 Fisgwm Aberlwyddoniais Ffalswyd. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the justice sub-committee on policing's fifth meeting of 2019. We have apologies from Stuart Stevenson. Our first item of business today is to consider whether to take agenda item 3, which is about our work programme, in private. Are we agreed about that? Agreed. Thank you very much indeed. Agenda item 2 is capital resources for Police Scotland in the Scottish Government's budget, 2019-20. I refer members to paper 1, which is a note by the clerk, and paper 2, which is a private paper. I welcome to the committee chief superintendent Ivor Marshall, president of the Association of Police Superintendents. Callum Steele, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, and David Malcolm, police staff, Scotland deputy branch secretary of Unison Scotland. You are all very welcome. Thank you for your written submissions. We are always very helpful, and we are just going to move straight to questions. There is a lot of ground to cover it. Daniel is the first question. When there is discussion of capital budgets that can sometimes be a little bit confusing for people, people understand what revenue gets spent on, but it is not necessarily immediately obvious what the impact of capital budgets or lack of capital budgets is. I was just wondering if featured panellists could maybe bring to life their view on what the impacts of delivering policing are on the current level of capital budget that is being provided to the police. The simple reality is that the lack of capital funding cannot be looked at just in financial years in 1920. It has to be looked at in the general picture as to what the police service has gone through since its formation as a single police service, and indeed, to some extent, what was invested in the police service by the former forces. Ultimately, the investment decisions that were made yesterday have an impact on what is available or what is required to be done today. Undoubtedly, although there is a tendency to concentrate on the big, glamorous areas of expenditure such as IT, regardless of whether people regard the I6 project as excess or a failure, capital goes much further than that. It goes to the replacement of vehicles, it goes to the building of new premises if they are required for modernisation, but it cannot be looked at in isolation because a modest or derisory, or to paraphrase a colleague of mine, a capital settlement that equates to he or has a direct impact on revenue funding as well, because much more of the care and maintenance side of the available funding has to be directed into trying to maintain things that are well past their serviceable best. The impact of a lack of or insufficient depending on which particular political heart or language you wish to use capital funding is quite significant across the totality of police service, from replacement of uniform, provision of fleet of buildings, of a state of infrastructure, and the simple fact is that, through the creation of the police service of Scotland, we inherited, and I use the royal way here, a disparate set of arrangements in terms of infrastructure across the whole of Scotland, and I use the royal way again, so that we require considerable investment to be able to put that right. As far as the impact of capital and revenue, the impact is fundamentally about service delivered to the citizens of Scotland. You can always trace it back to that one way or the other. I agree with Mr Steele that the issues in revenue and capital are inextricably linked in terms of how it operates, its accountancy and the allocations of capital funding vis-à-vis revenue, but absolutely I have travelled the country in recent months speaking to colleagues in command teams and their position is that they are frustrated at times that they don't have the autonomy necessarily and the budget even in terms of revenue to be able to do small repairs to buildings and so forth so that that prevents a big capital spend. If you leave things for a long period of time, then Calum is quite right, we have inherited a legacy around some of those things, but over a period of time buildings are the same at home. If you don't do the small repairs then it becomes a big capital project and that's not effective or efficient in the long term. In terms of what capital is usually spent on and has been traditionally big ICT projects, estates, fleet, specialist equipment, firearms equipment, specialist equipment in that regard, but fundamentally if you don't invest in these things sufficiently over a capital programme over a period of time I think it's always very difficult with yearly budgets because capital programmes take a long time to scope out, commission, tender, deliver. It takes a long time to deliver against these and if we don't have that sustained investment over that period of time fundamentally then the officers are working with sub-optimal equipment in sub-optimal conditions, therefore they are not as productive or as effective ergo the service to the public is undermined as a consequence of that. Mr Malcolm, do you have anything to add? Automatically, thank you. I echo the sentiment that my colleagues here, certainly from our point of view, at Unison, represent the police staff. It says in our paper that it's never been asked how much does it actually cost to deliver an effective police service, where we're constantly asking how much money they actually have to run that police service and how much do we have to spend on those projects? The estates, fleet management and the ICT are all, you know, we don't feel that they're funny, they're appropriately to deliver what is needed to service Scotland. Our members are then trying the best to make it work, along with our officer colleagues in the yard looking at effectively the phrase that's constantly used as a sticking plaster that's put over to just try and get by. I think a number of my colleagues are interested in going to the specifics whether it's equipment, estates or ICT, but I'd like to just stick in terms of just with one last question in terms of how to understand the capital budget. I mean, again, I think it's one of these budget lines where you see a number and you don't know whether it's a large number or a small number. I believe that the capital budget for the current financial year is 2.9 per cent of the revenue budget. If you compare that to the fire service, their capital budget equates to 9.9 per cent of their revenue budget. If you look at the capital budget on a prior employee basis, it's 1,526. If we were to compare that to the Metropolitan Police Force, which is a comparably sized force, it has a capital budget of £10,857 per employee. Admittedly, it has a capital plan that will reduce in coming years, but it will still remain relatively much higher than it is in Scotland. Those are some benchmarks. What do the panel think would be a sensible benchmark for us to assess the capital budget for Police Scotland? Is it comparator agencies within Scotland? Is it comparator forces? What should we be using as our rule of thumb to judge the capital allocation for Police Scotland? If I'm making a video, I'll have a pop-up of that one first. I don't think that you can really neatly find a direct comparator for the Police Service Scotland, principally because it's a relatively new entity. It doesn't have established infrastructure that it created for itself. It doesn't have, arguably, its buildings and its people. Although its people are lesser consideration in terms of this discussion, where it wants them, it certainly doesn't have