 Mae'r byd yn ddoch yn cyflawn. I'm sorry that we have one hour because we can't sit as a committee by Parliament, it's sitting at 2. I'm just give so. I'm looking for this as a day, it might happen. Short questions and short answers and then we can get through lots of stuff. A six-sinct rather than that. Welcome to the 3rd meeting, or the subcommittee on policing this year. I can ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices completely ffordd o'r wrthglwll â ffridd. Welcome, Roddie Campbell. You've been here before, Mr Campbell. The only item, of course, today is an evidence session on latest developments in relation to stop-and-search, and I thank you all first of all for making yourselves available a pretty short notice. I thank you very much for that. Welcome to meeting Chief Constable Sir Stephen House, Deputy Chief Constable Rose Fitzpatrick, Assistant Chief Constable Wayne Morrison, Vic Emmeray, of the Scottish Police Authority, John Fully, chief executive of the Scottish Police Authority and Callum Steele, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, and believe it or not, they're ready with their questions. So I go straight to Alison McInnes. Thank you. Thank you very much, convener. We're here today to talk about a broken promise. Is he saying, Mawson, last June, in response to questioning by me about how a child could possibly give informed consent to being searched, you said and I quote, you're absolutely right, and I'm going to make a strong statement. From here on in, we should not search young children who are under the age of consent. That must stop, because the current position is indefensible, end of quote. You then followed that up with a memo to all staff, so it's fair to deduce from that that you did not intend to mislead this Parliament about your intentions. So can you tell us what went wrong? Were your instructions countermanded, or did officers on the beat not pay heed to them? In response, that was directly to you, of course it would come on, if you indicate, and I'll call you, and the microphone will come on automatically. Is he, Mawson? Thank you very much, and thank you for the opportunity to respond to that, Mrs McInnes. I did indeed announce it to this group on the 19th of June, and that was followed up not only by a force memo but the electronic briefings to all staff, a piece on the intranet, and we went externally as well with letters to the stop and search expert reference group, and we also informed HMICS as well. What then happened was that we've identified that 130 stop searches are showing as consensual on the database from the date the policy came into place on the 23rd of June until the end of that year, 31 December 2014. We've identified that there are some areas where these searches are falling into, categories, if you like. Some involved an intervention or a seizure for alcohol or tobacco, and not a search. These should not have been recorded as stop and searches. Instead, they should have been recorded as incidents on our command and control system, and that's clearly a training issue. Some are showing as consensual, but it's clear that there is a legislative power that was available at the time it wasn't used. Again, I would say this is a training issue and individual officers have been addressed. Some of these searches, the 130, were carried out in the presence of a parent or a guardian or other responsible person. Some of these searches were for officer safety reasons only, so for example where an under 12 has been arrested or detained and are patted down before they're put in a police vehicle. These are not stop and searches and they've been entered in error. Another training issue, and again that's been addressed with individual officers. A small number, 18 in fact, don't fit into any of these categories. On these occasions there are two broad themes that these do fit into. The first is that officers are arriving on patrol or at an incident and maybe search a group of youths when taking their details it transpires that one or more of the group is under 12. It's ethically, I think, the right thing for those officers to do as they have done and record that as a consensual search on the database because that's what they did. The second broad area of those 18 consensual searches is around an officer's judgment based on the individual circumstances of the situation that they find themselves in. Some of these are around vandalism type calls or anti-social behaviour and I can give you two examples of those 18. So, for example, one of them relates to an 11-year-old boy. A call was made from a member of the public regarding youths throwing eggs at his window and shining a green laser pen at his home and at passing cars from a nearby play park. Youths were traced within the area and agreed to be searched for any eggs or laser pen, which was not found in the possession of the youths. I'll only mention one more convener, just to give you an idea of the type of situation. Again, an 11-year-old boy, the reason this male was searched was due to the Salvation Army reporting that a group of males had been throwing eggs at their windows and had smashed their fire alarm box. The male in question was located near to the locus, along with other male youths, between the ages of 12 and 14, and two of them matched the description passed by the Salvation Army. That's the reason why that male was searched. I'm sure you can appreciate when you arrive on scene and you're dealing with a fairly fast-time, fast-moving incident, it is difficult to sometimes judge whether somebody is just under 12 or is indeed over 12. That gives you a flavour of why there are 130 that are showing as consensual on the database. Whether those were consensual stop-and-searchs or what you're now calling interventions is, I think, to some extent immaterial, because all of these constitute interactions with young children under the age of consent. A very public commitment was made and then repeated to the Scottish Police Authority, and yet it's not clear what actions you took to ensure that the promise was honoured in the months following that. You talked about training issues and things. When the figures were released to the public a couple of weeks ago, you had not identified that any of those were inappropriately allocated, so you had not, at any time in the six months since you made the commitment, looked at those issues. It was only once there was a public outcry about the figures that suddenly the figures were being looked at and reallocated. Can you explain that? We did know that there were inaccuracies in the data. We were working to fix them, and we were still checking it. We did caveat the information to some extent that was released to the BBC, but with hindsight we should have been more explicit. If I can turn to the chief constable, Police Scotland's response over the last week has