Police and Justice Bill

My right hon. Friend puts the point extremely well. Far from there being any cost to the Government in withdrawing their proposals, there would be enormous benefits and great relief among the bodies that are going to have reorganisation imposed on them against their will. If police forces and police authorities believe that the reorganisation is a good thing, let them get on with it. I understand that there are one or two of them, and they will have to carry the people they represent on the police authority with them; that is their job. It has to be said that amendment No. 82 is a pretty desperate last throw of the dice as an attempt to rescue the position. I shall be voting for this desperate last throw, although I do not necessarily approve of the ideology of referendums and all the rest of it. The problem is that the official Opposition have nothing other than the amendment left to rescue the position. The Minister should reflect on what has happened in other public authorities—health and social services, for example, with whom the police are expected to co-operate. Under the latest health reorganisation in Surrey, we are moving towards having just one primary care trust for the county, so there is an opportunity for the borders of the PCT and the police to be coterminous. Yet just at the moment that we get health and social services in one shape around the county, along comes the reorganisation of the police, blowing all the potential benefits apart. Once again, I beg the Minister to think again. I know that opinion in Surrey is united on the matter. I finish by stressing the important issue of identity for the police force and the areas it represents. The county of Surrey has had a constabulary on a county level since 1851. Since then, we have seen other bits and pieces of constabularies representing towns or other communities as the area has developed, but only in the year 2000 was part of Surrey policed by the Metropolitan police. We have just gone through a reorganisation, affecting half of my constituency, whereby the Surrey police force has taken over from the Met and now, fewer than seven years on, we are facing yet another change to the senior management of the police force. I say again that the price of this reorganisation is simply not worth any conceivable benefit that will come from it. I add that as a marriage partner for the people of Sussex, the police of Surrey are a complete nightmare because the enormous subsidy that Surrey council tax payers give to their police dwarfs anything happening elsewhere in the UK. We have moved from a position in 1997 where 86 per cent. of the Surrey police’s budget came from the Home Office vote to about 50 per cent. today. About half the money for Surrey police comes from Surrey council tax payers. Surrey county councillors will wonder why they should vote taxes on to their council tax payers for a police force that is no longer theirs. The council tax payers of Surrey, led by their county councillors, have decided to protect their police force from the huge changes and swingeing cuts in funding that it has undergone since 1997. That determination on the part of Surrey county councillors has worked to the benefit of policing in Surrey and of the central Government budget, which has been significantly subsidised, in that respect and in many others, by the council tax payers of Surrey. The loyalty of the people of Surrey, through their police authority, to their police will disappear, along with any reasons for it, if it is no longer their police force. Yet that is what the Government propose to do. I beg the Government, as do my 10 right hon. and hon. Friends who are writing to the Home Secretary today, to review this decision. I will support amendment No. 82 in the rather desperate hope that it will enable us to prevent this measure going forward, but it would be infinitely better if the Home Office took the opportunity of a new team reviewing the situation to pull this dreadful proposal.