It is interesting to note that our Senedd remains quite unique within this island archipelago as it is the only devolved legislature within these islands not to have any control over its police forces.
Now it’s worth noting, that control over Policing was effectively devolved to Scotland in 1945, along with Northern Ireland, England, London, Manchester and even the City of London.
Even the Crown dependencies: the Channel Islands, the Isle of Mann and even the overseas territories (some of which are a focus for tax avoidance / tax evasion) have democratic control over their own Police services.
Some six years ago back in 2017 Plaid Cymru called a vote on devolving policing during the passing of the Wales Bill through the Houses of Parliament. We should remember that given an opportunity to devolve Policing to Wales, the Conservatives voted it down and the Labour in Wales MP’s quietly abstained.
This provides yet another example of the way the Conservative Party and Labour Party are quite happy to co-operate at Westminster to disadvantage Cymru / Wales. So much for standing up for our national interests.
Aside from direct control of policing, it also comes down to numbers. The then PM Boris Johnson made much of his plan to boost Police numbers during the last Westminster General election back in November and December 2019.
Even with the significant impact of Covid19, in relation to police numbers, it has gone rather quiet over there, which may prove that Boris’s great policing plan was not quite as easy to as achieve as the soundbite was.
At the time, Home Office officials suggested that Boris’s promise to recruit 20,000 new police officers in England and Wales within three years just simply would not work.
They estimated that some 50,000 officers would be needed, because so many officers were set to leave the service - more than a few perhaps demoralised by the impact of nearly 10 years of Conservative (and for some of the time willing Liberal Democrat) government.
Of course from Boris’s perspective, 20,000 was such a nice round number.
It was slightly ironic that the pledge to recruit more Police officers, was a direct result of the cuts to police numbers that were mostly brought about by the Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition.
Boris's much trumpeted election promise of 20,000 extra police officers - was nice, save for the fact that we were already 19,704 police officers down in Wales and England and Wales since 2010.
Here in Cymru / Wales, since 2010 we were at least 500 fewer police officers are on our streets.
So even if Boris had managed to 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 Wales and England as a whole.
Save of course that they would not all have come to Cymru / Wales, so even if we got 5% of them (say 25) that would still left us down by 480.
If policing was fully 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 funding per year.
Police budgets however were slashed, something that resulted in far fewer officers on our streets.
The end result was that Welsh forces have been hit harder than those in the rest of the UK, due to an unfair funding formula. Between 2010 and 2018, the number of police officers in Wales decreased by 9%.
The full devolution of policing would have meant the Welsh police forces would have been exempt from the Tories’ £32 million cut to their budgets and would have benefitted from an additional £25 million through being funded through the Barnett formula.
This would have meant a total difference in Welsh police budgets of £57 million between Plaid Cymru and Conservative policy.
Plaid Cymru would have recruited an extra 1,600 police officers – two for each community – to keep us safer.
This would mean that our officers will be better rooted in our communities, instead of being stretched to cover large geographical areas with fewer resources.
This would give the police the ability to focus on the priorities we need to keep us safe.
As argued by the Thomas Commission on Justice in Wales, we need to create integrated people-centred services – from prisons to counselling to housing – to undo the lasting damage done by Cameron / Clegg, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak - to replace the present callous approach that prioritises targets over people’s needs.
Extra police officers would help facilitate community engagement in which the police and the community can relay issues of mutual concern with targeted, community based problem-solving approaches to improve crime reduction and rehabilitation.
Plaid Cymru, alone amongst all the other political parties operating within Cymru / Wales, is committed to the devolution of policing and justice to Cymru / Wales to empower us to implement and pursue policies that actually serve the interests of our citizens and communities.
It is simply remains unacceptable for Cymru / Wales to be the only devolved nation in these islands without powers over its policing and justice policies.
The problem we now face, is that with an openly centralist Conservative government in Westminster, which is hell bent on undermining, weakening and destroying devolution, is one of where do we go now.
Let’s be honest, with ourselves, Cyrmu / Wales will get no additional new devolved powers, and any they have been offered have been rejected by Labour in Wales, and few of any powers repatriated from Brussels will find their way to Cardiff, Belfast or Edinburgh.
So what’s next and where do we go from here?
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