Chamber and committees

As we set out in the programme for government earlier this week, during this year the Government will launch a public consultation on the three-verdict system.

I am grateful for the opportunity to make a statement on police call handling and the tragic deaths of John Yuill and Lamara Bell in 2015.

I start by offering my condolences to the families of John Yuill and Lamara Bell. Yesterday, the chief constable unreservedly apologised to the families of John and Lamara. Just as the justice secretary did at the time, I apologise to the families for their tragic loss. I am deeply sorry.

Following a complex and thorough investigation, the Lord Advocate, in her independent role as head of the system of prosecution in Scotland, confirmed that criminal proceedings would be brought against Police Scotland in connection with the deaths of Mr Yuill and Ms Bell. As members will be aware, on Tuesday at the High Court in Edinburgh, the Police Service of Scotland pled guilty to an offence contrary to the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, admitting to corporate criminal liability in relation to the tragic events in July 2015.

I understand that the case team and staff from the Crown Office’s victim information and advice service have communicated with family members and their legal representatives throughout this process.

I know that the minds of many family members will now turn to the question of whether there will be a fatal accident inquiry. The decision on that is a matter for the Lord Advocate and as cabinet secretary I have no locus in it. However, the Lord Advocate has confirmed that work has begun to initiate a fatal accident inquiry, and she has committed to make further information on the process public when possible.

It is important to recognise the significance of the case and of the sentence. However, as Lord Beckett said in his sentencing statement,

“There is no sentence this Court can pass which reflects the inestimable value of life lost and harm caused.”

Following the tragic events in July 2015, ministers acted quickly and the then Cabinet Secretary for Justice directed Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland to undertake an independent assurance review of the operation, systems and processes in place in Police Scotland’s contact, command and control—C3—division. That review resulted in 30 recommendations for improvement and HMICS has worked closely with Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority to implement wide-ranging changes in the period since.

In May 2018, HMICS published an update report, which confirmed that all 30 of the recommendations relating to its initial assurance review had been discharged and commended Police Scotland for the considerable priority it attached to that work. This week, HMICS published a further briefing note confirming that it has continued to engage with Police Scotland’s contact, command and control division and has carried out on-going assurance work on the new contact assessment model and the wider Police Scotland change programme.

The briefing note confirmed that a further eight recommendations were made to support on-going improvement and ensure that key areas of development and risk continued to be addressed by the SPA and Police Scotland. All those further recommendations have subsequently been discharged.

HM chief inspector of constabulary in Scotland, Gill Imery, commented in the briefing that she is

“confident that Police Scotland has made significant progress in terms of its call handling processes and is committed to pursue continuous improvement, investing further in technology, staff and the C3 estate”.

Mrs Imery noted that the force had maintained a high level of transparency over its call-handling performance, publishing monthly reports on its website to ensure that the public and interested parties can scrutinise its progress. She thanked the officers and staff of Police Scotland, who have continued to engage positively in HMICS’s assurance processes and reviews.

Since the establishment of Police Scotland, public scrutiny of policing has never been greater. It is essential that public and parliamentary confidence in the police remains strong. I know that members will share my view that Scotland is well served by its police service, and its hard-working, dedicated and professional officers and staff.

Police Scotland, which was created through the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012, is a result of the largest exercise in public service reform since devolution. The Parliament’s Justice Committee’s post-legislative scrutiny report on the act was published in 2019, and it rightly recognised some significant achievements, including the creation of national capabilities in policing, which were described as

“a success story for ... Scotland.”

We are confident that the structures and procedures that were brought in under the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 have strengthened the governance, accountability and scrutiny arrangements for policing.

In giving evidence to the Justice Committee in October 2018 as part of that process, and notwithstanding, of course, the circumstances of this tragedy, Chief Constable Iain Livingstone was clear that police reform had made Scotland safer. He said that he did not think that Scotland would be as safe as it is now and in the future had we not gone through that process of reform. The Scottish Police Authority chair strongly agreed with that sentiment.

In these recent unprecedented times, we have been very well served by Police Scotland, its officers and its staff. Public confidence in policing is high. A survey by the Scottish Police Authority in February 2021 confirmed that 58 per cent of respondents rated their local police as excellent or good.

