The worst police force in Wales?
Plus how devolution is under attack and why Labour is blowing hot air on business rates
I want to start by thanking the hundreds of people who have now subscribed to this newsletter.
When it started a couple of weeks ago I thought it would take months to get to this stage. The great thing is that the more people sign up, the easier it is for me to spend more time on it making it better, so diolch yn fawr.
So there is a big issue I want to focus on this week - Wales’ basket case police force. But first let me offer you a little aperitif about business rates and devolution (which admittedly sounds like the worst name for a cocktail ever.
“We will save the high street (except all the ones in Wales we can already save)”
Labour’s shadow women and equalities secretary Anneliese Dodds was recently talking about how Labour would “save the high streets”.
An admirable aim. There is a really thoughtful discussion to be had about what we do with our town and city centres. The online shopping genie is well and truly out of the bottle (my 71-year-old technophobe dad has the Amazon app) and in reality shopping isn’t going to be the sole or even the primary function of the high street in the future. This doesn’t mean they don’t have a future, just that, if nurtured correctly, it will be different.
So what is Ms Dodds’ plan to save the high street? A key part of this is apparently going to be business rates. She said: “They are a really big problem for lots of bricks and mortar based businesses. Labour would scrap that system of business rates, replace it with something that instead actually promotes economic activity on our high streets.”
A bold plan. If only there was a place where they already had a lot of power over business rates? Luckily the Labour-run Welsh Government has been able to set the rates in Wales for over two decades. Unfortunately it is hard to argue that many Welsh high streets are thriving.
As always, there is nuance to this. If the Welsh Gov were to cut rates it would leave a hole in their coffers. Obviously they could cut other budgets or raise income tax to offset it but they don’t have close to the amount of tools to raise the cash elsewhere that Westminster does.
But on the flip side, if UK Labour were to follow through on their pledge they would still have to make tough decisions. Plus the Welsh Government has total choice right about whether it reinvests all the business rates revenue into “actually promoting economic activity on our high streets” and I would tentatively suggest they are far from doing so.
Devolution is a gift that can be taken away when the grown ups need to make important decisions
The second little amuse-bouche before the main course is regarding Michael Gove’s appearance before the Covid inquiry. In it he dropped in the line that the UK Government should be able to override devolution in the case of a pandemic.
The example he used was that public health questions about “how much fruit people should eat” are a matter for the Welsh Government whereas big questions are a matter for Westminster.
I am going to unpack whether the UK or Welsh Gov handled the pandemic better in a future newsletter but it is worth highlighting that here we have one of the senior members of the UK Government vocally calling for devolution (twice voted for by the people of Wales in a referendum) to be rolled back.
The referendums demonstrated that people of Wales want decisions about devolved policy areas to reside with the people of Wales, not politicians elsewhere.
Mr Gove’s comments reflect that for MPs like him, devolution was not a democratic expression of the will of the people of Wales and Scotland, but instead a temporary administered treat that can be withdrawn at will.
Wales’ worst police force. How do you solve a problem like Gwent Police?
As a reporter, the first time I ever came across Gwent Police was as a trainee. I was working a weekend shift and there had been a serious incident in Newport.
Once there have been arrests in a case it becomes “active”. This means that there are big limits on what we can report because we risk prejudicing future court proceedings. For example, if we report allegations that are later contested at trial, future jury members may have read those and it would be harder for the accused to get a fair trial.
This is a very bad thing to happen whether the person is guilty or not. It is a responsibility we take really seriously. So after the incident I rang Gwent Police (as they tell us to do) and asked to speak to the duty inspector to find out if there had been arrests. She repeatedly refused to speak to me and would hang up straight away when I called. Not the best introduction.
As I moved forward in my career I started to regularly report on domestic abuse and violence against women. After writing several of these stories women started to contact me to share their experiences. Several directly expressed issues they have faced with Gwent Police. But they were too scared to speak on the record.
However in April 2019, I reported on the case of Clarke Joslyn. PC Clarke Joslyn was found to be domineering, controlling and physically abusive to women. His disciplinary hearing had found that he had abused several female officers he had gone into relationships with over many years. The panel heard that he sent sinister biblical passages such as “be sure your sins will find you out” and used the police radio to track one woman’s movements when she was at work.
Joslyn’s role was to train new officers that gave him ready access to young women joining the force who he, a long serving and well known officer, had lots of power over. Despite many concerns raised about his behaviour, he was allowed to stay in post for years.
Eventually he was sacked and two years later the force apologised to two women saying they had “listened, reflected and taken the actions needed to get this right in future”. They even patted themselves on the back for winning an award for how they dealt with domestic violence.
What they didn’t tell you is that the force fought those women every step of the way and that apology was dragged from them kicking and screaming.
Roll forward to June 2019 and acting assistant chief constable Mark Budden and detective chief superintendent Mark Warrender were suspended following an incident at a retirement party Cardiff for former Gwent Chief Constable Julian Williams.
