Question again proposed, That this House do now adjourn.

Before any reorganisation is authorised by the House, the case should be overwhelming. The last two Opposition speakers have made clear how weak the case is. The original report states the case for reorganisation in very tentative language and points out that some of the biggest police forces fall short in dealing with all levels of crime, whereas some of the smallest—including the Gwent, Dyfed-Powys and North Wales police forces—achieve remarkable results.

It was once said that

"we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."

That was said by Gaius Petronius in AD66, and it remains true today. That is the experience that most of us have had of reorganisations. I have been an elected member of authorities for 33 years and I have seen many reorganisations, all promising to produce marvellous results. The first reorganisation of local government that I endured was based on the notion that big is beautiful, the second on the notion that small is beautiful. All of them duplicated jobs, despite promising reductions and all manner of efficiencies of scale, whether large scale or small scale. None delivered the promised improvements and all plunged the authorities affected into a period of upheaval.

Probably the only groups of people who favour police reorganisation are the criminals, because they are likely to benefit, and some members of the police service, because they are ambitious and know that it is likely to produce many new and well paid jobs. In the year leading up to the reorganisation, the police will be able to say, "Of course our standards have dropped and we haven't arrested so many people or solved so many crimes, but that is because we are building up to reorganisation." Their excuse for the next two years will be, "We are in the middle of reorganisation." The worst period will come after that. Members of the National Association of Retired Police Officers have first-hand knowledge of what happened during the last reorganisation, which took place in 1965–66, and their evidence states that it took 10 years to get back to pre-reorganisation levels of efficiency. That is the key point. There is no case for changing. We have the tyranny of arithmetic determinism. Someone names a number—for example, 4,000—and everyone has to fit into this Procrustean bed of a false 4,000.

We have a splendid police force in Gwent. It is at the top of the league, not only for last year or the year before that but for a period of 20 years. It is institutionally sound as well as administratively efficient. It enjoys enormous support from the public. The national approval rate is 78 per cent. What other service enjoys public confidence on that scale? It seems that we shall throw it away in response to a report that was not part of the Labour party's manifesto. There is no reason why we should be bound to the report. There is no ideology behind it. There is no reason why we should be supporting the report on the basis of party loyalty, or for any other reason. We are entirely free to vote against the report because it was not part of our manifesto.

There is an extraordinary political situation in the House. There is a Liberal Democrat Green who wants to hug all the asylum seekers and who is splendidly politically correct. There will be great changes to the political structure in future. The last thing that we want is to have round our neck the albatross of a reorganisation that will be unpopular, with all the problems that will occur in future, which will be blamed on the reorganisation. We shall suffer that ignominy and blame in future elections.

The report, as Mr. Llwyd and my hon. Friend Mr. Dhanda said, makes a weak case. We are offered the window dressing that it will solve the problem of terrorism. The same excuse was used for selling identity cards, but that was dropped. Identity cards will not solve the problem of terrorism. The other issue is drugs, to which a rational approach should be taken. The new leader of the Conservative party has a splendid, pragmatic view on drugs, which he demonstrated during his interrogation of witnesses who appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee when it was chaired by my hon. Friend Mr. Mullin. The present Chairman of the Committee did not seem to reflect that view. I believe that if the Leader of the Opposition continues to pursue the brave policy that he advanced then and during his leadership campaign election we will, for the first time in 30 years, have an intelligent debate about drugs in the House.

We will solve the problem of drugs not through a reorganisation of the police but through a set of new laws. I spent the last weekend in a country that is not regarded as one that is successful on drug policy—Italy. The Villa Mariani in Rome operates a drugs policy that would be approved by many progressive people in the House. It is one of harm reduction, of needle exchanges and of treating drug addicts not as criminals and throwing them into prisons where there are drugs—and there are drugs in every one of our prisons in this country. It is a humane and practical policy that is pursued in collaboration with the police.

Portugal has, over a five-year period, reduced the number of people who have died from drugs by 50 per cent.—an extraordinary achievement. The Netherlands, Belgium and Australia have reduced the number of deaths from drugs by taking an effective, practical and humanitarian approach to the problem. The structure of our police is completely irrelevant to that.

Criminals will, of course, welcome a restructuring. During the reorganisation the police's attention will be on where headquarters will be, on who will get what job and on who will be given what desk. Their attention will be distracted from the task of trying to catch criminals. They will be diverted by the black hole of reorganisation.

We have heard about what happened in Wales; it is an extraordinary, marvellous story. Evidence was given on 27 October 2004 to the Welsh Affairs Committee. The four chief constables turned up to say that they did not want an all-Wales authority. One of them said—I had the pleasure of quoting it back to her—that she did not want to see a link between north Wales and south Wales. Exactly a year later, on 27 October 2005, she told us that she would like reorganisation on an all-Wales basis. We must not be too hard on the police, as ambition comes into play. Some very attractive jobs and career options will be created. It has been said that when Wales reorganises the chief constable will have a helicopter—the "super-copper with a chopper". However, benefits will not be delivered to the general public.

As for costs, it is irresponsible to suggest that we should embark on such a programme when the police tax—it is more accurate to describe the council tax that way—will increase by up to 30 per cent. My area will be affected by equalisation between north Wales and Gwent, so our council tax or police tax will increase by an enormous amount—an increase of 13 per cent. next year is already being talked about. If we want more community police officers, it will increase by even more. We cannot be rushed into a decision by 23 December if there is no prospectus on costs at all. What on earth would the public make of that? The decision to reorganise forces has been rushed and has no rational basis. It will help only the criminals, and it will harm the structure of the police. It is reorganisation for reorganisation's sake, and we do not know whether big or small is beautiful. We know, however, that reorganisation, before it is introduced, must be based on a strong, powerful case. This is based on nothing.

All Governments are, from time to time, guilty of the offence of hurrying to change or to legislate. This Government, I am afraid, are doing so too often. Pressures have been imposed on the people who have to respond. What chance is there of an inquiry by the Select Committee on Home Affairs into police restructuring and reorganisation? What discussions have taken place with bodies that operate on a county basis and which will be seriously affected, including the magistrates courts service, the Crown court service, the probation service and the Crown Prosecution Service? There has been no consultation with them whatsoever. The Home Secretary said that the time frames were challenging. Frankly, they are nothing short of a disgrace.

I should like to say a word or two on behalf of Surrey, which is a small police force consisting of 1,959 officers. However, the great and the good deem it too small and "not fit for purpose". I invite them, however, to look at what Surrey has been able to achieve. Surrey police have made the county one of the safest in England, and they are consistently among the top five performers nationally. The latest results indicate that they have hit the top performance targets set for them by Surrey police authority in many different areas. They have cut robbery, vehicle crime and burglary. Surrey police are an excellent police force, and their success has been achieved despite Government help which, over the years, has decreased more and more. A succession of excellent chief constables—Sir Ian Blair, Denis O'Connor and the present chief constable, Bob Quick—and an excellent authority chairman, Liz Campbell, together with a dedicated police force in Surrey, have worked against a background in which, year after year, our grant has been cut. Surrey has one of the lowest grants per head of population in the country, and receives £88 a head compared with an average of £103 a head in the south-east.