frankly been quite incoherent. You have set great store on intelligence-led policing based on just such data, and yet now, in the last few days, you look at the figures and tell us that of the 350 searches that they are wrongly accounted for—and really we are only talking about 18—it is barely credible. What I am trying to understand is that it is in competence, or do you have a disregard for the Scottish Police Authority? Chief Constable, do you find it a nuisance to have to account for the forces' actions to the SPA and to the Parliament? I take very seriously my duty to account to the SPA and to Parliament, part of the reason why we are all here to try to clarify the situation. That is also why we met with the Police Authority last Friday to try to talk them through recent developments. I take that very seriously. We are here to answer questions. I hope that we are here to try to explain the situation. It is a complicated situation. Stop and Search has the illusion of being an easy thing to understand, actually. It is quite a complicated matter. You can see that from the fact that our own officers, who are well-trained and extremely well-motivated, we still need to talk to some of them about what the issues are. We have to explain that to them. I think that Wayne has very clearly talked about the amount of training issues that we have identified and that we are dealing with now. Chief Constable, you say that you take your responsibility and your accountability to the Police Authority seriously. You met with the Police Authority last week and within hours you were writing to them to correct the evidence that you gave to them. I am not entirely sure when the letter went, but I thought that the letter was sent the following week, i.e. at the start of this week, I think that it was sent on Monday. I do not think that it was within hours, but I do not see anything wrong with you making a mistake, acknowledging that you made a mistake and apologising to the body that you are accountable for for that mistake. That is exactly what I did. The code of ethics for policing in Scotland sets out what the public can expect from Police Scotland. It compensates the values of the organisation, values that should be at the core of everything that you do—integrity, fairness and respect. Let me read from the preamble. It says that how we deliver policing has a direct impact on our communities and will influence the trust and confidence that people have in us. How we deliver is as important as what we deliver. Chief Constable, the level of trust in Police Scotland is ebbing fast. You must acknowledge that. The force in its handling of this sorry mess has failed to meet its one high standard. What will you do now to improve the attitudes at the top of the organisation and restore trust? I am afraid that I do not accept your premise that confidence is ebbing fast. Our confidence levels show that they remain high in the 80s. We have not seen a dropaway of that over this issue. Of course, we do not want the sort of headlines that we have had, but part of the reason for coming here today is to try and address those headlines and try and set the record straight and where we made a mistake. I have already said it once. We acknowledged that I made a mistake in the language that I used. I should not have used that language. We mean it when we talk about integrity, fairness and respect. Just to go back to the stop and search practicalities, we emphasise to all officers. I am confident in saying that officers understand that how they go about things is as important as what they do. They treat the public with integrity, fairness and respect. That is evidence for the number of stop and searches that we do. The number of complaints that actually come out of those is very, very low. There are many parts of Scotland now that are much safer than there were five years ago because of the effective use of stop and search that has been done with the consent of the community to reduce violent gang crime. What is also important is that there is complete transparency with your accountable body with the Scottish Police Authority, not after the fact, but as we go through it. Time and again we see that we are picking these things up after the fact. What I am seeking from you is a commitment that you will change your practices and be much more open and transparent with the Police Authority and indeed with this Parliament in these policy matters. I am sorry, but I do not think that the circumstances that you have described are describing an organisation that is trying to hide things away. I made a mistake when I spoke to the Police Authority last Friday. We acknowledged that and we wrote a letter, which is a public letter, and you have copies of it acknowledging that I made a mistake. The reason I made a mistake was because I was in a meeting with the Police Authority talking to them about stop and search. If I was hiding things, we would not have the meetings. Wayne has made a mistake in terms of making that commitment. He came to you to do that. I must stop you there. Just one final. I would like to finish with another one. I will let other people in and then you can come back. I might just talk to Chief Constable there and just say that the SPA expressed surprise that they had not been told at any time in the last six months that there was any concern whatsoever about the stop and search figures and they were as surprised as the public when they came out. That is not being open and honest with the SPA. I think that Mr Emre perhaps would you respond to that? Is that the case? We first heard about these figures on the evening of the third of February when we were advised that the BBC would be running a story the next day. If you bear with me, it is just that I have got other people 13 minutes gone. Kevin followed by Elaine, followed by John, followed by Margaret, followed by Roger. Thank you, convener. There seems to be a fair mix-up round about the statistics and ACC Mawson you mentioned training. Obviously you have a situation whereby eight forces became one, using different methods of recording and different systems to record, using different training methods. How far advanced are we in ensuring that there is uniformity in all of this across the country? You are absolutely right. It has been a complex journey with the different IT systems, the different legacy force training systems, et cetera. What we have done in recent months is introduced a training policy actually Allen for all new probationers that is a full eight hours in duration, which goes on to the practical implications as well as the theory of managing stop and search. That is a positive step in the right direction. I wonder if I could hear from Calum Steele about his members and how they are coping with the changes that there have been in terms of recording and training. Thank you, convener. The