 Can I formally start this meeting? I welcome justice committee's 23rd meeting of 2014. Can I ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices, which will interfere with broadcasting even when switched to silent? No apologies have been received. Turn to item 1 in the agenda. I invite the committee to agree to consider item 3, the committee's work programme in private. Are you agreed? Thank you very much. Item 2 is an evidence session on police and fire reform with HM inspector of constabulary in Scotland and HM chief inspector of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. The purpose of the session is to discuss inspection and thematic work in relation to the first year of the single services and to explore common themes arising from work of both inspectors. I welcome to the meeting Stephen Torrey, HM chief inspector of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Derek Penman, HM inspector of constabulary in Scotland and Andy Cowie, assistant inspector of constabulary in Scotland. Can I thank the witnesses for their written submissions? I want to say that we have had additional written submissions from the FBU and from the petitioner, Jodie Curtis. I want to put this on the record that, while I appreciate that there may be very good reasons why we have late submissions, they are not very useful to the committee, nor indeed to other witnesses that may come before us, because members simply do not have the opportunity when they come in our inboxes at five o'clock at night on a Monday and they are sitting at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday or even this morning. Thank you very much, committee, this morning. It is almost really impossible for committee members to give them due consideration, though I know that they will try. I put this out to anyone else who wants to put in submissions, try to get them in as early as possible, and that would be to assist you with the submissions being considered. I understand that Mr Torrey and Mr Penn wish to make some opening remarks, brief opening remarks, because you have given written submissions and I know that members want to ask you questions. Who wants to kick off first? Mr Pennlin, thank you. Thank you, convener. I really just thank you for the opportunity for us to come along today and give members some explanation of our inspection work and where we fit into both police and fire service. As you said, we have submitted a paper that outlines some of our thinking on that and some of the joint themes that we have come to. Really all that we had intended to say was just a conclusion on there, which is that our shared view is in terms of the single police and fire service. We have a view that it has been effective to date. We both believe that fire and police are operationally stronger than their legacy services. What we have said in our paper though is that this is a reform journey. It only has started and there needs to be an ongoing focus in both services around sustainability, localism and scrutiny to ensure that the medium and long-term success of both are fully realised. We did not intend to go through the paper in any great detail. We felt that members would prefer to perhaps ask us some questions on that. We have anticipated correctly. Mr Torrey. Thank you, convener, just to add my thanks to Mr Pennlin. In both inspectorates, one of the things that we are very keen on is trying to add value to the work of the organisations. We think that being able to talk to the committee in that way helps us to do that, so we are very grateful for the opportunity. What would be useful is for the public record to explain how you work together so frequently for the public, for instance RTAs. Could you perhaps explain how you have to communicate with each other the different services? You are not in silos? No, absolutely not. There is a long history of organisations working effectively together at every level, so from chief officers, chief constables, down to local area managers, down to the individual firefighters and police officers on the beat. There is a long standing close relationship and therefore we reflect that, we think, in the relationship between the two inspectorates. I wanted really to explore the issue of localism with you and, in particular, the sort of relationships with local authorities, community planning partners and so on across Scotland. As you may or may not know, there is no representative of free share. There has certainly been a feeling locally that there has been a lack of consultation between the services and the local council and other community planning partners to the extent that the police and fire plans were rejected by the council. Do you feel, first of all, have you monitored this? Have you looked at the way in which people are communicating with the services? I think that our starting point would be that localism will be absolutely key to the success of Police Scotland and I am sure of the fire service as well. My view certainly is that the legislation in particular allows for effective localism, it allows for the creation of local scrutiny plans, it gives responsibility to the local commander around there. Certainly, from my perspective, I think that the legislation allows for it to happen and I think that what is needed and done now is that there is more to be done around effectively that engagement with local police and plans that reflect local community needs. As part of our inspection process, we are looking in particular at each division. We will go round each division in turn and we will have a great interest in how effective that local engagement will be. It is absolutely accepted that the fire and rescue service might be run at a national level, but it is a local service, fundamentally a local service. That engagement locally is fundamentally important and I think that the organisation recognises that. The inspector has a real and genuine interest in that, but it is still early days for us. When we started to look at the beginning reform, it was too early to make detailed comment. We published a report in May this year, which we reflected for the first time how we saw local partnership working. Those were in distinct areas and we interviewed a few local partners. The picture that we were getting was overwhelmingly positive at the time, so the people that we interviewed in South Lanarkshire and Fife and so on thought that they had always had a long-standing good relationship with the fire and rescue service, but that had either changed or improved during the 18 months of reform. That is our early picture. On my locality, it is also the lack of consultation on things like the closures of the control rooms and so on, which has contributed. I am not trying to criticise the local commanders and either service have a lot of respect for it. It is the way things have been done laterally with the issue of armed police, where there did not seem to be any consultation with local people at all. Maybe we are not even aware that certain changes we are taking place. We have noted those comments, but it is too early for us, and we have not looked to detail on how those engagements are working. One of the things that we are keen to do is what is the role for the commander, what can the commander influence locally, and how do they work with the local scrutiny group. There is also that important part that you have mentioned there, which is very much about how does a national decision have an impact on