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Police Restructuring

I would like to return to that point when I debate costs and savings later in my speech. I am also concerned about the narrowing of options relating to regionalism. Until I heard the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) refer to the extraordinarily unique nature of Staffordshire crime, I was tempted to explore the opportunity of co-operation between the Staffordshire and Derbyshire forces. That would have put together two relatively powerful forces to the benefit of people in that part of the country, but he claimed that Staffordshire criminals are unique and that we could not possibly proceed on that basis, so I must defer to the Home Office’s guidance on this issue. However, given that I represent a constituency that is right on the border of a region, it is perhaps natural for me to take the view that the drawing of such a hard and narrow dividing line does not at all reflect criminal patterns. I have two worries about the options being pursued: the possible loss of local focus, intelligence and awareness in addressing lower-level criminality; and the likely redirection of resources away from well-policed, lower-level crime areas such as mine, toward areas within the new regions where policing has been ineffective. It might be possible to address those two concerns, which is why I have taken a qualified position in my conversations with Home Office Ministers. I do not start from a position of innate support for these proposals, but I could be persuaded to support them if it can be demonstrated that there are ways of dealing with my concerns. First, is it possible to strengthen basic command unit representational frameworks? For example—I have used this example in meetings—we in South Derbyshire have an extremely successful crime and disorder partnership. I recognise that that is not repeated in all parts of the country, but it provides a relationship model in my area that the police could work comfortably with in strengthening operational activities. I want some flexibility. Instead of simply opting for a local authority model involving a police committee, for example, let us look at local examples that work and that work with the existing grain. I would not want to turn such a partnership into a rigid framework. The strength of our partnership has been the mutually respectful voluntary framework within which it has worked. Local people in South Derbyshire tend to work practically together to solve problems without doing a lot of grandstanding and point scoring among themselves. That strength would be lost if someone threw the pot of money into the equation and said, ““You’re going to have to carve up exactly how this is to be dealt with in a very practical way””, or if such people had too much direct operational control over policing in their area. What we have works very well and we should work with the existing grain.