Hansard

Before speaking to the motion directly, I would like to outline the current situation with regard to contacting the emergency services.

The current system is somewhat centralised. There are call centres that handle 999 calls all over Britain. When a call is placed, it goes to an operator who determines the service that is needed and rings the appropriate agency. On pick-up, the call is the responsibility of the emergency services. On average 26 million emergency calls are made every year in the UK and 50 per cent of those calls are screened out as being non-emergency. In some areas of Scotland, nearly 10 per cent of 999 calls are abusive, nonsense, malicious or a hoax. That affects all three emergency services. Only this month, the Parliament's Audit Committee reported severe problems with hoax calls to the Ambulance Service. Such abuse has expanded over the past five years as mobile phone ownership has increased.

However, not all non-emergency calls are malicious. The increase in ownership of mobile phones has caused specific problems to the emergency services, which have been much publicised lately. Non-emergency calls may be the result of 999 being dialled accidentally, if, for example, a phone is stuffed in a bag or a pocket—999 calls can be made from mobile phones even if the number lock is on. Lothian and Borders police deals with up to 50 unintentional calls a day. That is the background to the substance of my motion.

As a response to the problem, individual police forces are carrying out their own campaigns to minimise the number of non-emergency calls. Some members will have heard the recent commercials on radio, publicising the campaign that is being jointly managed by three of Scotland's police forces. I can understand why the police feel it necessary to educate telephone users in the proper use of the system, just as I can understand the frustration that operators must feel when they are dealing with a potential hoax, a silent caller or a routine inquiry, knowing that someone else may be genuinely at risk and is not being dealt with.

That raises two issues. First, surely in this day and age the technology exists to deal with such calls quickly, perhaps by diverting them to a non-emergency line for call tracing. Secondly, we must consider the individual who telephones 999. Whatever the rise in the number of hoax calls, unintentional calls and so on, most people who ring 999 do so for genuine reasons.

Although the stark definition of an emergency as

"threat to life or limb, or an ongoing serious incident requiring immediate police assistance"

may be logical in the cold light of day, in times of stress or danger such logic is unlikely to be applied. One of the great strengths of our police force lies in the fact that people who are in danger, or who perceive themselves to be in danger, automatically want a policeman. Whatever criticism is made of our police—justified or unjustified—we should do nothing to jeopardise such a relationship between the public and the police.

Members may have seen the reports of my recent experience in which I encountered road rage at first hand. Indeed, that was the incident that sparked off this debate. I shall say what happened in brief: 999 was called and the response that was given was such that we felt uncomfortable about having made the call. The point is that I felt threatened and in the circumstances it was impractical to look up the number of the local police station in a telephone book or to phone directory inquiries. Since the event, I have received correspondence that suggests that several other people have had similar experiences.

It must be recognised that, when a caller feels threatened and calls 999 to ask for the police, for that caller the situation is real and an emergency. It worries me that, in our attempt to minimise hoax and meaningless calls, we will discourage genuine callers, who may now feel that they will be assumed to be stupid for making such a call.

With the advent of the car telephone, people can more easily call the police if they feel that something is worth reporting, such as a situation or incident where police action would be advantageous. I recently had a conversation with a constituent who, driving on the A71 on a stormy night, noticed that a temporary traffic light had blown over and felt that that could have caused a road accident. He did not know the number of Strathaven police station and admitted that he had not phoned directory inquiries because that would have cost £2.50 on his mobile phone. He spent the rest of the evening worrying that he should have reported the incident and that an accident might have occurred that he could have averted.

In such situations, it would be an advantage to have a national contact number for the police to enable call diversion to a local police station. That service would be fairly easy to implement and, given adequate advertising, would not only assist the general public but, in time, lessen the number of non-emergency calls to the emergency police service. Many years ago in Glasgow, all police stations had the phone number 1113, preceded by the appropriate area code, which made it easy to telephone those stations. Many police officers to whom I have spoken support the idea of such a central telephone point. Lothian and Borders police has suggested a national police inquiry line and the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland supports the idea, despite understandable reservations about funding.

My motion—which, for the record, is motion S1M-999—is therefore clear. It asks the Parliament to urge any

"members of the public who believe themselves to be in danger to contact the relevant emergency service by dialling 999 without hesitation".

There should be

"a full examination of the implications for the emergency services of the continuing expansion in forms of communication such as mobile telephones".

Finally, the Scottish Executive should initiate discussions with all interested parties on the

"setting up of a central call system which could connect callers to the local police station".

I look forward to the minister's response.