VIOLENT crime will rise when up to 20,000 police jobs are axed because of savage spending cuts, MPs were warned yesterday.

The Police Federation pointed to the example of New York City – which recorded more “rapes, murders and robberies” – as evidence of the impact of taking officers off the streets.

And it pressured the Government to think again by highlighting how officers with the greatest experience and crime-fighting skills would go first.

The group representing rank-and-file officers told a parliamentary inquiry that only those with 30 years’ service could be made redundant, and only by invoking regulation A19 of the pensions regulations.

The warnings came as forces across the North-East and North Yorkshire make hundreds of staff redundant to cope with the effect of losing tens of millions of pounds from their annual budgets.

Almost 90 staff are going from the Durham force, although none of them will be frontline officers, while North Yorkshire will lose 200 officers and 350 support staff.

A Northumbria Police spokesman said 450 civilian posts would go.

Giving evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee, federation chairman Paul McKeever described the looming cuts as a revolution in policing that would have unintended consequences.

Pointing to the impact of police cuts in New York, he said: “Rapes, murders and robberies are up over the last year or so, so it is something we do have to take notice of.”

And, warning that officers who have served for 30 years or more would be forced out, he said: “They are the officers with the very high skill sets required for modern police service.

“They tend to be the officers with the experience we rely on when we are going through difficult times, but they are the ones that we are going to lose first.”

Mr McKeever said police numbers would fall below the “dark days of the Seventies”, and said: “People were leaving in large numbers. Nobody wanted to stay because pay and remuneration were so poor.”

The federation has no plans to organise demonstrations against the cuts, but Mr Mc- Keever said: “We do not rule anything out.”

Asked about suggestions that half of police stations would close, he said: “All bets are off. Selling police stations is one option forces could go down.”

Echoing the warning, Labour home affairs spokesman Ed Balls said: “The police are taking a much bigger hit than other vital public services.

These cuts are a reckless and dangerous gamble.”

But the Home Office has told forces to ensure they were “protecting the front line and prioritising visibility and availability of policing”.

Across the country, police funding will fall by 20 per cent by 2015.