7. What are the potential implications for Welsh Government funding decisions of the UK Government’s reduction in police budgets? OAQ51974

Llywydd, strong partnership arrangements exist between the Welsh Government and all Welsh police forces. Reductions in budgets on both sides inevitably place even greater pressure on our combined ability to provide essential services.

Cabinet Secretary, you've seen the growing debate on community safety, particularly the incidents, for example, in London, just to mention one area, the growth of knife crime, and the debate around the impact of police budget cuts around that. Of course, the UK Government's argument is that the Tory cuts in policing have not led to those increases in violent crime. Well, can I just draw the Cabinet Secretary's attention to the situation within Wales? We have, as the result of the loss of 682 police officers over the last eight years, had an 18 per cent increase in violent crime, a 14 per cent increase in knife crime in south Wales, a 25 per cent increase in knife crime in Wales and 84,000 crimes unsolved, and we've had the highest increases in these forms of crimes occurring. Isn't it the case that it is undeniable now that the Tory cuts to policing over the last few years that they've been in power have led to a direct result in not only fewer police officers and less money for the police, but a direct increase in violent crime, in knife crime and in crime generally across Wales, and that this is an issue that cannot go on any longer? 

Llywydd, the Prime Minister's disastrous record as Home Secretary is increasingly coming home to roost. Her decision—let's remember that it was her decision—year after year after year to reduce funding for the police—[Interruption.] You forget the times that she turned up at Police Federation conferences lecturing them on the way that they should conduct themselves, while she was, at the same time, taking away from police authorities across England and Wales the wherewithal to allow them to do the vital work that they do. It doesn't matter how many times Conservative Ministers go on the television and radio trying to claim that the slash and burn through police authority budgets has had no impact on crime, because people out there living real lives in real communities simply know that that is not true, and the figures that Mick Antoniw outlined demonstrate that very well. In the Prime Minister's disastrous election campaign last year, one of the issues that she failed to address right through the campaign was Labour's promise that if we were elected, we would restore those budgets and make sure that police numbers were restored to where they were before the Prime Minister set about her campaign of reducing them. Of course reducing budgets for police authorities has an impact on the work that they are able to do and of course the work they are able to do has an impact upon the lives of people in communities in every part of Wales.  

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary.