Meeting of the Parliament 15 January 2025
Scottish Labour believes that we must act to ensure the highest standards in our police force. The power held by police officers and police organisations requires the right structures and standards to ensure that we can have confidence in our policing. Measures in the bill seek to introduce robust mechanisms to address unacceptable conduct and behaviours of a minority of police officers and staff.
I, too, thank all the witnesses and the victims who spoke up and gave the Criminal Justice Committee first-hand evidence of how police processes can impact on their lives. I also thank my colleagues on the committee, the bill team and our clerks, who worked very hard to produce a constructive stage 1 report.
The bill cannot be viewed in isolation and is only part of a wider piece of work that must be done to improve police complaints and conduct systems. The code of ethics and the duty of candour will not have any particular legal effect, but they set out the expectations. There was quite a lot of debate on those, particularly from victims organisations such as Victim Support Scotland, which wants the code to be more transparent and publicly available, and wants there to be consequences of breaches. However, we are clear that the code of ethics should be robust and reflect the challenges of modern policing. In its report, the committee asked to be able to review the draft code.
Separately from that, there is the duty of candour, which is a standard requirement to assist in investigations. The duty is different to following any other duty or order; it is fundamentally of a more serious nature. Some witnesses advised caution on whether the duty of candour will extend in circumstances in which officers are off duty, but during the legislative process it has been made clear that it will do. However, that will not cut across the right of an accused person, whether they are a police officer or a member of police staff, not to self-incriminate in criminal inquiries. It is fair to put on the record that the Scottish Police Federation’s view was that a duty was not necessary as, in any case, 99.9 per cent of officers co-operate when asked to do so during the course of any inquiries.
One of the critical matters for both the Criminal Justice Committee and Scottish Labour was the financial memorandum. We could not have supported the bill if the Government had not corrected it. As early as this morning, we heard again from the PIRC, who reiterated that the financial implications of legislative decisions are important to consider. The PIRC remains opposed to taking on the responsibility of presenting cases against senior officers, not just from a financial point of view but in terms of the process itself, because they do not think that they should be “judge and jury”.
There are still things in the bill that are problematic, but because there are elements that we support, we will support it this evening. I hope that we can get a full update later in this session of Parliament on how it is proceeding.
One of the biggest issues with the bill is that it is not transformative in the way that the public might have liked. I do not know whether the public will notice any real difference in the handling of complaints, nor will the bill allow any new avenues for victims’ families to raise concerns about police inquiries. I have raised the specific question of the Emma Caldwell inquiry; if a family had some concerns about the avenue being pursued by the police, there is not really a route for that. It is pretty clear that there is a lot of work to be done.
The introduction of the barred list is an important aspect of the bill. It seems like a lifetime ago that the Criminal Justice Committee examined the issue of the length of time that cases involving police officers take to come to court. The committee did a good job of trying to thrash out why that was the case. I had a good session with Lady Elish Angiolini about the issue, which I think is contained in the stage 1 report, and I hope we have come to a conclusion on it.
The criminal allegations against the police division in the Crown Office—known as CAAPD—which is responsible for the investigation of criminal complaints, has said that it expects to
“progress and conclude 75 per cent of the cases that are reported to us within six months”.—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 15 May 2024; c 42]
Let us see whether that happens.
Although we have introduced new provision to pursue officers after they have left the service, I fully supported Sharon Dowey’s important amendments to ensure that the timescale for doing so is not completely open ended.
I will not reiterate what I said earlier about the vetting provisions that apply to police officers and staff, but I emphasise the fact that we agreed in our stage 1 report to the chief constable having the power to dismiss officers and staff who do not maintain their vetting before we had sight of the detail of the vetting provisions. Who knows what view we might otherwise have taken of that power? Because the chief constable now has that power under the new vetting provisions, we need to be clear that there is balance and fairness in the system.
It is important that the Government accepted my amendment 17 on written reasons, because it will provide substantial fairness for police officers who think that they should get to know why their vetting has been refused. As I said when we considered the grouping on vetting, my only remaining concern relates to the fact that we need to be clear, in principle, that there should be a right of correction or appeal.
I took a lot from what the cabinet secretary said about the discussions that we expect to take place between the police organisations and representatives of the police unions and staff. I hope that, in those discussions, we can thrash out something that everyone feels is a fair conclusion.
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