In my personal statement on 17 October 2005, I apologised to the House for the factual inaccuracy in my answer to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) during the Transport Sub-Committee meeting held on 14 November 2001. I am grateful to the Committee on Standards and Privileges for its investigation into my evidence, and in particular for its finding that I did not lie to the Select Committee, as alleged. As I told the Committee, an accurate reply at the time would have caused me no problem, either politically or legally. Although the Committee recognised that in my personal statement of 17 October I had accepted that I gave a factually inaccurate answer, it concluded that I should have apologised unreservedly for having done so. I accept the Committee's conclusion, and I therefore offer my unreserved apologies to the House.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In Health questions yesterday, we referred to the growing problem of the lengthening waiting times for radiotherapy, made the point that the Government are continually refusing to measure those waiting times, and asked how the problem could be solved. The Secretary of State for Health indicated in her answer that the Government would introduce measuring facilities for such waiting times, but that clearly contradicts written parliamentary answers given to us very recently. Will you please look into this matter, Mr. Speaker, and ensure that Ministers give accurate answers in future—for the sake of cancer patients, in this case?

The best way to deal with that is to table more parliamentary questions.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. At Question Time today I mentioned two reports, and you told me from the Chair, Sir, when you put me down, that I would be answered. The Prime Minister did not answer anything about the report that I was quoting—he went on to another report—and on a matter of this nature, when a Government-appointed body now admits that it misled people about decommissioning, we need a straight answer from the Government.

It is best for the right hon. Gentleman to pursue that matter with the Prime Minister, but to get the record straight, I put the right hon. Gentleman down because his supplementary question was too long. As a seasoned campaigner in the House, he will know that long supplementary questions will be stopped by the Speaker, for no other reason than that.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Two years ago, the Prime Minister tabled a motion in the House to welcome the fact that pensioners would be able to collect their pensions from the Post Office, using a Post Office card account. However, yesterday, an anonymous spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions announced that those accounts were always intended to be only an interim solution. Have you had any request, Mr. Speaker, from any Minister at the DWP to come to the House to explain why that fact was concealed from us two years ago, and to explain the pilot schemes that are starting this month, thus preventing some pensioners from using Post Office card accounts for their pensions?

The hon. Gentleman represents a constituency that is, at the very least, very rural, and post offices are an important part of that community. He should apply for an Adjournment debate and get the appropriate Minister down to the House.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to protect private gardens from housing development which is out of character with the surrounding area; and for connected purposes.

The Bill is designed to close a loophole in the planning system that is giving rise to great concern in my constituency and constituencies throughout the country. The problem is essentially that front and back gardens are classified in planning terms as the equivalent of brownfield sites. In other words, they are treated the same as an old gasworks or a disused railway site. As housing development is encouraged on brownfield sites, it is next to impossible for local councils throughout the country to refuse planning applications for developments that they consider to be excessive, even if they want to. The situation has serious consequences for my constituents and those of other hon. Members.

Let me give hon. Members an illustration of the problem. Forest road in Tunbridge Wells is typical of many roads throughout the country. Developers are buying up houses with big plots on that road. They do not buy them just to redevelop the house, because their eyes are as much on the garden as the house itself. Some of the houses have stood for as long as 100 years. They are some of the most attractive urban houses in our constituencies, but after they have been bought for development, they are demolished and replaced by housing—often in the form of apartment blocks—that covers the whole footprint of the plot.

Let me describe the consequences of that. The neighbours of such developments live in fear that the property their other side will also be bought. They fear going from living in a leafy street of family houses to being surrounded on both sides by apartment blocks, which was not the type of life that they expected to live. With understandable panic, those people sell to developers. A domino effect occurs on these roads—one after another—as houses fall prey to developers. In a short time, the character of some of our most prized areas is being completely destroyed, although we never would have considered that possible.

There are three reasons why there is a problem, of which the first is the point about character. We should prize the parts of our towns and cities that are attractive to live in and have proved to be so for upwards of 100 years. They are part of the identity of our towns, and we should cherish and preserve them.

The second reason is environmental. In towns and cities, our gardens are precious green lungs. They are havens for precious wildlife, insect and bird life. They clean and cool the air and keep down pollution. They also contribute to the drainage of our communities when we have problems with flooding and poor drainage throughout the country. If it were suggested that one of our urban parks or open spaces should be concreted over, there would be uproar and people would march on Parliament to protect those sites. However, as gardens are hidden from view behind houses rather than in public view, they go unnoticed, so little by little we are losing precious green spaces throughout the country.

The third reason why we should be alarmed by such developments is that although we all want more social and affordable housing, many of the developments are sufficiently small to fall below the threshold that triggers the requirement for such housing. Developers can thus create high-end housing, which is often dense, without making the contribution to affordable development that they would be obliged to make if they were to develop a genuine brownfield site.

What is to be done about it? I am not going to suggest that we should preserve every garden in the country in aspic—clearly that is not possible, and there is a difficult balance to be struck between housing need and protecting the character of our urban areas—but two principles should apply. The first is that the people who make the decisions should understand their communities. They should be familiar with the character of their areas and accountable to their local electorate. Better the town hall than the Minister in Whitehall when it comes to taking views on the character of a development. We should give back to local communities the power to decide those applications, and not have them taken remotely.

Secondly, we should not kid ourselves that those are brownfield sites. They are not; they are greenfield sites. They are not what the brownfield site legislation was designed to protect. We delude ourselves if we think that we are making progress in developing brownfield sites when we are ploughing up people's back gardens, with the consequences that I have described. And I am afraid that we are deluding ourselves, because in a statement released just yesterday by the Minister for Housing and Planning, the ODPM praises the

"new record high of 72 per cent."

of home building on previously developed land—in other words, brownfield sites.

In the context of my remarks today that achievement is dubious. We do not know what proportion of that 72 per cent. is gardens rather than industrial sites. In a parliamentary answer to a question that I asked, the Minister admitted on 11 January:

"there is no information on any loss of privately owned green space."—[Official Report, 11 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 691W.]

