Agenda item 5 is our final evidence-taking session on the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill at stage 1 before we hear from the cabinet secretary. I am sure that members are all sorry to hear that.
Yes. I declare that I am a member of the City of Edinburgh Council.
I am so sorry, Colin—I should say that Martin’s surname is actually Greig, not Grieg. I was thinking of the composer.
The culture committee beckons, convener. [Laughter.]
Indeed. Now, people, we are all going to settle down—me included.
We have started off well this morning, convener.
I will begin, but I am sure that others will want to chip in. As I understand it, the process that you have described varies slightly in different ways between different boards. In Lothian and Borders, for example, we have beefed up support to the board by ensuring that it can seek independent advice and research when looking at reports. We are also aware of the Scottish policing performance framework, which provides information across the different board areas that we can use for background comparison.
Another gauge is best-value reviews, which have been carried out by Audit Scotland and Her Majesty’s inspector on quite a number of the boards in the past three years. A lot of weight was laid on the challenge to chief constables, the contribution to strategic vision and the way in which board members engaged. Northern joint police board came across well in that process.
Yesterday I contributed to our best-value audit—we were the last in line—so I must be fairly consistent with my responses. The best scrutineer—as far as boards are concerned—is the unitary authority.
In the accountability process there are situations where security clearance of particular members of a police board is set at a low level. Previous evidence has suggested that there is very little of the required accountability in police boards, because of the security level. Can I have your comments on that?
Grampian Police and Grampian joint police board did very well out of the BV2 audit. The board was commended for robustly and vigorously holding the chief constable to account, while representing the views of the three local authority areas across the north-east. No problems around vetting have come up.
Good morning. Like John Finnie, I declare an interest as a holder of a police pension.
You mentioned in passing calling for reports. Do you have a specific example?
We had a difficulty with the ports unit at Stranraer when the Scottish Government reduced its police staffing levels. The authority recognised that there was an issue and called for specific reports that looked at the matter along with the UK Border Agency.
I will sum up the position. Although people may have some concerns about the fact that boards largely get their reports from the chief constable, I assure you that my board calls for reports. I can think of three or four issues from the past few meetings, including concerns relating to police station front counters and some additional work that was carried out on the potential reforms to combine the Lothian and Borders Police mounted section with the Strathclyde Police mounted section and best-value issues. More important were the reports on issues such as the use of regulation A19 of the Police Pensions Regulations 1987 to retire police officers after 30 years and voluntary redundancy schemes. The board is proactive on a whole host of matters.
My understanding is that our convener and vice-convener have had additional vetting. I do not know at what level, but the issue was raised with us.
I take on board what my colleagues have said, and in Fife we are proactive in bringing forward things that we want to hear about from the chief constable and the police service. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, we have to rely on the chief constable and the police service to give us factually correct information. We cannot start to query that.
Councillors Whyte and Ross made the point that some people on police boards are vetted. Does the fact that only a limited number of people are vetted to a particular level show the inadequacies of the police board system in relation to full accountability?
It is important to bear it in mind that we are democratically elected representatives. We are not professionals; we are there in a lay position to represent the public. We are not, and should not try to be, professionals, because we are there to represent the average citizen on the street.
Mr Keir has asked an important question. I do not think that “inadequate” is a fair word to use to describe the current situation. There is a balance to be struck in relation to operational needs. Councillor Greig mentioned counterterrorism and serious and organised crime, on which it would be inappropriate for us to know as much as the chief constable and the senior officers know. The balance involves what is publicly accessible, what we can discuss in the police board setting and who is vetted.
I am interested in the panel’s views on the bill’s proposals for national governance. We have heard contrasting views from previous panels about whether the proposed number of members of the Scottish police authority—between seven and 11—is anywhere near adequate. We have also heard different views on whether elected local authority members should be represented on that board. I would be interested to hear a range of views from the panel.
I start by echoing our written submission. We were looking at having a larger board size than seven to 11 members, which is based on our experience. My board—Lothian and Borders police board—has 18 members, which works reasonably well. If that was slimmed down, running committees and so on would become difficult. A board of seven to 11 members would be rather tight; we recommend having more members.
Do you have a proportion in mind? Would such people form a majority or a minority?
We did not come to a view on that. Other witnesses might have their own views.
The number of members of the board is interesting but not a killer. My own submission is that it should have 13 members. I am prepared to live with 11 as I do not think that that figure represents an insurmountable problem.
The important point is what the police service is for. The main thrust of what the police do in Scotland is community-based local policing, so it is fundamental that people who have a democratic mandate, legitimacy and accountability at local level are on the national police authority. We are directly elected for wards and we directly represent councils on police authorities. It is important because of the nature of policing that there are people on the national police authority who have that local relevance.
On the proposed number of members on the authority being between seven and 11, our own police authority has 11 members, so we work with that system now. Given the geographic spread of Dumfries and Galloway, travelling is difficult at times. Resilience is therefore an issue, as it can be difficult to get enough members to have a meaningful board meeting. Our view as a local authority was that probably anything up to 15 members would be appropriate. Although we as conveners did not come to a decision about whether there should be a majority of conveners on the police authority, my own local authority supports the suggestion that there should be a majority of local authority members.
The number of members that is being proposed is much too small. There is a very significant democratic deficit in the new set-up, because policing is a local government function. We rely on community policing to operate according to the principle of policing by consent. That means that decisions on budgets and performance relating to police forces need to be made locally.
You were all getting on so well.
The point is that we fight for our local areas. The value of the local boards is that we have somebody to bang the drum for policing in our areas. There will be no access to a remote quango of seven to 14 people, so people will no longer be able to influence police resources or police performance issues.
