Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid)

Meeting date: Thursday, September 9, 2021

Official Report 1198KB pdf

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Deaths of John Yuill and Lamara Bell

The next item of business is a ministerial statement by Keith Brown on the deaths of John Yuill and Lamara Bell. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of the statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.

14:45  

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.

The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in his statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions, after which we will move to the next item of business.

I thank the cabinet secretary for the advance sight of his statement.

The deaths of Lamara Bell and John Yuill are an utter tragedy—there really are no other words for it—but it is a tragedy that should not have happened. It resulted in unimaginable horror and, as we now know, the avoidable death of Lamara. It is also a tragedy that many warned might happen.

The case laid bare some very difficult truths for the Scottish Government, which it, too, must be held accountable and responsible for, over and above the apology that we have heard today. It is clear that the centralisation of Police Scotland and specifically its call-handling practices undoubtedly led to a period of funding concerns, information technology problems and operational failures that ultimately cost the lives of two innocent people. The Government cannot absolve itself of all responsibility, and only a fatal accident inquiry will unearth those failings.

Much was made in the statement of lessons learned—which, of course, they must be. Why, then, is it the case that, as recently as June this year, some 40 per cent of calls to the police on 101 were abandoned by the caller because of lengthy waiting times? Is that a lesson learned?

On police funding, does the Scottish Government contest Police Scotland’s defence argument in this case that the force’s budget has been operating on a hand-to-mouth basis, so much so that the judge handed down a reduced fine out of concern for the police’s budget?

Finally, does the Scottish Government have any regrets of its own about things that, through its admission, might ensure that a tragedy such as this never happens again?

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.

We, in Scottish Labour, add our voices to that of the cabinet secretary in offering condolences to the families of John Yuill and Lamara Bell.

There were many troubling factors leading to the death of those two young people, and lessons must be learned from the huge mistakes in the case and from the fact that it took six years for the family finally to have a court confirm the failings of Police Scotland, with an admission of corporate criminal liability.

What deeper reflections does the cabinet secretary have, in issuing an apology, about ensuring that such a thing cannot happen again, and that all steps are taken? It is clear that failing to accompany the centralisation of Police Scotland with adequate staffing and training was a factor. We know that because various reports indicate that the officer who took the call, who had stepped in due to staff shortages, was not a trained telephone operator, and he did not even have access to the IT systems. That was a monumental, complete systems failure. A properly resourced 101 call centre with well-trained staff is obviously crucial. We have heard that, of 71,000 calls, 40 per cent were left unanswered.

I acknowledge that confidence in Police Scotland remains high, but I ask the cabinet secretary to say whether, with what I have said in mind, he is really satisfied that Police Scotland has the necessary resource to ensure that such a situation can never happen again. When the fatal accident inquiry proceeds, how can we ensure that it is completed speedily, and that the public see that justice is done and that there is accountability?

I will address Pauline McNeill’s last question first. As I know that she knows, the Government would have no control over the pace of an FAI, if that is the way that the Lord Advocate chooses to proceed.

I acknowledge her first point, about the time that it has taken to get to this stage. I acknowledge the delay, and the angst that it has caused to the people who are involved, but once again I highlight that the Government—quite rightly—has no control over the process. Nevertheless, it is welcome that the Lord Advocate has said that she has already started the process and that she will keep us updated as to how it moves forward.

Pauline McNeill also asked whether we are satisfied that resources are available to the police in sufficient quantum. I refer her to my previous answer. We have consistently increased the police budget. When there have been requests—there have not been many—from Opposition parties in budget processes to increase funding to the police, we have responded to those. Of course, that can be done only at the expense of other services—we have to make that choice. We have also responded to specific requests from Police Scotland.

In addition, we hope to ensure that our police remain in much larger numbers. One of the budget constraints is that, if we increase our police numbers—as we have done—to more than 17,000, but the United Kingdom then reduces its police numbers by 17,000, the fact that it is spending less on policing means that we get less in consequentials, so it becomes harder for us to continue to fund the numbers of police that we have. Our commitment to the Parliament to ensure that we maintain the police resource budget is very strong and should, I hope, give some reassurance. I hope that other members will support that commitment.

