Meeting of the Parliament 02 April 2014
It is a privilege to open the debate on behalf of the Scottish Liberal Democrats.
Yesterday marked the first anniversary of Police Scotland and the abolition of Scotland’s eight regional forces. As members will be aware, we opposed the creation of the single force, because we feared that it was based upon deficient legislation, that savings claims were unproven and that it would lead to a one-size-fits-all approach to policing in our local communities.
Many of our concerns have been justified. However, one issue that we did not anticipate was Police Scotland’s zeal for stop and search. Willie Rennie and I have regularly questioned the First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice about the matter. They have both assured us, as recently as last week, that there is nothing that we should be remotely concerned about—even after the chief constable admitted that figures are being falsely recorded.
The manipulation of statistics is just the latest in a series of revelations about the extent and basis of stop and search in Scotland. Under the Scottish National Party Government, the use of stop and search has risen many times over. Since the formation of Police Scotland, the increase has been extended outwith Strathclyde. A Liberal Democrat freedom of information request uncovered an unprecedented surge in the use of the tactic in every other region. There was a 516 per cent increase year-on-year in Fife during the first four months of Police Scotland’s existence, and the number of searches in Tayside more than doubled.
Why does that warrant the attentions of this Parliament? Why should we worry about the pervasive deployment of this tactic throughout Scotland if, as the police and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice claim, it is keeping communities and young people safe? It should worry us, as legislators, because there is no legal basis for three quarters of the searches conducted in Scotland—all those that are non-statutory. The power to search an individual without legal cause has been appropriated by the police without due parliamentary scrutiny or approval. I think that that is intolerable in a mature democracy.
In the absence of codification, police are conducting so-called consensual searches when there is no suspicion of any wrongdoing. There is no requirement to tell people that they have a right to refuse, and without that any consent acquired is surely ill informed. To all intents and purposes, it is a command based on exploiting the power gap between the officer and the subject.
No authority has yet been able to explain to me how the 500 children under 10 who were stopped and searched in 2010 alone—almost certainly without their parents being present—or, indeed, the dozens of children aged seven or under who we know have been searched, are qualified to give consent.
Furthermore, the police do not record any details if a search is unsuccessful—as is the case on four out of five occasions when such a search takes place—nor is the subject given a written record of the encounter, which is a crucial safeguard in England. Such poor governance and recording procedures have led to Alan Miller, the chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, describing the practice as “largely unregulated and unaccountable”. It renders the system vulnerable to challenge under the Human Rights Act 1998, which dictates that deprivations of liberty and invasions of privacy by the police must be lawful and properly documented.
Discrepancies in how the tactic is employed around Scotland mean that there are disparities in access to legal safeguards. The extensive use of non-statutory powers in Strathclyde meant that three quarters of those who were searched in 2010 were told little or nothing about why they were being subjected to the procedure. Conversely, 90 per cent of searches in the then Northern Constabulary region were statutory and subjects were given more information.
We are regularly told by people who defend stop and search that crime is at a record low. However, there is no robust evidence of a causal link between low crime levels and increased prevalence of the tactic. Indeed, drops in serious assaults and weapon carrying predate the growth in stop and search. England and Wales boasts a similar record low in crime, but that has been achieved with only a quarter of the number of stop and searches per person in 2010 compared with Scotland as a whole.
The Cabinet Secretary for Justice also tells us that, because only a small number of complaints have been received, we can safely assume that everything is fine. I fear that that shows that people do not know their rights and are not told them, and that they do not know about the Police Scotland and the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner complaint and review systems. I fear that it may reveal a great deal about those who are disproportionately and persistently targeted—young people who are disaffected and disengaged, whose concerns are too often not heard and whose views of the police, in the absence of any perceptible form of redress, may be irreparably tainted by such experiences.
The Scottish centre for crime and justice research’s recent study of stop and search in Scotland made compelling reading. It concluded that the disproportionate use of stop and search against young people is out of kilter with both offending patterns and the welfarist approach to juvenile justice in Scotland. It also highlighted concerns that that could amount to discrimination that contravenes the Human Rights Act 1998.
On average, each 16-year-old male in Glasgow was stopped on four occasions in 2010. Such figures led Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People, Tam Baillie, to warn that a mass exercise of searching young people without safeguards risks “negative and unintended consequences”. Together, the Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights, which consists of Barnardo’s, Children 1st, Children in Scotland and many other organisations, agrees.
The Justice Sub-Committee on Policing last month heard from Chief Superintendent Garry McEwan. He told us that officers in Fife visit high schools once a month to help children to understand that their being stopped and searched deters violence and protects their safety. There was no suggestion that they are enlightened about their rights during such forums; therefore, I wonder whether such exercises compound the lack of understanding, unduly normalising the procedure and suppressing genuine grievances.
There is no scope for effective scrutiny of the stop and search tactic. Ghost entries may be only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, there is a real risk that the recording of positive results on which the policy is justified is at best inconsistent and at worst similarly manipulated. The public are unable to find out how many times any one person has been searched or how the police have responded to so-called positive searches, and they are unable to access information even on negative searches to which they were subjected.
Last weekend, the Sunday Herald reported that it had submitted a freedom of information request asking where the 500,000 searches that were carried out by Police Scotland between April and December took place. Police Scotland told the newspaper that it could not release the figures because doing so would be “harmful” and could lead to “misleading conclusions being drawn” by non-experts.
Although I appreciate that a Scottish Police Authority review is being undertaken, Police Scotland seems to be hushing up the information for public relations purposes. The fact that it prevented publication because the public might have used the facts to draw their own conclusions is both astonishing and patronising. People must be able to find out what is really happening in their area. Such an attitude to transparency will do little to dispel the concerns of academics, charities and watchdogs, and the minister’s blasé approach to the protection of civil liberties and ensuring that there are sufficient safeguards does not inspire confidence.
On Saturday, the Scottish Liberal Democrat conference in Aberdeen unanimously affirmed our concerns about the way in which this tactic is being deployed.