Surrey's difficulties will not be sorted out by an amalgamation with Sussex or anyone else, as they stem from the underlying funding instability of the past few years. So put that right and we could be on the road to solving Surrey's problems, by giving Surrey police increased flexibility in reconfiguring and modernising their work force, which they want to do. That, coupled with a fair financial settlement, would sort out Surrey's problems.

I have talked to many in Surrey about possible amalgamations. Where do we go? Is Surrey keen to amalgamate with another force? In truth, its preferred option is to stand alone, without the need for a merger, by exploiting work force modernisation and by co-operating with neighbouring forces to share services and with some limited financial investment. That is a viable option for Surrey police force. If it must amalgamate, I suspect that its favoured option would be to do so with Sussex; but, in truth, I am not sure that Sussex wants to amalgamate with Surrey. So the real answer is to treat Surrey police fairly—give them a chance, and they will prosper—and the Home Secretary should never say that a force of 1,959 is too small to be effective.

If I wanted to find the answer to two questions—what we think of our police forces, and what we want from—I do not think that I would go to a Whitehall mandarin; I would go and ask a victim of crime. What do the victims think? There is still huge respect for our police force. Many would say that we have the best police force in the world. Many would rightly say that our police have a magnificent record of responding to major disasters and terrorist attacks and of dealing with high-profile murders. On all the big things, there is tremendous respect for our police force in this country.

Ask individuals about their localities and how happy they are with the policing that they get, however, and perhaps there would be a frown on their foreheads. They are not so sure that the service is what they want. Locally, individuals want the police to respond and react quickly when they are contacted. They want detection levels to go up. Above all, most people still want to see more police on the streets, and the truth is that, whatever the Government's plans and policies and whatever they have talked about over the past eight years, I think that there are fewer police on our streets, and people do not like it, for each of us is comforted and reassured by the presence of the police, by knowing them personally and by knowing that they get deeply involved in the community.

If the police are deeply involved in the community, known to people, moving around, talking to people and learning about solving the minor crime—the graffiti, the assaults and the drunkenness—and if they take control of communities, not only do they get the intelligence to sort out low-level crime, but that way comes intelligence to sort out the very serious crime and to find out who is responsible for it. So one's contacts perhaps might fear that the amalgamations, the mergers and the whole principle that big is better is a flawed concept.

Someone told me not long ago, "Everything in my life seems to be getting bigger and more remote. It's moving away from me. I don't feel that I have any real involvement." So my advice to the Government is very clear. They should avoid the steady march towards a regional police force system; it is the last thing that people want. They should not think that bigger means better; it does not. They should not think that centralisation is better than devolving powers to communities; it is not. They should understand that larger can mean more remote. They should also understand that, if they focus too much on the big issues, those at the bottom end of society will find that the issues that matter to them are ignored and left aside.

So will it be in Surrey's interest to amalgamate? I doubt it somehow. If it amalgamates with Sussex, performance may drop, things will be more remote and the financial resources may be sucked down to Brighton, Hastings or Gatwick. People in my constituency, Woking, will feel less involved, and they will feel that the police service is less accountable. The Government should remember that people in our communities are feeling increasingly left out and detached, and the more that we create big things, the more that they will feel remote and left out of our society.

I have concerns about the proposals because I am extremely proud of the progress that the Government have made in improving policing in Wrexham. When I was elected in 2001, one of the most common issues in my constituency was antisocial behaviour and crime. I had difficulty in dealing with those issues and referring them to the police because I could not contact identifiable officers for geographical areas in the constituency and I was not sure to whom to refer constituents. I am pleased to say that, in the Wrexham and in the North Wales police area today, we have identifiable community beat officers in each council ward. In addition, we have community support officers and neighbourhood wardens. We would like to have more neighbourhood wardens, but unfortunately the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives on the local authority voted against that.

The Government have a tremendous record on neighbourhood policing and I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety has personal experience and knowledge of policing in Wrexham. She came to Wrexham at a very difficult time and I am grateful for her support then. She has seen neighbourhood policing in its infancy and the way that it has developed since.

My concerns are shared by my colleagues right across north Wales and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for already giving us a great deal of time. She has listened carefully to what we have had to say and she is aware of some of the arguments that have already been referred to in the debate so far. I will not discuss north Wales at length, because a number of colleagues have already raised the issue.

I wish to consider specifically Denis O'Connor's report. I am a reformer and a great believer in police reform. Police reform has occurred substantively under this Government, but it has been opposed at many stages by the Opposition parties. I remember being in Committee when the introduction of community support officers was being discussed. That was opposed by the Opposition parties. I remember concerns being expressed about the extension of neighbourhood warden schemes, but I am very pleased that progress has been made.

I welcome the assurances that have been given about the future of neighbourhood policing, but we must consider Denis O'Connor's report. I am not against the amalgamation of forces if it improves the level of policing that is afforded to my constituents. I am not against the amalgamation of forces if it improves the operational capacity of the Wrexham force and the North Wales force.

I have considered closely the proposals in Denis O'Connor's report, but I have also considered closely the statement by Chief Constable Giffard in his letter of 9 November this year to the chief constable of North Wales. It set out the reasons for recommending an all-Wales force, and it is worth quoting them in full:

"The option meets the HMIC criteria on size of force and demonstrates the potential capacity to provide protective services to national standards without adverse impact on police services at the neighbourhood level."

There is no dispute that an all-Wales force would have more than 4,000 officers; that is not an issue. However, I have seen no real evidence to date that suggests that protective services across Wales would be improved by the creation of an all-Wales force. If that evidence exists, I would like to see it. If it exists, it should be put before the public so they can see the evidence that suggests that policing would be improved.

In the Welsh context, it is extremely important to consider the geographical area that would be covered by the all-Wales force. Five hours is not an unusual journey time from Holyhead to Cardiff and, from Wrexham, it takes three hours to get to Cardiff and four hours to Swansea. It is a huge area.

When I read Denis O'Connor's report, I was struck by the stress that he places on the maintenance of local links. For example, he states:

"the overall goal should be the creation of organisations that are large enough to provide a full suite of sustainable services, yet still small enough to be able to relate to local communities."

It is difficult to see how a national Wales force could relate to local communities.

Denis O'Connor also refers to criminal markets, which are very important in the improvement of level 2 activities such as collecting intelligence and dealing with serious organised crime. It is easily explicable that improved level 2 policing would occur with the closer integration of police services in Merseyside and north Wales because, as any police officer or magistrate in north Wales knows, there is an active criminal market that is common to both places. However, it is not easy to understand how a national Wales force will deal with those criminal markets more efficiently than present arrangements, as its structure will take no account of criminal markets.

To date, the evidence has not been brought forward to support the proposed restructuring. I want my right hon. Friend the Minister to tell me how level 2 policing will be improved. How will there be better intelligence gathering in an all-Wales force? How will serious organised crime be better addressed? Will the fact that criminal markets, which Denis O'Connor describes as "fundamental", are ignored by the present proposal for an all-Wales force make any difference?

I am concerned that neighbourhood policing may be undermined by an all-Wales force. I have heard and welcome the assurance that the basic command unit will remain the building block of policing, but I have concerns relating to finance, the foundation on which the building blocks stand. In particular, north Wales has invested more in policing than other parts of Wales, and its police precept is higher. If the police precept is standardised across Wales, the north Wales precept will necessarily be reduced. If that happens, will there be a call for services to move from north to south, where, after all, crime rates are higher? If resources are shifted, it will have a detrimental effect on neighbourhood policing in north Wales.

