The Home Office would be stripped of its powers over the police under new plans unveiled by the Conservatives.

Instead, forces would be governed by directly-elected commissioners and US-style sheriffs, shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin told the Police Superintendents Association.

These officials should be given the powers to dismiss failing police chiefs, he suggested.

"The Home Office has got to let go because, sooner or later, the obsessive, centralising tendencies of the current regime will end in disaster," he said.

"You can't steer a ship from the shore. And you can't police a neighbourhood from Whitehall."

"The next Conservative government will reverse the direction of policing policy," Letwin added.

"We will push power down from the politicians and bureaucrats, through the police force hierarchies and to the police officers on the front line against crime and disorder.

"Each of you will be accountable, not to me, but to the neighbourhoods in your care."