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Agenda item 2 is on the report "An Independent Review into Policing and Race Relations in Scotland", which was commissioned by the Commission for Racial Equality in Scotland. I am pleased to welcome Ali Jarvis, the interim director of the Commission for Racial Equality in Scotland. Unfortunately, Chief Constable Paddy Tomkins, whose name appears on the agenda, has been taken ill and is unable to appear today. However, we will invite written input from Mr Tomkins once he is back on his feet.
I will start by explaining our approach to the matter in Scotland, which was different from the approach that we took south of the border, where we conducted a formal investigation into policing and race relations. The catalyst was the documentary "The Secret Policeman", which highlighted shocking levels of blatant racism in the police service. I hasten to add that that programme was not filmed in Scotland and that those levels of racism have not been explicit in Scotland. The decision to review policing rather than carry out a formal investigation was based on the fact that the CRE in Scotland already had close working relationships with the police service and felt that it would be more beneficial and constructive to carry out developmental work that highlighted the good aspects and the failings and gave us a clear set of recommendations for the way forward.
Thank you. The committee would like to be kept up to date with those reviews. We want to see things moving forward.
It feels as though it was only when the specific duties came in with the race equality duty that the concrete tools to measure and manage some of the progress became common practice. It was as if, once there was a legal requirement to do things such as monitor and address many of these areas, that work started to happen. Prior to that, there was no framework for it. As one reads the early pages of the document, it feels as though we have been here before so many times. As a famous American author said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different result. Somehow, we need to do something different in order to get a different result.
A number of the recommendations that are made in the independent review were, as you say, made in 2000 and 2003 in HMIC reports. Are there any areas in particular that have not been delivered on?
The area of greatest concern is the recruitment of ethnic minority staff to the police, either in uniform or in the staff support structures. That area will be one of the tipping points for a major breakthrough. Race will become a normal part of the Scottish police service, rather than something that the Scottish police service does. We have been concerned about the absolute failure, over the past four years, to move the number of people who are employed in the police service.
You alluded to the impact of having more diversity in the police. What would be the advantages in ensuring that there is more diversity in recruitment and therefore in relation to the men and women who work for the police on our streets?
There are two main themes to mention. First, more diversity in the police would result in ethnic minority communities being confident that they are being policed by an institution that visibly reflects the populations that it serves. The report identifies a perception among ethnic minority populations that there is racism in the police, although much of that perception comes from the media and is not necessarily borne out by individuals' experiences. In fact, many individuals from ethnic minority populations highlighted their very good experiences with the police. That visibility and the confidence that results from seeing oneself reflected in such a major and powerful institution as the police are important.
I have a question about monitoring racist incidents. The review highlights the lack of consistent monitoring mechanisms for reporting racist incidents. Has any progress been made in developing a consistent recording mechanism for racist incidents since the publication of the report?
No, not yet. One of the key recommendations is that there must be consistency in how such incidents are monitored and in forces' broader statistical analyses. Currently, we cannot compare what happens in forces or across Scotland, the nature of the incidents that take place or recruitment and retention issues, although changes in the broad, computer-based infrastructures will help matters. That is a key area in which we recommend that there should be progress.
The report recommends that the police should use the census categories for reporting purposes. If that recommendation is progressed, do you envisage that any system that is adopted will include Gypsy Travellers as a category?
Including Gypsy Travellers is recommended. Again, that is an area of inconsistency that will obviously be a concern for members, given the committee's previous interest in the subject.
The recommendation that I mentioned was originally made in the 2000 report entitled "Without Prejudice? A Thematic Inspection of Police Race Relations in Scotland" by HMIC. Do we have a good understanding of why that recommendation has still not been acted on five years later? How confident are you that the latest recommendation will be any more effective?
Those questions would probably be better directed at the police. From the research that we have carried out, our perception is that the recommendation was slow to be progressed because there was no central drive or motivation to achieve consistency. Different forces operate in different ways. ACPOS has only recently taken on more of a leadership, umbrella role on some issues, particularly those that relate to diversity. From the research, my best guess is that there was no great motivation to implement the recommendation.
I want to ask a couple of questions about support for minority ethnic victims. Bearing in mind what Marlyn Glen has said, I think that my question should include Gypsy Travellers, who are all too often completely forgotten about, as the convener has said in previous meetings. I hope that, when people listen to our discussion, they will realise that we are also talking about Gypsy Travellers.
I am not aware of any formalised research that has been done into that matter. Our report highlighted two areas that were of concern. One is communication about what victim support services are available. I am sure that that extends to many victims of crime, not simply ethnic minority victims of crime, but the latter group often face additional barriers, such as language issues and even the level of confidence that is needed to come forward in the first place.
