Mark Isherwood MS – the Shadow Minister for Local Government and the Welsh Conservative spokesperson on policing – has reacted robustly to a statement today (October 20) by the First Minister saying that a Welsh Conservative Government would scrap funding for *Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs).
The First Minister made his accusation in the Welsh Parliament in response to a question from another Labour Party MS, and accused Welsh Conservatives of planning to do away with funding because it is a “… non-devolved" responsibility.
Mr Isherwood put right the claims made, saying:
“One of Boris Johnson’s first promises as Prime Minister was to start recruiting 20,000 additional police officers, on top of those hired to fill existing vacancies and extra officers already being recruited, with more than 300 additional officers being recruited by the four Welsh police forces in 2020-2021 and two further increases to follow over the next two years.
“We have previously always stated that we would continue to fund PCSOs where ‘community safety’ is a devolved matter, and we will. The First Minister must therefore apologise immediately for his intentionally misleading statement.