Save Our Local Police

The Labour Government wants to scrap our Regional Police Forces and create super-forces in order to tackle organised crime and terrorism.

We say this will not work. It will divert police from where ordinary people most need them - on the beat in the towns and villages like yours. Ordinary people are more concerned about the drug dealer round the corner, or the hooligans and burglars making their lives a misery, not some criminal mastermind.

Worse still, the scheme the Government has devised may not achieve their stated aims. Experience has shown that much drug crime, and bank and post office raids, are cross-border. Our existing police forces liaise with neighbouring forces in England. This co-operation would be jeopardised by centralising Welsh Policing.

On top of all that, Liberal Democrat Peter Black AM calculates that the cost of the reorganisation could put an extra £70 on the average Band D council tax bill.

SENIOR POLICE OFFICERS have told a Welsh Assembly Committee that an all-Wales Police Force could face a deficit of £79 million by 2012. They want the Home Office to payup - however, Labour in Westminster have refused to give any such committment. If the money is not forthcoming and it has to be met from Council Tax instead, then each Band D household could find itself having to find an extra £70 a year to fund the merger that very few of us seem to want. Welsh Liberal Democrats are also concerned that a merger will mean that the new police force will be less accountable.