the IT infrastructure that the likes of the Metropolitan Police has had decades to develop and have fit for their own organisational needs. However, if we consider, for argument's sake, that the Metropolitan Police with its established infrastructure has such a relatively high capital allocation per head, we can think that that's where the Police Service Scotland needs to be, and certainly it shouldn't be starting off any less than that. However, comparing it to some kind of other agency within Scotland, I think, would be unhelpful. However, I think that the direct comparison with the fire service in terms of proportionality of capital allocation is really interesting, because this isn't the first year that this has happened. I think that if it wasn't last year, it was certainly the year before, where in cash terms alone, pure cash terms, the capital allocation for the fire service was twice that that was available to the Police Service. I'm sure that the fire service put together a very strong and reasoned argument as to why that should be the case, but the simple fact is that those that were responsible for making budget decisions and, to some extent, that's every single one of you as parliamentarians didn't seem to get particularly exercised about that at the time. The service found itself on a cash term basis, having less to spend on a more complicated service with more complex needs than the fire service for its capital needs, although it arguably would present a similar position that it was bringing together, disparate arrangements across the former fire and rescue services. My view is that we need to get to something that is at least comparable to what the metropolitan police has, but in order to get to that, we have to be given the opportunity to establish the infrastructure that they themselves have developed over decades. I concur with Callum in terms of, I don't think that it's necessarily equitable to be able to benchmark against other public sector or even private sector across Scotland. I think that the best benchmarks are probably in policing because it is somewhat unique, complex, complicated type of work that we do. I think that it is difficult, given that it's a national service and there are huge issues in terms of rural aspects that the metropolitan police obviously don't have, so I have to take that into account. I know in terms of benchmarking and certain statistics that the service and the SPA have looked at that Police Scotland is well at the bottom of the league table in terms of expenditure on about capital. Given the history of where we've come from under investment in significant parts of the country prior to and since the inception of Police Scotland, we need to get from the bottom of that, at least in mid-table, and that's going to require significant sustained investment in the capital, not just in one-two-year-type programmes that need to be over the next 10 years at least. If I could assist Mr Marshall with that point out, getting us to mid-table would require a doubling of the capital budget. I've done that math. If I may also supplement that convener, that would bring us to roughly the kind of capital funding that the service itself deemed was required for this year alone. Mr Malcolm, do you have anything? Yes, I would concur when my colleagues are here again. Comparatively, I don't think that there is an organisation within Scotland that reflects what Police Scotland now is at being made up of the former legacy forces. I do think that it needs to be looked at in terms of its individuality and wouldn't be surprised if, in the future, forces in England and Wales look north to reflect upon how that's been done. Comparatively, when you look at the actual graph that was provided in the report to the Scottish Police Authority by James Gray himself, it reflects how low the capital funding for Police Scotland is to many other police forces across the UK that do not have the same area of geography to cover the same staff, the same amount of police officers. The Metropolitan is probably the fairest, closest companion, but in the future of release, Police Scotland is looking to develop its own. In the past, there's been an issue about a lack or even an absence of meaningful engagement with key stakeholders when SPA and Police Scotland are looking at the capital budget. Can the panel tell the committee what kind of input they've had on the funding that is required for an effective force in the recent round of discussions? I again, convener. The direct answer to that question is none, but I do think that it does require a degree of caveat being applied. From an awareness and a briefing perspective, there is much more engagement that takes place now between the SPF and those that are responsible for the finances of the service. When it comes to the decision-making as to what the money is going to be spent on, there is nothing. We could argue that that's a moot point, because when you've got nothing to spend or near nothing to spend, having lots of people around the table to argue about distribution of nothing is probably not particularly helpful, not least when we would expect those in very senior positions to have more than a fair idea of what the absolute priorities are for spending the tiny amount of capital funding that's available to them. I know that this has been a thorny issue at the committee now for, I think, four or five years. I would have hoped that we would at least have addressed the fact that I'm coming here before every single year and given the same answer. Although it is caveated this year by saying that the general engagement on general money issues is much better than it's been before, that's a good thing. In terms of progress, there has been some, but in terms of the actual decisions as to what we, I think, we genuinely have meaningful input as to what should be priorities for the police service. I think that the service underneath the authority is missing a trick by constantly keeping us at arm's length on that. It's counter to what the Parliament itself is doing. We now have pre-budget talks because it's recognised once the budget has been set and you're commenting after the effect, that isn't the most effective way to do it. So in the Parliament here we have pre-budget talks. We say what is, we think, the priorities. Not necessarily look at a budget available but what is necessary and that seems to me what you're talking about, what is actually required. Never mind what we think we've got until you actually have these meaningful talks, it's not going to move on. The other panel members, they'd be interested in their view too. Again, in agreement with Mr Steele's position that we are, I think, in a much more open and transparent exchange of information with the service and the Scottish Police Authority in terms of the budgets and how it's getting spent, we get briefed. The most recent briefing in detail was about a couple of months ago from the ECO page in terms of the priorities that the force executive and the SPA had decided for the capital allocation that they had, how that was going to be prioritised and spent. So we were briefed on that, aware of what that is, but not part of any pre-budget decisions, as you say, or decision making process. Now that could rightly be the case, but I think that Callum's points valid that many heads are sometimes better than one. In terms of the viewpoints that we collectively can put forward on behalf of officers and staff, that might help inform any decisions about priorities and where the money may be spent. In fairness to the service and to