a local area? In particular, how is that decision communicated through, meaningfully, the local communities feel that they are involved in that? We took the opportunity and our road policing thematic to make a recommendation to the Scottish Police Authority, which is effectively to do work with each of the local scrutiny committees to tease out exactly that point, which is what is their role in terms of local policing, but how do you communicate those national decisions? You would inspect it not just for the forces, but also in your case for the SPA, am I correct? Do you also inspect them? Likewise, do you have the same inspection for overseeing of the fire service through their organisation? We do, but it is a slightly different arrangement chair. The fire and rescue service board is not a separate corporate entity, so the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service does include the board and senior management. So you do not scrutinise them in the same way? We do, but it is simply because they are part of that single organisational structure. I just wanted to make a point that it was both. Sorry, Elaine. I was just really a request, I suppose, that you would speak to people in places like Dumfries and Galloway as well, because of the levels of concern there have been. It is not just about looking at where people are content, it is actually if you can speak to the people locally who are discontent. I mean, I am just dealing with a case at the moment where a constituent, observed and armed police officer doing his shopping in Morrison's a couple of Saturdays ago, and issues like that create a lot of concern within local communities. If we want Police Scotland and the Fire and Rescue Service to work well, we actually have to make sure that we are responding to those local concerns. Kate, Margaret, Alison, Roger and John Finnie. Good morning, gentlemen. This question is really for Mr Penman. The problems with ICT integration have been highlighted now. A few weeks ago, Police Scotland was known to be two years away from having a fully unified ICT system with a cost of £60 million. It is running nine months behind schedule. Just exactly what effect is this going to have on the efficiency of Police Scotland and eight systems that, as you note in your report, Mr Penman, do not talk to one another? ICT was always going to be one of those major challenges in bringing eight services together into one. Prior to Police Scotland being established, it had the I6 project that you referred to, which is looking to create effectively the key systems in policing and having them rolled out. What there is just now is a number of work-arounds across the country that allows things to continue. The divisional structure of policing currently is sort of coterminous with the previous legacy forces, so that minimises the impact just now on those legacy force systems. What we are keen to see in the inspectorate now is the ICT plan for the future, what that looks like, what the timescales are in relation to the roll-outs for that and also what the costs will be. I have a specific concern that has been raised just recently with the UK statistics authority report, which refused to endorse the recorded crime figures and many claims that the police officer had massaged the figures and hadn't applied or complied with the elements of the code of practice. Have you looked at that? Was that something that you were aware of? I am aware of the UK statistics authority report. I understand that some of the media reporting had given the assertions that officers may have massaged figures in the UK statistics authority report was more in relation to Scottish Government and assurances that they would seek around making sure that the crime figures are accurate. In terms of the inspectorate, we have had an interest in the ethical crime recording and the standard since 2004 and we have been doing a number of inspections since then. We took the opportunity at the start of Police Scotland in 2013 to do a review of crime recording and we published a report with some recommendations on that. As part of our scrutiny plan this year, we have also committed to a significant crime recording review that will take us into far greater detail than we have done before, partly to address some of the issues from the UK statistics authority, partly to address some of the claims and issues that have been done in the media, because I would like to be in a position where we can definitively say in terms of our inspection that the crime statistics in Scotland are valid or can be substantiated and we do that through a fact-finding audit. That has all sounded very good, but I am none the wiser, I have to say. Can you give a specific as to this massaging? Obviously, those figures have been plastered over from the police. On that basis, we are now looking allegedly at a 40 per cent reduction in crime when some of those figures about homicide, serious assaults, attempted, are now in question. Where is the problem? It is for me certainly that it is understanding that the figures in Scotland have been since 2004 very specific requirements around crime recording and crime recording standards. There have also been checks and balances within each of the legacy forces around checking them, so if a crime is recorded on a daily basis, there are checks and balances to make sure that that has been properly recorded and it goes through a system of assurance. HMIC has previously been involved to make sure that these checks and balances are effective. What we are looking to do now is to extend our work in that area and give more statistical significance. In other words, we are going to check more records to give more confidence around the figures that we see. I am not aware of a 40 per cent reduction in crime figures. I think that a 40 per cent reduction has been reported in stop-search figures that are coming through. Again, that is another area that we are keen to look at. We have made a commitment as part of our scrutiny review now to go and look at stop-search and stop-search recording in particular. I think that it is claimed that crime is at a 40 per cent low. Could you give me a for example of something that is looked at that you are now checking more because it could have been recorded wrongly? In terms of crime recording, what we actually do is we will send staff out around each of the divisions. They will sit down in front of the computer systems. They will listen to call records from someone who calls into a control room to report a crime. They will follow that all the way through checking all the systems to see what the person is saying. The phone has a crime being properly recorded. Does an instant record go into the crime record? Is the crime properly established against the guidelines? They will follow it through in that level of detail. What we are looking to do is increase the sample size that we do and increase it across the country. I would like to be in a position to come back and give an assurance, one way or another, to be frank, around the efficacy of that crime recording and to ensure that it is being done ethically. Given that this is an independent watchdog, the UK statistics authority, and the referto code of practice, have you talked to them? Have you had meetings with them? What specifically on the code of conduct was causing problems and has not been complied with? Again, my understanding from the UK statistics authority report is that some of