Alex said: “We all know who is really responsible for the dismantling of the Criminal Justice System. As many will remember, we were told by the former Prime Minister that we were crying wolf.

“This is not the fault of the Police Service. This is the result of a Government that knew better than professionals, on probation, on health, on policing.”

Alex added: “Hampshire Police officers come to work to do a good job. They don’t like the fact that the service is poor, but that is squarely due to Government action - not the will of officers to do a good job.”

See the full HMICFRS report here https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/…/noticeable-diffe…/

In the report, HMIC Matt Parr said the public had "rumbled" that the police do not have the capacity to deal with common crimes, such as burglaries or car crime, and have given up reporting incidents to police.

"I think particularly in the volume crime area the public has rumbled that the police capacity to deal with this is extremely limited."

Mr Parr added: "There are some strikingly low figures about car crime resolution, meaning most of the public simply give up reporting it because the chances of anything positive happening are so slim."

"The country is just short of investigators," he said. "There's lots of forces that haven't got enough detectives - therefore, very often, crimes aren't allocated to the right people to investigate."