Item 8, a debate on the police settlement for 2023-24. I call on the Minister for Finance and Local Government to move the motion. Rebecca Evans.

Motion NDM8201 Lesley Griffiths

To propose that the Senedd, under Section 84H of the Local Government Finance Act 1988, approves the Local Government Finance Report (No. 2) 2023-24 (Final Settlement—Police and Crime Commissioners), which was laid in the Table Office on 31 January 2023.

Motion moved.

Diolch. Today, I'm presenting to the Senedd, for its approval, details of the Welsh Government's contribution to the core revenue funding for the four police and crime commissioners in Wales for 2023-24. Firstly, I'd like to record my gratitude to the police for their work in our communities. Although there is a vital, ongoing debate about the minority of police officers who have not lived up to the high standards that the public rightfully expect, and it remains crucial for forces to take swift and decisive action in those cases, I know that the majority of police staff show great dedication and resolve as they keep our communities safe.

The core funding for the police in Wales is delivered through a three-way arrangement involving the Home Office, the Welsh Government and council tax. As policing policy and operational matters are non-devolved, the overall funding picture is determined and driven by Home Office decisions. We have maintained the established approach to setting and distributing the Welsh Government component based on the principle of ensuring consistency and fairness across England and Wales. There are no further changes to the funding arrangements for 2023-24 following the technical and administrative changes made last year. Those changes resulted from Home Office decisions with minimal practical implications for police and crime commissioners in Wales. 

The Welsh Government contribution to policing for 2023-24 remains unchanged from last year at £113.5 million. This reflects the change made for this financial year, which replaced an annual transfer of funding from the Home Office to the Welsh Government with direct funding from the Home Office to the police. As was the case this year, there is no impact on the overall level of funding for police forces as a result. 

I have also retained the proportion of non-domestic rates that police forces receive at 0.1 per cent, with a consequential adjustment to the revenue support grant to balance this. This allows a smoother transition towards partial non-domestic rates retention for city and growth deal regions, and it will not result in any loss of funding for any police force. As outlined in my announcement on 31 January, the total unhypothecated revenue support for the police service in Wales for 2023-24 stands at £434 million. The Welsh Government's contribution to this is £113.5 million, and it's this funding that you're being asked to approve today. 

As in previous years, the Home Office has overlaid its needs-based formula with a floor mechanism. This means that, for 2023-24, PCCs across England and Wales will receive an increase in funding of 0.3 per cent when compared to 2022-23 before the adjustment made for the special branch transfer. The Home Office will provide a top-up grant totalling £63.5 million to ensure that all four Welsh police forces meet the floor level. 

The motion for today's debate is to agree the local government finance report for PCCs, which has been laid before the Senedd. If approved, this will allow the commissioners to confirm their budgets for the next financial year. I ask Senedd Members to support this motion. 

The Llywydd took the Chair.

As we've heard, funding for the four Welsh police forces is delivered through a three-way arrangement involving the Home Office, Welsh Government and council tax, with the Home Office operating a needs-based formula with a floor mechanism to distribute funding across Welsh and English police forces, and with the Welsh Government component based on consistency across Wales and England.

For 2023-24, the total core support for police forces in Wales will be £433.9 million. Police forces across England and Wales will receive a funding boost of up to £287 million next year from the UK Government. The rise will take total funding for policing in England and Wales up to £17.2 billion, and mean that police and crime commissioners across the 43 police forces in Wales and England will receive an increase of up to £523 million from Government grants and precept income. Council tax precepts will rise by 7.75 per cent in Dyfed-Powys, 7.4 per cent in south Wales, 6.8 per cent in Gwent, and 5.14 per cent in north Wales, equating, for example, to £1.86 per month for band D properties in south Wales and £1.34 in north Wales.

Figures last month showed that an extra 1,420 officers have joined police forces across England and Wales in the past three months, and 16,753 since 2019 as part of the UK Government's three-year programme to recruit 20,000 additional police officers by March 2023. This includes 1,843 new police officers across Wales. Of course, Welsh Conservative policy also remains to increase funding for police community support officers each year, aligning with the Welsh Government on that issue.