I have a feeling that you have undermined the case for having councillors on the SPA—there would be a scrap about whether money should go to the north or to Dumfries and Galloway. I would be batting for Dumfries and Galloway—I used to live in Minnigaff, so I know what Councillor Blake is talking about.
We just heard a very impassioned speech for the north-east, yet, as was pointed out earlier, for the main board people go in and leave their geographical allegiances at the door. That is part of the problem: how do we square that circle?
Yes, that was my point. We will let you mull over that, Councillor Greig.
I was just going to ask a follow-up, actually.
I think Alison was going to pursue it. Can we let her do that, as she opened this up? I will put you on my list, David.
I want to pick up on something that was said about the resolution of local plans, the interface between the national board and the proposed local arrangements and how silent the bill is on some of those points. If panel members could elaborate on what they would like to see to improve the situation, that would be helpful.
We will come back to that one. David, do you want to go back to the question of representation on the SPA that was opened up?
I just wanted to ask a question that might be appropriately directed in the first instance to Councillor Whyte, although other members of the panel might have a view. Members will recall that last year there was considerable controversy about forensic services and the proposals to close police labs in different parts of Scotland. I think, Councillor Whyte, that that directly affected Lothian and Borders because of the Howden Hall lab. You were also a member of the SPSA, so in a sense one might say that the sort of conflict of interest highlighted in the previous question might have arisen. That might be the case for some others on the panel, too. Will you describe how you managed to leave your hat at the door and come to a national view that might not necessarily have been favoured by your colleagues on the Lothian and Borders police board?
Focus on conflicts on interest, please. Forensic services are a good example.
Two of us—me and Councillor Kay—are members of the board of the SPSA. By virtue of the way in which we are appointed to that board, we are required to work corporately and to take the interests of the SPSA and its efficiency into account rather than anything else that we bring with us. Although we bring knowledge and experience of policing governance from elsewhere, we are required to take the interests of the SPSA into account. When we considered such matters, I was required to consider them in the interests of efficiency across Scotland, but not necessarily in the way that I would have done so with colleagues had we been lobbying the case for having a lab in the city of Edinburgh available for direct use by police officers from Lothian and Borders.
Will you remind me of the composition of the SPSA and the balance between councillors and non-councillors?
There are two councillors who are conveners—myself and Councillor Kay—two chief constables and five independent board members, including the convener. We are all appointed by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice but four of us are stakeholders of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland and the Scottish police authorities conveners forum.
Sorry. Councillor Kay, did you want to say anything?
I do not think that I ever had any conflict of interest. Fife does not have a forensic lab, nor does it need one.
That made it easy for you, then. That does not help you.
We have the facilities in Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow at our disposal, depending on where exactly the case happens. I would echo what Iain Whyte said: it is essential that the board of the SPSA—and that of the SPA, as we go forward—takes into account what is best for Scotland, what is best for forensic services in Scotland and, finally, what is best for police services in Scotland, rather than maintaining the geographical entity just because it happens to be in Edinburgh.
Councillor Curran, you wanted to come in on this point about conflicts of interest.
Councillors deal with conflicts of interest every week in the bodies and boards that they sit on. For example, my police authority board in Strathclyde has 12 councillors on it but, collectively, we are Strathclyde police authority, covering half of Scotland, rather than individual councillors. That is an important point: when you are in that meeting, you have the wider perspective. We could bring that to the national board in a way that independent members with a particular interest or hobby-horse perhaps could not.
I will move on to Alison McInnes, who wanted to ask a different question.
Just to finish the debate, Councillor Greig has been accused of undermining the case for elected members on the national board—
I alluded to that.
To be fair to Councillor Greig, he might want to come back on that. I think that he was making the case for how effective the existing police boards have been rather than arguing about the proposed new national board.
He has not indicated, but he can chip in if he feels that he must defend his corner.
I wanted to come in with a comment on the SPSA that relates to the point that has just been made. A centralised body such as the SPSA or the SPA needs a clear understanding of its policies on crime fighting. We already have in place excellent policies and an excellent business model in the north-east.
You have certainly punched for the north-east today, I will tell you that.
I take completely the opposite view from Martin Greig. [Laughter.]
At last the truth is out.
We are all taking political stances of one sort or t’other, but if you asked the professionals about the particular instance that Councillor Greig mentioned, they would say that the north-east of Scotland would not be hit one wee bit if there was not a lab there. The area would still get the same service that it gets from Dundee, day after day, week after week and month after month.
I will move on from what seems to be developing into a feud. Alison McInnes has another question.
I have another question about the interface between the national board and local arrangements and the local authority committees under the proposals in the bill. The bill does not go into great detail about how any difficulties—for example, between the national policing plan and whatever was in the local plan—would be resolved. Have panel members had a chance to think about that?
The important thing is that it is not just about numbers in a room. There is a real focus on the number of people who might be able to participate, which can be important, but the crucial thing is the substance and influence that those people have. There is no clarity on that as yet.
I will take Councillor Whyte, followed by Councillor Greig and then Councillor Kay. Do you want me to move you apart from each other yet, or have you made it up?
Do I need to sit between them?
You can sit in the middle if necessary.
Alison McInnes is right that the bill does not say anything about structures. I was asked the same question at the Local Government and Regeneration Committee. The panel that I was on at that meeting had a lot of policing professionals and some outside people, but I do not think that any of us said that we should have fixed dispute resolution procedures. The problem with those is that we would get into dispute resolution very quickly. However, we do have to have political and other mechanisms to resolve things.