the SPA, they seem to be focusing primarily on the money that they have in terms of health and safety essential requirements and a prioritisation around the ICT programme, which is only part of what was hoped for in terms of the settlement. Ms Malcolm? Certainly any pre-engagement on certain budgets is absolutely nil. We do learn about how money will be spent from a briefing. Normally someone will come along to a negotiating meeting to do that. Sometimes we are invited along to find out about that beforehand. Often it is just regards that we will be dismayed at what decisions have been made without any ability to early on influence that and speak to that and put forward suggestions on behalf of our staff. Reflect on what my colleagues here have said. It has certainly been effective in our Parliament. In terms of the committee following issues and certain funding allocation requesting, things that would not otherwise have been given funding, the COPF being a case in point, I hope that Police Scotland and SPA are listening to what has proved a very effective means of deciding what is required for an effective police force if they adopt the same kind of approach that we have here. I appreciate the conveners' willingness to let me come back in. I completely agree with you, Ms Mitchell. Although it is always dangerous to some extent to try and second-guess what the service and authority will say, I am going to take something of a punt on this occasion, because I appreciate that they will probably be coming before you in a future session. I suspect that they will rely very heavily on the fact that there was a strategy published and consulted upon called Policing 2026, which was as wide as the Clyde, I think, if it would be a localism. They would say that the various different organisations, ASPs, Unison and SPF, were given an opportunity to comment on that. From there, they are all their priorities. If that would indeed be the position that they would be to take out, I think that that is a pretty cheap and narrow perspective. We have got it well covered now, Mr Stewart. Thank you. Practically moving to the next question. I do not know if it is yourself, Mr Marshall or Mr Steele, but I would like to hear the panel's views and the opportunities that exist to have some revenue spend that would offset the potential for capital spend. The role that inspecting and any maintenance regime that might be in place now, we are well aware of the work that staff association has done in recent times with workplace inspections and some of that, but where does that sit with what Police Scotland should, as employers, have been doing with those premises? Is there a maintenance regime? Clearly, it is better to sort something than by a new one. I think that I myself introduced that directly in the evidence. I think that the issue is that revenue spend on capital cannot be seen in sort of too separate, they are inextricably linked. My experience, as I say, speaking to my colleagues, commanders around the country is that maybe in other times there was an element of local control, a command level in terms of a revenue flexibility that they were able to do, relatively small repairs and prioritise that locally. That obviously has been centralised, and because of the pressures on the revenue budget that we have gained, debated long and hard sometimes in this room and other places over the past five to six years, the squeeze on that has meant that that flexibility is not there. That is not to say that there haven't been inspections going on, or that there hasn't been attempts to make that happen. However, as I say, my colleagues submit into the centre in terms of requests for work, but again, on a prioritised list, if it's tiles falling off a wall in a station somewhere, that's maybe not as—it doesn't hit the top-line priorities vis-à-vis some of the others. However, I think that the issue is that if there was sufficient allocation, and I know that the force has been working on a more stable revenue position, if that's the case, some of that would stave off some of the big capital issues that start to materialise. There is a significant health and safety element to all of that. My colleagues, as commanders, understand their personal and professional responsibilities in that regard. I'm keen to continue to work with colleagues, particularly on the SPF, who have got a health and safety expertise, who carry out station inspections. The intention and the methodology around that would be to have a collective view on what the issues are, where the risks lie, get those prioritised and presented in the fashion, and work with the service and the SPA to have those addressed, because the health and safety responsibilities come first and foremost in terms of the responsibilities. Of course, we are here to discuss the capital, and it's me that it's taken us on to revenue, but there is that linkage. Mr Steele, if you could comment on that perhaps with brief regard to some of the recent publicity about some of the stations. Can you advise us that that's something that's done on behalf of other trade unions, Unison, for instance? The workplace inspections— If I'm being honest, I would prefer to leave Unison to speak for themselves. I certainly know that, in the early days, we, as far as humanly possible, undertook joint inspections, not just with the service but with other staff associations. I feel that it's really important to highlight that the obligation to inspect the premises is one that sits with the employer and, indeed, with the Scottish Police Authority, and we are given repeated assurances that these inspections take place on at least a six-month basis. What we found in Oban and what we found in Eldivision did not develop in six months, so there are very obvious questions as to what they are doing with the results of their own inspections. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the last meeting of the Scottish Police Authority, but I do understand that the live-stream also went down at a particularly unfortunate time when the issue of Eldivision was being discussed. I'll leave it and say no more about it than the fact that I was unfortunate, but my understanding from those that were on attendance is that, during the update that was being given at the authority, the service indicated that there was nothing that had been identified in the SPF deep dive in Eldivision that they had not been aware of. That, in itself, is frightening. The fact—and this does link back to the issue of revenue and capital spending—the fact that the service was aware of this and apparently appeared not to have done anything about it until shamed into doing so by a very significant publication that we made available, principally for the benefit of our membership, but also for parliamentarians also, and then suddenly there was money made available, I think to some extent gets back to the heart of the issues that Mr Marshall highlights. There is no allocation, as I understand it, to divisional commanders for care and maintenance. That seems idiotic. The fact that the authority with the service was suddenly able to find a sum of money and, more importantly, an initiative to go to try to fix it—we'll take a differing view as to whether they fix it or not—on the back of publicity suggests that there may be not as open and as honest as to the extent to which they could be doing more in care and maintenance as they could be. Sorry, if it was known about it, who knew about it and how was it recorded? If those matters are now dealt centrally, where perhaps historically they were dealt more