 I apologise for the slight delay and welcome everyone to the third, and you'll be delighted to know colleagues. The final meeting of the Justice Sub-Committee on Policing in 2016, can I ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices as they interfere with broadcasting even when they switch to sound? There's no apologies, but I do welcome Roderick Campbell and Graham Pearson, who have been intermittently regular visitors to the—can you be intermittent and regular? I don't know, but anyway, you've been visitors prior to this to the committee. We want item 1. It's a main item of business today. It's the evidence session on the issues that are considered by the sub-committee since its creation three years ago. I welcome the meeting of chief counsel of Police Scotland, Philip Gormley and Andrew Flanagan, chair of the Scottish Police Authority, who are both appearing for the sub-committee for the first time. Members here, the Justice Committee have seen you previously. I also welcome the deputy chief counsel, Rose Patrick, who's been here before, haven't you? John Foley, the SPA's chief executive, is here on a supporting capacity, and I go straight to questions from members. Good afternoon, panel. Chief counsel, a question for yourself. We've been out and about and we went to Elgin, Mr Stewart and I, and we returned. One of the issues that came up was what discretion officers would be afforded. We heard varying opinions. We heard that the discretion had been removed from officers, but we also heard from senior officers that, with regard to a specific example of speeding, a number of people were warned about their conduct and a number were charged. Can you advise what your position is in the—where discretion plays a part in operational policing, please? I think that it's absolutely four square in the centre of what good policing looks like. The conversations that I've been having with staff—I've just come from a meeting of chief inspectors not far away—is that we need to make sure that we understand productivity and what good policing looks like and that it will vary from community to community, and that we enable officers to make the right sorts of decisions for those communities that they understand that it's relevant. Disgression, the ability to apply professional judgment in terms of what they think will work in those circumstances, is absolutely at the heart of good policing. For me, there's a continuum in operational life. At one end, you've got malicious compliance, and the other, you've got discretionary effort. My malicious compliance is that I did it, although it was obvious that I shouldn't do it because you told me to, or I didn't do it, although I should have done it because you hadn't told me to. At the other end, it isn't written down, but I know what the values of the organisation are. I know what this member of the public needs at this point, and I'm going to act in accordance with those values and my professional judgment to deliver the right sort of service. I want an organisation that routinely operates towards the discretionary effort at the end. There are areas where there are non-negotiables, so you don't want to reinvent a new approach to a firearms incident in the middle of a threats to life incident, so I'm not naive around it. Most of the routine waft and weave of policing is about ambiguity and calls for service where there are a range of judgments that can be made, and I want officers to be confident that they can make the best judgments according to the circumstances that they see. I think that your example around speeding is a really good one, because for me, what is the outcome that we want? The outcome is less road deaths, less serious injuries and less danger on our roads. Actually, the evidence of the last 12 months is that we're probably moving the right direction around that. Part of that will be the issuing of speeding and other fixed penalty notices and enforcement measures. Some of it will be about proper sensible advice to people who have perhaps had a momentary lapse of concentration. Officers will be best placed to make those sorts of decisions about whether that is an issue where, in terms of public safety, we need to separate that individual from their driving licence, or whether that is an area where some advice, some sensible intervention will have a greater protective effect. We have seen a greater degree of advice given, as opposed to a simple enforcement ticket that has been issued. At the same time, we have seen an encouraging reduction in death and serious injury on the roads. That is a long answer, but I think that there is discretion. You need to be careful and clear about the set of circumstances where that is non-negotiable. For the vast majority of the sorts of incidents that policing is dealing with across Scotland day in, day out, officers need to be confident about making the right decisions. That might have been a long answer, but it was a reassuring answer. We assure not only politicians but officers in the public as well. Can I ask about one area where there has been conflict, please? Can you just ask something on that point, because it was raised with a constituent, that in England, I do not know if it is a police matter or whether it is a government matter, then go and drive our improvement courses rather than just a warning or a ticket? I understand that there are not any in Scotland. Is that within your remit, and if it is, what is your view? I do not know whether it is in my remit, but I certainly have a view that I think that the solution to road death is a combination of engineering, enforcement and education. The system that prevails in England and Wales is that if you exceed a speed