Labour MPs will call for the government to reverse planned cuts to police funding in the wake of rioting and disorder across English cities.
Parliament has been recalled for the day on Thursday to debate violence and looting, which spread after police struggled to control riots in London. Numbers of police on the street were boosted to help restore calm.
But Labour says 20% cuts in central government funding over four years are taking "huge risks with law and order".
The reductions apply to England and Wales.
'Substantially weakened' Ministers argue money can be saved by cutting bureaucracy and changing shift patterns - and say cuts could amount to 14% in real terms - if the funding police forces receive from local council tax is increased.
But on Wednesday the Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson put himself at odds with government policy when he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "If you ask me if I think there is a case for cutting police budgets in light of these events then my answer to that would be no - I think that case was always pretty frail and it has been substantially weakened."
As MPs prepare to debate events on Thursday, Labour's Yvette Cooper told the BBC her party would push for a reversal of police cuts - and said the events of the past few days had made it "abundantly clear" that more police officers on the streets could make a "real difference".
She said Labour agreed that the police could make budget savings in administration and "back office" - but the "scale and pace" of cuts, and reduction in officers, was not what people wanted."It is affecting front-line policing and I think it's a mistake ... Nobody's saying that police cuts motivated somebody to go and smash in the window of a sports store, but it may be that police cuts actually make it harder for us to restore order and to maintain order and to deal with these criminal problems when they arise."
David Cameron has been chairing another meeting of the government's crisis committee, Cobra, ahead of the debate.
He is due to make a statement in the Commons from 1130 BST, which will be followed by a statement on the economy by Chancellor George Osborne, and a debate on the riots from about 1330 BST.
The prime minister has played down suggestions the government should rethink police cuts, saying it will not do anything "that will reduce the amount of visible policing on our streets" or "puts public safety at risk".
The home secretary has said that, even after the cuts been implemented, police will still be able to deploy similar numbers to those seen over the past few days if needed.
The police watchdog, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary, said in a report last month that information from police forces in England and Wales suggested the number of police officers would be reduced by 16,200 between March 2010 and March 2015 - and police staff overall would fall by 34,100.
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