Meeting of the Parliament 10 November 2015
I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for sight of the statement prior to his making it.
Even in the language of management speak and acronyms, the HMICS report is damning. The report refers to weaknesses on 20 occasions. Two years since Police Scotland was formed, we are still seeing systemic failures in important aspects of policing. The report boasts of savings of £1.8 million on policing while admitting that the force had to spend an additional £1.4 million on overtime. That is a massive failure of strategic management. The report uses the word “assurance” on 103 occasions, but we have had numerous assurances on policing that have come to nothing.
The litany of failures that are listed in the report is extraordinary. It finds that the information technology systems offer only “basic functionality” and are of questionable stability. It identifies a lack of resources for front-line staff, weak local management and inadequate oversight of call centre rationalisation. It says that the SPA and Police Scotland have taken a “narrow approach” to the scrutiny of major projects and that there is no framework to measure the stated benefits. It finds that key staff on the project board are lacking in experience and training. It identifies a lack of staff, with those who are there reporting low morale. Forty-one per cent of the officers and civilian staff who responded to HMICS’s survey spoke negatively about the 101 service. Many improvements are needed.
On 12 July this year, the cabinet secretary blamed the M9 tragedy on an “individual failure” rather than on a lack of resources. We now know that to be completely false. Will he now—