limit up to a certain level—I think that it is 10 per cent plus two miles an hour, broadly speaking—you are offered as an alternative to a fixed penalty ticket, a driver, a speed awareness course. There is some very powerful evidence coming back from those in terms of people who attend them, who find them really helpful. We do need some longitudinal research around the genuine impact on re-offending and road safety, but instinctively it feels like the right thing to do, because instinctively I think somebody who goes and spends five or six hours carefully and sensibly going through a programme that helps them understand and perhaps reacquates them with their safe driving techniques, as opposed to potentially a fixed penalty ticket arriving through the post three weeks later and scratching your head trying to remember where it was that you were with. Human nature suggests that the former is going to be more effective. It does exist in England and Wales. I think that there is some real merits in those approaches. I was going to ask about stop and search. I know that it predates the particular issues, but it is still a live issue. Do you have a view, having come from a background where everything was on a statutory footing, of the benefits of that against so-called consensual searches, which a number of people including myself are very uncomfortable about? I guess that you are a product of where you have been and how you have been socialised. I have only operated in an environment where we have statutory stop and search. I think that it provides sensible protections, I think that it provides officers with clarity, I think that it provides accountability. I think that stop and search is a really important tactic, but it needs to be intelligence led and it needs to enjoy the support of the communities that it seeks to protect. My policing experience is that statutory stop and search provides the best protection for the public in terms of legitimacy and also clarity for officers. In relation to Mr John Scott Cusie, who did the report in relation to that, we heard from him that a phrase that people might have been surprised at was that the police service should be the front line defender of the citizens' human rights. Do you have a view on that? I completely agree with that. I think that policing needs to be on the side of the overwhelming majority of law-abiding citizens of whichever country we are operating in, and it needs to respect the rights of those who are, for whatever reason, offending. Absolutely at the heart of good policing in any liberal democracy is a proper understanding of human rights and the responsibilities that come with it, and we need to protect the vulnerable. I want to take Kevin Alasdair to come back to your promise. Margaret, Alison, Elaine and Kevin. I could ask the chief constable if he satisfied that effective lines of communication have been established between stakeholders and local commanders in order to make sure that lines of communication are there and that local priorities are being looked at. I think that there is always work to be done. We are now in a position where we have good local relationships and we have 32 local policing plans. My anecdotal evidence as I have gone around the country is that we need to do more in terms of explaining the connection between national capability and national decision making and how it impacts locally. I think that there is more work to be done there. I am not surprised that that is where we are, but enormous achievements have been delivered in my view in the last three years. Connecting that local service and reconnecting it into some of the points that Mr Finnie was making around discretion and enabling people to make local decisions relevant to the areas that they are policing is really important. We have got some work going on this year in terms of public consultation, so we are launching your view in April, which will be a digital-based, on-going consultation process, not just a once-off. It will enable people with sensory impairments, as well as the rest of the co-population, to contribute in terms of our understanding of what good policing looks like and what they want from good policing in their areas. I am not trying to do that because I think that we are in a good place. I think that there is more that needs to be done over the next year. Very often, there is a turnover of commanders. Even today, speaking to some farmers, they were saying that quad bikes have been stolen in our area again. The local police that were there have moved on. They were there for a number of years and they seem to be on top of it. Is there a balance to be struck there? There is always a balance to be struck. I agree. In my 30 years, that has always been an issue in policing in terms of the desire for consistency in local communities and the officers there. We are in a demographic bubble at the moment. A lot of officers joined in the early 1980s and mid-80s because of the Evan Davis pay award at that time. Those officers are now coming to the 30-year point. We are seeing a larger number than usual of officers leaving, particularly at the more senior ranks. We have gone through a process internally and looked at what does that mean in terms of division of command of superintendents and assistant chief constables. There is a reality that there will be a turnover in the next 12 to 24 months. My ambition will be to mitigate that. We are looking carefully at succession planning. Going to your earlier point, we have had to make some new appointments to the division of commander level. Rose has written out to the leaders of the local authorities asking for the sorts of skillsets, the sorts of challenges, the sort of