Seòmar agus comataidhean

Naturally, that proposal is of interest to me because it might have a knock-on effect on my member’s bill, as the abolition of the not proven verdict is one of its key pillars. I will liaise with the authorities on what happens next in that respect and I will try to work constructively with the cabinet secretary on that process.

There were not a huge amount of responses to my bill and to the consultation, but I note that the responses that were received were of quality and substance. I cannot say too much about the statistics from the responses to my question and my consultation on the issue of not proven, because we have not published them yet, although we soon will. However, the results are not far away from the statistical response that the Scottish Government got. Respondents were not overwhelmingly in favour of abolition—62 per cent is a high bar, but it is not the highest when compared to the responses to other questions that were asked.

As we all know, it is fair to say that it is not quite as simple as just abolishing a verdict—through whatever bill it is done, it will require a whole raft of other changes. It is very clear from the immediate response to yesterday’s news that a number of folk in the justice sector and some justice partners who we rely on as key cogs in the wheel have reservations about it. They expressed that to me when I announced my plans as well, and I hear them.

Therefore, it is really important that, as the Government moves forward with the not proven issue—I know that the bill will go through robust scrutiny and consultation, as all bills do, especially when it comes through this committee—it makes clear what will happen next. In other words, what other changes might have to be made and what wider implications will the change to the system have? That is really unclear at the moment. “What effect will it have on trials and on outcomes in our courts?” is an easy question to ask and a very difficult one to answer.

We will need to give a huge amount of careful and considerate cognisance to the voices who work in that sector, whether or not we agree with them, whether or not they agree with us, and whether or not they agree with the Government—that is by the by. They clearly have a lot of experience, and over the past few weeks of talking to judges, solicitors, barristers and advocates, we have all heard about the effect that these things will have on trials.

However, overall, it would seem to be a step forward, if it is finally delivered after what seems like hundreds of years of discussion. Time will tell.

Collette wants to come in first.

First, I associate myself with Collette Stevenson’s comments. I have long believed that the police are mopping up the jobs of other emergency and public services. We know that—we have heard it from the police in this room. For example, that might involve social care dealing with health situations, such as driving people to hospital and dealing with overdoses, mental health breakdowns and so on. That is taking up a lot of the police’s time at work, which adds to stress levels.

That leads to my point on the letter from David Page, which is of the sort that I would expect to see from the Scottish Police Federation rather than from the police force itself, given its tone. The first point that I would like to make is on a matter that should be of concern to the committee. We know about the issues around pensions and retirement, but the letter flags it up to me that we are seeing the loss of a large number of officers with considerable experience.

We have talked about that issue in the past, and there is no easy fix for it, as it takes time on the job to accumulate experience. However, if we are losing 718 officers who have more than 25 years’ experience, that is a huge chunk of the 1,137 officers who have left or are planning to leave. We should also note that one in 10 of those who are leaving the service are not doing so through normal attrition; their primary reason for doing so is the lack of resources. One in 10 is quite a lot. The letter goes on to explain why that is the case. That should be of concern to us, and we should ask the Government what it is doing to address it.

I am also worried that Police Scotland says that, given the available budget, it will focus on the three key business areas that involve its statutory duties, which are:

“C3, response policing and public protection”.

The letter explicitly states that

“some work in other business areas may be stopped or scaled back as we prioritise our work”,

and that those

“are not decisions that will be taken lightly”.

I understand why. The letter continues:

“our focus will always be on the most vulnerable in society.”

However, the letter does not elucidate what other business areas will be scaled back; what other capital investment projects will be stopped or paused or will not go ahead; and what other projects the police are involved in, such as education projects, that the police would say are superfluous to the core product that they must deliver by statute. It is unclear what those things are, and I am worried that they include important things. Especially in relation to the preventative agenda, scaling back will simply lead to problems down the line, because problems have been delayed.

The letter also says that the police are seeing

“the impact of fewer officers across a range of operational areas, including our responsiveness to calls from the public.”

My question would be: which operational areas? Does that mean the ability of the police to respond to emergency calls? Does it refer to the timescales that it takes for them to respond to calls, or whether the calls are answered, or how long it takes for them to be answered? As we know from information that came out last week, there is an issue with whether calls are even being processed—we heard last week that data was being entered in the system that was not even being recorded. Was that a result of human error, or technical issues due to lack of investment in information and communications technology?

Those are all questions that I have. All that the letters have done is to flag up the need for us to have a conversation with the police force and the minister, because this is quite serious stuff. One of the letters says that, if what was put out in the resource spending review comes to fruition, it

“would have a serious impact on Police Scotland and our likely ... workforce numbers”.

We hope that it does not. We know that there might be an emergency budget, in which I think the committee would have a role to play. We need to be quite nimble in responding to the letter, so I would like to hear from Mr Page and/or others, by having them come to the committee and tell us more about some of the issues, because the letters have opened up a can of worms.

The second forum is appropriate, because it is on budget scrutiny, and we will have valid cause to question our witnesses on the implications of the budget, whether that is the planned budget or any emergency budget that arises. The other session is perhaps more informative, which is not the right climate for getting into the nitty-gritty of some of the questions that I raised, as those are geared far more at management level.

I would be minded to thank Mr Page for his letter, but to go back to him in writing with all the questions from across our membership—which will be set out in the Official Report—and to say that we would like a little more information from him in advance. We should not wait until the end of October before we hear from them again. I politely request that we go back to ask for further clarification on what some of this means, because a lot of things have been said, but the detail is not clear.

