It's put to Cooper - who's speaking from a police station in Slough - that there are huge cuts coming down the line for police, as Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has previously suggested.

Cooper says there are "tight pressures", but says the government is going to increase overall investment in policing.

She says there will "efficiencies and improvements [needed] within policing" - but additional money is being given.

Cooper adds that next year's funding for the Met would be revealed just before Christmas "in the normal way", and acknowledged different forces face their own pressures, for example large protests for the Met.

We're hearing again from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who is asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme about the government's plan to have a "named police officer" for every community - what does that mean?

It means "you know who your local officer is, how to get hold of them about things like persistent anti-social behaviour... or maybe to talk about some persistent drug dealing you've seen around the corner," she says.

Cooper says "good neighbourhood policing is really the foundation of the British policing model" which has been "lost".

More bobbies on beat might not cut crime, but they can improve trustpublished at 08:01 Greenwich Mean Time 5 December

08:01 GMT 5 December

Mark Easton
Home editor

Police foot patrols may be popular with the public, but there is scant evidence they make much difference to cutting crime.

What they can do, however, is improve trust in the police and reduce the fear of crime.

There is research to suggest that neighbourhood policing with the right community engagement can increase confidence in policing.

The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said the measures are "about rebuilding the vital connection between the public and the police". Trust in the police has fallen considerably in the last few years.

The idea of having a named, contactable officer in every community is not new. Some forces already do this, and community support officers were created in part to provide a human face to a local police service.

The risk with this policy is over-promising. If a named officer is unavailable or unresponsive, this might further damage confidence in the police. A lot will rest on whether the extra training officers will get in specialist neighbourhood engagement improves the relationship between the police and the policed.

Earlier Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philip said the Conservatives had cut crime by 50% and added 3,500 more police officers during their stint.

Cooper is asked what Labour's target is. She repeats the pledge for 13,000 extra police officers, and says we "need to tackle" the fact that "street theft has gone up by 40%, shoplifting has gone up 30%".

Cooper is asked by how much will they reduce crime by, but declines to give a figure, saying Labour wants to "work with police forces to make sure that we can tackle those crimes" and is giving the police more powers.

"But you can't tell us that crime will be down?" host Naga Munchetty pushes. Cooper says they want to "of course" bring crime down.

Police forces will receive an additional £100m for the next year which would be enough to fund an additional 1,200 police officers, the home secretary says.

Yvette Cooper tells BBC Breakfast the money will help get neighbourhood policing "back in our communities where we can see them".

It would pay for salaries and recruitment and would be on top of the core funding they already get, she says.

Neighbourhood policing will also be changed in that people would have a named police officer for their area, says Cooper - something which a former inspector of constabulary earlier said was a "tall order" but possible.

Yvette Cooper is pressed on the fact that fewer than a third of the extra 13,000 police officers promised will be new recruits.

She says there will be a mix of recruiting new police officers, redeploying existing officers and recruiting new specials officers which will overall lead to an increase of 13,000.

Cooper adds that 10,000 people have been removed from neighbourhood policing over the years so this policy is about "restoring" it.

Asked whether Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) - who will make up some of the 13,000 - are indeed police officers, Cooper says they have similar powers but they're not the same.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is asked why a "reset" is needed - something that's been a main line of attack from the Conservatives who say Starmer's trying to relaunch his government after a tricky few months.

Cooper tells Breakfast today is all about Starmer outlining "the major milestones that catch the priorities for people across the country, the things that we're determined need to change".

She says before the election "we set out the big missions for the country" but now, after the Budget, they're setting out what this means and what people will see change in their neighbourhoods.

She tells BBC Breakfast there's going to be 13,000 more neighbourhood police officers, PCSOs and special constables because "neighbourhood policing has been decimated" by the Conservatives.

We're now about to hear from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who will be speaking to BBC Breakfast before facing questions from the Today programme again at 08:10 GMT.

We'll bring you the key lines from what she says, and you can follow the show at the top of this page, just click Watch Live.

Zoe Billingham, who was previously Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue, says having a named officer that people can get hold of - which Starmer is promising - is something communities want.

She tells BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it's absolutely possible to have a named officer who residents can reach out to directly - but it'll be a "tall order" in some places that are more stretched.

"It's a tried and trusted approach that puts neighbourhood policing at the heart of the communities," she says.

Neighbourhood policing is the "only way" we can stop crime from happening in the first place, she adds.

We know one of the milestones already - a promise to put an extra 13,000 policing officers on the streets in England and Wales.

As for the other ones, the targets will likely build on his five so-called "missions" for government that he set out way back in February 2023, prior to the election:

• Securing the "highest sustained growth" in the G7 group of rich nations, made up of the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, by the end of Labour's first term
• Making Britain a '"clean energy superpower", removing fossil fuels from all of Britain's electricity generation by 2030
• Improving the NHS
• Reforming the justice system
• Raising education standards

But, as our political editor Chris Mason writes, they lacked real detail or snappy, measurable promises. That's what we're expecting today.

