Criminal Justice Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Official Report 748KB pdf

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Policing and Mental Health

The next agenda item is consideration of correspondence from Police Scotland, the Scottish Police Authority, the Scottish Police Federation and the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents on policing and mental health. I refer members to paper 4 and invite comments on the correspondence, any suggested follow-up that members wish to see and the proposed actions set out in paragraphs 24 and 25.

Before members come in, for the record, I say that I am pleased that we have had the opportunity to consider this important issue and that there is support for the work on policing and mental health, and support for it to continue and develop. As such, the proposed actions in the paper are, I feel, a way to ensure that the work continues. Indeed, I know that the SPA is keen to have a role in that.

With that, I am happy to open up the discussion to members.

I absolutely welcome the fact that this issue is being talked about. However, the Scottish Police Federation makes some quite worrying points about the position of Police Scotland, which it describes as

“defensive, in denial and suggests ‘nothing to see here’.”

That chimes with my experience of trying to raise a number of cases of suicide of police officers, where we have established that none were the subject of fatal accident inquiries. Police Scotland does not record the numbers of deaths, let alone carry out any form of inquiry into them. In their responses, Police Scotland and the SPA still do not seem to be addressing that.

I know that it is uncomfortable, but the officers and former officers who have come forward to me who have either considered taking their own lives or attempted to take their own lives, or the families of those who indeed have taken their own lives, all draw direct links to the officer’s experience of the lack of support from the police. We are talking about issues that are due to what police officers have experienced or, even worse, to protracted regulatory or disciplinary processes that they feel were unfair or unjust to the point at which they were in such dire straits and such a desperate mental state that they believed that suicide was the only option.

As shocking as that is, in many of these cases, the individuals made their feelings known to Police Scotland. If we think back to when the issue first arose at the committee a couple of years ago, the responses from Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority set alarm bells ringing. For all that they appear to say all the right things about consideration of the wellbeing of officers, which is great, they are falling well short of acknowledging the scale of the damage that has been done, which could yet cause serious problems.

On action plans, we have a response from the Crown Office explaining that none of the cases has been subject to a fatal accident inquiry. Is there any mechanism that we can explore to give an officer who has died from suicide the same rights as someone who has died in custody and who is therefore automatically subject to a fatal accident inquiry? In the cases that I am aware of, such an inquiry would highlight serious issues about the pressure that those officers were under. I do not want to point fingers or lay blame, but I want us to realise how serious the situation is and learn from it. If we do a superficial exercise, nothing will change.

We have taken some notes on that, so we will come back to it.

I want to start with the section on Police Scotland. It is a great summary, and I thank the clerks for it.

Page 4 of paper 4 suggests actions, and they seem to be that we ask the SPA to do some work. We first need to take a step back and go straight back to Police Scotland. Paragraphs 5 to 8 of paper 4 show that the committee—I am now putting this on the public record—is unhappy with Police Scotland’s response and we have more than enough opportunity to go back to Police Scotland.

Paragraph 5 states:

“The response does not include an explanation as to why the officers who the Committee spoke to did not receive the expected standard of advice and support.”

In paragraph 6, we complain that Police Scotland’s response does not address key issues that the committee raised. In paragraph 7, we also say that the point about

“the inadequacy of the employee assistance line”

is not addressed. In paragraph 8, the committee requests details about when

“the court scheduling system redesign will be in place”

and say that that information has also not been provided.

Therefore, Police Scotland has not responded to some very specific things, and we should give it a second chance to do so before we escalate the questions. I am happy to include the SPA in our correspondence, but we should go straight to Police Scotland and explain that we are unhappy with its response. Let us be up-front about that, uncomfortable thought it might be.

We could also include the challenges that the SPF has raised. I know that Police Scotland will read the response from the SPF but, if Police Scotland is not asked to answer that, it does not have to and probably will not. I would like Police Scotland to respond directly to the concerns raised by the SPF, such as the one mentioned in paragraph16, which is that

“the SPA bases its oversight on evidence provided by Police Scotland”

but not necessarily by officers directly.

That is a key point. In other words, the SPA seems to be marking its own homework by responding to evidence given to it only by Police Scotland, which is, of course, accountable to it, but not necessarily by going directly to staff associations or organisations to get feedback. We need to sanity check whether what the SPA is hearing from Police Scotland marries up with the truth on the ground. That is perhaps a criticism of the SPA.

Paragraph 17 refers to specific complaints about

“the strategic commitment to wellbeing from Police Scotland”

and the mainstreaming of that policy. It notes that the SPF believes that there is

“either a failure to operationalise the programme or a failure to operationalise the right programme.”

Again, we could invite Police Scotland or the SPA to respond to that.

11:30  

I do not disagree with what we are asking the SPA to do around data collection and how it could better engage with officers and their representatives from the union or otherwise on whether that could be beefed up, as those are valid points, but they are not necessarily the main criticisms that we want to pose.

Although the paper is quite short, the committee has clearly expressed our unhappiness at the response that we have had from Police Scotland. I think that we need to challenge that. That is my only plea.

I agree with Jamie Greene, in particular regarding paragraph 16, which states that

“The SPF raises a concern that the SPA bases its oversight on evidence provided by Police Scotland”,

and that the SPF does not have much input. I agree that we should take up that point.

I do not agree so much with Jamie Greene’s first point about going back to Police Scotland. We have been there, and Police Scotland knows that we are not happy with the response, as does the SPA. The SPA governs Police Scotland, so the onus is on the SPA to get this right for the police and for us, and to give us the information.

