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Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

I accept that the noble Baroness is merely trying to elucidate what it means. It seems to me that in this case the Government are entirely sensibly trying to cover all the various types of agreement and contract that might exist. That seems to me what that part is about, and in my view that is why it should remain. I turn to easier ground and to that part of the noble Baroness’s remarks with which I strongly agree. I find it bizarre that the Bill prohibits an elected policing body entering into a collaboration agreement with another. Surely, this is precisely what we hope would happen. I hope to see all sorts of networks of agreements between policing bodies around the country, perhaps to share back-office facilities or an agreement that one police area will develop an area of policing expertise and other police areas will agree that that body will take the lead in that matter. That seems to me eminently sensible. I find it strange that the Bill appears to prohibit that. I do not understand why the Government have gone down that road. If this is a probing amendment perhaps the Minister will tell us that we have completely misunderstood what the schedule is about. However, it seems to me that it cannot be interpreted in any other way. I thought that it was government policy to encourage this collaboration. The Conservative Party, and probably the Liberal Democrats although I cannot remember their precise position on this issue, were deeply opposed to the idea of mergers of police forces when it was raised by previous Home Secretaries. They felt that this was a terrible diminution and that people would be affronted by changes in the hat badge if police forces in different parts of the country were merged. Their response was that they would want to see this sort of collaboration. Indeed, I recall the Minister for Police Nick Herbert pointing out at a conference that the proposals and discussions that were then—as I understand it—going on extremely slowly between police forces about how they might share helicopter services were a test case to establish whether police services and police authorities could collaborate under any circumstances. The message that I took from his comments was that if there was a failure to share helicopters in that instance, where there seemed to be an overriding case for doing so—however, the chief constables who wanted their own helicopters might argue differently—the Government would try to make that mandatory. I hope the Minister has received the advice that she needs on this point and that we will be told that that is not the Government’s intention. However, if it is the Government’s intention, perhaps they can explain why that is the case.