 I welcome to the 21st meeting of the Criminal Justice Committee. We have apologies this morning from Collette Stevenson and I welcome Jackie Dunbar to the meeting as a committee substitute. I would like to invite members to decide, first of all, whether to take item 3 in private and any subsequent consideration of progress made on implementing the committee's recommendations in its report on the priorities for the criminal justice sector in Scotland to take those in private today and at future meetings. Are we agreed? Our next item of business is consideration of correspondence received from Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Federation on the potential impact on police numbers of new pension arrangements. The correspondence was received following a request from the committee to the chief constable asking for an update on the matter after consideration of an SSI. I refer members to paper 1 and I will open it up for any members to come in with any comments that you may have. Jamie, do you want to come in? Yes, so I'm just quite clear on what's the format of this morning's sessions. I'd just like to open it up in terms of the correspondence that would receive the two pieces of correspondence. I'm just keen for us to have a discussion in relation to members' views on the content of the letters. So bring in Jamie and then yourself Russell. Of course, thank you, convener. Good morning. Yes, of course, I think naturally members would be concerned by the content of the correspondence, statistically for the benefit of those interesting proceedings. It was confirmed to us that on average 812 officers leave the organisation annually. What was identified to us was that in quarter one of this year already 321 officers have left, which is a 69 per cent increase on the normal retirement rate, which is a five-year average, so quite consistent, and it's directly related to retirements. There is a proposition that if that carried on, of course those numbers would only increase and be much higher than the normal retirement rate. Of course, there is a range of views and I'm happy to hear what other members say on this and maybe come back in later, but there's a range of views on the likely cause of such. I think there's two angles to this that we should explore as a committee. The first is what are those causes, but secondly, what is the effect? It's the effect that perhaps we're most worried about in terms of a loss of officer numbers and what will be done about that. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of time left in the session before a recess, but I think it will be prudent to take further evidence of this as soon as we can. What will have happened by September, who knows, but it seems a long way away from here. Noting the response from the Scottish Police Federation to these statistics, given that it seems to me that the view of the police of Police Scotland or perhaps the SPA is that this is to do with changes to pension commutation calculations and eligibility to retire, whilst that's accepted as perhaps one reason that's also perhaps refuted by the SPF, who admit that there is an advantageous financial option to consider early retirement. However, that's not the only reason. Callum Stale quotes on the record in all this is available for the benefit of the public that our officers are overworked and undervalued, specifically raising the issue of having their wrists disrupted, and I think that's one issue that has come through when you speak to front-line officers. The physical and mental toll that the job was taking on them and they feel that they're failing the wider public and their ability to carry out their role. So it clearly is a much more complicated issue than simply that of financial pension commutations. I guess what that will then lead to is discussions around workforce planning, whether any of this was foreseen, whether we believe that Police Scotland or ministers are heeding warnings about retirements as a result of health exhaustion and just sheer exasperation in the force, or whether there's perhaps an element of denial of that. I guess what we're worried about is how that will impact future numbers layered on top of that, the proposed potential action that the SPF recommended, which was announced yesterday, and what effect that might have on a more limited number of officers having to do the work of people who are not just not there, but people who are working to rule as well. I think that there's a lot going on there, but I hope that that opens up the conversation at the very least. Thank you, convener. When I read the letter from David Page from Police Scotland, there was a paragraph that I jumped out at me and underlined in it when he said, there's no impact to service delivery, that being in relation to what's fair to describe as an exodus of police officers, some of them with great number of years of experience. Then when I turned to the letter from Callum Steele of the Scottish Police Federation, he had also quite strongly questioned this and his take on the actual claim by Mr Page, and it's there for everyone to see, is that this is demonstrably untrue and verging on the deliberately disingenuous and goes on to point out that Police Scotland has the lowest number of police officers since 2008 and concludes by saying of Police Scotland, if it's not honest about them to itself, whilst simultaneously seeking to present a highly partial narrative about them to our parliamentarians. It's quite extraordinary that the General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation is effectively saying that Police Scotland are misleading us as MSPs and as a committee, and