the code of conduct is around the level of assurance that the Scottish Government would give in relation to the statistics and the HMIC review would be part of that as well. There are codes of conduct that the Government would have in relation to the official statistics, and we have a part to make sure that, at the police side, it is being recorded ethically and properly. You said that your current sampling size is going to increase it. Can you give us your current sampling base and what you are increasing it to, please? I will hand over to Andrew, who is going to be leading on that for us. I wanted you to have something to say. I am glad that I asked. Thank you very much, chair. The last report that we did last year was that around 1,500 records were looked at, so that is an instance that is reported by the public, and we followed them all the way through as to whether there were no crimes or recorded as no crimes or not. What we are now doing—and we will be kicking that off in late August going through to report in October—is looking at a sample size of around about 7,000 incidents approximately five times bigger. The statisticians—I am a police officer, not a statistician, but they tell me that that will be statistically significant not only at a national Scottish level, but also at the level of each division in Scotland, of which there are 14, as you are well aware, and also at the types of crime that we are looking up. Picking up on Mitchell's point there, we looked at sexual offences and violent crime the last time round. The performance was good, but we thought that it could be better, so we are again looking at those categories of crime in this follow-up survey, or audit, which will look in much greater depth at that. We bring the continuity of having looked at this from 2004 all the way through, just to refresh our actual terms of reference for that audit. Obviously, a key part of that will be making sure that that helps to fit in with the recommendations from the UK stats authority about an independent, incredible audit of crime statistics, because we recognise the importance in October when we report to Parliament around that, not only will the public make a judgment around official statistics, but Police Scotland needs to have an accurate record if they are going to deploy the resources in the most appropriate way. Thank you for that additional information. Alison, followed by Roderick, please. Thank you very much, Mr Penman. In your annual report last year, you looked at the things that would need to be addressed post reform, and you highlighted in particular the need for a robust and professional system of governance. That, for that to be complemented by a clear definition of what the chief constable is solely operationally responsible for. My intention is certainly that that robust system of governance is not yet in place, and some of the issues around about stop and search and the routine arming of police officers seems to point to that, and it is fallen to MSPs to be the ones that are raising concerns. Do you feel that there is much more to be done yet in terms of the governance? I think that there is a very valid observation around that. In our paper, we referred to scrutiny. I think that now we are almost 16 months into policing, now is a good time to look at the scrutiny structures that exist and work out what are the individual roles, responsibilities and indeed boundaries that exist among all of that. I think that it is helpful that we are 16 months into this rather than trying to design it from the start, and there are perhaps opportunities for everyone involved in that scrutiny to reflect on some of the difficult issues, some that may have been done well, others that may not have been done quite as well, and actually trying to work out how we build the scrutiny arrangements for a democratic Scotland moving forward. I think that that would be a helpful and timely opportunity to do that now. If I might convene a roundabout operational independence, surely it is not sufficient for the chief constable just to assert that his operational responsibility would be helpful perhaps to have a memorandum of understanding or some code that sets out some of the parameters. Would that be a useful way forward? I think that the concept of operational independence is based on some case law and based on convention around that. I think that there is certainly an opportunity to look at that and have a constructive dialogue around what that would mean. In any case, operational independence still requires operational accountability and there is still the need for that accountability to take place. The legislation, as it is framed under the Police and Fire Reform Act under section 21e, is the responsibility for the police authority to hold the chief constable to account. Although there are definitely decisions that, in my mind, would be operational, which means that it is free from political interference or that it cannot be directed to do certain things, there is still a need for the chief constable to be accountable for those decisions and the framework would exist through the police authority for that to happen. However, I think that now that we are 16 months in is a good time to start a constructive forward-looking debate around individual roles and responsibilities, including ourselves as scrutiny bodies and where we all sit and feed in to add value. That is important. Roderick? Thank you, convener. Just on a new topic, as Alison has raised one that I was going to raise, just in relation to police custody, any thoughts on Police Scotland's approach to single-cell occupancy or what investigations have you carried out to date on that? Thank you for that. As you will be aware, we have carried out a thematic review. We have carried out a number of them, which were in areas where there is a particular need to bring a national dimension to what were eight legacy forces, so we took the opportunity to review custody early on. In that, we made a number of observations and a number of recommendations moving forward. One of them was around the single-cell occupancy. The situation prior to Police Scotland, where the act plus guidance of the eight forces would be that single occupancy would be something that was desirable and, indeed, it would make every effort to have single occupancy. On a number of legacy forces, when areas were peak demand, that was difficult to achieve and they would move to multiple occupancy just to effectively manage that demand through custody. When Police Scotland has come through, there is the policy of single occupancy, which we absolutely support moving forward. However, if that decision is taken, where you do not have necessarily the infrastructure to support it at that times, then it makes it more difficult to think and the result of that perhaps is having to move prisoners around Scotland to accommodate that. What we have said in practice is for Police Scotland to review the policy of single occupancy and look to see in terms of a proper risk-based approach whether it can have some flexibility. Will Police Scotland give you any indications to when they will complete that review? We have only just published the custody review, so we would normally give them some weeks to consider our recommendations. We will work with them now and take them forward and then follow up on them as well. It relates to the submission that we have from you, and I am grateful for that. The third section