LIB DEM WOKING COUNCIL FIGHTS AGAINST LABOUR'S POLICE MERGERS

6.33.58am BST (GMT +0100) Tue 6th Jun 2006

LIB DEM-CONTROLLED WOKING COUNCIL SUPPORTS SURREY POLICE

On Thursday 1 June, the Lib Dem-controlled Woking Council committed to fighting against the Labour Government's plan to merge the Surrey and Sussex police forces. Moving the motion in the Council Chamber, Deputy Council Leader Cllr Philip Goldenberg said:

"Surrey Police are desperately underfunded. So is the Sussex force. They both need more money - not an expensive enforced merger with no guarantee of funding to pay for it, which will increase their financial problems.

If unfunded Police mergers are enforced across England, there will be an aggregate cost - to taxpayers by the Government or to local residents through Council Tax - of some £500 to £600 million. This is the equivalent of 22,000 Police Officers on the beat - know which local residents would prefer.

This is not an academic point. It is desperately real for our local community.

All of us, who have been on the doorstep in recent weeks, have come across frustrated residents, and also frustrated members of the business community, who are not getting the police response to which they are entitled.

We - and they - need extra police, not the enforced bureaucratic convenience of an expensive merger to no good public purpose; the concomitant damage to police morale; and policing which becomes even more remote and unaccountable.

"Police" and "politics" sound very similar. Not surprisingly, since they both derive from the Greek ðïëßò which, as the Greek City State, was the forerunner of our democratic institutions. For a community to flourish, it needs good and effective policing, as well as good and effective politics.

Under these wretched shotgun merger proposals, the politics will damage the policing.

I urge colleagues to support the Motion."

The motion was passed.

ENDS