Police and Justice Bill

If I may say so, Madam Deputy Speaker, the police force amalgamations, in which this Bill plays a part, seem to feed directly into the regional agenda, which should have been ditched following rejection of it in the north-east referendum just 18 months ago. This Bill is part of the top-down, Whitehall micro-management disease. I wish that the Government could see that proposals that they believe will improve police forces’ local responsiveness will in fact do exactly the opposite. I have to tell the Minister—and the Home Secretary, who I hope will receive a report of this debate—that discussion is taking place in Essex about whether police force restructuring should take place without a referendum. A number of my parliamentary colleagues are holding such talks with Essex county council, which has the power to call a referendum on the issue. That is the way the discussion is going. With my experience of facilitating the ““North-east says No”” campaign, I have no doubt that we would win any referendum on the survival of the Essex police by eight or more to one. The centralising tendencies of Whitehall Governments extend further back than 1997. They reach further back than even the second world war. They reach right back to the first world war and beyond it, to the first social measures that were taken towards the end of the 19th century. However, there must come a point at which centralisation stops. Were there to be a referendum on the future of the Essex police, it would represent the beginning of a great political movement in this country to restore real local autonomy, and devolution of power and authority to the organs of local government—not least to the county of Essex, representing the shire government that even William the Conqueror inherited, from Alfred the Great.