headed up leadership and governance. In November 2013, HMIFRS made a comment about the importance of effective working between the fire board and the strategic leadership team. That has not been explicitly followed up to date, but relationships continue to be of interest in the inspectorate's risk assessment. Can you comment a bit further on that? To be parochial, particularly in relation to, for instance, the tensions that did exist in the area that I represent, the Highlands Islands, about the period— That is my obligation, of course, convener. The tensions that existed there are about deficiencies that were identified at that time, and whether they moved to a single service has improved that situation at all, please. So there is a direct review? It is just that John Finnie mentions the Highlands and Islands every week, and we wait for the trigger for it to come in, but of course it is a serious question. I have seen that reaction in this committee before, so I was not surprised. There is pretty much a direct read across to that previous discussion that we just had with police authority and the chief constable. The way that the fire and rescue service is set up is intended to provide that healthy tension between the board who are non-executive people. They do not know how to run a fire service professionally and the relationship with the professionals and professional managers. All we are saying in our report is that these things are fundamentally important. If you want a good, healthy organisation, that is a good way to set it up and we are interested in the effectiveness of how the two bodies work together. It is exactly the same conversation about operational autonomy, operational independence versus scrutiny and challenge. There are many things that the chief officer and his team will need to make judgments on and make decisions on, but almost all of them are open to challenge and should be explainable to the fire board, whose job it is to hold the chief officer to account. We are interested in that. The one thing that I would say to you in terms of reflecting on your own experience is that in the past we have had to deal with eight different sets of relationships, where now it is just the one set of relationships, so in a sense life becomes a bit easier for us. But there is no doubt that these things are long term. It is all about human relationship and building confidence in the different bodies. That is why we are saying that we will have an on-going interest in how these things work out. Specifically on the question of plugging what was seen as a gap in the resilience of the former service area, is that being addressed? We have looked to that in great detail. What we have said is, Follon, you will remember the report that HMI published on Highlands and Islands specifically, and what we have said is that throughout our work we will continue to take an interest and focus on that. We have made comment on the gaps that have been plugged, and we are saying that we will continue to monitor to see whether that has been successful. Most of the observations that we have made to date and most of the things that we have reported on say that that has continued to be successful. Where we do see on-going issues or the potential for a fallback to something similar to what we saw before, we would take an interest and report on it. The challenges that I understand exist across Scotland, not exclusively relating to rural areas, about resilience from different lifestyle patterns that see people working in central areas rather than towns to staff, crews and vehicles. Is that an on-going feature of your work? We have said in our submission that we think that the fragility of the whole retain duty system, volunteer system across Scotland, is something that needs particular attention. We know that the fire service is focused on, and we want to work with the fire service in terms of resolving that or trying to address that the best we can. Would you develop the word fragility of the retained firefighters? I do not mean that unkindly, but to put it into people's speak, so that what you mean is that people are not being retained, they are giving up, they are a morale proport, what do you mean? Just in plain language to paint a picture, a typical village in Scotland where about 85% of Scotland's fire stations rely wholly or partly on retained or volunteer staff, so a typical village might have 15, 16, 17 people who are trained to be firefighters who carry a pager around, but of course they all have day jobs and they all have different things to do, so typically nowadays people in a village won't work in the village, they'll work somewhere else, and so during the day there are many areas of Scotland where it's a huge amount of pressure to have a crew available and it's very very difficult to manage those things. That then knocks on to retention, so if you're someone who's committed to give 120 hours a week of availability but you've also got a job to do somewhere else in Scotland and travel back, then these are big, big challenges. So the kind of lifestyles of people in Scotland's towns and villages has changed and that's having a fairly significant effect on how well you can manage, volunteer and retain units. That really is separate or is mainly separate from the issue of a single service, that would have happened anyway. It's entirely separate and it's been evolving over a long time. Sandra, followed by Christian, please. Thank you very much. Good morning gentlemen, thank you very much for your submission and the conclusion, I want to pick up on some of the stuff for the conclusion, but first I would like a wee bit of clarification, I think it was in regards to Margaret's question about this UK independent crime reporting unit. I mean, I seem to remember that Willie Rennie and also Graham Pearson had said that it was disgraceful that the Scottish Government were saying that crime was falling because it was falling all over, not just here but in England as well. So I just wonder what authority does this so-called unit have to ask questions of basically the Scottish Government in their reporting and I would say cast suspensions on the actual numbers that they're talking about. I'm perhaps not best placed to answer that in this entirety, but it may be helpful to explain the rules, so my understanding is... Rather mean political I think, yes. My understanding is that the UK status authority have responsibility for effectively how accurate the UK official statistics are and there are certain code of practice that would have to be followed for something to be given the designation of an official statistic and previously the crime statistics have had that. That is totally separate from our role in relation to the crime model. We have been involved in checking the official crime stats, as I said, since 2004, and what we are about to embark on now is a broader and more detailed study of that. That is in relation to us independently assessing that to provide a report that will come here, ultimately, to give members a view or information and hopefully go to judge for yourself whether the figures are accurate or otherwise. I think that the UK stats part of that is that they would be interested in the extent to which Scottish Government would look at our independent assurance and how that would feature into their framework of assurance to say that it can have the designation of an official statistic. Thank you. It's very helpful and