general change to... I wasn't the convener, he just did it himself, so there you are. I was through yourself, convener. Clearly the change to the police service Scotland has represented quite significant challenges in bringing together a standard recording approach, but the general tack on policing and interactions with the public largely continue as indeed they should have done pre-amalgamations. That being said, there is clearly a new force under a new chief constable. Policy direction and influence can have a bearing on how police officers undertake their day-to-day activities. The fundamental premise is that the service has gone through massive change and has delivered by and large an exceptional service to the public during that period of change. I cannot think that there will be many other organisations that would manage to deliver in the time that it has been able to deliver what the service, the police service Scotland has done. Of course there are things in the background that are far from being as seamless as they want to be. In no small way has the issue of, I suppose, things being lost in translation possibly about how issues are to be recorded, the losing of local practice to the understanding of the new corporate approach. Could that have helped? The general issue about the change in the service has brought some difficulties, but generally the service has been delivered to the public and continues to be first class. Have you been a member of a police board for a fairly long time? It was often very difficult for us to compare statistics with other boards. It was always comparing apples with pears because of the different recording systems and methods that were used across the country. Can I ask, in terms of getting this absolutely right, will the implementation of I6 ensure that we get a true picture of what is going on out there in terms of stats? That is for the chief constable, I think. The clue is in the title that it covers six systems. Stop and Search is not one of the systems that I6 covers. Stop and Search is dealt with on a standalone database, a pretty swiftly constructed standalone database, which I think we have acknowledged at the police authority meeting. I think the word we used was clunky. It is not as slick as it needs to be. It does not help the officers as much as it should do when they are filling it in. Hence we have had data errors around the ages of people they have stopped and searched. What we are working at and at the top of the priority list for our ICT people is to improve the database on stop and search to make it easier to use and easier to interrogate so that we can keep a check on what is going on, keep the police authority and yourselves informed on that. Can you tell us how you are going to implement that change and make sure that that system is fit for purpose? Is there a project plan in place already and how quickly can that be done to ensure effectiveness? I might pick that up. I think for me what we have clearly done is have early discussions with the I6 team about the way forward, but we have always been clear that while we are making amendments and improvements to the current arrangements, the ICT arrangements and the standalone database, we also want to take into account two things. First of all, the results and the emerging findings and then in due course the academic evaluation of the Fife pilot that we have been doing because that will have a significant impact on our processes going forward and also the results of HMICS's independent review which we expect to get later this month. Both of those will tell us about how we need to shape the ICT for the future because we need to build a system that reflects the way we will be undertaking stop and search in the future. I would add into that those two things come together, but also the work that is done in the short life working group to identify issues and options for stop and search for the future. We will want to build a database that enables us to do stop and search in the way that we have achieved a consensus to do for the future. We have a project plan around the current standalone database and we have agreed with I6 that we will build the business requirement for the new database. Final question, convener. We heard today from the First Minister to FMQs that she felt that the current situation was unsatisfactory. Here today we have heard about interactions with children under 12. I have a great fear that we may end up in a situation where something is not done because a child is under 12 and that there may be a child protection issue that goes very, very wrong indeed. My fear is mainly about the reaction of front-line police officers who may feel under pressure about that. I wonder if I could hear from Mr Steele his thoughts on that, and then from the chief constable please, convener. Thanks, Mr Stewart, and again through the convener. The issue of approaches to under 12s, this one that is enormously emotive us clearly, we are all aware of. I do not think that Parliament or the public is genuinely in a position where it is of a view to say that under no circumstances will a police officer ever search someone under the age of 12 with consent. The issue of informed consent is of course more complicated, but the duties of police officers, the duty laid down by statute of a police officer, laid down in the 2012 act established originally in the 67 act, it is the duty of a police officer to prevent and detect crime, to maintain order and to protect life on property, and then it goes on to say to take such lawful measures. That duty is not vested through the office of the chief constable, that duty is vested in individual police officers. On occasions, sometimes stepping out of policy does not necessarily mean that police officers are stepping inside of the law, so whilst the ACC Mawson, I think, for the reasons that he has explained reasonably, articulately a few moments ago gave the assurance to Parliament that there would be no searching of under 12s. The simple reality is that on occasions that is an entirely justifiable approach to take. I was doing some research, as I'm sure you wouldn't come as a surprise, on examples of this and one that struck me as being particularly pertinent about youngsters and their exposure to crime actually doesn't come from the central belt as would be expected, but it comes from the case of a young man who's currently serving a lengthy period of imprisonment, and I picked this up from a report in the Inverness Cwriar. Stephen Stewart, who goes now by the name of Ross, was sentenced to life imprisonment for stabbing two strangers in 2011. It was reported extensively in the Inverness Cwriar. The start of that report says that Stephen Stewart or Ross, whatever name he goes by, started his career of offending at the age of 10. I know that police officers by and large, in fact