Police Federation questions ‘ loopholes’

The Scottish Police Federation have claimed they have identified “loopholes” in new legislation giving powers to officers to break up house parties with more than 15 people.

David Hamilton, chairman of the SPF, said the organisation – which represents rank and file police officers – was not consulted on the move by the Scottish Government and questioned how the new powers will work in practice.

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme yesterday, Mr Hamilton said the new powers were fundamentally about “messaging”. He said: “The legislation was only published yesterday and we have a number of questions with that… we’ve identified a number of loopholes.

“This is the type of thing – how do you know from the outside what’s on the inside? There’s a number of questions we have about that.

“Fundamentally, this is a messaging bit of legislation.

“We don’t expect to see it being used frequently and and we’ll continue with the approach of educating and engaging people without having to use powers.”