I just wondered if we could return that favour then and ask for their crime stats. I'm just throwing that open. I don't know if we have the authority to do that. We'll leave it open. We'll leave it open. Another question. Perhaps I'll write to the camp secretary and ask her if one is allowed to do that. I think we should be allowed to do the same there as well and find out exactly where we are with it. Where's the next question, Sarah? The question I wanted to ask was in regard to sustainability and partnership working as well, particularly when there's events such as huge events, calm wealth games that we had recently, and the unfortunate horrific accident like the Cluth of Alts and various others. How has it worked with the one police force? Has it been better being able to do that if you're reacting to either an emergency or a huge event? How does it work? Fire and Rescue Service will be involved. That's when I was getting it. You public don't always recognise the teams that are there together because of the nature of what's taken place. Maybe ask it both. I was just going to say that. I'm so sorry. That's why I mentioned partnership working. Both can answer that. In terms of our joint submission, we both recognise that. The real strength of the single service has been the ability to pool resources and work together nationally better. Sadly, some examples that the fact to deal with over that piece have been dealt with extremely professionally. The real strength and one of the benefits of police reform is the ability to move those specialist assets across the country in terms of policing, whether they are investigators or major inquiry teams for murders or criminal inquiries. I know that the same will be the case for the fire service in terms of specialist resources, but perhaps faster, Steve? I think that the Clutha bar that you mentioned is a really good example of where things are now with the National Fire and Rescue Service. Naturally, nothing initial response to Clutha bar came from local crews, but within a very short period of time there were specialists from across Scotland and command team officers from across Scotland. Prior to reform, sometimes that would have happened, but it would have been unusual, where now it is normal. It is a very straightforward thing for the National Fire and Rescue Service to mobilise resources to any type of incident. It is amazing when there has been instances before the single reform. I love you dearly, but we are here to ask questions. I am quite amazed that it would have been very difficult previous to this. I think that it was said by, I think that we appreciate from your thing. I think that that is one of the recognised advantages where you need major incidents. Previously, we understood that a chief constable of a constabulary had to pay for a helicopter seat to come for somewhere out of his budget. There was this idea that the helicopter belonged to somebody else in another constabulary or whatever and now it belongs to the whole force. Is that correct? That is putting it simply. I think that I have got that wrong. I can tell by your face. No, you have not. Effectively, each individual force and each chief constable are responsible for the instance in that area, so where the incident became so large, you are required to have specialist assets. You would draw them in on mutual aid from other forces in that, including Scotland. The legacy strath Clyde was the only force that had a helicopter, so if you used that helicopter, there was also the potential to be cross-charged against that, although, quite often, they were provided if they were required. There was a possibility that that constabulary had to carry the cost of that? Absolutely. If you needed to have other officers in for a large-scale demonstration and you were required to have something at the Commonwealth Games, you would require mutual aid to come in from other forces and potentially recharge for that. Thank you. I am just reminding myself of that question, followed by Margaret Foll. I will take Christian Antic. You have been in already, Margaret, so I will take John Pentland next, after Christian, who has not been in yet, then Margaret. Christian. Thank you, convener. I just want to inquire following the question on the written firefighters. I think that you gave a very good answer, Mr Tolley. I would like to maybe ask a similar question on how challenging it is to recruit new police officers, particularly our reprins in north-east, and we know how difficult it is in the Abedin area. I do not have the figures to hand and perhaps more of a question for Police Scotland, but in general terms, I think that there is still not a huge difficulty in recruiting police officers. The issue is about how you would locate them across the country, and I know that there are and have been some challenges in the north-east in terms of having officers in that area, and also in some of the islands, in trying to attract candidates who could actually then go and relocate there. However, I do not have the figures to hand around that. On the same line of questioning that you had with the fire service, do you think that having a single service is a separate issue, as you got any changes due to the changes of single services? I think that our assessment is that the single service is working very well, and operationally, the stronger than the legacy forces has been in our take on that. On the recruitment question, there are opportunities to recruit nationally and to post people around the country nationally. There is probably greater opportunity to do that. If people want to join the police and are prepared to move, you would not have to recruit people into the various local eight forces. You can recruit centrally and then move people around the country to where the demand is, but that has to be supported as well around people's ability to move and relocate in the cost of that as well. Have you found some example of that already? I do not have anything to hand, but I know that Police Scotland are very exercised around how they will get officers into north-east, in particular how to get officers on to islands, and that is something that I think that they are looking to actively recruit. I think that some of that might be to try and recruit individuals in a more local area, so trying to recruit people from the north-east is one of the areas that they are looking at. I am just saying that with Highlands and Islands north-east and Freeson Galloway, I am expecting to get... My mother-in-law will wish us going to be punty. This is supposed to be a committee, not constituency issues, but on you go. If I can ask another different question about armed officers, have you seen some of the armed officers in the north-east and spoke to them? Some of them seem to be a bit frustrated about the news, thinking that it is old news. They have done that already. They were seen before with being armed. Do you feel that the officers... Have you got some assessment of armed officers saying the same thing? A little frustration about the news just now? What we have done is we have undertaken... HMIC has undertaken to do a review in relation to armed policing and the publicer terms of reference only last week, in relation to that. Some of that will be around the decision of the chief constable, around the standing authority. We have extended our terms of reference around looking at things like how the firearms are carried and what the deployment