With your indulgence, convener.
Good morning, members of the committee. Thank you very much for the opportunity to come and speak to you today. At the outset, I make the fairly obvious point that, although there is a complex set of planning assumptions around what has become known as Brexit, and operational plans exist to mitigate the risks that are associated with it, there are still a lot of unknowns, so it is very difficult for us to predict all the scenarios that we would like to. Not being able to predict everything with the degree of certainty that we would like is an uncomfortable position for us in policing.
I have three very brief observations, which I hope will set out the general context. First, Police Scotland’s planning for and operational response to Brexit has highlighted the benefits of having a single national service. The ability to plan across the country, and to set up intelligence support provisions and the operational assets that we need—including a force reserve of 300 officers that can move flexibly to any part of the country, supported by local, visible community teams that are still strong—has been a bonus for us over the past six to 12 months as we have been planning for Brexit. It has given us capacity and flexibility. One of the biggest operational risks that we have—not least at this time of year, as we enter the winter season—is what we call operational concurrence, which just means a lot of things happening at once. I would be very happy to talk about those risks in detail later in the meeting if members wish me to do so.
We also recognise the public concern that clearly exists around the UK’s exit from the EU. As you highlighted in your introduction, convener, every month, we go to our accountability body, the SPA, to talk as openly as we can about what the police service is doing, our concerns, what we are planning and the mitigations that we are putting in place to protect communities across Scotland.
Secondly, I am now in my 31st year in policing and have been very fortunate to have worked in many different parts of these islands, including in Northern Ireland and London, before I came to Police Scotland. I can say, without hesitation, that the partnership arrangements in Scotland are more mature than the ones that I have experienced in other jurisdictions. Those include the strategic resilience partnership that is chaired by the Deputy First Minister, the local resilience partnerships and the arrangements and relationships among local authorities, police and other category 1 responders under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.
That becomes important as we try to manage the relationship between operational plans and practical delivery. It is easy to have a plan on a piece of paper; it is a lot more difficult to ensure that it works in practice. Those plans have been regularly road tested over the past six months. The multi-agency co-ordination centre, which is housed in a police facility at Bilston Glen, is a very good example in that context, and I would be happy to talk about that in detail if members want me to.
Finally, one of our biggest concerns is the unpredictability of the environment that we currently face in respect of the reaction of the public to rapidly evolving and changing events. In that rapidly changing environment, words and behaviour matter, and the importance of temperate and responsible language and behaviour from people in positions of civic leadership—politicians and anybody who has leadership responsibility in Scotland and more widely—cannot be overstated. People are entitled to express strongly held views, and it is obvious that there is a range of strongly held views on Brexit. Police Scotland will protect the right to express strongly held views, but those views must be expressed peacefully and lawfully.
I end with that obvious point because some of the issues that we have seen recently and some of the language that has been used make it more difficult to police the environment. It is very important that we have an open and transparent debate about that issue, as well.