Police reform and social responsibility Bill

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I would like to extend that note of commiseration to all three unsuccessful candidates, all of whom have given great service to policing in their current jobs. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of that. The hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), the shadow policing Minister, raised a couple of issues that I would like to address. The first related to the transition costs resulting from this reform, and if I heard him correctly, he suggested that they would amount to some £37 million. He is not nodding, so perhaps he cannot recall mentioning that figure. I would like to ask him where he got the figure from, because it is not one that the Government remotely recognise, and I challenged him on it at the time. If he reads the impact assessment that we published in conjunction with the Bill, he will see that we estimated the transition costs at just £5 million. It does not help the debate if inflated costs are put about. It has been bedevilled by exaggerated costs for the reform and the elections, and I have put on record the fact that I disagreed with some of the figures presented by the Association of Police Authorities. Indeed, I have remonstrated with the association about them. I do not know whether those are the figures that the hon. Gentleman is using, but they are not right.