The local aspect is an important issue. We currently have three divisions in the north-east and the new set-up would create almost three chief constable areas from the three divisions. I believe that there is a significant risk ahead of us because divisional commanders will be responsible through the command-and-control structure to their chief constable but will also in some way be accountable to their local authorities, so they could be pulled in two directions. That is a real concern, particularly when all the key decisions will be made by the chief constable and the new Scottish police authority.
Fife’s being a unitary authority means that I sometimes have difficulty understanding the problems that boards have, because Fife does not really have such problems. As the pathfinder group goes forward, I hope that it will model the system that Ian Blake and I have in our unitary authorities and consider how we deal with problems between the chief constable and the chief executive—that is difficult—
That was recorded. There was no point in whispering it.
I look forward to boards and local authorities looking to the Fife model, as part and parcel of the pathfinder group.
I will briefly go back to something that George Kay said—today must be a day for going against George—
That happens every day.
George Kay said that we are all here to relay our political stances. I am not here to relay any political stance; I am here with a mandate from my board, which is cross party, to put forward its views.
Councillor Blake has made an important point. People in Scotland want to know what the police in their area do. They also want to know how much resource the local police have, but if the money is controlled at national level, where is the scrutiny of the 32 councils’ local policing arrangements?
I have a list of members who want to ask questions; I will take you in order, because people have been waiting a long time [Interruption.] I see that Rod Campbell wants to be in the list. You are too polite; you must be more brusque with me.
Let us be brusque, in that case. I want to cover three areas: budgets and staff numbers, national accountability and the democratic deficit, and local arrangements.
The question relates to what the budget is actually spent on. Some 88 per cent goes on officers and staff. We know that savings have to be made in terms of reform this year, never mind next year. There is a different balance in different areas—there are eight different balances across the country. For example, Strathclyde Police has 2,000 staff to 8,000 police officers and Lothian and Borders Police has 1,500 staff to 2,500 officers. That means that, if it is the staff that bear the brunt of the reform through voluntary redundancy, Lothian and Borders Police will take a much bigger hit, pro rata, than other parts of Scotland.
This is precisely where the strictures that the Government has placed on police authorities and on the reform programme are causing a problem: the number of police officers has been specified and there are to be no compulsory redundancies. As you heard from Councillor Curran, around 85 per cent to 90 per cent of the forces’ budgets goes on staffing costs, which leaves us very few options. Furthermore, many of us have already made efficiency savings. Over the lifetime of our board, we have made efficiency savings of £20 million on a budget that is now about £170 million, which is a considerable saving. We have already considered all the hard choices. It is difficult to see how we will go about producing the savings, without being given some leeway.
It will be important to be able to monitor resources in the way that has been done before. People will want to know what is happening to their assets—not just the officers and staff, but the buildings. The police reform programme promises great savings, but those figures have not been related to local impact. It is getting close to the time when people need to know how those savings will affect us in our local police forces.
What we do in relation to the budget will depend very much on the progress we will make in the next 10 to 12 months. If, in that period, we make an early appointment of the chief constable and the chair and membership of the SPA, the situation would have a completely different flavour from the one that it would have if we made the appointments at the end of the year. If we make them at the end of the year, the chief constable and the board will be able to consider only what we need from 1 April 2013. However, if the appointments are made earlier, there will be an opportunity to look at the budgets. If the appointments happen later, it might be wise to leave the budget exactly as if it were going to the local authorities, with the same sums of money. In that case, we should not change anything in the budgets—we should do only what is required for 1 April 2013. As I said, the issue depends on exactly when the key positions are filled and operational, and whether that happens in time to make the decisions.
At an earlier meeting, the Auditor General raised the notion of democratic governance at national level. He talked about how the relationships between the minister, the convener, the board and the chief constable will operate. From your experience of the SPSA and how it has been governed in the past few years, are there any lessons that we should bear in mind? Is there a role for Parliament or for any other organisation in calling the new single police force to account?
For me, the big thing that is missing is how local communities will hold the new police service to account. Although we will have local committees, we do not know how much power they will have. At present, the boards set the budget for the chief constable and monitor that on behalf of local communities, and we hold the chief constable to account for their performance. One important thing that we do is dip sample complaints. We also appoint diversity lay advisers and lay custody visitors. There is a host of checks and balances at local level. The service is made to account locally for the ethos of policing in each neighbourhood. I do not understand how we will get those democratic checks and balances in the new system.
Part of the role of parliamentary committees is to hold ministers to account in a cross-party way. It is a backstop. I do not suggest that that is the way we will go on this issue, but we do that already, I hope.
Would you stop ministers interfering in operational matters? I do not know. Who would judge that?
I do not answer questions here. I just ask them.
I put it as a hypothetical question for the committee to consider.
I do not want to interfere with the flow of question and answers, but I am conscious of the time. The witnesses are giving us interesting information, but I ask them and the questioners for shorter questions and answers, because we have a big agenda to get through. I apologise to the members who are at the end of the queue.
I presume that all the local checks and balances that Councillor Whyte rehearsed could be maintained under the new arrangement, overseen by the local committees.
That is possible, but the key thing at present is the power to appoint the chief constable and the power to get rid of them if they do something wrong. There is also the power to set the budget and elements of the budget. Those are the meaningful bits, but they are being taken away from the local level and local authorities.
The issue is really that we should find out what we can learn from the SPSA. There is a clear lesson to learn about transparency. I make a heartfelt plea for the SPA to meet in public and to publish its minutes, agendas and all of its business. The current tripartite arrangement is not a very neat-looking solution, but it works very well. What is at risk in the future is policing by consent as a local government function, so transparency will help to give some kind of reassurance and safeguard to communities.
