I am grateful to Members of the Committee who have supported my amendment. Naturally, I am grateful to the Minister who, as ever, has given careful and, from the Government’s point of view, extremely fair attention to both the merits of her stance and, as she sees it, the demerits of mine
I must agree to differ with the Minister’s reasons for considering that my amendment is defective. She referred in particular to the problems of the federal approach and the advice that has been given to Her Majesty’s Government. I have also taken advice from a wide range of constabularies around the country. Their concern for the future of policing is not the jobsworth kind of saying, ““My particular constabulary is going to disappear””. They are concerned about the future of this country, its safety, local accountability and effective neighbourhood policing. They should be given the opportunity to show that a formal federal option is workable and cost effective. After all, as the noble Baroness will have to accept, there are considerable costs in the forced mergers the Government have sought to adopt.
The noble Baroness teases me—as she likes to do now and again—about the Government’s record on increasing the number of police and police support officers, all of whom perform a valuable role. The overall increase is 14,000. On the worst case scenario that the Home Secretary had to recognise yesterday, we would lose 25,000 and be down by a net 9,000. He did not care to enlighten another place on what the best case scenario would be about the number that would be lost.
There is a reasonable alternative. The Minister said that this issue is not in the Bill. As she closed her remarks, she said that there would be another time and another place to consider this and that the Government were perfectly satisfied with our legislation of 1996 and its precursor of 1994. As I said, my amendment would not prevent voluntary mergers going ahead. It is intriguing that the Government are so wedded to our legislation. The difficulty is that we did not have the plans to abuse that legislation which the Government now have by enforcing mergers.
Looking back into history and the mists of time, I can see that on 5 July 1994, in another place, Mr Blair—not then Prime Minister—quoted Central Office research and accused us of being two-faced by saying that we had announced:"““There are no current plans to amalgamate police forces. Amalgamations will only happen when the time is right””."
He was right; that is exactly what we said, and that is what we meant. But then he went on to say, pouring scorn upon us:"““Many people in the police service and elsewhere believe that the time will be right when the Bill and its problems are out of the way. There will then be a wholesale amalgamation of the smaller police services. That will remove local policing further from local people””.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/7/94; col. 273.]"
Well, by golly, he was right; but it is not us but Mr Blair who is doing precisely that.
The noble Baroness says, ““Give us time. We should not be accused of being an unlistening, uncaring Government; don’t take us into problems because of that. We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t””. The difficulty is as I described in my opening remarks. Yesterday, Mr Reid, trying to be at his most cuddly self, said, ““I want to have time over the summer to consider. I am going to listen. I am going to consult””. But at the same time—five times in all; I spared the Committee the fifth time—he said: ““The destination remains the same””. Well, that destination is not the right one.
We all want to ensure that we have the best systems in place for the most effective policing that is right for all areas of our country. We simply question whether the Government’s fixation with mergers is the right way forward. This is the right place and the right time to do the right thing and ask the Government to think again about their destination of enforced mergers. I wish to test the opinion of the Committee.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 14) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 198; Not-Contents, 130.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Schedule 2 [Amendments to the Police Act 1996]:
Police and Justice Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
(Conservative)
in the House of Lords on Tuesday, 20 June 2006.
It occurred during Committee of the Whole House (HL)
and
Debate on bills on Police and Justice Bill.
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