Police reform and social responsibility Bill

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I am going to move on. I want to come back to the issue of London's Mayor, which was much discussed in the other place, as it has been here. I want to credit the Opposition for the creation of the office of Mayor, which, as I have said before, has been a popular reform. As we debate these issues, the Mayor has been playing a key role in the decision over who will next lead the Metropolitan police. He has given Londoners an important voice in policing. How many Londoners would prefer their police force to answer to an invisible committee? Now the Opposition are criticising the Mayor's role in policing—well, they invented it. Of course the Opposition do not like the current Mayor. They may not like what he does, but that is not a reason to dislike the office or to object to the same principle of greater democratic accountability being introduced in the rest of the country. Let us be clear: the Mayor does not run the police in London; he holds them to account, and that is the principle that we are advancing. The British model of impartial policing must be retained, and it will be retained. Our aim is not to abandon the tripartite arrangement of police governance between the Home Office, local representatives and forces but to rebalance it.