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Policing and Crime Bill

I am disappointed that we do not have an amendment from the Conservatives so that we could have a lively debate about their proposals for police authorities. I am sure that we can wait for another day for that. The difficulty that we face is that, given the state of local government elections and local government reorganisation, with yet more authorities put on hold in local government review, not only are the electorate not very interested in turning out to vote for their local authorities, but the attendance at police authority meetings, which has never been fantastic, is suffering again a fall in interest from members of the public. In proposing amendments to the Bill, we are between a rock and a hard place in coming up with any good suggestions in a system that is so broken and that the Government have so far failed to fix in the much wider context not just of the police authorities but of local government. The issue is very difficult and needs a lot of energy and input before we can get anywhere near solving it.