16/08/2007

Policing should be devolved

Today's edition of the magazine Golwg contains a call from North Wales Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom for responsibility for policing in Wales to be given to the Assembly.

Brunstrom says:
Responsibility for Welsh policing will be separated from Westminster before long. I am totally convinced that policing will be devolved in the near future, not immediately, the Assembly isn't ready for us yet, but that direction is clearer now than ever before in my opinion
Policing will be devolved to Cardiff over the long term, there is no doubt that that will happen. Because the world has changed. The law has changed and has developed, the Assembly has become stronger it has more powers
Although policing isn't yet devolved from London it's important that all the police forces in Wales are seen to be local and national services here in Wales. Not as an "army from England" but as a local army that wants to work for the future of Welshness.


Former Home Secretary John Reid, apparently responded to this suggestion when Mr Brunstrom put it to him some time ago with the retort over my dead body, but Brunstrom says in Golwg - He was wrong - he's gone - but I'm still here.

Of course Mr Brunstrom is right, if policing can be devolved to Scotland and the North of Ireland it is wrong that it is not devolved to Wales too; or does the Westminster government think that the people of Wales are too thick, incapable or unruly to run our own policing services for our own needs?

2 comments:

  1. I agree policing should be devolved but it should be devolved to a locally elected sheriff for each county

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  2. Surely the fact that policing is not devolved to the Aessembly is linked to the fact that, unlike N. Ireland and Scotland, Wales does not have it's own justice system. It is wholly intergrated with the English legal system. So it makes sense that policing should be intergrated likewise.
    Although if I remember rightly there is a paragraph in the One Wales document that proposes to look at the creation of a National Justice system for Wales.

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