On Councillor Greig’s point and regarding local divergence, could I get one word on how many times a year each of the local authorities that are represented here meet their chief constable in open public forums?
Every meeting is held in public. Only specific items that perhaps have commercial confidentiality—
How many times a year is that?
The board meets roughly every six weeks, and there are open committees. We also try to move around Strathclyde and not meet only in Glasgow, which is obviously the most central point for people. However, it is important to be seen to be out and about and to try to engage more fully with communities, as came through in the best-value reports. That would be difficult for a national authority to do without buy-in from local councils at policing-arrangement level.
All Northern joint police board’s meetings are in public, are publicly webcast and are archived, so there is full access to our meetings.
Rather than go round everybody individually, can you just confirm that all your meetings with chief constables are in public?
Yes.
Yes.
How often do the meetings happen? How often do you call the chief constable to account?
We probably meet five or six times a year.
The meetings are six times a year in every local authority.
I think Grampian joint police board meetings take place between eight and 10 times a year, and we circulate around the three local authorities. We also have, I think, four complaints and four best-value committee meetings. However, those are often augmented and there are many other committees as well.
I agree with Martin Greig that it is not just about the eight times a year that we meet formally. The Fife committee has 20-odd meetings in which we appear in public together and answer questions.
In Dumfries and Galloway, we have board meetings monthly that alternate between police and fire. In effect, there could be between six and 12 meetings a year.
Thank you for those answers. I understand the point about localities, which we are focusing on at the moment. The quality of the meetings is as important as the quantity, in some respects. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said to us a few weeks ago that it holds about 10 meetings a year—which seems to be about what you guys do—that are open and accountable and to which the public can come. They hold the meetings in different parts of Northern Ireland.
I thought that we had dealt pretty well with that issue, Humza. There is no consensus about the balance between councillors and experts, but there is consensus that there must be both experts and councillors on the SPA.
I suppose the question is this: who are the experts?
Do the witnesses have specific suggestions?
On elected members, the English police authorities have a 50:50 split or a 49:51 split, depending on the authority. I was in Vancouver recently, where I went to see the police authority, which is split in the same sort of way. Those authorities appoint people who have experience in finance, human relations, strategy and so on. All the professional expertise that is needed to run a Government or local authority will be reflected in the police boards in some manner, shape or form.
I agree with Councillor Kay’s point about professionals. The only other suggestion that I would throw in for the current reform is that there be someone with change management experience.
You mean “transition” management. [Laughter.]
I am being enticed to ask why you have never wanted MSPs on the SPA, but I do not think that I should ask.
MSPs are barred.
It is about the separation of powers.
Indeed.
It is clear from the answers to my question that there is divergence in local approaches. Some meetings are webcast, all are open, some take place six times a year, and some take place 10 times a year. You work with local circumstances, and you no doubt do that very well.
That is why the approach in the bill has been taken. The Government wants more councillors to be involved in local accountability, but there is no guarantee that that will happen. That is the risk. In some places, the pathfinders have the same number of councillors. There is a risk that the bill’s saying nothing about that means that it is worth less.
It is important that there is not a large and ineffective talking shop; there needs to be something with substance and influence. The real test will be whether it has those—reassurance on that is needed. Clarity in the bill might give such reassurance.
The concern is that the SPA and the chief constable will make the key decisions about resources and deployment of officers, so local committees will have a passive-reactive role in scrutinising what has happened rather than a role in driving forward the priorities for local policing in their areas.
I cannot see any of you gentlemen being passive and reactive for one moment. You seem to be quite robust.
That is our job.
Mr Yousaf is right to ask about local matters. There is the suggestion that local committees should mirror community planning partnerships. Conveners who represent wider areas are asked to visit local community planning partnerships throughout the board areas. I have been around them; they are not democratic, but are full of chief executives of organisations.
Absolutely.
There is a big democratic deficit at local level. We do not want to be prescriptive about how local committees are brought together, but I make the plea that they be truly representative and democratic.
Perhaps we have touched on the point that I am about to make; the convener can tell me not to pursue it further. Is the difficulty that we must have either all 32 authorities or none represented? People will gun for their areas. As much as people like to take off their geographical hats, it seems that it is difficult for them to do it, as has been somewhat exemplified.
Do not open up that issue again; they have all become friends again. Councillor Kay and Councillor Greig are happy again, so do not stir things up.
Good morning. From your experience, where is the boundary between operational independence and proper scrutiny and accountability? Has that caused you difficulties in practice?
The simple answer is that everything costs money and we can ask questions about everything, because we are responsible for the budget and we are the employers. We employ everybody who delivers the service. It is therefore difficult for operational excuses to be put forward if we want to ask questions.
I might take a slightly different view from the view that Stephen Curran takes. A question is raised in my submission. We have to define at an early stage what is and is not operational. Regardless of how nice we might think a certain toilet paper is, it is quite feasible that the chief constable might decide that its purchase is an operational matter, so we would no longer have responsibility for it. It is essential that we sit down early and define “operational”. I am sure that there will be a grey area in the middle, but there should be a discussion, because it is important that the SPA or a local board does not get stymied.
Operational independence is crucial. I want to flag up a concern about the new reformed structure, which is intended to increase the number of councillors who are involved in decisions about policing. I am concerned that the new committees could politicise policing by creating substantive council committees that are based on the political complexion of a local authority area. Holding your local commander to account could involve questioning operational activities and policing campaigns and, as a council committee, people could take political perspectives on policing matters. That is a real danger that must be considered for the future.
