The mayor in Manchester, as elsewhere, has the same powers as the police and crime commissioner. Are you calling for that to be centralised in the Welsh Government and for our regional police and crime commissioners to be abolished? Because that's what it sounds like. Despite this, the Thomas report makes only one reference to the key issue of cross-border criminality, in the context of county lines, and the only solution it proposes is joint working across the four Welsh forces in collaboration with other agencies, without any reference to established joint working with neighbouring partners across the invisible crime and justice border with England. And although I've repeatedly asked Welsh Government Ministers whether they will commission work to remedy this deficit, they've always dodged, dived and diverted in the name of policy-led evidence.

As I learned when I visited Titan, the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit, a collaboration of North Wales Police and five north-west England forces, all north Wales emergency planning is done with north-west England. Ninety-five per cent or more of crime in north Wales is local or operates on a cross-border, east-west basis. North Wales Police have no significant operations working on an all-Wales basis and the evidence given to the Thomas commission was largely ignored in the commission's report.

Commenting on its 'Delivering Justice for Wales' report last year, the Welsh Government described

'a distinct Welsh justice policy based on prevention through tackling social challenges and rehabilitation', and contrasted this with a more punitive approach, it said, by the UK Government. In so doing, it conveniently ignored all evidence to the contrary, when the UK Government has stated repeatedly that it favours a policy based on prevention through tackling social challenges and rehabilitation. It ignored the UK Ministry of Justice's 'Prisons Strategy white paper' to rehabilitate offenders and cut crime, its victim strategy to align support for victims with the changing nature of crime, and its £300 million turnaround scheme over three years to support every council across Wales and England in catching and preventing youth offending earlier than ever, helping to stop these children and teenagers from moving on to further, more serious offending.

Further, it was the UK Government that published a female offender strategy to divert vulnerable female offenders away from short prison sentences wherever possible, invest in community services and establish five pilot residential women's centres, including one in Wales. However, it was the Minister for Social Justice here who subsequently wrote to Members, stating that she had been working closely with the UK Ministry of Justice and announcing that she announced that one of these centres would be near Swansea in south Wales. Of course, Swansea's planning committee then refused this.

The powers of police and crime commissioners are held by elected mayors in London, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire, and should remain with police and crime commissioners in Wales and not be centralised in the Welsh Government. Of course, the UK Government recognises that devolution has altered the legislative and policy context of policing and criminal justice in Wales, and has already established a form of administrative devolution through Welsh offices, units or directorates based upon co-operation, including HM Prison and Probation Service in Wales, Youth Justice Board Cymru and HM Courts and Tribunals Service Wales. To devolve or not to devolve is not about the transient policies and personalities of different governments at a particular point in time. Both the policies of parties and the policies, personalities and parties of government in any geographical area change over time.