Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

I support new clause 4, the case for which was so powerfully made, characteristically, by my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker). I hope that the House will divide on it. I support the idea of deferring the commencement of part 1. Later, there might be the opportunity to debate my amendment, which would exempt Wales from part 1, but this is an opportunity to reflect on a less drastic course of action—that is, the deferral of the commencement of the Bill. There are one or two reasons for that and I hope that the House will bear with me as I set them out. Not very long ago, the National Assembly for Wales took the unprecedented decision not to give legislative consent to part 1. That, in my experience—which goes back a few years in such matters—is entirely unprecedented. It has never happened before. As a consequence, the Communities and Culture Committee of the National Assembly has asked for the deferment of part 1. Its headline recommendation reads:"““We recommend that the Welsh Government has dialogue with the UK Government to persuade it to defer introducing those aspects of the bill related to the abolition of Police Authorities, and establishment of Police Commissioners and Police Crime Panels in Wales, at least until the effectiveness of their impact in England has been assessed.””" That is not a million miles away from new clause 4, which asks for the deferral of the commencement until such an assessment has been made by HMIC. That is why I support the new clause. Policing, as the Minister will know, is not devolved in Wales, although it is in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but it is different in Wales from in England. I cannot see any evidence that there has been any sort of negotiation, discussion or proper Government-to-Government relationship on the issue of policing in Wales in so far as part 1 is concerned. There might have been, and doubtless the Minister will let us know when he winds up. In Wales, there is a rather different relationship between the Welsh Local Government Association—to which my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling has already referred and which, incidentally, is not in Labour's hands but is controlled by independents and non-Labour Members—police authorities in Wales, of which there are four, and the Welsh Assembly Government. That relationship is very special because it touches on a working partnership arrangement between the police authorities in Wales and the National Assembly that is unique in the United Kingdom. It seems proper to me to repeat the arguments used in Wales by local government, by the police authorities, by the National Assembly and by the Welsh Assembly Government to ask for the commencement of part 1 to be deferred. One chief reason those bodies ask for the deferment is the fact that there are rather different financial arrangements in Wales for policing. Half of Welsh police forces get their money from the Welsh Assembly. In addition, the proposals for police commissioners will inevitably be very expensive, as my hon. Friend said. I understand that only £30,000 per police force will go towards meeting the gap in paying the salary of the police commissioners and paying for police and crime panels. Over the next few years, Wales faces a reduction in its funding through the Barnett formula of nearly £2 billion. It is absolutely daft to introduce such highly expensive measures in Wales when, frankly, there is no appetite for them. I read in the Official Report of the Public Bill Committee that the Minister said that there was evidence that in 2008 only 7% of people in England knew what police authorities did. There is a counter-issue in Wales, where a survey that was taken much more recently than 2008 indicated that 82% of Welsh people knew precisely what police authorities did. That is because in Wales, we are different and we are smaller. The final point that I wish to make—I know that other Members want to speak—is that the decision by the Assembly not to give legislative consent to part 1 of the Bill and the decision by a major Committee of the Assembly to ask for deferment of the commencement of the Bill place this decision on a rather different level: it is now about the relationship between the United Kingdom Government and the devolved Administrations. A day or so after the general election, the Prime Minister came to Wales and talked about a respect agenda, in which he would respect the views of the devolved Administrations in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast. It seems to me that there is little respect in this measure, unless we can get a positive indication from the Minister that there will be a deferment of part 1 as far as Wales is concerned. If that is not the case, I suggest to the Minister that the Welsh Assembly Government will invoke the Joint Ministerial Committee, which is in place to ensure that disputes are resolved between the United Kingdom Government and the devolved Administrations. Otherwise, in addition to what I think is a deeply flawed measure, there will be an issue between two Governments in the United Kingdom, which we definitely do not want.