Violent partners are escaping justice in West Yorkshire after harsh police cuts, it has been claimed.

Labour raised the alarm today after new figures showing the number of domestic violence cases referred to prosecutors has plunged by 14.7 per cent in just two years.

As a result, the number of successful prosecutions, in West Yorkshire, has also fallen since 2011, although less sharply – by 8.5 per cent.

Yvette Copper, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, described the fall in referrals as “shocking and disturbing”, because levels of domestic violence were on the rise.

And she linked the decline to the loss of 15,000 frontline officers across the country under the Coalition.

But Mark Burns-Williamson, West Yorkshire’s elected police commissioner, insisted domestic violence complaints to the force had fallen, by 12 per cent in the past year.

The figures, obtained from freedom of information requests, showed there were 5,164 domestic violence referrals in West Yorkshire in 2010-11 and 2,877 successful prosecutions.

But those figures had fallen to 4,405 referrals and 2,632 successful prosecutions by the last financial year, 2012-13.