almost universally, have no desire to go stopping large groups of youths for the purpose of searching them. That is an absolute reality, but simply to say that it can never be done, I think that that is just wrong and doesn't deal with the reality of a public expectation and b, the fact that police officers have the duty to act in accordance with the obligations placed upon them in law. The examples that were cited, I think that I was actually unaware that those examples existed when I wrote a piece for the times about children throwing eggs or children shining laser pens. I just don't believe that the public is going to accept the fact that the police will turn up and effectively do nothing because of the age of individuals. What if I from you though, if it's weapons and so on, weapons or drugs, firearms, that's just statutory search, which does not require any kind of consent, so we're not talking about it on reasonable suspicion, you can do a statutory search for those. Let's just make that clear, that's very different from any other where there isn't any statutory backup, and it's a so-called consensual search, just to make it clear that you're confusing this first. I can assure you I am not confusing. Not for you but for perhaps everybody else. I am not confusing the issue. The issue relates to whether, for example, there should be a power to search for, for example, for eggs. Carrying eggs is not unlawful. No, no. I wasn't talking about eggs. Neither is carrying laser pens and neither indeed is carrying spray paint. It was when you mentioned violence, I just want to make it clear that statutory searches, that's there, we understand that. We're on to where there isn't authority under statute. Indeed, and the number of occasions, thankfully small, that police officers do undertake or have undertaken searches of those under 12, still do not mean that police officers are stepping outside the law. The issue of the legality of consensual stop and search has been established by the courts. When it comes to those under the age of 12, this is a really, really difficult area. Let it be known right about it. When police officers are dealing with children of any age, but particularly those under the age of 12, the intention is by and large dealing with these individuals under the GERFEC agenda and making sure that children are protected. I don't believe that it's going to be acceptable for police officers in their own right or that society would form a view that simply because the police get called to gatherings of youths that the police should seek to either take these youths home, assuming that the parents are going to be there, and engage in our medical round that might very easily and quickly be resolved through a courteous exchange at the time. I think that Kevin Stewart wants to bring you in. I'm in a position of agreeing with much of what Callum has said. I think that I would emphasise, going back to my points, stop and search is a judgment call for operational officers. It is their decision, it's them that exercise the power, not the chief constable. It's entirely appropriate that that should be the case. We don't want the situation in Scotland where officers are doing wholesale consensual searches of under-12s. For that end, we put in place a policy to say, we don't want you to do consensual searches of under-12s. It's policy, it's not law. And Wayne has explained that there have been a number of occasions where officers have stepped outside of policy, they have not stepped into illegality though, they are just outside of policy. And what we do is we ask them to explain why have you done that. And if the explanation is a fair explanation, then so be it. We're holding them to account for that because they've got substantial powers and you could easily argue those powers are magnified when they're dealing with someone of that age and then the question comes in, can they give true consent? If I may say so, convener, this is exactly why we've called for going forward the debate on stop and search, particularly consensual because what I would like to give my operational officers is a very clear mandate from the Scottish public that is signed up to by all parties and everybody who's got an interest in this. So the officers know where they are, they can be clear about it, we can issue the training materials to help them do that and we can then monitor it effectively to make sure that they stay within either the policy that is set or indeed the legislation that may be set on stop and search. Thank you. I have to bring in other people now so they get a chance to lean, followed by John, followed by Margaret. Thank you, convener. My question is for Sir Stephen House. On 4 February, Sir Stephen, the figure for under-12 stop and search was 356. Within a couple of weeks, that reduced first to 289, then to 130, then other 112 more mistakes were identified, came down to 18. Now, if a witness in a police investigation changed their evidence as quickly and as often as that, they would be considered to be unreliable, would they not, Sir Stephen? Well, in direct answer to the question of would they be considered unreliable, we would certainly be interested in why the story was changing. I think we're trying to explain why the story has changed. In a draft reading that we received yesterday from Inspector Mark Nicholl, I'm not sure whether it was supposed to have gone out, he stated that 20,086 records had been corrupted and the data lost. How much reliance can we place on the data you're giving now or, indeed, on any data that Police Scotland is giving with, quite frankly, it looks like a right mess, doesn't it? The ACC Mawson, I think you've nominated it's rather like university challenge, I nominate ACC Mawson to answer that. I'd like to answer the specific question of the 20,086 records. A computer programmer pressed a wrong button between May and July last year and that lost the results data from those records so they'd been properly put on the system by the officers as a result of stopping and searching people, but we lost the outcome of it as a computer programming error. We've been working really hard to recover that data. I've personally overseen the sending out of several thousand emails to officers and follow-up audits. We've been working hard with HMICS to oversee everything that we do to make sure that it's done properly. I'm pleased to say that the vast majority of that data, those results, are now back on the system. The update briefing that we got from Chief Inspector Jerry Finlay just yesterday actually identified that there were 112 mistakes made in the categorisation of various crimes. That doesn't sound as if the system is working particularly well. Those were things that had been categorised, including things that should have been recorded as interventions such as where legislative powers are available and not