Both men were suspended, and then stayed suspended for three years during which time they were likely paid over £250,000 each to do nothing. When their hearing finally came around, the force, in the spirit of openness and transparency that they apparently now had, appealed to bar the media from attending the hearing. Both WalesOnline and the BBC appealed this decision.
At a hearing in September last year, Warrender was found to have committed “inappropriate touching” and while Budden was found to have inappropriately disclosed information in relation the misconduct and criminal investigation, provided a dishonest account about his conduct and engaged in inappropriate behaviour whilst on duty.
They were both sacked. Well actually no, Warrender retired from Gwent Police on September 2, 2022 - just two days before the hearing, presumably on a full pension.
After this I approached Gwent police asking some fairly basic public interest questions including:
What was the nature of Marc Budden “inappropriately disclosing information in relation to the misconduct and criminal investigation into the inappropriate touching to the victim”?
Did the issues mentioned in the above impact on any criminal investigation?
What was the inappropriate behaviour by Marc Budden while on duty?
True to a culture of transparency the force refused to answer. Bear in mind we would have known the answer to these questions normally except for the fact they barred the press from attending the hearing.
The horrors of Ricky Jones
In December last year I interviewed the family of former Gwent Police officer Ricky Jones. He died after jumping off the Severn Bridge in 2020. In the decades before his death he had committed a relentless campaign of abuse against his family. It was truly horrific and you can read my interview with the family in the link above.
What made the story even bigger was that after his death his daughter found Whatsapp messages between Jones and both former and serving Gwent officers. They showed homophobia, racism, the demeaning of women and possible corruption.
The messages also showed that Jones had spoken to other officers in the force to “protect himself” in case his wife tried to report him for the abuse as well as trying to run illegal police checks to see if she had raised his behaviour.
Following the incident Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent Jeff Cutherbert spent most of his time making media appearances arguing that this was just “a few bad apples”. He raised the ire of the family after he said they were “refusing” to talk to him, a claim the family vehemently rejects.
My latest investigation
After tip offs from several sources and given the force’s record I decided back in early September this year to put in some freedom of information requests. I asked each of the four forces in Wales two questions:
How many officers are currently suspended?
How long have they been suspended for?
North Wales and Dyfed Powys came back within days. South Wales Police needed a bit of a nudge but came back within the deadline. But the deadline came and went without even an acknowledgement from Gwent Police.
When I chased it they sent me an email rejecting my request because “the information was already in the public domain”. They attached a link to a spreadsheet which showed historic suspensions but the cases were all concluded. I therefore went back and asked if this meant there were no active suspensions? They didn’t reply. I chased several times and they eventually came back and said that they needed to extend the deadline because of the demand on their service.
This was insane. This wasn’t complicated. This was a basic workforce question. Other forces had been able to reply within days but over two months on Gwent still couldn’t say?!
In the end I told them that I would be publishing a story based on the other force’s responses and saying that Gwent had not managed to deliver the data. I also said I would be writing an opinion piece about what a farce this situation was and how it undermined all the forces claims about transparency and learning lessons.
Within an hour they had sent me the data.
The results
It was pretty clear why the force wasn’t rushing to give me the data.
Gwent Police has 26 officers suspended which, when compared to their total officer numbers is two as many as any other force in Wales. The force also has five officers who have been suspended for between 2-3 years on full pay. The other three forces have only had one officer off for that long between them.
This chart shows how the different forces compare.
Though South Wales Police have more officers suspended, with a workforce of 3,396 compared to Gwent Police's 1,491 it has proportionately far fewer officers suspended and none for over two years.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
On the surface, having lots of officers suspended is not a good thing. But the force have argued that the reason is because they “set very high standards”. Clearly if we are going to spend years criticising the force we should not be critical when they try and clear things up. Though it does make the argument that it is “a few bad apples” a bit weak because at the very least the number could be two dozen apples (though suspension doesn’t mean guilt).
“High standards” also doesn’t excuse the fact that it is taking years to deal with suspended officers. This is terrible for the alleged victim of their behaviour, the taxpayer as well as the officer themselves. Gwent Police told me that half of the officers who have been suspended over two years are actually part of a judicial process and therefore the wait is actually for QC time. However this doesn’t explain the other half.
Changing the culture at any organisation is hard. Changing it at an organisation where the people there are used to literally being the law in their role is even harder. But if the force really has changed, it can’t just ask us to take their word for it. They can’t shut journalists out of hearings that should be public; when people request information they are legally entitled to it shouldn’t take months when it is basic workforce data; and when you allow an officer to abuse staff for years it shouldn’t take years more for you to apologise.
Thanks again for supporting this newsletter. Feel free to share it with others you think may be interested and don’t forget to let me know what else you would like me to look at.
Take care
Will