Policing and Crime Bill

I am interested in the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, because it raises many questions. We have not explored in great detail the Government’s proposals about collaboration. As I understand it, collaboration could extend from anything to do with IT and amalgamating the behind-office organisation to security and employing detectives across the piece. There seems to be a host of areas where such collaboration could take place. There is interesting wording, which is not six or more other "authorities" but six or more other "parties". How is "parties" to be defined? The collaboration agreements as I understand them are to be with other police forces, but parties is a different word. I wonder whether there is an expectation that collaboration can take place with, for example, a local authority. An agreement to have an arrangement to share payroll with a local authority would open up a wider debate on where the collaboration is going to take us. Perhaps when the Minister replies he could expand a little more on where the collaboration agreements are going to go, how widely they are going to go and whether they can be wider than between police forces.