The example that you gave involving your ferry journey to Arran indicates that there was a lack of support from the police, who just assumed that the Commission for Racial Equality would take on the responsibility.
The Gypsy Traveller focus group that we worked with felt that they were overpoliced, in the sense that there were assumptions that, if there was a crime, they were probably connected with it—for example, they would be asked to show receipts for the goods that they had. That experience was patchy, in that the approach differed between police forces. Gypsy Travellers are a mobile group and can see quite quickly that they receive a different sort of treatment in one part of Scotland than they might in another.
You have talked about what a good police service can deliver. Is there any family liaison involvement to support people? Is that a matter for the police alone or could there be civilian input?
That is an operational question and I am sure that it is outwith my remit to answer it. Family liaison is part of what the report identifies as good community policing. The easy box to tick is the one for relating to and making contact with community leaders, and I say that advisedly. Many self-styled community leaders do not have connections to the communities that they purport to represent. One of the recommendations is that the police must find more ways of getting closer to actual communities, not just community leaders. If the Surjit Singh Chhokar case taught us anything about family liaison, it taught us about the importance of recognising different generational needs, different expectations and different understandings, and about the need to recognise additional sensitivities that might occur in race-related crimes.
The report mentions that a strong view was expressed at every level in every force that the culture was changing. It also points out that some difficulties were encountered with some forces in identifying volunteers and maintaining confidentiality. How confident are you that the strong view expressed was a true reflection of views and of the reality across Scottish forces?
I think that the strong view that the culture is changing is an accurate and genuinely felt one, but the climate is also changing, and sometimes it is the pace of the change that is important, not the fact that things are changing.
Do you agree that police forces have a unique opportunity in this respect, given that 50 per cent of police officers will retire over the next 10 years? Are you satisfied that police forces are implementing training structures and so on to ensure that such problems are totally eliminated slowly in the next 10 years, if that is possible?
To achieve such a level of change takes a long time. We are naive if we hope that that change can occur overnight. I firmly agree that we have a unique opportunity. Five years of research tell us the same thing. We no longer need to question whether the research is accurate; we need to question why we cannot implement its findings. I hope that, in the recruitment opportunity that is imminent, we can achieve a step change forward.
The report says that each force has its own approach to implementing the national policy on handling complaints against them from the public and that only one force pays clear attention to the instructions that are given to officers on how to deal sensitively with complaints from members of minority ethnic communities. Does that suggest that the national policy needs amending or that forces have too much discretion in how they implement the national policy?
I tend to feel that the latter is probably the case. The national policy is robust, but is implemented inconsistently.
How do you suggest tackling that?
My first suggestion is similar to many recommendations in the report. It is that the police should be quicker to identify good practice and transfer it between forces. They should have an overarching system for monitoring that, which should—ideally—be within the police service initially. Much monitoring could be self-monitoring and self-evaluation. A consistent strategic overview of all the forces is needed, instead of leaving it to external bodies such as HMIC or ourselves to consider race equality. The tendency is to operate force by force, because the legal accountability lies with forces, rather than to compare forces, which would concern the whole Scottish police service.
I will take that a bit further and relate it to training, which I am about to explore with you. Could handling complaints from members of ethnic minority communities be included in the equality and diversity training that all officers receive?
That is important, but I would prefer a different approach. Complaints from all sections of the community could probably be handled better.
Yes.
Ethnic minority communities might feel that more than some, because they encounter additional barriers, but the robustness of the whole complaints system is the concern. I am wary about pushing too many of those issues into the equality and diversity agenda rather than getting them right in the main stream.
What you say is right and brings to mind something that arose at a public meeting that I attended recently. Someone had phoned to complain about antisocial behaviour and then had phoned again to say that that had turned into racial abuse of her neighbour. She complained that the police did not respond to the first or second call. Hours later, someone turned up when those involved had dispersed. That highlights how right you are.
Some staff members and serving police officers—I stress that they were in the minority—gave feedback that they felt that ethnic minorities would somehow receive better or special treatment. That goes back to the old reverse discrimination argument. I stress that the review is not about that. The aim is to ensure that all members of society receive an excellent service. People can look at the service the other way and think about the fact that if they do it right for some of the more difficult sections of society, they will get the system right for everybody. It was a concern that people—albeit a minority group—still felt that ethnic minority people would have a better service than others in Scotland.
I turn to what the report says about training. At the bottom of page 42, it states:
Given that the national equal opportunities training strategy covers gender, I am not sure why it is not mentioned in the report. I have trained on the NEOTS, so I know that gender is dealt with.
I found that omission slightly worrying. I wondered whether an assumption was made that gender issues had been sorted out. We might need to look into that further.
That might be a job for the EOC.
The report mentions that a review of the police's NEOTS is under way. Is there a timeframe for the completion of that review? Can you give us more details on how it is being carried out?
