Meeting of the Parliament 11 February 2026 [Draft]
SNP members often like to hide behind carefully chosen statistics that hide the real situation on the ground and how people are feeling, but, on this issue, the numbers speak for themselves. As was mentioned earlier, there are now 1,000 fewer officers than there were when Police Scotland was established. Many officers are now on clerical duties, because many support staff have been done away with. That ties in with the complaints that I get about never seeing a police officer.
There are 25 fewer officers in this quarter than there were in the previous quarter. Crime is up 2 per cent, violent crime is up 3 per cent and sexual crime is up 7 per cent. Those statistics reflect what people feel on the ground. It is not fear that people feel. They feel alone, because they know that, when they are in need of police assistance, help will be a little bit further away than it should be—if it comes at all.
Larkhall police station, in my constituency, is set to close its doors to public access, and the same is true for stations in Bellshill and Blantyre, in neighbouring constituencies. That ties in with the pattern of local services closing. A bank in my constituency closed recently, which will affect the vulnerable in society, and the police station is now set to follow suit. People are worried that their town, which is not insubstantial—15,000 people live in Larkhall, and it supports a further 15,000 people in the surrounding rural areas—is being forgotten. Given that the heart keeps getting ripped out of small towns, has the SNP Government forgotten about community spirit and the people SNP members were elected to serve? It is shameful that vital services are falling by the wayside while the Scottish Government does nothing about it.
If members speak to people in Larkhall, they will tell them that they now have to travel to Hamilton, take justice into their own hands or just not bother complaining and be a victim of crime. However, I am told that the desk at Hamilton police station is not manned in the evening, so I do not know where we go with that. I wonder which of those options the justice minister would like to suggest to my Larkhall constituents, because I do not know what to tell them.
Starving vital police services of essential funding is not like the mismanagement of health services. Families cannot go private, as they have to for hip replacements.
It is clear that the SNP does not have a plan to make our streets safer. The lack of community policing—in fact, any policing—will lead to more antisocial behaviour and people feeling less safe in their homes. Scottish Labour will restore much-needed investment in community policing, with a named officer responsible for every council ward, as has been mentioned.
If constituents want to feel safe where they live, they need to kick out the SNP Government in May. The SNP acts as though it does not care about the people it is there to protect. The SNP says that, if people vote for it and independence, it will be utopia, the garden of Eden and heaven all rolled up into one. Aye, right. The SNP Government can con some people some of the time, but the people of Scotland are finally beginning to see it for what it is doing in wrecking essential public services and breaking community spirits. Scottish Labour will fight that every step of the way.