With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement in response to Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s independent review of policing in England and Wales. Copies of the final report have been placed in the Library.

I want to start by thanking Sir Ronnie for his report. He has worked hard, meeting and talking to people up and down the country. I particularly appreciate the work he has done to include the voices and views of front-line officers. His recommendations are independent and challenging to all of us across the political spectrum and to the police themselves.

In asking Sir Ronnie to carry out this review, we were determined to find the best ways to ensure that the Government’s investment in extra police officers and police community support officers has an impact where it counts—with visible teams in every neighbourhood and with officers able to focus on what will really make a difference in continuing to reduce crime levels. The report is wide ranging and it deserves further reflection and discussion. It raises important questions about how working practices can be reformed so that police officers can get the most out of their job and communities can get the best out of the police.

I believe that we can make quick progress in reducing bureaucracy, which will be my main focus today. The Association of Chief Police Officers recognised in its submission to the review that

“current levels of unnecessary bureaucracy are created both within as well as outside the police service”.

Sir Ronnie is clear that freeing up police officers to do the job they came into policing to do requires more than simply removing paperwork, important though that is. It is not just about cutting requirements from the centre, important though that is, too. It requires new thinking on performance management from top to bottom of the police service; new attitudes to risk; new ways of working across the criminal justice system; and new technology to support the work of policing. I accept that challenge and we are already making progress in response to Sir Ronnie’s interim report from September.

First, from this April, our new public service agreements and targets will provide greater flexibility to focus on what matters locally, on serious violence and on antisocial behaviour, and streamline the process that gets suspected criminals to court. Secondly, we are consulting on reforms to the working of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 that will reduce police bureaucracy and allow experienced officers to focus on their core roles by making better use of police staff.

Thirdly, working with my right hon. Friends the Justice Secretary and the Attorney-General, I am piloting a range of improvements to the way the police work with the courts and the wider criminal justice system. Those include virtual courts and new streamlined processes to reduce police and administrative time in preparing prosecution files. Fourthly, we are investing in new technology—including video identity parades, live scan electronic fingerprinting, body-worn cameras and the £50 million capital fund that will deliver 10,000 mobile data devices by this September—to make crime fighting more effective and to save officers’ time. I want to end the days of officers having to enter details more than once on to systems that do not talk to each other.

Sir Ronnie’s final report shows how we can go further and identifies further savings to the equivalent of 2,500 to 3,500 officers a year. I accept his recommendations to achieve that and I commend Sir Ronnie for his careful and measured consideration of how to reduce the bureaucracy surrounding stop and account. I agree with his proposal that we should scrap the lengthy form that officers use to record data when they carry out that critical activity.

I do not underestimate the need to build community confidence in policing. We must be able to monitor the proportionality of stops, so I welcome the proposal to use airwave police radio technology to record any encounter and to ensure that the simple card given out by officers to those stopped will have a phone number that they can call. We will immediately pilot this new approach to stop and account in three areas and I expect the changes to be national later this year.

As the House will know, stop and account is a very different issue from stop and search, in respect of which Sir Ronnie says that

“a more formal and comprehensive process is both proportionate and appropriate”.

I therefore welcome the work already being done by the Metropolitan police and the Metropolitan Police Authority, in co-operation with community representatives, to produce a shorter form for stop and search, which is being introduced later this month. Separately, the use of handheld devices to allow officers to input information directly and create a central record of a stop and search is cutting average time from 25 to six minutes. In view of the considerable benefits identified, I am calling on all chief constables to streamline their forms and process in the way Sir Ronnie has advocated.

Both stop and search and stop and account can be powerful tools in tackling crime, so from April we will extend police powers to tackle gang-related gun and knife crime, enabling officers to stop and search in designated areas where an act of serious violence has taken place, as well as in anticipation of serious violence.

We can now go further in other areas of recording. Sir Ronnie proposes that we endorse a radical new approach being trialled in Staffordshire and other forces, whereby police are freeing up more time to deal with victims of crime by using a standard one-page form. Officers are able to use their discretion as to how much further information they record, proportionate to the severity of the crime. I will ensure that that approach can be introduced nationally as soon as possible.

In today’s report, Sir Ronnie celebrates the development and delivery of neighbourhood policing. Thanks to the hard work of forces and police authorities throughout England and Wales, there will be a team for every neighbourhood in April. More than 3,600 teams are now in place and 16,000 police community support officers have been recruited. Up and down the country, at public meetings and in street briefings, local communities are helping to influence their team’s priorities. Throughout March, people will be hearing more about who their local teams are and how they can contact them.

