 Felly, naohon i gael i gael i felw, yn 2018, mae nodi agor为odg o'i gwaith am ddau. Felly, doedd gan eu cyfrifuddio,John Finney yw'r eitem mwyaf ydymu'ch gwrthu felw. Rwy'n mynd i chi wnaethef y ddigon cais i ddau o grant sefn y mynd, mae credu i ddau i gael eu cyfrifuddio ei ddau. Rydw i'r pryd eich gennt yn ddiweddau i ddweud yn y cyd 55 eraill ond y combineb ond Holding in the Fiefigol. Roedd ni'n ychydig i weld i gafod eich pryd adegwyddol ar gyfer ym书wyr eu cyd-stwyll. Rhyf amddangos i noddol? Rydw i ar gyfweld y pryd eich genntau eich gennteg i wedi eu cyfrifoedd o'r lleifwyr am y I welcome our witnesses today, Craig Surty, the general secretary of the association of Scottish police superintendents, Callum Steele, general secretary of the Scottish police federation, and George McIverdon is not... Sorry, I welcome Drew Livingstone. Last minute replacement for George McIverdon, branch secretary of Unison Scotland and Police Scotland. You are very welcome. I thank you for providing written evidence. We will move straight into questions. Can I refer members to paper 1, which is not by the clerk, and paper 2, which is a private paper? Can I perhaps start by asking our witnesses what their thoughts and views are and if there have been any changes, including you in discussions about financial planning and priorities, because we have been quite concerned in the previous evidence sessions that we have, that there seems to have been almost an exclusion of staff associations and unions from any discussion around those matters. It is quite concerning given that the police force relies heavily on staff and to completely exclude them from all those discussions would seem to me to be quite unsatisfactory. I just wonder perhaps if you would like to give us an update on whether there has been any change to that, because we have received a commitment that that would change, and I just wonder if there has been any change. If I can start, yes. Certainly, we haven't seen any longer term financial planning for the next three years. I believe that that is going to be influenced by the Police in 2026 strategy. In terms of how we actually see it, we find it reassuring that there are certain commitments to engage us in further talks as to what sort of financial planning will take place. There are some concerns regarding, for instance, in this year's budget. We are actually aware that there is a kind of £4 million non-recurring vacancy factor saving that is listed on the police staff budget. We are not entirely cited as to what that is broken down into and what areas of the business are affected by that. It is not great at this moment in time, but certainly there is a commitment that it will improve. Just before I bring in Calum and Craig, I am sure that we will want to add something. When you say that there is a commitment, has there been a commitment as in we will include you or we will include you and this is how we will include you? Certainly, Unison raised some concerns regarding the governance structure that was going to form part of the renewed approach to the SPA's governance. We have had a commitment that that will be looked at over a six-month period. As far as we are concerned, it should probably take place sooner, so we just kind of need to see. David Page has given commitments that we will be included in. He does look to include us and take us with us on that journey, but obviously we need to actually see how that is going to take shape. Calum, do you want to come in next? I think that probably not too dissimilar from the position that Drew has articulated would probably be a close description of where we are. The SPF is aware of the generalities and the wide issues that are facing the service. We have had more engagement with the Scottish Police Authority in particular and also with the chief financial officer fairly recently, just around about those generalities. We are aware of what was in the budget that was going to be presented to the SPA, but in terms of dealing with the challenge that is there in black and white for everyone to see, there has been no detail shared. More importantly, I don't think that there has been—in fact, I can say that there hasn't been—never mind a question if I don't think—no specific effort to seek from us suggestions as to what could be done to mitigate or ameliorate some of the challenges that are coming. I personally find that frustrating. We are not an organisation to be pat on the head and stuck in the corner. In fact, all of our members—both Drew's and Craig's—do my right and left, see the realities of what takes place on the ground on a day-to-day basis. They also have more than an appreciation of what some of the language around about sustainability and so on means cuts. However, there is an unwillingness that would appear to exactly say what those cuts are going to amount to other than very broad aspirational statements about taking X from here and putting them there. Again, just to reiterate what has been said, we have had significant consultation about 2026, and we have found that to be very positive, but that is very much at strategic level. We really want to get into the detail of the delivery plans and implementation plans, and we have had no detailed discussion over that. Although the executive and the SPA have been quite open to us to discuss in general terms where things are going, but until we get into that detail, and in particular what the operating model is going to be in future and how we are going to change the organisational culture that we would like to get involved in, unlike Calum and I am sure Drew, we would like to assist with that as well. Just before I bring in Margaret Whee who wants to continue this line of questioning, can I ask you then what impact, if any, this has had on the morale of the force? If I may convene around, I actually do not think that it has done much to improve, but given that we are at a starting point, that was re-established again in December 2016, that only 8 per cent of police officers, I have distilled the figures down for police officers, believe that the organisation is genuinely interested in its people. Things can really only go up, although I thought that in 2015 when we had the original survey, but it turns out that it went down. Police officers by and large tend not to really care about the money. They just want to make sure that they are capable of doing the job. The reality, of course, is that when there is a lack of money, that impacts on their ability to do their job. The things that have the biggest impact and, certainly, that create the biggest source of anxiety for our members comes from resources. I regularly hear from members who express the greatest of frustrations at working in shifts that have been, if not quite decimated, certainly very close to it. They are constantly chasing their tails. Whenever they hear the management language of sustainability and efficiencies, they know that, because of the many years that service has taken and trying to invest in their skills, they know that that is going to be harder for them because they have no experience of it being any better when that kind of language is used. You recently said, Calum, that policing was really under the cosh and you mentioned the ludicrous working hours and demand and officers starting shifts with dozens of jobs outstanding. I take it that there is no change to that position. Well, I would like to think that the dozens that were outstanding when I have at least been dealt with, but the general trend and pattern of picking up many, many jobs from the previous shift continues. To some extent, it was ever thus. There were always jobs—if a call came in half an hour before the change over a shift, the reality was that unless it was an absolute pressing emergency, that that would be bound over to someone else. However, it has developed, to a large extent, from then in that many calls are just simply unable to be got to rather than being a coincidence of timing. Drew or Craig, do you want to comment additionally? I mean, our experiences are very similar. The Pulse survey offered a bit of insight into how staff and how morale are within the organisation. From a police staff perspective, there has been significant delays to the harmonisation programme of work, which sees huge differences in the rates of remuneration for police staff across the board. That was picked up on by HMICS in the review of call handling, where they have police staff