(12 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberI hope that the Home Secretary will not mind me saying so, but she sounds today like she is more on autopilot than anything else. Does she recollect being given a report about the pilot at the end of September? If she did not see it, which of her Ministers did?
(14 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberI am grateful to the right hon. Lady for raising that important point. Of course, individual police forces will still have a responsibility to deal with serious organised crime, but we need to strengthen that national co-ordination and tasking in relation to such crime, which is why we are bringing the serious organised crime command into the national crime agency. However, we are also looking at imposing strong duties of collaboration among police forces to ensure that, when collaboration across force boundaries is necessary to deal with issues such as serious organised crime, that does indeed take place.
Will the Home Secretary give an assurance to the House and police forces in England and Wales that they need not fear that they will be forced into amalgamations because of the changes, and that we are not going to resurrect the Labour party’s proposals from its last term in power?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point and for enabling me to put absolutely clearly on the record that this Government will not try to impose mergers on police forces. If police forces voluntarily wish to merge and come forward not only with a strong business case, but with clear indications that such a merger is supported by the local communities, we will of course look at that, but we will not, unlike the previous Government, try to impose mergers on forces.