Policing and Crime Bill

Amendment 21 is grouped with Amendment 19. As the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, has just pointed out, the two amendments are related. The noble Baroness has already spoken about the background to the amendments, so I will not repeat it. I agree with her that the Bill needs to be clear about where the ultimate accountability rests in order to ensure collaboration. I also agree with her that this is not clear at the moment, for the reasons that she outlined. Collaboration is really too important to leave this open to interpretation. My amendment would add to Amendment 19 and make this crystal clear. It would provide that a police authority could approve a police force collaboration agreement only if it believed that the agreement was in the interests of the efficiency and effectiveness of one or more police forces. This is consistent with the police authorities’ existing powers and would reiterate this in the context of force collaboration agreements.