person they want. I do not think that I can get to the position that allows them to choose, but understanding what are the local issues there and enabling us to fit as best we can, the sort of individuals that we have got available against the skills, there is also clearly the on-going necessity to talent manage, career develop and make sure that we are growing the next set of leaders both for general positions and local positions within a national organisation. I share the ambition and on occasions the frustration that we need to keep people in positions. The officers who are policing communities across Scotland under the Police Scotland badge were the officers who were policing it under the legacy cap badges, but I recognise the issue and it is one that I am alive to. We try within the constraints of a national organisation with the sorts of turnover that we have at the moment to minimise the impact. I think that the local authorities very much appreciate being consulted on that, because they have very good local intelligence that can feed back and help. It has been uncertain the extent to how much they felt, depending on each authority, they have been involved in that. Communities and councils have identified the erosion of local police and local decision making as a real concern. I suppose that what I am interested to know is your views on the autonomy of divisional commanders and how far you consider it possible to legitimise different policing approaches in different communities around Scotland. Again, you are going to find me in violent agreement with the ambition behind your statement. What we have to be careful is that in that we do not build in a lot of bureaucracy and cost. I have operated in other policing environments where I had a fully devolved budget. That meant that I spent an awful lot of my time managing it and I then needed the infrastructure of a local business manager. We have to be careful how we operationalise that ambition. We are talking at the moment, Rose and I and other senior colleagues, around what good performance will look like going forward and how we represent those locally driven ambitions for policing into a framework that has the right balance between headline national figures, a good competent police force that should be in control of and local issues and give due regard to those. The meeting that I came from this morning, which was all of the chief inspectors in the eastern region 30, was a live conversation we were having this morning about how do we empower you in a realistic way? Again, we got limited funding and we needed to make sure that we do not have a thousand flowers bloom experience when we have not got enough fertilizer for that number of plants, a vulgar expression. Are you lost to me last week? The serious point around local discretion and local decision making, commanders want it because they want to make a difference. I do not want to frustrate that. I do not know whether, Rose, you want to come in around how we have moved that. Again, early on, in any transition, there is a necessity to grip things really tightly at the centre because there are a lot of moving parts, a lot of different systems, a lot of different cultures and a lot of different practices. Three years in is the point at which we can understand which bits of that grip we can now release because we do not want to grip so hard that we strangle innovation. Nor do I want to end up in a position where we have a chaotic approach where we are not clear about what we are clear about, where staff are not sure about what we want as an ambition. There is always a balance, but I think that the ambition is one that I share. Do you understand that Police Scotland's view of what local policing differs significantly from what communities and local councils think of as policing? The plethora of national teams that have been set up sort of mitigates against delivering that kind of holistic local policing that communities are looking for? I am not sure. It is probably the first time that I necessarily accept the whole of the proposition there. I think that what we have seen across the country is some real advances in terms of what communities can now access. Again, I mentioned it a week before last. The absolute revolution in the approach to domestic violence is really significant. The ability to land really high-quality major investigation teams into any part of the country, which was not possible with the confidence that we have now. The ability to deploy air support to search for missing people in a way that was not as easily achieved. There are real advantages around the national. I go back to my earlier point. I think that the challenge going forward is how we explain that, how we make sure that it is available and how we retain the essence of local policing. I think that we will need to go through a reassessment of demand and risk, both demand that we know about, latent demand and emergent demand, because crime is changing. Understand what that means in terms of risk and vulnerability and then make the inevitable hard decisions about where resource goes against those emerging and changing threats. If I might turn to Mr Flanagan, one of the on-going criticisms of the SPA has been around its inability to proactively identify issues that it needs to scrutinise. It has constantly played catch-up and the committee has had to step into the region on a number of occasions. What is the SPA doing now in order to identify issues ahead of things? One of the issues that I am tackling in the governance review and how we work with Police Scotland more closely to identify issues as they are coming down the track and what processes go on in terms of the debate between