If we are to have a debate about housing and about balancing development and preserving the character of our towns, we should at least do so on the basis of clarity, honesty and knowing whether we are getting rid of industrial sites or gardens. That is not happening at the moment.

This Bill seems to have struck a chord right across the country. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] Labour Members and Liberal Democrat Members as well as Conservative Members have added their support to it, and that support has not just come from what one might think of as the leafy south-east. I have had messages of support from the valleys of south Wales, Rochdale, Rotherham and Doncaster, as well as from Teesside. The problem is shared across the country. To quote just one message of support, a correspondent from Rotherham said:

"We feel that our local council is sympathetic to our distress and they agree that too many mini-estates are being crammed onto unsuitable sites. Unfortunately, we are told that planning permission will almost certainly be granted to avoid an appeal which will then overturn their decision."

My Bill is simple in its intent: it would remove front and back gardens from the Government's definition of brownfield sites of previous development. If we are to be honest about brownfield sites, we owe it to ourselves to recognise the intention of the designation. If the idea of brownfield sites is to mean anything, it should be about improving the condition of our towns and villages and contributing to environmental progress, not about changing and destroying the characters of areas for ever.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Greg Clark, Michael Fabricant, Mrs. Jacqui Lait, John Penrose, Mr. David Burrowes, Mr. James Arbuthnot, Mr. Jeremy Hunt, Mr. Gerald Howarth, Ms Dari Taylor, Mr. Douglas Carswell, Mrs. Nadine Dorries and Mr. John Maples.

Protection of Private Gardens (Housing Development)

Greg Clark accordingly presented a Bill to protect private gardens from housing development which is out of character with the surrounding area; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 12 May, and to be printed [Bill 123].

We now come to the main business, which is an Opposition debate on the 12th allotted day on police amalgamations. I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

I beg to move,

That this House notes the Home Secretary's proposals to create regional strategic police forces in England and Wales; further notes the Association of Police Authorities' estimate that amalgamations could cost £600 million to implement; further notes that none of the proposed amalgamated forces has the unanimous agreement of the police authorities concerned; expresses concern about the implications of mergers for local accountability, neighbourhood policing and the level of police precepts; regrets the unnecessarily tight timetable for consultation; recognises that the potential changes are the most significant for over thirty years; and calls on the Government to consider alternative proposals to strengthen the ability of forces to deal with serious crime, including sharing services, as recommended by the Association of Police Authorities.

This is an unusual Opposition debate. Usually, we have a few hours of political combat and knockabout, all of which is very enjoyable, but the Government then carry on as they did before. Today, I shall try something a little different, and offer the Government a serious chance of achieving their stated aim of finding a better way of dealing with serious crime with the wholehearted and consensual support of all the parties in the House. That is appropriate, because the structure and accountability of our police forces and the decentralisation of law enforcement is a constitutional issue that should be resolved on a cross-party basis.

Let us start with what we agree on. We agree that we want to improve the ability of our police forces to deliver the so-called protective services that deal with murder, terrorism, cross-border crime and so on. We agree that the current organisation may be weak in some police forces on some of those issues. We agree that the policing teams—not necessarily the forces—that deal with those major issues should have the skills and resources to deal with them. Where possible, they should be able to develop experience in dealing with them.

We do not agree that the organisation that is best suited to deal with terrorism is necessarily the best suited to deal with shoplifting, mugging or burglary. We do not agree that bigger is better for most aspects of policing. Indeed, other issues including the quality of management and leadership, technical skills, proper resourcing and local knowledge are far more important than any imaginary police force-wide economies of scale in the delivery of better policing.

We do not agree that regionalism is a good model for emergency services in general or police forces in particular. We believe in localism. Regionalism is pseudo-localism, with all the disadvantages of centralisation masquerading under a local label. Most of all, however, we do not agree that this is a policy that should be analysed and proposed in a few months, barely debated, then imposed in a rush on an unwilling public and a number of unwilling police forces and authorities.

Let us start with the analysis, the so-called O'Connor report entitled, "Closing the Gap". It is subtitled, "A Review of the 'Fitness for Purpose' of the Current Structure of Policing in England and Wales". The phrase, "Fitness for Purpose", is one of the many pieces of managerial jargon that afflict modern policing. The question is, fit for what purpose? No one could seriously believe that ever bigger and ever more remote police forces will deliver more responsive, effective and accountable policing of the local robberies, muggings, burglaries that intrude into too many people's lives.

Nevertheless, the analysis in the O'Connor report implies that bigger is better when dealing with major crimes under the umbrella of protective services. The report and the Government response to it are flawed at three critical points: the original analysis; the plan and costing of proposals, such as they were; and the decision and timetable for implementation.

Frankly, the best thing that I can do is to repeat the House the coruscating opinion of Professor Lawrance, a professor of statistics at Warwick university. He addressed the analysis, which claimed that police forces need to be 4,000-strong to do their job, and found that the quality of the statistical information was questionable and that the statistical treatment of the data and the use of computer-produced statistical elaborations unjustified. In his opinion, there was minimum professional statistical science input in the planning stages, the data analysis, its presentation and the conclusions that were drawn. He concluded by stating:

"It cannot be presumed that there is a causative relation between protective service effectiveness and force size from rough trends on simple graphs.

The conclusions drawn in respect of a 4,000 minimum force size almost totally ignore the variability of protective services performance in each force size, and no evidence is provided that this will be small at the 4,000 level.

In short, there will be an unknown number of good and poor performers in re-formed larger forces."

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

In the last debate that we had on the subject, I gave way over 30 times. Today, with an 8-minute rule, I shall restrict the number of times I give way, but I will do so on this occasion.

I shall try to be brief. The Essex constabulary has considerable experience of fighting terrorism, not least because, as my right hon. Friend and the Government know, there are special facilities at Stansted. Also, on 7/7, the Essex police provided substantial assistance to the Met. Does my right hon. Friend agree, with respect to colleagues from East Anglia, that the Essex constabulary does not need to merge with other forces to learn how to fight terrorism?

