Mark Littlewood, Liberty's Campaigns Director, says:

"The police need to be able to defend themselves, but they also have a duty always to use minimum necessary force. This must be about safely reducing the force the police need to use, not increasing it - and that means they should only be used as an alternative to firearms.

We would question whether this is really the minimum force option for use against anyone with knives, as Bedfordshire police seem to suggest.

These new plastic bullet/baton round weapons also need rigorous independent testing to ensure they're as safe as possible and establish how they can most safely be used.

They should only ever be an alternative to using firearms - if they mean people can be safely tackled who would otherwise be shot, then that's a welcome improvement. But it must not lead to any wider use - it must be solely about options to reduce the force used by police, not about escalating armouries