4. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services: Working Together for Safer Communities

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:44 pm on 12 December 2017.

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Photo of Bethan Sayed Bethan Sayed Plaid Cymru 3:44, 12 December 2017

Thank you for this statement and initially, I think, what it shows is the complexity of the arrangements in Wales and that the lines of accountability are clearly divergent. As has been mentioned previously, I think the devolution settlement in this regard is highly convoluted. We see a situation where the police, the police commissioners, the Welsh Government, the health boards, all, in some way, have responsibility or play their part. It's holding them to account when there are those different devolutionary processes that makes it more complex to deliver and for us to scrutinise those services. So, it's always going to be more difficult when we look at the picture as it stands. That's why you would not be surprised to hear us say, as a party, that we need to have a separate Welsh legal jurisdiction and devolution of justice to Wales so that we can come to grips with some of these issues. I hope that's what the Cabinet Secretary means by a 'distinct Welsh justice system', because without all the tools in the box it's very difficult for us to come to sound conclusions. 

What I would say with regard to this particular statement is it should be called an understatement, as it clearly understates the issues that have been raised in both the auditor general's review and the Welsh Government review. I'm struggling to see the solutions to those conclusions that you didn't want to rehearse. Your statement is very fond of using words such as 'develop', 'consider', 'explore' when listing the programmes of work resulting from this review. So, if I may, can I ask for some more meat on the bones about what you are considering?

My first question relates to the review's conclusion that, and I quote:

'There is evidence of structural and resourcing conflicts and confusion posed by an array of both regional and local operational and strategic partnership "footprints" at play within the community safety agenda'.

Can I ask how the programme of work will be clarifying and streamlining these partnerships to tackle these conflicts?

Secondly, the review states, and I quote:

'We also found a confusion of community safety funding streams from multiple governmental sources, with many of grants tied to quite prescriptive and inflexible terms and conditions and requiring significant levels of administrative effort, monitoring and reporting for what are usually comparatively small and short-term sums of money.'

How are you going to tackle this directly, Cabinet Secretary?

Moving on to the third issue that I've got here today, and I quote:

'There is limited evidence of any significant shift in partnership investment toward "invest-to-save" principles, supporting more prevention and early intervention services, with the majority of community safety resources appearing to be directed toward crisis management and "treatment".'

Clearly, in line with other Government priorities, we want to be seeing proactive investment as opposed to this crisis management only. So, do you think that this is an inherent limitation of austerity or do you think it's to do with the fact that we don't have power over all services? I'd like to hear your view.

My final view, I think, on this is I remember speaking to Carl Sargeant about the fact that he was quite passionate about how we integrated services in Swansea. He gave an example of how ambulance services were providing places for people who were intoxicated on a night out to go to get treatment. This was then funded by the police commissioner. He was very keen to see how those services could be better integrated so that the cost could be divvied out and not one service within the Welsh Government would take all the hit from that. That was something that I heard quite clearly from him and I was wondering if that's something you are going to progress too.