criteria are there. One of the things that we will be doing is speaking to officers who carry firearms to seek their views as part of that. That is part of our methodology that we have agreed to do from there. We are too early just now to... We have not gathered evidence yet and we have not yet reported on that. This is coming up for the sub-committee on Thursday as well, is it not? What is the role of commanders? Have they got free hands? Maybe they have more free hands than they thought they had when the single force was created? I suppose that it all depends on the definition of the commander. What there is in Police Scotland is that you have divisional commanders who are responsible for each of the 14 divisions. They have statutory responsibility for the local policing in that area. It is perhaps going back to some of the earlier questions about how effective are the local policing plans and that local engagement in that area. I think that that is... Certainly there has been meaningful engagement. I think that in the second year of doing local policing plans there is probably more to be done for the third iteration of them to make sure that they fully reflect the community needs. I think that part of the localism that we refer to will be that greater empowerment of commanders moving forward within their own areas. I suppose that one of the biggest challenges that you have faced over the piece has been workforce planning. Recently, we have seen quite a lot of civilian jobs being lost and these have been taken up by police officers, police constables. Do you think that perhaps that has been a wrong decision? When are you likely to... What work have you done to sort of square that circle? Obviously, in terms of workforce planning, I think that it is one of the areas that we still feel is underdeveloped in Police Scotland. We are looking for some more detail around that as we go into our scrutiny programme this year. Clearly, what we are looking for is for Police Scotland to design the new service in a way that is sustainable moving forward and some of that, I think, also has to include what is the appropriate workforce balance moving forward from there. Certainly, my understanding is that Police Scotland and the authority are not looking to have police officers routinely backfilling posts around there. It is one of the areas that we will look at as we go through part of our inspection programme to see the extent to which that may or may not exist. Do you think that perhaps at this time and moment that civilian jobs should be looked at more closely and we should not have no police officers falling in the backroom jobs? My professional view is moving forward and needs to be a balanced workforce. That balanced workforce would be the appropriate mix of police officers and police staff to provide optimum service to the communities. What that is, I am not sure of. Police Scotland and Police Authority have to work their way through in terms of where they are now and where they need to be and what will that look like in terms of a balanced workforce and what the workforce plan will be to get them there. Mr Pettman, I would like to review that you are undertaken after 16 or 17 months. Again, over a piece, we have seen quite a lot of police station closures and registrowers. Will you be looking at that again to see if, because this was a great service that was provided to the public and we may have got that wrong to us somewhere down the line? Our absolute focus when we do inspections will be looking at the service delivery to local communities. To my knowledge, there have been no station closures or very few station closures. I think that there has been a reduction in opening hours of some of the stations that we are moving forward around there as opposed to station physically closing. Police officers were still working from there and that was a commitment that Police Scotland had given around there. As we embark upon our new inspection regime, we brought in what we call local policing plus. That will take us around each of the 14 divisions and part of that assessment will be the services that are being provided to local communities. That would include, for example, what the footprint is of policing in that local community and how well some of those police officers are being used to be frank as well. I have got Margaret Fall by Alison, please. Mr Perlman, the somatic inspection for road policing, which was reported in July, expressed concerns about the impact of the absence, again, of a national ICT integration, or this time on road policing. Particularly over the variability and level of local scrutiny and engagement in relation to road policing. Could you comment further on that? We took the opportunity in our thematic inspection early on to look at roads policing. On the issue of ICT, it was not unforeseen. It is not of Police Scotland's making. It is inevitable as you move into forces without a single national ICT system that there would be some difficulties effectively in terms of ICT, especially for those officers who are moving across boundaries. As I said earlier, the majority of officers still work within their legacy boundaries, which means that the ICT impact is minimised, but when you start to have road policing officers who might move across a region, then there are some impacts on them not being able to access legacy systems. Police Scotland identified that early on in the defence and they have put workarounds in place in relation to that. On the issue of ICT, if I can be more specific about the variability, for example, the DVLA figures released recently show a disproportion that it seems trend where people in Scotland are more likely to have points in their licence than elsewhere in the UK. I also highlighted certain areas, such as the G69 postcode, including Baelasyn, Gary Hill, Glasgow, Moody's One, Garkosh and Autlannockshire, being targeted particularly. In the report, you mentioned that there is a lack of clarity about the priority given to road crime. Could you elaborate on that? We looked at the impact of performance and how enforcement activities are driven from there. As you will see in the report, we identified there were some significant increases across the country in areas such as speeding or seatbelt offences and mobile phones. What we said in our report effectively was that, although that in itself is fine because people are breaking the law, there is a bit to say to what extent does that actually have an impact on driver behaviour and we started to deliver outcomes in relation to that. I suppose that some of our questions that we have asked of Police Scotland is to look at the performance regime across the country and the extent to which they are confident that, by having officers targeting certain areas, those areas will have a positive impact on outcomes that would reduce casualties and modify driver behaviour. On outcomes specifically, I have mentioned one area and there were other areas that I mentioned. If an area is particularly a black spot on a target, then surely, if it is not all about collecting cash and it is prevention and road safety, shouldn't that be looked at for average speed cameras, for example, rather than those things that you have looked at in terms of outcomes? In terms of the leadership, the new road policing model is strengthening the connection between police services and communities but, at the same time, you highlight that perception about a 10 per