Keetch challenges Home Secretary

12.00.00am GMT Fri 3rd Feb 2006

Liberal Democrat MP, Paul Keetch challenged the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke MP over police force mergers in a recent debate in the House of Commons.

The MP is against the merger of West Mercia Constabulary with a greater West Midlands Police Force, which would combine West Mercia with Birmingham, Wolverhampton and other urban areas.

Commenting, following the debate, Mr Keetch said "This is another example of the Government riding roughshod over local opinion. The West Mercia Constabulary is one of the most effective in the country and the threat of a merger with a regional super force would have a profound affect particularly on local policing in many rural parts of my constituency.

"Rural communities are in danger of losing out because resources will go from relatively low-crime rural areas into high-crime urban areas. The sooner the Home Secretary realises this problem the better." Mr Keetch added.

ENDS

Full text of the debate:

Mr. Paul Keetch (Hereford) (LD): Has not the Home Secretary identified part of the problem? The police forces that support this proposal are by and large metropolitan police forces covering large metropolitan areas. In the west midlands, for example, West Mercia, which covers Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, has real concerns. Rural communities are in danger of losing out, because resources will go from relatively low-crime rural areas into higher-crime urban areas. Is not that why so many rural forces are concerned about his proposals?

Mr. Clarke: I think that that description is completely wrong. In the west midlands region, for example, Staffordshire and Warwickshire, which have many rural areas, supporting the changes. Northumbria, a force that has great swathes of rural population, some of which are very sparse, supports the changes. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman would categorise County Durham as a rural or an urban force, but it certainly has substantial rural areas, and it supports the changes. He rightly says that there are issues in West Mercia, but it is not the kind of area that he describes.

Mr. Keetch : One other area on which the debate has not so far touched is recruitment. I know police officers in Hereford—I was at school with three police officers who serve in my local division—who have said to me that they would not have joined a west midlands force, had one existed, for fear of being transferred from Herefordshire, not to Worcestershire, Gloucestershire or similar rural communities but to Wolverhampton, Birmingham or wherever. They believe that there is a future recruitment problem, especially for small rural forces, as people would not join such a force if there was such a danger.