working alongside other police staff and they are receiving different rates of pay. That was initially meant to be addressed in October 2016 and has had to be put back. We have hundreds of police staff vacancies across the organisation, which are not being filled. A lot of the cost-cutting measures have been to reduce police staff numbers so that we could experience recurring cost savings as a result of cuts to police staff. Police staff are increasingly being asked to deliver a lot more with less, and that is having a huge impact on morale. However, due to their on-going professionalism, they will continue to deliver a service. You only have to look at the example with Aberdeen staff, who carried on delivering a service for C3, even though there were imminent closures. Above and beyond is how police staff go about the business. Callum McDrew said that federation members, police staff members and members of ASPs are overstretched now. They are working beyond what I think can reasonably expect of them. In many cases, I think that the organisation that the service is trying to address some of these issues. I think that 2026 is a good example where there have been some real attempts to go out and speak at front-line levels. However, until we see some demonstrable change or change to the organisational culture and an indication of what the operating model is going to be, it is very difficult for staff to accept that and see what difference has been made. It is going to be a critical time. In the budget, it is quite clear that it is challenging just now. It is going to come even more challenging than over the years ahead. If we do not engage with staff, we are going to have real issues. Thank you, Margaret. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Just following up on the engagement issue, you will be aware that the committee has been sent today a letter from Derek Penman, HMI inspector of police. It is very critical, it is fair to say, of the decision of the SPA to hold committee meetings in private. In particular, I wanted your view on what Mr Penman had raised in terms of oversight and scrutiny. He refers to the audit committee, the finance committee and the policing committee of SPA, all those being in private. He makes a particular point that the new policing committee in particular will deal with a range of business that would previously have been heard in public and, as such, you would be party to everything that was discussed. Specifically, operational performance and complaints handling. How early were you aware of the letter and the concerns and your comments specifically on operational performance previously being heard in public and now being behind closed doors in the SPA committees? Obviously, unison is particularly concerned with being quite vocal in terms of how the SPA and Police Scotland go about their business. It is important when you are undergoing massive structural change within an organisation that it is important that you take your staff with you. Now, as we have been quite outspoken and quite critical, I think that there has been a reluctance on the part of the organisation to listen to opinions that may come across as slightly dissenting. When you were aware of the letter and the concerns that HMICS has brought up with Andrew Panagan? The first thing that we became aware of, I believe, would be when the article appeared in the press in relation to the letter not being put forward at the board meeting. Would that be roughly? That would probably be six weeks ago, maybe? Around the story with Moe Alley and these instances that started coming to light. Convener, likewise, I was aware of the existence of the letter at the time that I think it was Paul Hutching to run the story in either the Herald or the Sunday Herald. I think that the timing, as Drew, alluded to six weeks ago. In addition to that, the matter was touched on at fair length by John Scott QC at the recent Scottish Police Federation conference. However, on the specific issue of the manner in which the SPA is conducting its business, I fundamentally believe that it undermines its legitimacy. The views of the SPF on the approach to the SPA are that, whilst what existed in the past with police forces and authorities may not necessarily have been overly effective, there could be no doubt that they had legitimacy because of the ability of the public to be involved in them or certainly to see what was going on. Whilst I appreciate that the jury may be out on this, but it is certainly my view that, to some extent, what we currently have is more effective, but it is a lot less legitimate because of the closed-door approach. I think that my point specifically was that this was the 8th of December. This was raised as an issue, saying that this was held in public before. You would have had an opportunity to see some of the finance committee's deliberations. You would have had an opportunity to comment on the operational performance that had been held in public. That is months being wasted of information that could have been provided if someone had looked at the 8th of December. HMICS has brought this to our attention and is most unhappy with it. It is not the best practice of effective scrutiny and transparency. I would have hoped that, somewhere along the line, somebody would say, right, we must fix this right away, like January, February at the latest. Instead, we have had more months of the association representations, representatives and unison being kept totally in the dark. The thing is, I do not disagree that the correspondence was from HMICS to the Scottish Police Authority if the chair of the authority declined to share that content of the correspondence with members of the authority. That does not really come as a surprise that it was not shared much further. The concerns came back much earlier than that. It was when the Government's review came out, which was about the middle of last year, when that came out that we had some concerns at that time. I agree with what Callum said about the previous organisations with regard to police boards, some very effective ones, but there were some shortcomings in that. Actually, with the openness of the board meetings in the early years of the SPA, I am not sure that we were always being listened to even then. We got the chance to sit, but we did not get the chance to speak. There are many issues. I heard the chair speaking about some of the things that he said Police Scotland got wrong, around armed policing, around stop and search, traffic warrants, he could have gone to talk about the performance model, the CCU. They are all things that the staff associations and trade unions were bringing to attention, the force executive and the SPA before that time. It is a question of whether they were listening to us and whether anything was being done about it. I am encouraged that the new arrangements that I am putting in place have now been invited along to the People Committee on 27 April. I think that colleagues have been invited along with that committee as well. Will it be interesting to see how we are listened to or how we engage with the SPA at that time? I think that it was not just a case of just having where you listened to even then. It was a case of you knew exactly what was being discussed. Supporting papers would be available. There is a lot more to this than just holding it in public. You then have important information, which you really need to put your case forward and properly represent your members. Can I just move now to… Can I just speak to avoid any suggestion of misrepresentation of the reality here? We were able to attend. We were not contributing members at these meetings. I just want to make sure that that is properly understood. At least in the previous meetings, when they were held in public. Even in the previous meetings, we were not contributing members who were there in our observation capacity. At least you could hear quite clearly and see transparently what was going on. Actually, the development whereby we now get papers, or were surprised when we got papers prior to the last meeting a few days beforehand, I think that is very helpful as well. That is a helpful development by the SPA. The SPA recently approved the 2017-18 budget, and it includes a £47.6 million revenue deficit. What discussions and input have you had prior to the budget being presented? Could I have your views on how that will impact? We had no discussions prior to or through some understanding just what the budget deficit was. The Audit Commission had a look at that, and we knew that it was there. I was surprised to see that it was described as an underlying budget deficit. I had never heard of anything like that before, but there is that £47 million shortfall. The reality of that is that it will have an impact, maybe not now, because I think that there are arrangements in place for that to be covered, but in the future it will have a massive impact on how we deliver services. 