Official Report 434KB pdf
The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S7M-01039, in the name of Stephen Kerr, on policing, crime prevention and the response to mental health crisis in Mid Scotland and Fife.
The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes the findings of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland’s report, Thematic review of policing mental health in Scotland, which was published in October 2023 and reported that at least half of deployable frontline uniformed officers are regularly engaged in mental health-related calls, a single such call can engage two officers and a vehicle for a full shift and Police Scotland “is filling gaps in the health and social care system in Scotland”; further notes the evidence provided to the Criminal Justice Committee that mental health calls rose from just under 400 per day in 2018 to an average of 666 by the first quarter of 2024, that the officer time absorbed by mental health incidents in 2023-24 was equivalent to 612 full-time constables, which is more than the staffing complement of five local policing divisions, and that approximately 70% of such incidents occur at NHS hospitals; acknowledges the views of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents that present arrangements amount to “mission creep”, and of the Scottish Police Federation that handover of mental health crises to the most appropriate service is at best delayed and at worst non-existent; considers that communities across Mid Scotland and Fife are best served by officers who are free to prevent and detect crime, and believes that an individual in mental health crisis is entitled to a response from health professionals with the training, powers and facilities to help them, rather than from the police.
17:46
I am grateful for the opportunity to have this issue discussed in the chamber. The first principle of policing is not complicated. Sir Robert Peel’s model was built on prevention of crime and disorder, the maintenance of public order and the protection of the public. Police legitimacy comes from doing those things effectively, with the consent of the public. However, in Scotland, that basic purpose has become blurred.
Police Scotland is increasingly expected to be a mental health service, a social work service and, under new housing legislation, even part of the homelessness prevention system. That is not right. Yes, those issues matter, but that does not make them policing responsibilities. The police must have the ability to say, “This is not our role”, and other services must step up to the mark, because those added burdens are putting immense strain on police resources, especially front-line resources.
HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland found that, at times, at least half of deployable front-line uniformed officers—which is a smaller number than the total number of police officers—were dealing with mental health-related calls. Its conclusion was blunt:
“Police Scotland is filling gaps in the health and social care system”.
Figures that have subsequently been given to Parliament are extraordinary. The number of mental health-related calls rose from just under 400 a day in 2018 to 666 a day in 2024. The officer time absorbed was calculated to be the equivalent of 612 full-time officers. That is police capacity on a massive scale being taken away from preventing and investigating crime, patrolling communities and responding to victims.
The chief constable herself now says that that “cannot continue”. In her submission of 16 September, Jo Farrell said that Police Scotland recorded more than 230,000 mental health-related incidents in 2025-26—around 18 per cent of all incidents—and that approximately 85 per cent of those incidents involved no crime.
She said that policing’s role had grown
“beyond what is best for vulnerable people, what is intended in legislation and what is financially and operationally sustainable”.
So, why are police officers still going to these calls? Part of the answer to that question is mission creep. The Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012, which gave birth to Police Scotland, says that the main purpose of policing is to improve the
“safety and well-being of persons … and communities”.
That is an unusually broad statutory formulation. Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, the core legal duties of police remain much more closely centred on protecting life and property, preserving order, preventing offences and bringing offenders to justice. In Scotland, the idea of wellbeing has helped to blur the boundary, and has expanded over time. I do not doubt that the use of that wording was well-intentioned. However, in practice, it has helped to create an open-ended expectation that the police will pick up whatever other public services cannot or will not deal with. It has contributed to a culture in which the police become the service of first and last resort whenever another public service cannot cope.
Another part of the reason is risk aversion. Officers are understandably concerned about the consequences for them personally of making the wrong judgment call, leaving a person in crisis, putting the phone down or deciding that there is no more that they can do to help. That is not healthy. Officers are being asked to do work that they were not trained for and did not sign up for and which properly belongs to other services. We do not expect doctors or nurses to tackle crime. Why, then, do we expect police officers to respond to mental health incidents?
This situation cannot go on. If somebody is committing a crime or poses an immediate threat to life or serious harm, or if police powers are needed, the police must act. Mental illness alone should not turn a person into a police matter.
The minister who is responding to the debate needs to answer three questions. First, will she redefine the boundary of policing in Scotland so that health, social care and housing responsibilities sit with the professionals who are trained to deliver them? Secondly, will she review section 32 of the 2012 act and clarify that wellbeing does not create an open-ended welfare duty for Police Scotland? Thirdly, when will front-line officers see the benefit of any changes to their responsibilities?
Although ministers talk about collaboration, police resources are being consumed, crime is rising, victims are left waiting and visible policing is disappearing. The police cannot be everybody else’s emergency stop.
There is one fundamental question that the minister should address in her response to the debate: where does policing end? If the Government cannot define that boundary, mission creep will continue to occur, front-line capacity, which is already stretched, will continue to disappear and police officers will spend less and less time doing what we all want to see Police Scotland doing: preventing crime, protecting the public and pursuing those who break the law.
I remind all members to speak through the chair.
