Sutton Borough Liberal Democrats

The Prime Minister will be aware that talks between St George's Healthcare NHS Trust and Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust on their possible merger have been abandoned. I seek reassurance from him that Epsom and St Helier will be able to engage with local partners, such as local authorities and clinical commissioning groups, in order to come forward with a proposal that meets local health needs, and that the £290 million allocated for the hospital is still available.

I have no problem whatever with the hon. Gentleman providing scrutiny. That is the Opposition's role, but they must also provide solutions.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I have no experience of living in north Wales. I am not purporting to have the very local knowledge that she and other Welsh Members here have. Clearly, that is not the case. If she takes part in a debate about London policing matters in the future, I may throw that comment back at her to see what her experience has been and whether she has lived in London, as I have for the past 30 years. She may be able to comment in some detail on that matter.

I want to move on to what might in the longer term present a solution to these problems. I-and I think many hon. Members present-would like the Welsh Assembly to take on greater responsibility for policing and justice issues. I see that some Members are not in agreement with me, but others may well be. In the longer term, if Wales wants to have total control of its policing and therefore have responsibility for deciding what the appropriate level of policing is and what percentage of its budget should be allocated to policing issues, that is an ambition I support.

Clearly, I accept that there would be enormous challenges to achieving that and that we would have to try to unpick the funding arrangements that apply to policing.

I, and many hon. Members here, know that that is extremely controversial. Depending on which part of the country someone comes from, the funding arrangements either work for or against them. Clearly, that issue would require long and detailed negotiations. However, in the longer term, I cannot see any other solution to providing the policing that Wales feels is acceptable for Wales. As long as the UK Government-in whatever shape or form-continue to provide funding for policing, we will always have rather sterile debates about central Government not allocating enough money, and the Welsh Assembly not being able to deploy the resources that it would like to deploy.

On that final point, which I hope will provide a longer term solution to these funding issues, I conclude my remarks. As I said, I hope that this debate will not be entirely partisan. I had 13 years' experience in opposition and I always felt that it was clearly my role to attack the previous Government, which I did, hopefully with some vigour. At the same time, I always felt that as an Opposition Member it was incumbent on me to reflect the reality of the circumstances, and deploy some solutions for the Government to consider.

I see that the hon. Lady is on the edge of her chair. Perhaps she wants to intervene on me at this point.

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I need to make a little progress, having taken four or five interventions already.

I hope that this morning's debate will not be totally partisan. Clearly, there are some very challenging circumstances for the police in north Wales. I understand that, prior to the election, they had lost 85 officers and that, under the previous Government, there were some issues that needed to be addressed. There has since been a further reduction in officer numbers. As the hon.

Lady said, I acknowledge that, for rural forces, there are clearly bigger challenges than for forces in urban areas, where, for instance, it is easier to call on support from neighbouring forces because the distances are smaller. I acknowledge those points.

In those circumstances, it was right that the chief constable, Mark Polin, undertook the reorganisation proposals that he has instigated in terms of setting up the hubs, reducing senior management numbers and merging three divisions into one. It is perfectly appropriate that, having undertaken that reorganisation, the matter should be looked at again to see what the impact has been. We need to consider whether such an approach has been effective and whether it has perhaps had unintended consequences that the chief constable may be able to address.

In the past, the chief constable has criticised partnerships, so I hope that he will not go down the line of saying that partnerships get in the way of the police working effectively. Certainly, my experience is that partnerships-particularly those with the local authority, the voluntary sector and other partners-are an effective way of reducing crime in an area, not a hindrance. I do not consider officers who are allocated to a partnership role as being officers who are badly allocated in that respect.

Another point that the chief constable's review may touch on is the issue of overtime payments because, clearly, there has been an increase in north Wales. I accept that there will be circumstances in which overtime payments allow officers to be specially tasked for a particular initiative. However, at the same time, there needs to be a balance between an acceptable reliance on overtime and police officer numbers.

I am very happy to respond to that; indeed, I have responded to similar points in a number of debates since the new Government were elected. The financial circumstances do not allow such pledges to be funded. It is as simple as that. What this discussion has revealed is that we need to have an important debate-perhaps if we set aside partisanship, we could have that debate-about using police officers effectively. For example, if we recruit more police officers and put them in a call centre, it might add to police officer numbers, but it does not necessarily equate to a more effective police force.

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I think she will have to accept that, in fact, this will be a rather partisan debate. When she opened the debate, she set the tone.

I understand the very simple economics to which the hon. Gentleman has referred, but, of course, the Welsh Assembly has the ability to take decisions and make its own priorities. Clearly, it has chosen not to make policing a priority.

Following the tragic deaths of two teenagers at young offenders institutions in the last week, will the Minister examine the role of peer mentoring in helping people to detect those who are at risk of self-harm or suicide?

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) on securing the debate.

I am still hoping that the debate will be an opportunity not for a display of new Labour, but for a display of new realism. Perhaps the hon. Lady might like to explain why the Welsh Assembly has cut police funding. I understand that the Labour party supports the budget reductions because its economic credibility depends on it and it cannot guarantee to reverse any of the funding cuts that the Government are going to make. Yet, at the same time, Labour opposes every step that the coalition Government take.