I will use the example of the climate camp at Gogarburn, the public furore around that and the number of police officers who were seen by the press to be standing back and not taking action. It was not for me or the board to tell the chief constable how to police that event, who to arrest or what to do. Afterwards, however, it was for us to ask how much money he had spent, whether his tactics had been successful, how he would do it next time, how we might improve and whether the action had met what the public wanted—that is, did the protesters get to protest without the public being overly disrupted and did everyone remain safe?
To follow on from what Martin Greig said, in a unitary authority there is a risk that a political perspective could form as the proportion of members reflects the make-up of the administration, but in the five years for which I have been convener that has never been an issue.
Do I take it, then, that none of you has had a problem with such a distinction in practice?
No.
No.
The important point is that the chief constable has to be open to accountability. We are quite fortunate in that the chief constable who came to Strathclyde was, to put it bluntly, used to more robust accountability in England in the Metropolitan Police. He is used to being questioned. There could also be tension in that we could stray into areas that might feel like operational matters for the chief constable but on which we might understandably want answers. As long as the chief constable understands that we have a right to ask the question, he has the responsibility to answer.
It has been put to us in a different place that police boards and fire boards seem to be overawed by the brass and the scrambled eggs. Can I take it that none of you has ever been overawed? I see Councillor Greig shaking his head.
I like one of the things that I—and, I hope, lots of others—do at every board meeting to be to ask the chief constable a question that they do not know is coming and to which they do not necessarily know how to respond. The relationship is reasonably friendly most of the time, but there will be disagreements and we are quite right to have such disagreements from time to time.
Are those disagreements in public?
They are in public. Sometimes the chief constable looks quite grumpy at board meetings.
Sometimes I do, as well.
I do not make witnesses grumpy, I hope.
We have heard in previous evidence that some of the practical strategic decisions in policing in the future in a single force will still be taken at what you might call regional level—in other words, in Glasgow and Strathclyde, out in Grampian or in any of the other regions within which the police will operate. What, in your view, is the best way to secure scrutiny and accountability, for example on road policing for a region of Scotland that might go significantly beyond the boundaries of a single council and for which the police decision-making process goes beyond the boundaries of a single council? Is that best done by an association of local committees from the bottom up, or by some form of regional collaboration or devolution from the national police authority?
That is where the pathfinders have been very helpful. For example, the three Ayrshire councils are used to being policed in an Ayrshire setting and Argyll and Bute has road traffic as its top priority in the Strathclyde setting. They want the priority that will be given to that at national level to be reflected in the local policing plan. It is really important that the national authority understands how it is responsible for engaging at local level, but it is also really important that local councillors have clarity on what they must do to ensure that the communities that they represent are also involved in the process. The onus for that is not just on the national authority.
Does anyone else wish to comment? No? That is good—[Interruption.] Do not feel obliged to comment.
I agree with Councillor Curran.
That is fine.
That was a very clear answer, but I want to pursue one point a little further. If both the national authority and the local community have responsibilities, what is the interface? Argyll and Bute is easy and obvious, in a sense, but when areas such as the three Ayrshires have a common interest, how does democratic accountability work, as opposed to the police command structure?
The situation is a bit ad hoc. The other risk is that the police force will be set up in such a way that we have a regional command structure. How will that be accountable? Will it be accountable to the chief constable, who will be accountable to a national authority, or will there be regional buy-in? I am not saying that we should recreate the joint boards that we have just now, but there is certainly room for a more collective approach. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and individual local authorities could look at how that might best be done. That would be helpful in the next few months.
The pathfinders will be significant with regard to how the structure evolves. The crucial thing is how we harmonise the feedback from those groups so that it has a significant influence on the structures that develop as the new service and the new authority come into being on 1 April. There is a timing issue, and we must ensure that everything matches up.
To amplify that, we need people on the new police authority who are prepared to challenge the chief constable on how he is taking into account local need, building local policing plans into the national plan and appropriately resourcing local areas to meet their own priorities.
Jenny Marra has been very patient. I will make this the last question.
I am looking for evidence on the gender balance in the boards and authorities. Can each of you tell me quickly how many of the elected members on your police boards or authorities and fire boards are women, and how many are men?
There are cats among pigeons—they are having to think their way through that one.
There is certainly not a gender balance. We also have substitute representatives from the councils, who tend to be slightly older, male and white. Although we have ethnic minority members in our authority, from a gender balance perspective only about a quarter—at best—of Strathclyde’s board members are women.
The figure is about 25 per cent in your authority.
Yes, and that is not good.
I would echo that. The vast majority of the Northern board members are male and are probably even older than me.
Can you give numbers?
The percentage of women is probably 25 per cent or less. The same applies to the substitutes, so it varies.
About a third of Lothian and Borders board are female.
Councillor Grieg? Sorry—it is Councillor Greig; I have reverted again.
Grampian’s figure is something similar, but I cannot remember.
Councillor Kay?
I am sorry, convener—
I will come back to the councillors, but let us go round them all first. Councillor Kay?
Six out of the 15 members of the Fife board are female. We never set out to make that the case—it depends on who the political parties nominate as their representatives.
Dumfries and Galloway’s figure is 10 per cent.
Councillor Greig said that the board meets eight to 10 times a year, but you cannot remember. Can you be a bit more specific?
There are eight to 10 scheduled meetings, but we hold additional meetings when they are required—for example, to go over the single status agreement.
I am sorry. My point is that you meet so often, but cannot remember the proportion of female elected representatives on the board.
I am not good with maths.
Okay.
I feel that Councillor Greig has had a bit of a hard time today, for reasons that I do not understand.
Okay. I will lay off Councillor Greig.
I see that he is smiling. You have a lovely smile, by the way.