Yes. My hon. Friend is right and, if I remember correctly, he is supported in his views on the matter by Members representing Essex constituencies from all the major parties in the House, which is an important indication of the concern about the proposal. He raises another point. The Essex force, as he says, has special skills in dealing with terrorism. Other forces in other parts of the country have special skills in public order defence, or in dealing with border-related issues such as international crime. On the regional model proposed by the Government, we cannot be sure that any particular region has these special skills.

One of the great advantages of a looser federated model is that a force could take advantage from one area of one set of special skills and another area for another set of special skills. Rejecting a one-size-fits-all model will help us get better policing across the board, not least at the high levels of protective services that the Government are concerned about.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

I will, but with the stricture that I made before. I am often keen to give way to Labour Members, normally the dimmer ones, but I will make an exception in this case, as the right hon. Gentleman is the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee.

I am more grateful than usual. If the right hon. Gentleman is making the point that for a force of a certain size, there are a number of other factors as well as its size that determine whether it is good or not, of course that is true. Everyone would accept that. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that, quite separate from the O'Connor report and that analysis, Sir David Phillips, chief constable of Kent and then president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, produced a position paper three or four years ago, adopted by ACPO, which reached almost exactly the same material conclusions as O'Connor about the optimum size of police forces? Is it not the case that that is not a one-off report, but a reflection of the dominant professional consensus in policing in Britain about the ideal size of police forces?

I accept one point from the right hon. Gentleman. He is right that there are various views from leading senior police officers. My conversations with many members of ACPO indicate to me that that is not their current collective view. We will see what happens in the course of the debate in the coming days.

I did not read the whole of Professor Lawrance's critique. I dispute the idea of an optimum size for a police force. That differs around the country. The right size of police force will be different in a big urban area such as Manchester from what it would be in East Yorkshire. A one-size-fits-all model is just plumb wrong. I am sure the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) has read the Lawrance report, as he is an assiduous Select Committee Chairman. He will have seen that if one took three of the bigger forces out of the 43 in the analysis, there would be no correlation whatever for any optimum size. The whole statistical analysis is based on a flawed concept, flawed data and a flawed analytical approach. The right hon. Gentleman's Committee will no doubt consider the matter again in the coming year or so and reach a similar conclusion.

I have broken my stricture about interventions, but I shall try to make progress. The other concerns that arise are manifold. Let me go through them one by one. The first concerns accountability. Regional forces would cover a huge area. A south-west regional force—some Members from the south-west are present—would cover a massive 8,187 square miles. People living in the north of Gloucestershire are nearer to Scotland than they are to the south of Cornwall. The proposal is madness, if the aim is local identification and local accountability. Chief constables will be hundreds of miles away from many towns and villages. As I said last time, Kent officers could be closer to Calais than to their proposed regional headquarters. Inevitably, regional police forces will become more remote from the communities they are meant to serve.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Not for the moment. [Hon. Members: "He is one of the dimmer ones."] Exactly. The hon. Gentleman does not realise the temptation he places before me with respect to the concept of dimmer Labour Members. However, I will go to another one, the Prime Minister, and the House can make its own judgment. When he was shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sedgefield argued that

"wholesale amalgamation of the smaller police services . . . will remove local policing further from local people when there is no evidence that it will create a more effective police service."—[Official Report, 5 July 1994; Vol. 246, c. 273.]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Not at the moment, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. [Interruption.] Yes, another dimmer one.

Let us move to the issue of cost. The O'Connor report calls itself "Closing the Gap", but far from closing the gap, it will open a gaping black hole in the finances of our local police forces. Based on the submissions made by police authorities, the Association of Police Authorities estimates the cost of mergers to be over £525 million across England and Wales. As is the way with IT-based costings, I suspect that that is a grotesque underestimate. Indeed, the APA itself says the cost could be double that—£1 billion—when the associated costs of police restructuring are taken into account.

Let us consider that conservative estimate, which is based on the submissions of individual authorities. The sum of £525 million represents an average of £12.5 million per police force. The Home Secretary belatedly offered just £125 million, less than a quarter of the funding necessary, to pay for amalgamations. What is more, the Home Secretary's promised funds are in any case being raided from the existing police capital budget, not new money. So resources that should have been spent on improvements to policing will be used to pay for management consultants, merged IT systems, new headquarters and the like, none of them making a contribution to better policing.

More than £400 million must still be found by police authorities to finance amalgamations. There are only two places that they can get £400 million; they can borrow it or raise it through a higher precept on the council tax. We know where it will come from, don't we? Either way, in the end, the cost of the exercise will fall on the council tax payer. Assuming that police authorities do not cut services, the average police precept would rise by 21 per cent.—up to £37 on a band D property—on top of increases already planned and on top of the fact that the police precept has more than doubled in the past eight years in most cases.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Just this once.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Given that West Yorkshire police has calculated a cost of £50 million for the amalgamation, given that the force already meets the criteria set down by the Home Office and given that the merger is opposed by the local police authority and by hon. Members from both sides of the House, including the hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell), who made an excellent speech in a previous debate on the matter, does my right hon. Friend agree that the £50 million cost would be much better spent on real policing than on an unnecessary merger?

I agree with everything my hon. Friend said. The model is repeated throughout the country. I should, perhaps, explain to the House my softness in giving way to my hon. Friend. He is a namesake, he used to be a constituent of mine and his wife was my agent, so I had to give way.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) has none of those qualifications. Even if he keeps moving around, he will not fool me. I still recognise him.

Let us remind ourselves what the exercise was meant to do. The exercise was meant to strengthen protective services—the ability of police forces to tackle serious crime—but not one penny of the £500 million spent on amalgamation will be invested in them. The numbers do not add up, which is one of the reasons why the Association of Police Authorities opposes the Government's plan.