In short, the case for an all-Wales force still needs to be made, so that I can make it to my concerned constituents in Wrexham.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

I appreciate that there is already a time limit on speeches by Back Benchers in this debate, but if hon. Members are brief, a few more may be able to contribute, even at this late stage.

The Government claimed that the O'Connor report forced them to restructure our police forces. They started a panicky, so-called consultation exercise, which was too hasty, and now they are providing a financial bung to those who kowtow to them before the ridiculous deadline of Friday.

A week last Wednesday, I asked the first question at Prime Minister's questions, when I mentioned an extraordinary letter from the chairman of my police authority, who is a Labour councillor. The Prime Minister said that a full consultation is taking place, but that is not what Cheshire police authority expects. In a letter that was copied to the Minister, Councillor Peter Nurse has stated:

"Policing should be at the heart of our communities and your proposals do nothing to safeguard or develop this. Your timetable is so absurd that it is impossible for us to have a meaningful dialogue with our communities . . . Your direction in respect of Cheshire is severely flawed . . . Restructuring policing with such haste and without considering the long term implications is dangerous and not in the interests of the people of Cheshire."

I have not yet seen a reply to that letter.

Two days after Prime Minister's questions, I attended a meeting with Cheshire police authority and the chief constable, where I paid tribute to the hard work of the Cheshire constabulary and all the policemen and women within that force. Performance has been middling, and nobody would say that there is not vast room for improvement, but the force has specialist policing capabilities, and, as we have heard from Members on both sides of the House, it has engaged in fantastic collaboration with not only North Wales police, but Merseyside police, Greater Manchester police, Staffordshire police and, in north Shropshire, West Mercia constabulary.

My constituents in Cheshire are served by tailor-made collaboration, co-operation and co-ordination, while national threats are met by national strategies. In terms of a criminal market, as it was rather delicately put by Ian Lucas, crime is either local or national. There is no such thing as regional crime. Logic does not impel the Government to design a response that is regionally based rather than nationally based or, as at present, locally based.

What is the answer? It is not what is on offer in the House today. We are not allowed to maintain the status quo or to look across National Assembly or regional development agency boundaries; instead, we have to look at this precisely as the Government want us to, for the convenience of Ministers and Whitehall mandarins, who no doubt see it as a nice dotted line that will not disturb their administrative flows.

We need to tell the Government to think again. This hasty timetable can easily be extended and the financial bung can be removed so that there is not a perverse incentive for rushed responses. There should be a proper, considered and serious response so that we get to the point where we have an organisation that is equal to the threats and meets the needs and demands of our local citizens. All the constituents whom I represent in south-west Cheshire want good collaboration with north Wales to continue. They do not need a national police force to make that happen, because it happens already. As we have heard from Welsh MPs, a national Welsh force is not needed either, for much the same reasons.

When my good friend and neighbour, Mrs. Dunwoody, asked whether there should there be a national police force, the Minister replied with a categorical no. Let us therefore assume that it is not going to happen. I very much support that. We could, however, expand national organisations such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the British Transport police and the National Criminal Intelligence Service in order to collaborate, co-ordinate and co-operate nationally to deal with national threats, be that through counter-terrorism or anything else.

Deep down, the consent of the British people is required for us to have confidence in our policing, because policing, as it was originally set up, has to be by the people and for the people, just like our mandate in this place.

Not for the first time, the Government's proposal has been presented to the House in a panicky way, with no votes and no chance to make corrections—only an opportunity to urge a Minister who is not necessarily going to respond positively, although she is giving a good impression of listening. We are being offered a false prospectus. This is not about improving the service of policing to my constituents; it is about mapping an organisation on to a pre-conceived regional agenda that has nothing to do with meeting the additional threat that my chief constable rightly said has gone national, while continuing the local neighbourhood policing strategy. That is what is so inconsistent, and that is why we should not be shy of holding the Government to account and accusing them of issuing a false prospectus for an agenda and a strategy that is below-the-table stealth regionalisation that we should reject out of hand.

I welcome the fact that we are having a debate on police reform. We cannot divorce the idea of police structure from police functions. Having said that, I could not disagree more with Mr. O'Brien about the purpose of the rearrangement and the process that is being followed.

It is worth stating that police reform is already well under way. Lots of things have been happening, and I see them in my own constituency. We have significant new services in operation—for example, a mobile police station for rural areas. We have our first community support officers. We have £1.5 million of investment in a new police station in Glossop. We have had the very successful Operation Slipknot, whereby a major drugs ring was busted just a few weeks ago. Derbyshire has record numbers of police and has had a record fall in crime. That shows that things are working in my constituency as regards policing and the fight against crime. However, it is not a question of complacency, as there is much more to do.

One of the first antisocial behaviour orders in the country was imposed in my constituency. ASBOs have been welcome in the Gamesley area, where unacceptable behaviour contracts are bringing young people to book and encouraging positive behaviour, not just punishing bad behaviour. We are seeing positive leadership from police officers in our county.

I commend Derbyshire constabulary on being an active member of the local strategic partnerships that operate throughout the country. They advise others on how to work with other public services to help reduce crime across the board and to see what the police can do to help those other services deliver what they are there for as well. But most of all, we are seeing the development of neighbourhood policing. We are seeing the concept of the police officer in the allocated area with a telephone number and e-mail address, known to the people in the wards, building relationships, and that is working well. Only this weekend, a police constable said to me that, whatever happened at the top level, what was important was that the investment in neighbourhood policing should continue.

That is the agenda behind this reform. It is not about centralising control in regions but about devolving power and responsibility to the divisional headquarters, to the BCUs, and into the neighbourhoods. That is exciting and to be commended. I wonder if there really is an hon. Member who has more contact with their chief constable than with their BCU chief superintendent. When I refer constituency cases to the police, it is to the divisional headquarters, not the constabulary headquarters; it is to the chief superintendent, not the chief constable. Of course, I have a good relationship with the chief constable. I have even been to a Derby County football match with him; that is how good the relationship is. [Interruption.] Yes, I know, but we have to make sacrifices in this job. This really is about decisions made at chief superintendent level.

A few years ago, like a number of other speakers in this debate, I took part in the police service parliamentary scheme, and every aspect was a real eye-opener. I spent 22 days with police officers in Derbyshire and in the Metropolitan constabulary, really seeing what life was like on the front line for police officers. During that experience, I saw my first dead body. I helped to discover a cannabis factory. I found myself chasing down a street at night after a few kids with balaclava helmets and baseball bats, wondering what I was doing there. I was one of the first on the scene when an officer had been attacked with his own CS gas. We were searching an abandoned derelict building for young children who were missing at midnight. Those are the sort of pressures faced by our police officers, who are genuinely committed to what they are doing in the neighbourhoods as part of the strategy and regard themselves in Derbyshire as a police service rather than a police force.

As I started the police service parliamentary scheme, the Airwave project was being introduced. Police officers were cynical about it. They saw it as a big Government IT system that was bound to fail and questioned its advantages, saying that they were quite happy with their police radios. At the end of my participation in the scheme, 18 months later, Airwave was well established, without any fuss, on budget and on schedule. People were saying that it was wonderful and asking why they had not had it before. That innate conservatism, scepticism and cynicism about whether it would work and produce results was there at the beginning, but Airwave did work and demonstrated that police authorities and services throughout the country could deliver on such issues.

