Police and Justice Bill

When I served as a young officer in the Territorial Army, I learned a bit about morale. One of the great mottoes that was drummed into me as a junior subaltern was, ““If it ain’t broke, sir, don’t fix it.”” Our police force is not broken and it genuinely does not need fixing. I agree with my hon. Friend and I hope that the Minister will take that point on board. The Government have set an arbitrary target for Essex of some 4,000 officers, and Essex regulars currently number about 3,300. However, if the Government press ahead with building all the houses in Essex that they want up to 2021 and the population of Essex increases by hundreds of thousands as a result—I am not in favour of that policy; the Government want 123,000 new houses, which would mean an extra third of a million people, or so—it is clear that the number of police will go up pro rata. That would easily take us beyond the 4,000 limit. So if the Minister wants a rationale for her own arbitrary figure looking into the medium term, I have just given it to her. I turn to fighting terrorism, which others have touched on. I understand that for the so-called category 2 tasks, the Minister does not favour federation. I think that such an approach has merits, but if she is convinced that that is not what she wants, I have another suggestion for her. We could meet the requirement through a beefed-up Serious Organised Crime Agency’s working closely with local forces in certain parts of the country. The chief constable of Essex has suggested that certain tasks are best handled by SOCA, although in fairness, the Essex force has considerable experience in fighting terrorism because of the special facilities at Stansted. The Minister is well aware of that, and she also knows that the Essex force gave considerable assistance to the Met on 7/7. So I do not believe that we are weak in that particular department. The Minister will have been involved in negotiations with a number of police authorities in the past few months. She will know that in several areas throughout the country—I do not mean to disparage any other part of the United Kingdom—there has not been unanimity of view. In some counties, the police authority, Members of Parliament, the county council and the chief constable have seen this issue differently and have not necessarily spoken with one voice. However, in Essex precisely the contrary is true. The police authority, the chief constable, Essex county council, the vast bulk of district and borough councils and 15 of the 17 Members of Parliament—including the hon. Member for Thurrock, the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell), who has spoken on this issue before, and all Essex’s Conservative MPs—publicly signed a pledge urging the Minister to listen to us and to allow the Essex police force to continue to stand alone. I cannot speak for every other county in the country—I do not have the precise data—but as I stand here this evening, I know of no other county in which there is such firm unanimity of view on this issue as there is in Essex. As I have said, that has been physically evidenced tonight. The Prime Minister has said repeatedly that he will listen to local people on this issue. I very much hope that he will, and we in Essex look for some real evidence of that. I very much agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex said about Essex county council’s actively considering holding a referendum on this issue if the Government refuse to listen to reason. In other words, if push does come to shove, we will hold a poll across the county to allow people to express a clear opinion on what the Government are trying to do. I am very confident of what the outcome would be, and I suspect that, in her heart, so is the Minister. I ask her seriously not to put us to the trouble of doing that. Our police force is not broken. It is not perfect, but it is overwhelmingly popular. There is cross-party support for it, and political support at all levels in the county. Please, please listen to us, and allow our force to stand alone.