17:54
I commend Mr Kerr for securing a very topical debate. He is a valued member of the Criminal Justice Committee, which this week took evidence from Police Scotland, the Scottish Police Authority and HMICS on the issue. Although he and I will often come to debates from different angles—certainly, politically and ideologically—I think that some of the issues that he has raised are important and fit within the wider public sector reform agenda that will cast such a shadow over session 7 of the Scottish Parliament.
Before I go any further and get into the meat of the issue, it is important that the Parliament places on record its sincere thanks and appreciation for our police officers, who work, day in, day out, running into incredibly difficult situations. [Applause.] In particular, I pay tribute to Chief Inspector Jonny Watters, who leads the police in my constituency in Shettleston.
Mr Kerr is right to bring the issue to the chamber, because it is frustrating for those of us in the criminal justice sphere, and, no doubt, for the Cabinet Secretary for Justice. Mr Kerr put some of the challenges in context, but, to broaden that picture, last year, we lost 775,000 policing hours as a result of mental health call-outs, which have cost an estimated £34 million from the policing budget. Every mental health call-out takes up an average of 5.34 hours of police time, which is a colossal amount of time that could be spent dealing with issues that we know of in our constituencies, so Mr Kerr is right to place that on the record. Some work has been undertaken to move the dial on that, but I was very struck by some of Police Scotland’s written evidence to the Criminal Justice Committee, and, in particular, by the following quotation:
“we have been unable to generate the momentum and pace of system change required and mitigate the immediate pressure, which is still resting on policing by default, rather than design.”
Ms Constance, the previous Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs looked at the issue, and the current Cabinet Secretary for Justice is looking at it. We are going to have to start thinking outside the box a bit more on the issue, because Mr Kerr is absolutely right to acknowledge that there is a grey area, and the committee has heard significant evidence on that in relation to police officers turning up at accident and emergency areas. All the body-worn cameras in world would still not get to the nub of the issue for police officers, who feel that they are unable to leave people at A and E, and I agree that there is an issue with regard to risk aversion.
I understand why police officers are risk averse, particularly because of fears, if something goes wrong, in relation to the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner and having to appear before committees such as ours. It is human nature to be risk averse, but we have reached a situation where we need to look at things differently. I am very attracted to learning more about the right care, right person approach that we explored in the committee, and which Humberside Police piloted from 2020-21. It is not a panacea—there are issues that we will need to look at—but this is an example of where, cross-Government, we will have to have further discussion. I can understand that the health service is stretched and that they see these situations in accident emergency departments.
I want to press the minister on the roll-out of mental health triage cars. Obviously, I was delighted that my party won the election, and I am sure that there was a manifesto commitment to roll those out. That would be welcome, but we need a much wider conversation in the context of public service reform in which we can ask, “Do we have a place where we can drop people off?” The police will still be called out, because the nature of these incidents means that there will be a degree of criminality at times. Therefore, the police will have involvement in this work, but I am absolutely clear that we cannot have a situation where, on average, a mental health call takes up 5.3 hours of policing time, because that is putting massive pressure on the criminal justice system. We need to work much more closely and in a much less siloed way on the issue.
17:58
I am grateful for the early call to speak and for permission to leave early to cover another event tonight.
For nearly three quarters of my more than a decade in the Parliament, I served as the shadow cabinet secretary for justice, and, throughout that time, it was always the same story. Issues such as mission creep in the police are raised by the Opposition, discussed in the chamber or in committee, and nothing is done. Stephen Kerr is absolutely right to hammer that point, yet again, in his excellent motion, because the police’s own research describes their officers as “a backstop” in the ongoing mental health crisis. Instead of being on streets or responding to an incident, they are, to use their word, “babysitting” people in distress in A and E.
Incredibly, more than one in six Police Scotland incidents were classed as mental health related in 2024-25, and the time and cost of that was accurately, and terrifyingly, set out by David Linden just now. We cannot continue draining police resources because the Scottish National Party Government fails the health service and will not give the Ambulance Service sufficient capacity to respond.
This is not only about what the police are being asked to do and the gaps that they are being asked to fill; it is about the impact that mission creep is having on the officers. As the Scottish Police Federation has warned time and again, the stress, pressure and expectations that are placed on officers are going up exponentially, while the resources that are made available by the SNP are plummeting. When Stephen Kerr flags that time absorbed by mental health incidents was equivalent to 612 full-time constables, that is in a context where there are over 1,000 fewer police officers than there were before the pandemic. They are working from fewer stations, with 18 having been sold between 2023 and 2025, and more than 300 of those remaining requiring repairs.
I thank my colleague and friend for giving way, because the point is that the number of officers who are available for front-line duties is shrinking faster than the number of lost officers, because there are modified officers and there is a huge sickness absence level. At any one time, more than 10 per cent of the force is absent due to sickness, so the number of available officers is diminishing all the time. That is creating a greater crisis beyond what we are able to describe in the words that we are using in this debate.
My friend is absolutely right. Unbelievably, some of the officers are having to buy their own uniform because of problems with the standard issue kit. They have then had to use that kit on the almost 50,000 officer rest days that were cancelled in 2024-25 for the reasons that Stephen Kerr has just set out. It is no wonder that, last year, 1919 Magazine reported that police officers lost almost 80,000 working days to their own mental ill health. Indeed, in the first quarter of this year, nearly 32,000 working days were lost to psychological disorders. The officers have been overworked, underresourced and overlooked by this Government.