Paragraph 11 states:

“In response to the Committee’s request, the SPA undertook an urgent review of the number of cases where officers and staff retired due to mental ill health ... The SPA confirms in their response that additional resources have been assigned and are having a positive impact on reducing the number of officers awaiting approval”.

We have had no update on that urgent review, so we do not know what the outcome was.

Paragraph 11 goes on to note that

“The SPA’s People Committee is to consider the outcomes of the review at its meeting of 28 February”.

It might be timely, therefore, for us to contact the SPA and ask what the outcome of the review was. I am not sure of the value of going back to Police Scotland, because I think that we will just get the same response.

Does anyone else want to come in quickly?

I have a quick question on paragraph 16, to which Jamie Greene and Rona Mackay both referred. There is perhaps a more fundamental issue about the creation of Police Scotland, which is coming up to its 10th birthday. The short history of both the SPA and Police Scotland has been tumultuous, to say the least. At the very beginning, there were serious questions about both the ability and the willingness of the SPA to hold Police Scotland sufficiently to account, and indeed, in the early days, about political meddling, which has now been pretty much acknowledged.

I go back to the specific issue. In May 2021, the committee raised the issue of officer suicides. In September 2021, we got a letter in which the SPA said that, based on the information that was available at the time, there was nothing to suggest that any of the recent cases was caused directly by the pressure of work.

The SPA took the information from Police Scotland—it took Police Scotland at its word. That response was disingenuous, to say the least because, in some of those cases, the officers had made known their difficulties with the on-going processes that they were being put through.

That one brief letter highlights the problem of the SPA showing a lack of curiosity, or robustness, in respect of holding Police Scotland to account and asking difficult questions about difficult subjects.

I see that no one else wants to come in.

I thank members for their comments, which are all perfectly valid. I will try to summarise the points that have been made. Russell Findlay raised some key issues around the commentary on police suicides and some of the previous responses that we have had, including the correspondence from the Crown Office on police suicides.

Jamie Greene proposed that we go back to Police Scotland to ask further questions, including on the Scottish Police Federation’s comments. Please correct me if I have picked that up wrongly—I have been scribbling down notes. Some other issues have been raised, too.

Part of the reason for the actions that have been set out in paper 4 is that I do not want us to simply get into a chain of correspondence. However, in view of the comments and points that have been made, I ask members to indicate whether they are happy for us to go back to Police Scotland on the specific issues that have been highlighted. Are members happy for us to take that away as an action?

In the letter that we send, could we perhaps ask for some more data? When we had a police witness before us, we asked about the number of officer suicides. He said that he would come back to us, but he has not done so. We have since corresponded with the police, but they have shown no sign of providing that information. Therefore, I suggest that we ask specifically for that information, and that we ask how many of those officers were subject to on-going internal processes.

I would also like to know, in the light of the fact that we have raised the matter publicly and in writing with the SPA and Police Scotland, whether they have revisited the SPA’s acceptance that there is

“nothing to see here”,

when, in fact, it is clear that there is something to see.

Thank you for your proposal, convener, which I think is a good move. I agree—I do not think that there is any merit in getting into a game of letter tennis, but if it gets to the point where we are expressing unhappiness about the responses that we are getting, we cannot simply park the issue.

There is another issue on which we could ask for a more regular update—that of officer retirement and churn, which is an issue that I have struggled to get information on. I appreciate that the police do their own analysis on officers who exit the force—there will be exit interviews and so on. I have chucked some questions on that into the system, but it has been very difficult to obtain data. It is important that we get that data so that we can get underneath the skin of why people are retiring. Is that simply to do with early retirement and changes to the rules around that, or are there mental health and physical health issues at play? What reasons are being given? Are we keeping a watching brief on the churn rate relative to the number of officers in the system, the average age and so on?

The police or the Government should make an effort to be proactive in keeping the committee informed of the data in that regard. It does not matter what it tells us, but we need to know what picture it paints, because that will have a massive effect on the number of officers available.

I agree. I think that it is really important that, alongside whatever we decide to do, we support clear arrangements around data collection, because that is fundamental to tracking progress on the range of issues that we have highlighted.

I agree with what you have said about data collection—that is crucial. I have no objection to our going back to Police Scotland; I simply the question the worth of that.

I definitely think that we should go back to the SPA to get an update on the review that it is doing. We should also ask about the point that is made in paragraph 16 of our paper, which is about why the SPF does not really have a voice at SPA meetings and why the SPA takes Police Scotland’s evidence as read. In other words, we should ask the SPA how robust it is being with its governance. I would like us to see whether we get anywhere with that.

I am happy with that suggestion.

I ask members for an indication of their view on going back to Police Scotland to ask some further questions. Rona, I know that you—[Interruption.] Do members agree that we should do that?

Members indicated agreement.

Do members agree with the actions that are in the paper in relation to the SPA? Those actions have an important role. Despite some of our comments and views on the SPA in our scrutiny, are we nonetheless happy to accept the proposed actions?

Members indicated agreement.

I will bring in Stephen Imrie in case I have missed anything; I do not think that I have.

No; we are fairly clear on writing a letter to Police Scotland on the various issues that have been raised, and on taking forward the actions in paragraphs 24 and 25.

I put on the record that His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland has just issued its terms of reference for a thematic review into policing mental health in Scotland, and it is due to publish that, according to its initial report, in July. Presumably, it is asking the same questions that we are asking, and it will perhaps have greater access to a lot of this stuff than we do. In the context of all this, that is vital.

That is a helpful update. Thanks for that.

Before we conclude the item, I place on record the committee’s thanks to David Hamilton, chair of the Scottish Police Federation, for bringing the issue to our attention. As we know, David is moving on from that role, so on behalf of the committee, I wish him well in his future endeavours and whatever challenges he moves on to.