I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman.
The policing initiative is being led by a retired local police officer, and it is transforming the countryside’s ability to police itself and to deal with rural crime more effectively. I have been trialling such initiatives in my constituency, too.
We are not scrapping all the regulations. Of course, there has to be regulation. Some of the rhetoric has been overtaken by politics. Our population may be overwhelmingly urban, but England and the whole UK sees its countryside as its shire, embodying an ideal of harmony between humankind and nature. This national feeling is a force to be reckoned with, and Governments who trifle with it do so at their peril.
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