used, and things that had been miscategorised. Is that because you've had such a loss of civilian staff? Nearly a thousand civilian staff. Were they the experienced trained people who could have made sure that these mistakes weren't made? No, I don't think it's that at all, actually. Just to clarify the figures for the record, there were 356. That's the figure that the BBC have used. 69 of those were over 12, so they shouldn't have been on the database. That left 289 of which 130 were consensual, which is the crux of the matter and the reason why I've gone into great detail around how they are showing as consensual on the system. And the other 289 are legislative, so they are statutory powers. That adds up to a bit more than 356, doesn't it? 69 were over 12s. You had 130 and 112 had been misrecorded out of that 130 consensual once 112 had been misrecorded. My apologies. It's obviously 189 legislative, not 289. Can you just clarify one other thing for me? Are there targets for stop and search? There are absolutely no targets for volume stop and searches, and there never have been in Police Scotland. That was a very clear direction right from the outset from the chief constable. There are no individual targets for volume stop and searches either. The only target that we have around stop and search in Police Scotland is around the positive rate. How do we monitor that we are in the right place, at the right time, targeting the right people for the right reasons? That's why we have that target, but it's the only one. Is that acceptable, do you think, that four out of five people stopped and searched to have nothing on them? The positive rate at the moment is 21%. That actually is a good success story, in my opinion. You'll recall that just a few years ago, the positive rate was down at 13%. At the end of the first year of Police Scotland, we'd increased that to 19%, and so far this year, we're up at 21%. It's a question for you, chief constable, and it is about the advent of Police Scotland. When you take over, I'm connected and saying that the statutory police duties didn't change on day one for Police Scotland. The lawful authority to undertake stop and search didn't change on day one of Police Scotland. Rather, just like your decision to deploy armed officers on to the streets of Highland villages, it was practices that changed on the first day of Police Scotland. Is that not the case? You're quite correct. There was no change in legislation. I'm not entirely certain that there were change in practices either. I think what we said was that we... but certainly no change in the way officers were asked to go about their stop and search. I'll go back to what Callum said. A stop and search on the street is for an individual officer to decide when and where they do that and how they carry that stop and search out. So there was much of a change to that. What we did say was that we were now able, as being a single service, to have a monitoring across the country of stop and search and that we wanted to make sure that it was being applied appropriately in the right areas. The figure that seems to not register with people is that in every year we've existed, which is just about coming up for two, stop and search numbers across Scotland have declined, not gone up, they've declined. But what hasn't declined is the public concern about this. It is the case that the eight component parts of... You may grimace, but that is the reality. The component parts of Police Scotland and indeed the central services, there were no issues around stop and search pre-advent of Police Scotland. I think that's an interesting observation. I can't speak for the seven other forces in terms of Strathclyw, which did the vast majority of the stop and search. I would think I would in general agree with you. There wasn't any real concern about the level of stop and search in the West when I was there for five years. Why is there now? Well, again, I don't agree with you that there is a growing public concern about the stop and search. I think there is absolutely justified interest from a large number of people such as yourselves and others, and the journalists, into the proper application of police powers balanced with the freedom of the individual. That's what we're trying to get to as well, a clear answer on that. But I don't think it's anything more than the fact that there were a single service. People pay a huge amount of attention to us in a way in which, when there were eight forces, it didn't happen quite as much. I would also point out there was never a national database on stop and search before Police Scotland came along. There is now, which allows us to monitor levels of stop and search and allows us to get relatively quickly from the number of, sort of, up in the hundreds of thousands, down to the individual officers who've carried out a stop and search, send them an email and say, you've carried out a consensual stop and search on an under-12-year-old, that's outside policy, can you explain why? I think that's quite an impressive development as far as human rights are concerned. Of course, what did change on the first day of Police Scotland was that the police officer swore a noth to uphold human rights. There was a change to the earth, and I think that's a terribly important thing to acknowledge. Would you understand that people were concerned when there were levels of stop and search greater than there was in the Metropolitan Police in indeed New York? I would understand it on that bold fact, but unfortunately, you simply cannot compare the three jurisdictions. I know very little about policing in New York, but in terms of the Metropolitan Police, the simple fact is that a lot of the stop and searches on our databases are to do with alcohol. We don't believe that the Metropolitan Police record those in the same way, so the figures really aren't comparable. Can I also give you one other statistic, which is if you take the number of stop and searches that have been carried out so far this financial year in Scotland and divide it by the number of police officers whose names appear on the database, which I think is about 12,000, is that right? When you divide those two figures into each other, you come out with the average officer in an average week carries out 0.8 per cent of a stop and search. Of course, there's a lot of statistics we could badly about. You said that under 12 wouldn't be subject to wholesale stopping and searching. Is that correct? We don't think it's desirable that there should be a large number of under 12 subjected to consensual stop and search. By inference, there is wholesale stop and search in some areas relating to those over the age of 12. I don't think wholesale is the correct word. What do you use, Chief Constable? I've already apologised once for misspeaking and maybe I need to check my vocabulary more