Last week, the APA asked the Government to consider the option of forces sharing services as an alternative to amalgamation, and at a recent Prime Minister's Question Time, the Prime Minister seemed to agree:

"We have to listen to what people are saying and, obviously, there are different views about police reform. One possibility is for strategic coming together on certain issues, rather than mergers, but that has to be looked at on a case-by-case basis . . . The aim should be the most effective way to police local communities with the greatest amount of accountability and effectiveness. Obviously, we will listen carefully to what people say."—[Official Report, 25 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 1426–27.]

Bravo.

From the other side of the Dispatch Box, the Home Secretary keeps saying, "Quite right.", but I wish that he were as open-minded as he pretends to be. He has commented:

"Some people think that a form of federation would be a more effective way of dealing with aspects of the situation than strategic forces. I take the view . . . that that is not the right approach".—[Official Report, 19 December 2005; Vol. 440, c. 1583.]

The Chief Whip may not be the only one who makes a career-changing decision in the next few days.

The Prime Minister is for sharing services, and the Home Secretary is against, so what is the Government's policy? Is the Home Secretary looking at federations with an open mind? The Prime Minister is often accused of wanting to associate himself with popular initiatives, and if he is successful in persuading the Home Secretary that the federated option is worth considering, this will be the one occasion when he will have our full support, whether he turns up or not.

The Government are attempting to drive through the biggest reorganisation of the police for 40 years with little debate or consultation. Police authorities were given just three months to prepare their cases before Christmas. When police forces were last restructured in the 1960s, a royal commission was formed. It took two years to report, and there was then another two years of debate on the report before legislation was enacted. Denis O'Connor, the author of the report, believes that this process should take longer:

"This process looks like five years and not 18 months to me".—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 29 November 2005; Vol. 440, c. 8WH.]

The Home Secretary has already been rebuffed by the police authorities, which will not submit to his absurdly tight three-month deadline. He must realise that more time is needed to assess the costs of restructuring, the implications for accountability, the objections of local communities and potential alternatives to amalgamations, many of which are strongly opposed by police authorities, chief constables and local people.

rose—

For the sake of party fairness, I should make one concession. At a party conference, I once described the Liberal policy of tough liberalism as an oxymoron with the emphasis on the last two syllables.

The right hon. Gentleman is tough with a generous heart. He has made an important point about consultation. Does he agree that in many cases the people who oppose the Home Secretary's proposal do not have vested interests? If the Home Secretary listened, he would realise that serious crime is a consideration, but not the only consideration. Many people think that the proposal will seriously harm local crime management. For example, an all-Wales police force will pool resources in high-crime areas, leaving relatively low-crime areas to experience an increase in crime.

I agree with almost every word the hon. Gentleman has said, despite his opening accusation of kindness, which is very dangerous for a Home Secretary.

Returning to my opening remarks, even if we were not in this new age of consensual politics, I would still believe that every hon. Member wanted to ensure that our police forces are adequately equipped to tackle the myriad threats faced by the people of this country.

The Home Secretary has already admitted that the widespread objections to the proposals have forced him to implement them in two stages. He has said that those forces happy to proceed will start in April 2007, while for those that object it will be April 2008. All the indications are that few, if not none, of the forces will agree to April 2007, so we are discussing April 2008, when most of the forces will be cajoled into submission with doubts about costs and accountability still rampant.

For that reason, surely we should spend the next year on a proper period of consultation, which we should have had in the first place. During that time, precise costings could be made and other options, such as a federated structure, could be properly considered, just as the Prime Minister has suggested. Proper local consultation could be undertaken, with local referendums—I know that the Government do not like them any more—where appropriate.

If the Home Secretary does that, in most cases—the Home Secretary has a point in some parts of the country—the option that will deliver the greatest ability to fight serious crime is the federated option of enhanced co-operation and sharing services between neighbouring forces. Indeed, 23 Labour Members have signed early-day motion 1393 to that effect.

My proposal to the Home Secretary will enable him essentially to keep to his projected timetable while allowing us to exercise our constitutional obligation to ensure that our country's police forces are "fit for purpose", which is fit for all purposes. If he chooses to dismiss it, he must explain why he has chosen to implement uncosted, unpopular, ineffective and undemocratic reforms with undue haste and inadequate consideration. Why has he chosen to spend £500 million to take half a step backwards?

I will listen to the Home Secretary very carefully. If he is reasonable, we may not even force a vote. If he is not, however, we will revisit this issue time and time again in the coming weeks, months and, indeed, years until the serious inadequacies in the Government's proposals are dealt with in the interests of the British people.

I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"welcomes the excellent work of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) in clearly setting out the case for reform of the current structure of policing in England and Wales; thanks police forces and authorities for their hard work in responding to the HMIC findings; congratulates the Government on its commitment to delivering excellent policing at all levels, from vandalism to terrorism, through strategic police forces equipped with dedicated capacity at the neighbourhood level; and endorses the need for reform to move swiftly to minimise uncertainty and damage to morale within a service which has over the past eight years shown itself dedicated to continuous improvement in delivery of a truly locally responsive service."

Labour Members have no aversion to votes, despite recent experience. I was excited when the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) described the constructive approach that he was going to adopt, but we did not hear a lot of it in a speech that consisted of a series of attacks of the traditional variety. As ever, I shall attempt to respond constructively.

The issue concerns professional policing, and the process is not driven by politics or, as the right hon. Gentleman suggested, a regional agenda. Everyone with a serious professional interest in policing accepts that the provision of protective services is deficient. The Association of Police Authorities has acknowledged that point, pointing out that the current 43-force structure is not strong enough to tackle organised gangs and nationally mobile criminals.

The current president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Sir Chris Fox, has said that

"ACPO has long recognised that there is a need to restructure the police service to meet the threats and challenges of at least the next thirty years."