locally, is there a maintenance regime and is there a register of defence? I'm sure, convener, that you appreciate that that's very much a question that would be best answered by the authority and won't be lost in you that those are questions that we will be raising in our subsequent full report that will be completed in the near future. Okay, sorry, Mr Malcolm. Fairly brief. So, it always appears that when there's an operational or reputational risk that Police Scotland will be able to fix these things but there doesn't appear to be a clear regime, that seems to be the question that I'm asking, that this maintenance is getting done, otherwise we wouldn't be in some of these situations that were highlighted by the Federation and the press. The authority and Police Scotland have obviously inherited those properties and situations from legacy force areas. It goes back to what Mr Steele was saying at the start of the session, that if those problems were there and not addressed before they have been brought into Police Scotland and they continue and if there's not the priority on the capital spending to then push forward with the sort of maintenance, then those problems are just going to continue to appear. Okay, thank you very much. Liam. Do you know, when we follow up that line of questioning before turning to my original question, I think that myself and a number of colleagues raised this with the cabinet secretary at the time of the reports, and I think that the assurance was along the lines that you suggested, Mr Steele, that the concerns that have been raised were being dealt with and a fix put in place. It did rather beg the question, had it also triggered within Police Scotland and under the auspices of the SPA, a look across the estate to see where further issues of this kind are there isn't? I take it from what you're saying that that hasn't taken place. My belief is that on an individual level, commanders on the back of the elder vision report have very much undertaken the same kind of scrutiny of the responsibilities that they have responsibility and name for, but I think that to some extent we're kind of going down a blind alley if we think that this is the services problem. The issue is undoubtedly that the service does not have sufficient money that's provided to it, and that doesn't start with the SPA, but the SPA should be the body that's making the noise about it. It's for that particular reason that I very pointedly suggested in my submission on behalf of the SPF that I believe the SPA is not discharging in statutory functions. It's very clear in section 2, 3 of the act that the authority must carry out its functions, and it goes on to say that in a way that is, amongst other things, transparent, and the fact that the authority through the people that work for it or through the service is aware of the scale of the issues. Those are things that should be getting discussed in a very public forum and very public correspondence should be getting shared with ministers to make sure that these things are being addressed. We wouldn't tolerate our teachers working in these kinds of conditions. We wouldn't tolerate our nurses working in these kinds of conditions. We very clearly aren't prepared to tolerate our firefighters working in these kinds of conditions because they were provided with a capital settlement two years ago, which was twice that in cash terms of the police service. Yet, when it comes to the police service itself, there's a willingness to somehow rubberear the concerns of those that are delivering the service, the conditions that they're working in, which in some areas are a complete and utter embarrassment. I shared before this committee a link to another series of pictures, which had just been taken in the past few days and weeks, about some of the very issues that are available across the totality of the police estate. Quite frankly, I think that it's unfair to point a finger of blame at the service when the authority is not making the case for more funding for policing. On that particular point, you've referred there to rubbereering the concerns. There was, indeed, an explicit accusation that the SPA were downplaying the impact of the shortfall in the capital allocations on its impact on the delivery of policing. Is that it? Would you be prepared to confirm that and expand on that? Yes, absolutely. Although those are always matters of judgment or certain interpretation, I appreciate that you've probably got many better things to do of an evening, but I would encourage you all to go and have a look at the live stream of the meeting in the tail end of March, when the budget was being presented. I believe that the paper that was presented by the service could, in its own right, have been stronger, but the level of interest as to the challenge of what the capital allocation for the service meant was pretty much non-existent. I strongly believe that the authority—probably more the chair of the authority—is deliberately trying to avoid conflict or any kind of thing that might appear to criticise Government for the funding that's made available to it, for reasons that I cannot genuinely understand. Another example would be that we had a very prestigious panel, if I may use the term generously, at our conference that we held at the tail end of March. At that conference, you would have struggled to differentiate between the role of the cabinet secretary and the answers that he was giving to the questions that were being asked to him by delegates from the SPF to the role of the chair of the SPA, who arguably presented a much stronger defence of Government position than would have been perhaps healthy for someone in the position that he occupies. Is that a concern that Unison and the Association share? I would say that it's always been a frustration for Unison that someone from the authority or the service doesn't speak up to say that there is not adequate funding for policing. We've always said it in our written submission for this session and we do believe that. I would share the sentiment that Mr Steele has presented that there could be more said publicly. When you see the authority board meetings, you're reading between the lines, but for someone to actually stand up and say it to the Government would be a much preferred stance. I agree that the Scottish Police Authority has that role on behalf of the citizens of Scotland, on behalf of the service, to speak on behalf of them all and to Government in terms of funding. All the evidence that I have seen is pretty clear that the capital funding around a lot of those issues has been deficient for some period of time. You're absolutely right in terms of my members' responsibilities. As I said earlier, they are professionally aware of their responsibilities. It's been some of them who have maybe come to the positions that they're in in recent times were unaware, perhaps, through lack of training. That's a matter that we have raised consistently with the service to make sure that officers who hold positions of command and departmental management are aware of their health and safety and other responsibilities. Some commanders have had inspection regimes in place for some time. Some are in the process of reinvigorating those, so we're aware of that. The issue is that it is piecemeal, it is not systemically built in. I know that that's something that the work by the SPF most recently has shone a light on that, and they're amused by the service to make that a case. However, again, it's fundamentally—we can have a great system in place, we can have all the reporting in