I have asked Sir Ronnie to report back to me in six months on the progress we and the police are making to reduce bureaucracy. This spring, I will publish a Green Paper with proposals for greater flexibility for front-line officers and staff, greater reductions in bureaucracy, strengthened local accountability arrangements and a reformed performance management framework.

Sir Ronnie’s report sets out a powerful challenge for how we can adapt to meet the demands of 21st century policing. We can do so by freeing police officers from unnecessary red tape; giving them the skills and tools for the valuable job they do; delivering neighbourhood policing in every area; and ensuring a better police service for officers, victims and communities alike. I am sure the police service and the Government will, working together, rise to that challenge. I commend the statement to the House.

I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement. I am glad that it, at least, was not lost in the post. I also thank Sir Ronnie for his invaluable contribution to the debate on police reform.

I agree with Sir Ronnie's assessment of the state of policing in Britain today. The question is, does the Home Secretary? Does she recognise, and does she accept, Sir Ronnie’s candid assessment of 10 years of failed policy? In Sir Ronnie’s own words, that policy has left the police subject to “perverse incentives”, “a slave to doctrine”, and “straitjacketed by process”. Police spend a fifth if not more of their time on bureaucracy, and wade through a “raft” of targets—and that is just what Sir Ronnie was allowed to say.

The original draft, widely reported, included material that has been taken out, and which we have not been allowed to hear today. For example, why does the Home Secretary dispute Sir Ronnie's estimate that our police forces face half a million hours of audit inspection every year? On what basis did she delete references to the devastating effect of—again, these are Sir Ronnie’s own words—“top down management”, the “proliferation” of process and “declining public confidence”, and Sir Ronnie’s finding that the over-centralised Government of which she is a member is “part of the problem”? On pages 64 and 65, the original report refers to

“The focus on national priorities… and consequent decline in public confidence and satisfaction with policing”.

The final report states:

“'Public satisfaction in the police… has shown gains”

since the 1990s. That is not quite the same, and I wonder whether the Home Secretary can explain the change.

We agree with many of the recommendations in the Flanagan report, even the Home Office-edited version. It demonstrates clearly that Labour’s approach—over-centralised micro-management of the police—has failed. We have proposed an alternative approach, involving a locally controlled police force with officers on the street, free of unnecessary red tape and free to do the job of protecting the public.

Sir Ronnie has adopted a number of our ideas, including scrapping stop and account—to which the Home Secretary referred—and introducing virtual courts. Those and other common-sense measures will receive our support. But there again, we have been calling for a fundamental overhaul of police bureaucracy for years, and we have had more police reviews from the Government than we have had Home Secretaries.

Let us look at the specifics. The Home Secretary has expressed support for increased civilianisation of police functions. We introduced civilianisation 15 years ago, and we made some sensitive and positive proposals a year ago. Will the Home Secretary tell us her response to the president of the Police Superintendents Association, who said this morning that there was a limit to the scope for civilianisation in a large number of forces?

If the Home Secretary wants to make a real difference, she should simply adopt the whole Conservative agenda. She should scrap forms, starting with the stop-and- account form but including the stop-and-search form. She should slash targets—rather than just fiddling with them—and the army of auditors that goes with them. She should strengthen police powers of stop and search to respond effectively to incidents or threats of knife, gun and drug crimes, and she should reverse the health and safety rules that wrap officers in cotton wool and put the public at risk.

The Home Secretary can go further. Will she adopt our proposals to put police back on the beat, revise the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 so that the police do not spend up to seven and a half hours filling in forms before they can stake out a known burglar’s house, and restore charging discretion so that they spend less time waiting for the Crown Prosecution Service to make up its mind? Will she end 10 years of corrosive centralisation, and accept our long-standing call for locally elected police commissioners?

The Flanagan report is long and comprehensive, but it demonstrates two key facts: that the failure of 10 years of Labour’s centralised micro-management has demoralised the police and debilitated public confidence, and that it is the Conservatives who understand what it will take to get police back on our streets, accountable to the communities that they serve.

After five—five!—studies of police bureaucratisation and 150 recommendations before this report, none of which has been implemented, will the Home Secretary please tell us when the Government will stop just talking about stronger law and order? When will they get a grip and deliver it?

