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Justice 2 Committee, 07 Mar 2006

07 Mar 2006 · S2 · Justice 2 Committee

Item of business

Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill: Stage 2

Baillie, Jackie Lab Dumbarton Watch on SPTV

I will try to pick up on all the points that members have raised—in a way, they are grouped together. First, I say to Stewart Maxwell that, although it came late in the day, during stage 1, we received evidence that suggested that there could be considerable duplication between the ombudsman's role and that of the proposed independent police complaints commissioner. We reflected that in one of the recommendations in our stage 1 report, and I have now taken that to a logical conclusion by attempting to address exactly what the Executive wants to achieve, albeit by using a different body that already exists.I am clear that, although I may not have the technical expertise of the minister and his department, I sought to match exactly the bill's intentions. If I have failed to achieve that for a technical reason, I would expect the minister to tidy that up. In relation to the role of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, I hope that I can reassure Stewart Maxwell that no difference is intended between the role that I propose for the ombudsman and that of the proposed police complaints commissioner.Jeremy Purvis, too, can feel reassured by what I said about technical issues. As far as I am concerned, there is no intention to make the process weaker—quite the contrary: I want to make it more transparent and stronger. At the heart of the bill lies the intention to give the general public, rather than us, the ability to access independent and robust complaint mechanisms. Therefore, by making the process more transparent, we will strengthen it. I would expect the ombudsman to capture the proposed commissioner's powers, such as the power to issue guidance.I will focus on the ombudsman for a couple of reasons. First, I would hate the suggestion to come out of this meeting that we somehow got it wrong in 2002 and that the ombudsman is incapable of operating in a specialist role in complex areas—the ombudsman already does that. When we brought together the responsibilities of four ombudsmen in 2002, we included the responsibilities of the Scottish parliamentary and health service ombudsman. Health is an extremely complex area that involves a huge range of governance issues, but the Scottish public services ombudsman employs specialist staff to enable her to deal effectively and comprehensively with such matters.Secondly, although the minister is right to say that police officers have a specialist role—they deal with a huge range of difficult situations, the nature of which we cannot begin to second guess—I would expect the ombudsman to be as sensitive as we are about the recruitment of a police complaints commissioner. I see no logical reason to suggest why that would not be the case. My fundamental concern is to ensure that the public are not confused. I suspect that we might all struggle to understand the differences between maladministration, service failure and action that leads to a complaint about an individual police officer—never mind how we might explain those differences to some of our constituents. If we want a robust and independent process, we must seriously consider the proposals in amendment 134. However, I have listened to what has been said and I am all for consensus. I note that there is some consensus that there might be too much institutional clutter. Given that I am attempting not to weaken but to strengthen the ombudsman's role in police complaints, I am prepared to withdraw amendment 134. I reserve the right to lodge another amendment at stage 3, because there is substance to my proposal, as the consensus in the committee demonstrates. However, I do not want to split the committee unnecessarily and I am sure that the minister's suggestion that the Executive or the Parliament might give the matter wider consideration indicates that he is minded to do so before stage 3.