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Police and Justice Bill

I will just finish this point. Secondly, on the role of the House, I want to answer directly the point about referendums. As the House knows, the process is that the Home Secretary must give notice of his intention to merge forces, and then there is a period of four months for the submission of objections. The Home Secretary must then consider those objections and respond to them before orders are made. Where a merger proposal is initiated by the Home Secretary—this is the most important point for the House—the necessary order is subject to the affirmative procedure, so that there is a debate and vote in both Houses. I am not sure that it is time to allow the new revisionism to run riot in the way that is proposed. I am a great advocate of direct democracy, probably more so than philosophers such as Michael Oakeshott or Edmund Burke. There is a place for referendums, and in our parliamentary system they should be reserved for major issues of constitutional significance, such as devolution and our future relationship with the European Union. It is for the House to deliberate and decide.