I think that that's absolutely vital that we get to the bottom of this and work out exactly what this pension issue and its cause and officer numbers is going to actually mean for policing in communities. Okay, thank you very much. Pauline? Thank you, convener. I agree with the points that we made so far, and as Russell said, there's a slightly different perspective from the Police Scotland versus the Police Federation, so I think it's important that we do establish why, when one thing is clear, that there's higher numbers than usual leaving police service, so why is that the case? For me, from what I've read, the phrase in the Federation letter that says that police officers feel undervalued is no great surprise to me. My perspective anyway during the pandemic, I can't for the life of me understand why police officers will not give them priority for vaccination, for example. Obviously, that was a matter of the GCVI, but in reality I kind of felt that no-one was really standing up for police officers, and as we in this committee have been examining, police officers are the one provision that cannot walk away from problems, whether it's dealing with the 101 calls to mental health issues or crime, and we now know that a lot of the calls that police officers deal with are not directly related to crime. That's got to be recognised in some way, but for us as a committee, I think that it's the loss of experience that concerns me most. I've looked at the breakdown of the ranks, I mean it's pretty spread across the ranks, but I actually think that there's a sense of urgency about this because if those numbers are correct and we lose that level of experience at all those grades, no level of recruitment is going to compensate for that. It's a service already under pressure, so I think that there are service implications for that, that I do think that we need to discuss with the Government, and for me it must be around the pay and service conditions issue. I mean, I'll say lastly, my concern as a politician is we've got to try and do the right thing, I think, and when I try to try and retain some of those officers, if the federation are correct, they say it's a minor change to pensions that police officers could always leave 30-year service, 30-year, 25-year service, but there's been a minor change to that and that isn't the reason why they're leaving. If that's correct, I think that there's a duty on the Government to make some inroads into paying conditions that would persuade some of those officers to leave, sorry to stay, because if they don't stay, I think that we've got real service issues in the police service. A lot of what I was going to say has been covered, I think, particularly the pension points that obviously we'd want to understand, but I do think that it's quite important that we do get on top of exactly where we are on police at the moment, given what's coming in terms of the spending review and the cuts of what I understand to be in the region of 20 per cent in real terms that are coming between now and 2026. Obviously, not everything is to do with money, a lot of it's to do with morale, the two things can be intertwined, but I think as a committee this is a useful opportunity to perhaps leap ahead of where we would have been in looking at budgets to look at how much money is the police service going to have because pay must be one of the major ways that that money is spent, so I'm sure it's not just all about pay, it will be far more complicated than that, but pay is obviously going to be one of the factors and it is intertwined with morale, so it would be useful, I think, as a committee to gather as much information as is available on all of that and perhaps make more inquiries so we can take an early view on that rather than perhaps waiting into the end of this year or next year when we're sort of looking at the budgets in more detail. I just wanted to say, and I think we know that it's not the first time that Police Scotland and the Federation have had differing opinions as a regular occurrence, and I think that the reality is that 440 of the 735 officers who've retired or about to retire have 25 to 29-year service. They're perfectly entitled to retire, that's the reality of it, it's just the demographic of it. I'm not quite sure what we can do, there's nothing we can do to stop that, that's their right to do that. Police Scotland say they're going to try and recruit more than 300 probationers a quarter, and I'm sure they'll make every attempt to do that, and also look at transferring opportunities from across the police force and people doing different functions to get them into the police force. This isn't just happening in Police Scotland, I think it's happening in a lot of public services, health etc. We're just at that point where a lot of people with a lot of service are retiring, and that's just the reality of it. So I appreciate the concerns, I don't think we should hit the panic button because they will sort this out, and as I say, people are perfectly entitled to take their pension when they have done that length of service. I don't think anybody would deny them that. Thanks very much, Shona. Fulton. Thanks, convener, and I agree generally with all the points that have been made, including from the first few members that spoke about some of the difficulties that Police Scotland are quite clearly facing, but also what Rona has highlighted there in terms of perhaps aligning what this committee's role could be in that, and obviously there's processes to go through in terms of paying negotiations and such like, which I know are on-going. I wanted just to highlight that Pauline did touch on