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Police

When Ministers say that we have had a good debate, they often do not mean it, but I do mean it. The debate has given Members the opportunity to air local concerns—I accept that, as the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) said, policing is, rightly, a hugely important local issue—and to make more general points about the processes, the formulas and all the other elements of the settlement. In that sense the debate has been good and focused. The hon. Member for Banbury is also right to say—it is jargon now, and I do not remember when the expression was first coined—that the broader issues of finance and policing in our communities are a process, rather than an event. That seems to apply to most things these days. Although many contributions focused on the specifics of the immediate settlement and its consequences for individual communities, many hon. Members, not least the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor), dealt with the broader picture. I do not blame hon. Members for adopting either approach. The debate was constructive and represents the start of a wider debate. I do not say that as an abdication of responsibility for the development of public policy on policing. I say that because the subject is important enough for us to have a proper national debate, as I suggested earlier.