THE THICKENING BLUE LINE

Facing the prospect of a much thinner Blue line...

Boris’s plan to boost Police numbers, may not be quite as easy to as achieve as he thinks. Home Office officials have suggested that Boris’s promise to recruit 20,000 new police officers in England and Wales within three years - won’t work - as they estimate that some 50,000 officers will be needed, because so many officers are set to leave the service - many perhaps demoralised by nearly 10 years of Conservative government. 

From Boris’s perspective, 20,000 is such a nice round number, even if ironically the pledge to recruit more Police officers, is direct a result of the cuts to police numbers introduced by the Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition. Boris's much trumpeted election promise of 20,000 extra police officers - is nice, save for the fact that we are already 19,704 police officers down since 2010 in England and Wales. 

Here in Cymru / Wales, since 2010 there are at least 500 fewer police officers are on our streets. So even if Boris could achieve his extra 20,000 Police officers he would basically take us back to were we were in 2010 - with a next gain of 296 police officers in England and Wales as a whole. 

Save of course that they would not all be coming to Cymru / Wales, so even if we got 5% of them (say 25) that would still leave down by 480. If policing was devolved and funded on a population basis as is the case with other policy areas our Welsh police forces would receive upwards of £20 million more per year. 

Policing is devolved to Scotland and Northern Ireland, making our National Assembly the only devolved legislature not to have any control over its nation’s police forces. Once again, we remain the poor relation amongst the devolved institutions across these islands. We definitely need to take back control… from Westminster.