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Police and Justice Bill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point, which he makes very well. He is rightly proud of his local police force. Had that merger been enforced, it would have been against the will of one of the major police forces concerned, which felt very strongly that such a merger would have resulted in its being subsumed into the larger force, and in a loss of accountability. People in rural areas in particular felt very unhappy about the creation of a West Midlands super-force, which, ultimately, is one reason why the proposal fell. But the absence—