Police Scotland and the SPA in terms of what we think is the correct approach for that. I think that the role of the SPA has to be in terms of how we represent the public view, because policing can only succeed where it has consent from the public to police. At the same time, that principle sits at a little bit of tension with the operational independence of the police in order that they can carry out their duties as they see fit. The two things need to work in balance with each other. One of the issues that I am addressing in the governance review is how we identify those issues. We have touched on some of them at the moment at stop and search, but we are clear that there was public concern and therefore the consent to police was at question. The SPA should have been at the forefront in discussing that with Police Scotland. I have to accept the criticism that was there, that we were not being proactive, but one of the things that I think going forward we have to ensure is that the dialogue between us and Police Scotland is looking at those issues in advance. It is not just about the performance of policing, but it is also about the way that we police. That has to be a close involvement between both the Chief Constable and myself, but also the wider SPA and Police Scotland. I think that you will see, hopefully, in that some recommendations in the governance review about how we might do that. I might finally ask other people what progress there has been on the development of the code of practice on stop and search. That is clearly pivotal to moving forward. As you know, we have been doing a lot of work ourselves to get ourselves ready for the implementation of the code of practice. My understanding is that the Scottish Government will be doing a public consultation in relation to the code and also issues around alcohol and young people. Of course, we will contribute to that and support any information or data that we have that debate and consultation. Sorry, at consultation we have only got a few more a week and a half to go, so what is the deadline for that? I am afraid that I will have to ask the Government about that. Sorry about that, did not mean to stop you there, but it is just that, as we know, we rise after March 23. The legislation is such that this has to happen, so whatever Government takes it on, we will have to take it on. I will return to the issues around local policing and the relationship between local areas and the centre. Have you had contact with local divisions? Have you been to visit the local divisions? Have you discussed with officers at all levels their perceptions? One of the things that we found on our visits was, in Dumfries, the perception of the constables, for example, of how they were being directed and so on, was rather different to the more senior members of staff. What sort of contact have you managed to bring in that sort of experience? I am endeavored to go on a Scottish world tour, really. I have said it overtly that my first three months will be more about receive than transmit. I will get some of this wrong, but I have been to Inverness, Stingwall, Stornoway, Inverruri, Aberdeen and into the Kingdom of Fife, Edinburgh and Glasgow. What I have been doing is having a conversation with officers, I have even explained to them my view about what the four broad main challenges are for us going forward over the next 12 to 24 months. More importantly, I am listening to them in terms of how they feel about the organisation. What they are saying to me is that they have noticed in the last 12 months that there has been a change of tone around performance. The example that Mr Finney alluded to earlier is that they do not feel as driven if they were ever being driven to hit targets around speeding tickets. There is a greater level of discretion that they are describing coming back into their daily work. I have been out and spoken to local authorities, so each of those visits is really—I normally have two or three staff engagements in the day and then spent an hour or two with the local civic leaders, the chief executive, just to get a sense from their point of view what it feels like to be a stakeholder and a partner of Police Scotland. Coming back from that is genuine support and commitment to the local service that has been delivered. I have seen extraordinarily strong relationships between divisional commanders and local civic leaders. I have said earlier that I desire to better understand how the national plays into the local and how we can more effectively hear voices at the centre from localities. I was having conversations with Rose about some simple measures that we can probably put in place in terms of using our area ACCs to more effectively engage both in terms of briefing on issues at a national level but more importantly hearing how things are landing locally so that we get a better, more nuanced relationship with local authorities. My sense that I do not want to overstate this is that staff are hugely enthusiastic, they are doing really great work, it is being recognised and valued by the communities that they serve. There is an ambition from the staff to have more discretion to build on that and there is an ambition locally from civic leaders and you will know this better than I to be better connected to some of the big decisions that Police Scotland has to make in the national interest. The feeling in local authorities and local communities now that they do not have the same relationship with the police as they used to, they are not getting the same sort of opportunities to feed in their views or to comment as they had when, certainly in my area, which is Dumfries and Galloway, I would say that they do come south as well