In my 10 years here, there have been four cabinet secretaries before this one. In all the debates, they all gave exactly the same spad-prepared soundbite answers. I have my bingo card ready but, to allow the minister to adjust her speech, I will warn her what is on it: “We recognise the pressure”; “Wellbeing is a priority”; “Support is available, but it is an operational matter for Police Scotland”; “More must be done, so we are investing and working with partners”; and, of course, the inevitable, “We have more police support money than England does”. Yet nothing changes; it gets worse, such that the data suggests that it gets ever more challenging to serve as an officer in Scotland.
I beg the cabinet secretary and the minister to go where Yousaf, Brown, Constance and Matheson refused to go. I beg them to listen to this debate, to the officers and to the police; investigate the multitude of evidence that underlying organisational pressures and mission creep lie at the heart of the issue; and respond positively to Stephen Kerr’s three questions.
I would love to see the new cabinet secretary and minister sort the problem, and I readily offer any assistance that they need in order to do so. However, I fear that the NHS data that the cabinet secretary left behind when he was reshuffled in May means that I will wait a very long time.
18:03
I thank Stephen Kerr for bringing this debate forward, and I am particularly pleased to talk about this issue because the motion references Mid Scotland and Fife.
I will start by talking about Mid Scotland and Fife and other rural areas. I have lived in Perthshire for over 20 years and I lived in north-east Fife on previous occasions, so I know what life in towns such as Perth, St Andrews and Cupar was like and is like now. The atmosphere has changed; that is not just my perception but what people tell us when we go round the town centres. Approximately four police officers used to come up to Highland Perthshire—which includes Pitlochry, Aberfeldy and Dunkeld—where there are some issues and obviously a lot of car accidents.
Sadly, we rarely see the police in those areas now, but we hear them nearly every day when they respond to the car accidents. We should take into account the trauma that that must involve for those police officers, whose job has fundamentally changed—in that case, the issue is not about anyone’s mental health but their own. I pay tribute to those officers because often, when I hear those sirens, the road has been closed because there has been a serious accident.
In the town centre, whenever people suggest to ruffians or whoever else might be there that maybe they should not bother, we never see the police. There is a reason for that. Police Scotland has been asked about the closure of the police custody suite in Perth. When I was campaigning, I met the man who had been the police sergeant when the closure happened. He asked me what I thought of the police. I said something, and then he told me that he had been the police custody sergeant in Perth but that now he had to go to Dundee because there was no nearer custody suite.
We hear from other police officers that, now that there is nothing in Perth, they do not have anywhere to take people. They have to decide whether they are prepared to drive to Dundee with the person—which would involve two officers—and, if Dundee is full, because there are fewer spaces available, they might have to drive to Aberdeen. Police Scotland says that there is no requirement to revisit that decision.
Helen McDade says that we are not seeing the police around too often, but that custody suites are full. The two things cannot both be true, can they?
They could be true, depending on how long someone was in a custody suite for. I am not in a position to talk about that. However, I believe that they are true—I was told by the police sergeant that that was his experience and I have been told it by others. I would be interested to know what David Linden’s explanation would be for their perception.
In support of what Helen McDade is saying and in answer to David Linden’s question, the reality is that there have been huge cuts to the capacity of custody suites. It is quite regular for police officers to have to travel for up to two hours with someone that they think should be retained in custody. Often, when they get there, they wait a long time to be seen and then the individual is released. It is a deeply frustrating situation, which is borne of the fact that there have been massive cuts to custody suite capacity and the availability of cells.
Thank you—I welcome both interventions.
That is one problem. We also need to look at how people feel in the areas in which they do not have visible police. Many women in Perth have said to me that they do not want to walk around the town centre at night in the way that they used to, maybe as a group of women, and that they are frightened to go across the big areas of grass that we call the inches. The centre is less vibrant and many shops have closed, and I have been told by many people that there has been a change in how they feel. I have also been told that friendly taxi drivers will stop and ask people whether they want a lift if they think that they might be being followed.
Once, I walked up to the optician’s and the door was shut and locked. I thought that I might have got the time wrong. No—it had to lock its door because people were coming in, stealing all the best sunglasses, going away and coming back a fortnight later to do it again. They were doing it in front of the staff; the staff just had to sit there in the same way as you are sitting over there, Deputy Presiding Officer. That situation would never have been contemplated in the past. I know of a lady who shut her shop because somebody had come in and caused an incident.
Obviously, there has always been crime, but the question must be asked: what has been the benefit to rural areas from Police Scotland? I would like see the figures. As I said, we are aware that there are fewer police officers about. Where are the police?
There are great examples of the third sector helping out.
The member must conclude.
I agree entirely with Stephen Kerr’s point that people need that third sector involvement. There are various good examples of change in relation to mental health, such as the things being done by the nook and Community Justice Scotland. We need to look at that and we need to do something.