Although police-recorded crime in Wales and England has risen, the Office for National Statistics states that this was largely driven by increases in the offence categories that are most subject to changes in reporting and recording practices. Therefore, they said these estimates should be treated with caution as they may not reflect a genuine increase in crime. Figures released a fortnight ago show an estimated 136,000 violent offences have been prevented since 2019 in 18 areas of England and Wales, including south Wales, most blighted by violent crime, which have received targeted UK Government funding. And according to the crime survey for England and Wales, the best indicator of long-term trends in crime, the latest crime figures for the year ending September 2022 show that compared with the pre-coronavirus pandemic year ending March 2020, total crime decreased by 10 per cent.

As the finance Minister stated here last week in a different context, 

'we've got that long, porous border with England'.

And as I learned when I visited the north-west regional organised crime unit, an estimated 95 per cent or more of crime in north Wales operates on a cross-border east-west basis, and almost none on an all-Wales basis. However, and I conclude with this comment, the Welsh Government is yet to explain why the Thomas commission report only makes one reference to cross-border criminality despite the evidence presented to them, which I was appraised of during that visit. Diolch yn fawr.   

Austerity has delivered a devastating impact on policing in the UK. The brutal cuts to public spending, masked by the term 'austerity', may have been the brainchild of the Tory party, but they are also a stain on other Westminster parties, as it was backed by the Liberal Democrats in coalition Government, and subscribed to by the Labour Party in opposition. The initial wave of Tory-driven austerity led to 400 police officers and 100 community support officers being lost from the ranks—

Will you give way? 

I've only just started.

In a minute, then. 

The initial wave of Tory-driven austerity led to 400 police officers and 100 community support officers being lost from the ranks of the south Wales police force alone. Despite the recent investments, staffing levels at this force remain well below the numbers it had in 2010. Mark.  

Do you accept—and this is a fact—that the police cuts you're referring to that were initially to 2015 were announced in Alistair Darling's last budget in 2010, and simply carried forward in terms of policing by the UK Government? It is evident in the final budget statement by Mr Darling. 

That's not an excuse, but I said 'all the parties that subscribed to austerity', which we didn't.

The deterioration in policing levels over the past decade was brought up during a recent street surgery last Friday in Pontlottyn. People had noticed what the Tories, backed by the others in Westminster, have done to community policing. This settlement will make for further grim reading for each of our Welsh police forces. An increase of merely 0.3 per cent in central support funding will do little to address the severe resourcing pressures being faced by our police forces. It will necessitate extremely difficult budget decisions. South Wales Police, for example, is facing a £20.8 million budget gap, and are having to identify £9.6 million-worth of savings this year to show that their spending plans for the financial year of 2023-24 are sustainable, whilst Dyfed-Powys Police are having to contemplate savings of £5.9 million over the next five years. 

The recent Police Federation of England and Wales pay and morale survey for 2022 revealed the extent to which police officer morale has been eroded by years of neglect on the part of the UK Government. Such findings emphasise how little the current constitutional arrangements on policing and justice benefit Wales. It is imperative that the Welsh Government pursues the full devolution of policing and justice without delay, so that decisions on how we keep our communities safe are not left in the hands of an out-of-touch and austerity-obsessed Westminster Government. The current UK Labour proposals to only devolve probation and youth justice don't go far enough. The fact that levels of central UK Government funding have virtually flatlined also means that each police force is having to resort to substantial increases in their council tax precepts to merely limit their budget shortfalls.

Finally, I want to make clear how unacceptable it is that regressive council tax increases are being used to keep essential policing services afloat. We all know that council tax disproportionately affects the poorest Welsh households, and within my region, some of the highest rates in the country can be found in Blaenau Gwent. Its reform or even better, its replacement, cannot come fast enough. Diolch yn fawr.

I will be voting for the police settlement this afternoon, but it gives me no pleasure to vote for a settlement that provides even further cuts to our policing services up and down Wales. Mark Isherwood pays tribute to his colleagues in London for the work that they've been doing in funding police over the last few years, but what we know, and what we know in Gwent, is that police forces are actually seeing year-on-year reductions in their budgets. In this settlement, the Gwent police force, for example, will see a 2.8 per cent reduction in its actual spending power, and when you actually look and take 2010 as the base point, you'll see that Gwent Police again have 85.9 per cent of spending power available to them that they had back in 2010. And when we hear about 20,000 new police officers, what we also know is that what they're doing is replacing police officers who were sacked during the years of austerity. In fact, in this coming financial year, there will be fewer police officers in Gwent than there were in 2010. So, it's not that we're just not seeing the increases; we're not even seeing a stability in the numbers that the Tories inherited from the last Labour Government. What we are seeing is salami-slicing of the police budgets year on year on year, and the people paying the price of this, of course, are police officers themselves who are unable to deliver the service that they want to deliver, but also the communities that we all seek to serve in any part of Wales.

