Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution – in the Senedd at 2:26 pm on 9 November 2022.

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Photo of Mark Isherwood Mark Isherwood Conservative 2:26, 9 November 2022

Diolch, Llywydd. Responding to your statement here in May on justice in Wales, I stated,

'given that senior police officers told me during my visit to the north-west regional organised crime unit that: all north Wales emergency planning is done with north-west England; 95 per cent or more of crime in north Wales is local or operates on a cross-border east-west basis; North Wales Police have no significant operations working on an all-Wales basis; and that evidence given to the Thomas commission' regarding this

'was largely ignored in the commission's report',

I asked,

'why do you think that the Thomas commission on justice report only includes a single reference to any cross-border criminality in the context of county lines, and that the solution it proposes is joint working across the four Welsh forces in collaboration with other agencies, but no reference to partners across the border, with whom most of the work is actually being done?'

You accused me of 'a head-in-the-sand response', when, instead, ignoring these key issues would represent a dangerous head-buried-in-sand approach—