BRITISH police guns are no match for the weapons used by Islamist killers, says Surrey’s Police and Crime Commissioner Kevin Hurley after the Paris massacre.

And faced with a similar attack in the UK, police forces would not have the numbers of armed officers to respond.

Writing for the Daily Mail on Tuesday, Mr Hurley said: “The truth is our police – especially the armed response units – remain pathetically ill-equipped and inadequate for the job of protecting the public.

“When an Islamist outrage occurs on our soil, as it inevitably will, our forces may have neither the firepower nor the numbers to overwhelm the terrorists quickly before mayhem occurs.

“What was striking about Paris was how effectively the well-armed French police went into action, preventing even greater carnage.

“Yet our officers have nothing like the same strength or weaponry.”

Mr Hurley, who was the City of London Police’s head of counter-terrorism as well as having served as a Detective Chief Superintendent in the Metropolitan Police, said there are 40 times more armed officers in France than in the UK.

“Nor is the equipment used by the police’s armed response vehicles (ARVs) remotely adequate for the task,” he added.

The Paris terrorists used automatic machine guns, but the main weapons used by British police guns are high velocity and lower calibre, which he claimed were “inadequate’ for combating the new breed of terrorist.

The outspoken police commissioner (above), responsible for overseeing the work of Surrey Police, warned terrorists could “just as easily inflict their savagery in provincial towns such as Guildford”,

He added: “At present, most counties in England have only four or six armed officers.”

The failure to provide an effective armed police reflected wider inadequacies in UK security, he said.

Mr Hurley wrote: “My patch covers a large section of the M25 and I often reflect on how many illegal immigrants are being stowed away on foreign lorries on our motorway network.”

“The latest scanning equipment used at ports can pick up a heartbeat, smell and carbon dioxide from people’s breath, but there is no such technological capability for detecting smuggled weapons.

“Contrary to what [Home Secretary] Theresa May said recently in another of her hollow boasts about Home Office effectiveness, there are probably large quantities of imported arms circulating in Britain.

“Only in August, police seized a haul of guns that had been smuggled across the Channel, including 22 automatic assault rifles, nine Skorpion machine pistols and almost 1,000 rounds of ammunition.

“I have argued for years that our police were under-powered and under-prepared for the terror crisis that is looming. Paris should serve as an alarm call.

“It is no use recruiting 2,000 extra intelligence analysts – as the Government announced [on Monday] – if the frontline force cannot act on the information.

“If we are really going to be ready for the fight, we need to stop the police cuts, which have already seen the loss of 18,000 officers (as well as many Police and Community Support Officers, who provide vital local intelligence), develop proper response plans with the Army – and above all give armed police the weapons and numbers they need.”