In HMICS’s recent annual report, which was published on 13 August 2021, Her Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary in Scotland, Mrs Gill Imery QPM, said, in the context of an on-going pandemic:

“Having one police service for Scotland helped to achieve consistency in leadership direction, interpretation and implementation of legislation. Police Scotland’s public messages repeatedly emphasised working with the public as fellow citizens, maintaining the principle of policing by consent and building legitimacy, despite the extraordinary additional police powers to restrict people’s individual freedoms.”

Much has been achieved through police reform, and I firmly believe that policing in Scotland is stronger for it. However, that in no way, of course, detracts from the failures that occurred in this part of the reform programme, which have been accepted by Police Scotland.

Lord Beckett stated during sentencing:

“The offence for which the Police Service of Scotland has accepted responsibility and pled guilty to arises from human error which arose at a time of considerable restructuring of the police and necessary reorganisation of their procedures. I accept senior counsel’s unchallenged submission in relation to the reorganisation of call handling and area control, that:

‘This was not change for the sake of change, or change driven purely by the desire to reduce costs. Rather, the lack of an integrated system caused considerable operational difficulties: the previous legacy systems could not communicate with each other, access to technology across the forces varied and coordination of operational responses across legacy boundaries was convoluted and cumbersome.’”

The Scottish Police Authority recognises that the severity and significance of the charges and the fine placed on Police Scotland underline the serious failure to respond appropriately to the incident in 2015. The SPA chair, Martyn Evans, said in his statement following the court proceedings:

“The Chief Constable’s detailed acknowledgement of these failings, apology and personal commitment to continue to drive improvement and further reduce the opportunity for such circumstances to ever happen again are frank and heartfelt.”

Nothing that I say today in the chamber can adequately recognise the sense of grief and loss that the families will have endured but, again, I turn to the families of John and Lamara and say that I am deeply sorry for what happened and I am deeply sorry for their loss.

I thank Jamie Greene for his questions.

Going back to the comments that were made during sentencing, the judge said the public reform change that was happening at the time was a “necessary” change, and he alluded to the inadequacies of the previous legacy systems. I can attest to that myself, as a member of a police board. The eight systems were not talking to one another in the way that they should have. Part of the public sector reform that was undertaken was to address that and many other systems. It was a necessary change, which is a point that his lordship made.

Jamie Greene said that such a tragedy had been warned about, but the single point of failure was human error, as the judge said in delivering his sentence. As was said elsewhere in the judgment, human error will happen in “Large and complex organisations”—that much is a given. However, we have to work to try and reduce that. The 30 recommendations that have been taken forward and the subsequent eight recommendations that have also been taken forward specifically in relation to the call-handling and management system are our way, the police’s way and the SPA’s way of responding and ensuring that the likelihood of such a thing happening again is absolutely minimised.

The comments that were made by the inspectorate, which is the body that oversees such changes, are very encouraging, saying that the police, ourselves and the SPA are getting it right. A fundamental reform happened in how such calls are handled. The service takes more than 2 million calls a year. People can drop out of calls for any number of reasons. It can be because they are directed to go elsewhere, for instance. Under the previous legacy systems, calls were often not answered at all, and no record was kept of the fact that those calls were not answered. That does not happen now.

On the point that the member makes about budgeting, I point out that we have increased police funding year on year since 2016-17, investing more than £10 billion over that time. The decade that we are talking about, from 2011 to 2021, has been a decade of austerity, and it is against that background that the police budget has increased by £75.5 million to more than £1.3 billion. During that entire time, we have had a higher number of police officers than under any previous Administration.

There is no doubt that there are budgeting pressures. I concede that, and that is set by the context in which we ourselves are funded. I point out that, as recently as last year, under the budget that we are currently working with, we allocated £60 million extra to the police. The Conservatives asked for £50 million, and we allocated £60 million. We have, on occasion, allocated further funds for specific purposes, for example for body-worn cameras.

We are, indeed, looking to learn the lessons, and we want to maximise the budget for the police. We have committed to maintain the police resource grant right through this parliamentary session, and I hope that we will have support for that. We are, of course, learning lessons, and the bulk of them have been taken forward in the 30 recommendations, which have been followed by eight subsequent recommendations, all of which have been discharged. I accept, however, that that must be a continuous process.

I thank Audrey Nicoll for her question. She knows far better than me that police recruitment is, of course, a matter for the police. However, the Scottish Government has continued reform funding for a further year in order to support police transformation, and £29.6 million of reform funding will be provided to the SPA this year to support a range of transformation projects. Recruitment will remain a question for the police but they, as members would expect, are watching these proceedings and will have heard Audrey Nicoll ask that question and I am sure that her point will be taken on board.