because I think it was a lot of the places that you have been a brother now. Whatever my itinerary looks like, it will offend somebody. I deliberately did not start in the central belt. I have done it for you, George. In terms of the way in which, this is also a question really for Mr Flanagan as well on the SPA, how you can improve the accountability and the relationship, not just obviously with staff but also with the public and local communities, that they feel that they are being consulted and know that they have the opportunity to express their views on either operational matters or on policy matters? I will not hold the microphone at all, but I would point to what I said earlier in terms of your view being launched by the public consultation. We are doing a lot of work to get a better level of connectivity with local communities so that we can hear their voices. The governance review that clears the SPAs, I am on the independent reference group for that, and that is clearly a live issue for the SPA and for the service. I will let the chairman reflect his views on that, obviously. The governance review is still on track for the end of March. It is. In fact, I suspect that it should be delivered next week. As part of the governance review, we did quite an extensive consultation through local authorities and wider. There were common themes that came back through that consultation. It was not so much that they were happy with the involvement of the SPA in terms of local engagement, but it was on those points that you were making about how, on the ground, engagement works with Police Scotland. One of the things that we are coming through was how our national decisions, especially when they are made by some of those specialised services that were referred to earlier, how perhaps the communication of how that decision has been made does not feed down through the organisation as well as it might in terms of local commanders, because they form part of local policing rather than national services. Understanding how a decision has been made and why that may not be in line with what the local community thinks is not effective enough. That is a point that we need to address. Equally, it is not clear how their initial engagement and views are fed through into the top of the organisation. I think that we need to work with Police Scotland to make sure that the communication loop is working more effectively, that both it is going up and down in terms of the organisation. One of the things that came out from some of the consultation was that there was an acceptance that not always could the desires of the local community be met. There was an acceptance of that. However, when a decision was going in an opposite direction, they wanted to know why. I think that that is a perfectly reasonable position to take. I do not think that the people who are communicating are always fully understanding the background to how the decision was made, and that is where we can improve. You were quite critical of the skillset of the board of the SPA, and you felt that there were insufficient people with the accounting and economic type of background. Do you think that there needs to be some changes? I wondered whether you were content that there were sufficient members with policing backgrounds, either serving officers or people who have been involved in local authorities facing operations and so on. I was not particularly critical of that. I felt that there were gaps in the skillsets. We have two ex-police officers who sit on the board. We have some access to those skills, but one who was a former chief constable only joined us last summer. We need to strengthen that area. There are other gaps, as someone mentioned earlier, human rights. I think that that is somewhere that we should have those skills around the table. What we are doing at the moment is creating a skills matrix in terms of what skills we think board members have and trying to match the skills that we already have and identify what gaps we need to fill. Finance is a more obvious one, and we are more pressing because we have financial challenges. That is why, to fill some of the vacancies that we currently have, I identified finance as a particular requirement. Can I start off with the local policing aspect? Mr Finlay mentioned earlier that him and I paid a visit to Elgin. During the course of that visit, I talked to members of the community council there. They felt fully informed about what was going on in their area and felt that they had a major part to play in the formulation of the local policing plan. In some regards, it was very difficult to get them to say a bad word about the force, even though we tried. On the north-east, chief superintendent Adrian Watson, who has just retired, has been fantastic as far as I am concerned in listening to communities and bringing communities with him. Yet other colleagues visiting other parts of the country found that folk did not feel that they were involved in the formulation and the priorities of the local policing plan. How, Mr Gormley, can we ensure that the exporting of good practice and that inclusivity is right across the country, rather than in just certain areas? How do we make sure that the south of Scotland folks feel the same way as the north-east of Scotland folks in terms of local policing plans and their involvement? Critical to that role is the assistant chief council who sits at area level. We have an ACC for the north, the east and the west. Identifying good practice, whether it is in relation to consultation and the creation of plans and local approaches to performance, or some of the really good innovative work that we have seen going on around mental health and pilots