Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jones of Penybont (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that when I was First Minister of Wales, I strongly supported the devolution of policing, and my position has not changed. I fail to see why Wales alone, of the four nations of the UK, should not have the powers to shape policing and policing priorities.

I have heard arguments about crime being cross-border. Well, that is true of England and Scotland as well, and indeed of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland for that matter. Simple co-operation between police forces is a way of overcoming that. I saw that in 2013 when we had the NATO summit in Newport. Police officers from all over the UK had come to help police that event.

The Minister will, I am sure, be relieved to know that I am not looking for him to agree with me tonight. I know the view of the UK Government that, currently, policing should not be devolved in Wales. Nevertheless, we now have a lack of clarity as to the future, because with the abolition of the PCCs, the suggestions that have been made about how policing will be made accountable in the future are based on English political structures that do not exist in Wales. We do not yet know what will happen in Wales. That is important because there are, of course, arguments that we have to make to ensure that Wales is properly recognised. Wales has its own civil contingency forum, language, laws and ways of policing that must be reflected in the future. With that in mind, does the Minister agree that a way must be found to take this forward? Will he agree to meet me, and perhaps others, to see how we can deliver better policing that nevertheless reflects Wales’s national distinctiveness?

I turn very briefly to Amendment 409B, in which I have a personal interest. This was a recommendation that came from the Brown commission, of which I was a part. Naturally, I fully support the devolution of youth justice. I was delighted to see this included in the manifesto that the Government were elected on in 2024 and I look forward to its delivery.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, when my noble friend was the First Minister, and slightly before that, when I was the Secretary of State, I was less of a campaigner for this issue than he was. But I recognise that times have changed over the last few years. I am told that devolution is a process rather than an event—something that I have witnessed myself over the last 20-odd years that I have been involved in Welsh politics at a ministerial level. But two or three things have occurred literally within the last year or so that mean we have to bend our minds to something that I was not all that keen on all those years ago.

First, as my noble friend said, the Labour Party manifesto indicated that youth justice and probation were now to be matters for the Welsh Government and the Welsh Senedd. Like my noble friend, I was a member of Gordon Brown’s commission, and that was something we all agreed on. I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s response on those specific issues, which we must not forget.

On the issue of policing generally and its devolution, the view over a number of years was that it was quite hard to devolve policing without devolving criminal justice. The noble Baroness referred to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Scotland historically has had both over many centuries. Northern Ireland has not—it did and then it did not after the collapse of the first Stormont arrangement. Indeed, when I was Northern Ireland Secretary, I held responsibility for criminal justice and for policing until the Good Friday agreement made the difference by recommending that both those issues should eventually be devolved to Northern Ireland, which they have been, and very successfully too.

Two things have occurred over the last few weeks. First, my noble friend the Minister came to the Chamber and told us that police and crime commissioners were to be abolished. I do not think that that was in the manifesto, but I entirely concur with it. However, if we are to abolish police and crime commissioners, the responsibility for accountability has to lie with somebody. In England, there are mayors and the new organisations which will follow the devolution Bill, but in Wales there are no such institutions. There are no mayors and no local authorities which currently have a responsibility for policing. We have to find out what happens in Wales when that Bill goes through. That makes us think more about general police devolution.

Secondly, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has now decided in the White Paper on policing that there will be far fewer police authorities and police boards in England. What happens then? Will the current four police forces in Wales be abolished? Will we have two or one for the whole of Wales? I do not know but obviously there will be a change if the White Paper affects Wales as much as England.

Those two issues mean that we have to bend our minds to what we do about policing in the months ahead. Those months ahead will inevitably be complicated by the fact that in 60 days’ time there will be an election in Wales, the outcome of which none of us knows but it will undoubtedly be something we have to deal with in a rather different way from how we have over the past 100 years.

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

My Lords, given the hour, my contribution to this debate will be a short one.

I first apologise for not having spoken to similar amendments on this subject in Committee because of illness. I express my gratitude to my noble friend Lady Brinton, who is no longer in her place, for taking my place on that occasion. My thanks go also to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, for bringing the amendments in this group back for debate on Report.

On these Benches we agree with both Amendment 409A on the devolution of policing and Amendment 409B on the devolution of youth justice. They are in line with both Welsh Liberal Democrat and our federal Liberal Democrat policies. Had this debate taken place at an earlier hour, we would have joined the noble Baroness in the voting Lobby.

I will speak very briefly on youth justice, which was seen as an early candidate for phased devolution. The Welsh Government have been able to influence youth justice policy through devolved areas such as education, health and social services, and have established a youth justice system that prioritises prevention, rehabilitation and the rights of children over punitive measures.

According to a Senedd research document published in January this year,

“The Welsh Government has said that it has agreed with the UK Government for officials in both governments to work together to ‘explore options’ where responsibilities in the youth justice system could be ‘realigned’”,


as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, referred to. What progress has been made there?

But despite that and other affirmative statements, the Senedd Equality and Social Justice Committee warned last year that

“the UK Government could row back its promises on the devolution of youth justice … in Wales”

Disappointingly, experience is showing us that this is what appears to be happening.