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Council Tax Capping (Surrey)

I have been a customer of my hon. Friend's service station—I hope that I did not add to the crime while I was there—which gives me the opportunity to mention my concern about motorway issues. In places, the constituency boundary goes down the middle of the carriageway. My constituency includes the busiest part of the M25, which is the busiest motorway in the United Kingdom. There has been no recognition of that or the fact that the Staines junction, junction 13, has the highest accident record of any junction on the whole of the M25—that was true the last time that I checked. The formula does not take into account the special case that arises there. The county force is expected to deliver the quality of service that everyone has a right to expect, when those involved in accidents on the M25 are not often residents of Surrey. It is very rare for a Surrey resident to be involved in such an accident, so our constituents have to pay the cost of other people's accidents, which is unreasonable. Let me pick up the point about cross-border crime. My hon. Friends have mentioned London. My constituency is caught in a pincer movement. I can tell when places such as Hounslow and Hammersmith and Fulham are having a purge on crime, because the M4 gets busy and crime rates go up in my constituency. People rush out of London, down the M4 and turn into my constituency and cause trouble. When we have dealt with that, the next thing we find is that Thames Valley police is having a purge in Slough, so the people of Slough get on the M4 and come rushing down to my constituency and cause mayhem from the other direction. Yet a rural county force is expected to deal with that without any special recognition, which is wrong. Plenty of people, including the Audit Commission, the inspectorate and my residents, say that Surrey has an excellent police force. Our constituents probably pay the greatest amount of tax of any county in England into the central Exchequer. We do not mind doing that, because it is only fair that wealthier areas should make a greater contribution. We understand that, but is it unreasonable to say that we should get a fair return from Government grant for our needs rather than just being used to provide money that is sent somewhere else?