The point about command and control is essential. A couple of times this morning, people have talked about Police Scotland’s current response to a railway incident, but that position is not going to change in future. At ground level across the United Kingdom, Home Office forces and Police Scotland respond to incidents, as indeed does British Transport Police if it happens to be in the vicinity when there is an issue off the railway. There will actually be no change in that respect at a working level.
We know that that is because of the command and control structure. If a Home Office officer is not quite dealing with an issue in the way that we might have thought, that is because a BTP sergeant or inspector is there, taking control of the situation, providing advice and so on. That happens because there is a dedicated railway control. At the moment, the BTP has two such controls: one that deals with London and the south-east—for obvious reasons—and another in Birmingham that deals with the rest of the country.
As it happens, that control is just across the road from my team. While they are looking after vehicles, policemen and so on, we are looking after trains and passengers, but it is a very close map. When my staff call for assistance and the call goes through to the BTP, there is a single control room where people know what is going on and can respond accordingly. If they need to call on the services of Home Office forces, they do so. That is very clear and it gives confidence to people in the front line and to our control team that the arrangement works.
We need to make sure that that is replicated. The IT and all the other things that support it are important. All I can say is that things are working okay as they are at the moment, but there might be challenges elsewhere. My personal concern is that, despite the merger, Police Scotland still has four control offices. I understand that that number is coming down to three, but I just wonder what will happen when my staff call for assistance. How will we work out whether the call has gone through to Glasgow, Edinburgh or Motherwell? Will somebody take the lead? Will the message be passed on?
That seems a little unclear at the moment—although that might be expected, given that we have not yet gone into that level of detail. However, the point is that we will have three control offices for Scotland and one for the rest of our operations in England and Wales. If we stand back and look at it, we see that the situation does not look as straightforward as it might be when things settle down.