Hansard

On behalf of the Scottish Greens, I welcome the bill and the reforms that it contains. Those reforms, as we have already heard, represent a further step in the implementation of the Angiolini review into complaints handling, investigations and misconduct in relation to policing.

I thank members of the Criminal Justice Committee for their meticulous scrutiny of the bill at stage 1 and look forward to further discussion of the points that they have raised. I also thank the committee clerks and researchers for all the work that they have done and for their support for the committee and thank all those who contributed at stage 1, including the individuals and organisations who gave evidence as witnesses or who submitted briefings and other information during that process.

We live in a society where the institution of the police holds considerable power, both in the acts or omissions of individual officers and in its corporate response to scrutiny. That power has often been misused—sometimes with the tragic consequences of which we have heard some examples today—so it is our duty as lawmakers to recognise, respond to and help to redress those wrongs.

People who have experienced harm from police action or inaction deserve to receive respectful, timely and appropriate treatment, through processes that are clear and fair and have outcomes that include full and candid truth telling, reparation where that is needed and an assurance that lessons have been learned.

There is much in the bill that can, if properly implemented, help both to reduce the level of misconduct by police officers and to improve the process by which misconduct and injustice are investigated and addressed.

It is important that every police officer understands, accepts and lives out the ethics that we expect of them. Those ethics have, rightly, deepened and developed in recent decades, but they cannot always be taken for granted.

It is important that every police officer bears and follows the duty to be open and truthful when something has gone wrong. The existence of that duty will be a benefit to the majority of police officers, who will want to be able to fully explain what has happened without the sense that, in doing so, they are somehow letting down their colleagues or their corporate body.

In the implementation of these provisions, it is crucial that the rights of workers, police officers and civilian staff are properly protected. We must have clear and independent processes for calling the police to account, including senior officers and those who leave the force before their actions are investigated. We must have a means of ensuring that, if a police officer has behaved badly in one part of the UK, they are not able to do the same elsewhere. Robust vetting procedures can help to ensure that the right people are recruited and that they continue to be the right people to be trusted with the exercise of police power. The work of the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner must be effective and efficient, getting both its functions and its governance right.

However, legislation alone cannot bring about all the changes that we need to see. There are fundamental problems with the institution of a police force—any police force—that will not be easily fixed. It is not an accident or a weird anomaly that Police Scotland has been acknowledged by its own senior officers as being institutionally racist and discriminatory. It is not an accident that the victims and survivors of police misconduct, injustice and brutality are overwhelmingly those who are already marginalised, whose identities are already viewed as problematic and whose voices are already silenced.

The historic roots of the police in Britain and beyond lie in colonialism, the suppression of democratic movements and the capitalist imperative to defeat organised labour. Those foundational purposes might not be overtly present today, but they determine why we have something called a police “force” at all and they cannot help but underlie what Governments, media, political discourse and police officers expect that force to do.

In many ways, we can be rightly proud of Police Scotland when comparing it to other police forces across the UK and around the world. Much good work has been done, and much more is continuing. We have all, I imagine, had positive encounters in our work and in our personal lives with police officers who are kind, thoughtful, sensitive and empathetic. However, we must recognise that Scottish exceptionalism in that, as in other areas, is not always justified. Policing by consent too often means only the consent of people like us in places like this.

So, yes, the Scottish Greens will vote for the principles of the bill today. We will work with others across the chamber and civil society to make it as fair, effective and worth while as it can possibly be during the coming weeks and months. However, as I have indicated, we have some broader questions to ask—not just here, but here is a good place to start.

In closing, I look forward to hearing more of the debate this afternoon and to returning to the issues in the days and weeks ahead as we grapple with amendments to the bill, as we must.