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Welsh Affairs

I am aware of the debate, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that we have a serious and growing gun problem in north Wales. Without having an argument with him or Richard Brunstrom about the specific figures, I think that we have a real opportunity to take a different approach, to learn from the project in the south-west and to apply it in north Wales. The greatest deterrent to crime is the fear of being caught, but Wales is some 430 police community support officers short of the Government’s own original target. In the last year, we have actually seen police numbers fall by more than 70. Welsh forces have been through enormous upheavals and one can see where some of the resources have been diverted, resulting in the squeeze on funds. The most obvious example is the botched police merger. It was wisely abandoned, but the process wasted more than 30,000 Welsh police force hours. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire can confirm that in Brecon a team consisting of 13 staff, many of them quite senior officers and from all four Welsh forces, was working full time on the merger proposals for up to 10 months—a total, for only those staff, of more than 16,000 police hours. I ask the Minister to confirm that the Welsh police forces, which are suffering from a significant £500,000 funding black hole as a direct result of the merger proposals, will have that money reimbursed, so that they may make good the losses that were not of their doing. To have a healthy Wales, we also need healthy people. Health care risks becoming ever more remote from communities across Wales, despite the proven advantages of care closer to home. Cottage hospitals provide less expensive bed spaces than the large district general hospitals and they also allow patients to convalesce locally, closer to their families. That has a clear record of speeding recovery times. Improvements in technology also provide us with a serious opportunity to base specialists in central locations, but to deliver the services remotely using the wonders of modern science. The overwhelming majority of the decisions to close such facilities are in the hands of local health boards, which are meant to make decisions locally and accountably. I appeal directly to those boards not to follow the remorseless pace of centralisation, but to recognise that if we make full use of the available technologies, community health care can be the best health care.