‘Bonkers’ cop job
EACH WEEK THE SUNDAY HERALD PUTS THE MOST CONTENTIOUS ISSUES OF THE DAY UNDER THE MAGNIFYING GLASS TO FIND OUT WHAT’S TRUE, WHAT’S FALSE AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE. TODAY, INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR PAUL HUTCHEON LOOKS AT WHETHER POLICE SCOTLAND PROVIDES THE NA
FORMER Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has accused the Scottish Police Authority of making a “bonkers” decision by hiring a new director on £173,000 a year.
MacAskill said the “super-director” appointment was an “insult” as it implied that other senior figures were “numpties”.
He also said he had changed his mind on how board members at the policing watchdog should be appointed, arguing that Holyrood, not the Government, should have this responsibility.
The SPA appointed David Page as Police Scotland’s first director of corporate services, strategy and change. His salary is in line with what a deputy chief constable earns.
MacAskill said: “I think bringing in this hot-shot finance guy from outside was just bonkers.”
THE Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 sounded modest and technical, but in reality the legislation ushered in a policing revolution.
Under the radical plan, Scotland’s eight “old” police forces – constabularies like Strathclyde, Lothian and Borders, and Grampian – made way for a single organisation, and regional scrutiny boards were abolished in favour of the solitary Scottish Police Authority (SPA).
The Act also created the Police Investigations & Review Commissioner (PIRC), a body tasked with probing serious incidents involving the new single force and reviewing complaint handling.
The single force also commanded cross-party support: the SNP, Labour and the Tories believed the policy was necessary against a backdrop of public-sector cuts.
Four years on from the SNP Government’s most ambitious experiment in public-sector reform, where stands Police Scotland?
At a glance, the single force can point to some successes. The Commonwealth Games went ahead successfully, the Scottish Crime Campus at Gartcosh was opened, and national units covering rape and child protection become operational.
If the official figures can be believed, recorded crime is now at its lowest level since 1974. In the latest batch of statistics, non-sexual crimes of violence were at historically low levels and crimes of dishonesty also fell.
Police Scotland has also been commended for its zero tolerance approach to dealing with domestic abuse.
However, even the staunchest defenders of the force would admit that the last four years have been tough.
In its early days, Police Scotland was hampered by a row over the authorisation given to officers to carry guns and dogged by a scandal over a deeply-flawed stop-andsearch policy.
The force’s struggling call-handling service came under scrutiny and the internal Counter Corruption Unit, set up to weed out “dirty cops”, was shown to be unfit for purpose. The much-vaunted i6 programme – a £60 million computer project – was also abandoned.
Sir Stephen House, the first chief constable of Police Scotland, and his number two, Neil Richardson, both left the force in the wake of negative publicity about the organisation.
However, the main challenge facing the policing service in 2017 and beyond was laid out by Audit Scotland in December.
The force, which has already made huge cuts, faces a potential deficit of £188m. The future seems daunting.
Kenny MacAskill, the former justice secretary who pushed through the single force plan, defended the radical shake-up. “What was the alternative?” he asked. “The alternative was to continue with the regional forces and they would have been in financial disaster. Forces like Fife and Dumfries and Galloway would be on the point of collapse. It was necessary.”
MacAskill said that in view of an increased workload on terrorism and historic sexual abuse, the challenge facing policing is redefining what a police officer is expected to do, rather than structural change.
The former MSP said police should not be dealing with “lost property” or responding to mental health issues “unless there is a threat to public safety”.
He said: “There is going to have to be almost a strategic retreat from some more things.”
MacAskill is of the view that his SNP colleagues in government must show leadership on rethinking the role of a police officer.
He said: “I think the government has got to be a bit more supportive of the police and recognise that there’s going to have to be another change.”
On the personalities, MacAskill believes House got Police Scotland “into gear”, while his successor Phil Gormley has “brought in a period of stability.”
However, he said of the current leadership at Police Scotland: “I think at some stage they have got to take the next move forward.”
Graeme Pearson, who used to be the director general of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, supported the creation of a single force but was critical of its implementation when he was a Labour MSP. “The changes have reorganised policing, but they have not reformed the way policing has been done,” he said.
He is on the same wavelength as MacAskill, his one-time political opponent, in calling for greater modernisation of the service:
I think the government has got to be a bit more supportive of the police and recognise that there’s going to have to be another change
“Police officers, when they turn up at things, should be the best-advised public servants. They should have the information on their hand-held devices – all the sorts of things that makes the delivery of the service smooth.
