Merged police to be ditched

Christopher Booker in The Sunday Telegraph last weekend informs us that the plan by Charles Clarke to merge the 43 police forces of England and Wales into a handful of regional "super forces" looks more indefensible than ever, after an internal report for the Association of Chief Police Officers showed that its cost would lead to the strength of the police being cut by 25,000 -more than a sixth.

In the Daily Mail on Saturday a piece reveals that all is not well at high levels at Scotland Yard. In The Mail on Sunday Peter Hitchen's quite rightly complains that British Policeing as it once was is to be abolished. The introduction of 'Community Support Officers' in effect replacing the 'copper' on the beat.

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Assistant Commisioner (of the Metropolitan Police Service) Tarique Ghaffur has been removed from his job after a clash with his boss 'Plod Blair' (Sir Ian Blair, the Commisioner). The Assistant Commisioner who was the head of the forces murder squads has been shifted to a less prestigious post, that of being in charge of policing trafic, demonstrations and football hooligans.

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Mr Gaffur fell into dispute with his 'gov ' over plans to cut dozens of detectives from the elite specialist crime directive and transfer them to (the politicaly high profile) neighbourhood schemes.

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Back at the Home Office the reality of the plans to merge the English and Welsh Police into regional police 'services' is to be shelved now that the details of the plans have been examined - not least being the plans would have distroyed the Government's vision for neighbourhood policing.

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With the removal of John Prescott from the political decision making process the drive for regionalisation will quite clearly soon lose its momentum. The axing of the plans to regionalise the police is the start of the process of waking up from Prescotts ''30 year dream''. One can only hope that it is not to long that the Regional Development Authorities are also soon to fall under the axe.