Paul Scott-Lee, chief constable of the west midlands, has said that it would be better to serve the region with one force. Jon Stoddart, the chief constable of Durham, has said:

"Politics aside, the chief constables of Durham and Northumbria are united in their belief that, from a purely professional point of view, a regional force would reinforce and improve community policing as it now exists. At the same time it would enhance our ability to tackle terrorists, extremists, major emergencies and the 'Mr. Bigs' of serious and organised crime."

Only yesterday, the chief constable of North Yorkshire said that

"there is a powerful and persuasive case indicating that, far from being diminished, the quality of neighbourhood policing, and the status of the local Basic Command Unit will be significantly enhanced by regional amalgamation."

Let me go through the different regions. In the west midlands, three of the four forces think that some form of amalgamation is necessary, while one is very concerned. In the north-east, two are in favour and one is concerned. In the north-west, a form of amalgamation is supported by most of the forces in the region. In Wales—

rose—

I will give way in a moment.

In Wales, many forces accept the idea of a national force to deal with these circumstances.

The point that I am trying to make is that it is wrong to suggest, as some do, that there is total opposition to these changes or that the policy is politically driven. It is professionally driven: professional police officers think that it is the right way to go.

I assure my right hon. Friend that representatives of the Association of Police Authorities in south Wales, whom we met last week, and the chief constable of the South Wales police force and her colleagues not only accept the main thrust of these proposals but recognise that local and democratic accountability will come through the neighbourhood policing model, which was not mentioned at all by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr. Davis). Does my right hon. Friend think it somewhat unfair that the Tory Front-Bench spokesman has as a motto, "Tough on crime, tough on interventions by the Member for Ogmore"?

I would have thought that that was the authentic voice of Davis. I intend to talk at some length about neighbourhood policing.

rose—

I want to make a little more progress before I give way again.

I want to emphasise that the professional view that we need change to deal with serious and organised crime, counter-terrorism and major stretches of forces is not new. My right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) made the case about Sir David Phillips' report. The "Closing the Gap" report was a consequence of a large number of similar proposals in the past. Even under the previous Conservative Government, a White Paper was published in 1993, which said: "This pattern"—of 43 forces—

"is partly the result of historical accident and the merging of organisations which were established haphazardly over more than 100 years . . . The result today is a patchwork quilt of forces of widely varying sizes and types."

It continued:

"It is questionable whether 43 separate organisations are now needed to run police operations and whether the maintenance of 43 parallel organisations makes the most effective use of the resources available to policing."

Those are very similar to Sir Denis O'Connor's words about being "fit for purpose", which the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden criticised.

rose—

I will give way in a moment, as I said.

We must be clear that it is our duty—certainly my duty as Home Secretary, but also our duty across the House—to find the most effective way of enabling the professional views of our police service best to protect the public and then to go ahead and implement them without delay. The problems addressed by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary are problems that we face now—they will not go away, as they have not gone away in the past. In fact, the inspectorate was clear in its report that they would get worse if we failed to act.

Last week, Bedfordshire MPs from all parties met Bedfordshire police authority, which believes that the cost of the Home Secretary's reforms will affect the number of officers on the ground. I tabled a written parliamentary question on that matter last week. Can the Home Secretary enlighten the House about it?

There is absolutely no reason to say that. In fact, I quoted a chief constable making exactly the point that neighbourhood policing will be strengthened, not weakened, by this approach. I will return to that later in my remarks.

A week ago today, Mr. Barry Roper, the independent vice-chairman of Leicestershire police authority, lobbied Leicestershire MPs, including me. Will the Home Secretary acknowledge that there can be a dichotomy of views between an area's police authority and its police force? Would he care to comment on how he intends to react to that?

My hon. Friend is entirely correct. There is a range of views about these questions within policing. There are different views between professional police officers, as there sometimes are between chief constables and police authority members. That is part of the debate that we should have. I do not argue that there is a uniformity of view that this is the right thing to do, because that is not so. I do argue, however, that serious professional policing opinion at the level of the inspectorate and others has taken that view consistently.

rose—

I shall give way one more time before making more progress.

Has not the Home Secretary identified part of the problem? The police forces that support this proposal are by and large metropolitan police forces covering large metropolitan areas. In the west midlands, for example, West Mercia, which covers Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, has real concerns. Rural communities are in danger of losing out, because resources will go from relatively low-crime rural areas into higher-crime urban areas. Is not that why so many rural forces are concerned about his proposals?

I think that that description is completely wrong. In the west midlands region, for example, Staffordshire and Warwickshire, which have many rural areas, support the changes. Northumbria, a force that has great swathes of rural population, some of which is very sparse, supports the changes. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman would categorise County Durham as a rural or an urban force, but it certainly has substantial rural areas, and it supports the changes. He rightly says that there are issues in West Mercia, but it is not the kind of area that he describes.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the proposal by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr. Davis) for a loose federation of constabularies combines the worst of all possible options, first, by not delivering economies of scale at the delivery end and, secondly, by bringing in an additional tier of bureaucracy that can only make things worse?

I agree. That gives me the opportunity to make some progress in addressing precisely that point.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan describes existing collaborative arrangements as "woefully inadequate" and adds that they

"fail to deliver sustained resourcing for preventive or developmental work".

At a different level, Rick Naylor, who leads the Superintendents Association, says:

"The present structure gets in the way of co-operation and working across boundaries. We have tried collaboration and it has not worked."

There are instances of useful collaboration—for example, in providing training for officers, often in reactive response to civil contingencies. The hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois), who is no longer in his place, rightly mentioned Essex's support for the Met after 7/7. Mutual aid can be very strong and effective. It was required, for example, during the recent fire at the Buncefield oil storage facility, where the Metropolitan police service and Bedfordshire constabulary provided support for Hertfordshire in an effective operation.

I do not in any sense decry the view that collaboration can offer solutions and benefits—it can. However, the "Closing the Gap" report demonstrated that that was not a good enough basis for the continuous intelligence and preventive work that is essential for good protective services. The common element of the types of crime that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden described is that in the modern 21st-century police service we must not only predict and prevent but recognise and react. Intelligence gathering and preparation are absolutely critical, and we need resources dedicated to proactively gathering intelligence and making links that deal with that in a variety of ways.

