Crispin Blunt

Conservative Party | Reigate

Home Office abandons plan to force Surrey Police to mergeLocal MP welcomes Government U-turn

The new Home Secretary, John Reid, has abandoned his predecessor’s unpopular plans to merge Surrey and Sussex Police forces. He had already ordered a delay, but following the failure to merge the only two police forces which wanted to join together, Lancashire and Cumbria, plans to force mergers elsewhere have also been abandoned. In Surrey, plans to merge the forces had been opposed by both the Chief Constable of Surrey and the Chair of the Surrey Police Authority. Crispin Blunt and all his fellow Surrey MPs also opposed the mergers and wrote a joint letter to the Home Secretary on 10th May 2006 urging him to reconsider. Tony McNulty, the minister with responsibility for policing said today that the plans to impose mergers had been "definitively" scrapped, after objections from most police forces and a failure to find ways to pay for the mergers.

At Prime Minister’s Questions in House of Commons, David Cameron today accused Tony Blair of “wasting police time”. The Prime Minister conceded that representations had been noted and that it would not be sensible to force the mergers.

Crispin Blunt, MP for Reigate, said today:

“I am delighted by this U-turn on policing – as I have always argued, the people of Surrey deserve a Surrey-wide police force. Local politicians, MPs and Surrey Police had all rejected the merger as bad for Surrey. The wider picture is one of a Home Office in disarray. Charles Clarke, who looked ready to steamroller these unpopular reforms through, now condemns his successor for dropping them within a few weeks of taking over. If only more Government ministers would heed the views of local people instead of foisting their unwanted reforms on Surrey regardless.”