Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)

I think that we would all agree that the crime and disorder reduction partnerships, which were introduced in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, are one of the most significant things that have happened to policing and community safety. In many parts of the country, the partnerships are working very well. The best CDRPs bring together the health service, education, social services, the police and the local authority. They share information, look at hotspots in their communities and help to task and to deploy resources to reduce a range of crime. However, it has to be said that, in some parts of the country, the performance of CDRPs is patchy. That is why we reviewed the partnership provisions in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.

We had 450 different responses to that extensive and lengthy consultation—some people thought that it was too lengthy. The recommendations took a long time to come out. However, it was a serious attempt to look at where CDRPs were working well, where they were not and what we could do to strengthen them.

Schedule 6 contains various recommendations for national standards for information sharing and community engagement. They are about ensuring that all partners take the partnership seriously. If CDRPs are going to be the engine of local policing, together with the neighbourhood policing teams and the basic command units, they have to be rigorous, perform well and deliver the outcomes that communities want.

Small partnerships might find it advantageous, therefore, to merge with neighbouring ones. That is voluntary, and not being imposed by the Government. However, we might ask CDRPs to focus on a particular issue, to come up with a strategy and to work with the police to develop tactics. The focus might be on, for example, alcohol-related violent crime, if that is a big community issue. That would be quite a task, and if a small organisation lacks the capacity, resources and people to carry it out, it makes sense for it to come together, perhaps with a neighbouring CDRP, to take that forward.

Many of the established drug and alcohol teams have merged with their CDRPs because they recognise that that makes sense. Those teams tackle drug and alcohol problems, which fuel a lot of violent and acquisitive crime, so it makes sense to bring together the bodies that deal with all those issues. In some other parts of the country, those teams have not merged, probably for good local reasons, and all I am concerned about is that those areas achieve the outcomes that we want.

The proposal to encourage CDRP mergers, where appropriate, is about ensuring that they can perform at a level that can deliver good crime reduction for their local communities. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman that the proposals are not a centralised plan to dictate the landscape, but are driven by efficiency and performance to ensure that the CDRPs that, in some cases, struggle to deliver on the agenda, can get support from neighbouring CDRPs.

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