Yes. In many forces, the level 1 training has now been completed; indeed, in many forces, all three levels of training have been provided. I suppose that we are most concerned about the cases in which the training has not been provided and what pressure the forces concerned are under to complete that work.
Is the review simply an internal process?
The review of NEOTS?
Yes.
Yes, that is an internal process.
Do you think that that should be the case or that it would be healthier to have members of other equality strands, such as ethnic minority communities, involved in the review?
I had not really thought about that. In general, the more widely informed a review is and the wider the range of stakeholders who are involved in it, the more effective it is likely to be.
The report raised a significant number of issues to do with training. Given what you have just said, might there be merit in having a dedicated team to provide the same training for all police forces? That would ensure consistency and might avoid a situation in which a trainer had to deal with high-ranking officers in their own force, which could be quite an intimidating scenario. Would that suggestion have merit?
You are right—a number of issues were raised on training. At the outset, I should say that the national equal opportunities training strategy is good. It provides a robust and intensive piece of training, for which the Scottish police service should be applauded. The questions that have arisen have been to do with consistency and the difference between delivery of the training in two or three days and its delivery in a shorter timeframe, when there is a tendency for it to become didactic—chalk and talk—rather than more experiential.
Is that an argument for getting an outside organisation to deliver the training, as that would ensure consistency throughout Scotland?
The fact that the training of trainers at the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan was delivered by an external agency was certainly greatly appreciated because there were no personal conflicts and people did not feel vulnerable as a result of having to challenge views that had been expressed by someone of a more senior status. That was widely appreciated by trainees and their organisations alike. Operationally, there are cost implications for doing that throughout the Scottish police service. Doing the training internally had the benefit of building trainees' skills and making them sustainable in the service.
Would that also help with sharing good practice across forces?
Exactly. It would give people a chance to share what is happening and not simply to go with the norm of their own force.
We have touched on some of the matters—good practice, communities and community leaders—that I wanted to ask you about. The report highlights the difficulties in getting ethnic minority groups to come to lay advisory group meetings or to keep attending them once they have come along. Why is that? What can we do to improve the attendance of members of ethnic minority groups at such meetings?
The research highlighted some practical reasons: people cannot attend meetings held during the day if they work full time. It would have to be acknowledged that they would have to take a half day or lose earnings by closing their business.
You said that the head of a community might not necessarily represent the whole community. You also said that work and business were some of the reasons for people from ethnic minority groups not attending advisory group meetings. Do more men than women attend the meetings of the lay advisory group? I find that interesting.
That is the case. The police are aware of that, and there have been instances of good practice in trying to strike a different gender balance in some communities. A different gender balance can lead to different styles of working, solving problems and exploring issues. That is not to say that one is better or worse than another; it is just that greater diversity makes finding a solution more likely.
It also improves equal opportunities for everyone in the community.
Exactly.
How do you deal with gender imbalance at meetings? What strategies would make contact with women in those hard-to-reach groups? Would strategies at a national or at a local level help?
We have not formed a settled view on that. I do not believe that there are such things as "hard-to-reach" groups—there are organisations that do not have the capacity to reach them. We must invest in developing such capacity.
Yes. It is important for people to get feedback.
We should also recognise that it takes time to build relationships. Members of ethnic minority communities in Scotland are like anyone else. They have lives to lead, jobs to do and kids to bring up. They have the house to clean or whatever it might be. We have to stop expecting that those people will want to give up a Wednesday night to go to a meeting about their community any more than we would expect that from a majority community. Rates of volunteering and participation are down throughout the Scottish population, so we have to find creative ways to engage with people and we have to invest in that in the long term. Relationships build up only if there is consistent contact. We can't just say, "We did it for two months and no one came so we stopped."
Do the police have a role in working with other agencies that are already working locally? I agree that there are no hard-to-reach people, but it is a question of how people approach their work and good community development. That could include the police working with other organisations at various levels. Should that be encouraged?
It should. There are many recommendations in the report, but they are not all targeted at the police. Many other organisations also have to respond to the recommendations. We would be quick to say that, on many issues, the police are a lot further ahead than other parts of the public sector. The more people work in partnership, the more effective the work is. We have seen some good work, particularly in Dumfries and Galloway and Lothian and Borders, in which agencies work together so that they do not say to the same people, "We want to see you on Tuesday night and they will see you on the Thursday." That is simply unsustainable.
In response to Elaine Smith's question about good practice you said that police forces should share good practice. Also, in response to Cathy Peattie's questions you mentioned examples of good practice in various communities—not necessarily just ethnic minority communities.