18:09
I thank Stephen Kerr for securing the debate, and I recognise the picture that he paints of the experience of police officers and of those in mental health crisis. I do so both as a fellow representative of Mid Scotland and Fife and as my party’s spokesperson on mental wellbeing.
It was precisely because of engagement with the Scottish Police Federation and in response to its 2023 report on police time spent on dealing with mental health emergencies that Scottish Labour proposed in our election manifesto in May the setting up of an emergency mental health response division across Scotland. The chief superintendent publicly raised the problem of the amount of police time spent on dealing with mental health emergencies as long ago as 2019, and my colleague Pauline McNeill highlighted the issue in the chamber earlier this year.
Labour proposed the creation of an emergency mental health service to ensure that those who were in crisis would receive timely, skilled support from mental health professionals and that police officers would be able to get on with the job of policing instead of spending time chaperoning vulnerable people on A and E wards.
In 2024-25, Fife was one of the pilot sites for mental health response cars, in which a paramedic from the Scottish Ambulance Service and a mental health nurse attended emergencies together. The service, which was funded by Fife Council, resulted in a significant reduction in the time that police spent supporting people in the A and E department of the Victoria hospital. The pilot, which originally operated in Leven and was later rolled out to cover Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, ran from 8 pm to 6 am, Friday to Sunday, but, since the pilot ended in 2025, wrangling over funding has meant that the future of the service has been uncertain.
So, I welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment, in the programme for government, to mental health triage cars. We are very used to seeing effective interventions being piloted but not being scaled up or put on a sustainable footing, so I will be genuinely delighted if we start to see more well-evidenced programmes rolled out in that way.
Just this week, I met Penumbra Mental Health, whose team, which includes peer support workers, provides essential services to people on the road to recovery, whether that be through home-based support for those at risk of homelessness in Fife or in the 24/7 crisis centres, such as Hope Point in Dundee. Change Mental Health has highlighted to me its work in deploying the distress brief intervention model in other parts of Scotland. I also recognise the excellent work that is done in non-clinical settings such as SAMH’s the nook in Glasgow, which I had the opportunity to visit over the summer.
The way to stop people ending up in mental health crisis is to support those preventative and early intervention services. There will not be a magic bullet or a one-size-fits-all solution, but such models, the success of which has been proven, together with the expertise that the third sector brings, deserve sustainable support and funding.
We need to have a joined-up, whole-system approach to mental wellbeing. The Mental Health Foundation highlights how vital it is to counter the harms to mental health in the workplace and online in social media and to tackle bullying among children and young people, but we also need to ensure that mental health is not just a proxy term for mental ill health. We must recognise the positive wellbeing effects of the community-based services—whether places, events, groups or pastimes—that are not nominally about mental health, but which are spaces of belonging, wellbeing, connectedness and purpose. Despite that, those services are often on the most precarious funding and the first to be cut when finances are tight.
If the Scottish Government is to succeed with a preventative agenda, around which there is broad cross-party agreement, such a whole-system approach will be necessary to support the wellbeing of our people and to let the police get on with policing.
18:12
I thank Stephen Kerr for securing the debate. We have started some good conversations on this subject at the Criminal Justice Committee, so I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss further how we can secure safety and wellbeing in our communities.
The intersecting crises of climate catastrophe, cost of living and housing all fuel another crisis—the mental health crisis. Census data shows that the number of people who report having a mental health condition more than doubled between 2011 and 2022, and Police Scotland, being on call 24/7, has clearly been affected.
I mention the other crises because they cause all our services and facilities to be stretched. University staff report soaring cases of student mental health crisis, as students struggle to balance study and work with poor housing and decreasing support services. Council housing officers report increasingly complex homelessness presentations, while substance abuse services report clients’ declining mental health. Austerity has taken its toll.
The focus of the past 15 years should have been one of prevention, as outlined by the Christie commission and referenced yesterday by Assistant Chief Constable Catriona Paton at the Criminal Justice Committee. Instead, standards of living have fallen and public and third sector infrastructure has not been resourced to deal with current crises, never mind shift to prevention. The police are often the only port of call left, and the more than 600 daily police visits to people in mental health crisis are not, for the most part, to people who have an abundance of wealth and opportunity. They are to people who are living in homes that they cannot afford to heat and to those who are socially isolated because local services that they once relied on have been cut.
A 2024 Scottish Government survey showed that 48 per cent of women and 39 per cent of men reported that their mental health had been negatively affected by the cost of living crisis. No doubt there are similar examples in Mid Scotland and Fife.
For 25 years, Rosie’s Social Enterprises in Aberdeen, in my region, offered specialist creative workshops for people with mental health conditions, with the products sold through its gift shop. It provided inclusion, vocational training, support and work experience for people in mental health recovery. Rosie’s has now closed, because of a funding cut made by Aberdeen health and social care partnership. I am deeply concerned about how those affected will be coping.
