When will they ever learn?

Here we go again. The Scottish Parliament has passed legislation to merge the British Transport Police north of the border with its general police force, Police Scotland.

This seems to have been stimulated by a desire to make the force more accountable and easier to administer, and was initiated by the ruling Scottish Nationalist Party for reasons that seem overtly political rather than practical. They suggest that it would allow the Scottish Government to have “greater control”, the same fatuous argument deployed by the Brexiteers.

We have been here before. Numerous times. There have been regular attempts this century to scrap the BTP and merge it in with local police forces, but they have quite rightly been fought off by the force. The attempts at merger were scuppered by the clear arguments from the BTP that its officers have specific skills that are needed to manage incidents on the railway.

There is no doubt that if ordinary police, with no knowledge of the railway, arrived at an incident such as a fatality on the track, they would have little idea of how to ensure the matter was dealt with speedily. Instead, there would be long delays and unnecessary line closures while the investigation took place.

Railway workers, the unions, the police force itself and many politicians all oppose the move, which seems to be based on narrow political concerns.

As the local Chief Superintendent told the committee of MSPs, whenever Police Scotland are involved in an incident, it takes twice as long to clear up. So expect a drop in performance north of the border if this daft move goes through.