place, we can speak the truth to power and say that buildings are falling down, there are cars in backyards that can't go out. If there isn't the funding there to repair and replace those, then it's not moving the issue forward. That takes us back round in the circular argument to the responsibility for that. Speaking that position forward in terms of the service on behalf of the people of Scotland and rest with the Scottish Police Authority, you talked to Mr Steele about you would have hoped to have resolved some of the communication issues by now. Sorry, could you just clarify who that was with? Is that with the authority? Well, you'll recall, convener, that under the previous iteration of the authority that I had come here, I think, two years since succession and advised that there would be no engagement whatsoever. There's no doubt that the new chair of the authority has changed that. We have absolutely built in meetings into the diary to make sure that we catch up on a regular basis, but the wider engagement has been with the service itself. We've had direct meetings with the deputy chief officer who's made us aware of the finance and also with the chief finance officer himself. Can I ask, in relation to ASPs and Unicent, if that's a similar situation? Likewise, the lines of communication on the DCO page, the finance officer, as I said, we've had much more openness and transparency in terms of the budget lines, the paperwork, the decision making, the prioritisation around some of that. Dialogue with the authority has been with the chair and that's a more general sense rather than the specifics. That's our experience also. Unicent, the new chair of the authority has changed the engagement that we meet together in a forum to discuss the issues in general terms, as Mr Marshall said. There are improvements there, and we speak with the finance officers at Police Scotland. Sometimes we have to request them to come, but we do eventually get that engagement that we're looking for. Mr Steele, you said that Police Scotland's case could have been stronger to the SPA for the capital budget. Is there any chance that the SPA doesn't realise the severity of the estate problems? If there are, then every one of them should resign on mass, because they have an absolute responsibility for making sure that they are absolutely fully aware of what they are responsible for. The short answer is that I don't believe there is. I'm reluctant to get into this just now, but I suspect that the communications that take place between the service and the authority are not too similar to the concerns that were in existence in the past around the relationship that existed between the former police boards and the former chief constables. I suspect that what the service wants to say, it probably says in early iterations of papers that go to the authority, but by the time that there have been a number of side meetings what actually goes to the authority is a watered down version of what the service believes needs to be said publicly. I base that on nothing more than 26 years of cynicism and knowing exactly how those relationships have worked in the past. I think that we all received the photographs of aspects of the estate, quite grim pictures. I'm trying to get an idea of how representative that is, because it's obviously a large estate that the police have. How representative are those pictures that you sent? I think that we have to realise that the police service is not at a standstill position in anything. We have relatively modern buildings, we have new buildings and frankly decrepit buildings. Paisley office is pretty much held together with black and yellow hazard tape. The air office, I think, was probably carved out of asbestos. There is so much asbestos in the building that is the general belief that we have. Even now, relatively new buildings are falling into a state of disrepair because no money is being spent in maintenance. They look tired and they look shabby. It's not just the physical building, it's also what's contained within it. The series of the link that I posted this lunchtime also highlights that there are some fairly significant risks and dangers to the manner in which our buildings are slowly declining. We have water coming in and around electricity points. We have water coming in and around stairwells, our floors are not maintained. One of the biggest causes of workplace payouts are slip trips and falls. Those kinds of things in their own right place are significant additional pressure upon a police service with very little money. Insofar as the pictures are illustrative of what we found in the buildings that we have been in, it would be fair to say that the general maintenance picture across the totality of the estate was the exception of probably the Gucci buildings to use military parlance off guard cost, although a window did fall in there in the past number of years. In Dalmarnock, there are arguably the two flagship premises that we have that the buildings are beginning to look tired and they are looking shabby. Coverings are coming off walls and floor coverings are wearing away. The Paisley office, as of for instance, has got so much yellow and black hazard tape pasted upon it that I suspect it probably comes in by the puffle road on a monthly basis to keep the place together. We have got the picture there. Mr Marshall, you talked about the health and safety inspection report. Can you just clarify when that might be forthcoming? When we talked about the risks in the estate, you said that health and safety were doing our report. Is that what you said? I believe that there is a process that has been trying to make a more systemic approach to this. I am aware from colleagues that if they have not already had that in place in terms of a regular inspection regime, as I said maybe because they have come to the role recently and do not understand that that was part of their responsibilities, but to amalgamate that up, so every commander has the opportunity to feed in to a centralised point in terms of the health and safety function within the service to highlight what they believe the prioritised issues are across their part of the estate and flag that up, so that there is a fully corporate knowledge of what the issues are. That will extend from holes in roofs and water running into tiles off walls. The problem with some of the prioritisation around some of that is that you can spend lots of money on some of the things that are the most obvious, but even tiles off a wall does not sound very much. If that means that the shower block—this is a real case on the face of it that looks like a good building—if the shower blocks out of commission because the tiles are off the wall, officers and staff do not have anywhere to shower either before or after their shift or whatever it happens to be. There are some basic hiding factors around some of that, and if it takes months of wrangling by the commander or the area commander to secure enough funding to do that and then find to get workmen to come and who may or may not be vetted and to get them into the building to plaster the wall, to put the tiles back on, if that takes somewhere between six and nine months, then there is a significant issue there for officers and staff. I am sorry to pression this, but the timescale of talking about some kind of collective report from the area commanders on their own particular buildings, is that going to happen and when do you expect it to happen and who is going to pull it together? It is a matter of the service that under DCC Taylor has instigated a piece of