Of course, police officers should rarely be the first responders to someone in mental health crisis anyway. That is not just because mental health professionals are more appropriate but because the police can make some mental health crises worse. Many people in mental health crisis will have had previous, and often negative, engagement with the police. Just this week, a constituent of mine in severe mental distress had six police officers turn up to undertake a so-called welfare check. My constituent became even more distressed. They were physically restrained on the ground, they suffered significant bruising and cuts, and they ended up being arrested. I do not believe that that would have happened if a 24/7 mental health service had attended. Aside from that being very poor use of police time, the additional trauma and distrust will make it harder for other services to provide support.
We desperately need properly funded urgent-response mental health services.
I appreciate the tone of Maggie Chapman’s speech. We come at this subject from different directions, recognisably, but I think that we have ended up at the same place, which is to say that the police should not be the ones who bear the burden of responding to mental health crisis. Does she welcome the fact that there seems to be a consensus right across the chamber, from those from different parties who have spoken tonight, that something now needs to be done to address that fundamental need?
Yes, absolutely. It is quite clear that, although our police officers should be able to recognise and support people in mental health crisis, they should never be the first responders. We desperately need to properly fund urgent mental health response services.
We must expand the 24/7 mental health triage cars, which were mentioned by David Linden and which have been piloted in Dundee, so that appropriate mental health professionals can urgently attend people in crisis without the need for police presence. I hope that the minister will provide an update on that in her closing speech.
We need a core minimum of services available to anyone with mental health needs. We all must recognise the links between inequality and poor mental health. Ultimately, as Professor Clare Bambra says, poor mental health is “the human price” of the economic decisions that we make. We can choose to create a country where people have access to warm homes, decent incomes, good health and social care when they need it, opportunities for social connection and hope for a liveable future. Then we will have addressed the mental health crisis that is causing the problems for our police service, as we have been discussing today.
Due to the number of members who still wish to speak in the debate, I am minded to accept a motion without notice, under rule 8.14.3 of standing orders, to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes.
Motion moved,
That, under Rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended by up to 30 minutes.—[Stephen Kerr]
Motion agreed to.
18:18
I commend my friend Stephen Kerr for securing a debate on this very important topic. It is clear from the speeches that we have heard so far from all parts of the chamber that there is a huge degree of consensus around the issue.
I was very much struck by the comprehensive briefing from the Scottish Police Authority that was supplied to us. The authority states that policing has become the default first-response service for people experiencing mental health distress and crisis. Clearly that should not be the case, but that is the reality, as we have heard from Mr Kerr and others.
The figures that are quoted by the Scottish Police Authority are stark. In 2025-26 alone, the police had 234,000 mental health calls. They accounted for 22 per cent—nearly a quarter—of all police deployments. As David Linden said, that represented 775,000 policing hours, or the equivalent of 481 full-time-equivalent officers fully employed. However, the starkest statistic is that only 13 per cent of those call-outs resulted in a crime being recorded. Fewer than one in seven related to criminal activity. As Stephen Kerr said, the police are instead being diverted into social work, which should not be their core activity.
It is a common complaint from communities across Mid Scotland and Fife—I am sure that this is also the case in other parts of Scotland—that they feel a lack of police presence. People do not see the police in their communities. When they call the police, perhaps for something that is not an emergency, they have to wait a long time for a police officer to attend, and they seldom see the police out on foot patrols, which we know are a good way of deterring the low-level crime and antisocial behaviour that plague too many of our communities. However, the police are starved of resources.
The Scottish Police Authority says that it wants more visible policing because that is what the public expect and it knows that that deters crime and antisocial behaviour. It is right to make that call. The local police in the area that Stephen Kerr and I represent need more resources. We know that there are fewer police officers today than there were when the SNP came to power, as Liam Kerr said.
There is a particular issue in Perth and Kinross. Helen McDade made a fair point about the closure of the custody suite in Perth a number of years ago. It means that, if somebody is picked up in Perth and Kinross and they have to be taken into custody, two police officers have to accompany them to Bell Street in Dundee and sit and wait while they are processed and taken away, before the police officers can come back into Perth and Kinross.
Even more seriously in this context, the nearest mental health admitting facility for Perth and Kinross is the Carseview centre in Dundee. If somebody has to be taken into mental health custody, two officers have to accompany them to Carseview. From what I have heard from the local chief inspector, they sometimes sit in Carseview for hours waiting for the person to be admitted before they can even consider coming back to resume their shift. Frequently, two police officers will spend their entire shift accompanying one person to Carseview, which takes them away from the streets and their core activities.
As others have said, we need alternative pathways. It should not be down to the police to become social workers. We need to take the burden off the police and get them back to what should be their core activities of detecting, solving and deterring crime. That is what the public expect, and the Scottish Government needs to get on and deal with that.
18:22
I congratulate Stephen Kerr on bringing this important debate to the chamber. Most things have been covered, but I will carry on with what I have to say.
Our police officers play an essential role in ensuring that we are all kept safe. As we have heard, they do an excellent job under very difficult circumstances, but they should not be expected to act as emergency social workers. Their job is to deter crime and catch criminals, and we should fully support them in doing that.