it, but I found one of the quotes from Colin Seill quite strong, and I think we do need to, from his letter, and I think we do need to get to the bottom of that, to understand what it is, and I'll read it out. It's also noteworthy that palpable anger remains across the PSOS as to how police officers were treated by government, the service and the SPA during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, so I do think that we need to maybe try and understand what that's referring to. Pauline raised the issue of vaccinations. Is it just that, or are there other things going on? We need to tease out what that means, because this committee could have a role in maybe trying to understand that and give advice, if you like, about how that could be improved. I found that quite a strong statement in the letter. Thank you for letting me back in, but obviously when you're first to go, it opens up the can of worms. Is the issue around backfilling positions and Rona Mackay's right to point out that the aim, and the wording is very specific from Police Scotland, is that we will endeavour to recruit 300 probationers per quarter, so if you tie that out at 1200 per year, it's still less than the number retiring, but there is obviously a time lag involved in this from the recruitment to the being live on the job process, and it's fair to assume that the majority of those who will graduate and go into service will not be going in at the higher end of the roles. It is quite notable that so many of those leaving in the next 12 months of the 1377, around half of them are at PC level, and that's a substantial number, but of course people of this cohort of 300 per quarter, it's unlikely that many of them will be going into roles as chief inspector, superintendent or chief superintendent, so there is an inevitability that those higher ranking roles will not be filled quickly, and that's where that loss of experience is important. Rona is right to say that people 30 years service will be, and if it was me, I'd be thinking about my retirement as well, however it's the right at it which could cause worry, so there may not be a panic button now, but I don't think we're far round the corner from pressing the panic button on this because we don't really know how many they will recruit, we don't know how long it will take them to get into active service, I think these are questions we must ask Police Scotland. I'm notwithstanding the pay dispute, which obviously has its own process, if there is the real terms budget cut that is forecast and is widely acknowledged, what effect will that have, is that a capital resource or resource budget cut or both, and what effect that will have on that churn increased as well. We don't want to get to a point in a year, 18 months, two years time, where they say, we told you so, the numbers are far lower than what is needed. The police are already talking about moving people into front line services that currently work in the force but aren't in, for example, local policing. I'm not quite sure what corporate service roles are and why those people are doing those roles and not local policing or front line policing, but if they're already having to take people out of those to fill in gaps, then that begs the question who will prefer all those back office roles that obviously need to be done. If they need to be done, there wouldn't be people doing them. I think there are a whole bunch of questions that arise from the correspondence that we've had and we should either try and take evidence from or write with requesting more detail on that. I'd quite like to see a forecast plan of numbers actually and what rank people will be at. Police surely will be doing long-term resource planning for the next couple of years. That might give us a better idea of when we see the crossover between everything being just about manageable to their being a major issue for us and the sooner we get sight of that, if that doesn't exist, that's great, but those projections should be quite easy to forecast given the numbers. Do you mean the ranks of those who are planning to retire? I presume that there's modelling taking place within Police Scotland to know what level they expect people who come into the system new to then rise up through ranks into new positions. There must be an average rate of promotion, for example. I think that looking at that in the round, we should be able to take snapshots of future years given projections on retirement rights, recruitment rights and promotional time lags. I presume that this all happens as a matter of course, given the scale of the organisation. There will be people who are far better at that than us, but let's see what it looks like. I want to know what those graphs look like for the next 12, 24, 36 months, because if at any point they demonstrate that there's a dip and there's a problem, then those gaps—I don't know how on earth we're going to fill those gaps, because there's not the sort of jobs that we can just draft people in to do quickly and easily, so I'm maybe a little bit more concerned than other members. Turning back to the letter from the Scottish Police Federation, I know that the General Secretary is perhaps not slow in coming forward, but I think that so many elements of what he says are really strong and really quite concerning. Going back to two of the points that Rona raised about intent to recruit new officers, he describes an apparent annual accounting chicanery of mass recruitment before each quarterly publication. In terms of perhaps bringing in officers from elsewhere, whether that's other police forces in the UK or elsewhere, the language that police use was