Police and Justice Bill

I, too, support amendment No. 82. I represent a constituency on the far east of the west midlands area, in the metropolitan borough of Walsall. The drift of modern politics is anything but local. We refer to local government, but Walsall is no more local than a fly in the air. We talk about local policing, but we are constructing great structures that are questionable as regards whether they will meet the tests of loyalty and a sense of time and place that my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) mentioned. If it would be a comfort to my hon. Friends and to my friends in Staffordshire, West Mercia or elsewhere in the greater west midlands, I would stand up for the principle of localism and the right to local policing. I note with regret that my own constituents in Aldridge-Brownhills—in Pelsall, Streetly, Rushall, and all the communities that form it, which are very much part of Staffordshire, historically and by linkage to the coalfields of south Staffordshire—have very little confidence, alas, in the policing that they are experiencing. We are divided between two command units based in Walsall and Bloxwich. They report, in theory, to central Birmingham, and a chief constable makes his dispensations. We are already some way down the line; goodness knows what would happen to Staffordshire or West Mercia if we were to go yet further down that line. The sense of localism is important. The mantra is, ““Let the people feel confident with their institutions and structures.”” In all my political career, the attachment to those structures has shrunk. We should let the people speak. That used to be a cry of the Liberal party, and I would expect it to stand up for that localism and the rights of people as regards the things that most matter to them—education, a health service and policing. As I said, in the former villages now coalesced into Aldridge-Brownhills, there is little confidence in the way in which centralised policing takes place. The huge proposed west midlands area gives us even less confidence that Bloxwich and Walsall will manage with due diligence the affairs and protection of the people of Aldridge-Brownhills. In vast structures, people do not look laterally or downwards, but upwards. This Government can testify to that. My chief superintendents want to curry favour with the chief constable, who in turn wants the indulgence of the Home Office and the Home Secretary. We become so utterly centralised that it squeezes out the judgment as to who is competent and who is incompetent. This is a question of how the way in which we govern ourselves through our central administrations—through the Home Office and through Whitehall itself—echoes what the people of the country want. We speak from our local perspective; we vote with the party machine. That reinforces the strength of the centre. Where we over-centralise—that is what the whole Bill is essentially about—in the health service, education and the police service, we see the decline and fall of public confidence in those institutions. I hope that the House takes the amendment seriously and votes for it.