that are producing real dividends around reducing demand and providing a better service to our most vulnerable. That in a national organisation is a challenge. I think that as we settle and embed the service over the next year, 12 or 24 months, we need to work harder to identify what has gone really well, what do we need to replicate, what works well in one environment but simply won't in the other. Again, if you look at some of the historic criticism or present criticism, it is a one-size-fits-all, and I know that that is particularly directed at what some people have called the stratoclidation of Scotland. That is a real challenge for us and it is an enormous opportunity, because there is some really good innovative work. We need to coach, but there are some really good chief superintendents. I alluded earlier that we are going through a period of transition. We have got some new ones. There is a role for all of us on the executive to support people who are new into role and make sure that they are learning from the best. How do we expose them to the best practice and the experience of their colleagues? I think that there is a range of issues, but it is about good leadership, it is about bringing people together, it is about listening, it is about creating a collaborative culture rather than one that is not invented here, therefore I do not do it. It is one that borrows with pride, plagiarises with confidence. It is that sort of continuous improvement that we need to make sure, which is always going to be a challenge in the national organisation, as big and disparate as we are, that we actually grab those gems and promulgate them. One of the things that we see in other areas of business is the fact that folk tend to keep their good ideas to themselves. I am glad that you talked of borrowing and plagiarism there, because there is no ill in doing both of those things to improve public service across the country. You mentioned mental health. Obviously, there has been some intensive training in that regard. Does that also cover autism? I know that there is a misunderstanding sometimes of folk with autism who often end up in trouble much more than they should because of that misunderstanding. Yes, I can help with that. Our central safer communities team is working with a number of organisations that support people with learning and other disabilities, and those with sensory impairments and so on, to help to improve and provide better training for our officers and our staff who have direct contact with members of the public to assist with those kinds of situations, where there may be communication difficulties or behaviours that are entirely in keeping with perhaps conditions that people have or disabilities that they have, but which may not be something that officers come across regularly. We are continually looking to improve the training that we provide to officers. I want to move on to scrutiny of large projects, which the sub-committee has done to a degree. If I could turn to Mr Flanagan, because we have heard of some of the problems that are around the implementation of I6. There has also been a look at C3IR. How has the SPA been scrutinising major projects and do you establish sub-groups to scrutinise those major projects to any degree? We have a sub-group of board members who are called business transformation that does have some work in terms of looking at the larger projects. Specifically on I6, John Foley sits on the programme board, along with representatives from the Scottish Government and Police Scotland in terms of looking at I6. We rely heavily on Police Scotland in terms of reporting to us in terms of those projects, because we do not have a huge capacity ourselves in terms of that. Going back to one of the skill gaps that has been identified, someone with experience of major projects and major change programmes is something that I would identify as being a weakness that we have. You are basically saying to me that you do not have the experience to scrutinise major projects to the degree that you probably should. I think that that is fair. How are you interacting with that? You said that you are looking at bringing in folk who have— Yes, I think that one of the skills that we should have at board level is someone with big project management and change management skillsets, and that is what I intend to do through the recruitment programme. How quickly is that going to be in place, Mr Flanagan? We should be starting to advertise for new members before we go into perda. That advertising process would run through up to the election, and then we would be in a position to make recommendations to ministers once after the election, once new ministers are appointed. In terms of the information that you have been receiving from Police Scotland around about those major projects, you have said that you probably can not scrutinise those things to the degree that you should because you do not have the personnel. Do you feel that the information that you have had from Police Scotland on those major projects has been open and transparent? I think that it is reasonable. Could we have had more information? Yes, we could have had. I think that, to some extent, Police Scotland, if I go back to I6, I have been dependent on the supplier in terms of providing information. There are some situations where it was very late in the day that I felt that we were beginning to see testing problems on I6. That was as late as October, November last year, when the first roll-out was supposed to take place in December. That indicates that Police Scotland itself was somewhat surprised by some of the difficulties that came through. Mr Gormley, do you feel that the scrutiny of major