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman did not have to put any extra work into his contribution by adding to what we had already read in The Sunday Telegraph last week.

The right hon. Gentleman made much play of Sir Ronnie’s words. Let me quote what Sir Ronnie said in the introduction to his report:

“These additional resources have undoubtedly contributed to a significant improvement in performance, with crime falling by a third since 1997 and public confidence in the police, which had been falling consistently since 1982, rising since 2003/4.”

When the right hon. Gentleman finally began to deal with the substance of the report, we heard a series of references to elements of measures that I have announced today, or had already introduced, which he supports. He supports the action we are taking on stop and account, although his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition did say last week in The Sun:

“We will carry out a review to see how we would”

reform stop and search. We have identified how we will reform stop and account, and I referred today to the work that is already under way to reform stop and search within the Metropolitan police and more widely.

The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) claimed that virtual courts were somehow an Opposition idea, but it is the Government who are now establishing the process in London. It has taken a Labour Government to deliver that. The right hon. Gentleman made some serious points—as did Sir Ronnie Flanagan—about the process of authorisations under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, but we have already removed the equivalent of 24 hours of police time per day as a result of earlier reviews, and we will of course go further.

I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman chose to spend the vast majority of his time discussing the various versions of the report on which he has managed to lay his hands, and spent the rest of it regurgitating his Sunday Telegraph statement. I think that this issue demands more serious consideration, and that is what Sir Ronnie and the Government will give it.

We welcome Sir Ronnie Flanagan’s report, which is very much in line with many of proposals made by the Liberal Democrats over the years. Civilianisation, neighbourhood policing, increased use of technology and, indeed, a single case file system for the Crown Prosecution Service and the police should all be priorities. It seems to us, however, that as there has been substantial consensus on so many of these matters for such a long time, the real need is for action rather than recommendations. This is, to my certain knowledge, at least the fifth and perhaps the seventh review of modernisation in as many years. Sir Ronnie has suggested that the work force should be modernised over a 10-year period. Will the Home Secretary make a commitment to try to introduce some of the key changes rather more rapidly, particularly given the opportunities afforded by the retirement bulge?

It is important to reduce bureaucracy without impairing the safeguards against abuse. The proposal to cut the bureaucracy involved in stop and account is sensible, as no coercive powers are used by the police when it occurs. However, in the case of stop and search, the Home Secretary has announced an extension of police powers to tackle gang-related gun and knife crime, which is not recommended in Sir Ronnie’s report and which would enable officers to stop and search in designated areas when an act of serious violence had taken place. Will she give concrete examples of circumstances in which the extensive powers for stop and search under part I of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, or section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 are failing—or is this another instance of the Government’s addiction to reaching for legislative powers when what is needed is implementation?

I thought that the hon. Gentleman was responding very seriously until the end of his remarks. Let me respond to some of his serious points.

I agree that there is much scope for both better efficiency and a better service to the public in work force reform. The hon. Gentleman suggested that that was not already under way. In fact, owing to the investment that the Government have been willing to make in increasing police personnel more generally, more and more time is being freed for police to spend on the front line. We see growing numbers of specialist staff, for example, working in roles such as the licensing of firearms and explosives, carrying out criminal records checks, front-office duties, and control room and CCTV activities; and increasingly in some of the work force modernisation pilots we see them working in areas including custody, training and some courts duties. Those and other efficiencies have enabled us to increase the time officers spend on front-line duties in each year since 2003-04 to the equivalent of having more than 5,000 more police officers on the front line.

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s welcome for our action on stop and account, which will be introduced quickly following the three-month trials Sir Ronnie recommends. On stop and search, we have evidence—such as in tackling gangs—that the section 60 search provisions the hon. Gentleman referred to are being used effectively alongside other action to protect people from guns and gang-related crime. We proposed their extension during the passage of the Serious Crime Act 2007 so that they can be used both before and after an attack takes place. That is a reasonable and proportionate use of the stop-and-search powers, and that is what will be introduced from this spring.

I welcome this excellent report and the Home Secretary’s powerful commitments. As she will know, the Home Affairs Committee is about to start a major inquiry into policing which will begin in Newark and end in Monmouth. As several Committee members discovered on our visit to Hackney on Monday, the public want, as far as it is possible, a bonfire of blue tape, and also for visibility to be put at the heart of community policing—they want to see the police constable right at the centre of what is going on. I therefore hope that the Government’s plans for neighbourhood policing will be rolled out, and it would be helpful if my right hon. Friend gave us a timetable. Also, might it be possible for us to get our old police boxes back?

