Welsh police forces to lose 1,600 jobs, says MP Bryant

Image caption, Prime Minster David Cameron said police cuts could be made without hitting frontline officers

19 January 2011

The four police forces in Wales face cutting 1,600 officers and support staff over the next four years, a Labour MP has claimed in the Commons.

Rhondda MP Chris Bryant asked David Cameron about the numbers during Prime Minister's Questions.

He said he had been told that South Wales Police would lose 688 officers.

But Mr Cameron said the reduction in budgets could be met without cutting frontline officers. The police forces have been asked to respond.

Addressing Mr Cameron, Mr Bryant said: "The police forces in Wales are going to have to cut their numbers by 1,600 police officers and staff.

"The South Wales Police Force has told me this morning that just in that one force, 688 officers are going to have to disappear.

"The Prime Minister said on 2 May last year that any frontline cuts he would outlaw. Why is he backing down on his promise?"

Budget deficit

Mr Cameron told MPs that he accepted that all police forces in Wales and England were facing "a difficult financial settlement".

But he added: "The context for all of this is the vast budget deficit we were left and the huge mess we have to clear up."

The Prime Minister said in the case of South Wales Police, it was being asked to find 5% in savings next year.

"That will take them back, not to some figure of the 1980s, that will take them back to the spending they had in 2007-2008.

"Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary have said it's quite possible to make those sorts of reductions - while not losing front line officers.

"And that's what needs to be delivered."

In response, Dyfed-Powys Police Authority, repeated a statement from last December which said the force was facing cash cuts of "£7.012m or 11.5% in revenue over the next two years".

Authority chair Delyth Humfryes said: "Cuts of this magnitude will inevitably alter the way in which policing services are delivered in future".

The savings target facing Dyfed-Powys Police was "enormously challenging and will inevitably mean there will have to be a greater focus on threat to life issues and core policing rather than some of the other things which the force have been able to do in the past.

"Taken together the cuts are likely to result in job losses of between 250 and 350 and this scale of budget reduction cannot be delivered without a significant reduction in the number of police officers employed.