Thanks, Minister, for the proposed settlement that you’ve brought to the Chamber today. In general, we in UKIP share the general public’s desire to maintain police officer numbers, particularly officers on the beat. This is because we acknowledge that public perception of crime and crime prevention is an important factor in keeping public trust and retaining cohesive communities. So, we welcome visible officer numbers and welcome the commitment to keep an additional 500 PCSOs on the street in Wales. What we need to try to achieve, as far as we can, is to release officers from administration and allow them to be involved in crime prevention and detection.

In the Gwent Police area, there has been a welcome development recently with the creation of a single emergency services station, housing police, fire and ambulance services together in Abertillery. This centre serves the whole of the Blaenau Gwent area. We have discussed co-location in the health service and this may be a good example of co-location in the emergency services. So, in general, we want less spent on administration and more on front-line services. I appreciate that policing is not a devolved matter, so we are limited in how far we can influence these things, as Steffan Lewis outlined earlier, but I do feel that the debate on the devolved policing issue is for another day. In the meantime, we do support today’s police settlement.