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments. I am sure when he was in Hackney he was able to celebrate with local police officers and Hackney council the considerable fall in crime that has been achieved in that part of London. The local authority, the Mayor and the local police force deserve congratulations on that. I am not sure I can reassure my right hon. Friend on bringing back police boxes, but I hope I can do so on neighbourhood policing: I agree that it is fundamental to ensuring that communities have confidence and that it is important that police officers are a visible presence. We will, of course, be in a position to ensure that there are neighbourhood policing teams in every single community in this country by April this year. I know that local communities are already engaging actively with them.

Further to what the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, has just said, is the Home Secretary aware that three years ago the Committee published a report that found that not enough progress was being made in key areas of police reform? Is she aware that if that report had been responded to thoroughly and promptly, much of what she has promised today would not have been necessary because it would by now already have been accomplished? Will she give an assurance that during this process she will listen to what police officers themselves say? They have told me that they are still as frustrated as ever by the mountain of red tape that they have to confront, which has been introduced in the past 10 years.

I shall of course listen to front-line police officers—as, in fact, Sir Ronnie Flanagan has done. Equally, I will listen to the public about the service they want from their police. For the hon. Gentleman to suggest that reform has not been successful at a time when the numbers of police personnel are increasing, their use is enabling police officers to focus more on their front-line activity and crime is falling, is a travesty both of the reforms and the progress that not only this Government but, more importantly, police officers and police staff have made over the past few years.

I hope that my right hon. Friend agrees that neighbourhood policing is not just about numbers, but that it requires a local partnership approach to cut crime. Will she make sure that the flexibility to which she referred at the beginning of her statement is driven by a clinical approach to measuring and cutting crime in local areas? On violence, which she highlighted, might she learn from the scientific approach introduced by a surgeon in Cardiff, which significantly cut violence by identifying exactly where it was happening and how? There are scientific approaches that could assist the police and which are not currently being used to the full.

My right hon. Friend is right to say that an important aspect of neighbourhood policing is the partnership it is able to build up, including with local government, particularly using the crime and disorder reduction partnerships. That partnership has already led to the success of neighbourhood policing in helping to reduce crime and build confidence. He is also right to suggest that we should learn from important activities such as the one he described, where accident and emergency units identify the reasons that people come into their casualty departments, for example where drink is involved, so that action can subsequently be taken. I was pleased yesterday to be able to refer to the work being done across the whole of the south-east in making those links in order to cut violent crime.

I welcome the fact that the stop form is to be scrapped, but it should never have been introduced in the first place. May I take the Secretary of State back to an issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), the shadow Home Secretary: the civilianisation of police functions? Does she accept that doing that might lead to the resilience of police forces in emergency situations being weakened, and will she reassure us that anything that is done to improve day-to-day efficiency will not undermine the capacity of police forces to respond in emergencies by bringing officers from back-office functions back on to front-line duties?

It is worth while remembering that the stop-and-account form came out of the Sir William Macpherson review into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Sir Ronnie has spoken to Sir William Macpherson, who says he is convinced that stop and account is an example of where the police have gone further bureaucratically than was intended by his eminently sensible recommendation to protect the police and the public and the relationship between them. The form was developed for wholly laudable reasons, but it is right, given that support and Sir Ronnie’s recommendation, that we now get rid of it and find more effective methods. I disagree with the hon. Gentleman that having—to borrow Sir Ronnie’s description—the right people in the right place at the right time, including using civilians where appropriate, makes the police less able to respond; in fact, it frees up police officers to do the jobs that only police officers can do. Therefore, the progress we have already made should be welcomed.

The report includes many sensible recommendations that I wholly support. As a Member who has had two young men in my constituency lose their lives in knife-related violence in the past year, I am absolutely committed to anything we can do, including the use of stop-and-search powers, to reduce the number of guns and knives on our streets. However, may I remind Conservative Members that the accountability measures that were introduced after the Macpherson report came about because of the breakdown in trust between the police and many urban communities? Stop and search should be intelligence-led and not prejudice-led if we are going to retain community support in reducing crime. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that in cutting bureaucracy we will not lose that vital accountability of the police to our communities?