I do not mind whether we move to a Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire arrangement, or a wider east midlands arrangement. As I said to my hon. Friend Mr. Todd, I do not think that it matters where the headquarters is. What is important is that police are available in neighbourhoods. I also see this in the context of delivering more neighbourhood policies in families of schools, in primary care trusts with locality commissioning and in local authorities with local area agreements. All those policies look to more neighbourhood control and influence and more sensitivity to the delivery of services at that level.

This is an exciting set of proposals. I look forward to it being developed in harmony with the other proposals that are going on in different Departments, and I wish the Minister good speed and good luck with it.

Were an educated but ill-informed Martian to wander into this place and ask why this Government were both unpopular and had lost the confidence of professionals in the public services, we could do little better than refer him or her to the subject of this debate. In particular, had the Martian been observing this debate, he or she would conclude that any governing party that had Mrs. Dunwoody on the Back Benches and the Home Secretary on the Front Bench was working in the wrong direction.

The Government's handling of this matter is a microcosm of what they get wrong in three respects. First, the consultation process and time scale never do justice to the complexity and seriousness of the issue being considered. Secondly, there is always a hint of menace in the Government if one does not do what they ask. Thirdly, they do not learn from their mistakes.

First, on the seriousness of the issues to be considered, we have heard plenty of serious speeches tonight. Had the Home Secretary approached the subject on the same basis as many of those speeches, which have called for longer to consider these matters, he would have been heard better. There are serious issues in relation to balancing local matters and larger-scale problems.

I do not want the Minister of State to talk to me about terrorism. Bedfordshire police authority is still reeling from having £400,000 removed from its budget this year, which was previously paid to it to look after the policing at Luton airport and to cover anti-terrorism measures. Bedfordshire does not need lectures from the Government about the importance of tackling terrorism.

We have not had answers in relation to serious issues such as accountability, the precept and other matters. Many colleagues mentioned the operational issue and asked whether forces will be moved from a low-crime area to a higher-crime area, bearing in mind that everything is run by targets and quotas these days. How can anyone in a low-crime area be sure that that will not happen when those who run the police force must respect the targets imposed by the Home Office?

The police authorities of the eastern area met today and could agree on nothing except that they did not want a regional force. They had different ideas on everything else. The Bedfordshire police authority voted unanimously last Friday to reject the idea of mergers. The county council passed a motion saying that it did not want any of this. In dealing with policing matters that are so important to all of us, it takes some genius for a Government to get so many people against them who reckon that they have got it wrong.

Secondly, there is the hint of menace from the Government. There is the time scale that suggests to the police authority that if it does not voluntarily co-operate and come up with a scheme, something will be imposed on it that it might not have wanted. If such an authority does not volunteer something quickly, money that might be available will be taken away. Which responsible senior officer could look at money that is available and decide not to go for it?

Thirdly, the Government are failing to learn lessons. The last time that the Home Office tried to foist something on Bedfordshire that was ill thought through, had money thrown at it and seemed to deal with a national problem, it was called Yarl's Wood detention centre, which went down in flames because of the ill consideration behind it. The Government do not learn the lessons from how they did things.

I asked parish councils in my constituency, which are affected by policing, what they thought of the proposals. I received 15 responses, three of which could be described as neither one way nor the other, while 12 were more or less vehemently against. One parish council summed it up succinctly. Mavis Knight, the clerk to Odell parish council wrote to me:

"Dear Mr Burt, Thank you for your recent letter . . . At a recent meeting, Odell Parish Councillors were somewhat derisory of the whole process and felt it a waste of time to respond with any particular option as they are of the firm opinion that this government has already decided which option is to be adopted. They are probably right, but obviously you are not in any position to agree with that premise!!! Kind regards, Mavis Knight."

I think that Mavis has got it bang right, and I agree with her absolutely.

I am pleased to contribute briefly to this debate. I am aware that numerous colleagues also want to speak. I have often raised police issues in the Chamber—I have family links with the police, I have been a magistrate and a chair of my local safer communities forum, and my maiden speech concentrated on policing in North-West Leicestershire.

There is something of an anomaly in the debate tonight. We might have discovered a new phenomenon of the whole being less than the sum of the parts. We have heard many attestations to the quality of individual forces and the progress that has been made in particular areas, yet Opposition Members are quick to criticise, or set at low levels, the progress made in the police service as a whole.

I am very happy with the progress that we have seen in Leicestershire, where during eight and a half years of Labour government the number of police officers has risen from 1,950 to 2,311. I am reasonably happy about the increases in police grant, although I accept that the proportion of police funding required from council tax payers is probably too high, and causes problems to my constituents in particular.

An important example of progress—I have supported the Government strongly on it, although I have not always supported what they have done in the public sector—is the new role of community support officers. I have seen them in action in my constituency and throughout Leicestershire. There are 100 or more in the county, and they are doing an excellent job. I am very pleased with the way in which the initiative has worked in practice.

Leicestershire has a good force. Like every other Member, I have had regular contact with the local policing unit commanders, the area commanders and the chief constable, Matt Baggott, to whom I pay tribute. I pay even more tribute to the outgoing chair of the police authority, David Saville, who has done a magnificent job for eight and a half years.

That is the good bit. I have a criticism. Why are we changing what is a reasonable and decent force? Leicestershire is well known, rightly, for being an innovative and creative force. It is accessible, open and responsive, as I said earlier in an intervention. It contains some 2,300 officers, serving a population of just under 1 million. How would we benefit from being absorbed, aggregated and expanded into a region containing nearly 4.5 million people and 10,000 officers?

I understand the argument that a force of a minimum size is necessary to tackle major crimes, serious organised and cross-border crimes, terrorism, civil contingencies, critical incidents and problems of public order. In Leicestershire and the east Midlands, however, there has been collaboration with some of the forces with which a merger may take place at some point. There has been a successful project involving Northamptonshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, which have jointly investigated drug trafficking, money laundering and the criminal use of firearms. Why, when we are seeing the benefits of exploratory piloting of such collaboration, do we want to run down this path far too fast?

I am baffled by the requirement for a decision from the constituent police forces by 23 December. The East Midlands strategic board, which represents collaboration by all the existing police authorities, has reluctantly concluded—that is my view, although it may not be the view of the board—that two options might work in practice, the whole-region option and the two-force option. The second option would involve Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire as one force and Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire as the other. At its meeting on Thursday, the day before the deadline, the board concluded:

"Integral to the cost benefit analysis in respect of either option is a requirement for substantial initial and recurring expenditure that is well beyond any existing, or projected, means of the authorities."

As was mentioned earlier, the one-off implementation cost of an east midlands regional force would be £100 million, and there would be a continuing cost in the medium term of £30 million a year. The two-force option would cost £111 million, with a medium-term revenue cost of £50 million a year. I cannot believe that that is a sensible or coherent approach for the policing of the midlands and east midlands of England. The constituent authorities must be given more time and allowed to revisit other options than forced mergers. Collaboration and federation have some attractions and some benefits.