Many of the business cases submitted by forces and authorities state that, under the current structure, if their forces were to experience sustained demand on protective services, local policing would suffer. We need solutions for each area. I agree that it is not a one-size-fits-all model, which is why the regional picture that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden described is not correct. We look at each case and consider what to do in the light of the professional advice that we receive. We are going through options case by case. The first crucial hurdle that every option, whatever it is, has to clear is to demonstrate operational viability in terms of delivering protective services. I hope shortly to be in a position to make an announcement on those options identified as operationally viable, and we will then discuss with forces the best way to proceed.

rose—

I will go on to talk about neighbourhood policing, which I see as absolutely central, and the basic command unit, but before doing so I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham).

The west midlands was mentioned earlier. West Midlands police responded tremendously to a bomb scare, for want of a better term, in Birmingham. It showed how well a police force can operate when it gets it act together. However, one of the biggest fears about a merger is that in some areas—for example, Coventry, although we have a big police force—it is often difficult to find somebody in charge on a Saturday, or Sunday, when incidents occur in neighbourhoods. The public expect Members of Parliament to be able to get through to a senior police officer, but it is difficult. Will my right hon. Friend look into that?

My hon. Friend is right. That is precisely why we have made the development of neighbourhood policing teams central to our policing strategy. The strategy at basic command unit level—for example, at the level of the city of Coventry—is for the police to work with other agencies to tackle crime in the locality. A key test is whether such a strategy will help or hinder neighbourhood policing and the development of a proper basic command unit structure. My hon. Friend is right to highlight that.

The Home Secretary said that there was support in Wales for the proposals in the report. A parliamentary written answer from the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety suggested that there had been a joint submission from all forces in Wales. However, the North Wales police authority appears to favour closer collaboration with Cheshire. Will my right hon. Friend take that on board?

I certainly shall. My hon. Friend is correct. There are doubts in the police force and among parliamentary colleagues from different parties in north Wales about the wisdom of an all-Wales basis for policing, and serious issues have been raised. As my hon. Friend knows, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety and I have discussed how best to tackle them with the police force and Members of Parliament. We are therefore listening. I emphasise that, in the rest of Wales, there is a view that an all-Wales force is the right way forward, but we shall take account of my hon. Friend's point.

I want to establish the Home Secretary's good faith, having listened carefully to his response to the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen). Cheshire has made it clear that intelligence as well as crime economy—for want of a better phrase—arguments favour putting north Wales and Cheshire together, rather than putting Cheshire with others in a region called the north-west. If the Home Secretary is truthful about listening, he should wipe away all the administrative boundary constraints, within which North Wales and Cheshire police must fit, and get them together.

The hon. Gentleman is right in an important respect: the crime marketplace runs from Liverpool to north Wales; in south Wales, it runs down the M4 corridor. Examples could be given in every part of the country of the need for collaboration to tackle such circumstances, wherever the border falls.

However, the hon. Gentleman asked me why regional boundaries were important. The reason is that they are important—[Interruption.] Let me be clear. The police will tell all hon. Members who ask that collaboration with other public services—health, education or any other service—is central to improving policing and reducing crime. Increasingly, such collaboration is the way to reduce crime and it is therefore necessary. Other services recognise regional boundaries and that is why I said that police structures should consider that. I said previously that it is not an absolute requirement that one should not cross a regional boundary because there may be cases of the sort that have been mentioned. However, I said publicly in September that the case for not respecting the regional boundary in our work would need to be powerful. That is a reasonable position for a Home Secretary to adopt.

Terrorism and other such subjects have been mentioned. However, residents in Essex are genuinely worried that, at a time of increasing antisocial behaviour and violent crime, the reorganisation will distance policing from local people. That is the key concern, not only in Essex but other parts of the country. At the same time, the reorganisation threatens to increase cost when the police levy in the council tax has already doubled since 1998. What would the Home Secretary say to my constituents?

The hon. Gentleman is right about the concern that exists. I believe that people's major anxiety, reflected in the earlier debate on the proposals, which come from professional police but are supported by the Government, is that policing will move away from the local community. I shall now deal with that precise point.

Let us consider the levels of policing. First, there is neighbourhood policing, which roughly covers a local authority ward. There should be a neighbourhood policing team, with police officers and police community support officers working with the community, so that a force serves its specific needs and cannot be abstracted from it. That is a central policy. It was part of our manifesto in the election and it will be driven through. I shall give an example shortly.

Secondly, the level above the neighbourhood or ward is the local authority area, which the basic command unit covers. A structure should exist at that level for the partnership that I described earlier, whether we are considering Coventry, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham) referred, or any other community in the country. For example, in Essex and, in my case, in Norwich, there should be a relationship between the basic command unit—the BCU—and other services.

Given the anxieties that the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) expressed, I want to explain how we ensure that neighbourhood policing happens. He is right that his constituents are worried about that. First, we will provide ring-fenced funding, whereby we can ensure that the money is spent on implementing neighbourhood policing. It totals approximately £80 million this year, rising to more than £130 million in 2006–07 and nearly £390 million the year after that to help forces with the costs of moving towards our target of 24,000 police community support officers. A condition of receiving the funding is that police authorities and forces have to sign up to fulfilling the criteria of the neighbourhood policing programme, which the chief constable of Leicestershire is leading. Police community support officers are vital to those teams. We therefore have ring-fenced funding to provide neighbourhood policing.

Secondly, the Government, with the Association of Chief Police Officers, are providing a programme of support and guidance, to ensure that all forces have effective police teams. The Association of Chief Police Officers is leading a programme of support, evaluation and programme management to ensure that the programme is delivered in every police area in the country. As part of that, it provides professional guidance for neighbourhood policing teams and BCU commanders, and training to ensure that all officers are committed to implementing the target. If forces fail to implement the programme effectively, the programme team will intervene to support and help drive progress.