My hon. Friend makes an important point and she demonstrates the difference between being able to get an easy headline and actually being able to deliver improvements by reducing bureaucracy while at the same time maintaining trust among our communities. We are taking the latter approach; unfortunately, Opposition Members have taken the opposite approach.

Can the Home Secretary reassure members of the public and me about one of the more alarming aspects of the report that I read yesterday? I am talking about the suggestion that equal weighting is given in police targets to solving simple, low-level crimes and solving serious crimes. Is that the case? If so, it must be addressed because otherwise the police will naturally concentrate on solving lots of little crimes rather than the important ones.

I do not believe that was ever the case, but we have recognised the concerns about the targets that we set on offences being brought to justice. As the hon. Gentleman says, serious violence should clearly be treated more seriously than other offences. That is why our new performance framework, starting this April, reflects the significance of serious violence in managing police forces’ performance.

I thank my right hon. Friend for picking out Staffordshire police for particular praise in her statement. Does she agree that its strong performance can largely be put down to a succession of excellent leaders in its chief constables, up to and including the present one, Chief Constable Sims, and a very supportive police authority, which is ably led by Councillor Mike Poulter? When Staffordshire police tell me that they can implement the Flanagan proposals for cutting bureaucracy in just 12 months, I believe them—does she? If she does, will she assist them with getting started on that work straight away?

My hon. Friend is right. He has brought to my attention the excellent work being done by Chief Constable Chris Sims and the police authority, which, as he said, is led by Mike Poulter. That work has also come to the attention of Sir Ronnie Flanagan, and I believe it also came to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister last week. The way in which Chief Constable Sims has been able to reduce the recording crime paperwork while putting increased focus on victims is inspiring. As I have made clear today, the proposals should be rolled out quickly not only in Staffordshire but in the rest of the country in order to realise the massive potential that exists.

I am sure that the Home Secretary will join me in paying tribute to the high quality of policing throughout Wales. Will she confirm that proper consideration will be given to the costs and difficulties of policing in rural areas when the new statistical profiles and the funding formulae are being developed? When I read chapter 2 quickly, I did not see any reference to that point, which is particularly important in the Welsh context.

May I reassure the hon. Gentleman that Sir Ronnie had considerable engagement with the Welsh Assembly Government and with representatives of Welsh forces and police authorities in putting together his review. The issue that the hon. Gentleman raises is slightly different in terms of the formula used to allocate resources. The previous formula review considered the impact of rurality on the distribution of funding. I am sure that will be one of the issues that he will bring to our attention when we review that formula again, and it will, of course, need to be put into the mix when we consider that allocation.

Despite the fact that between April and December 2007 violent crime reduced by 13 per. cent in Warrington and personal robbery reduced by 31 per cent., we have experienced some serious crimes involving tragic loss of life. My constituents want significant further action to be taken to reduce crime on our streets. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that there will be no reduction in the number of police officers on the streets tackling crime in Warrington?

My hon. Friend rightly draws attention to the importance of our investment in police officers and the work that is being done locally. I understand the particular circumstances that caused concern in her constituency. Next year, we will ensure that Cheshire police force receives a 2.5 per cent. uplift in the central police grant, including a 2.7 per cent uplift in the part of the grant that relates to neighbourhood policing. It is for the local chief constable to make decisions about the issues she mentions, but I believe that the Government have ensured that the resources are available to put the policing personnel in place to tackle crime and to ensure that her constituents feel safe.

These reforms will be welcomed by all police officers, but may I recommend that the Home Secretary examines one other aspect? A growing number of people who are stopped by police for offending and dealt with by process are not being searched, even though many of them will have recent convictions for carrying knives, drugs or guns. Will she consider giving police the power automatically to do a non-invasive, pat-down search of anyone who is stopped for breaking the law but is not being arrested?

It is quite difficult to envisage a search not being invasive. The hon. Gentleman makes the important point that we need to continue talking to police officers about the powers that they need to do their job properly, and I can certainly give him the undertaking that we shall do that.

As a Staffordshire MP, I welcome the report and I look forward to its implementation in Staffordshire. The Home Secretary is fully aware that this country has too many police authorities and that there is a wide divergence in their performance. How will she ensure that the best practice of the better-performing authorities is passed to lower-performing or poorer authorities? Will she consider introducing a light-touch audit on the authorities that perform well?

