Found: written evidence be reported to the House for publication: Police and Crime Commissioners PCC Alun Michael

Found: Rt Hon Alun Michael Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner Police Headquarters Bridgend CF31

Found: For example, former Welsh Secretary and former Welsh First Minister Alun Michael cited incidents

Found: Is that very much— Alun Michael: Very much so.

Found: I have had meetings with Alun Michael and conversations with him after specific instances.

Found: gyfarfod â / Engagement description or Organisation/Individual met with 26/03/2024 Cyfarfod/Meeting Alun Michael

Found: Cyfarfod/Meeting Cafcass Cymru 2024-12-12 00:00:00 Cyfarfod/Meeting Action for Children Ambassador Alun Michael

Found: Prize giving Gwobrau EMWWAA / EMWWAA Awards 2023-05-17 00:00:00 Cyfarfod/Meeting Cyfarfod gyda Alun Michael

Found: Ymweliad/Visit TfW's Building Futures – On the Right Track Visit 2021-09-20 00:00:00 Cyfarfod/Meeting Alun Michael

Found: Participants in evidence sessions (including sub-groups) • Adam Price MS, Leader, Plaid Cymru • Alun Michael

Found: Chair of Policing in Wales, Andy Dunbobbin, Police and Crime Commissioner for North Wales, and Alun Michael

Found: Jeff Cuthbert Dafydd Llywelyn Andy Dunbobbin Alun Michael PCC for Gwent PCC for Dyfed Powys

Found: Apologies included the South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner, Alun Michael who, as a result, was

Found: Cardiff’s Public Service Board • Led by Councillor Huw Thomas, Leader of Cardiff Council and Alun Michael

Found: Finance Reform (LGFR) Lisa Hughes – Local Government Performance and Partnerships Apologies Alun Michael

Found: The following key points were raised: • South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Alun Michael referenced

Found: Kitchen – Visitor Levy Policy Apologies Finance Sub Group Meeting – 6 July 2023 - Minutes Alun Michael

Found: Crime Commissioner, Gwent Andy Dunbobbin Police and Crime Commissioner, North Wales Alun Michael

Found: Commissioner, Dyfed Powys Andy Dunbobbin Police and Crime Commissioner, North Wales Alun Michael

Found: Constable, North Wales Police Jeff Cuthbert Police and Crime Commissioner, Gwent Alun Michael

Found: The following key points were raised: • South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Alun Michael commented

Found: Action 2 – Alun Michael and Tim Peppin to explore involvement of Police in Climate Strategy Group

Found: 11.30 Agenda item 5: Partnership working within Policing and Criminal Justice in Wales • Led by Alun Michael

Found: South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Alun Michael said: “PCSOs strive to make our communities safer

Found: Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales, Alun Michael, said: We know that incidents of domestic

Found: Dafydd Llywelyn PCC Dyfed Powys Jeff Cuthbert PCC Gwent Arfon Jones PCC North Wales Alun Michael

Found: South Wales Police and Crime Commission, Alun Michael stressed the importance for the work of the Regional

Found: Talbot Council Rex Phillips, NASWT Cymru Gaynor Purcell, St Chad's Primary School The Rt Hon Alun Michael

Question

What is the Welsh Government doing to support the Hassan family a year on from the death of Mohamud Hassan?

Answered by Minister for Social Justice

This is a tragic case and our thoughts and condolences continue to be with Mr Hassan’s family.

I have regularly engaged with South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner, Alun Michael, Mohamud’s constituency MP Stephen Doughty, and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

I have also requested regular updates on the case from the agencies involved.

As the case is currently with the Independent Office of Police Complaints, it would not be appropriate to comment further. But I have stressed to all the services involved the need to expedite this case, and demonstrate that Black Lives Matter.

A key goal within our Race Equality Action Plan is to work with criminal justice in Wales to better understand and address race disproportionality and its causes across the criminal justice system, including the youth justice system.

We pledge to work together with devolved and non‑devolved partners to address the over representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people in the criminal justice system.

We will also work in partnership to address the under-representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people working within the courts and criminal justice system at all levels.

Our collective aim is that everyone who comes into contact with the criminal justice system will receive equal treatment and equal outcomes, whatever their ethnicity.

Question

Will the Welsh Government raise Mohamud Hassan's case with the UK Government and call for justice for his family?

Answered by Minister for Social Justice

This is a tragic case and our thoughts and condolences continue to be with Mr Hassan’s family.

I have regularly engaged with South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner, Alun Michael, Mohamud’s constituency MP Stephen Doughty, and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

I have also requested regular updates on the case from the agencies involved.

As the case is currently with the Independent Office of Police Complaints, it would not be appropriate to comment further. But I have stressed to all the services involved the need to expedite this case, and demonstrate that Black Lives Matter.

