North Wales MS Mark Isherwood has today questioned the First Minister over community safety in North Wales, emphasising the need for “joined up, multi-agency working with communities themselves, with the role of North Wales Police central to this”.
Speaking during First Minister’s Questions in today’s meeting of the Welsh Parliament, Mr Isherwood spoke of the need for community safety to be prioritised by the next Welsh Government, and said that Welsh Conservatives would continue to support and fund Police Community Support Officer numbers in Wales, despite the First Minister’s continued claims to the contrary.
He said:
“Community Safety in Flintshire and across North Wales requires joined up, multi-agency working with communities themselves, and the role of North Wales Police is central to this.
“With Community Safety being a devolved matter, Welsh Conservatives would continue to support and fund Police Community Support Officer numbers in Wales, working alongside the UK Conservative Government programme to recruit an additional 20,000 police officers in England and Wales by March 2023.
“How do you therefore propose to ensure partnership working between the Welsh and UK Governments on this agenda, where the uplift in additional Police Officers in England and Wales had already reached 6,620 by 31st December 2020, including 302 extra Officers in Wales and 62 in North Wales, with further increases to follow in the next 2 years, recognising that community safety in North Wales is entirely dependent upon North Wales Police’s established integrated working with their adjacent partner Police Forces in North West England?”
In his response, the First Minister failed to answer the question and instead criticised past policing cuts.
Speaking afterwards, Mr Isherwood added:
“There he goes again, living in the past rather than learning from it. This UK Conservative Government was elected on a Manifesto which pledged to boost police numbers in Wales and England by 20,000 in three years. At least his response to me didn’t repeat his untrue and deceitful claim that Welsh Conservatives would scrap funding for Police Community Support Officers, when our longstanding policy has been to do the opposite, although he couldn’t resist repeating this falsehood in his subsequent responses.”