If my hon. Friend is arguing, as I think he might be, for us to look at the performance management regime and ensure that it is proportionate in representing success but strong in challenging underperformance where it exists, he makes an important point. That will be an important element of the consideration that we will put into the policing Green Paper.

Is the Home Secretary aware that recently a number of high-profile cases have exposed the deficiencies and limitations of police community support officers—they have little training and limited powers of arrest, and are paid. In stark contrast, the specials, who do a superb job, are not paid, they are all volunteers, they receive high levels of training and they have normal police powers of arrest. What plans does she have to put more emphasis on the specials and to boost their numbers?

Specials do an excellent job, their numbers are increasing and we should congratulate them on their work. However, to congratulate them while denigrating the crucial work that PCSOs do in communities across this country day in, day out short changes not only our communities but PCSOs and specials. It is about time that we recognised, as I believe people within policing do, that policing is about a range of contributions being made by the specials, PCSOs, police officers and police staff. To run down one particular section in order to make a point demeans the argument.

I welcome the report and the shift in resources from the back office to the front line that it recommends. That is just what the public want. Will my right hon. Friend assure us that the kind of efficiency savings that are being talked about—2,500 to 3,500 officers-worth—will not be scooped up by Government generally, but will be redeployed and will produce the extra officers that people want to see, be they police officers, PCSOs or staff, such as forensic staff, who are civilians but who are key partners in the fight against crime?

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have rightly set strong efficiency targets for the police service, on which it has delivered well. The report is about ensuring that we can shift the resource that is already in policing so that, as Sir Ronnie appropriately puts it, we have

“the right people in the right places at the right times, doing the right things.”

That is what this report and our action are about.

In my time on the parliamentary police scheme, I detected a debilitating culture in the police, whereby it seemed better not to make a bad decision than proactively to make a good decision. Police officers of all ranks seemed afraid of making decisions lest something went wrong and they were left hanging out to dry. Will the Home Secretary ensure that officers are given proper support when things go wrong through genuine mistakes and are not left in the situation that I have outlined? Will she ensure they are given more discretion to size up situations for themselves? They should not process people through the custody desks on cases that they know are not going anywhere just because they do not feel that they have discretion to size up the situation for themselves. That happens at the moment.

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman meant this, but in my contact with police officers I have not felt that they have a debilitating culture. I have always felt that they have a can-do attitude in the way in which they respond. From a position of some experience, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point about how we can maximise discretion and support police officers in making split-second decisions in which it is appropriate that they have the support of the public. I have always provided that support for police officers and senior police officers in such circumstances when, sometimes, those on the Opposition Front Bench have not. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the way in which we provide that discretion and support and the Government are committed to ensuring that that will happen.

But is not the police service the classic example of an organisation where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts? There must be a limit to civilianisation. Is not our drive for efficiency often seen in the police service as deskilling the organisation and losing its resilience?

Of course there is a limit. There are important roles that only sworn police officers can play. In my experience, including of some impressive projects that I was looking at just last week, there is still great enthusiasm from police officers and others about the idea that we should ensure that whether someone is a member of police staff, a police officer or a police community support officer, they focus on what they are best able to do and therefore provide the best service to the public. We have seen good examples in both our work force modernisation pilots and other projects of increased police activity, increased public satisfaction, falling crime rates and—dare I say it?—general content all round. While we continue to see that, I would be keen to push on with those programmes. I know that they have widespread support across policing.

May I return the Home Secretary to a question posed by my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary, which she never answered? When it came to Sir Ronnie’s original draft of his review, why did she remove the reference to half a million hours spent on audit work?

Sir Ronnie’s review was written by Sir Ronnie and published today. It is written in his own words and I respect them.

Is it not a mistake to go down the line of the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) and praise one part of the police team rather than the whole police team? It is only when we have the civilian staff as well as the constables, the specials and the PCSOs working together that we can get what constituents want, which is a regular presence on the street, swift answering of the telephone, somebody there when there is an emergency and every claim taken seriously. It is not also important that we boost the specials? Would it not be better to have more local training of specials so that we could encourage more people to come into the force? Perhaps we could consider a small honorarium of £500 a year for specials.

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the range of police personnel. The fact that the Government have been willing to invest so that there are 25 per cent. more police personnel now than there were in 1997 is very important. He makes some interesting points about the specials, which I shall certainly consider as we approach the Green Paper on policing.