The authorities have been clear from the outset about the need to ensure partner and public consent to any proposed changes. A large-scale survey of people involved in the process has been undertaken. Surprise, surprise, the level of support for what is proposed and for the available options is very low indeed. Why are we going down this path? It will add nothing to the policing of the 4.5 million people of the east midlands or the 1 million people of Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

I represent North Shropshire and, according to a combination of Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary's baseline assessment and the police standards unit, it is the No. 1 police force in the country even though it has the fourth lowest level of funding in the country. For example, we receive £94.38 per head from the Government, while neighbouring North Wales gets £116 and Staffordshire gets £107. I am not whingeing about money. What that means is that if West Mercia received the average of its surrounding forces, it would get £130 per citizen, which would provide an equivalent of 1,600 more police officers—and, hey presto, we would hit the magic 4,000 figure and there would be no need for an argument. The Government's threat to West Mercia is completely bogus on money grounds. The force has 2,380 officers, but if it were funded at the same level as its surrounding forces, it would have 4,000 officers.

The Home Secretary helpfully said in my local newspaper, the Shropshire Star:

"I do listen to what people say, but I also have to listen to what the police professionals are saying to me. My No. 1 criteria is the effectiveness of policing."

However, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, Fiona Mactaggart was absolutely roasted in the café under Westminster Hall recently when she wholly failed to answer the questions put to her by Chief Constable Paul West and the chairman, Paul Deneen. She was unable to say where the 4,000 figure came from, to identify the statistics that backed it up or to clarify whether the proposal had been peer reviewed.

I take my hat off to Paul West. He is extremely brave. As a chief constable, he has been put in an impossible position by a request to destroy the force—a force that is his life's work. He told the Under-Secretary that speaking

"as Chief Constable of the best performing force" it would not be possible for West Mercia to provide the same level of performance under a regional structure. Yet we have platitudes and bullying from the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety, who has just slipped out. She merely says:

"West Mercia as a standalone force does not meet HMIC's criteria . . . and is unlikely to deliver sufficient capacity . . . to meet the requirements for provision of protective services to national standards."

That is utter nonsense.

Already in West Mercia, we have a force that is going ahead towards strategic status on its own, backed by the remarkable analysis today from Professor Lawrance, statistics professor at the university of Warwick. He comprehensively rubbishes the statistical basis of the 4,000 figure. To provide a flavour of his argument, he refers to page 30 and states:

"This is an almost perfect example of how not to present a graph"— the graph that illustrates the 4,000 figure. He argues that there are

"no scales on either axis, no data plotted . . . It is almost impossible to obtain any critical understanding from it, except that it is intended to prove that score for protective capability increases with force size. I can see very little hard evidence in pages 30 and 31 to justify the 4000 figure."

We have had an astonishing series of public meetings—more than 100—with massive support for the prospect of keeping West Mercia strategic. Support comes from all the 13 MPs in the area, all the county councils, all the district councils, 108 parish and town councils, 14 statutory organisations, 11 police community consultative groups and 15 community groups. West Mercia has the capability to move forward. It is going ahead and intends to invest £2.5 million in 95 extra officers. The force has a record of level 2 care in respect of SAS Hereford, it handled Shrewsbury castle and Tern Hill when they were blown up by the IRA and it collaborated successfully with neighbouring forces at the Weston Park IRA summit and the G8 summit.

I give the force full marks for all of that and I want the Minister to assure me that Paul West and Paul Deneen will be given a fair hearing when they bring these proposals forward. I can assure the Minister that they will be considerably better prepared than the cack-handed proposals of the Government.

These proposals are totally alien to our traditions. In Elizabethan times, jury service and policing went together and citizens were expected to perform those functions. Ten years after Peel introduced his reforms, the royal commission demanded a national force but Parliament refused because it believed that policing should be rooted in our local communities. On that basis, I bitterly oppose this rushed and unnecessary attempt to bring about the greatest change in our policing in 100 years. It is based on totally bogus statistics, there is no justification for the hurry and it rides roughshod over the No. 1 police force in the country, which, on its own, would be a successful strategic force.

We in Swindon do not talk about the Wiltshire police; we talk about the Swindon police. That is because we have a good, well run local force that people identify with. They certainly do not identify with Wiltshire constabulary. It is very rare to find a Swindonian who says that they are Wiltshire first and Swindon second, so discussions about Wiltshire constabulary losing its identity do not trouble my constituents. What they want is what they already have: a Swindon police force that responds to Swindon's needs, delivering the low-crime town that we already have. However, my constituents also want the reassurance that, should a threatening incident occur over and above the usual crimes that our force is good at dealing with, an organisation is in place that is able to respond immediately and with sufficient dedicated resources.

Therein lies the rub. We are pleased with our force's performance on level 1 crimes, but level 2 crimes and major incidents are currently excluded from such measurement. It is unlikely that Wiltshire will do well in this area. With a force of some 1,000 constables, it does not have the capacity to respond to exceptional major incidents, but unfortunately there is little evidence that the police authority accepts that. It is overly concerned with the identity of Wiltshire, to the detriment of pressing national policing needs.

As Members have said such attitudes are bound up with the possible local government review and the precarious position of the county councils. Any suggestion that county identities should go is fought tooth and nail. Sadly, Wiltshire police authority is unlikely to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State, other than to recommend the loose federation of police authorities that it proposed in its last letter to the Home Secretary. Of course, such a structure is largely the same as the existing one; if it were adequate, Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary would have said so in its report.

A federation would be little more than a talking shop, with all the associated inherent problems. Would it have to convene a meeting to decide how to respond to a terrorist attack? If that is the plan, my constituents will not be very impressed. Federations are likely to be dominated by larger forces, and such an arrangement would be much worse than the current one for small forces such as Wiltshire. However, Wiltshire police authority has made it clear that it will sit on the fence and make the Home Secretary take the decision. That will not meet the needs of my constituents, either, and I cannot support the police authority if it decides to follow that course.

We are not living in the time when the police boundaries were first drawn, and nor are we living in the first Elizabethan age—we are living in the second Elizabethan age. International terrorism and serious and organised crime do not respect historical boundaries. Indeed, they are likely to thrive on them, as they do not reflect current crime patterns. I do not want to have to explain to my constituents that our police force could not respond adequately to a major incident because the police authority's elected members were more concerned with protecting the identity of Wiltshire than with protecting the safety of the people living in it. I have not heard from Opposition parties any proposals that offer a serious and realistic alternative to the Government's proposals for fighting the serious and organised crime that HMIC has identified that we need to fight.

As I have made clear, the removal of the Wiltshire constabulary is unlikely to trouble the people of Swindon. What my constituents want is good local policing, backed up by the reassurance of strategic policing for major incidents. It may be one of the smallest forces, but Wiltshire consistently outperforms most of the other constabularies in its group, thanks in part to its neighbourhood policing policy. I was pleased to note the reassurances given about that aspect of police work. Indeed, Ministers have gone to great lengths to make it clear that neighbourhood policing can co-exist quite happily within larger strategic forces. They are right to say that neighbourhood teams will be protected if dedicated teams for major incidents are created; that means that individual officers will not be taken away from their local duties. That is what we want in Swindon. Our local police commanders have made excellent contributions to neighbourhood teams in Swindon—they have led the way. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will visit us in Swindon to see what we have done with the local authority, housing, health and education, as well as the police authority.

I commend the Home Secretary and Ministers on the rapidity of their response to the O'Connor report—[Laughter.] Unlike Opposition Members, I do not find it amusing that we face serious policing difficulties. We do not have the luxury of delaying reform—the last restructuring took 10 years—as they suggest and I am glad that my constituents have the backing of the Government for that restructuring.