That is very kind.
This is a Frank McAveety moment.
Given the importance of gender issues in policing and the figures on domestic abuse that Women’s Aid released this weekend, is there a place in the bill for a quota that would ensure better representation and better scrutiny of those issues, particularly in policing?
That is a serious point.
Diversity in its broadest sense is really significant. It is an area that has been flagged up as a weakness in some police boards and in policing generally. It covers a range of issues including sexuality, ethnic minorities and so on. To be accurate, I would say that the women on our board are probably its most active members, and probably the ones of whom I have been most wary in the meetings that I have chaired.
I honestly do not see it as being an issue in Fife. We have a fairly robust number of female members on the board. Whether the number could be doubled would be entirely up to the parties. I attend all our inauguration meetings, and I would say—in fact, I gave this information out yesterday—that if we have not reached a 50 per cent split between female and male in the police force, we are very much heading that way.
I will let Councillor Greig have the last word.
We take equalities very seriously as a board, and we have fairly recently agreed an equalities policy. At our stewardship committee, I and my colleagues have questioned the chief constable and his representatives about the very low numbers of female police officers and police staff. That is an intractable problem: we will have to wait for a culture change to increase the number of women who are employed in police forces. It is an issue that we have complained about time and again, because the police force needs to reflect accurately the communities that it represents. There is still a long way to go.
I am happy to say that there are quite a lot of women conveners in the Parliament—I do not see one from a police board in front of me just now, but there might be one somewhere.
I welcome to the meeting our second panel of witnesses, all of whom are from COSLA: Councillor Pat Watters, president; Councillor Barbara Grant, community safety spokesperson; Hayley Wotherspoon, policy manager; and James Fowlie, team development manager. Have I pronounced your name correctly, Mr Fowlie?
Yes.
I ask simply because I have been getting my Griegs and Greigs muddled up this morning.
I will certainly come back if I am invited. It all depends on how I am treated this morning.
I am afraid that no one gets called on that basis. We could be really nasty to you and still call you back before us. However, as you will find, we are a very kindly committee.
As you will have heard this morning, two themes are emerging from the evidence that we have taken: governance, and the interface between local authority responses in local planning and the national police plan. First, on the issue of governance, what is COSLA’s view on the size of and the representation on the national board? When should those appointments be made?
Having carried out a considerably long and weary examination of the issue, COSLA has come to the view that a board of either seven or 11 members is not really practical. There would not be enough people to do all the business that needs to be done. Instead, we suggest that the board should have a minimum of 15, the majority of whom should be elected members.
Do you have anything to add, Councillor Watters?
No. That was fine. That is our position.
It would be helpful if you could say more about the value of having elected members on the board and explain how they might be chosen.
We have suggested that COSLA put forward a list of names, which would be seen by ministers before the people in question went through the national independent selection process. Of course, those people would be from all parts of the country and would all have different interests. Councillors have very wide views on everything. My particular area is policing—indeed, Mr Pearson knows me well from my days on the Strathclyde police board—but the fact is that you do not have to be a member of a board to be interested in what is going on in your local community. After all, it is not the minister who matters; it is the people you represent who matter and COSLA is focusing on what the service will provide for the people we represent.
I want to pursue with you a governance issue that I pursued with the previous panel. As far as local accountability or engagement with local policing issues is concerned, we are looking at a shift from eight police boards to 32 local authorities. In some respects, that is the appropriate level at which things should be done and decisions made. However, in other areas of policing, certain decisions and strategies go wider than that and cross local authority boundaries. Is there a governance mechanism to ensure that police decisions at a strategic but sub-national level can be made accountable to locally elected members? Could that be done through a combination of local authority police committees or would COSLA have to create some kind of regional focus to maintain a degree of democratic accountability at that tier?
It will probably require a mixture of the two approaches. Although a national board will make strategic decisions, there must be a measure of local flexibility. You mentioned accountability; unless there is something that the police are accountable for to local committees, all we will have will be wee talking shops. I am sorry, but I did not come into politics simply to meet once every six weeks and be told things that I could read anyway. As I have said, if the local commander is going to be accountable to the local committee, they must have something to be accountable for.
In this country, policing happens by consent of the public, not the minister. I have to say that we are worried by the provision in the bill that the Scottish police authority
No, that is fine. You were on a roll.
I would like to follow up on that point. My background is as a former police officer and Police Federation official. In my period in Northern Constabulary, which is five years ago now, it had the greatest level of devolved resource management of any of the forces in Scotland, to the extent that, for instance, the two constables on Barra had their own overtime budget.
The difficulty is that we are being told that there will be no local budgets. The budgets will all come from on high.
That happens at the moment. Within Northern Constabulary, the budget comes from on high—from the Northern joint police board—and is devolved down.
Yes, but it comes through a different source. When you are sitting at a police board and you know that you have X amount of pounds at your disposal, that is translated by the chief constable into an allocation for all the various jobs that need to be done. However, if the board has a different idea of what is going to be done, it can shift the money around as it suits it.
Is that not an operational matter?
Not necessarily. It depends on how the whole plan is worked out.
Could you give an example of where your board has taken a contrary view to the chief constable on redirecting resources away from a plan that he or she proposes?
No. You would really need to ask Stephen Curran, who is the convener of the board.
To what level do you think that resources should be devolved?
I will defer to my colleague, who is more into the money.
Generally or specifically?
Specifically, in this instance.
Would you expect the commander to devolve money below that?
Not particularly, unless that was the way in which it was done. I would see the budget as being devolved down to the local commander, so that there is accountability to the area committee.
