The Police Settlement

Speech by Peter Black delivered to Plenary on Tue 9th Feb 2010

Peter Black: I enjoy Dai Lloyd's lectures on funding formulae, which we hear on a regular basis in the Chamber. I do not disagree with him, either-clearly, the funding formula is wrong. In this particular instance, we have two funding formulae to deal with: not just the Barnett formula, which determines how much money we have to spend as a National Assembly, and how much we can put into the police settlement, but also the funding formula used by the Home Office to decide how much is distributed to the police forces, and which ultimately determines our share of that funding. I would guess that we have little room for manoeuvre in how much we put in, because of the way that the Home Office funding formula works.

In a sense, that is a compelling argument in support of Dai's other point, on the devolution of policing to the Assembly. Police forces in Wales suffer by being funded through a Home Office formula that does not take into account the specific circumstances in which police have to operate in Wales. In particular, there is constant top-slicing of that money to fund initiatives that do not impinge on Wales at all, mostly in England's bigger inner cities. There is further top-slicing to fund London as a capital city, but South Wales Police does not necessarily benefit from similar funding to cope with pressures in Cardiff. There is a case to be made for the devolution of police funding, the distribution of that money and the performance management framework within which the police has to operate, which is also Anglo-centric.

This is a time of huge strain on public finances at all levels: for the UK Government, the Welsh Assembly Government and local authorities. However, it is clear from the pressures that the police service is under that the Home Office is consistently underfunding its own police forces, and leaving others to plug the gap. With each successive year of underfunding from the Home Office there is additional pressure on police authorities to demand extra money from local councils in the form of the police precept. This year we are being asked to approve the police settlement before we officially know the effect on local authorities' contributions, which will clearly be an issue. The police authorities will face similar pressures to last year, when, in the case of South Wales Police in particular, there were huge pressures on what it could afford to do, and how much money it was able to raise.

Nor is it helpful that the relevant Minister in Wales operates different capping criteria to those in England. Either you use the same capping criteria, or you remove the service altogether and deal with it in a different way. If South Wales Police had last year been able to operate the same capping criteria as England, then it could comfortably have got the 9.8 per cent increase in council tax that commanded cross-party support, and thereby secured the funding that it needed. Instead, it is £14 million in the red, 234 police officers down, and has not been able to recruit sufficiently to make up for the loss of the experienced officers. If you look at Cardiff, four police stations closed last year, with the loss of 61 cells, and although we have that swanky new police building down the road in Cardiff bay, it only provides 60 cells. Nearby Barry, which does not have the same access to that building, has to transport prisoners across the county, diverting officers from core patrol duties. That is completely unsatisfactory when you consider that the Vale of Glamorgan is 190 sq m, has the largest town per capita in England and Wales, an international airport, an operational seaport, a major arterial route in the shape of the M4, and a vast area of countryside. However, as a result of cuts in funding, just a few weeks ago, it was being policed by just one officer, and a few days ago, there were just two response officers covering Barry.

That is completely unsatisfactory, but that is not happening only in Barry; it is replicated across Wales. For example, in Swansea, on a busy night, you could find only five or six police officers covering the majority of the city. Clearly, that is not satisfactory. It is one reason why we feel that we are unable to support the settlement. It is not only because the Assembly Government does not have the money to pass on, but because the funding criteria and the capping criteria are preventing police authorities from raising the money that they need for essential policing.