A former counter terrorism police officer has said young police officers are scared to use their powers because they fear what will happen to them if they do.

Chris Phillips, who co-ordinated Counter Terrorism security visits to the UK said there was a ‘risk averse’ culture in the Met by police scared of being called racist.

Speaking to GB News Chris Phillips said: “You do need to arrest people to take them out of the dangerous situation.

“And I think we need to just give the police a little bit of a leeway here. Public Order is not easy. I think they are [scared] and, I think over the last couple of years, there has been a lack of real positive policing and I think there's a number of reasons for it.

“One: police these days are very young in service. Because of Theresa May’s and David Cameron's work, the experienced people have all gone, we've got loads of young police officers out there and they're quite scared to use their powers because they fear what's going to happen to them if they do use them.

“The same social media crowd will be getting these police officers suspended and taking the police officers to court. We’ve got officers now waiting to go to court because of things that they've tried to use their power for.

“I think there's a risk averse culture within The Met now, right from the middle rank and higher rank, but also at the base level, where officers are really scared to use their powers at the risk of being called a racist, quite simply.

“And I think we've seen the same in the schools. We still got a teacher in Batley who's in hiding because of actually doing his job properly, and there is definitely an issue throughout society and that's permeated."