regularly. Thanks for raising it right now. Going back again to what Callum said, the reality of the situation is officers make individual decisions about stop and search, whether that is a group of people who they come across who are throwing eggs at Salvation Army Centre or whether it's one individual. Officers will carry out that. Each time they come up against an individual, they have a decision to make based on exactly what you quoted, which is the human rights aspect and other aspects in the oath that they've taken to decide, is it proportionate for me to stop and search this person? That's one of the things that they have to think about. Is it possible that there's a perception among frontline officers that they are under pressure to deliver targets? It is possible they're under that perception and I'm grateful for this opportunity yet again to say to them as I've done on numerous occasions internally and externally and to a number of people in this room that there are no targets on volume in terms of stop and search. You've heard from Wayne Morstan that there is one in terms of trying to get a high percentage of positive stop searches, but we repeatedly say to our officers we are interested in you stopping and searching people within policy, within the law, and it should be aimed at the right person, at the right place, at the right time. That's what we say. But if what defines searches are unsuccessful, it doesn't suggest that that is intelligence-led in its literal sense. I don't necessarily agree with that observation. I think looking back on your police experience, you will remember that stop and search can be used as an aid to police officers in terms of prevention of crime. We've seen in the last five years across Scotland a huge reduction in violent crime, a significant reduction in the carrying of weapons, and the feedback we get from some parts of Scotland is the reason that the weapons count is down so much is because people understand that they are at risk of being stopped and searched for weapons and if they are under the protocols agreed with the Crown, they will be dealt with very firmly. But isn't that part of the problem, chief constable, because there is an awful lot of good work going on, but it's been lost because you've become the story? So whether that is your tough war initially with Mr Emory, whether that is the issue of the mishandling of the issue of traffic wardens, the counters, the armed police situation, this will be generous and say muddle here, you've become the story and that's counterproductive. I certainly would be happy not to be on the front page of national newspapers in relation to these things, but I'm not going to let that deflect me from the fact that the officers and staff in the organisation are doing a fantastic job. Crime is down. Are you doing a fantastic job, chief constable? Well, I try my best. That's all I ask of any of my staff is to try their best. Is it in any way impacting the efficiency or effect of the police Scotland, how you're conducting yourself? I don't believe it is if you look at the figures, if you look at the feedback we get. We always come back to the figures though, don't we? It is about presentation a lot of things. I understand that, but it's also about public confidence and the way to measure public confidence is to ask them. Public confidence remains high. Have you asked your senior officers if they have confidence in you, because some of them are quoted in the press today saying that's not the case? Well, there are many views on policing and many views on how to go about stop and search. I think we're trying to clearly lay out that what we want from yourselves and from the Parliament and from the police authority and a wide range of other people that we're going to consult is a strong mandate from Scotland on this is what we want the stop and search regime to look like so that I can say to my officers, you've got the backing of everybody here, go out and do the best job you can. It's not a simple, you either support the policy or you don't. I mean, I do support the police, but I want them to go out their duties in a proportionate way. When you say there's no statistics, but continually refer to statistics and use the term wholesale, then that's not the sort of policing arrangements that people in Scotland want to see. Of course they want their communities protected, but Highland villages are not the broncs and they're not London. Yeah, and we're not doing huge numbers of stop and searches in Highland villages. And I'll go back to, I'm sorry, I'll go back to the figure of 0.8% of a stop and search on your average officer. They are not carrying out huge numbers of stop and searches in areas where it's not appropriate. And if they were, we would be asking them, well why are you carrying out so many stop and searches in this quiet area? Because that's one of the things we monitor. Thank you. Can you open something because it may break the consensus between yourself and Callum Steele? You were saying that it's not target driven, but Callum Steele's letter to every MSP says regrettably the police service of Scotland has to carry much of the responsibility for the hostility towards the subject of stop and search. The numbers driven target approach to this area of policing was ill conceived and resulted in attention being directed towards meaningless numbers rather than the sensible objective of crime prevention and detection. Discuss. The discussion on that is simply there are no targets in relation to volume stop and search. There's only one target in relation to stop and search and that is the positive one. On the other hand, what we do is we do consult with, I think this year it's been 41,000 members of the Scottish public to say to them what are your priorities for policing? I hear that. I don't want to put a marker in, but like Callum Steele, you can't both be right. Well, we have different opinions. So you're saying it's target driven and you're saying it isn't target driven? Excuse me, convener, but what I was going to go on to say was we talked to 41,000 members of the Scottish public and say what are your priorities. I think it's defensible then to say if these are your priorities, we will set some performance targets around those priorities. So we have a number of targets in relation to what the public think are priorities, but in relation to stop and search, there is only the one target which is on positive. I'm looking at Mr Steele. Thank you, convener. You're blaming Police Scotland and they're saying there's not a problem here. The chief constable and I have spoken about this at considerable length and I don't I do believe him when he tells me that there are no individual targets, but I have officers and office bearers from all over Scotland that tell me something different. There is a massive selection of officials from the Scottish