Site news
Sign up to receive an
occasional bulletin about new content.
Sign up to receive an
occasional bulletin about new content.
Monday, January 28, 2008
At Holyrood this week, the Justice Committee published its Inquiry into the Effective Use of Police Resources and debated alcohol licensing fees. In Parliament there was concern about the management of the Prison Open Estate and questions were put to the Justice and Law Officers.
Justice Committee Inquiry
Effective Use of Police Resources
On Thursday, the Justice Committee published their report into the ‘effective use of police resources’. The Inquiry was begun in September 2007 to focus primarily on the management and deployment of police officers, including the proposals in the SNP manifesto for an increase of 1000 officers (subsequently reduced to 500 police officers in the draft budget published in November).
They looked at how effectively police resources are being utilised, and highlighted areas where improvements could be made in the operation and governance of the police. The main points of the report are highlighted below.Evaluating police resources
The Committee were unanimously of the opinion that, at current levels, police resources do not appear to be adequate to allow Forces to effectively meet all of their present commitments. They also said that the Government’s plans to identify a further 500 officers for front-line policing through a combination of retention and redeployment will be very challenging to deliver, and that the ability of the police to meet the annual 2 per cent cashable efficiency savings demanded by Government, will also be extremely challenging.
Reviewing the role, responsibilities, and public expectations of the police
The Committee noted that expectations of the police have changed significantly over the past 40 years, and that in order to secure the public’s support, it was vital that any future changes to the police role and functions must be effectively communicated to the public
Civilianisation and the changing nature of the ‘policing family’
Given the variation in the amount of civilianisation between the eight different forces in Scotland, the Committee recommended that the Government commission a study to identify best practice in staffing structures with regards to civilianisation throughout the eight forces
‘Community policing’
The Committee was concerned that there was no commonly agreed definition of community policing among Scottish police forces and the Scottish Government. They also thought that, because there is no commonly agreed definition and no baseline figure therefore exists, it is essential that such a baseline figure is established as soon as possible. The Committee considered that community policing is of such importance they intend to carry out as a second phase of this inquiry, a more in-depth review of community policing in Scotland, in order to establish a clear definition of community policing and identify baseline figures for community police officers.
The Scottish Policing Performance Framework
The Committee also welcomed the establishment of the Scottish Policing Performance Framework, and they recommended that similar reporting standards should be adopted at divisional and sub-divisional level within individual forces, in order to allow more detailed scrutiny of policing performance between local areas.
Reviewing and strengthening police governance, accountability and organisation
The Committee recommended that the current tripartite arrangements should be strengthened in order to clarify the role and responsibilities of each of the partners. They also recommended that police authorities should be given the assistance they require in order to be able to independently scrutinise the performance of their police forces.
See also :
Press Release
“Justice Committee Reports Police Resources as Inadequate” The Scottish Parliament.
Full Report
“Report on Inquiry into the Effective Use of Police Resources“The Justice Committee
The Justice Committee
Subordinate Legislation - Licensing (Fees) (Scotland) Regulations 2007
The Committee’s entire meeting on Tuesday was occupied with the subordinate legislation which will implement the final part of the Licensing Scotland Act 2005 which deals with the level of fees that Licensing Boards are able to charge premises that sell alcohol. At the end of the previous meeting, the Committee had raised concerns about the very tight schedule they had to deal with this issue, given that the regulations were due to come into force at the beginning of February. The Committee had received various submissions from the licensing trade arguing that the fee structure is excessive and will result in many small businesses having to close. The Committee therefore wanted to raise these issues with the Cabinet Secretary before agreeing to these regulations.
To put the regulations in context, this Government has made addressing alcohol consumption in Scotland central to its justice and community safety programme, and their decision to impose substantial fees on licensing premises could therefore be seen as part of this agenda. The Government’s argument for the higher than expected level of fees, is that they want licensing boards across the country to be self funding. Currently, fees paid by pubs cover only 63% of the licensing system’s running costs, with local authorities meeting the shortfall. The Committee’s main concern with the regulations was the lack of time they had been given to review them, especially in light of the volume of submissions they had received in opposition to them. At the end of last weeks meeting, the possibility of lodging an annulment was discussed, which would give the Committee more time to scrutinise the regulations, but which would also delay the implementation of the entire Act.
At the meeting last Tuesday, the Cabinet Secretary argued that attitudes towards alcohol had to change, and that there was a need to move away from the mindset that selling alcohol is a right. He argued that it is not a right, it is a privilege, and that the privilege to profit from the sale of alcohol has associated costs which must be born by those who profit from it. He said that if the Committee rejected these regulations, they would be undermining the intentions of the Act, which he said were ‘to protect and improve public health; to prevent public nuisance; to secure public safety; to prevent crime and disorder; and to protect children from harm’. He said that members on the Committee would be sending their constituents the wrong message if they voted against them.
