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Criminal Justice Committee 24 April 2024

24 Apr 2024 · S6 · Criminal Justice Committee

Item of business

Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Margaret Gribbon Watch on SPTV

I think that the mentality is that they just do not want to investigate the complaints. I will give you an example from the case of Rhona Malone. She had tried to raise a grievance and was trying to tick all the boxes. I do not know whether you recall the case, but it involved her sergeant sending a silly sexist email saying, basically, “If there are enough male firearms officers on duty, I don’t want to see two female firearms officers out on their own.” It was clearly a blatantly discriminatory email, even though, for years, Police Scotland denied that it was, until, on day 1 of the tribunal, everybody accepted that it was demonstrably a textbook example of an ill-judged and sexist email. Rhona had complained about that email and believed that the officer who was dealing with her complaint had just dismissed it and was not taking it seriously. She then tried to raise a grievance about the mishandling of her complaint in relation to the email. It was clearly a grievance, but people and development—that is, human resources—said that it was not a grievance. It clearly was a grievance; the tribunal found that it was a grievance. 10:15 Rhona Malone then tried to raise the issue with the professional standards department. It tried to dissuade her, because, at that point in time, she had her tribunal lodged. The department said, “Why don’t we deal with it as part of your tribunal mediation?”. However, it had nothing to do with the tribunal, so she was resolute in making it quite clear to the department that she wanted it to investigate the matter. The department confirmed to her in writing that it would investigate, but absolutely nothing was done about that. The professional standards department is supposed to log all complaints on its Centurion database and then an investigation would follow. In Rhona Malone’s litigation, the highest-ranking officer who gave evidence on behalf of Police Scotland—you might recall she had multiple victimisation claims, which the employment tribunal upheld—was the then head of the PSD. He was a chief superintendent. He was called on to explain why, having stated in clear and unequivocal terms in an email to the officer that the PSD would investigate, it was not even recorded on the database and there was no investigation. The tribunal found that the explanations for the failure to investigate by the PSD and by that chief superintendent were implausible. In evidence, he said, “Oh, you know, I get a lot of emails”. Well, don’t we all? He said, “I get a lot of emails and I dropped the ball”. Given my history with the Rhona Malone case and the other cases that I act in, I would say that there was never an intention to pick up the ball. Again, I really cannot explain the psyche. I think that I saw in one of the reports—it was perhaps the Angiolini review—that Police Scotland is quite relaxed about holding its hands up and saying, “Yeah, we’re completely incompetent, but we don’t discriminate”. However, it does discriminate, and this is a classic example. None of this is rocket science, so the situation is inexplicable. In such cases, it actually takes more energy and time not to deal with it properly than it does even to try to circumvent and dodge the issue. That creates problems for the officer, but it also raises a question about the integrity of policing. There are potential cost ramifications for the public purse when such cases end up in an employment tribunal.

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Criminal Justice Committee 24 April 2024

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