I am grateful to be called to speak in this debate, partly because I have been helping to co-ordinate a campaign against the changes among MPs in Essex on a cross-party basis, as I shall explain in a moment. I also look forward to an opportunity to vote against the proposals one way or another in the new year.

There are several reasons for opposing these ill thought-out proposals, which I shall attempt to summarise in four and a half minutes. First, they enjoy little or no public support, and certainly not in Essex. The Evening Echo, which covers most of the south of the county, ran a telephone and internet poll that showed that almost 70 per cent. of respondents want to keep Essex constabulary as a stand-alone strategic force. Only 4.1 per cent backed the Government's preferred option of a six-county regional merger.

Secondly, the reforms would make policing more remote. Essex is one of the largest counties in England, with a population of 1.5 million people. It is also very diverse, with a highly urbanised south and a mainly rural north. It is nonsense to suggest that a regional chief constable based in Cambridge would be more in touch with how to police Essex than one based in Chelmsford in the heart of our county.

Thirdly, there are important issues of accountability. County forces have a sense of identity to which people can relate. If we believe in policing by consent, we must do everything that we can to retain that, and these proposals do not. Fourthly, they raise the prospect of the politicisation of the police. We have a proud tradition in this country that our police are non-political, but if we have 12 regional super-forces, they would inevitably come under stronger political control from the Home Secretary. We had an inkling of that in the debate on terrorism when some chief constables, though thankfully not ours, wrote to MPs to advise us on how to cast our vote. We do not want to go any further down that route.

Fifthly, the reforms will be expensive for little benefit. The APA has already estimated that the whole exercise could cost more than £500 million. There will be massive costs and it will also lead to an increase in council tax. The standard Essex precept is £105 for policing, compared with £145 in Norfolk. With the greatest respect to my colleagues from elsewhere in East Anglia, Essex council tax payers pay enough council tax as it is. They do not want to pay even more to subsidise policing in other parts of East Anglia.

Sixthly, the merger is not necessary to combat terrorism, as I pointed out in an earlier intervention, when I quoted my own chief constable in Essex. Seventhly, with all the house building that is likely to take place in Essex, much as I resent it, our policing strength on a pro rata basis will rise well above the 4,000 limit in a few years and thus comply with the Government's arbitrary target.

Crucially, the proposals are now opposed on an all-party basis in the county. Essex police authority, which is chaired by Councillor Robert Chambers and is all-party, has now formally come out in favour of the stand-alone option. At a meeting in Chelmsford last Friday, its members voted overwhelmingly for the option that Essex should stand alone as a strategic force, and the authority will submit that opinion to the Home Office to comply with the 23 December deadline. In addition, the chief constable of Essex, Roger Baker, who had previously had some sympathy with the suggestion of a regional merger—as the Minister will know—has now backed the Essex stand-alone option on behalf of the force and the people it protects.

There is all-party opposition among Essex Members of Parliament. Last week, 15 of the 17 MPs in Essex signed a pledge in defence of Essex constabulary and expressed their formal support for option 4—that Essex should stand alone. They included Bob Russell—who is in his place—a Liberal Democrat, and Andrew Mackinlay, a Labour Member, as well as all the Conservative MPs in the county. Therefore, I may claim genuine cross-party support on the issue. Feelings are running high on both sides of the House tonight, but as far as I know, we are the only county for which MPs from all parties have come together and formally signed a pledge in defence of maintaining our force. The Minister ignores that at her peril. Shortly, I shall write to her and the Home Secretary with a copy of that pledge so that she can see the strength of feeling for herself.

I have been an MP for only about four years, and this is one of the liveliest debates in which I have participated—certainly in terms of the opening speeches. Again and again, Members on both sides of the House have spoken out against the proposals. In policemen and women, we are talking about a breed of people who do a special job. In essence, they defend us and our constituents. Tonight, MPs of all parties in the House have united to defend them.

If policing by consent still means anything to the Government, Ministers should listen to elected representatives on both sides of the House who have been sent here to speak on behalf of their police and their constituency. I say to Ministers: think again and make the changes go away.

I welcome the report and follow my colleague, my hon. Friend Mr. McFadden, who is unfortunately no longer in the Chamber, in saying that my force, the West Midlands force, welcomes the proposals. It has taken action and made proposals within the time scale.

I spoke not only to the force management but to Paul Tonks, the secretary of the West Midlands police federation. He commented that he was surprised that the reforms had not happened before; the federation was in favour. If both management and practitioners at local level are in favour of the reforms, there must be something going for them.

Public opinion has been prayed in aid for many solutions to the gaps identified in our policing. As with all public consultation, however, it really depends on the question that is asked. If we asked the public whether it was acceptable for only 13 of our 43 police forces to have specialist murder squads, they would say no. If we asked whether it was acceptable that only 6 per cent. of big criminal gangs are targeted every year, they would say no. Is it acceptable that only seven of the 43 forces deploy special branch officers in support of local neighbourhood teams? The public would find that shocking, too. In addition, I have evidence from local people who complain that their local police are diverted to other police forces when a major incident takes place elsewhere, and are thus unable to carry out their neighbourhood policing duties.

There are huge gaps in our level 2 policing that must be addressed but, unfortunately, I have heard no coherent argument from Opposition Members about how that should be done. I have heard the Kent solution and the Hampshire solution. I have heard about a bit of federation here and a bit of collaboration there, but all those solutions were examined in the O'Connor report and rejected as not fit for the purpose we want—for our police forces to be able to deal adequately with level 2 crime.

I accept that the consultation period was short. Having been in local government for many years, I know that public authorities will take as long as they are given for consultation. Indeed, as has been said, the last police reform started in 1960 and finished in 1974. We no longer have that sort of time. We live in an age where technology and its criminal use move at such a pace that delay assists only the criminal. Given the figures outlined in the O'Connor report, the public will be on our side and will say that the Government need to address the issues urgently.

I want to emphasise an issue raised by other Members, but it is essential to keep hammering home the point: at the end of the day, the public will judge their local police on how they respond to antisocial and neighbourhood problems. An improvement in level 2 policing will have a constructive impact on the number of police available and perhaps result in the diminution of crime and antisocial behaviour at a local level. However, it is incumbent on the Government to ensure that as they make the changes and give level 2 policing a measurement of performance management, they do not take their eye off the ball on local policing. Level 2 policing must not be carried out to the detriment of local policing.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I do not have time.

I emphasise the fact that we must control costs, because we will be judged on local impact and the size of the bills that drop through people's letter boxes.

I shall be brief because of the time.

Mr. Francois mentioned the support throughout Essex for the retention of Essex as a stand-alone police force. The force is already on top of its case and has 3,200 police officers. When the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety winds up the debate, will she set out the number of officers between 3,200 and 4,000 that would be sufficient for the force to stand alone? Mr. Howard made an excellent case for why Kent police should stand alone, and I suggest that it was identical to the argument why Essex police should stand alone.

Who is exerting pressure by saying that the people of Essex would be better served by a force that was amalgamated with Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, because all the evidence shows that the Essex force operates perfectly well on its own? Will the Minister comment on the Prime Minister's verbal response to Mr. Whittingdale that he would ensure that the Government would examine the case for Essex to stand alone if evidence to support that were produced? Will she assure the House that what the Prime Minister said was the truth and that the Government will listen and act if such a case can be made?