I know only too well from my role as a Fife councillor the difficulties that our communities face in trying to access the police. When I attend meetings locally with organisations, community councils, people at the grass roots of their communities and the constituents who come to me each week, their complaints are about antisocial behaviour, thefts from shops and day-to-day crimes, and they are simply not being addressed. I stress that the blame is not on individual officers across my area or anywhere else, who are doing their level best. I regularly speak with the police on these matters, and it is the deep structural issues in the policing system that are causing the problem. Ironically, more mental ill-health is caused because our constituents bear the brunt of unchecked crime in their areas.
With regard to the motion, I want to focus on another fundamental issue that has been touched on but has not been addressed enough. Rather than asking what our police can do for us, we need to ask what we can do for our police and make sure that we are considering their wellbeing. I also believe that our modern system of policing and damaging Government policies have resulted in more undue stress being added to their role. The SNP’s merger that created Police Scotland in 2013 was supposed to reduce those pressures and make policing more efficient and accountable, but, more than 10 years on, it has only made those issues much worse.
There are notable examples of bullying and harassment in Police Scotland that there have been attempts to sweep under the rug—the Rhona Malone case from a few years ago is one of them—but there have been plenty of underreported instances of individual officer misconduct. In some of those cases, the accused has been suspended with pay for years on end before justice has been served. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland has even gone so far as to report that that a damning delay in justice has left victims who serve in the police feeling suicidal. Is that really good enough for our brave policemen and policewomen?
How much that situation damages the effectiveness of policing in our communities cannot be overstated. It demoralises our officers, deters newcomers from joining the force and, ultimately, pulls much-needed resources away from the real problems on the streets. That is before I have even mentioned some of the other issues that have been spurred by the SNP Government’s short-changing of our police, such as the closing of local police buildings across Scotland, which has also resulted in Scottish police officers being encouraged not to make arrests because of capacity issues. In addition, who could forget the utterly embarrassing hate-mongering campaign in the previous parliamentary session, which was the result of Humza Yousaf’s Government essentially forcing Police Scotland to justify his deeply unpopular attempt to erode free speech in Scotland?
I raise all of that to make the point that, even if we were to accept the premise that our police should take on mental health incidents as part of their role, there would simply not be enough officers to do so as a result of the consistent underfunding and undermining of basic police services.
For policing to work, we need to believe in our police, and the police also need to know that we believe in them. I look forward to working with colleagues across the chamber and with local police representatives across my region to make sure that we get this right across Mid Scotland and Fife.
18:27
I am aware that Stephen Kerr and I do not always see eye to eye on matters of criminal justice, but I am happy to say that I support the motion and would like to thank the member for bringing this topic to the chamber for discussion.
I, too, am really worried by the evidence that there has been a rise in mental health calls to the police and that Police Scotland is essentially filling gaps in the health and social care system in Scotland. People experiencing mental health crises should always have access to the most appropriate service, and the police is rarely that service. Police Scotland itself is declaring that it is under unsustainable pressure from the need to respond to mental health incidents. Officers told the review team that it is not unusual for half of the deployable front-line uniformed officers to be on mental health-related calls at one time.
Expecting overstretched and inadequately trained police teams to be the primary response to mental health crises risks leaving extremely vulnerable members of society without the care that they need. It can also further stigmatise people who are struggling with mental health issues.
In my view, this discussion really highlights the need to move more funding into community mental health support by transferring mental health responses from Police Scotland to properly funded community crisis services, which would enable the reduction of police call-outs. We can take inspiration from communities around the world, such as those in Minneapolis, where local governments have been voting in favour of proposals to reduce their local law enforcement budgets and remove police as responders for non-criminal calls in areas such as homelessness, mental ill-health and substance abuse.
Sadly, it is no wonder that we are seeing a rise in the number of mental health calls to the police after decades of austerity and declining funds for our mental health budget. If we want to support the long-term safety and wellbeing of our communities, we should be prioritising the funding of preventative services and addressing the root causes of poor mental health. As Change Mental Health tells us, we should be using every opportunity to protect and enhance local mental health crisis pathways
Investing in community support is also particularly important when trust in policing is not shared equally across society. For example, participants at focus groups that were run by LGBT Health and Wellbeing discussed at length the significant lack of trust that minoritised communities have in policing and Police Scotland, with past negative experiences and systemic inequalities contributing to hesitancy in seeking police support.
As today’s debate is also about Mid Scotland and Fife, it is important to pay tribute to the family of Sheku Bayou, who have now been fighting for more than a decade to uncover through a public inquiry whether race played a role in Sheku’s untimely and tragic death at the hands of the police. Sheku was aged just 31 and clearly experiencing a crisis. His family are still waiting for answers from the inquiry, and I hope that they get the solace and answers that they need and deserve soon.
In 2023, Scotland’s police force acknowledged that it was institutionally racist and discriminatory, and the chief constable made a set of commitments to Sheku Bayou’s family about understanding, recognising and acting upon institutional racism within Police Scotland. However, Police Scotland’s chief officers team still does not have one person from a minority ethnic background on it and we have heard little more on those commitments since then.
