Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)

I am grateful for the noble Viscount’s support on this matter. In response to his question about force sizes, we will be announcing a review very shortly, which we hope will be done by the summer. That will set the template for the Government to determine ultimately how many forces there will be and how we begin the process of changing that system accordingly. When parliamentary time allows—in that time-honoured phrase—we will bring forward measures to end the role of police and crime commissioners. This will be done by the time of the next election due for electing police and crime commissioners. In the initial phase we will also look at bringing together IT, forensics and procurement into a national service, but over time. Again, this will require parliamentary legislation to bring together the National Crime Agency and other bodies, including counterterrorism, into that body as a whole. We also have a separate paper coming forward shortly that will look at fraud, which is currently the responsibility of the City of London Police as the lead force. We will be looking at how we can improve performance on that issue as well. These will not be quick fixes but if I look three to four years ahead, police and crime commissioners will have gone, the new structures will be in place for the new forces, and there will be accountability through the mayors or councils. We will be quite well down the road of the establishment of the wider national police service, bringing in training, national services and the roles of the National Crime Agency and counterterrorism police.