The Police Federation is right today to warn about the potential cost and the strain on police resources likely to be caused by next year's proposed pilot scheme to cull badgers in the Westcountry. The Federation – which represents rank and file officers – points out conflict over the cull will mean an unpredictable workload without any guarantee that costs will be reimbursed by the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs – the body that is ordering the cull.

And, in what is likely to become a regular refrain over the next five years, it points out that this extra responsibility is coming at a time when the Devon and Cornwall force is having to absorb spending cuts of £50 million and the loss of 700 officers or one-in-five of the current manpower. Let's be clear, none of these potential problems is an excuse for abandoning plans for a cull. That would be a sensible course only if the scientific advice suggested culling badgers in hotspot areas could not possibly help to reduce incidence in bovine TB. Despite the claims of the anti-cull lobby, any such claim that a cull will make things worse have yet to be proved.

Police officers are right, however, to raise concerns about the cost and the impact on manpower of trying to prevent those vehemently opposed to any badgers being killed from taking the law into their own hands. While there are many opposed to the cull who will pursue their cause through the courts there are also – we fear – hotheads who will seek to protect badgers if all legal avenues to prevent a cull have been exhausted. It is, obviously, the duty of the police to monitor them and arrest any law-breakers.

But, as we have seen last weekend in London, the police have finite resources. One of the reasons given for the failure to mount an adequate response on Saturday night to the rioting in Tottenham was that the whole of London has a busy "night time economy" and many officers were occupied elsewhere. That's not a suitable excuse but it is undeniable that when any police force is facing multiple calls on its resources, something has to give.

The same sort of pressure, albeit in a completely different scenario, could well arise whenever a badger cull gets underway in the Westcountry. We trust that senior police officers will deploy their resources in an appropriate way to ensure a legal cull can take place and those marksmen undertaking the task can be allowed to get on with their job in safety. But it is patently obvious that if officers numbers have been reduced by then, as they will have been, properly policing any clashes in the countryside will be that much more difficult. The only useful lesson that can be learned is that cuts have consequences – something that, so far as the police are concerned, the Home Secretary has resolutely refused to acknowledge ever since the overall 20 per cent cuts in spending were announced as part of efforts to reduce the public deficit. It is the first duty of the police to keep order. If they can't do that with the resources they have, ministers have some hard questions to answer