The lessons of the Sheku Bayou case demand that we listen to communities and ensure that people with experience of racism and other forms of discrimination help to shape the services that are intended to support them. They also demand that we push for antiracism education in schools, police and justice practices while recognising that our communities—in particular, our marginalised communities—are not best served by the police when experiencing a mental health crisis. Ultimately, we need to invest in inclusive community mental health and broader support services to keep our communities safe and well.
18:31
I congratulate my friend and colleague Stephen Kerr on securing the debate. It is timely, especially given the Government’s approach to what could be a significant redesign of services. I hope that the cross-party consensus that is emerging about needing a new model is acted upon urgently, because, from speaking to police officers in my region, I know how frustrated they have become.
As Murdo Fraser outlined, we need to consider what a positive outcome is for the police response to a mental health crisis. Sitting with an individual in A and E, where a medicine review might take place, before returning a person home is not a good use of anyone’s time, including the A and E staff’s.
A few weeks ago, I visited the nook in Aberdeen and was impressed by the data that the staff there shared with me about how that service is being the first point of call. They take someone who is in mental health crisis and work with them, and they are building strong links with the police, who transport the people there in some cases. There is a good opportunity for that service to be expanded. There is another service operational in Aberdeen and Glasgow, and there is soon to be one in Edinburgh.
The nook is a good model, but we need to consider not only that; as David Linden mentioned, we can also consider the right care, right person framework, which is delivering great results in England. The National Police Chiefs Council in England suggests that that new approach has saved more than 1.1 million officer hours. We know what works in England and we need to adapt it in Scotland as soon as possible. Unless there is an immediate risk to life, the police response is not to attend.
A police response is not an appropriate response to a mental health crisis, so we need to develop the services that will meet that need head on. I spoke to a number of police officers about the issue over the summer recess. One of them has left the police service because they had had enough of how they were being treated. The key message that I took from a meeting that I had was that many female police officers complain that they are now the ones who are tasked with responding to mental health call-outs. I do not have evidence that that is the case, but that is what female police officers have told me and I wanted to raise the point in the debate.
Maggie Chapman made an important point about integration joint boards. Every year, over the past five years I have served as a member of the Parliament for Edinburgh, I have campaigned to prevent our crisis centre from being closed because of cuts to the IJB. What infrastructure we have is slowly being eroded as well. I hope that the minister will also consider that. We were told that A and E would be the response and that, if the crisis centre was closed, people could go to A and E without it being an accident or an emergency. However, we need to understand and consider what the response is at the weekends, because there are often no social work or NHS services available then, and that is when the police are the only response available. What does the 24/7 service look like? We have not really developed it.
As I return to covering the health portfolio, I am disappointed that we have not made any real progress on mental health. I raised the issues during my time on the Health and Sport Committee and had hoped that we, as a country, would have adapted some of the new models that have worked in England. I hope that the minister, in her response, speaks to that new approach and that we urgently look towards changing how the police respond.
I call minister Kirsten Oswald to respond to the debate.
18:35
It is a pleasure to respond to this important debate. I thank Mr Kerr for raising the topic, and I thank all members who have contributed.
I echo what David Linden and Julie MacDougall said, and I convey the Scottish Government’s sincere thanks to police officers. I acknowledge that the deployment of officers to mental health incidents takes up a disproportionate amount of their time, and we are seeing the impact that that is having on them and on communities. Police officers should not routinely find themselves carrying responsibilities that belong elsewhere in the public sector.
The cabinet secretary and I hear the calls from police officers, the Scottish Police Federation, the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents and the chief constable. I reaffirm to them and to members that the Scottish Government is committed to working with our partners to address the highlighted challenges and to achieve reform in mental health services and policing following His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland’s thematic review.
Public service reform—indeed, mental health service reform—is a priority for the Government. The Minister for Mental Wellbeing, Public Health, Sport, Alcohol and Drugs, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and I are all committed to ensuring that people in mental health distress receive the right support, in the right place, at the right time. Indeed, I know that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Care have met on that specific topic.
Poor mental health and mental distress are multifaceted issues, as Maggie Chapman eloquently outlined. We know that a range of factors contribute to our mental health. We cannot address such issues without also considering employment, housing, the cost of living, opportunities and people’s relationships. As we have heard, that requires a whole-system approach. Moreover, people’s lives are increasingly complex, and the response to mental health distress does not fit neatly into clear organisational boundaries.
In response to the inspectorate’s thematic review, a partnership delivery group has been established involving the Scottish Government, the Scottish Police Authority, Police Scotland, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and other partners to adopt a collaborative approach to improving our emergency and unscheduled mental health care pathways. Last year, the group developed and published a framework for collaboration and a collaborative commitments plan. We are 18 months into that programme of work, and we are seeing its benefits. I know that members have been interested in hearing about those.
Will the minister take an intervention?
I will make some progress first, but in my speech I will try to address the remarks that members have made, which I hope they will find helpful.
In relation to Maggie Chapman’s points, each health board is now providing access to a mental health clinician 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for those who require urgent mental health assessment or urgent referral to local mental health services. Police officers have 24/7 access to those mental health clinicians. NHS 24’s dedicated mental health hub within the 111 service ensures that people who make emergency calls when they are in distress or in need of mental health support get advice from trained professionals 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The enhanced mental health pathway ensures that referrals from police to NHS 24’s mental health hub are carried out safely and effectively. Last, but certainly not least—this will be of interest to colleagues in the chamber—the Scottish Ambulance Service is operating mental health paramedic response units in Glasgow, Dundee and Inverness.