The Committee’s questions revolved primarily over the level of the license fees, and their feeling that they had been put in a ‘fait accompli’ by being presented with the regulations at the last possible moment. The Cabinet Secretary replied that the Government had only set the maximum level of the fees, and that each local authority had the ability to charge any level below this if they wanted. He also said that there was no point in having a longer time for consultation, given that everyone’s views had already been made known to the Government during the consultation, and extra time would not have changed the Government’s decision.
The tone of the meeting was rather combative to say the least, and the Cabinet Secretary’s refusal to be more conciliatory, even in tone, could well have made the possibility of a vote against them more likely. However, at the end of the meeting, the Committee agreed to the regulations, albeit reluctantly, primarily because the consequences of not allowing the regulations to go through would ‘severely hamper’ the operation of the 2005 Act, which had already been passed by the Parliament. The relationship between the Committee and Cabinet Secretary cannot have been enhanced by this meeting, a factor which may lead to interesting tensions as the new criminal justice legislative programme is introduced this year.
You can read the full transcripts of this meeting in the Official Report, or you can watch it on Holyrood.TV for up to one month.
The Chamber
The Budget Scotland Bill: Stage 1
The Chamber was packed on Wednesday afternoon for the Stage 1 debate of the Budget Bill. The budget had to be voted through on Wednesday if it was to go ahead. In the draft bill published in November, the Government confirmed that they would provide funding for only a further 500 police officers, rather than the 1000 they had pledged in their manifesto. However, because the Government does not have majority within Parliament, they have had to offer concessions to other parties in order to secure their support to get the budget passed. This has lead to an unlikely alliance between the SNP and the Conservatives, which has resulted in the Government modifying the budget at Stage 1 to include, amongst other things, a promise to ‘address the issue’ of extra police officers, indicating they will provide funding for the original extra 1000 officers initially promised in the manifesto. However, at this stage, the Government only needs to indicate their intentions, which was sufficient for the budget to be narrowly voted through on Wednesday with Tory backing. The Labour party and the Liberal Democrats voted against it, and the Greens abstained. The budget will now return back to individual subject Committees for more scrutiny.
This is another example of how Parliamentary mathematics has resulted in certain issues taking central stage, and in this session of Parliament it has been the issue of ‘policing in Scotland’ which has been put firmly at the centre of the political arena. This is because of a combination of a Justice Committee headed by the Conservative’s influential Justice spokesperson, and the Government’s need for Conservative votes in the Chamber in order to secure their budget.
You can read the full transcripts of the budget debate in the Official Report, or you can watch it on Holyrood.TV.First Minister’s Questions Time
First Minister’s Questions on Thursday was dominated by news of the conviction of absconder from an open prison who had raped. Wendy Alexander asked the First Minister what the Government was doing to ensure that this would not happen again. Alex Salmond said that the Justice Secretary was carrying out a review into this specific case, and also that the issue of imprisonment generally is currently being reviewed by the Scottish Prisons Commission. He also said that the issue of absconding prisoners is not new, and that there has been concern about Castle Huntly prison for some time. The Labour leader attempted to connect this incident with the Government’s decision to reverse the previous administration’s plans to abolish automatic early release, but the First Minster emphasised that this crime was committed by a prison who had absconded, not one who was on automatic early release.
The Conservative leader, Annabel Goldie, also used this story as a platform to attack the Government for not carrying out a review on Castle Huntly which her party’s justice spokesperson, Bill Aitken, had called for in October last year. She went on to give statistics about the number of violent offenders in the open prison estate, and the number of these offenders who have absconded.
The First Minister replied that the Cabinet Secretary will be looking at arrangements at Castle Huntly, and he said that although ‘systems are not foolproof’, public safety is uppermost in consideration when decisions are taken about who can be moved into the open prison estate.
At the end of FMQs, a Liberal Democrat member asked Alex Salmond about the Government’s decision not to roll out domestic abuse courts. There is currently one pilot court in Glasgow, which has been heralded as successful, however, the Government has so far refused to roll out the courts nation wide. The First Minister replied that what may provide exceptional results in one area of Scotland may not necessarily be the correct way of addressing the same issue for every area of Scotland. He also reiterated that the widespread review of the summary justice system in Scotland will affect the timing if any initiatives are to be rolled out, and it would therefore not be wise to extend domestic abuse courts while such the summary justice review is underway.
You can read all these questions in the Official Report, or you can watch them on Holyrood.TV.