projects by the SPA of Police Scotland has been robust enough? I know that that is a strange question to ask yourself, but there is no harm in some good scrutiny taking place. Do you think that the scrutiny of those major projects by the SPA has been robust enough? I am not sure that I can answer that with any degree of precision, historically. What I would say is that, in terms of public confidence, we need proper scrutiny. I am used to operating in an environment where I am held to account and the level of reassurance that can be provided by good scrutiny underpins public confidence. If we are not delivering in the way that we need to, I want to know as early as possible. Others will have to comment on whether they think that the level of scrutiny was appropriate historically, but, going forward, in the way that the chairman describes, we need robust and transparent scrutiny processes around major projects and programmes. Do you feel that the information that the force has supplied to I6 has been open and transparent? I have not heard anything to the contrary. I will take the chairman's point that there may have been more or different information that may or may not have helped, but the inference that intended or unintended that there was a desire not to be open and transparent, I have not seen that. Whether better information could have been provided in different formats at different times to enable greater levels of scrutiny, I suspect that the answer may well be yes, because you can always learn from the past, but, certainly going forward, my ambition is that there will be transparency. I want to be held to account. I want the police authority to be in a position to be able to reassure the public that we are doing our job both operationally and organisationally, because, again, that comes back to public confidence. Mr Foley, you have been involved in that, so I have left you to last deliberately. Do you feel that, in terms of scrutiny of the I6 project, the SPA has had the information that it requires to scrutinise properly? Yes, I would say so. The programme board certainly is an open and transparent forum, and, as the chair said, I sit on that board. The flow of information coming through that is the same information that passes to Police Scotland from the contractor, so we see what Police Scotland is saying. In addition to that, we also have, through our committee structures, reporting back at various stages. There have been a number of reports made to the full board, but we also have an ICT scrutiny forum, which I chair, and I6 has been a standing item on that particular forum, from when the date was established. Can I just get a date when you became part of that forum, just to know, because this I6 has rumbled on for quite a while? Can you just have a date when you became closely involved? Yes, I would have first been part of the forum, probably, towards the very beginning of 2014, I would suggest. I remember that there was a contract variation that was put in place around about that time, and I played a lead role in the commercial aspects of that contract variation. We would be round about that time, convener. Just some small points to finish off, convener, if I may. On the openness and transparency of I6, those folks who appeared in front of us the other weeks were pretty open and transparent with us, as far as they could go, as far as I'm concerned. Other major projects that are currently going on at this moment, what role do the SBA play in terms of being on project boards or on fora in those other major projects, and do you have the ability to scrutinise as much as you can on those? If we take C3, which has been mentioned earlier, so if we refer to that one specifically, the authority has representation on the programme board for C3. We have also established a governance and assurance forum, specifically for C3, which I chair, and that has member representation from the authority. One of the members who represents on that particular forum is a well-respected ex-senior police officer, so we have policing experience there as well. Police Scotland clearly are on that board, and we have observers from Her Majesty's Inspectorate at the Han Scottish Government. In addition to that, C3 is subject to regular scrutiny through the full board. Indeed, all of the SBA committee structures engage in scrutiny of C3 specifically on subject matters. For example, if there were issues that related to staffing associated with the C3 project, those matters would be taken to the HR committee. Similarly, if there were issues that related to finance that would go to the finance committee and so on. Those are the two most significant ones. We have a number of ICT projects that take place within Police Scotland, and they are at various stages of development. They form what was known as the ICT blueprint. Those scrutiny are carried out on those projects as appropriate by the committees in the same way that I have explained over C3. However, there is also the ICT forum. Mr Flanagan, do you think that the SBA is robust enough in its scrutiny of the major projects? I think that they could be improved, yes. It could be improved, thank you. Can I just very quickly, before we get to the market, to return to the cost of the I6 contract? Can you remind me how much money we are talking about a year? It is roughly about £43 million. It is £43 million. I have to say that what I have heard is a bit despairing that it does not appear as being the scrutiny during that period of time, the £43 million. I would like to ask what contingency plans are in place of the chief council if the negotiations for that contract fail, because I understand that there are some kind of negotiations just