Part of Questions to the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 2:40 pm on 19 February 2019.
Well, I'm grateful to Joyce Watson for raising this question and particularly for drawing attention to the survey last week, undertaken by the Police Federation of England and Wales. Not only were they suggesting that 90 per cent of officers believe that there are not enough of them to do their job properly, they see that that also puts the people that they want to serve in their communities at risk.
I have mentioned the fact that we have a policing board, which the First Minister chaired yesterday, and these issues were raised in that meeting. It is good that despite austerity, despite reductions to our budget by the UK Government, we have protected investment in 500 Welsh Government-funded community support officers, and that, of course, is crucial to that work in the community. But it is something that I will be discussing with UK Government Ministers, because it does mean that, in terms of community safety and the fact that police forces in Wales are concerned about ensuring that they can, as they said yesterday, focus on prevention and early intervention, diversionary support, working with young people and communities—. Indeed, yesterday, we also addressed the need for the inter-agency work of our public services boards, and they need to have the backing and the UK Government needs to give it to them.