Within the structure, is a decision that is taken in the police service about how to allocate resources—for overtime, for example—not an operational matter for the chief constable, the chief superintendent, the chief inspector or the shift sergeant, rather than a local commander?
I disagree. Having budgets at the commander level and not the central level is not an operational matter but a financial governance matter that relates to how the service is operated. That is not about how policing decisions are devolved or what operational priorities are set in the police area.
How many budget holders would be in the model that you propose?
It would involve the divisional commanders.
How many of them?
How many are you proposing? If there was one in Ayrshire, there would be one in Ayrshire.
With the greatest respect, I am asking how many budget holders COSLA proposes.
That would involve the divisional commanders as the structure is made up.
I will pick up the answers to my first question from Councillor Grant and Councillor Watters. A gap between the local and national levels is recognised. Is there a risk that we will end up with polarisation between ministers saying that everything should be done centrally and the other argument, which is that everything should be done at local council level? Will you address that gap in how you relate local priorities to national priorities and local budgetary decisions to national budgetary decisions?
The problem is that we do not have enough information. There is a gap between what will happen locally and what will happen on the national board. We have had no information about whether a regional structure will be in place. We do not know any of that business and we might not know any of it until a chief constable is selected. The chief constable might make the decision or the national board might make it. We do not know about that at the moment.
All such questions will be put to the cabinet secretary when he gives evidence next week. I am sure that his staff are listening with great interest to what is being said.
Good morning, everyone. I will follow up the discussion about budgets and accountability. I can speak only from direct experience of the City of Edinburgh Council and Lothian and Borders police board. The council provided additional funding to the board to employ additional officers who focused primarily on community policing initiatives. We can leave aside for a moment whether that is interference in an operational matter. The fact is that additional funding was provided; that might have been replicated in other local authority areas. Is the proposed funding and budgetary structure likely to sound the death knell for such additionality? A council will have no obvious incentive to put in additional funds for such a dedicated purpose.
Something between 600 and 800 additional police are on the street because authorities up and down the country have prioritised that in their communities, for whatever reason. What will happen to them after the transfer to a single force would certainly interest those authorities. We could be in danger of the officers being transferred under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, which would mean that the local authority budget was transferred. Before that happened, I think that local authorities would take steps to ensure that the responsibility for funding those posts was not theirs but that of the single police force.
The 600 to 800 police are part of the big number of 17,234 police, which seems to be a fixed number. If local authorities cannot fund those extra posts, how will we get the 17,234? For example, my authority puts money towards campus cops, which have been a great boon—everybody says that they are great and asks why we do not mainstream that approach. If the local authorities, which are strapped for money, cannot provide money for, say, campus cops, that will be taken out. How will those 600 to 800 police officers be funded? Will they no longer be in the force, or is the number of 17,234 sacrosanct? If it is, and local authorities do not pay for the extra posts, who will pay for them?
That is a good question that I would like to get to the bottom of. Councillor Watters referred to TUPE. If I understand your answers, the 600 to 800 additional officers will have their employment transferred to the SPA—the new police service of Scotland. There cannot be any other outcome. I therefore presume that the money that is presently paid for those 600 or 800 officers will have to go with them, or the budget will not work out. One assumes that, whether one likes it or not, the local authority budget that presently pays for the employment of those 600 to 800 officers will have to be sliced off and added to the national police budget so that the national police force can continue to employ them. Is that correct?
You presume that, in our preparations in the run-up to our budgets for next year, we will leave that money in our budgets.
That is correct, but you make the presumption that your overall level of grant will be sustained. If that issue and impasse cannot be resolved—
With respect, our agreement with the Government is that we transfer to the police the money that we receive for police. The additional 600 to 800 officers are the result of a priority being set in the local government budget to meet needs in our communities. That is not part of the money—the 49 per cent of the funding—that we get for police.
I understand that the money for those officers is additional. My point is that your additional contribution is largely funded from a general grant that comes to local authorities from the Government. You say that I make certain assumptions about what you might pay out of your discretionary pot, if you like—which is funded in part by revenue support grant. Equally, if the additionality issue is not resolved, the Scottish Government might say that it has to continue to pay those additional officers when they are employed nationally and, whether we like it or not, it will have to take the money from the local government pot from which they are being paid at the moment and put it in another one. Am I missing something? That seems to me to be logical. I am not saying that that is desirable; I simply put it to you that it is likely.
Councillor Grant does not seem to agree.
No, I do not agree, because that would mean that, with anything that local government decides to put money into from its general grant—to fund a dog catcher, for example—the Government can say that it will just take the money away. If that happened, the whole thing would become preposterous. We are talking about money from the general grant that councils have decided to spend on X, rather than on Y. That money has nothing to do with the police budget or anything like that.
I agree that it has nothing to do with the police budget. My point is that the money has to come from somewhere to employ the people who will be officers in the police service of Scotland.
Yes.
As that money presently comes out of a local government pot, if we are to continue to employ those officers, it must instead come out of a national pot. Therefore, it seems to me self-evident that one pot will be reduced to boost the other. I am not saying that that is desirable as a matter of principle; I am simply saying that it seems logical.
With respect, Mr McLetchie, there are two things. First, that money is given by agreement at present, on the basis of an understanding between the local authority and the chief constable. If we were to continue down that road, there would have to be discussion between the chief constable for Scotland and the local authorities about priorities, what we were paying for and what the police delivered for that money. If that were not the case, our priorities might change. We budget on a three-yearly basis but review our budgets annually and, if we decide to change our budgets, that is our responsibility.
Indeed, and if the Government decided that it was not going to fund 80 per cent of your expenditure any more, that would be its responsibility.
That is true.
That is my point.