maximising transfer-e opportunities, which he describes as meaningless corporate language. I think that such is the strength of difference between those two submissions. What underpins all of this is the financial situation. The stagnant budget for the next few years is not just stagnant but with inflation represents serious cuts, so this is going to be a huge issue for us. That's a helpful discussion. A lot of points are raised legitimately so. For myself, without a tall diminishing what is happening, this is an exceptional departure of police officers in terms of the numbers involved. Ordinarily, as members know, Police Scotland has an exodus of officers year on year. That can, to a certain extent, be the numbers that can be dictated by 30 years previously when, for example, you had in the 70s high numbers of recruited officers courtesy of, for example, paying conditions improving. To a certain extent, provisional forces before Police Scotland and now Police Scotland have experience of managing that kind of changing staff profile. However, I would certainly agree that this is an unusual set of circumstances arising out of the change in the pension provisions and arrangements. It is really important that we have been able to put our views on the record. We have obviously published the letters that were received from Police Scotland and the Police Federation, which were helpful. It is also important to note that the Scottish Police Authority has an important role in managing and responding to the issue. I would propose, if members are agreeable to it, that, given that we are just a couple of weeks away from recess, we should perhaps ask Police Scotland for its initial response to the letter of correspondence from the Police Federation to comment on the concerns that it has raised. In terms of the underpinning potential budget issues, that is something that we can also consider and pick up in our forthcoming budget scrutiny process. At this point in the year, if members are agreeable, as a starting point, that we write to Police Scotland and ask for their response to the Federation's comments. Obviously, we very much keep the situation under review and revisit it where we feel that is required. Are members agreeable to that? Can I request that we write back to the Federation to ask them to clarify or expand on the language that they are using around what their plans are over the next few months? We want to be sitting so that we will not be able to react to things that are urgent, but they are using language like in terms of the potential industrial action that they may take as sustained, impactful, and there are other words around that, which I think strike some warning bells. It would be helpful to know exactly what they mean by that, what sort of action are they considering or might they do, and what effect or impact that might have on local policing or front-line services. I think that the problem is that if we wait until the middle of September, it may already have started. I think that our constituents have been more than concerned to think that there might be any impact on front-line policing that might commence more quickly than in three months' time. It is up to them to clarify what they mean by that, not for us to make conjecture around it, but I do not see any harm in asking them. I have no objection to that, but the press has spoken publicly about not answering phone calls and rest days. There is a lot of stuff that, in most jobs, you are not required to do, you do it. It is the goodwill side of things, but I do not mind if what you are asking for is for them to clarify in writing what range of actions. It is all very well speaking to newspapers, but it has been nice to speak to us about it. Anybody else want to come in on Jamie's suggestion? I have mixed feelings on that. On the one hand, I understand where you are coming from. On the other hand, I am quite keen for us not to conflate what we are looking at. The Federation has been very clear in the terms in which it has written to us. Members have no doubt about what their concerns are. If members are happy to write to the Federation for some clarity, I am agreeable to that. However, I am keen for us to keep this quite focused in the meantime. The other option that we would probably be relevant is to write to the Scottish policing authority to ask what it is doing by way of monitoring what is happening in the immediate term. I agree with myself. I hear where Jamie is coming from. In principle, I do not have any objection to it, but I think that it might muddy the water a bit, especially in a period in which we are getting into recess. If we write to both of them and we are asking Police Scotland to respond to this letter, what I would rather do is perhaps a compromise. I will write to Police Scotland just now to get their response and then obviously we will be in recess at that point, but then perhaps leave at your discretion whether we then write to the SPA as well. You keep in mind that members have requested that. I would say that that might be because, if we write to both just now, then Police Scotland might—there might be other things that they want to respond to in the second letter back from the SPA. Members are agreeable. My proposal would be that, in the first instance, we write back to Police Scotland and we also write to the Scottish policing authority. I will park the idea of writing back to the Federation for the moment. I think that we have a very clear idea of their position on that and we can review that in due course. Are members agreeable to that? That concludes the public part of our meeting and we will now move into private session.