A key goal within our Race Equality Action Plan is to work with criminal justice in Wales to better understand and address race disproportionality and its causes across the criminal justice system, including the youth justice system.

We pledge to work together with devolved and non‑devolved partners to address the over representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people in the criminal justice system.

We will also work in partnership to address the under-representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people working within the courts and criminal justice system at all levels.

Our collective aim is that everyone who comes into contact with the criminal justice system will receive equal treatment and equal outcomes, whatever their ethnicity.

Question

What action has the Minister taken to secure access for the family to the bodycam footage relating to Mohamud Hassan?

Answered by Minister for Social Justice

This is a tragic case and our thoughts and condolences continue to be with Mr Hassan’s family.

I have regularly engaged with South Wales Police and Crime Commissioner, Alun Michael, Mohamud’s constituency MP Stephen Doughty, and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

I have also requested regular updates on the case from the agencies involved.

As the case is currently with the Independent Office of Police Complaints, it would not be appropriate to comment further. But I have stressed to all the services involved the need to expedite this case, and demonstrate that Black Lives Matter.

A key goal within our Race Equality Action Plan is to work with criminal justice in Wales to better understand and address race disproportionality and its causes across the criminal justice system, including the youth justice system.

We pledge to work together with devolved and non‑devolved partners to address the over representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people in the criminal justice system.

We will also work in partnership to address the under-representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people working within the courts and criminal justice system at all levels.

Our collective aim is that everyone who comes into contact with the criminal justice system will receive equal treatment and equal outcomes, whatever their ethnicity.

Found: Hon Alun Michael MP Labour October 1998 – July 1999 Rt.

Found: Former Wales First Secretary (before the job was called First Minister) and Home Office minister Alun Michael

Found: Previous regional vacancies Following his resignation as First Secretary in February 2000, Alun Michael

Found: Last Friday, along with Alun Michael, the Member of Parliament for Cardiff South and Penarth, I met residents

Found: Hon Alun Michael MP Labour  Rt. Hon Paul Murphy MP Labour  Rt.

<p>I&nbsp;thank Jane Dodds for that intervention because this has been critically important indeed in supporting this amendment, making sure that we are listened to and acknowledge that crucial role of those organisations who are at the front line. And so, just in recent days, we've written not only to all regional safeguarding boards, but we've written to all our third sector partners, the NSPCC and all those at the front line supporting victims and survivors, and asked them to, again, tell us concerns and give us any concerns that are being raised with them, and also to emphasise the importance of their work. Of course, the funding of these organisations is critically important, and the role and the respect that they must have in multi-agency safeguarding as well. So, I'm really grateful for the cross-party group work that you've mentioned, Jane, for children and young people, and I also recognise that we've actually got a really important forthcoming report and debate on the cross-party's&nbsp;Children, Young People and Education Committee's inquiry into children on the margins. I think that debate will be a follow through from our debate today.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Just in terms of the third sector and those on the front line with children's organisations, I met with Action for Children last week, with Dawn Bowden, the&nbsp;Minister for Children and Social Care, and they also now have Alun Michael as their ambassador. We discussed the work we're taking forward on child criminal exploitation.&nbsp;</p>
<p>There are many other points that I would like to respond to, but I think you will find that we've already published the response from the Government to that report. But you'll find, I hope, the response will provide many of the responses to the points that have been raised today, and I think, particularly, Sioned Williams's points on the importance of specialist teams and the role that Barnardo's plays across Wales, and the very excellent work, for example, in the safeguarding adolescents from exploitation teams and authorities. Natasha also made a really important point about modern slavery, and human trafficking from Joyce Watson, and the fact that we have developed online learning on modern slavery. And regional safeguarding boards and social care workforce teams are commissioning and developing multi-agency training.</p>
<p>So, I hope that the work I've outlined to deliver on the existing inquiry recommendations and the new independent audit being led by Baroness Casey represents a comprehensive response to this issue. Continuing with this approach rather than duplicating or distracting from it is the best way to maximise delivery and action at pace so we can better safeguard children from harm. Across all of this activity, I repeat: we're determined to hear the voices of victims and survivors, but not just to listen, as Sioned Williams says, but to take action. I do believe the amendment captures this goal and the objectives that we're committed to and I've set out.</p>
<p>In closing, I would say the continued work being undertaken by Welsh Government, UK Government, our policing partners, children's organisations, our local authorities to ensure there's comprehensive understanding of the issues in this debate—no stone is being left unturned. Our focus will always be on listening to victims and survivors of abuse. And on behalf of the Welsh Government I say again: we will do everything we can as a Government to ensure young people in Wales are safe from the horrific crimes of exploitation and sexual abuse.</p>