If, after such support, forces continue to fail to deliver the neighbourhood policing that the constituents of the hon. Member for Billericay want—for example, knowing the names, addresses and phone numbers of local officers whom they can contact about any problem that arises—we have the power to intervene. Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary will begin to conduct specific inspections of neighbourhood policing later this year. If it is not being performed according to agreed national standards—agreed with and by the police—the inspectorate will develop an improvement plan with the force, as happens when any force fails an inspection. If the force continued to underperform—that is extremely unlikely—it could lead to engaging the police standards unit. Ultimately, it is possible for the Home Secretary to intervene directly.

I am trying to stress that the neighbourhood policing element, which the hon. Member for Billericay rightly raises, is the key concern. I believe that we have a substantial programme in place to implement the policy. Every chief constable in the country is committed to developing neighbourhood policing. I therefore hope that the sanctions that we have discussed will be unnecessary. The policy is essential.

I thank the Home Secretary for his verbal commitment to the principle of neighbourhood policing. However, has not the trend under the Government gone in the opposite direction? Sir Denis O'Connor's report states:

"When HMIC started the current BCU inspection process there were nearly 320 BCUs in existence, but in only three years the pressures to achieve resilience, financial efficiency and co-terminosity have seen this figure fall to approximately 230."

The BCUs are becoming bigger and less accountable. That is the reality of community policing under the Government.

Actually, I do not think that that is the reality. If we look at neighbourhood policing, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman has, we can see it developing much more. I will respond to the point about BCUs in a moment.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire is probably a good example of what he has been describing? We have a large rural force combined with a metropolitan force. The chief constable is based down the road at Stafford, some miles removed from Stoke-on-Trent both geographically and in terms of the local environment, yet in Stoke-on-Trent the chief superintendent, John Wood—who was recognised in the new year's honours for his outstanding work—is putting in place just the kind of local policing that my right hon. Friend describes, through the systems that are in place in Stoke-on-Trent, and working at community level.

One of the exciting things about doing this job is that, when I go to communities such as Stoke and meet the borough commanders and local inspectors who are dealing with these issues, I can see that their commitment, engagement and excitement in delivering these programmes is real. This is not something that we are having to put in place against the wishes of the policing professionals; exactly the reverse is the case. They want to deal with these problems more effectively; my hon. Friend is right.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that coterminosity is important? In Surrey, it is therefore important for the Surrey police to stay where they are, coterminous with Surrey county council. If the police force were merged with that of Sussex or Kent, it would be coterminous with nobody.

The key issue is coterminosity with the local district council area, and that is how it should be.

I will take the hon. Lady's question as a cue to talk about the BCU relationship, which has rightly been identified as extremely important. I want to emphasise that, through the Bill that was published last week, we are significantly strengthening accountability, so that the BCUs and the crime and disorder reduction partnerships—the CDRPs—will be more accountable to local communities. It will therefore be much more difficult for forces to ignore the BCU-level demands of those communities.

First, we are introducing national standards, to which the CDRPs must adhere, to provide a minimum quality of service. Secondly, we will ensure that elected councillors responsible for community safety take a personal lead in setting community safety priorities. One of the problems has been that elected local authority councillors have not always been able to give this work the priority that their constituents would wish. The key strategic issues will be set by the CDRP's members, the elected councillors, rather than by officials.

We will also ensure, through the national standards, that the CDRPs continue the consultation with their communities and develop it so as to reflect the concerns of local people. There will be scrutiny of the work of the CDRPs by local authority scrutiny committees—again, in the classic way, through local government—and inspection by the inspectorate in the relevant area. All of this will make it much more difficult for a chief constable or a police authority to circumscribe or weaken the discretion of a BCU commander.

Beyond that, we are introducing measures to ensure that, even where they do not succeed, communities will still have the ability to get their particular problems addressed, even if the overarching force is not involved. To deal with circumstances in which issues are not being addressed, we are legislating in the Police and Justice Bill to provide a mechanism—which we are calling the community call for action—whereby people living or working in a particular area can initiate action by the BCU commander or the local authority chief executive. The new legislation will give the Home Secretary the power to intervene to force the police authority—and, through it, the police force—to take BCU-level issues seriously and to give the BCU-level commanders the support that they need to get the job done.

The concern expressed both by Labour and Opposition Members that this reform will lead to the police being distanced from the local community is, I accept, a well-founded fear, in the sense that it is a description of the state of affairs that exists. However, it is not founded in reality. The process that we have set out to promote neighbourhood policing and to develop the basic command unit will apply throughout the country in ways that will materially change the situation.

The right hon. Gentleman has been extremely generous in giving way. He is right to say that some change is necessary. Will he at least acknowledge, however, that the police authorities were right to resist the Home Office deadline before Christmas, and that they acted in the public interest in so doing, because they have facilitated a fuller consultation that will deliver better solutions for neighbourhood policing and enable the Home Secretary to consider Her Majesty's Opposition's proposal to work together to get the answer right?

I am sorry to say that the hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. What actually happened was that just about every force in the country—all but one or two, I think—submitted proposals to me as requested. There were a number of authorities that did not make a proposal, although the force in their area did. The Association of Police Authorities then put out what was, in my opinion, an extremely ill-judged press release shortly before Christmas, suggesting that people were not responding when in fact they were. We had very good responses. The hon. Gentleman is right, however, to suggest that the key element is neighbourhood policing.

In regard to the communication that exists at the moment, Dorset MPs have a very close relationship with the chief constable. If we create a super-force for the south-west, that relationship would change fundamentally. The worst case scenario would be that the power, influence and responsibility that we have in regard to the police force would be transferred from the House to the regional assemblies. In the case of the south-west, that would involve the most undemocratic, unrepresentative and unelected body in the entire area.