2026 is all about identifying where the demand is, about reducing that demand and identifying efficiencies. There are going to have to be significant changes into the way that we deliver business to balance our budget, and I cannot see that being done without losing staff and staff across the board. Again, through yourself, convener, like Craig has highlighted, we had no discussions around it with the specifics, although we were aware of the generalities of the cuts or the scale of the whole that was going to be presented in the budget. I think that what is probably most concerning about even that is that the budget that was passed contains unidentified savings, even within that £47 million, and that in itself is going to be particularly interesting as to how they are going to be addressed. Similar point of view to my colleagues here. We were aware of the generalities surrounding it, but clearly, as we have alluded to earlier on, item 5.4 within the 17-18 budget refers to the application of a non-recurring vacancy factor saving of £4 million to the police staff budget. That leads to a number of unfilled police staff vacancies across the organisation. We are yet to see exactly what that is broken down into. You really would have to analyse that quite clearly so that we do not go back to a situation where the police end up backfilling again and taking off the front boundary. Do you want to come in on a supplementary on that point? I mean, I will bring it back in. I still have a point about unidentified savings. Are you able to quantify the scale of those unidentified savings so that we have a picture of what the kind of... Off the dog my head, the short answer is no, but again from memory, it was identified in the budget document and I will make sure that I copy as forwarded on for the attention of committee members. That would be helpful, thank you. The next question is quite a big question really. What do you consider to be the financial priorities of Police Scotland and the SPA going forward and are you all on the same page? I suspect I know the answer already to the latter part of that question. Oh, sorry, four. Well, if Stuart Stevenson wants to come in a little bit and I'll ask an aspect of this and then leave you to answer Stuart on that one. My real concern is here going back to the letter from Derek Perlman that on the basis of previous discussions and given that you've been implementing our new governance arrangements in 2017-18, I've decided that it would be timely for HMIS to schedule a statutory inspection into state efficiency and effectiveness of the SPA authority. Now, in terms of operating and placement, SPA is potentially looking at the integration of the railway place. It's going to be germane to the railway policing agreements. It's going to have the ability to negotiate and to make sure that these are a success with the railway operators, but here we have, which is tantamount to a vote of no confidence in the SPA so much so that the HMIC, or at least if no confidence, the concern is being sufficiently severe to warrant a statutory inspection into state efficiency and effectiveness of the authority. Under those circumstances, is it sensible in any way that she performs to consider giving the SPA even more responsibility? Again, I'm sure that Derek Perlman can speak for himself, but I certainly wouldn't take the view that the indication of an inspection of any part of the area under which he's got responsibility for performing his duties is in any way a signal that there's a lack of confidence or a vote of no confidence. It may well be the case, but you'd have to ask him if that's his intention. I thought we'd done the railway policing stuff, to be honest, but for what is worth, I don't envisage that the Scottish Police Authority would be any less capable of dealing with whatever comes its way for railway policing than the current arrangements that exist for governance of railway policing. That's just that. Certainly on the issue of railway policing, I believe that the committee that would deal and address with some of the governance of the integration of British Transport Police would be a private committee. Again, if we're talking about legitimacy and transparency, that doesn't necessarily bode well as to whether British Transport Police should be integrated to certainly, I think, the question was framed that it was more a matter of how we integrate as opposed to whether we indeed we should. I think there was quite significant input by the British Transport Police Authority whose proposals just seem to be kind of dismissed out of hand. Thank you. Mr Stewart, did you want to come in? Well, I wanted to move to more strategic view, which I think the submission from the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents makes the comment in relation to the 26th strategy. The association is supportive of the general aims and objectives. That's not a green light in total. Similarly, Unison Scotland makes an interesting, and I think the other point relation to that is that there's a requirement for partner agencies to buy into the 2026 project. What I think the committee would be interested in and what I'm certainly interested in is first of all, in general terms, where things are, I think that the 2026 strategy is moving in the right direction, but more fundamentally, is it good enough to start to inform some of the more tactical decisions that need to be made in the shorter term, or is there more work required on that strategic vision that's encapsulated in the 2026 strategy? To try and suggest what we might spend in 2526, it's furious at this distance, but does it help us to understand where the police is going in the shorter term, because I think that's the important thing for us today? In terms of policing 2026, it was certainly reassuring from Unison's point of view that, for the first time, there was a quite frank admission that backfilling took place within Police Scotland, and certainly in terms of the campaign that we've run of moving towards a balanced workforce and best value, it was reassuring to see some of those terms creeping into that. At the same time, in some of the work that we see in terms of organisational change, we do see areas of collaboration-like partnership working and so on. Some of those posts have actually been removed due to no longer being a commitment from local authorities and so on to continue to finance those. Justin Devane, it would be helpful if you could give some specific examples rather than—because what you said is a quite open general statement. Just to help us to understand. Yes, it is. There are certain collaborative roles that are financed by local authorities, so there are certain roles like a youth justice assessor that would organise and arrange meetings that would be between various stakeholders and people around vulnerability and risk. If there was no longer a commitment from the local authority to finance that, then the onus then switches to the police in terms of whether they can continue to finance that. There is a lot of work to be done in terms of establishing these boundaries and kind of harnessing the synergies between who we collaborate with and how we go about it. It is a long road, I believe, but, certainly, there is a lot of value there that we can release. I feel when 26 covers a number of different issues. Fundamentally, as a strategy, there is nothing in it that gives me much surprise as a progressive police service looking at it. I think that police services prior to police service Scotland and other police services elsewhere are looking at similar things, so I put that into that context. I think that there is a bit important about 2026, which talks about working within the budget, and that is a massive issue for policing, because policing do not set the budgets, it is politicians and others that set the budget. It is up to the police service then to make sure that they are delivering that in the best way we can. I think that there are really important bits that I mentioned earlier about how we identify what a real demand is, how we reduce the demand and how we create efficiencies. 