Well, with Welsh police budgets funded, as we've heard, by Home Office, Welsh Government and council tax, we will support the motion.

The Conservative-led UK Government elected in 2010 inherited £545 million-worth of police cuts from Labour’s final budget, to be made by 2014. Labour’s deficit reduction and spending plans under Mr Miliband would have meant equivalent police budgets to those implemented by the UK coalition Government prior to 2015. In 2015, the UK Government announced that the amount of money the police receive from Government would increase each year, in line with inflation, for the following five years. Part of the extra funding over these years is going on specific areas of policing, like cyber crime and tackling child sexual exploitation. Because these are often dealt with regionally, not every individual force would see the benefit of this uplift. Access is also being given to a £175 million police transformation fund. 

The UK Government's police settlement increases total funding across the police system in England and Wales by up to £450 million in 2018-19—an increase of over £1 billion since 2015-16. The UK Government has protected police grants to forces in cash terms, and, if locally-elected police and crime commissioners had raised council tax precept contributions by £1 per month per household, this would have allowed, the Home Office states, £3 million extra in Gwent, £3.1 million in Dyfed-Powys, £4 million in north Wales and £6.7 million in south Wales. But, as the Cabinet Secretary rightly states, the commissioners are free to make their own decisions after consultation, and the commissioners have announced a 7 per cent precept increase for south Wales, 5 per cent for Dyfed-Powys, 4.49 per cent for Gwent—although that was vetoed by their police and crime panel—and 3.58 per cent in north Wales. And, although north Wales has not increased its precept to the maximum, south Wales is still paying less as it is still playing catch-up.

Total police-recorded crime across Wales rose by 12 per cent in the year ending September 2016—14 per cent up in Gwent, 13.7 per cent in north Wales, 13 per cent in Dyfed-Powys and 10.9 per cent up in south Wales. However, Welsh police forces themselves have attributed much of this to changes in recording in 2014, and greater public confidence in reporting crime. North Wales Police also emphasised there is now better understanding, and therefore identification, of child sexual exploitation, sexual violence, cyber crime and serious and organised crime. Further, the UK Statistics Authority has stated that the crime survey for England and Wales provides a more reliable measure, and this indicates that crime across England and Wales fell 9 per cent in the 12 months to June 2017, compared with the year before. The 2016-17 crime survey for England and Wales found that 63 per cent of people in Wales say that the police do an excellent or good job, and North Wales Police is fourth from top across England and Wales for public confidence.

Although the number of police officers in Wales rose by 1 per cent between 2016 and 2017, the four police and crime commissioners and four chief constables in Wales have warned that their inability to access the £2 million they pay to the apprenticeship levy could result in fewer police officers in the future, and potential recruits choosing to sign up for English forces instead. Despite Welsh Government claims to the contrary, the UK Government has fully funded the Welsh Government for this, after covering the amount paid into the levy by Welsh public sector employers and the consequential Barnett block reduction. Welsh police forces need this funding to go to the police college. They've told me that this is recognised by the Home Office, and they're calling on the Welsh Government to get in the room with the Home Office and sort this out once and for all.

Operation Tarian was originally created in 2002 to provide intelligence-led, joined-up law enforcement by integrating the services of the Dyfed-Powys, south Wales and Gwent police forces to tackle drugs crime. In 2004, operation Tarian Plus was launched to co-ordinate the response to serious and organised crime in Wales, with financial support from the Welsh Government. Although less of a problem for north Wales, which works with Cheshire Police on this, there are concerns that the Welsh Government is cutting its contribution. There are also concerns that the Welsh Government is planning to phase out its £1.98 million annual contribution to the all-Wales schools liaison core programme from 2019, as the funding disappears into the new schools curriculum. And the danger inherent in calls for police devolution is evidenced by proposals to grab power from our four locally accountable police and crime commissioners and centralise this in a commissioner politically accountable to the Welsh Government in Cardiff.