Readers' Letters: Scotland has too few police officers and staff to get job done

Police Scotland is losing 1,000 officers with perhaps 25 years’ experience each, and replacing them with new officers who undergo a two-year probationary period.

The end result is fewer experienced officers, placing an even greater burden on them, with the potential for higher levels of absence due to sickness and stress.

Ah, the SNP argue, we have more officers per capita than England or Wales. Such use of selected statistics is always a cause for a deeper analysis. After Police Scotland was formed, many, many civilian staff lost their jobs and were backfilled by experienced police officers, ironically at a higher cost, so does Scotland have more Police Staff and Police Officers per capita than England and Wales?

Around 1,000 Police Scotland officers are expected to retire before next summer (Photo by Steve Welsh/Getty Images)

It’s time the SNP and Police Scotland were open with the public. Scotland has too few officers and staff to do the job that needs done, dilapidated police stations that are not fit for purpose, clapped-out police cars, and an exhausted workforce.

It’s a far cry from the promised 1,000 extra officers made by then first minister Nicola Sturgeon in 2017. The same date she promised a Scottish Energy Company that never materialised. The SNP – a total failure after 17 years and people leaving school now will only ever have experienced their failures.

It’s a sad indictment of my homeland.

Brian Barbour, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland

Season of gloom

An eye-watering fiscal deficit of £22.7 billion and a black hole of nearly £1bn has forced Shona Robison – the SNP Government’s finance minister – to announce swingeing mid-year cuts to public services and capital projects, and the premature tapping of investment funding (eg the receipts from offshore wind farm licensing held in the ScotWind fund). Hard trade-offs for any finance minister to have to face.

The factors leading to this are pretty clear: the decline in Scotland’s share of the oil revenues as the global price of oil slumped last year; the vagaries of the workings of the Barnet Formula; fiscal drag on Scotland’s higher basic income tax rate; and the cost of the SNP Government’s past spending commitments (free tuition fees for students, free early learning and child care, subsidised transport, frozen council taxes etc).

And add to that the recent above-inflation pay rises agreed with unions in the public sector.

The relative significance of these factors will no doubt be discussed ad nauseam ad infinitum by politicians and commentators. Let the blame game begin!

The mantra of progressive politics is “let those with the broadest shoulder take the strain!” That usually means the uber rich, high earners and profitable Big Business. The rich are rich enough to flee the country while Big Business can financially re-engineer and report their profits in more attractive fiscal regimes outside the UK.

But this is full-blown austerity for all – so expect further significant increases in the tax burden (already at a near historic high)!

In particular, if you are middle class – the very people that John Swinney now wants to attract back to the SNP – or if you run or work in a small/medium sized business, or are self-employed, making ends meet could well become even tougher after the October Budget at Westminster and December Budget at Holyrood.

The election message of “positive change” of our unseasonal summer is withering rapidly as a very gloomy autumn fast approaches – and with it the sinking mood of the nation!

Ewen Peters, Newton Mearns, Glasgow

Voters listened

John Swinney’s promise at the SNP’s annual conference to go “front and central” on independence wasn’t exactly on a par with Winston Churchill’s “We will fight them on the beaches” speech. Or JFK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner.” From a First Minister who’s got little else to actually offer, he falls back on the hoary old chestnut of an independence that, verifiably, can never happen.

And it’s no use the diehards saying it will. That’s pure fantasy. A “route to a stronger and fairer country?” The SNP have had, at least, 14 years to make Scotland a stronger and fairer country.

It’s not that voters are not listening to the SNP. They’ve listened, not liked what they heard and deserted for good.

Doug Morrison, Tenterden, Kent

Dead in the water

How can anyone have any doubts about the fact that any early surge towards Scotland becoming independent of the 300-year old Union has now met with strong resistance not only from Westminster but, more importantly, from the majority of Scots.

The SNP is a failed cause. It has had its peaks and troughs during its campaign to change the governance and future development of Scotland. But as with other similar failed ventures in politics, business or finance, its followers are finding it difficult to accept defeat.

May I suggest to the members of John Swinney's “last post brigade” that the time has come for you to accept the status quo.

I have no doubt that your intentions were sound but “independence” from the UK was rejected by the “people of Scotland” in the 2014 Referendum. The SNP cause is dead in the water.

Robert IG Scott, Northfield, Ceres, Fife

Sitting pretty

Pensions expert John Ralfe wrote in the media last year about his discovery that Nicola Sturgeon was a member of the UK's most generous pension scheme.

On a final salary basis, 1/40th accrual rate and a normal retirement age it's worth a whopping 75 per cent of the salary it's attached to and is by a long way more generous than arrangements for Westminster MPs, council workers, NHS staff and those in the emergency services – all of which were reformed to align to state pension age, average salary and lower accrual rates. And yet a year on there is, incredibly, no indication of reform while swingeing cuts are made elsewhere.

MSPs, why not start with your own benefits and then you might have the moral authority to come for the Arts.

Dorothy Henderson, Edinburgh

Boxing match

Jill Stephenson takes aim at the Scottish Government’s baby box scheme (Letters, 3 September).

I don’t disagree that the fall in child mortality in Finland was tied to improved overall healthcare – for a start, the boxes were introduced (as Jill Stephenson says in her missive) in 1938 so they have had some little time to do longitudinal study.

Scotland has not had a whole lot of academic research done on the impact of the baby boxes. The best one I came across was 2022’s “The Baby Box scheme in Scotland: A study of public attitudes and social value” by Zoë Skea et al.

This study concluded that, “we found a high degree of positivity about the principle of the Baby Box scheme... remarkably consistent across different communities and backgrounds. There was little evidence of the strongly polarised views present in media reporting.”

What I am struggling to understand from Jill Stephenson’s letter is this: the baby boxes are not universally accepted; the midwife brings a form at 24 weeks asking if the mother would like one. She doesn’t need to have it if she doesn’t want it.

In the UK we do not take care of our mothers: we have the worst female health gap in Europe and the 12th-largest on the planet. Many – too many – women live under conditions of abuse and coercion and an equivalent amount of money would not be accessible to them. Likewise, the gender pay gap means that far too many pregnant women have to make decisions about whether to eat properly or prepare for their new child. Universality removes stigma.

Coercive control, gaslighting and restricting the financial flow to a supposedly equal partner? Sounds eerily familiar – and apparently Jill Stephenson is as comfortable with it in people’s homes as she is within the dis-United Kingdom.

Rebecca Machin, Edderton, Highland

Trained eyes

ScotRail is currently in public ownership, which is a euphemism for being run by the Scottish Government, who have announced this week their intention to replace the ageing intercity fleet of diesel locomotives with electric ones. Is there any reason to suppose that they might just award a large contract which will not continue to drain the almost empty public purse by being years late and grossly over budget? Don’t hold your breath!

SR Wild, Edinburgh

Skye’s limit

On hearing about the “too many tourists” problems on Skye, I was interested to read in a weekend’s Sunday Times: Travel section as to how this problem seems to have been solved by Spain for a similar situation on the Cies archipelago off the coast of Galicia.

“Over Easter and from May 15 to September 15, only 1,500 visitors are allowed to visit the islands per day, and need authorisation to travel from the Galician environment ministry. Permits are issued free of charge online up to 90 days in advance.”

Authorisation is granted immediately, after which one gets a code with which ferry tickets have to be booked within two hours (otherwise reapplication is needed).

Maybe a similar arrangement could be considered before crossing the bridge “over the sea to Skye”?

Margaret Campbell, Edinburgh

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