2026 talks about efficiencies in the back office and talks about making sure that we prioritise the front line. We would accept that. Fundamentally, for me, 2026 is about the start of a discussion with the communities that we serve to ask, what do you want from policing in the future? There are massive strains on policing. I mean, policing demand has gone up over previous years. The thought that because crime is down, policing has gone down is a fallacy. There are massive demands on policing and our communities need to understand where we are with that. It was interesting that the HMIC down in England Wales spoke about the massive demand that mental health is placing on policing, and that is something that we need to engage with communities. They need to understand and our partnerships need to understand how we are going to improve on that. Policing is far too important to be left to the police, and that is a phrase that has been said many times, but we really do need to start talking about it, how we are actually delivering that in Scotland. When you talk about the tactical determining of budgets in the short year-by-year term, are you therefore saying that when we describe the budgets for next year or the year after, we should always be doing so in the context of what the strategic objectives are, rather than simply the tactical requirements of the year to year? Absolutely. I mean, that is what strategies are, but within policing terms, we are quite familiar to using strategies, and that informs tactical delivery absolutely. That is what I heard you say. I just wanted to hear you say it. Absolutely. If you see what I mean, I can't. Yes, thank you, and again to your self-community. I would align myself with what Craig has just said. I mean, the policing priorities are determined by government, and the strategic plan thereafter should be a matter for the authority. But I believe that there is something actually much more fundamental than the issue of, you know, partner agency buy-in and whether we've got this right for what the shape of policing could look like in the next number of years, and that is that the service itself has to buy in. When we're starting, and indeed it's recognised in the foreword, that's jointly signed by the chief constable and the chair of the Scottish Police Authority, where they say, the input and wellbeing, and it's off the staff, are critical to our continued success, yet at the recent meeting of the Scottish Police Authority when they were talking about the morale issue and the sense of wellbeing that the staff were feeling, that the chief constable openly conceded that he did not see the situation improving any time soon. That seems to me to be a fundamental weakness in any success that is recognised in their introduction about delivering a change programme, particularly what a significant does as 2026. Now, I'm sure that chief constable would say that he is not giving up on morale, but certainly it could be conceded, it certainly could be construed that by saying, I don't see it getting better any time soon, that that is exactly what he was doing. And when you have a situation where, and again after still those down for police officers, 16%, only 16% of police officers responding to the previous survey said that they believed they had enough resources, 13% believed that managers were committing to improving ways of work, 12% believed that the service was changing for better, 11% felt that they were positive about the future. Against that backdrop, when you have a tacit statement and it will be recorded in the notes of the Scottish Police Authority the last meeting that took place on the same date as the terrorist incident in Westminster, it's difficult to align that with the introductory forward in the strategy that says the input and wellbeing are critical to continued success. That for me is much more important than what it is believed the aspiration of the future of the police service is going to be, because if you cannot persuade, and it's not just the 17,234-ish police officers, it's also the large number of support staff or the depleted number of support staff. The results for support staff are similar to those for police officers. If you can't bring your workforce with you, then this is a waste of time. As things stand just now, because of what we've discussed from the very start of this, when we're only talking about generalities rather than specifics, it's difficult to see how you're going to make that quantum leap between saying we've got to introduce a culture change and a culture change is going to be successful and to the implementation of this strategy to then making it happen. Police officers, I'm not saying we're change weary, but we are weary of being told that things are going to get better and not seeing it. Often it is because of organisational failure, not because of a lack of willing on behalf of individuals themselves. Did you still want to come in on this, or are you happy? Before I bring in Ben, can I ask you then, obviously, the public expectation on what the police force should provide and the demands on the police force from the public has changed dramatically over the years, and it seems to be almost on a yearly basis what the public expects from the police gets bigger and bigger and greater. Was there a tipping point for that change? Is it just because of the general societal change? Is it because you are expected to do tasks that other partner organisations may have done in the past? Is enough of that taken into consideration in the 2026 document to ensure that the force itself is brought along with the changes that are happening? One of the strong themes in 2026 is the idea of establishing capacity through demand reduction. We believe that that is sound, but there are certain examples where, particularly in the early stages of restructure, restructures have taken place and demand has actually increased both internally and externally. You can view what has happened in C3 as an example of that, where call volumes have actually increased. I lie to that, you have station closures, which then force demands on other channels and so on. In terms of how we actually overcome that, we actually require significant ICT investment and investment in staff in order to make that happen. There are certain areas where we advocate the idea that police staff can actually are a more cost-effective solution at times to addressing some of those issues of demand. I am not sure that public expectation has changed. I think that the public has always had a fairly high expectation of what it wants its police service to do. At the risk of stealing Malcolm Graham, Assistant Chief Constable Malcolm Graham's language on this, the public has always known what the police do because it is a public that asks us to do it. I think that when you ground yourself in that reality, it kind of acts as a stark wake-up call that when we talk about changing priorities and demands and expectations and all the rest of it, it is actually the public that tells us what it is that they expect a police service to do. I think that it probably can be distilled out and again I am going to steal someone else's language, but the public love the police. They just do not want to pay for us, or the public love the police, but politicians do not want to pay for us. There are all those realities that exist in our wider society and the expectations that are placed upon us, but, undoubtedly, there is a huge change away from criminalising people in the way that we have in the past. That is, undoubtedly, a good thing. The much-throtted line about only one in five incidents results in a crime being recorded. That is a consequence of a change of policing approach, arguably not a consequence of a change of reality, because what once upon a time would have been a crime and resulted in someone getting locked up is now, whilst it is still legally in terms of its definition, a crime that does not result in a crime being recorded and results in some kind of diversion activity being put in place. Those additional diversion activities from a societal perspective are certainly much more better, much more better, or certainly much better and more effective than simply locking someone up and then passing them on to someone else only