Labour’s misleading claim over Welsh Conservative funding for PCSOs must be retracted

Mark Isherwood MS – the Shadow Minister for Finance – has reacted robustly to a claim today (March 16) made during Plenary by the First Minister who said that a Welsh Conservative Government would scrap funding for Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs).

Countering this inaccurate claim, Mr Isherwood said:

“We have previously stated – in response to other equally inaccurate and deliberately misleading statements made by Labour – that we would continue to fund 500 PCSOs in Wales, where ‘Community Safety’ is a devolved matter, and we will.

“The First Minister must therefore apologise immediately for his intentionally misleading statement.”

Laura Anne Jones MS, the Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government, added:

“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.”