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.