to get them back in a few hours, days, weeks and months time. That element of it has changed and the wider holistic approach, and it is far from perfect, let us not get ourselves, but the wider holistic approach to the care and wellbeing of our societies is much more labour-intensive than just simply turning up and dragging someone away and putting them in a cell. One significant time would be April 13, when the service was brought into being. Just for the record, our association is absolutely supportive of the single service and still thinks that it is the right thing and does not think that we could deliver policing the way that we are doing now without it. The service has produced great dividends and great performance with regard to operational policing, but other sides have not been so good at it. I think that individual officers feel under pressure because they are under greater scrutiny, and I think that the fact that a single service has extenuated that. I think that some people have used this as a rubber ball to kick around, and that has not been helpful to individuals. I do not think that that has been helpful to the public in understanding just what it is that we are delivering, but I think that we as a service fundamentally need to get better at explaining to the public what we actually do. I think that that has been one of our failings over the previous years, and I do not think that that has helped. Liam Kerr, you may have just been touching on it. I would probably take issue with something that Callum said earlier about the public know what we do because the public asked us to do it. Certainly one of the concerns that I hear raised at a local level and I think that it has reflected nationwide is the amount of officer time that is taken up in involvement in managing cases for vulnerable adults and others, which is entirely appropriate. I am not entirely sure, though, that the public recognises the extent to which that engagement is on-going. It is not just an interaction that the individual has passed on to community mental health or whoever. There is that continued involvement beyond the initial contact, which I do not think that the public does see and does not realise that it takes up an amount of police resource on an on-going basis. I think that it may be a nifty phrase, but I am not sure necessarily that Mr Graham has it entirely right in terms of the public's expectation. I am just going back to policing 2026. We have heard you say, explain at some length about how you felt officers and staff did not have enough input into it. I am just wondering if you could say anything positive about what are the positive aspects of it within the report that you see. I think that it is fundamentally a positive report. I think that it is looking into the future of policing and how we will deliver policing in the future. I think that there have been great attempts for staff to have an input into it, but I understand why staff may feel that that is not important for them. If you picked a police officer in the street just now and talked about 2026, I am not convinced that they would know that much about it, but I think that fundamentally it is the right direction to go. I think that part of the challenges, and Calum has already said that, is to bring their staff along with us so that they can understand what 2026 is about. Does that be your specific complaint about it, the fact that the staff were not included as much as they should have been? I do not think that it is a complaint. I think that there have been attempts to get staff included. That is very difficult. The report says very simple things, like the new chief constable, as he was last year, who talked about the four pillars, and he talked about organisational capability, organisational culture and changing that. That is massive. That is going to take some time to do, and we have to build on what has happened in the past. It is a difficult job, but I think that the services are trying. I am not sure whether they are going to achieve it or how quickly they are going to achieve it. That was my next question. Is it too late to have a culture change? You talked about culture change. No, culture develops over time. Will that be on-going? Yes, it will take some time, but we need to accept that culture is going to have to change at a time when the number of officers and staff available to deliver is going to reduce. If we live within our budget, which is a lot of what 2026 is about, that is going to have to happen. There are some efficiencies and savings that can take place, and those are going to be difficult. Are any of them achievable? You are saying that it is difficult. Do you think that ultimately they will be achievable or they will have to be achieved? Absolutely achievable. Efficiencies are always achievable. We also talked about the operational delivery model or the operating model. We need to look at that differently. We have come under pressure with regard to how quickly we answer the phone or how quickly we dispatch resources. That has become a target, rather than looking at what we are doing with the calls that are coming in and how we are responding to them. That is one way that we can look at things differently and we can maybe make some savings. A lot of demand within policing—we talked about reducing demand—is internal demand or failure demand. We need to look at that differently. We need to stop the culture of everything that is going to be reported up. We need to give more discretion and freedom to our very able officers who are out in the front line and police staff and to let them do their job. I do not often try to pick up on what has been said by my friend from us, but I think that what Craig said a few moments ago about the culture that will have to change indicates the very real difficulty that there is in implementing or certainly the changes that this document lays some of the foundations for, because it is telling staff that their culture has to change, their approach has to change, or that the organisation's culture has to change does not necessarily mean that it is going to happen. What I think is to answer the specific question about the positives, I think that this document does a lot of things. The one thing that it does not do and self-evidently knows strategy document ever would, but it is obviously the thing that will matter most to the police service and to police officers and staff working on it, is the how. It is not what the problem is or why there is a problem, but the how are we going to change it, and the how does not exist anywhere in this, and that is a big, big part of it. I do not think that the document is either here or there for what it is worth, but if I am looking for positives, I will say this, and I hope that, despite the fact that I disagreed with this comment a few seconds ago that Craig will agree with me on this, that what I am enormously positive about is that we have, and I mean that we as the Scottish Police Federation have been actively engaging with the 2026 team, Chief Superintendent Andrew McLaren and Malcolm Gray in particular, and I have to say that there has also been significant by and from Deputy Chief Constable Ian Livingstone around about this whole matter, and we are hoping to bring to work with the service anacademic of significant international standing to try and help, identify and put in and work with us on some of the change challenges that are in place, or certainly that are likely to be presented, and the service willingness to work with us in that manner thus far has been second to none. I would say in a way that I have never seen it before, they are not quite backing their hand off, but if the metaphors apply, that would be as close as you would get. There is lots of engagement and willingness to utilise expertise, international expertise, to try and put in place something that will work for the future of the whole of the communities in Scotland. Self-evidently, this consultation is still live. I know that it sounds like we are giving it a bit of a hard time in terms of some of what has been said, but I sense from the team, and Craigie and Drew will speak for themselves, a genuine willingness to try and make sure that they take on board some of the issues that are being presented to them. That is not to say that that, in any way, underestimates the scale of the challenge that the service is facing. Ben. I was going to ask about the workforce profile and the 