<p>Diolch, Llywydd. The Secretary of State for Wales—it reminds me of one of those sort of vestigial offices of the bygone past that we sometimes gawk at during great state events. It's so redundant that they might as well wear plumed hats or epaulettes. It's a bit like the Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom. Historically, that was the highest ranking officer of the Royal Navy, but since 1964 it's generally been held by a member of the royal family. It's currently the King. It's described as a titular position without direct operational command, and I think that pretty much defines the Secretary of State for Wales, which was of course created in 1964, 60 years ago. It's about as useful to Wales as the office of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is to the good people of Lancaster. It's not Wales's representative in the Cabinet; it's the Cabinet's representative in Wales. That's the truth. It was created and sustained in order to create an alternative narrative as to where the democratic mandate lies, so it's there as a competitor to the democratic legitimacy of this institution and the Government upon whose confidence, of course, it relies.</p>
<p>If anyone really believed that it was effective, would we have had the scandal of HS2 and the money that was stolen from Wales? Would the steel industry in Port Talbot be teetering on the brink as we stand if it was an effective method, a real shield on behalf of the people of Wales? It's not. Look at the history since 1964. There have been 22 Secretaries of State for Wales. Only five of them, you could say really, were convinced devolutionists. If you were being particularly generous, you might add Alun Michael as a sixth. The rest of them were all devosceptic, Labour and Conservative, and of course what we have in the shadow Secretary of State for Wales now is somebody from that devosceptic tradition. That's without a doubt. How could you go from the Thomas commission clearly recommending the wholesale devolution of criminal justice to Wales—all of it for very good, progressive reasons—to the Brown commission, which was a bit of a damp squib, saying, 'You can have probation and youth justice', to the Welsh Labour manifesto, which then said this:</p>
<p>'The UK Labour government will work with the Welsh Labour Government to consider devolution of youth justice'?</p>
<p>That well-worn kind of language means nothing at all, really. And</p>
<p>'the next UK Labour government will explore the devolution of services'.</p>
<p>I think we see the direction of travel clearly, and, yet again, under a devosceptic shadow Secretary of State.&nbsp;</p>
<p>I'm not a nihilist. I may be a nationalist, but I'm not a nihilist. While we're in this United Kingdom, I want the institutions of Government at all levels to work for the people of Wales. So, the reason that I'm against the Secretary of State for Wales is that it's not working for Wales. Their voice just doesn't carry weight or power. Gwydyr House is an empty vessel, in all senses, literally and metaphorically. If you, instead of having a Secretary of State for Wales, created something along Canadian lines, for example, federal or semi-federal institutions that have different levels of government, created a Secretary of State for inter-governmental relations and you created statutory structures and agreements, instead of the convention of the Barnett formula you had something written into rules that could be enforced, and you had structures then alongside it of inter-governmental relations that could be upheld by a powerful department of inter-governmental relations, that would be a political structure that would show respect for the multinational nature of this United Kingdom. Isn't that, even from a unionist perspective, better than what we currently have, which is a fig leaf, which is a gesture? It's not real and it's not delivering, and that's why we need to get rid of it.&nbsp;</p>

