Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)

Again, the Bill covers a range of legislative options on a range of matters. In parallel to that, there are two other aspects of work. We will produce a policing White Paper very shortly, which will look at some of the issues in policing and how we can improve efficiencies. With the National Police Chiefs’ Council and colleagues and police and crime commissioners, we will look at how we can get better value and better focus on the key policing issues that Members have talked about today. The very point that the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, and others have mentioned—about delivery, about use of resources, about focus and about asking what the police do on particular issues—is extremely important. It is absolutely vital that we focus the police on government priorities. Aside from the police White Paper, we have issues with police funding and budgets. We have given £1.2 billion extra this year to policing. There is a challenging settlement, but our job is to get better value out of that. But I think there is commonality between all of us in the Chamber today that the issues that matter to people are anti-social behaviour, shop theft, violence against women and girls and child sexual abuse. Although there are many policing priorities, those are things that this legislation is dealing with. Therefore, we are hoping that the resources and focus will follow the legislation. The work we have done already—putting an extra 3,000 neighbourhood police on the ground and focusing on neighbourhood policing—means that over the next two to three years we try to increase the number of forward-facing neighbourhood police officers on the ground. Nobody expects that there will be no challenge in all this, but the purpose of this Bill is to give legislative framework to government manifesto commitments. I think it meets a number of important objectives. There will be debate between Members; there will be differences; there will be votes; there may not be a meeting of minds on certain issues. But I am hopeful that, when this process is over, this Bill will pass, that it will be put into effect and that Members of this House and the House of Commons will hold the Home Office to account for making sure that we reduce crime, increase confidence in policing and make sure that there are fewer victims in the future. I commend the Bill to the House.