We recognise that all that work sits in an environment of rising demand for mental health services. Police officers will always encounter people in crisis; they have a vital role in protecting life and keeping communities safe. I am encouraged that we are doing the right thing. The 2026 mental health distress partnership delivery group’s report shows a multiyear reduction in the number of police-related mental health incidents, by more than 6,000 incidents since 2024. That is one of the things that Mr Kerr—I mean Stephen Kerr; there are too many Mr Kerrs this evening—asked me to look at.
Many serious points were made. Stephen Kerr was interested in section 32 of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 in relation to wellbeing. I do not consider the definition of “wellbeing” to be in itself a cause of demand; the challenge that we face is broader pressures across the public services and society.
The Scottish Government is looking at a national review of Scotland’s strategic police priorities to ensure that they remain relevant and responsive to the needs of our communities.
Will the minister give way?
I will give way briefly, but I do not have a lot of time.
I respect where the minister is coming from—she has her brief—but I have to say to her sincerely that her understanding of the effect of the framework is grossly overexaggerated. The evidence that the Criminal Justice Committee has collected at the beginning of our time suggests that the modest progress that has been mentioned is next to zilch. Police officers on the front line would not agree with how the minister has characterised the support that is available to them in that regard.
I ask the minister to speak to the Scottish Police Federation and to the superintendents. They will tell her a completely different story, because serving police officers are telling us a completely different story from the one that we are getting tonight from the minister.
I am grateful to Stephen Kerr for that intervention. I will try to make progress now. I ask members to bear with me.
Will the minister give way?
No. I am going to make progress now, as I have said. That was a long intervention from Mr Kerr. He is quite right to make an intervention if he wants to, but there are things that I want to cover.
Another issue that Stephen Kerr asked about was boundaries. His point about the importance of understanding what those are is a reasonable one. The Scottish Government is aware of the standard operating procedure review, on which Police Scotland is consulting partners. That is an important point. Our focus is on making sure that people who are experiencing distress or crisis receive timely and appropriate support. That all plays a part in the discussion.
Stephen Kerr asked about when we would begin to see the benefits, and I think that I have covered that quite adequately already in relation to the data. However, this is an ongoing body of work, so Mr Kerr’s point about it being somewhere that we are moving towards rather than somewhere that we have arrived at is reasonable.
Mr Linden and Mr Long talked about mental health triage cars, which I have also mentioned. There is a commitment to expand that service, based on an evaluation, covering the existing three locations, that should be with us this autumn.
Mr Linden and Mr Briggs talked about the situation in England and Wales. Police Scotland, the Scottish Police Authority and the Scottish Government agree that that is not the right approach in Scotland, where we continue to adopt partnership working, particularly in light of the findings of recent coronial inquests resulting from the implementation of the policy there. Last year, the committee received evidence from the assistant chief constable that the approach that we have here will be far more sustainable, which is an important point.
Liam Kerr asked about the mental health of police officers themselves, as did Julie MacDougall. That is a welcome and important point. There is significant investment—£17 million—in employee assistance as well as mandatory mental health interventions, but it is a serious point and one that we should continue to give time to. Liam Kerr also raised the issue of the police uniform, which is a matter for the chief constable. Obviously, my expectation is that people should have the kits that they need.
I point Kate Nevens to the new Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Act 2025, which I think will answer her questions. Public trust in policing is really important.
Our ambitious programme for government reiterates a prevention-first approach across public services. That is echoed in the “Health and Care Improving Flow Plan 2026-2031”, which aims to ensure that we have one connected system with simple routes to care—mental health care being key, as well as early intervention. It also outlines our support for expanding community walk-in mental health hubs and investment in third sector support services. I know that that will be of interest to Murdo Fraser and Kate Nevens, who raised those issues.
We want to ensure that when somebody is in need of emergency mental health care they can receive it appropriately and in a timely way. That is why our focus is not just on improving access to support but on building a stronger system. We will strengthen crisis support through the new paramedic response units, expand access to help by delivering psychological therapies through NHS 24 and fund better support for children and young people in crisis.
In addition, there is a joint commission between Police Scotland and NHS board chief executives to move faster on reducing inappropriate police demand and improving access to timely support for mental health distress. Helen McDade made important points about partnership working, and I will absolutely reflect on what she said.
Taken together, the comprehensive package of measures that I have set out will improve mental health and wellbeing in communities, which is the aim that members spoke about.
I would like to finish where I started—with a note of gratitude to the police. Confidence in our police service is vital if we are to achieve a safe and just Scotland. The majority of adults are confident in the effectiveness of our police in dealing with incidents, solving crime and catching criminals. I look forward to continuing to work in this space with Police Scotland, our NHS partners and members across the chamber in delivering this vital programme of work in this area.
That concludes our business today.
Meeting closed at 18:45.
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