Police and Justice Bill

Indeed. That is a general point, but it also relates to the police. When we implement mergers, we lose talented people and we have to spend public money on retiring people early. I want to express my real irritation about this matter. I have told the Government before that the onus is on them to convince me that there is an overriding case for so-called reorganisations and mergers, both in the police and in other parts of the public service. The existing police force in Essex is about the optimum size. If it were to stay as it is, it would not be the smallest of the new; it would still be a reasonable-sized authority. It has the full range of police duties and responsibilities. It has stewardship of Stansted airport, and responsibility for a substantial part of the M25. I should say, in parenthesis, that traffic policing is a particularly skilled and harrowing police duty that is performed extraordinarily well by Essex police. The force also has some of the longest riparian and coastal frontage of any police force in the country. It is a good, highly experienced unit, and to merge it either with Suffolk and Norfolk or with Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire would be a profound mistake. I hope that the Home Secretary will reflect on the fact that such views are held not only by Conservative Members of Parliament. As the only Labour Back Bencher representing Essex, I take the view that we should keep Essex police force as it is. On the question of governance, I am worried that the police authorities will either become rather large, numerically, or be inadequately represented. In the Essex police force area, we have the unitary authorities of Southend and of Thurrock, and I want jealously to safeguard the direct representation of my unitary authority on the police authority. That brings us back to the compelling case for maintaining Essex as it is. Reference has been made to basic command units, and I want to express some disappointment that Essex has merged my BCU with Basildon. Again, that is part of the obsession with reorganisation. Where there is a unitary authority, there should be a BCU, just as all the other public services should fit into the unitary authority, be it the various health trusts or other agencies. Unitaries work best when all the local government powers are being fulfilled not just by the local government unit, but by all the other related agencies, and they have the same boundaries—there is coterminosity. That may not be a matter for the Home Secretary, but I hope that he might reflect on the fact that when he is giving advice to police authorities, he should urge them to be sensitive to unitary authority boundaries in deciding what their BCUs should be.