<p>To briefly respond to Mike, I'm sure the current leader of Plaid Cymru would welcome a head-to-head debate with the British leader of the Labour Party to see then who is the most left-wing leader.</p>
<p>Last week, while this Chamber was quiet, the theatre next door was echoing to the words of one of the Labour Party's most iconic figures in that epic morality play for modern times, <em>Nye</em>. The man in the title role, Michael Sheen, said of Aneurin Bevan that he had a cast-iron integrity and a raging passion. Sadly, I don't think you can say either of the leadership of this Government at the moment. As we heard yesterday, the Government is systemically removing all the more radical elements out of its own programme, from reform of the school year to reform of the council tax. So, if anyone for a moment thought that some of the First Minister's failings could somehow be justified in the spirit of the end justifying the means, then I challenge you to describe that end, because this is a Government that, in a matter of a few short months, has become shallow and rudderless, shorn of any sense of greater purpose other than the political survival of the First Minister himself.</p>
<p>And let us turn to those issues of integrity. The question of dirty money, which bedevils most western democracies, has thankfully not been much of an issue for us in Wales. Welsh millionaires have not been interested in politics and Welsh politics has not been interested in millionaires. That happy circumstance the First Minister has brought crashing to an end. To quote Bevan himself,</p>
<p>'Christ drove the money changers out of the temple, but you inscribe their title deed on the altar cloth.'</p>
<p>Indeed, we could say the First Minister has stitched it into the very fabric of the seat he occupies.</p>
<p>A public inquiry into the deaths of over 10,000 Welsh citizens is, it is reported, taking very seriously the First Minister's failure to inform them of deleted messages, and now that same lack of candour is extended to us. Ten days ago, I asked the First Minister whether a formal leak inquiry was held into the alleged disclosure of a chat group by the former Minister for Social Partnership. I’ve yet to receive a reply. I asked the Welsh Government's director of propriety and ethics whether he knew. His response: 'I'm not aware.' Now, the Government's silence clearly raises very serious questions as to whether such an inquiry was held, and raises the possibility that the case against the former Minister was neither forensic nor formal, and that she was sacked without a proper investigation and with little in the way of due process.</p>
<p>I've asked the First Minister whether there was a written report into any alleged breach of the ministerial code by the Minister. Again, I've received no reply. I've asked the Government's director of propriety and ethics if he was aware of any such report. He said he wasn't. He was walking in the hills of Spain at the time. He was also on holiday when the ministerial code investigation into the current First Minister was held, but on that occasion he was asked to give advice, which was reflected in a written report. No such courtesy was afforded to Hannah Blythyn.</p>
<p>Now, maybe this is a sign of the new ruthlessness of which Sir Keir Starmer spoke so glowingly recently in an interview with <em>The Daily Telegraph</em>. Rebels in the new model Labour Party must pay a heavy price. But let's remember that Bevan himself was expelled from the Labour Party and suspended from the&nbsp;parliamentary Labour Party&nbsp;on multiple occasions, and in response to Joyce Watson, one of those was actually when he moved a vote of no confidence in Winston's Churchill's Government that the Labour Party was part of in July 1942, and when he was criticised for the timing of that no confidence motion, he said the very reason we were fighting the Nazis was so that you could hold leaders to account even in wartime.</p>
<p>It's Bevan we remember. It’s Bevan we remember, not the desiccated—[<em>Interruption</em>.] No. Not the desiccated calculating machines that condemned him. And it's Rhodri Morgan we remember most, not Alun Michael, because 24 years ago a vote of no confidence was moved—the only other time that has happened in the leader of the Government in the history of devolution—and it was passed. Alun Michael, to his credit, resigned immediately, and much of what we have achieved collectively over the last quarter of a century flowed from that singular moment. It's that precedent that has to be followed if the First Minister can no longer command a majority, because that is a foundational principle of parliamentary democracy everywhere. The Assembly back then adjourned, the Cabinet met and brought forward a nomination for Rhodri Morgan as acting First Minister precisely an hour and two minutes later. That was not ruthlessness, but it was decisiveness, and it's what this moment calls for now.</p>

<p>Diolch yn fawr, Heledd Fychan, and thank you for your words of support and sympathy to the families and to all of those who have been affected by this in the community of Ely. I just want to say that I've already met with the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales, Alun Michael, for an update on this incident, and the First Minister has also been briefed. South Wales Police are looking into exactly what happened, the circumstances surrounding this tragic series of events. And, I have to say, it was a fast-moving situation; I think we were only becoming aware, and I know that the local councillors and the police and all the agencies were working to address the situation, as it emerged. Again, I would want to thank those who responded so quickly and speedily to this. In fact, the violent disorder that took place did include attacks on the emergency services, damage to property, causing considerable fear, as you've said, within the community, which is completely unacceptable. So, can I again call for calm and for people to support the police and other services in the work that's being undertaken now? And, of course, in terms of communications, I'm pleased to be responding to this question this afternoon, and we will keep everyone briefed in terms of the ongoing investigation.</p>

<p>I fundamentally disagree with the last point the Member made. He's right to say that drug-related deaths in the last year for which figures are available rose in Wales, as they did in every part of the United Kingdom, but they fell in Swansea. So, that's an important thing to recognise as well. I do accept that there are particular challenges in the Swansea Bay area, and we need a full commitment from all members of the area planning board in that area to bringing about improvement. The Swansea Bay truth commission, chaired by a former very senior public health consultant and a former police assistant chief constable, is itself bringing together local players and people with direct experience of these matters, to try to make sure that there is a pathway to improvement, and we look forward to their final report in September of this year.</p>
<p>Waiting times are too long in the Swansea Bay area, and they can be better. In Bridgend, which was until quite recently part of the Swansea Bay health board, waiting times are now 10 days for treatment. If you can do it in Bridgend, it can be done in Swansea as well, and it's important that lessons are learnt from good practice in places that have struggled to be in the same position.</p>
<p>We continue to work closely across the jagged edge of devolved and non-devolved services in this area, and we've been pleased to work closely, through the Police and Crime Commissioner Alun Michael, with the Home Office project ADDER—Addiction, Diversion, Disruption, Enforcement and Recovery—a project that seeks to bring together the forces of both policing and treatment to make a difference in the Swansea area. I know that my colleague Lynne Neagle visited that project in October of last year, and it is by bringing together the different services that can make a difference in this area that we will be able to make the progress that we want to see in Swansea Bay.</p>