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Police and Justice Bill

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) for his warm words of congratulation and I sincerely look forward to debating many issues with him. The hon. Gentleman ranged widely beyond the Bill, as is his right, to the subject of amalgamations, as did the hon. Members for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson), for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples), for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson), for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns), for Reigate (Mr. Blunt), for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and for Colchester (Bob Russell), along with my hon. Friends the Members for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) and for Stockton, North (Frank Cook), in whose Disney epic I look forward to appearing. Amalgamation is not the subject of the Bill, so I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I confine my remarks on the matter to only two points. First, there is a balance to be struck between accountability and effectiveness. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon put his finger on the nature of that balance. The Government are not the first Administration to be worried about the current structure of police forces. I recently read a Government report that was written not too long ago and stated:"““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:"““The Government considers that for all these reasons it may be desirable in the long term to reduce the number of police forces.””" That is taken from the police reform White Paper of June 1993. Governments of all persuasions have therefore realised for some time that effectiveness must be tackled. When Her Majesty’s chief inspector puts the question in such stark terms, surely it is right for the Government to respond.