cent target. Police being targeted for 10 per cent increase in those crimes when, in actual fact, I think that Police Scotland was established, it was up about 37 per cent. Surely there is a real question about management performance here and about the priorities that are being set when there are so many other serious offences that seem to be not getting just the same priority? It's a fair question. I think that there are probably two points in your question. One of them is to do the new road policing structure, strengthen that local connection, our view would be that they do in as much as each of the 14 divisions now have their own dedicated road policing unit that works to the divisional commander and that then has the ability to deal with local priorities around that. To that extent, we feel that that local connection is strengthened. In terms of the performance issue, for us it's very much about making sure that, within that performance regime, it is being targeted towards the right things and the right priorities within that community. If Police Scotland is going to be targeting speeders, which is absolutely appropriate, you want to target speeders in those areas that are the highest risk around schools and areas that are community concerned and where it will have the largest impact. That was the question that was asked by Police Scotland, is to look at that and ensure themselves and put safeguards in place to make sure that, if targets are being put forward and officers are working to priorities that effectively are doing them in areas that will have the biggest impact. Is it not almost the case that the higher these crimes are recorded, the more of them, it's almost an admission of failure? Surely they should be coming down if it's an effect and if it isn't, shouldn't other remedies be looked at? I think that you are again a very valid point around the extent to which enforcement will drive behaviours or change of behaviours in people. Effectively, if people are speeding, they are breaking the law in relation to that. There is no doubt that speeding is a major contributory factor to road casualties, so there is something about police officers enforcing speeding. I think that there is a bigger part around how do you start to modify driver behaviour and how do you satisfy yourself. You have a range of tactics, if you like, that will start to have an impact on that. Our view is very much about if you are going to direct the activity and significant activity in policing, you would want to be satisfied that the outcomes that you are seeking to achieve will be met by that target. Can I just say that I certainly have found that I must mention the Scottish borders, as it is not a dimension, but the police are of an increased activity with having unoccupied police cars sitting, which have a great impact on everybody driving up and down. We all know where the speed cameras are, but we do not always know where they are on occupied. You just need to see a police thing on the side of a car, and everybody, you see the brakes going on all in front of you and you wonder what is up. I am not speeding, this is not a declaration, but I am interested in the fact that you are looking at what different areas do, and you did not mention rural areas where there is a separate issue about speeding from outside schools and so on. When you have cyclists out on the weekend or motorcyclists out on roads where they think that they are on some kind of race track, it is interesting to see what is being followed up with rural areas rather than just outside schools and communities. As we mentioned in our report, the police Scotland did analysis and identified where those hotspots are. They are still looking to shift resources up into the north and the north east in particular, so they can deal with rural roads, because they present a different issue from motorways and other parts. Again, the casualty rate is higher in the north and the north east and rural roads as well, and the police Scotland are mindful of that. If it could elaborate a little on the strand that is within your business plan for the forthcoming year around emergency medical services and the SSFRS, could you explain a little bit more what you intend to do with that? That is something that we are actively working on at the moment. We expect to lay a report before Parliament in October. It is fundamentally about how the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service works with Scottish Ambulance and, more broadly, how it deploys equipment that it owns and the skills that its staff have. We have been actively working talking to the service, Scottish Ambulance and Scottish Government people, because of the big relationship between health people and Government and fire and rescue justice people. We have lots of interesting conversations going on. Our starting point is that, although there is a good relationship, in practical terms it is not a deep relationship. I will give you just one example of that. There are examples of what is called co-responder, where Scottish Ambulance might mobilise some firefighters at the same time they mobilise an ambulance. However, there are only two stations out of the 359 Scotland, which currently run these services. We have been up to talk to the staff and learned lessons from them. They are both in Aberdeenshire that are at Maud and Braymar, so they were inherited from Grampian Fire and Rescue Service. We are very interested in the benefits that can be gained by rolling that more broadly across Scotland. What we are not doing is to try and justify that there is a business case, because we think that there is a very strong argument. There are loads of examples in England and Wales. There are loads of international examples where close working and collaboration between emergency ambulance and fire and rescue services brings great benefit. Finally, I will just say that we hope that it is going to be supportive, but we also hope that it will tie in with something that the Scottish Government and ministers are looking at at the moment, which is something that they are calling a community resuscitation strategy. Again, we are having conversations with the minister's officials to see how those things can mesh together. That is very helpful, thank you. Mr Penman, in relation to the piece of work that you are going to carry out on stop and search, do you consider the ethical issues that are raised by there being no power to search for alcohol and yet the recording of confiscations of alcohol and, of course, the use of consensual search for something that you do not have a power to search for in the first place? I think that that is an issue that I would hope that you would be able to explore. We are just finalising our terms of reference for the stop search. Our original approach was very much to look at the recording and some of the claims about under recording or over recording and to get to the bottom of that from there. It is certainly one of the things that we could take on board. I have a view at the moment that many of those interactions with police officers in relation to alcohol have a legislative framework. A lot of them are done under the legislation that allows for alcohol seizures and, quite often, I think that police officers will approach that. That affects young people because the offence is for under 18 and they will ask for the alcohol to be handed across. That is permitted by the legislation. The legislation also