We will continue to support the current police numbers, which are higher than under any previous Administration. I am also pleased to report to Audrey Nicoll—she might know this anyway—that there continues to be very strong interest in joining the police, in contrast with, for example, recruitment to the armed forces, where there have been substantial recruitment crises in previous years. A number of members have written to me in recent months about aspects of recruitment, and I am assured that recruitment work will be taken forward by Police Scotland and the SPA. We will continue to support that work, in so far as it relates to the reform of the service, at the same time as providing the support that, in our public statements, we are duty bound to provide to the police, given the fantastic role that they have played, not least in the past 18 months during the pandemic.

I thank Michelle Thomson for that very important question about the victims in all this. For the family and friends left behind, no sentence can adequately address the tragedy and loss that they have experienced. However, I note that the Crown Office was in regular contact with the families during this difficult period, and that, as well as writing to the families with a full apology, the chief constable has offered to meet them, which, of course, will be a decision for the families. I have letters being compiled just now to send to the families as well. They have received support through the Crown Office and from elsewhere. Once again, our sympathies are with those families.

I do not want to dismiss out of hand the suggestion that Dean Lockhart makes. When he started talking about a more decentralised system, I thought that his question was going to be about accountability and some kind of influence over local policing, which I concede is something that we should explore further.

However, I do not agree with Dean Lockhart on the national call-handling centre issue. Now that it has been improved to the extent that it has been, we have the best system that we could have. The situation when we had eight legacy systems that were unable to talk to each other and there were cross-boundary issues was problematic, and we now have a better system. I accept that we have to make sure that it is the best system that it can be, and I am more than happy to engage with Dean Lockhart on the issue of more local influence and control over how the policing system operates, which I know that he, or certainly his party, has raised before.

As the member knows, it is not appropriate for me to comment on individual cases, although I am sorry to hear that his constituents feel that the not proven verdict left them in limbo as he describes. I have said in the chamber previously that I recognise that a strong case has been made for the abolition of the not proven verdict. Those issues are complex, however, and many stakeholders believe that the third verdict should be retained, or they highlight the interconnectedness of the system. It is therefore right that we consider the consultation responses carefully before we weigh all the evidence and reach a decision on those important matters.

I am happy to confirm that we will continue to take an open and consultative approach, just as a broad range of stakeholders including victims and survivors played an important role in last year’s engagement events on the findings of the independent jury research. As part of the wider public consultation, we will seek to capture the views of a broad range of stakeholders including legal professionals, the third sector and those with lived experience of the system.

I suppose that Jamie Greene highlights the difference between opposition and government. Of course, the Opposition can demand those things, but the Government has a responsibility to take on board the views of stakeholders and to ensure that, should legislation follow from that process, it is sustainable and well founded. It is right that we take on the views of the legal profession; indeed, many of the people on the member’s own back benches and across the chamber have reservations about the abolition of the verdict as well, and it is right that we hear those views. That is the sensible way in which to proceed.

The two examples given by Mr Findlay are not comparable at all—we are not at that stage. It is not open to me to comment on any potential further cases. However, it can be assumed by the approach being taken by the Scottish Government in relation to the other case that the member mentioned, that we do not want to see the police budget impacted. We want to safeguard resource budget for the police. The Government is not involved in or informed about potential actions in those areas, so I do not want to say more than that at this stage.

I have already mentioned the fact that we have spent extra money on the police throughout the past 10 years, when public finances have been extremely squeezed. I think that everyone, especially Daniel Johnson, will acknowledge that fact.

We have maintained capital funding, which Daniel Johnson mentioned. As well as giving capital allocations to the police when they were requested—and none was challenged by any other party in the chamber—we have given additional capital funding for specific purposes, such as body-worn cameras, which I have mentioned.

We remain alive to requests from the police, but it is all one pot of public money, notwithstanding the difference between resource and capital, and we have to make choices. We have chosen to have a higher number of police officers, to pay our police officers better and to provide the equipment that I have mentioned. There is always debate about that, and perhaps Daniel Johnson has a different view on how the funds should be disbursed. I accept that, but we stand by the allocation of resources that we have made to the police and we will try to maintain that throughout this session of Parliament.