now, but what we got in the previous hearing here was that the persons involved in that have Police Scotland not happy bunnies with the contractors and did not seem to have much faith in them. I think that there is an understandable level of professional and personal disappointment around some of that. At the moment, planning is on-going in terms of option appraisals, and I think that you will have heard last week that there was a 12-week period to work through this. The I6 programme team is looking at all contingency options open to the force and interim solutions using current technologies to support the force over any module roll-out period. There is very active consideration of what are the available options that we can take a view on at the end of this three-month period, so we are clearly working those up as we speak. I sort of did not understand all that. I was trying to get it in more forgiving in plain English. What happens if this contract collapses around your ears? What happens to the extra money that Police Scotland has put in to try and sort this out? You must have used more staff to do it. You are going to get that money back. How have you already got things in place to take over if it does not work out? You cannot wait for three months? That is the work that is on-going now in terms of developing those options, understanding what the commercial impact is of whatever solution is or is not arrived at and how do we move forward and prioritise the various elements within the I6 programme in the most sensible order in terms of the risk that some of those areas present to the organisation if we do not move forward? That is the detail work that is going on at the moment. I take part of those negotiations. Do we have much money? We are talking about a date that has been additional costs to Police Scotland through this, which is turning out to be a wee bit of a fiasco. I do not have those figures with me, so I do not want to offer a view without having the detail. Do you just want to fully have them? Additional costs to date? The cost to date, convener, including the police staff that worked on it, would be broadly around about 20 million, short of 20 million, but it is of that magnitude. What we are doing at the moment, as the chief constable said, is that we are considering the options and we are in a period of commercial review in relation to the contract. I am playing a key role in that. Is there a 20 million to date that has been additional costs in staffing and other things? It is not that 20 million is the total expended, including the amount given to the contractor, so it is not the extra cost. So what is the extra costs? At this stage, because it is a fixed-price contract, there has been no additional costs up there. I do not mean under the contract. What is the additional cost time at Police Scotland doing all that extra staff and having to deal with the failures of the contract? That must be costing Police Scotland money. Sorry, I misunderstood the question, convener, that you were asking. I thought that you were referring to the total cost expended to date. As I understand it, the extra cost of officer time accessor will be in excess of three million, which is included in that 20 million. Right, so 17 plus three. Broadly, yes. Thank you, Margaret. We have talked generally about scrutiny, if I could perhaps look at some specifics. Morale and the Morale of the Force has been a recurring theme when we have taken evidence. Sometimes that manifests itself in absences. Specifically on C3 and Billson Glen, are the absences figures there the same level as they were when there was a tragic incident on the nine? We have obviously looked at this. I will ask Rose to come in. We provided the signature figures to the SPA. There are clearly some issues that we needed to get under, so I will perhaps ask Rose to illuminate that. The figures that we have, the current figures that we have at this time of year, we are in a season at the moment of where we have some of our peaks of absence rates, but there is a significant reduction in absence at Billston Glen from the previous period that you are describing. Overall, where we benchmark our sickness rates with other forces that provide significant and large contact command and control rates, our current sickness rates, compared for example with West Midlands Police, are about half a percent higher, and compared with the Metropolitan Service, Police Service are very slightly lower at this time of year. Is there still backfilling then that is going on? If we have absence rates, that was a very big issue. Not in the way that we have previously been part of what we were doing when we saw very high absence rates, and when we saw vacancies, we have had a very significant recruitment campaign for police staff at Billston and in our service centre in the west as well. That has been extremely successful. We did a very localised set of recruitment, which has seen a significant number of people come into the service centres. What we are seeing at the moment in terms of absence rates is in line with other organisations seeing seasonal absence at this time of year. I have to stop you, Margaret. I am sorry, we cannot sit beyond two o'clock. I really think that we have one more thing to say. I must apologise to Roderick and Graham. We knew that we would be pushed for time today. The only thing that I can suggest is that you write your questions to chief constable and to the SPA and get your answers that way, because we will not be sitting again. My apologies to both. Thank you very much for your evidence. I am sorry, we cannot sit after two o'clock when the chamber sits. I have to wait to talk about this. We are going into private.