At the risk of intervening in difficult debates about regionalism, I think that I can say with some confidence that the prospect of an elected regional assembly in the south-west region is some little way away. The accountability of neighbourhood policing that we want to achieve is certainly to the House but, even more importantly, to the local community. That accountability should exist at the level of the basic command unit, the district council or the unitary authority, directly to the people in that area by the means that I have described. If the hon. Gentleman believes in accountability, I hope that he will agree that the police in Dorset should be accountable not only to the House—important though that is—but to the people in his constituency in the direct way that I am establishing.

rose—

I will not give way. I want to conclude my speech.

The problems that we face today are stubborn, persistent and serious, and no one should try to hide that fact. That is the view of policing professionals in this country—[Interruption.] And it is the view of the Home Secretary. It is the view of the Home Secretary as advised by policing professionals. I am not just making a political point for a political reason. I am looking at the professional policing needs of the country.

Present policing structures have shown themselves to be very able to deliver in terms of reducing volume crime and providing a good local service. However, the present structures have failed to deliver a dynamic, forward-looking and strategic response to the problems of organised criminality, terrorism, and nationally mobile criminals. On the basis of the assurances that I have given, particularly on neighbourhood policing and the basic command units, I hope that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden will urge his colleagues not to vote for his motion today. I should be interested to see how things go if they do.

I should be very happy to take the Home Secretary up on his offer. I have said that, if he is willing to have an open consultation on this issue—in some cases involving referendums, in the parts of the country where people have concerns—we shall not press this point. However, the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) made it clear that people feel inhibited even from making submissions, because they believe that the Home Secretary will not pay attention. Cross-border policing is just one example of the issues involved. If the Home Secretary will now tell the House that the Government will hold an open consultation in the time that he has available—after all, he is not going to be able to implement this until nearly 2008—and look at all the options, including federation, with an open mind, we will not press this matter to a vote.

All that I will say on that is that we have had an open consultation—[Interruption.] We certainly have, and many submissions have been made by policing professionals. By the way, we have also had quite a large number of debates in the House and elsewhere on these questions—some in Opposition time, some in Government time. I therefore urge colleagues on both sides of the House to support the amendment tabled in the name of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and to help us to take forward this important reform of policing, which will improve the security of people throughout the country.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) for selecting this subject for debate. It is an enormously important matter. I also congratulate him on the tone in which he introduced the debate. This matter should not be fought on strictly party political lines—it is too important for that. I freely admit that in the many years that I have spent speaking about policing matters in the House, I have often found myself in agreement with him, as I have with the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety on some of the things that she has been trying to achieve in the police service. We would often share an agenda, for instance, on neighbourhood policing.

That is not to say that I agree with the proposal today on amalgamation. If, as the Home Secretary has declared, we have had an open consultation, it must have been some time over the Christmas holidays, I guess—[Interruption.] Yes, we did not notice it at the time. A police restructuring of such a massive scale must have a real question mark against it. Even those who support it wholeheartedly—there are some who will—cannot deny that a reorganisation of structures of this sort will be costly and difficult, and will divert police attention away from their core duties at, I believe, a critical time for the country. It will also be divisive because different views will be expressed.

None of those is a decisive argument in itself against making changes in the police service—not if there is an overwhelming case in support of the Government's proposals. However, there is no overwhelming case. Even if there were, none of that would suggest the sort of precipitate action that the Home Secretary suggests, given his time scale for developing a structure that suits the country, which would normally take a great deal of consideration both by the House and, more importantly, by those outside the House. To have bypassed that whole procedure in favour of a consultation that was brief to the point of cursory, followed by a decision that I do not believe to be in the interests of the country, is not the way in which we should approach such a serious matter.

In the spirit of cross-party consensus, may I share with the hon. Gentleman the views of Dr. Marie Dickie, the Labour chairman of the Northamptonshire police authority, which, together with the four other authorities in the east midlands, has been considering the potential impact of the proposals? She estimates that the up-front cost will be £100 million, and that all five authorities involved will end up with fewer police on the beat if they are to provide the level 2 services that the Home Secretary wants to be provided.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I know Dr. Dickie well, because she was chair of the police authority when I was chairman of my police authority in Avon and Somerset, and we worked on the same committees together. I am sure that she will take a sober and sensible view of the cost to her authority.

What the hon. Gentleman says underlines the fact that the Home Secretary makes great play of the professional consensus that he believes exists—but no such consensus exists. Across the country, only 13 forces want to take part in a merger. Police authorities and forces are not voting with their feet to embrace the new structure, they are rejecting it. Thirteen of them say that they want to stay as stand-alone forces and another 15 have not expressed a preference. It is simply nonsense to suggest that there is a clear professional view that the proposals are the way forward.

Even the O'Connor report, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) pointed out in an earlier debate on the issue, was not conclusive. It stated:

"To conclude, the answers to the two questions that prefaced this section are: The current structure of policing probably does not support the efficient and affordable provision of protective services and support services; and yes, there is evidence that changes in that structure might provide a more efficient basis for service provision."

That is an invitation to open a debate. It is not an invitation to settle the structure of police forces for the next half-century.

One other area on which the debate has not so far touched is recruitment. I know police officers in Hereford—I was at school with three police officers who serve in my local division—who have said to me that they would not have joined a west midlands force, had one existed, for fear of being transferred from Herefordshire, not to Worcestershire, Gloucestershire or similar rural communities but to Wolverhampton, Birmingham or wherever. They believe that there is a future recruitment problem, especially for small rural forces, as people would not join such a force if there was such a danger.

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point.

If we return to the underpinning of the whole argument, which is how we effectively fight international and national crime, we must examine the Government's rhetoric. No so long ago, we discussed the Serious Organised Crime Agency and the Bill to bring it into effect. However, that agency does not come into force until 1 April 2006. Even before the ink is dry on that legislation, and even before we have that new structure, we are proposing to throw all the building blocks up in the air again and redesign the way in which we fight organised crime in this country. There was no mention of amalgamation of police forces when we discussed that question. There was no suggestion that the agency was unable to work with existing police forces. Now, however, we are to believe that it is untenable to retain the current police forces.