The Government faced growing calls to include the North-East in a new nationwide crackdown on street crime last night.

MPs said they were bewildered that the region appeared to have been ignored in the Government's new Robbery Reduction Initiative.

About 5,000 traffic policemen across the country are to be put back on the beat to beef up specialist squads targeting thugs in London, on Merseyside, Lancashire, the West Midlands, Avon and Somerset, West and South Yorkshire, Thames Valley, Nottingham and Manchester.

Ashok Kumar, Labour MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, says he found it inexplicable that crime-hit areas had been left out.

Dr Kumar is taking up Teesside's omission from the pilot list with Home Secretary David Blunkett.

He said: "I welcome this new initiative which will put more resources and effort into tackling street crime through the application of zero tolerance measures, but I am very concerned that Cleveland, which certainly has problems arising from such crimes, is being left out of the first wave of pilots.

"I feel that some of the other areas - such as the Thames Valley or Avon and Somerset - are a lot quieter than Cleveland and that Cleveland should be considered again.''

The MP added: "Accordingly, I am writing to the Home Secretary pointing out these facts. Put simply, to an elderly person who may have been the victim of street crime in Middlesbrough or East Cleveland, the fact that parts of the leafy south east are benefiting from this initiative will be of little comfort. We need this initiative here in Cleveland an we need it now.''

But yesterday a Home Office spokesman revealed there were no immediate plans to extend the scheme to any of the North-East police forces, although it had not been ruled out.

He said: "These areas have been chosen because they have the worst problems. It is not a good thing to be on this particular list as regards crime levels. It is possible that the scheme could be extended at some future date. That has not been ruled out although there is no time scale for that."