See also press on the Castle Huntly StoryNewsblog
Questions to the Law and Justice Officers
There was a question from the Greens about what the Government were doing to take account of prisoners’ children’s interests, given that an estimated 13,500 children in Scotland were affected by the imprisonment of a parent or carer. The Minister for Community Safety, Fergus Ewing, replied that each accused’s personal circumstances are carefully considered when a sentence against them is passed, but that sometimes the public must be protected by a custodial sentence being passed. He also said that most prisons go to great lengths to ensure that conditions are made as pleasant as is possible for family visits and that families receive support.
Next, the Lord Advocate answered a question about what the Government is doing to support a national non-emergency three-digit phone number for the police across Scotland. She replied that there were no plans to create a new national non emergency number at this time.
Next there was a question about what the Government was doing about forced marriages in Scotland given that legislation has been introduced in England and Wales which make forced marriages illegal. The Cabinet Secretary for Justice replied that the Scottish Government will begin a consultation in Spring on whether civil legislation should be introduced to protect those affected by forced marriage in Scotland as well. He said that this ties in with the creation of the Scottish forced marriage network, which has been established in order to raise awareness of this issue within Scotland, and also to explore what the true extent of the problem is.
A related question was put to him about how the Government can monitor incidents of ‘honour killings’ when information on such crimes cannot be separately identified within the statistics collected centrally on homicides. He said that proving whether a murder was an honour killing or was ‘done out of badness and malice’ is difficult, not least because the Police and the Crown are dealing with sections of community that may not wish to co-operate or confirm that a crime has even occurred in some instances. He also said that the solution is not just enforcing the law, but tackling the culture that exists, and that if the consultation report that a new law is not required, then the Government will be more than happy to enforce the existing laws
Next, the Cabinet Secretary answered a question from Lord Foulkes about the Scottish Government’s relationship with British Transport Police, specifically regarding their use of stop-and-search powers. He replied that he had met with the BTP earlier that week in order to discuss concerns about its use in Scotland of stop-and-search powers under s.44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, but denied that he had only held this meeting after repeated requests from the assistant chief constable of the BTP, or after this question had been lodged by Lord Foulkes. He said that the BTP had been ‘staggered’ by the number of searches that had been carried out in Scotland, and that they had ‘agreed that matters were out of kilter’ and that is why they had agreed to undertake a review. He said that he has made it quite clear that the Government supports the use of s. 44 powers as long as they are used appropriately. He was asked by an SNP member whether the possibility of a national transport police service which would cover ports, airports and train services, had been considered by the Government. At the moment, Scottish railway stations are dealt with by the British Transport Police and bus stations and airports are dealt with by local constabularies. He said that he had discussed it with the police and that the proposal should be considered
Next, the Minister for Community Safety, Fergus Ewing, answered a question about what additional measures the Government proposes in order to extend existing community orders, or introduce new forms of community orders, to reduce short-term custody for non-violent offenders, especially women. He replied that a range of measures are currently being implemented that ‘have the potential to reduce’ the number of female accused and offenders who are sent to custody. He said that a number of ‘fiscal work orders’ will be piloted shortly, which will provide fiscals with an additional option for dealing with those accused of minor offences but who may be unable to pay a fiscal fine, to carry out between 10 and 50 hours of reparative activity.
He also said that the Government proposed to pilot a mentoring/link worker scheme for adult female offenders who have been given community sentences. He was also asked whether the Government would reconsider their decision to abolish community reparation orders, given that the recent evaluation of the orders showed that they had been poorly explained to the judiciary, and that numbers were therefore low, and arrangements for implementation of the orders were poor. He argued that just because the pilot was poor, that should not mean that the orders should be abandoned given that they had generally been welcomed by communities
The Minister said that the Government were willing to look again at the disposals, and that they had also been disappointed that the pilot had shortcomings and defects. He said that sentencers are not always convinced of the efficacy of community disposals, and that in order to ensure that the disposals are effective, an additional £500,000 had been made available to increase the capacity of bail supervision.
You can read all these question in Official Report, or you can watch it on Holyrood.TV.
Written Questions
There was a question about the progress of the review of anti-social behaviour legislation, and a question about the number of calls to the pilot Child Protection Line. There were a number of questions about vandalism in the Grampians, and internet fraud, and about funding for victims of human trafficking. There were a number of questions about the so called ‘mosquito ultrasonic youth deterrents’, about the sentences given to sexual offenders, and the nature of sentences currently being served by prisoners in Castle Huntly prison. There were a number of questions about Government plans to increase the police numbers through the retention of officers about to retire, and a number of questions about prisoners and prisons.
Posted by KM
on Mon 28th Jan 2008
at 5:02 pm
• Permalink • Tell-a-Friend