work obviously to try and amalgamate that into something. I think that that is a question in terms of the timescales and what that looks like would be a matter for the service and the health and safety leads to pull that together and give you an accurate reflection of that. My position should be that that should be done as quickly as possible, but it has to be done honestly, forthrightly and as fulsom as possible. Maybe the committee could be kept updated when that comes together. Can you update the committee on the results of that? I am happy to update, provided that we get sight of it. Yes, obviously. Thank you. I think that we will write to Police Scotland to ensure that you get sight of it. I think that that would be very helpful for all concerned that we did. I think that Police Scotland has said that, in light of the funding settlement that I think has agreed across the border, and even the cabinet secretary in evidence he has given has accepted that fact. Given where we are with the capitals bend, Police Scotland has indicated that the priority is in terms of delivering on health and safety and statutory requirements. What is the view of the panel as to the success of even achieving that sort of bare minimum, if you like? They are not. I do not want to make this all about the recent elder vision, but the simple fact is that we had police officers that were housed in buildings that did not have HMO licenses. HMOs require additional certification in terms of gas and electric. They did not exist. Those are straightforward breaches of the law. We know because of the actions that have been taken in terms of some of the cell accommodation that the cells were not fit for the use. We also know that the identified cost of bringing the buildings up to fire and building regulation standards comes in somewhere in the region of £300 million. The fact that the service and the authority know that they have buildings that do not meet the fire and building regulation standards and still continue to operate them clearly shows that they are not meeting the health and safety obligations, regardless of the desires or stated intention to do so. Given the accepted shortfall and the capital allocation, is there anything in your view that should be done differently with the allocation that is there that would better achieve at least that bare minimum of health and safety and statutory provision? I do think that that is a difficult equation to balance given what we have got. There are things that the service does, which is often prompted but sometimes not, to ensure compliance. For example, we recently found, and I know that there was much publication about it at the time, that the vehicles that we have because they are bought at such a relatively low spec do not meet the expectations of the police service by the time that we put in the safety equipment and allow for the weight of the occupants with their own equipment that they have to carry with them. We highlighted to the service that use of the vehicles in general activities would result in them being overloaded. The service put in place mitigation by issuing safety alerts, arguably in conjunction with the SPF, to ensure that instruction was given that no more than three occupants would be in a vehicle at any one time, for instance. We also identified that the safety equipment that was utilised for marking or for locus protection on our roads did not meet the British standard for reflectivity and size, so that was withdrawn. All of those mitigation activities take place when the issue is highlighted. When you have floors that have more trip hazards on them than you almost have tape on a roll to deal with, that kind of mitigation takes you so far, but it eventually starts to present a hazard in itself because people become blind to hazards of that magnitude. I mean that does suggest back to the point that I think colleagues were raising earlier about the level of communication that is beyond an initial conversation around budgetary priorities. There would be some value in having then a more granular discussion about how those sorts of issues are addressed, because from what you're describing, Police Scotland are spending and then having to spend again, either from mitigation or in terms of replacement because what they've purchased first-time round has been a false economy effectively. Indeed, and what is purchased to replace is also at the lower end, so it tends to have a shorter shelf life than you would expect. We are hopeful that the replacement vehicles will not have the same weight issues that those vehicles that they're replacing currently have, but we'll only find that out when we bring them in and test them. To some extent, that takes us into a slightly tangential discussion about the awareness and knowledge that goes into informing the decisions that are about purchase and procurement. However, if we have very little and we have to stretch it a long way, invariably the quality of what is replaced is every bit as poor and often poorer than even if newer than what it's replacing. I would come in to speak on that as well. I can only speak with 14 years' worth of cynicism, but I can see what's being provided as a budget to Police Scotland, and then they're making decisions based on that that this is all that we have to spend. What are we going to be able to purchase? What are we going to be able to do with it? I would like to see that the engagement in terms of a pre-budget goes to the people who effectively are going to be using that equipment, so if they're going to come down and speak to Police officers and to staff members, I was indated with calls from the mechanics who were able to tell me about those vehicles not being sufficient. If they knew that they had that knowledge, and perhaps that wasn't considered at procurement level, I don't know, but engagement with those people would perhaps allow them to find a way to spend that more effectively if that's all you've got. I appreciate that you don't want to dilute the overarching argument about the insufficiency of the capital budget, but whatever point you're at, you would want to make sure that what allocation is there is being used as efficiently and effectively as possible. I speak with 30 years of optimism, maybe that's... I'm a superintendent's pensioner behind my back. Do you want us to leave the room at this stage? Paid for from my contributions too. From my point of view, in all seriousness, there is a bit about the fact that we as a service are a can-do organisation, and sometimes we're the worst enemies of getting through and making the most of certain things. Objectively, in terms of that decision making and the prioritisation, as we've all said, we weren't part of any pre-briefing on that. We weren't involved other than the 2026 broad consultation about how those priorities were reached. We were briefed by the service about a very difficult position that they found themselves in, with a very small cake that they had to slice up. Not being part of that, not being full of imposition of the full circumstances, it's not from me to second-guest the decisions that they took in relation to that. From my point of view, as it was articulated, there are certain things that have to do in terms of if that's replacing certain weaponry and bits and pieces so that we can be operationally competent to deal with certain threats, then those need to do things. The health and safety elements, yes, there's a big long list, and there's a very high risk, high risk, normal risk, because there's a whole list of those, and, as Calum alludes, that