Angry words of politicians will make it harder to keep order, says police chief
One of Scotland’s most senior police chiefs has warned that inflammatory language used by politicians in the Brexit debate makes it more difficult for officers to “police the environment” as tensions heighten.
Deputy Chief Constable Will Kerr of Police Scotland issued an appeal for a more “temperate and peaceful” approach from all sides of the debate, as he appeared before MSPS.
It came after Prime Minister Boris Johnson came under fire from opposition politicians over his use of the term “Surrender Bill” to refer to opposition Brexit legislation amid claims from female MPS that they felt in danger over the use of aggressive language.
DCC Kerr was appearing before Holyrood’s justice committee today to set out Brexit contingency planning taking place in the force.
But he told MSPS that the country was in a rapidly changing environment, adding: “Words and behaviour matter.”
He said: “The importance of temperate and responsible language from those in positions of civic leadership, from politicians, from anybody who has a degree of leadershipresponsibilityacrossgovernment and wider cannot be overstated.
“People are entitled to express strongly held views and there are a range of obviously strongly held views on this issue.
“Police Scotland will protect that right to express those strongly held views, but they must be expressed peacefully and lawfully.
“Certainly some of the issues we’ve seen recently with the language being used makes it more difficult to police the environment.”
Mr Johnson came under fire over his language during heatedscenesinthecommons last week as he claimed opposition parties were prepared to “betray” the public by seeking to delay Brexit, and called legislation to block a no-deal scenario the “Surrender Act”.
But he has rejected calls to alter his language.
“At a time of political uncertainty, political fragility perhaps, there’s also a risk that those on the extremes are going to look to exploit that situation. We’ve seen some of the evidence of that recently,” DCC Kerr added.
“What we have established right at the outset, and still are maintaining, is an EU exit intelligence cell, so what we can do, as you would expect us to do on your behalf, is open source monitoring, looking at social media commentary, looking at some of the groups who may be on the extreme fringes who may be more inclined to be involved in some of this disorder.
“Part of that intelligence overview and work involves reaching out, as we do on a daily basis, to colleagues in Northern Ireland to see if there’s any associated risk across the Irish Sea. And there are some risks of – I suppose you’d probably describe them as proxy-symptoms – about a rise in hate crime.
“We haven’t seen that in Scotland, unlike our colleagues in England and Wales.”
Mr Kerr added: “Frankly what I’m more concerned about at the moment is not the high-end disorder – I hope I’m not proved wrong in that, if it happens we’ll deal with it as you would expect.
“But it’s actually the low-end disruption that you might get from people being genuinely annoyed, large queues at the borders and at ports, if you end up with some viral image of an empty shelf in a supermarket that all of a sudden within two to three days you could end up with protester concern at supermarkets around food or fuel shortages – that’s the sort of stuff that’s incredibly resource-intensive for us to police.”
Fears of ‘flawed franchise’ as a large number of Scots risk being ineligible for snap election
Hundreds of thousands of Scots are still not registered to vote despite a snap general election being widely expected to take place before the end of the year, The Scotsman can reveal.
So many potential voters are currently missing from the electoral roll that the next Uk-wide poll could be based on a “flawed franchise”, the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) has warned.
The organisation is now calling on the Scottish Government to explore how it can use its powers to ensure more people are signed up to vote in time.
It follows a recent survey by the Electoral Commission that found between 630,000 and 890,000 people in Scotland who are eligible to be on local government registers are not correctly listed,