“When you deal with Amazon, there is a smoothness with the way they deal with the transaction. They know who you are when you come on. You don’t need to tell them again. And yet when you deal with the police over a more important matter, it’s like they have never heard of you.”
Asked whether the single force had been a success, he said: “Not yet. I’m disappointed at the slow development of what Police Scot- land should mean to communities across Scotland.”
Calum Steele, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, has been another critic of the force, but he also defended its creation: “There really was no practical alternative to dealing with the scale of the financial challenge for policing.”
He believes Police Scotland had been successful in providing a national capacity in specialist crime investigations, but said the new set up had not been good for local policing.
“I would have a much greater look at the local arrangements,” he said: “The force created a sense of loss of identity within local communities that the service is still struggling with.”
Steele also said officers had been “falling out of love” with Police Scotland, explaining: “They are frustrated by organisational bull***t.”
Moi Ali, until recently an SPA board member, said the new policing regime was implemented too quickly in 2013. “There was a big rush and a deadline date and then it all happened,” she said. “Four years on, there is still not a strategy in place.
“For a big merger of that size, you can’t rush it.”
However, if there are mixed views on the performance of Police Scotland, there is a consensus on the failings of the SPA, whose board members are appointed by the government.
As the national oversight body, the SPA was supposed to scrutinise the force and provide sound financial stewardship.
Not only has the SPA presided over large deficits, but its first chairman, Vic Emery, resigned amid an internal revolt. A new policy on holding committee meetings in private, under new chair Andrew Flanagan, has fuelled a perception of crisis.
MacAskill, despite being the architect of the new policing set up, conceded the SPA had encountered difficulties: “At one stage it was dysfunctional between Steve [House] and Vic [Emery], but I think everything worked out all right. But I’m not sure there is any relationship between [new SPA chair] Flanagan and Gormley.”
He is also critical of the SPA decision to hire a new director of corporate services, strategy and change on a salary of around £173,000 – more than either the First Minister or Prime Minister:
“I think bringing in this hot-shot finance guy from outwith was just bonkers. I’m not sure what that did other than imply that they were all a bunch of numpties at a senior level.”
MacAskill now believes SPA board appointments should be made by Holyrood, not ministers. “I think that would be a good thing. I think there is a point to that and that would help it. I would have no problem with that at all.”
Pearson also criticised the watchdog: “The SPA has been a very poor organisation to instil governance. There hasn’t been a great deal of accountability over the last four or five years.”
While he gave Police Scotland a mark of “four out of 10” for its performance, Pearson awarded the SPA a derisory “two” since its inception. He also reiterated his call for parliament, not the government, to appoint the board.
Steele has also been unimpressed with the SPA which has “not been a success”, he said. “It needs to change its approach and it needs to be much more engaging with the considerations of local communities.”
He added: “The former [regional] boards, while they may not have been particularly effective, were seen as legitimate. The SPA, while arguably more effective, is arguably less legitimate.”
Mo Ali, who quit the SPA earlier this year amid a row over her speaking out about watchdog secrecy plans, said she agreed that the government should lose the power to appoint board members: “I’m not in favour of ministerial involvement – it makes appointments political. I don’t think that’s appropriate. We are there to bring an independent view and the way to do that is to have an independent public appointments process.”
The third leg of the new policing set-up – the PIRC – also divides opinion. When Sierra Leonean man Sheku Bayoh died after an encounter with police in Kirkcaldy in 2015, the investigatory body’s performance was thrust under the spotlight.
Aamer Anwar, the lawyer who represents the Bayoh family, said of the organisation: “Members of the PIRC’s staff have all the powers and privileges of a constable throughout Scotland including powers to detain, arrest, question, obtain warrants and seize evidence as productions. However, these powers are useless if they are, in fact, never used.”
Anwar also questioned the presence of retired police officers in the organisation: “From many who have dealt with PIRC the real issue of concern appears to be the attitude and ‘independence’ of those investigating on behalf of PIRC who, in the senior investigating positions, are overwhelmingly ex-police officers.”
However, Steele, while equally critical of PIRC, takes the opposite view to Anwar: “I don’t believe the PIRC has worked. The PIRC has taken an unnecessarily adversarial approach to the investigation of police complaints. It has not treated police officers fairly.”
Policing was never a top-order political issue before 2013, but the single force has attracted an unforgiving amount of scrutiny from Holyrood and the media.
A combination of further cuts, creaking infrastructure and low morale is likely to keep Police Scotland in the public eye.