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Welsh Affairs

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Perhaps it is apposite, therefore, to ask the Minister of State if he will comment on the matter when he makes his winding-up speech. Another important matter in Wales, which the Secretary of State did not touch on, is that of law and order. In my experience, during the past two years policing has become harder in Wales. We feel that police should be out on our streets in Wales doing what they joined the police force to do: fighting crime. Instead, we are finding that all four of our police forces are fighting red tape and bureaucracy. That is why this party has advanced policies to scrap stop-and-search forms, and would certainly reduce the bureaucracy that our serving police officers face every day. The police are not just being asked to be pen-pushing bureaucrats, but seem to have been appointed as jailers. They have to use their cells to hold so many prisoners that even the Government are losing track of them. I do not know whether the Secretary of State is aware of this, but last month the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), had to write to me, informing me that he had provided me with incorrect figures on the number of prisoners who were being held in Welsh police stations. He corrected the figures, and had to revise the figure of prisoner nights upwards by 426. The total number of prisoners being held in custody cells last year in Wales was 4,200. That is a staggering increase, which puts unprecedented strain on police forces and budgets in Wales. I hope that the Secretary of State will make representations to his Cabinet colleague to consider this matter, because it has become such a burden that it is causing problems for many of our forces.