I have only a couple of minutes, but I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I know that most of us have looked carefully at the plans, but I have become more and more suspicious that those who oppose them are doing so for many other reasons than their desire to make our police force more effective. I became incredibly suspicious when I had a dialogue with the Sussex police authority, and fast realised that because I did not take its point of view it did not want to be bothered to hear from me. I firmly believe that we need to address the question of our borders and to tackle the crime with which most people now—thank goodness—have no contact. People are worried about crime in their communities.

I have one question for the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety, although I firmly believe that I know the answer to it—[Laughter.] I am glad that Opposition Members find that funny, because we in Crawley do not. We think that policing is incredibly important. When I had my regular meeting this morning with my divisional commander, did we talk about force structure or the strange debates that are going on? No, we did not; we talked about how policing is better for people in my community, how we can tackle young people who hang about on parades, how the local strategic partnership can tackle problems and how our increased number of community support officers can do the job that they want to do. That is what matters. People do not say that they want Sussex police to turn up. They want a police officer in their neighbourhood and that is precisely what they will get. They get that now and I am glad to say that they will get it with a changed structure. I want to ensure that we move ahead and have the police authorities that we deserve.

I regret the contribution just made by Laura Moffatt, who is completely out of step with the views of other West Sussex Members of Parliament, her own chief constable and the police authority, all of whom have expressed grave concern about the impact of amalgamation on policing in the county.

It will not have been lost on the Government that of, by my count, 26 speakers, only five Government Members were willing to defend the Government's proposals, and many of them offered only a qualified defence. Great concern has been expressed about the proposals. Mr. Denham, who is Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, voiced concern about the inability of any proposed amalgamation to cross borders.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I have very little time, so if my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not give way.

We face an absurd situation in which Dorset would be unable to amalgamate with Hampshire, even if it wanted to. Many hon. Members representing Welsh constituencies, including the hon. Members for Clwyd, South (Mr. Jones), for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd), made the same points in relation to the inability of North Wales police to merge with the Cheshire force, as did Mr. Todd, who bravely suggested that Derbyshire might make a foray into Staffordshire.

The Opposition fear that in proposing the amalgamations, the Government are pursuing the regional agenda that we have seen in planning, health care and fire services. There is a simple remedy for our fears: if the Minister is not pursuing that agenda, she need only agree to a straightforward request to allow mergers across borders. If she will not agree to that, we shall have a clearer idea of what the proposals are about.

Conservative Members, including my hon. Friend Mr. Gale, spoke about the British Transport police, whose position in London is a special one. My hon. Friend's concerns were echoed by Mrs. Dunwoody. Having met the British Transport police authority, I believe that there are compelling reasons why the BTP should remain a separate, independent organisation. For example, the London underground extends beyond Metropolitan police force boundaries, the British Transport police pursue mainly level 1 policing functions, and soccer trains are run across county borders.

The Conservatives accept that some policing functions are best performed at national level. We would not go so far as to take up the suggestion made by Mr. Oaten to extend the powers of SOCA, but we are grateful to him for taking up our proposal for a border police force. I hope that his brave adoption of a Conservative policy will not harm his bid for the leadership of his party. We strongly reject the concept of a national police force and we are delighted that the Home Secretary has ruled that out, but we remain concerned that the creation of regional forces will be a step towards greater centralisation, which could lead inexorably to the creation of a national force.

Several hon. Members questioned the central premise of the report, which is that a force requires at least 4,000 officers to deal with level 2 crime. My right hon. and learned Friend Mr. Howard pointed out that John Giffard, the chief constable who is charged with driving the Government's proposal, told Kent police authority that that threshold simply did not matter. The O'Connor report itself makes the point that

"some smaller forces were almost as successful as the majority of larger forces, whilst two relatively large forces"— with 5,000 or more staff—

"received surprisingly low scores."

As my hon. Friend Mr. Paterson said, the weakness of the arbitrary figure of 4,000 staff can be seen if one reads the O'Connor report. There is a central graph designed to show that bigger forces are more successful in maintaining protective services—but there are no scales on it. What does that tell us about the integrity of the research? Each force on the graph is represented by an unnamed dot. We do not know how each force performed because that information is not available to us in the report. Perhaps the Minister will agree to report it. We do not believe that a case for amalgamation can be hung upon such tenuous evidence, particularly when the consequences would be so profound.

My hon. Friends the Members for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) and for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) referred to unequal precepts. Sussex police authority has said that if it were forced to merge with Surrey that would increase the police element of the council tax in Sussex by 20 per cent. West Mercia police authority has said that the regional West Midlands force, taking in Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands and West Mercia, would lead to council tax falling in Staffordshire, West Mercia and Warwickshire but that in the west midlands it would rise and £30 would be added to the average council tax bill. That would lead to great local resentment at a time when levels of council tax are rising unacceptably. Perhaps the Minister will tell us how she would deal with the problem of equalisation of precepts.

The Government's case for merging police forces rests on achieving savings that can be ploughed back into enhancing protective services. The Minister, in her interview in The Daily Telegraph this morning, said:

"The whole aim here, by having larger forces, is to give us some re-organisation of the business so that we can reinvest in these Level Two services".

The report said that the savings could be £70 million a year.

How did the report arrive at that figure? It seems to have assumed savings of 1 or 2 per cent. of spending. We do not know what those savings are. How can savings on this scale be properly estimated if the structure of the service and the number of amalgamations is not known? There are no supporting calculations to back up the estimate. The figure appears to have been written on the back of an envelope. Even if £70 million is right, that is just 0.6 per cent. of the total budget of policing, which is £11 billion a year.

The Government's case is even less convincing since they have no idea of what amalgamations would cost. The report admitted that there would be costs but did not quantify them. The Home Secretary's first letter to chief constables did not mention the costs of amalgamations. His second letter recommended borrowing to meet the costs of merger. It took a third letter, two working days before the debate, for the right hon. Gentleman to recognise that the cost would be significant. He had decided to set aside up to £125 million of capital funding to support authorities and forces committing to an early merger.

We all know why he had to do that. Costly climb-downs appear to be in fashion on the Government Benches today. Where is the money coming from? It does not appear to be new money. The Home Secretary has raided the budget for police capital spending. The sum of £125 million would have been invested in police services and could have been invested in enhancing protective services. That money will now be spent, wholly unnecessarily, on amalgamating forces.

We are concerned also about accountability. The Government have not thought seriously about the issue. The O'Connor report points out that the number of basic command units upon which the Government have been relying for suggesting that there will still be elements of local policing has already fallen from 320 to 230 in just three years. The existing size of police authorities is 17 members. I understand that the Government have said that they are willing to increase that size to 23. If a police force area and the population that it serves doubles or trebles, by definition each member of the public has less representation unless the authority is increased in size by the same proportion.

As Sir Ian Blair said in his Dimbleby lecture last month,

"Every lesson of every police inquiry, not only the issues that give rise to antisocial behaviour but also those that give rise to criminal activity and to terrorism begin at the most local level, and it is the threat to that local policing that most concerns us about these proposals."