And it is important that when we're debating this, we are able to provide the funding that police forces require up and down the country, but that we are also able to provide the policing service that communities want to see in different parts of Wales. And what that means is that policing is able to operate on the same basis as other public services and other blue-light services in Wales, which means that they operate within a devolved structure and that policing is devolved to this place with utmost urgency. Because we have to do two things: we have to certainly maintain and increase spending, because that's absolutely fundamental to being able to provide a service; but then, what we have to do is deliver the coherence of service, so that police officers are able to work with all other police and public services to deliver a coherence. And I've heard the arguments from Mark Isherwood over these matters on a number of occasions, and he's very, very happy to quote his speeches from many years ago to support his arguments of today, but were he to quote his speeches from 2016, from 2017 to 2018, then he will also see the way in which the UK Government has cut back policing. And it is the poorest and most vulnerable people in our most fragile communities who have paid the price for these cuts year on year on year, and until policing is devolved to this place, we will not be able to have the coherence of services that this place demands and that our people deserve. So, I will be voting for the police settlement this afternoon, but I am really disappointed to see the way in which the Home Office plays fast and loose with police forces, fast and loose with public safety and fast and loose with the future of our communities.

The Minister for finance to reply to the debate. Rebecca Evans.

Diolch. I'd like to thank colleagues for their interest and their contributions today, and colleagues have made it very clear that we have huge appreciation for the work that police officers do in communities across Wales, and I do share those concerns that have been raised about morale amongst police officers at the moment. But, here in Wales, they are an absolutely key part of our integrated public service; they work with health boards, local government and other partners. And I think that they're absolutely incredible, really, in terms of finding creative ways to collaborate. So, they're very valued partners in our Ystadau Cymru work, for example, and they are able to bid for a number of Welsh Government funds, and we encourage them to look at ways to do that collaboratively—for example, sharing corporate services is a really good way to work closely together, and I know that they are potentially looking to expand that work through the community safety partnerships to tackle issues in our communities. 

I'd also just reiterate our ongoing support to funding additional police community support officers, and that really does reflect the understanding of the importance of that collaborative way of working. We know that, where we see greater confidence in policing in communities, it's often because there are numbers of PCSOs out on the streets, so giving communities that kind of visibility of policing that people rightly expect within their communities as well—we're really pleased to continue with our commitment to fund and increase the number of PCSOs across Wales. 

And we also continue to make very clear our support for policing to be devolved so that we can deliver against the needs, priorities and values of Wales. As we've heard, it is the only blue light service that isn't devolved to Wales, and in that context of collaborative working, you can see that there are many ways in which we could do things differently and better, were it to be devolved. I do know that there is concern amongst police and crime commissioners that this is only a marginally positive settlement this year. That is a matter for the Home Office, but we've heard very powerfully about the impact of cuts in policing over the years on our communities, and I'm very much hearing that the increasing numbers of police officers currently in no way offsets the cuts to the numbers that we've seen previously, and there is yet a way to go in some parts of Wales to make up those numbers. 

We are very much committed to working with PCCs and chief constables to ensure that the challenges that we've heard about this afternoon are managed in ways that limit the impact on community safety and on front-line policing in Wales. And of course, we continue to invest in substance misuse and that particular agenda, and our funding there has increased to £67 million in 2023-24. A large proportion of that does go to the area planning boards through the substance misuse action fund. 

And of course, the final element of police funding is raised through the council tax precept, and unlike in England, we have retained the freedom for the Welsh PCCs to make their own decisions about council tax increases. Setting the precept is a key part of the PCCs' role, and that does demonstrate their responsibility and accountability to the local electorate. I do know, though, that, in a period of increasing pressure on local households, commissioners will be considering this very carefully indeed.

Llywydd, I commend the settlement to the Senedd. 

The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No, and therefore the motion is agreed. 

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.