Meeting of the Parliament 08 October 2014
Graeme Pearson, in his opening speech, asked, “Who watches the watchers?”, and his motion mentions responsibility, accountability, scrutiny and challenge.
I would like to remind members of what existed before the current structures. I served on Grampian police board for 13 years before coming to the Parliament, and I was told by a Labour councillor when I first joined the board that his party put on boards and regulatory committees the folks who were “the dross and the awkward squad that we canna control in other committees”.
Police boards were the sole bodies scrutinising the forces at that time, and according to that Labour councillor they contained “dross and the awkward squad.” I disagree with that, because there were many good people on police boards. However, many boards failed dismally in watching the watchers and ensuring that the chief constable was held to account. That was evident in some of the final audits that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary for Scotland and Audit Scotland carried out jointly on police forces and boards, which were extremely critical of the scrutiny situation that existed.
The only board and force that came out fairly well—I can only say “fairly”—was Grampian. The reports on the rest made for very grim reading indeed.
What do we have now? As the cabinet secretary said, we have 360 councillors on local policing boards. We have the Scottish Police Authority and the Justice Sub-Committee on Policing, which the Parliament wanted to establish. There is more scrutiny of the police force now than there has ever been.