I wonder whether the Minister will tell us why she has not been keen to pursue the idea of federations, which was supported strongly by hon. Members on both sides of the House. My hon. Friends the Members for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) and for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) and Martin Horwood all said that it would be possible for police forces to share functions, and that that may be a much lower-cost option as a way of strengthening strategic services in future.

Finally, it is the speed at which the debate has been pursued that has most discredited the Government. Hon. Members on both sides of the House complained about that. The manner in which the Government have driven the debate is worrying—there has not been any time for debate, and there has not been a vote. On 5 April—the eve of the election campaign—the Government commissioned the O'Connor report. The Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety said in a letter to Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the chief inspector:

"The next stage of the review should be low-key in terms of publicity".

I wonder why she issued such advice just before the election campaign.

The Government have simply failed to make the case for amalgamation. In 1994, in a debate on the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill, it was said that

"a wholesale amalgamation of the smaller police services . . . will remove local policing further from local people when there is no evidence that it will create a more effective police service."—[Hansard, 5 July 1994; Vol. 246, c. 273.]

That was said by Mr. Blair, who was then shadow Home Secretary. He was right then, and he is right now.

May I welcome Nick Herbert to his Front-Bench role? I am sure that he will enjoy it and the opportunity to work with the police.

I shall try to respond to as many contributions as possible. Twenty-seven Members spoke, which shows the level of interest on both sides of the House in the future of our police services and their importance to local people. I was a little disappointed that Opposition speeches did not include a single contribution by a female Member of Parliament. Indeed, I do not think that a female Opposition Member even attended the debate, which is not the face of the new Conservative party that we want to see. David Davis made a disappointing contribution, in which he argued for the "do nothing" option. He often says that he wants efficiency, but he was not prepared to make any of the bold and courageous decisions that the Government are prepared to make. May I remind him of the history of the proposals? Mr. Howard is in the Chamber and, in June 1993, just before he replaced Mr. Clarke as Home Secretary, a White Paper on police reform was published. It said that "the pattern" of 43 forces

"is partly the result of historical accident and the merging of organisations established haphazardly over more than 100 years . . . The result today is a patchwork quilt of forces of widely varying sizes and types. . . It is questionable whether 43 separate organisations are now needed to run police operations and whether the maintenance of 43 parallel organisations makes the most effective use of the resources available to policing."

Twenty-three years ago, the Conservative Government were not prepared to grasp the nettle and make the decisions that needed to be made. History has therefore repeated itself.

Mr. Oaten, like other hon. Members, commended the ability of our police forces to respond. He acknowledged that changes were taking place, and that there were new challenges in relation to serious and organised crime. However, there is not a blueprint, redprint or any other kind of print in the Home Office to redraw the map, which is why we asked forces and authorities to submit proposals. I can tell the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members that, as a result of those proposals, the links of the locality will be stronger, not weaker—a point that has been made by several Government Members.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

I am afraid that I will not give way, as I have seven minutes to try to deal with 27 contributions, and I will do my best to do so.

I was grateful for the support of my right hon. Friend Mr. Denham, who asked us not to be too rigid on coterminosity and Government office boundaries. We included that issue in the original criteria for logical and coherent reasons, because prevention of crime, young people, social services, education and drug action teams are significant considerations, and it is important to align such services with policing services. Only 50 per cent. of work to tackle crime is pure policing business—the rest of that work is conducted in conjunction with a range of organisations. Where there is a compelling case for going against those criteria, we would look at that, but it is the responsibility of Government to set criteria in the first place.

My hon. Friend Albert Owen had some understandable concerns. We have met Welsh Members on four or five different occasions and I am happy to continue having those discussions. North Wales has a good record on neighbourhood policing. I have visited the force and seen it for myself, and it is one of the excellent forces. Again, it will be important for North Wales police to continue to collaborate with the Cheshire force, whatever the future of the strategic force, because that is an important relationship to maintain, as various hon. Members have said.

Mr. Howard asked whether the 4,000 figure for the size of strategic forces was a completely hard-and-fast rule. Denis O'Connor rightly said in his report that there was a clear correlation in respect of the size of force; but, again, we have said if Kent police want to work up the stand-alone option—they are doing so—and if it provides protective services in a proper way, we will consider it.

Essex.

The hon. Gentleman is shouting "Essex" at me. If he calms down, I will come to him in a moment.

Again, if Essex police want to work up that option, we will consider it, but all hon. Members should realise that this is not simply about looking at individual solutions. As any Government would, we must also consider the national landscape and what works in each region—that is a careful balance to make—so we will look at the options, but we will not make the wrong decisions simply because they are based on individual forces. We will consider how the forces interact and at how the whole business is configured.

My hon. Friend Mr. Jones made some important points about his police area, and I can reassure him about strength and accountability at BCU level.

Mr. Gale, with his extensive experience of the British Transport police, made some important points, and he knows that the Department for Transport is conducting a review that, we hope, will feed into some of our considerations.

My hon. Friend Mr. McFadden, who has had to leave, put the emphasis in a very lucid contribution rightly on tackling antisocial behaviour and local crime. Again, I can reassure him about strengthened accountability arrangements at BCU level. We are committed to looking at the idea of local police boards, whereby local communities will be able to set priorities and have a much greater input than they currently have.

Mr. Paice has extensive knowledge from his experience of being Opposition police spokesperson, but he must also know about the links between the local communities and the volume of crime at BCU level, and then between the strategic level and serious and organised crime. They are absolutely connected, and I would not want the role of tackling all serious and organised crime to be taken over by SOCA, thus losing those essential links with community intelligence.

Several hon. Members have spoken about collaboration and federation. I am not convinced that collaboration would take us anywhere on the journey that we need to take. There have been several examples of forces that have tried to collaborate, but other forces have not provided resources and there has been no real buy-in and no real ownership. That would not get us results.

My hon. Friend Dr. Kumar made some very powerful points, and I acknowledge his support for local policing over very many years. If police authorities do not submit cases by 23 December, we will continue to work with them throughout January and continue to offer support, but if, at the end of the day, we have to make decisions, we will clearly need to do so.

My hon. Friend Mr. Todd made some important points, again, about collaboration. I have discussed the matter with him, and I am not convinced that it is necessarily the way forward. My hon. Friend Paul Flynn wants no change, but I am afraid that, with the serious threats that face us, that is not an option either.

My hon. Friend Ian Lucas is absolutely right about the importance of good neighbourhood policing, and I acknowledge, again, his concerns about the relationship with Cheshire police. My hon. Friend Tom Levitt, in an excellent speech, talked about the good collaboration that Derbyshire police have. They are a very good force, as well, in dealing with domestic violence and sexual offences, and I hope that they can spread that good practice among other forces.

My hon. Friend David Taylor also argued for no change. Again, we must look at the position across the country. He understands the arguments and the serious threat that faces us.

Mr. Paterson has his report on statistics. We also have a report that expands the HMIC report, and I hope that he will look at it.

My hon. Friend Anne Snelgrove made an excellent speech in support of the idea of creating strategic forces. My hon. Friend Mr. Bailey also made an excellent speech, with an analysis of the gaps in our capacity. Again, my hon. Friend Laura Moffatt showed a real grasp of the new threats that face police authorities in this country.

We have seen a fairly unholy alliance among the Opposition parties. I wonder whether we have seen the new Liberal Conservatives, or the Conservative Liberals, united on a no-change option. Perhaps we are seeing a new merger not of police forces but of—

It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.