Police to scale back operations because of SNP’s cutbacks
Chief Constable’s extraordinary admission
POLICE Scotland is to begin scaling back its operations due to SNP broken promises on funding, the chief constable has warned.
Sir Iain Livingstone said the force has no choice but to start doing less because ministers had Uturned on a commitment to protect force budgets from inflation.
In a bombshell intervention, he said he had ordered an urgent review to target resources at community policing, emergency call centres and public protection.
That will mean cutting training and crime prevention work, with officer numbers set to shrink and technological improvements to be scrapped.
Sir Iain said a depleted force was the last thing society needed when the current cost of living crisis had the ‘potential to lead to disruption, protest [and] disharmony’.
He was giving his response to last month’s Spending Review in which Finance Secretary Kate Forbes unveiled slashed police budgets for years to come.
Sir Iain told a Scottish Police Authority (SPA) board meeting yesterday: ‘The position outlined is not the realterms revenue protection that we expected and that had been committed. I do have a duty of candour to say I am deeply concerned about the position in which policing may be placed if the Spending Review is implemented as outlined.’
The review set out plans for how Miss Forbes will try to fill a £3.5billion public spending black hole by 2026/27.
With NHS and social security funding set to rise, police, jail and court budgets are set to take a real-terms hit.
That breaks a 2021 SNP manifesto pledge to ‘protect the police resource budget in real terms for the entirety of the next parliament’.
Last night, Scottish Tory justice spokesman Jamie Greene said: ‘Scotland’s top police officer is rightly sounding the alarm bell that the SNP breaking their manifesto funding promise to the police will put public safety at risk.’
His Labour counterpart Pauline McNeill said: ‘This proves that Nicola Sturgeon’s words in the run-up to the elections meant absolutely nothing.’ At the SPA meeting – held virtually – Sir Iain savaged ministers’ plans and said he has already ordered an urgent review of force operations.
He said: ‘Policing as a public service will clearly be subject to the pressure of high inflation and real-term increases in our operating costs. These increased costs will not be matched by increases to our funding in the absence of real-terms revenue protection, as laid out in the Spending Review.
‘Funding future pay awards may only be possible through having a far smaller workforce, fewer officers.’
Sir Iain added that the police service is already saving the public purse £200million a year.
He said: ‘We have made the reform, taken the hard decisions, saved money and improved services and the officers and staff deserve great credit, deserve to be recognised, deserve to be rewarded.’
He also warned: ‘The cost of living crisis has a potential to increase the vulnerability of people while, at the same time, placing pressure on the services which exist to support them. In placing additional strain across society, such pressures have the potential to lead to disruption, protest [and] disharmony.’
David Hamilton, chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, which represents most officers, said: ‘There’s no fat left to cut from Police Scotland.
‘There’s a sense of gloom around the finances.’
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘The police resource budget has been protected in real terms since 2016/17, which led to the elimination of the police budget deficit. We remain committed to working closely with both SPA and Police Scotland to ensure we continue to have a safe, protected and resilient Scotland.’
‘Will put public safety at risk’
At AN SNP work gathering in 2016, Patrick Grady made an unwanted sexual advance to a party staffer. Rather than receive support from the SNP, the 19-year-old researcher had to watch as Grady was later promoted to chief whip.
Last week, after a lengthy investigation, the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner recommended Grady be suspended from the service of the House for two days.
the SNP followed suit, suspending Grady’s party membership for the 48 hours of his exclusion from Parliament.
A 48-hour block on his membership card. this was the penalty for sexually harassing a junior staffer.
to add insult to injury, a leaked recording captured SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford telling MPs to give Grady their backing. Give Grady their backing – not the victim. Conspicuous by her silence was Nicola Sturgeon. Only yesterday, under questioning at Holyrood, did she break cover to address the outrage.
She said Grady’s behaviour was wrong. She apologised to the victim. But her partisan instincts got the better of her. Contrition was soon supplanted by talking points about sexual harassment in other parties.
One comment did stand out. Based on what she had heard about the secretly taped meeting, Sturgeon admitted that ‘more concern was shown for the perpetrator of the behaviour than for its victim’. this was ‘utterly unacceptable’.
the meeting was chaired by her top MP. Does she still have faith in him? If so, the callous talk on the recording was not unacceptable. It was politically inconvenient.
If Blackford no longer retains her confidence, it is incumbent on her to say so. She cannot remain neutral on the actions of the party she leads.
Sturgeon cannot confine herself to warm words and expressions of regret. She must say plainly whether she thinks Blackford’s position is still tenable – or whether he ought to resign over this sordid episode.