Single police force none of your business, senior officers told

ONE of Scotland’s most senior police officers has launched a stinging attack on Scottish Government civil servants, claiming they tried to exclude police from the drafting of legislation to merge emergency services.

Speaking at the 89th annual conference of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents in Peebles yesterday, Mr House also revealed tensions had built during last year’s budget discussions with officials over the Scottish Police Services Authority (SPSA).

The Scottish Government responded that the reform of police services would save £1.7 billion over 15 years.

The chief constable of Strathclyde told the conference that police were heavily involved in the recent Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012, but that changed when government officials started writing up the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill, which passed its first reading earlier this month.

He said: “There’s no denying there has been some tension between senior police officers and civil servants.

“We were told in very clear terms ‘this is none of your concern’. The writing of this was for the civil service, not for police. Steps were taken later to redress the balance.”

Mr House, who is a board member of the SPSA, which leads on police forensics and IT, said the budget negotations between the SPSA and the government went back and forth between officers and civil servants for months.

He said: “We had a situation where the chief executive of the SPSA was sent back to civil servants to say we can’t balance the budget, only to be returned by the civil servants to say that’s your money.

“It can’t be the way we run a single police service in Scotland. It can’t be the way we run the SPSA either. We must take action to make sure the relationships between police officers, the police authority and civil servants are clearly defined.”