Police Federation sitting in the public galleries today and every one of them and also some officers that are here in their off duty time. They have experience either directly of being contacted by members who have been told that they have volume targets. There is clearly a disconnect between the messaging that's been delivered on the ground and the messages being delivered by the chief constable. But I have not found the chief constable to be untruthful anytime after I've dealt with him. In fact, I think he and I would consider that our relationship was frank enough that if one thought the other was being disingenuous we would tell each other. I don't think I'm any further forward in knowing what the fact is. You're telling me that police officers are saying they are being told to meet numbers and you're telling me they're not. All I can say is, as I've said repeatedly, there's no target as far as we're concerned on stop and search. I do acknowledge what Callum says. I'm sure there are officers in the organisation who feel that they are under pressure to do volume stop and search. I'm happy to again take the opportunity to say to them and to you they are not. There is no target in relation to volume stop and search. We will put the message out yet again and I acknowledge Callum and his concerns. We do have a mechanism, I think you'll agree, Callum, whereby he can bring to us specifics of where he's found this so that we can seek out why it's happening and which individual officer is actually feeling this and why they're feeling it. But there is no target on volume stop and search. There are apparently in the public area that I don't have far to go to find out. I may have to come back to this, but I've let Margaret, you've waited a long time. Thank you, convener. This is rather breathtaking, chief constable. We've got Cannesdale here, quite happy to do an open letter stating quite clearly that the hostility towards stop and search was due to the numbers-driven target approach to this area, which he says is ill-conceived and resulted in the tension being directed to meaningless numbers rather than sensible objective of crime prevention. You are the chief constable. The responsibility for communicating with the rank and file from the top down rests with you clearly. There has been a huge communication problem here. I accept your comments. It's my responsibility to communicate. I do that through a monthly video message to the organisation. We regularly meet with large numbers of officers to talk to them about it. I'm quite certain that Rose will tell you that her divisional commanders meetings are constantly discussing this to re-emphasise the point. I think our communication is getting through so far this year compared to last year's stop and search volume is down 32% compared to the first year of Police Scotland. In the first year of Police Scotland 6% on the combined eight forces. Stop and search numbers are coming down. This year they are coming down in a very strong way. As violent crime is still reducing and public confidence remains and the police remains high we think that we are getting to the proportionate level of stop and search. We want to use the powers we have proportionately when they are necessary and therefore continuing reduction in stop and search volumes is welcomed so long as violent crime and other crimes that can be combated with stop and search continue to reduce as well and at the moment they are. I accept all that, but the fundamental point is your update message on communication was repeated the last time D.C. Rosefoot Patrick came here and I tackled her on this very subject having been out in recent Galloway and heard on the rank and file there that they are simply not communicated with and corroboration they were never ever consulted about it so there is a fundamental problem can I continue with the communication problems and perhaps give you the opportunity to put on record the communication problem that seems to have transpired between the freedom of information commissioner and yourself about what you considered to be having to release this information when you didn't think it was fit for purpose. Thank you Obviously following the evidence that I gave to the SPA Board on last Friday I wrote I think the following Monday to provide the authority with clarification and also to apologise for any misinterpretation that I had given concerning discussions with the Scottish Information Commissioner I think it's worthy of note that the letter that I sent to Vic on that Monday and I think you have a copy of the content of that letter was agreed with the Scottish Information Commissioner's office. Any misinterpretation was not intended on my part and I could have and clearly I should have expressed myself better on that occasion. However the assurances I gave at that time remain. Our decision to release the data to the applicant was on the basis of an assessment that despite our concerns about its accuracy or reliability there was a risk that we would have been subject of an adverse decision notice if the appeal process continued. That was pretty much in line with earlier legal advice that we'd had so that was the approach that we took. I can only repeat the assurances that the decision to release the data to the applicant was on the basis of an assessment that despite our concerns about its accuracy there was a risk that it would have been subject of an adverse decision by the Information Commissioner and we did not want as an organisation to be in a situation where the Information Commissioner is having to use its full force to say to you you will release this information. We did write to the journalist as Wayne has mentioned when we released the data and we did point out that there were inaccuracies and we should have been clearer what they were. I merely repeat in any successful organisation establishing effective lines of communication would be crucial. I suggest that Police Scotland has not done that so far and I hope that if we get nothing else out of this session you will go back and think and reflect very seriously about that Chief Constable. There is just one small aspect that I would like to cover both in D.C. Ruth Fitzpatrick and your own Chief Constable's references to the Police Authority and interesting HMICS you refer to them as partners. Do you think that that is an accurate description of your relationship? No, we are accountable to the Police Authority and the HMICS is our inspecting in body, so no. I am very pleased to hear that because the impression that we are getting is that the accountability that I am getting perhaps Mr Emery can contradict this is that the accountability is after the effect after some crucial decisions have been made and perhaps Mr Emery would like to comment on that. Well the last time I sat before you I said to you that good accountability is not