Beyond that, it is the Government’s responsibility to allocate funding and the Parliament’s responsibility to agree that funding, and it is then the SPA’s responsibility to deal with that funding and oversee how the police spend their budget. I have high—and rising—confidence in the SPA’s ability to do that.

We have to learn lessons. It will take a bit of time to do that, and it will be done as and when, and if, an FAI proceeds—we should, of course, learn lessons at that stage as well.

I know Lamara Bell’s family—I am thinking of them today, as I have for many days over the past six years.

For the justice secretary to use this week, of all weeks, to claim that the centralisation of the police is “a success story” is both insulting and offensive, especially as the chief constable has admitted that, for three years, the call centre system was unsafe.

Four months before the tragic deaths of Lamara and John, I warned Nicola Sturgeon about the problems at the Bilston Glen call centre, but the Government did nothing to stop the cavalier closures. Political decisions have consequences. Will the cabinet secretary follow the dignified lead of the chief constable and accept that the Government got the police centralisation programme wrong?

I appreciate the points that Willie Rennie makes and the fact that he has been involved in the case for a long time and has personal knowledge of the family concerned, but I have to say that I disagree with him.

I have been a supporter, by conviction, of centralisation of the police force; I believe that it leads to a better police force in Scotland, and it is already showing benefits.

Of course, I acknowledge the tragic loss of life that happened in this case, but I believe that centralisation of the police is a fundamentally important public service reform. I am not the only one who says so. In my statement, I read out a list of all the different people, including the chief constable, the chair of the SPA and the head of HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland, who have seen benefits from centralisation. That is an important point.

Willie Rennie asked what lessons we can learn. I have already mentioned some of them, including some practical things that have been done. Pauline McNeill mentioned increased training for staff, which has been taken forward as part of the 30 recommendations.

I have confidence that those recommendations are improving the existing service even further. Nonetheless, it may be the case that an FAI, if that is the way that the Lord Advocate proceeds, will give us a further opportunity—Willie Rennie may have a chance to contribute to the process—to go back and learn further lessons. I, for one, would commit the Scottish Government to playing a full part in an FAI, if that is what happens.

My thoughts and heartfelt condolences go to the families of Lamara and John, too. Will the cabinet secretary reiterate some of the actions that have been implemented by Police Scotland following the HMICS independent assurance review to ensure that such a tragic and avoidable event never happens again?

I point out that the HMICS independent assurance review did not examine the circumstances of this incident, but instead provided wider independent assurance of the operation, systems and processes in place in police contact, command and control—C3—facilities across Scotland.

I mentioned that 30 key recommendations were made in 2018 and HMICS has provided an update on the progress that has been made; that progress was not left to Police Scotland or the SPA but was inspected by HMICS. It made further recommendations and has confirmed that all eight of those recommendations have now been closed.

Those who have taken the time to read the inspectorate’s recommendations will know that they are not soft recommendations—they are very serious and have been delivered by people who are experts in the area. HMICS notes that

“considerable priority and effort has been applied to ensure that progress has been made”

and that

“the management and staff of C3 Division have continued to be strongly committed”.

HMICS also points out that

“Police Scotland now has a single national command and control system in place which allows oversight of all incidents across Scotland from any of the three Area Control Rooms or Service Overview functions providing resilience and more effective management of national incidents, as well as providing a complete picture of activity.”

I mentioned the information communication technology legacy systems. Substantial work has been undertaken to further stabilise the ICT infrastructure and systems and provide an effective medium-term environment. I am grateful to the inspectorate for its work, which gives us confidence that, as far as conceivably possible, we will drive down the risk that something similar could happen again.

Tens of millions of pounds in compensation for the Crown Office’s malicious prosecution scandal will not come from its operational budget. Ministers have promised that those payouts will come from other public funds. It is reported that Police Scotland may face similar claims over its criminal negligence in the M9 tragedy. Will the Scottish Government make the same commitment and guarantee that not a single penny will be taken from front-line policing budgets?

