Police and Justice Bill

We have just had a 25-minute debate on community policing in north Wales in the middle of a debate on the reorganisation of police forces across the country—I would like to drag the debate back to that broader subject. I want to speak in support of Amendment No. 82. I am not, in general, in favour of referendums. I take the points that the Minister made and I think that, on the whole, Governments should make those decisions and then be responsible to the House and to the electorate for them. However, in this case there has been so little consultation and consideration of the alternatives that a referendum may be one of the only ways in which we can air matters. The former Home Secretary had made up his mind what he wanted to do. The regional agenda was at work and he was not prepared to entertain the concept of the federalisation of forces or of having multi-level, two-tier police forces. I was told that very early on by one of the Ministers concerned—I was told not to bother to write about that. Within days of the so-called consultation period finishing, the Home Office had reduced our options in the west midlands to two—and it made it very clear that it did not like one of them. There has not been a proper consultation. On the question of referendums and the Conservatives, when police forces were last reorganised—this is a once in a generation thing and it is important that we get it right, because Governments of different political colours will have to live with the arrangement—there was a royal commission and all the different options were studied. I do not know whether we came to the right conclusion, but nobody could pretend that there was not a full consultation and examination of the alternatives, which there has not been in this case. [Interruption.] I was in favour of a referendum on the European constitution—that is perfectly true. So, in the end, was the Prime Minister. I realise that there is a trade-off, which the Home Office is trying to deal with, between the need for high-tech intelligence-led modern policing to deal with the professional criminal gangs, serious crime such as armed robbery, and terrorism, and the need for local community policing, which is what most of our constituents want and feel that they do not get. I can see the argument that, at a big regional level, a West Midlands police force with 15,000 police constables will be able to have dedicated units to deal with drugs, organised crime, armed robbery and terrorism, whereas that cannot be done on an amalgamation basis or by having one police force taking the lead. On the other hand, there is no doubt that a police force such as Warwickshire, with 1,000 policemen, will provide a far greater level of local accountability and community policing that would be the case if it were part of the West Midlands force. I am concerned about that. The good thing about the old arrangement was local accountability and community policing in rural areas. The bad thing was the lack of resilience. If a couple of murders occurred in Warwickshire, until they were sorted out, that was the end of about half of the community policing. Under the new arrangements, those good and bad aspects are reversed. The arrangements will be good for serious crime and resilience, but bad for local policing and accountability. We need to consider another way of dealing with the matter. I hope that the Minister will be able to address my specific concerns when he sums up. First, the high levels of crime in the conurbation of the west midlands—the Birmingham conurbation—will suck police forces out of rural areas. That seems inevitable. The problems that are faced in the conurbation areas will always result in higher crime rates than in rural areas. I do not see how there will be protection. I would be grateful if he could reassure me about that. Secondly, there is the issue of accountability. Warwickshire police force is accountable to one county council, five district councils, five crime and disorder reduction partnerships and five Members of Parliament. If I want to speak to the chief constable, it is very easy, and, to be frank, there are so few of us that he has to take my call, but in the case of the West Midlands police force, there will be about 70 Members of Parliament, about 14,000 policemen and about 32 basic command units. He will be as far from rural Warwickshire, or rural Staffordshire, or rural Shropshire—both in his head and geographically—as it is possible to be. He is going to say, ““Gee, they don’t have any problems in south Warwickshire. Crime there is half the rate it is in Wolverhampton. I am worrying about Wolverhampton.”” There must be some accountability in relation to the basic command unit. Thirdly, we do not have the ability to manage forces of that size. I know that the Met is held up an example and I think that the police force is quite strong on leadership in some areas, but it is not particularly good on management. It is a feature of the public sector that it does not appreciate or put into operation a distinction between leadership and management. The management of a force of 14,000 policemen and probably 6,000 or 7,000 civilians is a really big task. We have not proved at all that we are up to that. I am concerned that the Government never allowed us to examine the two-tier option. We could have done, because it exists in many other countries. France and the United States are two examples. We could have had a West Midlands police force that dealt with big serious crimes and strategic issues, built in the necessary resilience, and dealt with terrorism, intelligence, and serious and organised crime. We could also have kept a Warwickshire police force, and other county forces, to deal with community policing. The police say that there would be a problem of interaction between the two forces. That is true, but that exists at the moment between head office and basic command units. That would be a small price to pay for getting the two objectives that we want. The Government want a high level force to work well, but are sacrificing the value of community policing and community accountability at a lower level. A two-tier force would at least have given us the best of both those worlds and it would have been worth examining the issue of the weaknesses in communication—often clues about big, serious, organised crime are picked up at local levels by community officers. That would have been a smaller price to pay than the one that we are paying in the Government’s reorganisation proposals. I bitterly regret that we were never given the opportunity to consult on that. We should have been, because, as I say, we are reorganising the forces for a generation. I hope that the Minister can deal with the question of community accountability at a basic command unit level, or some other level that means something—rather than just having a dotted line that involves going along and talking to the district council once every three months. There should be a real obligation to take notice of what locally elected politicians and communities want. The resources for community policing in rural areas should be protected from the demands and inevitable predations of policing and crime problems in urban areas. We all pay our taxes. The transition costs in the West Midlands are estimated to be £50 million and the annual savings £30 million. When I wrote to the Minister’s predecessor, I was told that part of the police’s capital budget for those two years had been set aside to pay for that. I am glad that the money is not coming out of the current budget, because then it would be a long time before we saw the benefit of any savings, but I am concerned that the money is coming out of the capital budget. Will the Minister tell us exactly what that means? Does is mean that the police will not be able buy computers, fingerprint kits and police cars, or whatever else they need to buy out of their capital budgets, or that criminal justice centres will be set back? Finally, I would like some reassurance that the police precepts, which tend to be higher in rural than urban areas, will be allowed to find an average level without that being rigged. There will have to be one police precept across the west midlands under the new arrangements. Given that that will benefit rural areas—almost uniquely in the context of anything that the Government have done in that respect for nine years—I suspect that local authority finance will be rigged to take that benefit away so that we will lose grant to make up for the fact that we have had our police precept reduced. I would like some reassurance on that, too.