Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Chamber

Meeting of the Parliament 17 May 2012

17 May 2012 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Civilian Police Staff

McInnes, Alison LD North East Scotland Watch on SPTV

Mr FitzPatrick would do well to focus on what we are here to focus on, which is the running of the service in this country, for which responsibility sits with the Scottish Government.

The motive behind the Government’s plans for a single national police force appears to be the cost savings that it believes can be made. However, as has been pointed out in the chamber and by expert witnesses in committee, the push for efficiency savings in our police forces has already begun. I am concerned that the majority of the additional savings seem to be destined to be made by further cutting the number of civilian staff who are employed by the police. I say “further cutting” because—as we heard from Lewis Macdonald—the number of civilian staff has already fallen dramatically in recent years. It is not for me or for any of us to quantify how many civilian staff our police need to employ, but the fact is that shedding more than 1,000 staff in just a couple of years cannot fail to have an impact on how our forces operate.

ACPOS has estimated that, in order to meet the Government’s pie-in-the-sky savings targets for the new single force, a further 2,000 civilian staff will have to be cut. Some of that number might be accounted for through rationalisation of certain functions, but with potential redundancies on such a massive scale it is inevitable that in order to fill the gaps police officers will have to be taken off front-line duties to fill other roles. I have many concerns about the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill that are, by now, fairly well documented, but it is this headlong rush—the need to hurry through the changes with little regard for the consequences—that I find really objectionable.

Chief Constable Kevin Smith—the man at ACPOS who is responsible for overseeing implementation of the new force—explained to the Finance Committee the situation in which he finds himself. I will quote him at length, because it is important to put this on the record.

“The Government’s outline business case does not quantify job cuts. However ... If we are to make the savings that have been set out in our budget for the next three years—and into the next spending review, in fact—the main focus will be on police staff.”

He continued:

“Although there will not be an automatic assumption that we will have to put ... a police officer”

into support roles,

“if we are to get to the numbers on which the savings are based, it is a distinct possibility that that will happen. That will not be a good thing professionally or politically, and I do not think that the public will think it a good thing, either. It is a real risk.”—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 22 February 2012; c 670-671.]

He also said:

“The danger now is that we will be so focused on making cuts in financial budgets for next year and the following one that we do not get into what the exercise should be about, which is developing the best model of policing for the benefit of the people of Scotland.”—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 22 February 2012; c 669.]

Although Chief Constable Smith was talking about the hypothetical situation when the new force comes in, his comments are equally relevant in considering the situation that already exists. Staff are being lost to make savings, but the jobs that they performed still need to be done. In the year to July 2011, Grampian Police reduced its civilian staff by 14 per cent. They lost, among others, a camera enforcement officer, two community wardens, an early intervention worker, an intelligence manager, a welfare officer, a wildlife crime education officer and three road safety advisors. Those jobs still need to be done; the only difference is that they will now have to be done by officers who might otherwise be out on the beat. The more civilian staff who are lost, the more officers will be taken off front-line duties to cover their responsibilities.

There can only be one result, as another chief constable told me last year:

“De-civilianisation, which will occur if whole scale civilian job losses take place, will result in the current community focus model of policing reverting to a crime fighting/call response model of policing where officers run around answering calls for crimes that have occurred because they are no longer able to prevent them.”

That is the danger of losing civilian staff, and it is the danger of the Government’s ill-advised police reform bill.

I move amendment S4M-02906.1, after “public” to insert:

“; is concerned that the Scottish Government’s rushed timetable for the implementation of a national police force, along with unrealistic savings targets, will serve to exacerbate the problem and lead to significant further redundancies among civilian staff”.

09:39

Search Hansard contributions

Meeting of the Parliament 17 May 2012

In the same item of business