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Police Grant Report

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate, albeit only briefly. I commend the Minister on the fact that he has always been responsive to representations made to him about the police settlement. Indeed, I think that I am the third Member from the Dyfed-Powys police area to contribute to today's debate. We do so on the basis that we are very proud of our police force. The people who live in the Dyfed-Powys area are basically satisfied with the service that they get. They complain from time to time about police visibility, but we live in a sparsely populated area. It is a challenge for the chief constable to deploy his forces around that area to give people confidence. However, the force does a lot of good. I attended an event last week at which awards were given to police officers, specials, police community support officers and back-room staff for the work that they had done in the Powys area. The citation on each award read ““For making Powys a safer place””. That must be the aim of the police force. The hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) raised a number of points, which I would like to reinforce. In a way, the representations that we are making today are not about the present police settlement, but about its future. Mention has been made of Ronnie Flanagan's report, which, if I understand it correctly, says that the formula must be adhered to more strictly. However, the fact that the funding for many Welsh police forces depends on exceptions being made to the formula, rather than on the formula being delivered right across the piece, is important. Indeed, if the floor—the minimum of 2.5 per cent. of the settlement—were not implemented for all four Welsh police authorities, there would be a loss to those authorities of £15 million. I also want to mention the rural policing grant. The rule 2 grants make a contribution to the funding of authorities, but most of those grants are spread among all the police authorities, whereas the rural policing grant goes to only a limited number of authorities. That being the case, certain police authorities would suffer disproportionately if the rural policing grant were abolished or if the rule 2 grants were brought within the formula. If that happened, it would be difficult for Dyfed-Powys police to maintain the standard of policing that the people living in the area have come to expect. If we were to aspire to the same level of policing, there would be a huge increase in the precept, and in the council tax that people would have to pay—and we know how unfairly council tax falls on the lowest paid in our communities. I want to comment on one other issue. At the moment, the area that I represent has only one set of custody cells for an area that extends for about 80 miles south to north and about 40 miles east to west. That means that putting somebody arrested in Llandrindod Wells into a custody cell requires a journey of at least 30 miles, which takes police officers away from their duties, just to take a prisoner from a police station without a custody cell to one with a good custody suite. It is important to make the appropriate capital investment in the infrastructure, so that the police can spend their time dealing with the issues that the public expect them to deal with, rather than having to transport prisoners.