The practical steps are obvious. They include the creation of more opportunities for forums, workshops and information sharing. That can be done thematically—for example, by holding a half-day seminar on community engagement and encouraging the police forces to attend. A sense of competitiveness between police forces in Scotland appears to inhibit that. In doing the research, we made it clear that it was not a force-by-force analysis but an analysis of the Scottish police service. However, there was an element of people saying, "What have they done? How have we done? Can we compare ourselves against them?" Sometimes competition can be healthy, but sometimes it is isolating. That is one of the challenges.
Do you agree that equal opportunities training at the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan is an ideal opportunity for the police to pass on examples of good practice?
Yes, and again, not just when they are at the college for equal opportunities training. Sometimes we target that training too narrowly; the opportunity exists to offer it in the context of operational policing training. Good community relations are not just about equal opportunities. That said, equal opportunities should be at the core of police training and not just a side issue.
Thank you.
You spoke earlier about issues that affect other agencies. Concerns are expressed in the report about the lack of action in schools on racist name calling. Funnily enough, I was at a school in Clydebank last week for a priority question session with MSPs. One of the pupils made the point that a lot of money and resources have been put into addressing bullying in schools, but not into addressing racism. We were asked what we, as MSPs, would do about that. The issue appears not just in your report; young people are also raising it.
Yes, we have. Given the importance of education in young people's lives, racism in schools is of significant concern to us. Education can shape someone's performance, self-esteem and attainment throughout their adult years. Clearly, if we are to address racism—and racist bullying, in particular—schools need critically to address the issues.
My other question is about the media. You spoke earlier about the perception of racism—whether it is accurate or based on an old premise—and about the fact that the perception in the minority ethnic communities is on the whole negative. The issue is first about communities' engagement with the police and, secondly, the way in which police recruitment is affected by that perception. How should the police approach the issue in order to change it—sorry, how should the media approach it?
Again, the question is one for Paddy Tomkins when you speak to him, convener.
What you said shows that the situation is changing, but where on the scale is that change at? I know that we are talking anecdotally
I have much sympathy for the police service in this regard. The position seems to be that they are crucified whichever way they do things. For example, if the race-hate figures are rising, they will get high news coverage, but it is difficult to get news coverage on the fact that community relations are improving. The issue is not ethnic communities' perception of the police, but their impression of race crime. The police are responsible for solving and policing race crime, but not for causing it; the cause of race crime is the people who commit it. The challenge will be how to change the perception of the police in the media. The perceptions that the media promotes will not be changed through the media, but by sound operational and community policing and by people having the opportunity to say of what they hear in the media, "That is not my experience; that is not what I felt."
The Minister for Justice welcomed the report when it was published. Are you aware of any concrete action taken by the Executive in response to the report's findings?
The Executive's equality unit is represented in the group that was appointed to follow up the review. The group validates the reports from the police about where improvements are being made and prioritises the actions and recommendations. There are many recommendations, some of which are almost tangible, such as, "All people should use this monitoring system". Others are more generic, such as, "Better community relations should be sought". We can all agree with that, but what we do about it and how we drill down into specific instances is more challenging. The Executive is involved in that.
What is your impression of the police service's response to the report?
It has been positive. It is hard for the police because they often feel under attack. Every time they try to improve they get slated for not doing something else.
The report notes that many contributors to the work of the review requested that a process to provide feedback be put in place. Has that been done and, if so, what is the process?
We took that firmly on board because we are aware of people's frustration about contributing and then hearing nothing back. People contributed anonymously to the research and only the research group that conducted the work knew who they were. We used Law at Work's mechanisms to ensure that all contributors and organisations received the report and a letter from us highlighting the next steps. People know what has happened up to this stage.
Thank you. Was the review intended as a one-off investigation or would it be beneficial to have a review at regular intervals?
There are regular reviews through HMIC's continuing inspections, but to have a review on such a large scale, looking at the situation across the piece, is a useful exercise. I would be wary, however, if, like many of the reports cited in the review, it was just considered to be something that has happened. People might note that it had taken place and they might find it interesting, but nothing might necessarily happen as a result.
There is an issue here about tracking progress. What do you plan to do to ensure that work progresses in the areas that were identified by the review, such as basic targeting, monitoring and the placing of responsibility with named personnel?
The first output of the implementation steering group following the review's publication will be in the new year. Each of the recommendations will be broken down. There will be an update on where the police and other agencies feel they are. There are specific things that still need to happen. There will be a detailed description of what success criteria will look like, and there will be a named allocation within each agency based on who is to deliver. That covers our first six months of work. Our aim is both to validate progress and to clarify the gaps between the recommendation and our current position. That all relates to the outcomes of the first six-monthly review.
We will write to Paddy Tomkins and ask for his written input. We will then consider what the committee would like to do next to progress this work. We will be interested to hear about any other work that you are involved in and about your reviewing the report. We are keen to see some work taking place as the result of the report. Thank you for your evidence this morning, Ali.
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