2026 that is talking about the maintenance of current police numbers in this coming year. The changes in the profile of the workforce are expected by 2020, but I wanted to read all three of you something out of 2026 and ask if you could answer in light of the phrase that is in the document. We will increase the flexibility of the terms and conditions for both existing members and new roles with the organisation. How do you see things going as regards to the workforce profile and have you concerns about your member's terms and conditions? Certainly, unison has significant concerns, as I have touched on earlier on. The harmonisation project is overdue. We would expect that they will seek to not necessarily improve, but modernise terms and conditions, and that is something that we will have to engage with our members on. In terms of the workforce profile, unison has been calling for a thorough breakdown of exactly what the workforce make-up is, where police officers are deployed, and certainly there are attempts to address our concerns by producing a workforce planning model that will actually show where people are deployed. Previously, issues such as gender segregation in policing have not been available—it was included at the SPA board meeting—as part of the quality outcomes for the Scottish Police Authority. Previously, all the analytical data in relation to what impact 17234 has on the working population in Police Scotland has been unavailable. I do not know why that is the case, but that is the case. We would seek to see that that is addressed as part of the 2026 strategy that we start to look at exactly what our workforce make-up is. Prior to 2007 and 2012, in Unison Scotland's Stuart report, it is mentioned that only three out of the eight legacy forces had conducted any sort of research into what roles could be civilianised in policing in Central Scotland's Strathclyde and Tayside. There is a bit of a shortage of what we could do to deliver best value in a balanced workforce within the framework of 2026. I think that that comes back to the how. It is all very well saying what and why, but it is ultimately going to come down to the how. One thing that I am acutely aware of is that the terms flexibility and modernisation mean cheaper. They always have done. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. Self-evidently, if there is going to be a how that looks towards making cheaper and more inconvenient to work as a police officer, then that will work against the very important thing that they have to do in trying to change the culture and do that against a background of reducing numbers and increasing demand. It is difficult to say that that is anything other than a Pandora's box for problems. We very much welcome the bit about flexibility. I think that that is a really important part as we move forward. Flexibility can at times be cheaper. By encouraging retention of a lot of our staff, those who care and responsibilities, I know that our association is unrepresentative of the community's particular gender but also elsewhere. Our force executives are even less representative, so there is a big challenge for them there. We have discussed that particular part with the 2026 project team, and our advice to them was to look down England and Wales, see what tinkering with terms and conditions has done, and it has been an absolute disaster down there. It has done nothing for morale, and I see no benefit in bringing that to Scotland whatsoever. I will speak out specifically for the operational police officers and staff associations. Do you see any threat to the role of the status of office of constable inherent to any of that statement? I think that that is always the case. The question would have to be a case of waiting seat, but there is always a danger that that could be one of the orally implied conditions that comes from that expression. In 2004, I was at the Scottish Police College at the launch, the very significant launch of what was then called flexible working works. It was an act post initiative and the then president of ACPOS, and I think that the chief constable of Grampian, it may have been one and the same, stood up in front of a packed lecture hall and said, I can see no reason, no reason at all why every police officer in Scotland cannot work flexibly if they wanted to. Yet here we are, 13 years later, and let me tell you, trying to work flexibly as the devil's own job in the police service of Scotland, and that, in its own right, the real life, the real lived experience of police officers is not going to be changed by writing some warm, cuddly words on that page. We would all have an entirely different view of what flexibility is, I suspect. I can accept that, but the question about the chance of constable, I hope, improves it. I see that there have been some moves where we look at trying to bring in non-warranted officers. That is a dangerous thing to do, but I do not think that that is the same as having the right person with the right skills being paid the right money to do the right job, and I see some benefits in that. I do think that there are a number of roles getting carried out by police officers just now that could be more ably carried out by police staff colleagues. Actually, over the last few years, Drew spoke about earlier, we have taken officers off the front line and put them into these officers to do jobs not as well as those people that we have lost. Not disturbingly, but we had some concerns when we saw some of the early manifestations of 2026 being the advertisement of some very highly paid jobs within the service. We have raised our concerns with that, with the executive and with others, and we have been provided with some reassurance that those jobs are people who have the specific skills to come in and make a change. I think that it is fair to say that 2026 is about transformation, and the service has been absolutely terrible at transformation over the last few years, so if we need to bring in some skills to drive that, I think that that is the right thing to do, but we need to remember that we cannot denude the service of our members who have real operational responsibility and we need to be careful when we talk about reducing the number of supervisors who have got elsewhere in the service. Can I read another quote to you, please? It is from the chief constable who said that, again, a narrow assessment of success predicated simply on crime figures, officer numbers and cost savings no longer represents the true test of an effective police service capable of meeting the challenges of the future. Do you have any concerns about that statement at all? I think that, through yourself, that statement was always through. I think that the difficulty that the chief constable and many others have is that they created the illusion that the very thing that they are saying is no longer the measure of success, it is the very thing that they always said was the measure of success. I am not quite saying that it is a maskine conversion, but it does certainly have the appearance of one. You mentioned the year 2007. I do not have the figures to hand, but I would wager that there has been at least two, possibly even three thousand additional police officers in that period. I mean, certainly, I think that over a period since 2007, we have lost approximately two thousand members of police staff over that period of time. As I have alluded to earlier on, there is a large number of police staff vacancies. I think that if you look at certain business areas such as C3, there was an uplift to approximately 45 per cent police officers within area control rooms. Now, I think that part of HMICS findings in their final report was that they would have expected a more detailed rationale and supporting data to justify this workforce balance. When clearly in the legacy force areas, we had area control rooms and indeed service centres, which were more intensively staffed with police staff. So, some of the justifications behind that are just unclear as to why we need to protect police officer numbers in these business areas. If I may convener, 2007 is a very fortuitous year because, of course, that was the year when every politician and his or her granny were standing on a manifesto commitment to increase police officer numbers. With the notable exception of your own party, it has to be said. So, I know that in 2007, simply because it is where the 1,000 number was anchored to, that there