could take up to £300 million to do all of that, so there's a sort of prioritisation that you have to apply to that. Then there's still the aspirations to do something in terms of the ICT, so that we can move to a position where officers and staff are able to log in rather than have to travel hundreds of miles to get to a computer that's still got their log in, so there's some very basic, it's not Gucci, it's not something looking designer, it's very basic ability to be able to operate and do their job, so there's an aspiration to do that. They're not just a spinning one plate, they're spinning a number of plates, and to try and do that, as I say, with a very small cake, admire what they're trying to do, but it fundamentally needs more to be able to do more of across that. We're not going to be able to do it all, and, as I say, unless we had a programme, a capital programme that had sufficient funding over a period of time that allowed us to commission all the relevant elements of that and have that mapped and delivered over a period of time, we are talking about a five to 10-year programme just to stabilise the issues in terms of health and safety, estate, fleet, equipment and, also, to invest in an ICT world that enables officers to operate in the 21st century. Mr Steele, I'm going to bring Fulton in who's waited patiently here. Yes, thanks. No, Fulton, we're just going to hear from Mr Steele first and then I'll bring him first. Oh, right, okay, sure, yeah. Thank you, convener. We also can't recite at the fact that the capital allocation is not entirely without strings. There are expectations that the service will spend some of it on its DDICT digital data and ICT programme, and I think that that kind of goes against the ethos that the Government certainly came to power on some significant time around about the removing of ring fencing. But if the service is provided capital funding with strings, that does not mean the service. I mean, I'm not saying that the service would not come to the same conclusions and determine that the strings are exactly what they would choose to spend the money on, but it doesn't deliver the full flexibility to the service to spend the money on what may be those priorities in the year. Thank you for that. Fulton, and then Daniel. Thanks, convener. Good afternoon, panel. You've actually started to touch on where my line of questions are around, and it's specifically around ICT. As I say, I think that you've already started to develop the answers, so I think that I know where that will go, but do you feel as a panel that staff currently have access to ICT, which allows them to provide effective, inefficient policing? The answer to that might not be as simple as I know I suspect, but where are there any gaps, if there are any? It's a simple no. Where do you see the main gaps being? In everything. I mean, I have in my pocket something, and I suspect every one of you to see the same, something more sophisticated and advanced than the basic equipment that police officers have reliant upon. I know that my colleagues in Unison will speak with tremendous knowledge and the frustrations that their members have in maintaining ICT infrastructure, which is well past its best. It's not too recently that we've moved away from our version of Windows that Microsoft itself had stopped supporting. The fact that, in this day and age, as Mr Marshall highlighted, we have to move potentially hundreds of miles to get to log on to our system because your programme to a certain part of the network is idiotic. The gaps are wide and varied. The world has changed. You can order them and book a holiday on your phone in nanoseconds. You should be able to do something similar in terms of checking whether someone's wanted or establishing what you're outstanding workload is so that they haven't revert to a bit of paper with a reminder. The gaps are so great that it's almost impossible to start to narrate them in the time that's available to us just now. I think that you've articulated that pretty well in terms of the simple answer that you gave as well. What impact has that had on the ability of officers to carry out an efficient policing service? Obviously, we're also in this committee and the larger field justice committee. We hear a lot of good reports of police work across a number of different areas. Is there any idea how those gaps, which seem very striking, have impacted on that? It compounds the sense of frustration. I'm not in any way demureing from the fact that the officers that are at their day and daily and right now and will be working night shift tonight are doing anything other than working as hard as they possibly can to deliver the best police service they can. However, they are almost hindered at every single turn by the equipment and the facilities and the technology that's available to them. First of all, they've got to be lucky to get a vehicle that works to be able to get to the incident in the first place. Then, because of the pressure on the volume of calls, which is not a capital problem but it's a problem nonetheless, they spend not as much time dealing with complainers and victims as they might wish. Then, because of the unavoidable requirement for multiple entities across a whole variety of systems, they spend more time dealing with inefficient bureaucracy rather than providing a service to the public. All of those things in their own right mean that the service that's been delivered is not as efficient or as effective or as professional as it could be. We can't ignore the fact that, in amongst all of those pressures, officers have so little time that many of them are not able to get properly refreshed. Even if they were able to get properly refreshed, they don't have the facilities within their buildings to be able to do so. I would encourage any single member of the committee to, if you want to go and visit a police station, don't do so by getting in touch with a divisional commander. Do so by getting in touch with the SPF. Come and see us and come and ask us what—can you come and have a look around a police station? Can you come and speak to—I suspect that Unison would say the exact same thing—speak to Unison. Come and speak to our officers, come and speak to our staff direct. Don't go and listen to the hand-picked harries that will almost certainly be rounded up to tell you how glorious things are when the reality is somewhat different. Thanks for that robust response, but I wonder if any of the other panel would want to come in. I suppose that what I'm looking for is a non-police person—I think that only our convener has got experience in what I'm directly in the places. We're hearing that the technology is not really suitable for up-to-date, but I want to know a real-life example of how that's affected on a bit of police work that would have been, for example, the public interest. I don't know if either master you were wanting in. I was going to answer your question first on effectiveness and efficiency. I personally think that Police Scotland is effective in all the statistics in terms of performance indicators, but more significantly in terms of the quality of data, what the public say, in terms of surveys and what the interactions are, suggests that policing in Scotland is amongst the best across the UK, across Europe and maybe even on a global sense. That, fundamentally for me, policing is a human endeavour. It involves the men and women of Police Scotland interacting with the citizens of Scotland and the people who visit Scotland, and that's done to a very high standard. Efficiency is a different