It would also take legislation to do that.
Could I—
David, are you pursuing the same point or is it something separate?
This gets us to whether some mechanism for local budgets needs to be included in the bill. As I understand it, that is one of the points that are made in the COSLA submission. We can have additionality only if we have a local budget against which to baseline it in the first instance.
The money that the police in-gather when they catch criminals and, for example, find a case full of money in the boot of a car could go to the local authority, which could decide what it wanted to spend it on. At the moment, such money goes to the Government, which decides what it wants to spend it on. There are all sorts of things wafting around that need to be thought about.
Community safety in any community in Scotland is the responsibility of more than just the police. David McLetchie is right that there might be other ways of adding to it and driving it forward.
Surely your current police budgets are used for preventative spend anyway. The police do not only catch crooks or find pots of money in the boots of cars—wherever that happens—but do a lot of other stuff. Surely that is already part of the police budget.
There are good examples of how that is done. I am saying that it is not just about that budget; other parts of local authority budgets go towards community safety.
I understand that, but some of the police budget—if we take just that little capsule—is already spent doing those other things. It is not as if it was tightly defined as simply policemen walking about the streets capturing people and taking them back to the police station. It already does all those other things and, on top of that, as I understand from your evidence, there is flexibility from other budgets because, if you make interventions in housing, you do not have housing issues, antisocial behaviour, health issues and other ancillary problems. Is that correct?
Yes.
The business of community planning partnerships is to bring together the police, the fire service and other bodies in a way that enhances all their operations. That is happening all the time and more and more. We want to ensure that it continues to happen and continues at an even higher level, because that is what makes life better for our communities. To take fire for example, there are new alarm systems in which the fire alarm is connected into the community pendant alarm. Everything is gathered together to make the whole service better.
I understand. In my constituency and the neighbouring one, because the local authorities are coterminous with the NHS, the police and so on, there is good partnership working to make the money go further and be more effective. I just wanted to clarify the issue about pots.
Councillor Watters’s comments about not wanting local talking shops and about the need for people to have a budget for which they are responsible chimed with my question to conveners on the previous panel, when I asked them who should be responsible for the financial picture for their local areas during the changeover to the new force and as things go forward.
The savings that have been made have been achieved through redundancies in support staff, which have happened only where the support staff were not required. In future, if the amount of money must be saved that has been suggested, and if the police and fire services have a new responsibility to pay VAT of £30 million, that money must be found from somewhere.
I could ask a lot more, but let us leave the issue there.
I am not sure that there are issues that you have not considered. Consideration must be given to appointing the chief constable as soon as possible, to give him an opportunity to think about how he will take things forward. The process could operate in a number of ways. The current police conveners could work jointly with the cabinet secretary to consider how to do it. The situation is not ideal, but we do not have long and there is a big job ahead of us.
Do you envisage that the buildings will transfer over to the ownership of the new single authority, or will there have to be a capital allocation to local authorities to reimburse them for the loss of those facilities?
We are in active discussions with the cabinet secretary about that.
A huge number of issues around assets and liabilities have not been tackled. Some buildings that the police and fire services operate from are joint buildings. Over the past few years we have gone out of our way to ensure that police, fire, health and housing services are all together under one roof. Does that roof belong to the council, to the NHS or to the police? All that mess will have to be unknitted, as it were. That will take a bit of time—it will not happen in a hurry.
Another issue that jumps to mind is how we interact. Staff in both the police and fire services would like still to be part of their national bodies, but that will become difficult when there is a single police authority and a single fire service authority in Scotland that report directly to the Government, because the Government would be the employers of those forces. Therefore, they will not have any right to representation, or additional representation, on either the Police Negotiating Board or the National Joint Council for Local Authority Fire and Rescue Services.
Councillor Watters touched on the transitional arrangements and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice’s determination to have the single service up and running on 1 April 2013. The last time that there was a major reorganisation of local government there was a full shadow year. Is there any merit in exploring that option?
There is plenty of merit in that suggestion, but it is not what we are being engineered to do. The Cabinet Secretary for Justice is fairly determined that from 1 April next year there will be a single service.
I touched on the boundaries between operational and non-operational matters with the previous panel, and I got the impression that that distinction was not something that would give them any problems. In your submission, you refer to the fact that “operational” is not defined. I suggest that defining operational matters might cause additional problems and that, in reality, a lack of definition has advantages.
There are advantages because, if you are not too prescriptive, you have a bit of leeway. However, by the same token, sometimes the situation can be too open. There have to be certain parameters. At the moment, the chief constable in my area is responsible for almost half the population of Scotland. If I want to speak to him, all that I have to do is lift the phone. I do not know that I will be able to do that when there is one force and one chief constable for the whole of Scotland.
How many divisional commanders are in the Strathclyde area, which, as you say, contains half Scotland’s population?
I do not know. Maybe Mr Pearson has a better idea.
I am not allowed to ask him, but he might just tell me.
Stephen House is our chief constable, and there are various commanders. For example, in my area, G division, which covers the Pollock/Govan area, plus the East Renfrewshire Council area, has one commander; all the Ayrshires are under one commander; and A division has one commander. I am not sure how many there are altogether, but the system works well, and I am sure that it would not be a bad thing to build on that model. At the moment, however, we have no idea how it is going to pan out.
I am just trying to say that we are not reinventing the wheel, as there is already a system that works in a large part of Scotland. While that situation is not exactly the same, it means that we are not starting from nothing.
I hope that we are not reinventing the wheel, but the problem is that we do not know what is going to happen. It will be for the future chief constable and the national board to decide what is going to happen.
I will bring this session to a close at this point.
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