Starmer announces 13,000 more police - but that includes PCSOs and volunteerspublished at 07:24 Greenwich Mean Time 5 December

07:24 GMT 5 December

Mark Easton
Home editor

"More bobbies on the beat" is political catnip on crime and, not for the first time, that is a central promise of a government.

Today’s prime ministerial missions include an extra 13,000 neighbourhood police in England and Wales with a named, contactable officer in every community.

The extra patrols will be paid for, the Home Office says, by efficiency measures such as standardising procurement, “ending the madness of 43 forces purchasing their own cars and uniforms” as Sir Keir Starmer puts it.

But the promise is not quite what it seems. The 13,000 extra officers include only 3,000 fully-warranted police - the remainder are made up of community support officers (PCSOs) and volunteer special constables.

There is no timescale on the introduction of the additional personnel and less than third of the budget has so far been announced.

One of Starmer's milestones that he's setting out today is to have 13,000 extra neighbourhood policing officers in England and Wales.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp tells BBC Breakfast that the Labour government's plan is "completely dishonest".

"Only 3,000 are actually new", with the rest being transferred from elsewhere and some being PCSOs with no powers of arrest, he says.

He says Starmer's plan is "a desperate attempted relaunch" for an "already failing" government.

While in office, the Conservatives aimed to increase the number of officers by 20,000. The target was reached overall - meaning there were around 3,500 more officers than in 2010 when Conservatives and Liberal Democrats began cutting police numbers. Meanwhile the population grew by about 7% between 2010 and 2023.

Chris Mason
Political editor

Insiders I talk to are pretty sanguine about the prospect of this being seen by critics as a relaunch.

Perhaps a good job, given the Conservatives are saying precisely that, branding it an “emergency relaunch” and the Liberal Democrats have suggested the milestones were “on the road to nowhere” without what they see as a proper plan.

But it is also true to say I have picked up chat about the planning for this moment for quite a while, where ministers would try to shift beyond their initial pitch billed as "fixing the foundations" and add to that by giving themselves a framework around which people can understand what they are prioritising.

They want to create a story about what they are trying to achieve so when the prime minister and his cabinet ministers are out and about they have stuff to point to about what they are focused on.

More from Chris here.

Image source, PA Media

Starmer's political opponents are criticising him over the speech, with the Conservatives describing it an “emergency relaunch” after a difficult start to government.

On Sunday - following the prime minister’s weekend article - Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said he "is having to relaunch... because Labour had no plan for government".

"This is just the beginning…. there will be more resets to come.”

Elsewhere, the Liberal Democrats' Cabinet Office spokeswoman Sarah Olney said the government's targets would be "meaningless unless they reversed the disastrous mistakes made so far" such as the changes to winter fuel payment and inheritance tax for farmers.

Several papers look ahead to one of Starmer's expected targets today - to put more police officers on the street. The Daily Mirror's headline is the "long Starm of the law".

A strike by journalists hasn't stopped the Guardian going to print, although none of the front page articles has a byline. Its main story is also on the promise of 13,000 extra neighbourhood police, external as the paper says he tries to "reset" his premiership with new targets.

But no new pledges on immigration, the Telegraph says it understands., external Instead Starmer will map out his targets on economic growth, the NHS, the environment, societal opportunities and policing, it adds.

And the Times says the promises will be something that voters can judge him by by the next election.

Chris Mason
Political editor

They are not perhaps the most elegant duo of words, but they get to the heart of what the prime minister wants to set out in a wide-ranging speech on Thursday - what senior folk in government describe as "measurable deliverables".

In other words, Starmer's "plan for change" to be revealed later will include half a dozen understandable, digestible promises and a deadline - the next general election.

It is a plan not without risk because while success, against those metrics at least, would be transparent, so too would failure.

There will be six targets - or as Labour will put it "milestones" - in the PM's remarks.

Three milestones are for England - more housebuilding and planning reform, speeding up how long it takes to get a routine NHS operation, and improving pre-school education. There will also be a greener energy target for the UK and for putting more police on the beat in England and Wales.

Over the weekend, Sir Keir Starmer gave us a flavour of what we might expect him to say in his "plan for change".

Writing in the Sun on Sunday, external, the prime minister described it as "the most ambitious yet honest delivery plan in a generation".

"That means doing things a different way, and launching new, measurable milestones so the ­public can track our progress."

He accused the Conservatives of leaving "major problems that can’t be fixed overnight" and "there’s no point pretending otherwise".

Image source, Reuters

Five months ago, in his maiden speech after Labour's election landslide, new PM Keir Starmer pledged the "work of change will begin immediately".

It's now December, and Starmer is due this morning to give another major address on his "plan for change" for Britain.

What is it? Well, the PM's saying it's the "most ambitious yet honest delivery plan in a generation", that will detail "measurable milestones" by which the public can track his progress.

His Tory opposite, Kemi Badenoch, isn't so convinced. She's describing it as a "relaunch" from a party with "no plan for government".

We're expecting him to speak at 10:45 GMT. We'll be covering the speech, reaction, and analysis from our correspondents.