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.

The court noted that operational difficulties at the time included differences in access to technology across the forces. Has the Scottish Government taken any action to ensure that Police Scotland have access to up-to-date and sufficient technological resources?

I mentioned that in response to Collette Stevenson’s question. Yes, there have been substantial upgrades, because that has been a huge problem. I say candidly that that is not true across all the IT systems that the police rely on. Those systems require substantial investment and anybody who has been involved in public or private sector procurement of IT systems for very large organisations knows how complex it can be.

However, in relation to that particular area of work, I am confident that the work is being taken forward. That confidence does not derive only from an assurance from the police—serious though that would be—but the assurances that we have received from the SPA, who this month will hold another public session on the matter, and from the inspectorate, as I have mentioned previously. That provides a very strong level of reassurance.

Poor implementation of central control centres was the underlying fault behind these tragic deaths, and Police Scotland has rightly apologised. Capital funding of Police Scotland per police officer has remained around the fourth lowest across United Kingdom police forces since the creation of the force, at around half the police service’s assessment of what it requires. Will the cabinet secretary reflect and extend his apology to police officers for his Government’s failure to fund the systems, facilities and equipment required to create a single police force?

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.

Does the Scottish Government have plans for police recruitment, to ensure that all areas of the service, such as call handling, are sufficiently staffed?

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.

My heart goes out to the family and friends of Lamara Bell and John Yuill. No one should have to experience such an avoidable tragedy.

This terrible case reminds us that serious harm and death can be the result of not only individual mistakes but institutional and corporate failures of governance and care. While Police Scotland’s admission of breaching health and safety legislation, its conviction and the imposition of a small fine bear some symbolic significance, they do little to bring about real justice. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the people of Scotland urgently need law reform that, through robust participatory and potentially transformative processes, effectively addresses corporate and institutional responsibility for death and serious injury?

At this stage of the session, I know Maggie Chapman’s views on the issue that she has raised. I have confidence in our justice system, notwithstanding the point that Pauline McNeill raised about the time that it sometimes takes to get to a conclusion, which can be very difficult for people who are waiting for a resolution to the issues of justice that they seek. Of course, as a listening Government, we will listen to proposals for further changes that would facilitate the more efficient use of the justice system in order to achieve justice. We should always seek to do that, and I am happy to engage with Maggie Chapman, as I have done already, on the issue that she raises.

I thank the cabinet secretary for his statement and I add my voice to the heartfelt sympathy that has been expressed to those who were affected by the tragic deaths of Lamara and John.

I am encouraged that, following today’s statement, questions that remain unanswered may be explored further with a fatal accident inquiry. However, we must also consider the feelings of those who have been left behind because, for the family members, the loss is on-going. What range of victim support processes is in place for them?

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.

The move to a centralised call-handling system has inevitably resulted in significant gaps in local knowledge and a disconnect between Police Scotland and local communities. Does the cabinet secretary recognise that a return to a more localised, knowledge-based call-handling system would help to prevent similar tragedies from happening in future?

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.

Does the Scottish Government have any plans for financial support for the continued process of police integration and reform?

I have sought to answer that through the funding that I have announced, which we will continue to commit to Police Scotland for the reform process. I underline that we recognise that reform did not end in 2012. It takes time to go through a reform of that size, which has been described as the biggest public sector reform under devolution. We have to accept that we must continue to support it.

I have mentioned already that the chief constable has been candid about the fact that there are still challenges with some IT and other systems, not specifically in relation to call handling but across the legacy forces’ systems. Given that, and given the vital importance of policing to the wellbeing of the entire country, we are duty bound to continue supporting the police in the way that I have described and through resources, including the very recent resources that I mentioned in earlier answers.

That concludes the statement on the deaths of John Yuill and Lamara Bell. I remind members that social distancing measures are in place in the chamber and across the Holyrood campus. I ask that members take care to observe those measures, including when entering and exiting the chamber, and to please use the aisles and walkways only to access their seat and when moving around the chamber.