Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for giving me this opportunity to clarify the situation. Her generosity beggars belief on occasion. On 19 June my right honourable friend the Home Secretary made it clear that he was not going to force through mergers where they were not wanted. As a corollary to that clear statement, the notices of intention to merge which were issued on 3 March and 11 April were withdrawn on 13 July. That is not to say that the issues in Denis O’Connor’s report, Closing the Gap have gone away; far from it. There is a widespread recognition that the status quo is not an option. We need to make progress in enhancing forces’ capacity and capability to protect the public from the threats posed by terrorism, serious and organised crime and civil emergencies. We now need to focus more on the outcomes that we want to achieve and less on structural questions. Earlier today, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, gave us an example of her local force working energetically with other forces in the locality to address some of those issues. Collaboration and co-operation are obligatory for all of us. We want to work with police forces and police authorities to see how best we can deliver the required improvements in protective services while preserving neighbourhood policing. To this end, the Minister for policing and security, my honourable friend Tony McNulty, has written to all chief constables and police authorities seeking their views on how best to narrow the protective services gap in the absence of mergers. He has followed up that letter with a series of meetings with forces and authorities to listen to their views at first hand. As part of that dialogue with the service, we have made it clear that we are open to all possibilities ranging from collaboration to federation and to the lead force model. We are ready to do what we can to facilitate any innovative solutions to the issue. What matters is what works and what delivers real improvement in the quality of level 2 policing while protecting neighbourhood policing, rather than details of structure. The public want their local force to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour. They also want and deserve to be properly protected from threats posed by serious organised crime and terrorism. We are no longer looking to mergers to deal with that issue, but the merger option must remain available as a last resort. We cannot say that we will never have to use it. No responsible Minister and no responsible Government could ever give such a guarantee, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, referred. But I reiterate that enforced mergers are off the agenda. We shall return to that only if it is clear that none of the other options being considered could produce worthwhile results. As in all our debates, there did not seem to be any disagreement between us that we had to improve; the question is simply how. How do we deliver the change that everyone has identified as needed? It is for that reason that we must preserve the existing provisions in the Police Act 1996 which enable the Home Secretary of the day to initiate mergers where that would be in the interests of policing and protecting the public. Such a provision has been on the statute book for many decades and was retained and, indeed, updated, by the previous Conservative Administration in 1994. That is why we shall invite the other place to reject the amendment made by this House in Committee. I turn briefly to the amendment. Its effect would be to outsource decisions about whether to alter police areas to an unidentified and unaccountable independent body. Any merger needs to be supported by a well-founded business case, but it is ultimately for those who advocate change to put the case for it. In the case of initiating police mergers, Section 33 of the Police Act already effectively provides for that by requiring that the Home Secretary of the day must set out his or her reasons for the proposed alteration of police areas. I hope that the House will be satisfied that the Home Secretary's decision to withdraw the merger notices issued in the spring has settled the issue. What matters now is how we work with the police service to strengthen the protection of the public against the threat posed by terrorism and organised crime. All the conversations that we have had have addressed that issue with a degree of urgency. That is the debate that we need to have now. The provisions for amalgamating police force areas in the 1996 Act are perfectly adequate as they stand and should be left on the statute book as a back-stop but, as mergers are no longer on the agenda, it is time for us to move on. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, will be content to withdraw her amendment, having given me a delightful opportunity better to explain where we now find ourselves concerning force mergers.