thing. That's about how productive the officers can be. Issues in terms of ICT, the working environment that they're in, the vehicles that they use, the equipment that they have—those are enablers in terms of how well, how productive they can be in the time that they are at work. I think that we've alluded to the fact that, with proper investment, with better equipment, with more safe environments for people to work in, they could be even more effective than they are in terms of that. I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking that the Police Service of Scotland is going to hell on a handcart. It's not. It's built upon the endeavours and the motivation and the hard work of the men and women of the service, so I really want to make that point clear. In terms of answering your question specifics, I might be a bit far removed from it, but if people are having to queue up at the end of their shift to get onto a computer so that they can download stuff or input material or whatever it happens to be, as opposed to being able to do it in an effective way during the course of their shift using mobile data and various other things, there's something not right there about the bandwidth and the equipment and how up-to-date it is, so they could just be much more productive and much more effective as a consequence of that. Brother, I'm taking up any more time, convener, again, because I realise that we're quite short for time. I would just like to make a final comment on that, because I think that that is, you know, I was almost feeling the answers being given that there's almost two, I think, you've kind of summed up well, but almost two opposing views from our end of the table, in that we're hearing a lot about a very effective police service in Scotland, a police service that's doing a lot right, and that came through the inquiry that the Mother Committee recently committed to, but there is issues there with ICT. That can't be clearer as well, so. Daniel Dewish. I'll try and keep this brief, because I think it's important. I mean, we obviously now have an ICT strategy, which is a big step forward, but of the transformation budget, £24.5 million is allocated to ICT transformation. On that basis, it would take around 10 years to achieve that. I'm just wondering if the panel could give their comment about whether they think that is the right programme and really just whether that pace is even vaguely adequate, but also in terms of the things that are not being funded this year, so the national cybercrime infrastructure, GDPR, the digital evidence platform and the custom productions remodelling, those would seem to be pretty important investments. I was just wondering if the panel could give some view both on that, the generality of the programme, but also those specific line items. We'll have in a society where it's very common place to annually renew your phone. We have an ICT strategy that, as you've pointed out, could take over 10 years. That would be out of date by then. I have people sitting at their desks just now with computers that probably haven't been replaced in the last seven to eight years and working on systems quite recently, an old version of Windows, because there's licenses need purchased or updates need made on the software that runs on that platform and then needs to be updated for the newer platform and there's moving up the money there for that. The concern is that without the funding to bring in the strategy properly and efficiently that, again, it will be an expenditure that at the end of the run and when we get to the end of the 10 years we're out of date when we're in the same place again. It will be no surprise to anyone that the criminal element doesn't have any concerns about updating their IT technology and our well ahead of the police in terms of that. While our staff and officers are definitely delivering an effective service that we are all supportive of, we could be much more efficient and have greater capacity with a much better system behind that. I completely agree with that. The reality is that with the speed with which technology develops, it's more likely than not that much of what would be purchased in year 1 would be out of date, not even by year 10 or by year 5 or 6. The requirement then to go back and reinvest in infrastructure again would arguably be of greater priority than continuing to upgrade to try to get to the end point. However, on the specific issues that there are about productions, it's the kind of things that the evidence chain is highly reliant upon. The safe and effective and secure tracing of productions is important not just for the criminal justice system, but it's also important for the security of the people—I mean job security—of the people that are charged with making sure that nothing goes missing. Those things are invariably made much more difficult without the technology to be able to make it happen. This building alone is but a few short miles away from one of the most advanced global companies in terms of logistics in the world in Amazon. They can track and move stuff in the blink of an eye. We should be able to do something similar. That's hugely, hugely inefficient. I think that there's a particular big risk with that. Yeah, we welcome the fact that there's in place now an ICT strategy. I think that 10 years in its long potential in terms of delivering against that is far too long given the pace of change. But it is one of these sort of exponential things that just keeps on growing in the expectation. So we get that. It's back to that point. If we need a programme across ICT states and all the other issues that she alluded to, it encapsulates that so that we can map that out and phase the funding of it. I think that trying to secure 300 million up front to deliver some things across a public sector budget that is under strain is perhaps unrealistic, but spreading 50 million over six years or whatever it happens to be, that may be doable. 60 million for five years repeat is something that can be monitored and so on and so forth. That's the type of approach that we need to have. If you think beyond that, we don't know what the future holds in terms of many things, but we know that technology is changing. We know that there's going to be demands in the future, particularly around green elements for cars and buildings and so on and so forth. If we move to electric, there's a big cost with some of that. If the police service of Scotland even migrated to using hybrid cars or electric cars going forward or were forced to do that because of legislative change or whatever at some point in the future, the costs with that even would be significant. We need to future proof and build in where Police Scotland is going to be in the next five to ten years as well beyond where we are currently. We need to have that mindset as well be looking beyond the crises that we seem to find ourselves in in terms of buildings and cars and so on and so forth. We need to build a stable platform that we can go forward and continue to invest in the service. I heard things slightly different. I don't hear anyone say other than, as Fulton said, that the officers and staff of Police Scotland are doing a very fine job notwithstanding the challenges, is what I heard. I assure you that we'll be following this up with the cabinet secretary and putting robust questions to him. First, I can't obviously speak for the cabinet secretary. I know that those meetings and our discussions with him will help his discussions with colleagues in future budgets, so hopefully we'll see some change in that.