Top police chief backs single force for Scotland

A SENIOR officer responsible for co-ordinating policing in the rest of the UK has backed Scotland’s move towards a single police force.

Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) which represents the 44 police forces of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said the single force is an understandable response to 21st-century threats.

However, he stressed that cross-border co-operation with other UK forces “has to survive” under the new order to protect the “national infrastructure”, which he said was stretched tight by last year’s English riots and was held together thanks to the “critical” support of Scottish officers.

Speaking at Holyrood’s Justice Committee today, Sir Hugh said: “Size and scale of the operation does not mean that, by definition, the bigger the organisation gets the less commitment there is to local policing.”

He added: “If one looks at the biggest threats in the country, the 21st-century threats: cybercrime; organised crime; international crime and terrorism; you cannot deliver those at a local level.

“But every chief that I have the privilege to represent recognises that if you don’t have the confidence of the communities to keep them safe at a local level, you will not deliver at a national level because one is a function of the other.”

He said chief officers would not ditch their commitment to local policing under any circumstances and cited cases where “serious terrorist offences” have been prevented by information obtained by community policemen.

Sir Hugh spent 25 years in London’s Metropolitan Police Service and seven years as Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland before adopting his current role as Acpo president.