Peter MacMahon: Hysteria over looming public-spending cuts risks drowning out more deserving voices

Published on Tuesday 31 August 2010 21:41

Compassion fatigue. It's a well-charted phenomenon in the charity world. People can only take so much when it comes to seeing pictures of starving children, fleeing refugees or villages surrounded by flood waters before they become inured. It may not be right, but it is human nature.

I'm suffering something similar though, unlike compassion fatigue, I don't feel in the slightest bit guilty about it. I have christening it Apocalyptic Public Spending Cuts Warnings Fatigue (APSCWF), which might be pronounced 'apswhiff' if one were to use the acronym in speech.

'Apswhiff' has been induced by a series of increasingly hysterical warnings from various interest groups within the public sector over the likely effect of the impending significant reduction in the budget Holyrood receives from Westminster.

The most recent, and most extreme, came from Les Gray, chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, who opined, with an apparent straight face, that ministers would have "blood on their hands" if they pushed through a 9 per cent budget cut, and a reduction of 2,800 officers.

Obviously a man who is never knowingly under-hyped, or possibly advised by some slick PR merchant of the need to grab a headline, Mr Gray also warned that if the cuts went ahead, "the murder rate will go through the roof".

Just think about this for a moment. Let us assume such a cut in police numbers will happen, something that is not certain. But if it did what would good chief constables do? Most would redeploy officers to the priority areas which, one hopes, would include tackling violence on the streets.

The end result might – and it is only might – be an increase in burglary, the stealing of lead from roofs, petty theft and the like. Very unlikely that blood will be involved, then.

Second, the claim on the murder rate. As even a cursory look through recent murder cases suggests most of them could not be prevented by "bobbies on the beat". They are often premeditated, or so-called crimes of passion and many take place in domestic circumstances.

So a cut in the numbers of police officers is highly unlikely to mean an increase in the murder rate. And indeed, if ministers offered to double the headcount, would Mr Gray be able to promise the murder rate will decline substantially? I doubt it.

The point of this is not to say the police may not have an argument, but to illustrate the fact that from now until the Scottish government budget is set we will be inundated by special interests pleading their case.

And the danger is that those who shout loudest, who can grab the biggest headlines, those with the most muscle – the playground bullies of the public sector – will drown out the weaker, the less vociferous, the more self-effacing. The scandal is these less powerful groups are often the most deserving.