Police Reform

Viscount Hailsham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

As a believer in collective government responsibility, which I have to be at this stage, I say that there was joint and several responsibility for the policy. I am very sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady May, cannot be with us today; as Home Secretary at the time, she was the prime deliverer of the policy. I wrote to her to give her advance notice of the Statement. To answer my noble friend, it is a shared responsibility.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister understand that those of us who live in Lincolnshire are not seeking the removal of Marc Jones, who is a rather good police commissioner? We are seeking a recognition of the difficult circumstances that face rural counties, such as Lincolnshire, which are sparsely populated and where policing costs are very great. Does he understand that we seek a further adjustment in the funding mechanism to recognise the sparsity factor? To be fair, I have been making this point since 1979, when I first became a Member of Parliament for a Lincolnshire seat.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

If the noble Viscount cannot persuade Mrs Thatcher, I do not know who he can persuade. The issue with Lincolnshire is interesting, because Humberside Police includes parts of the mayoralty of Greater Lincolnshire, such as Grimsby and Scunthorpe, but the rest of Lincolnshire is separate. Some discussion must be had about what we settle on and how.

A police settlement will appear in draft form before Christmas, following which the noble Lord can again make representations around the police settlement for his county. We are trying to make sure that we deal with rural as well as urban policing. Tremendous effort has been put in place to look at rural crime, and some of the measures we have in the Crime and Policing Bill deal specifically with that. Issues on the Government’s agenda include livestock worrying, equipment theft, and small villages being subject to a great deal of shop theft and intimidation. However, we will have to look at the circumstances around Lincolnshire specifically, given the model that we are trying to drive forward: there is a mayor in Hull and a mayor in Lincolnshire, but the police forces currently overlap both. That subject is for another day.