about knowing about stuff after the event but actually being involved in a proactive way. Our relationship with Police Scotland has always been based on an open book transparency and laterally we want to be more proactive in being advised as to what initiatives are taking place so that we can be more helpful in moving some of these initiatives along. Clearly something's gone wrong in this case and we will be picking that up in the next little while. As you've heard, Rose is organising a short life working group. We are participating in that both at the strategic level and at the detail level and I've asked HMIC to do a review of the data so that they can give me an independent view of the situation. If Roderick and Hew will excuse me, I've got supplementaries and members of the committee are here on behalf of the Parliament to scrutinise from Kevin, Alison and Elaine. Kevin? My question 2 is for Mr Emery. In terms of the upgrading of the IT that seems to be required to ensure that this is done properly from now on and in terms of the Fife pilot on stop and search that is on going how do the SPA intend to monitor to ensure that best practice comes from the Fife pilot and to ensure that the statistics on any new IT system are absolutely sport on rate? Well I think the two things are different I think the stop and search from the Fife pilot is actually to inform us with regard to the subject around stop and search there's also a piece of complimentary work going on with HMIC on that same subject we need to get visibility of you're quite right that we need to get visibility of the IT solution to bringing the 8 disparate forces information systems together so that we have a reliable system going forward you may or may not know that we have an ICT forum where we discuss at regular intervals the governance of all of the IT programs that Police Scotland are working on at the moment and there are quite a few of them so our assurance is actually gained through the ICT scrutiny group and how often do they meet and report to the board as a whole to see what is working and what is not? They meet every quarter there are board members sitting on that review it is a governance body it's not a working body the Police themselves have their own internal mechanisms for progressing these but as a governance body we meet every quarter and all of the ICT programs are reported to us I think we may have to come back to that convener A couple of clarifications and then a question the only caveat that Police Scotland put and releasing the figures to the BBC was that they were to disregard any entries out with the age range from 1 to 90 so you did caveat it you were very clear about what the caveat was it was only after there was then some very significant concern within the community that the figures were looked at again I must also draw up the chief constable on his constant referral of the stop and search reduces crime the SPA's own report found no causal link in the reduction of crime and the rates of crime are reducing although that is not applied but I wanted to go back to If I can just go back to what the chief constable said in discussion with Mr Finnie he said there had been no real change there has been a massive increase in stop and search around Scotland and you said it was only down to individual officers but perhaps it's worth considering if you could explain to the committee what happens in your campaigns against violence action weekends that's clearly a direction to officers to use a particular style of policing could you talk a little bit about that the thing I've just come back on straight away you said that there's been a massive increase in stop and search that hasn't stop and search has come down since the eight forces were created in terms of the weekends that we're talking about Wayne can probably answer in more detail on those weekends but again officers are taken on those weekends they come from administrative support duties and they're put into places that are suffering often particular spates of crime or particular problems with disorder and in terms of the tactics that the officers use I'm sure stop and search is one of those tactics but it's not the only thing that they use we've used violent crime weekends campaigns against domestic abuse offenders to try to reduce the rate of domestic abuse stop and search probably does not play much of a part in relation to that where we're looking at gang activity in a particular part of Scotland or where we're looking at a spate of housebreakings as we've dealt with in the east then stop and search maybe if the officers feel it's appropriate either through the legislation available to them or on a consensual basis maybe outstop and search if they think there's something going on in relation to one of those crime trends and I won't seek to take that power away from officers so I think we may in some material provide them with information around the crime trends where the crime is taking place when it's taking place to give them information if they're not familiar with the area but we don't say to them right now stop and search hundreds of people we do not have a volume target on stop and search it's coming down this year 32% compared to last year and it's come down both years of our existence within the legacy forces it has increased significantly in places like Grampian and Dumfries and Galloway and you're only able to see that there's an overall reduction because there was a spike in Strathclyde in the last year of the legacy force and we did better I'm not sure we know the answer to that A brief question for the SPA this is an issue of stop and search particularly if the under-12s has been a concern in this parliament for some months it was raised in June why did it take the SPA until the 13th of February to call the police to account on this we Mr Mawson raised it with you in June we started a review of stop and search back in I think it was June 2013 we actually launched that in August of 2013 the review that review issued its findings at the no 2013 the findings were and the recommendations were discussed at a public board meeting in October which is only three months ago at that time we were told that stopping and searching of individuals 11 and under would stop there is a Fife pilot that was being launched to look at that HMIC also was producing their own report on stop and search and they are due to deliver their findings in March of this year that will be your last sentence because I don't want to stop your mid-flow we physically actually have to stop right on 2 o'clock because parliament will be sitting in starts early today I'm sure if there are supplementary questions members what we can return to this I understand that our reports at the end of March will certainly look at them and excuse the members who came but we had to get through in that one hour thank you