were 16,000 in the 34 police officers, so the uplift was, you know, broadly 1,000. Thank you. Can I ask them the effect of that 1,000? I mean, we need to understand is the finance in place to deal with the workload? Has the workload been assessed? Are we deploying the appropriate people? I would suggest that those told us that we are not to do the appropriate tasks. Is that part of 2026? That fairly simple series of things which would be a very complex process or could be treated as such, but that's what you do. What do we need to do and what do we need to do in terms of human resource and financial resource? I think that that's part 2026. I can't say any way we can look forward without looking very carefully at just how we do put resource out. We've always said that 7234 was just a number that was made up sometime and whether that's too many, too less or not isn't really for us to decide what we need to make sure is that we make sure that the officers and the budget available to us is used most effectively and efficiently as it can be. Thank you very much. Yes, I did. I mean, the issue of demand here is very important because, you know, demand comes in many ways, shapes and forms and it's not just the number of times that people phone the police. You know that there are demands and, of course, there are expectations that come from reassurance and community presence and patrolling and proactive initiatives. You know, we have to have enough police officers to be able to deal with elections. Let's be honest about it, we have no shortage of them. You know, we have a Scotland England football fixture coming up, we have a sporadic and, you know, no notice demonstrations take place. These things in their own right are demands that do not feature in the broad statistics that we have. Finance and, indeed, the way in which the organisation has responded to some of the financial challenges creates additional demands. We have reduced our custody centres. We are now transporting people on greater distances in the backs of cars to get them to put them in a cell. That is a danger and it is something that I believe is probably one of the biggest services facing. So there are a whole host of different things but, you know, fundamentally I do not disagree with the question that was asked by Mr Finnie in that you have to understand the holistic nature of what it is that the police is and are expected to do before you can then come to an answer. Traditionally, the answer was always what your starting point was. If you had a thousand and the question was how many police officers you had, if the budget wasn't going to change, the answer was always going to be a thousand. I fear, genuinely fear, that in this particular exercise we are looking at the money first rather than coming up with the true answer of what it is that policing in Scotland could cost and then have a conversation with people like yourselves and communities about whether they would be willing to pay for it. Ben Macpherson Just very briefly on that point, Calum Steele, I wondered, is there a responsibility for all of us as politicians and those working as public servants and beyond to raise greater awareness of the fact that demand and policing is at the level that it is and of the complexity of it to try to create a greater awareness among the public and other service providers around the complexity of the demand issue, as things stand? Ben Macpherson Yes, I believe that this is probably the only answer that I could give to that. Previously, one of the committees in this building had a round table, a round about the demands that are placed upon the police service. When I left with the evidence session on that particular day, some of the people that were present said to me, let's not kid ourselves, the police service is the act of our service for every other service. If we maintain that expectation, which I don't think is ever going to change, then we have to make sure that that catch-all safety net for everybody else is not in itself undermined as a consequence of the very real budget challenges that we face. Ultimately, whilst police officers may not be happy at their work, whilst members of support staff may not be happy at their work, whilst we might be working long hours and getting assaulted and injured, it is our communities that will feel the greatest brunt of that and that will result in an ebbing of public confidence across the piece. It will drive down economic activity and, as a nation, we will go backwards because the fundamental building blocks to successful communities start with shelter and sustenance and then safety and security. If you take as a given that, at the very least, we have basic shelter and sustenance, then you cannot then undermine the importance of safety and security thereafter. Given the discussions that we have had in the past hour and the issues that we have talked about, does the panel think that the ambition and the aspiration in the 2026 policing document are achievable in the timescale that is set out? The document talks a lot about what the problem is and what the service needs to do. It does not say, although it is implied in a lot of places, what the service is going to stop doing. If I give a very simple example, there is an underlying assumption that if you are a frail woman in your dotage, that you are going to be more affected as a victim of crime than a young, strapping male. There is no scientific evidence that that is the case. There is a danger that the service moves into in certain areas of crime, facilitators for the insurance industry. I do not think that that is going to be good for issues of public confidence. There was a fairly withering commentary piece in one of the tabloids, I forget which one might have been the record of the sun fairly recently, about Bill Lecky's own experiences of being a victim of crime. I think that, although there was a lot of hyperbole in that commentary piece, it lays bare some of the real concerns that exist out there that the police service risks being seen as walking away from certain elements of the communities whilst we talk about chasing other parts of it. I do not think that it should be one or the other, it has got to be one and the other. If we give up or are seen to be giving up on community presences and community engagement and existence and taking seriously the concerns that exist, then we will lose the public support. The importance of tackling cybercrime, which is alluded to fairly heavily, is also something that I think risks being overplayed simply because of the reality of geopolitics. If we are looking at people calling each other names and being offensive on Facebook and Twitter and let us be honest about it, there is no shortage of them, then we can tie up the police service forever and a day and we will be doing nothing else. If we are looking at the complexities of online fraud, child exploitation, pedophilia and so on and so forth, many of those crimes take place through multitudes of proxy servers located in nations across the world that we simply will not be able to get access to and identifying the problem is one thing, but pretending that we are going to be able to solve it is entirely another. That whole cyber element of it needs a much more honest discussion than just talking about it in the hope that people will believe that because it is an online crime that therefore the service must throw a fortune at it even though it may not result in any material change and the experience of the member of the public who may be a victim of crime through that media. I think that I can probably stop to know there, but I think that 2026 itself is interesting because the 10-year strategy we have only got nine years left to deliver it, it was an unfortunate term, I don't think that we should have called it 2026 to start with, I filed it next to 2025 and 2020, which were other initiatives, which have actually started. My view is that it will succeed in so far as we try to look at what we are doing in a different way. I think that that is a big challenge, but again, if we would listen to people like Professor Harry Burns a number of years ago and start putting all the resources into early intervention, we might not be in the position that we are in just now. I would agree that it depends exactly on how prepared and the planning and preparation that goes into delivering competent and coherent ICT strategies and workforce planning models. It certainly talks