Police: Records

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes a very important point. There is the idea of 43 police forces, going back to the noble Viscount’s initial point, but we should be trying to encourage co-operation on procurement, on personnel services and on a whole range of other issues where we can save resource and put it into front-line policing. Without trailing too much, the White Paper will examine how we improve that collaboration. When it is published, I hope the noble Lord will welcome it, contribute to it and, if need be, challenge it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, peacekeeping needs to be local as well as national. If one centralises too much the way the police is organised, we will lose touch with people in communities. I also recall that the four Yorkshire forces have a number of collaborative operations about organised crime, terrorism and, as I remember, helicopters and animals. These are obvious things to collaborate on, but one should retain a sufficient link with local communities in order to make sure that policing makes sense to the people it serves.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Absolutely. The whole principle of policing is that it represents and is accountable to the local community. If I may say so to the noble Lord, it is still absolutely vital that we get best value out of the police resources that are put in. It is a valuable course of action to follow to find mechanisms to ensure that police forces can co-operate, where they want to, on getting a better deal for the taxpayer on some major procurement or on efficiencies generally. When the police White Paper is published relatively shortly, it will offer a number of pointers for where that co-operation can potentially be encouraged.