MSPs will question police watchdog after parting shot
Holyrood to ask Susan Deacon why she resigned from Authority
MSPs will invite the former chair of Scotland’s police watchdog to explain why she believes the organisation is unfit for purpose.
Members of Holyrood’s justice committee want ex-chair of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) Susan Deacon to speak to them following her sudden resignation last week after two years in the job.
In a letter to the justice secretary, Ms Deacon, the third chair to quit in six years, said the authority’s role supporting and scrutinising the national force is fundamentally flawed.
Ms Deacon resigned as chair of the organisation tasked with holding the chief constable to account on Thursday, two days after scathing criticism from HM Inspector of Constabulary Gill Imery. Ms Imery said senior figures at Police Scotland invited her to carry out inspections because they were frustrated by a lack of scrutiny by the SPA.
She said: “I find it difficult to understand why the authority is not more rigorous in holding the chief constable and Police Scotland to account.”
However, her claim to MSPs that Police Scotland “is very keen to be scrutinised and wants to be held to account” was questioned by critics of the national force, which has been criticised for being defensive and lacking in transparency.
During her two-year tenure Ms Deacon, a former MSP and health minister, defended the SPA and said she was making progress in making important changes. However, in her resignation letter she said she is convinced the governance and accountability arrangements for policing in Scotland are fundamentally flawed in structure, culture and practice.
She offered to appear before the Scottish Parliament’s justice committee and, we can reveal, MSPs are likely to invite her early in the New Year.
Shadow cabinet secretary for justice, Conservative MSP Liam Kerr, said: “Ms Deacon must now outline to the justice committee what, specifically, must change at the SPA – and the SNP must listen.”
Scottish Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Liam McArthur, who is a member of the justice committee, said: “What this series of events makes clear is that there is something seriously wrong at the heart of police governance and scrutiny in Scotland.”
Justice Minister Humza Yousaf has rejected Ms Deacon’s claim that the SPA is fundamentally flawed.
SNP MSP Fulton MacGregor, who is also on the committee, added: “The justice committee are aware of Ms Deacon’s comments and will make a decision in the near future regarding her offer to share these thoughts with the committee as a whole.”
Convenor of the justice subcommittee on policing, John Finnie MSP, said Ms Deacon’s comments about the flawed structure of the SPA are at odds with her previous statements.
In a written submission to the committee last year, Ms Deacon said the structures were sound and have delivered significant progress.
And when Ms Deacon appeared before the justice committee in October 2018 she said governance and scrutiny arrangements had received too much attention and “that absolutely has to change”.
Mr Finnie said Ms Deacon’s resignation letter is so far from her previous comments that it’s “comical”.
He added: “It’s unclear to me what, apart from possibly the scathing criticism of the SPA by HM Inspector of Constabulary, that would cause such a fundamental change in opinion.
“It’s important that those that scrutinise are themselves open to scrutiny and Ms Deacon never seemed keen on political scrutiny of her work.”
Responding to Mr Finnie’s comments, Ms Deacon said yesterday: “Experience has certainly informed my opinion. I do believe very passionately that it is important that the focus of energy, effort and activity should be on policing rather on the systems of governance and scrutiny and accountability. That’s why you need effective systems, to ensure the focus is on policing.”
Convener of the justice committee Margaret Mitchell MSP said: “The justice committee will return to these issues in the New Year after it has received further information sought following the HMICS evidence session.”
The optics, as the First Minister’s PR advisers might have sagely nodded, were not good
It is, as the comedians like to say, all about timing.
Presumably, it must have been someone’s idea of a good idea for the Scottish party leaders to be interviewed by BBC Scotland’s spoof chief constable Cameron Miekelson for some light relief in an election badly needing it.
However, on Wednesday night, as the fictional leader of the fictional Scot Squad tittered with the First Minister about sharing a ramshackle night blitzed on Midori, the real chair of the real Scottish Police Authority was signing her resignation letter.
Susan Deacon announced she’d had enough the next day, the third chair to quit in six years. Her considered but withering note to the Scottish Government suggested the structures in place to monitor our police are supremely unfit for purpose and always have been.
So, as Ms Sturgeon – and her fellow party leaders – laughed their way through a kid-on interview with the kid-on chief, the abject failure to scrutinise the work of Scotland’s police force – a force that, whatever it says in public, welcomes oversight the way banks welcome robbers – was being laid bare. Again.
The optics, as the FM’s advisers may have nodded sagely, were not good but, for voters, they have not been good for a single hour of a single day of an election campaign now dwindling towards the finishing line. The night before they met the chief, for example, the four Scots leaders were debating on STV
and, seasonally, put on a pantomime of hoary punchlines, faux outrage – Apologise? Oh no, I won’t – and shared smiles at curtain call, like a bunch of old hams at Ayr Gaiety. It was politics for the cheap seats and, frankly, the cheap seats – where the voters sit – deserve better.
The false notes and empty theatricality has not been unique to the campaign north of the border, of course, as voters across Britain look at the parties, all of them, with what feels like unprecedented cynicism.
From a Prime Minister who refuses to reveal how many children he has, insisting he can – and will – get Brexit done by February; to a leader of the opposition insisting he can – and should – remain neutral in any referendum deciding Britain’s future in Europe; to a First Minister insisting that, yes, we absolutely could – and should – have two referendums next year; to a Liberal Democrat leader, unencumbered by humility or reality, keeping a straight face while insisting she could easily become PM.
And that’s before we get to the manifestos, or, as the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggested we call them, letters to Santa. The whole thing rings hollow and the tone has been set from the top, by the Prime Minister, an unserious man encouraging voters to laugh at his reputation for dissembling instead of being appalled by it.
In recent years, Mr Johnson has been far from alone in helping paint our politics in black and white, leave or remain, yes or no, but it has left our country in a poor place, voters with a poor choice and politicians in the poorest repute.
One day, we may look back in wonder at how our country came to this but, for now, we can only try to use our vote wisely. Good luck with that.