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Police Funding (Gloucestershire)

The hon. Gentleman is quite right. I would not suggest that every part of the country should get exactly the same amount of money; my contention is that the disparity between areas is simply too large, particularly when the Government place central burdens on all police authorities. Incidentally, Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary and the Home Office judge police forces on the burdens that they place on them; they do not take into account the relative amount of funding that they provide to them. Given that, police authorities should not get exactly the same, because we have to take into account need, but the funding formula does not accurately reflect the needs of different areas, and it is one of the questions that I should like the Minister to address. On collaborations and mergers, the current state of finances for the constabulary means that it will look to find savings. It is also working with other forces, where that makes sense: for example, it runs the regional intelligence unit based at Clevedon, although a number of forces pay for it. The constabulary works very well, such as in procurement, and on uniform purchasing it is best in class, with low-cost and high-quality uniforms. The best example of collaboration is with other emergency services. There is a tri-service control centre, with control rooms for the police, fire and ambulance services, and it worked incredibly well during the flooding crisis in 2007. It represents a great opportunity for services to work together, but inexplicably, the Government insist on breaking it up by taking away the fire control element as part of an over-budget, behind-timetable and ill-conceived regional project. But enough of that; fortunately for the Minister, it is not his responsibility. There is some concern that the financial squeeze on constabularies is part of an attempt to force through the back door those police mergers that failed to get through the front door. I challenged the Home Secretary on that issue, and she told me in the House that it was not the Government's intention to force through mergers, so I should like the Minister today explicitly to rule out any police mergers—either by the front door or the back door—that are forced by a financial squeeze. In conclusion, this year will be very tough for local policing in Gloucestershire. The Government grant is inadequate when compared with centrally imposed costs, and council tax payers are already stretched and cannot afford to have a large increase in the council tax precept. Gloucestershire county council has delivered a record low council tax rise, and I hope that the police authority will keep its increase low as well; but it would be very welcome if the Minister addressed my questions, so that the people of Gloucestershire might understand why their constabulary is poorly funded and whether the Government intend to do anything to put it right.