has safeguards about reasonable suspicion and also has some safeguards about asking for names and addresses. My understanding is that they will currently then be recorded as a consensual search because, effectively, if they went on to search them, that goes beyond the power in the legislation. I think that there is some work that I would like to do to understand what is the actual practice of police officers. If police officers are effectively seeing young people with alcohol and they are going along and seizing that alcohol, they are doing that within a legislative framework. If they are not searching the young people, they are merely seizing the alcohol and that might sound like a distinction, but the legislation allows for that. If that is being recorded as a consensual search, my own personal view is that that is slanting the figures significantly. It gives the impression that there are a lot of consensual non-legislative searches that are probably officers exercising their powers and it is coming down to the recording practice about what is a search and what is a seizure. If police officers go beyond the seizure and take the alcohol and go in to have young people turning out their pockets, that is a search. I think that that would be moving beyond the legislation. However, I think that it is a piece of work that is worth looking at to see the extent to which that interaction by officers has some legislative basis on that. That would bring down the number of genuine consensual searches into something that is perhaps a bit better to understand. Two of the concerns that I think have been raised about Police Scotland and I would address this to Mr Penman is, first, that Police Scotland is becoming increasingly target driven and, secondly, that the methods of operation of the former Strathclyde constabulary are being rolled out right across Scotland. I wondered if you had heard those concerns first of all and if you thought there was any justification for them. Clearly, in terms of our research and looking forward to see what are the things that we have scrutinised, we would look across media reports. We would also engage with staff associations and we would pick up any comments that were being made in terms of the performance. We took an opportunity to look at that in terms of road policing and I have made some recommendations around that in about Police Scotland understanding the impact of a performance culture and how that drives operational behaviours and in particular what outcomes are achieved. That is road policing but it probably goes beyond road policing into the targets more generally in relation to that. As far as there is a feeling, if you like, that Police Scotland is Strathclyde constabulary at large? My first part is probably not Strathclydeisation. I think that it is inevitable in a police service that the chief constable who is leading that will move the force in the direction that he believes is the right direction. It is probably more about the chief constable's style than about Strathclyde. When you have organisations that have to come into one, it is inevitable that what you have is a very sharp focus in relation to having everybody understanding what the priorities are, very much focus on service delivery around that. It is an inevitable initial part to get everybody looking in the same direction, understanding the new organisation to bring some of that through. As I picked up on my paper and I think that you picked up on your first question, the localism is the key to all of this. I believe that the legislation is absolutely key that you can have national and local and the local policing plans and local engagement from commanders would be the way forward. I would hope that as policing starts to mature and is, after all, only 16 months into the new organisation that it will start to move in and that localism and that empowerment is something that would move forward. I want to just ask the final thing because it is people who are in the services. It is very hard for people who have had one way of doing things for many years to suddenly find this turmoil, not just in the organisation perhaps and where they live and what their future is and so on. In terms of morale of police and fire service, whether it is civilian or uniformed, and in terms of whistleblowing to you, because if you are just talking to the bosses all the time and I know that you are not naive to just do that, give us a little picture of how the ordinary police officer, fire officer, manages to say something to the inspectorate that they cannot perhaps say in public to us at a committee about how they feel, whether rightly or wrongly, or comments if they have to make. In terms of our own methodology, we look to involve police officers in all the scrutiny work that we do. The example around armed policing in our methodology, we will have a commitment to speak to officers who are firearms officers and also commanders and other people who are involved in policing. As part of our local policing methodology, we will run a series of focus—we have done, in fact, in Fife—we run a series of focus groups where we would encourage police officers to come and speak to us. I am going to stop you there, because you see focus groups are not going to tell you stuff. We have had to have chats with people when we go around and I think that we are aware sometimes that we are not always getting everything. So how does somebody reach beyond these formal things? They may be right and they may be wrong, but I think that their voices have to be heard in your roles as inspectors. So how do they get past focus groups and formal things and maybe just send you stuff and say, look here, look there, this is what I feel? No, I think that is a fair point. My experience actually is that focus groups have been very forthcoming and a lot of officers have taken the opportunity to come and raise issues with us, but the other part is that we also are trying to link in through the staff associations in particular, so we are linking closely with the Federation and ASP, but I think that you raise a valid point around how the individual officers perhaps contact us anonymously or otherwise with any issues that they would have. Clearly, if that was done through existing channels, we would take that very seriously, but I think that you raise a fair point for us around how we might want to provide channels for officers to come to us direct as well. I would say the same to the first ever. In a similar way, so the majority of our work nowadays is my small team and I travel around Scotland and interview individuals and small groups of staff. Every time we are on a fast station—as an example—we insist that managers do not sit in the room with us, so we are just talking to a local crew or to individuals in that team. Each time we talk to people, we give them a guarantee of anonymity, so we explain how we would manage things and how we would deal with any comments that they have got to make. My experience is that people are not nervous about that. In the same way that Mr Perriman said that they are forthcoming, I think that firefighters and fire and rescue service staff are the same. They are quite happy when they are in a room with you to be very frank and open. I want to thank you for being frank and open with us. I am bringing this evidence session to a close. I thank the committee for their questions. We are now moving in, as we agreed earlier, into a private session.