Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 12 January 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:46, 12 January 2021

Well, Llywydd, let me say for the record, as I know the Member himself would, black lives matter in absolutely every aspect of public services and public life here in Wales, and that obligation lies with our police services as much as with any other part of Welsh life. I have been, though—to make the record a fair one, I have myself attended with senior members of the South Wales Police at mosques and other gatherings of black communities here in Wales at points when those communities felt very badly under threat, because, for example, of the Christchurch attacks in New Zealand 18 months or so ago. That night, South Wales Police mobilised across the whole of their area, making sure that mosque communities felt protected, that they knew there was a visible presence of the South Wales Police there, and I attended myself with the chief constable at a number of meetings with leaders of those communities, making sure that they knew that their police service was there to look after and to protect them.

So, I think that we have to look at the record in the round. Where disturbing matters happen—and I was a member of the South Wales Police Authority during those awful years around 1990, when there was a failure to grasp the significance of what had gone on and the depths to which cover-ups had been engaged in, but I think, while we take those things seriously, and absolutely must do, there is a wider record and a great deal of commitment from very senior people in our police services here in all parts of Wales to make sure that the right things are done, and we need to support them in that even while we make sure that those individual examples, of the sort that the leader of Plaid Cymru began his questions with today, get the proper, independent and open attention that they need to reassure those people who are most directly touched by them.