What is the format of this item?

It is all very well speaking to newspapers, but it would be nice for the federation to speak to the committee about it.

Thank you for letting me back in. Obviously, when you are the first to speak, it opens up the can of worms.

My question is about the issue of backfilling positions. Rona Mackay is right to point out that the aim—and Police Scotland’s wording is very specific—is that

“Police Scotland will endeavour to recruit 300+ probationers per quarter.”

That would work out at 1,200 per year, which is still less than the number who are retiring. However, there is obviously a time lag between recruitment and going live on the job, and it is fair to assume that the majority of those who will graduate and go into service will not be going into the higher-end roles. It is quite notable that, of the 1,377 who could leave in the next 12 months, approximately half are at police constable level, and that is a substantial number, but of course it is unlikely that many of the people of the cohort of 300 per quarter will be going into roles as chief inspectors, superintendents, or chief superintendents. It is therefore inevitable that those higher-ranking roles will not be filled quickly, and that is where that loss of experience is important. Rona Mackay is right to say that people with 30 years’ service will be thinking about retirement; I know that if it was me, I would be thinking about my retirement. It is the rate at which that might happen which could cause worries.

There may not be a panic button now, but I do not think that we are far around the corner from pressing the panic button on this, because we do not really know how many people Police Scotland will recruit and how long it will take them to get into active service. These are questions that we must ask Police Scotland.

Notwithstanding the pay dispute, which has its own process, if there is the real-terms budget cut that is forecast and widely acknowledged, what effect will that have? Is that a capital resource or a resource budget cut or both? What effect will it have on increasing that churn? We do not want to get to a point, in a year, 18 months, or two years, where they say, “We told you so—the numbers are far lower than what is needed.”

The police are already talking about moving into front-line services people who currently work in the force but are not in local policing, for example. I am not quite sure what corporate service roles are and why those people are doing those roles and not local policing or front-line policing, but if Police Scotland is already having to take people out of those roles to fill in gaps, who will fill those back-office roles that obviously need to be done? If they did not need to be done, no one would be doing them.

The correspondence that the committee has had raises a whole bunch of questions and we should either try to take evidence or write to ask for more detail on that. I would quite like to see a forecast plan of numbers and the ranks that people will be at. The police will surely be doing long-term resource planning for the next couple of years. That might give us a better idea of when we could see a crossover between everything being just about manageable to there being a major issue for us, and the sooner we get sight of that, the better. If that major issue does not exist, that is great, but those projections should be quite easy to forecast, given the numbers.

May I request that we write back to the federation to ask for clarification or expansion of the language that it has used to describe its plans for the next few months? Obviously, the Parliament will be in recess, so we will not be able to react to things urgently. With regard to its potential industrial action, it has used language such as “sustained” and “impactful” and other words that sound some warning bells. It would therefore be helpful to know exactly what it means by that: what sort of action it is considering and what impact that might have on policing and front-line services. Words are just words.

If we wait until the middle of September, that action might already have started. Our constituents would be more than concerned about any impact on front-line policing that might commence sooner than in three months’ time. It is up to the federation to clarify what it means by that language—the committee should not conjecture in that regard. I do not see any harm in asking the federation for that clarification.

Members will naturally be concerned by the contents of the correspondence. I point out for the benefit of people who are interested in our proceedings that it was confirmed to us that, on average, 812 officers leave Police Scotland annually. It was also identified to us that, in quarter 1 of this year, 321 officers have already left. That is a 69 per cent increase on the normal retirement rate, which is a five-year average and, therefore, quite consistent. That is directly related to retirements. There is a proposition that, if the trend carries on, the numbers will only increase and be much higher than the normal retirement rate.

I am happy to hear what other members say and perhaps come back in later. There is a range of views on the likely cause of the increase. There are two angles to the matter that the committee should explore: first, what the causes are and, secondly, what the effect is. We are perhaps most worried about the effect of the loss of officer numbers and what will be done about it.

Unfortunately, we do not have a lot of time left before recess, but it would be prudent to take further evidence on the matter as soon as we can. Who knows what will have happened by September? It seems a long way away.

I note the Scottish Police Federation’s response to the statistics. It seems to me that the view of Police Scotland or, perhaps, the Scottish Police Authority is that they are to do with changes to pension commutation calculations and eligibility to retire. Although that is accepted as perhaps one reason, it is also refuted by the SPF, which admits that there is an “advantageous financial option” in relation to considering early retirement but says that that is not the only reason.

Calum Steele of the SPF states on the record—the letter is available for the benefit of the public—that officers are “overworked and undervalued”. He specifically raises the issue of their rest being disrupted, and that is one issue that comes through when you speak to front-line officers. He also raises the physical and mental toll that the job is taking on them and states that

“they feel they are failing ... the wider public”

in relation to their ability to carry out their role.

Clearly, it is a much more complicated issue than simply that of financial pension commutations. I guess that that will lead to discussions around workforce planning, whether any of this was foreseen and whether we believe that Police Scotland or ministers are heeding warnings about retirements as a result of health issues, exhaustion and just sheer exasperation in the force. Perhaps there is an element of denial of that.

I guess that what we are worried about is how that will impact future numbers. Layered on top of that is the potential action that the SPF is recommending, which was announced yesterday, and what effect that might have on a more limited number of officers who are having to do the work of people who are not there or who are working to rule.

There is a lot going on there, but I hope that that opens up the conversation, at the very least.

Well, that as well, but also—