In fact, we have heard in the debate today that one of the cuts Labour Members think they can support is a 12% reduction in the police budget. If that is the case, perhaps the hon. Lady or the official spokesman for the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) when he responds, would like to tell hon. Members exactly how many officers that will equate to, because

the hon. Lady is in cloud cuckoo land if she thinks that a 12% cut does not relate to a reduction in staffing numbers.

I welcome the Secretary of State's statement and the proposals, particularly on requiring offenders to pay more to compensate victims and on providing compensation to

UK victims of terrorism abroad. On UK victims of crimes abroad, will the Secretary of State agree to meet a cross-party group of MPs to look at the issue of people who are victims of serious crimes of another nature, such as serious assault?

Because the disability discrimination laws would apply, the problems of access that the hon. Gentleman is highlighting should not apply to turnstiles. Furthermore, the fact that these turnstiles allow for the mechanical collection of charges should mean that there will be more, not fewer, public toilets.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many people from (a) EU member states other than the UK and (b) non-EU countries signed on at Jobcentre Plus between (i) January and June 2011 and (ii) July and September 2011; and what proportion this represents of the total number of people signing on.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many reports her Department has commissioned but not published since May 2010; and what the title is of each such report.

My contribution this afternoon will be short, because many Members want to speak. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), with his

personal and moving contribution about how he and his family were affected directly by the holocaust. I, too, thank the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for their assiduous campaigning year after year to ensure that we do not lose sight of what happened during the holocaust. I very much welcome the theme for this year's campaign, Speak Up, Speak Out, which encourages us to stand up and speak against racism, discrimination and genocide, because regrettably those issues are alive and well, and remain with us, abroad and in the UK.

I draw attention to the work of the all-party group against anti-Semitism. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) would have liked to have been present today to make a contribution. I must declare an interest as the vice-chair of the group, but my role has been relatively minor compared with that of the hon. Gentleman, who has played a central role in building the group, which has challenged past Governments successfully, pushing them much harder and faster. Let me list some of its achievements. There have been three formal Government responses to its inquiries into anti-Semitism, under different Governments. There has been the establishment of a Whitehall working group on anti-Semitism, the first official anti-Semitic hate crime statistics, a funding arrangement for the security needs of Jewish faith schools, a Crown Prosecution Service review into the disparity between anti-Semitic incidents and convictions, ministerial conferences and action on internet hate crime. So the group has made it plain that, when people want to get together and successive Governments have the will to tackle such issues head on, it is possible to achieve great things.

We must maintain our vigilance, and the work of the Community Security Trust in highlighting the number of incidents reminds us regularly of that. Although the number of incidents of anti-Semitic hate crime has gone down, there is still a large number of incidents around the country. The Jewish faith is not the only faith to suffer in such a way, of course, and I very much welcome the funding recently given to MAMA, the Measuring anti-Muslim Attacks project, which is a means of reporting hate crime against the Muslim faith. The Minister is well aware of the initiative, and I hope that it will be possible for that facility to be drawn to the attention of a wide range of Muslim groups so that awareness of it can be promoted heavily within the communities that could use it. There have been interesting discussions, and I hope there will be more, with other organisations that might be able to benefit from such a reporting mechanism, including people with disabilities who clearly still suffer a degree of discrimination and targeting that is completely unacceptable.

One other area on which the Government are due to report is to do with Roma people. During the holocaust, perhaps up to half a million Roma people were killed. While they do not suffer persecution as they did then, certainly in the UK, persecution of Roma people remains in some countries in the European Union, and the UK Government should take a vigorous stand on the issue. The Government also have a responsibility to come forward with a plan on the Roma people, and I look forward to it.

We must maintain our focus on education. As other Members have said, as the survivors of the holocaust die, perhaps it loses its prominence. I suspect that many

parents and filmgoers have had the opportunity to see "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas"-I have just finished reading the book to my son-which brings to the attention of a completely new generation, in an accessible way, the impact of the holocaust. That can play an important role in raising the awareness of new generations, when neither they nor their parents have had direct knowledge of the holocaust. Also, as the schools landscape is changing, with more free schools and academies, schools have an important role. There might be a conflict with the desire, which I support, to give schools more control over their own curriculum and activities, but it would be regrettable if that desire to free them up meant that the focus that there has been on the holocaust and on educating pupils on such issues were lost as part of the change.

In conclusion, it is entirely right that we should have the debate today, and the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) is right to have brought it to the House's attention. I welcome the flexibility shown to enable him to speak. The debate is clearly important and we need to have it annually so that we all remain focused on the genocide during the holocaust and can avoid future genocides.

We must get to the bottom of the allegations of mistreatment as soon as possible. The credibility of the intelligence services depends on it. To that end, how soon after police investigations are concluded does the Secretary of State expect a successor detainee inquiry to be established? In the interim, is there an enhanced role for

the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation that might require him to have a salary and an office outside the Home Office to review these matters independently and effectively?

May I ask the Minister to examine MAMA-"Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks"-which is a new system for reporting hate crime against Muslims, to see whether its use would be appropriate in relation to the reporting of hate crimes against people with disabilities as well?

Has the Minister gone further than interest on this matter? In the new landscape, where does he think that body of evidence will be held?

My hon. Friend provides me with the opportunity to flag up an exciting proposal that has been put to me by an organisation called Cricket for Change. It is keen to work with those responsible for the training of PCSOs, and embed within that training a unit aimed at providing PCSOs with the skills that they need to engage young people in sport through games such as street cricket and tag rugby.