Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Well, in some cases it is an inevitable guilty plea. It is thousands of police hours—not in every case, but in many. There are clear benefits from increased collaboration between forces, not least improved efficiency, the driving down of costs and the avoidance of reinventing the wheel. Police forces can do a lot with sharing back-office functions and procurement. In Hampshire constabulary there will be collaboration with the neighbouring Thames Valley force on facilities such as dog teams, firearms response, IT and surveillance aircraft. We also need to ensure that the collegiate approach is backed up with shared local information. So many times, the police talk of the frustrations of the record management system, with local criminal information not being available across county borders, which the bad guys are happy to exploit. There is a tendency for people to view the police as ““them and us,”” but the police are us; the us that is prepared to deal with humanity at its worst. As both Robert Peel and the Home Secretary have said,"““The police are the public and the public are the police.””" In Gosport, our local police work hard to build up trust in traditionally wary neighbourhoods. The Bill starts to recognise that work and build on it, and is joined up in both its approach and its delivery.