Police and Justice Bill

moved Amendment No. 60:"Page 82, line 10, at end insert—" In section 32 (power to alter police areas by order), after subsection (3) there is inserted— ““(3A)   Before exercising his power under this section the Secretary of State shall commission from an independent body a cost benefit analysis, which shall include the financial costs and benefits of the proposed alterations. (3B)   The Secretary of State shall publish the cost benefit analysis commissioned under subsection (3A). (3C)   The Secretary of State shall not exercise his power under this section unless the cost benefit analysis conducted under subsection (3A) concludes that the benefits of the proposed alteration significantly outweigh the costs. (3D)   In this section ““independent body”” means a body which is wholly separate from central Government, police forces or police authorities.”””” The noble Baroness said: Perhaps we are on a roll here, you never know. There are some animals flying by. In moving Amendment No. 60, with the leave of the Committee I will speak to Amendment No. 61. It is for the convenience of the Committee that I speak to the two together; I have given advance notice both to the Chairman of Committees and the Minister. Because of matters occurring elsewhere in Europe, I decided that it would not, perhaps, be the most popular thing in the world to call Divisions on these vital matters at this time; particularly because, as the Clerk was so kind to inform us, we are now 1-0 up. Things nearly as important now come into play. Of course, even though I shall now move and speak to these amendments without testing the opinion of the Committee on this occasion, they remain core to my concerns about policing matters. They develop further the arguments underpinning our earlier debate on Amendment No. 14, on police mergers. It is essential that before the Home Secretary forces the merger of police forces, he should ensure that the changes are certain to be both cost-effective and accepted by the communities affected. Amendment No. 60 would require the Home Secretary first to obtain a cost-benefit analysis from an independent body. Amendment No. 61 would require the Home Secretary to cause a referendum to be held in every area affected by a potential merger. The Government have said that the systems already set out in the Police Act 1996 put sufficient protection in place; indeed, the Minister herself repeated that when we debated Amendment No. 14. The Act provides that when a Home Secretary announces a merger, there is a period of four months when objections may be submitted. The problem is that experience has shown the systems not to be robust enough under this Government’s plans for mergers since last autumn. They were put in place by my right honourable friend Michael Howard, but they have certainly not been used in the way that he intended, and cannot, it currently appears, withstand the onslaught of a Government determined to proceed with mergers. Amendment No. 60 therefore provides a sensible procedure for conducting an independent cost-benefit analysis. It is surely right that there should be an independent, transparent process. It is as important that this should happen when mergers are agreed as when they are not. Agreement may be reached between the police authority and the Home Secretary, but whether the results of the merger would be cost-effective in the short or long term might still be questioned. The public should have the confidence that these matters have been properly considered. The Government’s assessment of the costs of the currently proposed mergers is not recognised by police authorities and police forces as being anywhere near the real figure. For example, the Association of Police Authorities has estimated that the cost of mergers could be around £500 million across England and Wales. The Government belatedly announced that they were to meet the net costs of amalgamations in a budgetary letter to the chief constables at the end of March. It is clear, however, that those funds are being raided from the existing police capital budget. Resources that should have been spent on improvements in policing will now be used to pay for management consultants, merged IT systems and new headquarters. The problem is that the Home Office has not yet even made clear what it means by ““net costs””. Can the Minister put what is meant by that term on the record tonight? In any event, it is simply insufficient to offer to fund whatever the Government means by ““net costs””. In reality, the costs will have to be funded by recycling other portions of the Home Office grant. With the Home Office budget effectively frozen by the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2008 onwards, the outlook for investment in level 2 services is bleak. Amalgamation will put pressure on other parts of police expenditure. Local policing is bound to suffer. In 2004, a leaked joint Home Office/strategy unit report warned:"““Evidence from other sectors suggests that merger can be a costly, protracted exercise which does not always deliver expected benefits and inevitably causes distraction for management and staff . . . Any case for merger would need to show that the likely benefits outweigh these risks””." My amendment simply puts that proposition into the Bill: the costs of merger should be outweighed by the benefits. On 8 May, a letter from a group of cross-party chairmen of police authorities representing Cheshire, Cleveland, Northamptonshire, North Wales and West Mercia was published in a number of newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, the Independent, the Guardian, and the Financial Times. It added to that warning as follow:"““The current proposals are being rushed through amid growing concern that they will lead to a damaging reduction in performance, a collapse in neighbourhood policing, and a significant loss of accountability. Serious questions remain about the costs and financing of mergers, the impact on council tax, the timescales for transition and the governance arrangements. Opinion polls show overwhelming public opposition, only two police authorities have volunteered to proceed with mergers . . . and some have initiated legal proceedings to halt the process””." Indeed, we have seen that happen recently. Serious questions about costs still remain. They may only be resolved by taking the course in Amendment No. 60—an independent cost benefit analysis. Amendment No. 61 requires a referendum to take place before any merger may proceed. If the Government are serious when they say that they want local people to feel that they have a direct interest in local policing, this would surely be the right way to go about securing that interest and the validation of changes that are of a constitutionally significant nature. I appreciate that the Minister said earlier today that she thinks we have enough elections and do not need any more, but there are occasions when the public have a right to be consulted in an effective way. We can talk about what an effective method might be, but I suggest a referendum as the tool. It is clear from informal methods that have been used to test public opinion that the Government’s plans for mergers are not popular in many—possibly most—areas. For example, on 12 June, East Sussex County Council announced that it had held an internet poll using the question:"““The Government has proposed merging the Sussex and Surrey police forces. Do you support a merger?””." That is as simple and non-prejudicial a question as one could put. The result was that 74 per cent of respondents voted no, 14 per cent voted yes and 11 per cent did not know. It attracted more than 1,100 votes, which makes it reasonably comparable with MORI and other polls. One is left with the concern that the Government are perhaps afraid that if they accept my amendment they would have to accept that the public do not want their merger plans. I beg to move.