Exclusive: Johnson rules out forced mergers of police

Ministers were forced to drop the proposals – which would have seen the four Yorkshire forces merged into a single "superforce" – in 2006 amid a huge public backlash.

But growing budget pressures and closer co-operation between forces – such as the appointment of a single deputy chief constable for Yorkshire – have led to renewed talk of mergers, with a committee of MPs last month warning that some forces may have to consider combining.

Mr Johnson, MP for Hull West and Hessle and a supporter of the proposals when they were unveiled by Charles Clarke, insisted he would not revive them and said it was "difficult to see" there ever being a single Yorkshire force.

But he said forces were free to merge voluntarily provided there was public backing for the move.

He told the Yorkshire Post: "I think the merger proposals which Charles Clarke pushed forward and then we had to retreat from – there was a real backlash, not least of all in Yorkshire and the Humber – we just decided to leave well alone. If we hadn't and we had been going the route of forced mergers now I don't think we'd have had these results on tackling crime, on introducing neighbourhood policing, on getting the police pledge agreed.

"I don't think we'd have had the same progress on anti-social behaviour – we'd have been spending so much time on the structural issues. That's why we are not going to return to this argument of forced mergers.

"Co-operation and collaboration yes, and it works very very well. In Yorkshire and the Humber they're doing an awful lot to collaborate to jointly procure and let's remove whatever barriers there are to working together effectively.

"If police authorities want to merge, if they voluntarily want to merge – and there's at least four at the moment who are talking about that – fine, provided it has the support of both areas looking to merge and the public in both areas to merge."

In recent months, the region's four forces – West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, North Yorkshire and Humberside – have been working ever more closely together.

A cross-border detective squad is being created to stop 200 criminal gangs across Yorkshire, and the forces plan to spend more than 6.4m between them on regional policing next year.

They have pooled resources to provide a regional intelligence unit, an asset recovery team and a roads policing team.

The regional crime unit will be made up of 21 surveillance-trained detectives and assisted by a "confidential unit" with links to counter-terrorism officers, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency and HM Revenue and Customs.

The projects have attracted the attention of some MPs who fought the merger plans, although new deputy chief constable Mark Whyman, who will oversee cross-border regional policing, has played down the recent speculation.