a good game in terms of identifying where the risks lie. I think that he and Craig speak about Sir Harry Burns. I don't know if anyone else here has heard him speak, but his idea is around solitogenesis and identifying the problems. If we are actually foisting people down more remote platforms in terms of contacting the police and leaving them more isolated, to what extent then do we then deliver a self-fulfilling prophecy? I think that there are all these sorts of ideas that are very good within the strategy document, but it is actually addressing them to how, as Callum pointed out. Do you want to come in? At how point? Obviously, we have heard concerns from the Auditor General about incomplete records and poor financial management. At an earlier session, Callum, I asked you about the expectation that the deficit of £180 million and growing within Police Scotland was going to be turned around in a matter of the next two or three years, which, frankly, given what has happened today, seems to lack credibility and whatever the how is going to come with the price tag attached to it. Are you any more confident that the financial underpinning for 2026 is credible, or are we just being told that the deficits that have built up are going to be turned around because the SPA and Police Scotland feel that that is what we need to hear? I think that 2026 is more about changing the way we are doing things about creating capacity, and that is the real challenge. It sounds really simple. I am not convinced that we are going to be able to do that within the timeframe. I think that we can try, but other demands will come in. I think that I6 was put forward as it was going to increase capacity. We did not achieve that, so we have real challenges in doing that, but whether we achieve it or not, we probably can, because we can project ahead and reduce the number of police officers that we recruit. We can 2026 talks about reducing police staff as well as bringing other police staff in. We can do that, and that will balance the budget. Is that the police service that you want? I agree with the broad observations of Greg Sutty that the service can balance the budget if it wanted to, but the question will be at what particular cost. I know that members will be aware that there is a narrative that failure to deliver I6 has set the service back five years. I personally think that it is much more than that. We have very fragile and antiquated IT, and all of those things impact on the capacity of the service. If we do not deliver on our IT, we impinge on the ability to create additional capacity to deal with the demand, and that is undoubtedly the biggest problem. When the service was established against the expectation to save £1.1 billion in its first decade of existence, that was underpinned by the expectation that I6 is going to be delivered. That is gone. Everybody knows that it is gone. As parliamentarians and everyone of you, I believe that we have an obligation to say that we cannot do that after the service to deliver savings based on something that no longer exists. It is also worth noting that when the budget or when the expectations were set, there was a very real and totally different terror threat across the world, and that in its own act has created additional demands and drawdowns upon the police service. However, the service can save its money. It is what it will mean for quality of investigation and quality of victim care. We know just now another part that is directly linked to the service, although it is not a service responsibility to deliver it. The treatment of rape victims, particularly in Ornain Shetlands, has to go through, because of the unavailability of medical professional standard-take examinations, all of those things impact on the view in which the police service is held. I suspect that, as horrific an experience is to be a victim or survivor of rape, the additional horrendous experience of having to wait several days before you can properly wash can only make that worse. That will reflect badly on the police service, even though it is a medical consideration. We have those kinds of issues. Ultimately, it is a wider justice arena that I believe makes it unattractive for suspicion rather than an evidence position. However, I suspect that it is a wider justice reality about the inconvenience and how court systems operate that makes it very, very unattractive for many people to put themselves forward to be in a position of giving evidence on a fairly regular basis. That is even more challenging for female professionals because of the self-evident expectation that they have of being the primary carers in their own societies. There is a whole host of different things. We can investigate our murders less. We can investigate our organised gangs and our organised criminals less. We can undertake less investigations in a whole variety of different areas, but that will filter through into the experiences of victims and will filter through into the confidence of the public. Just on the specific point about the financial management, financial oversight, the Auditor General is pretty explicit in her criticisms. Do you see evidence that those safeguards in that oversight has now been tightened up and that, looking ahead, we will not see some of the problems that have emerged in the past? Speaking to senior members of the executive, I say that they do have that tighter. I think they have learned from what has happened over the last few years. I think that when a better place, that does not take away from the very significant challenges that they will then have in delivering the budget. I am more optimistic but I am not completely convinced. I still see that we are a service that tends to be penny wise and pound foolish. Those elements of penny pinching are what again go back to the undermining of the moral and confidence and the belief of the officers that are delivering the service. Up until recently, I genuinely did not believe that many of the senior managers in the service have agreed to a large number of Cregs members and, to some extent, possibly even some chief officers genuinely believed that there was a financial problem facing the service. We will continue to do this because we can and because it is not going to be my problem or I am going to be retiring and someone else is going to have to pick up the pieces. I think that the failure to communicate the reality of the financial situation amongst the wider workforce, rather than just in brutal terms if you are not going to be getting overtime and then something happens or an initiative comes along and overtime is thrown at the most ridiculous of causes, then I think that the service was largely, in many areas, kidding itself as to the reality of what it was facing. We did not deal well and I do not believe that it was a service issue as such but it should have been better done by the authority but we did not deal well with the communication about the reduction and counter hours. We did not deal well with the issue of station closures. All of those things had been much better explained not just to the communities but also to the police officers. The hard responsibilities for the areas may have been less painful but when you are up against a police service that is inherently cynical of many of the promises to save money and improve and you are telling them that you know that we are going to close this station but we are still going to have the same presence as we had before, everybody knows that that is not the case and they see it as nothing more than cutting for the sake of it without necessarily understanding its impact on the wider organisational capability and capacity. Very briefly, I am sorry to ask you to try and make your... Yeah, no, certainly we are more optimistic, we have kind of echoed the sentiments of ASPs. I think that the approaches to financial monitoring and reporting including areas such as the Police Scotland internal audit strategy are certainly positive developments. I think that I would temper that with the fact that we would like to see more of a shift from the management of costs to management of value. A case in point is in four years C3 division has run £12.5 million over budget and any suggestion of significant savings being delivered by that business area have kind of been somewhat eradicated to the point that within the Scottish Government gateway review it suggests that there are modest savings to be made within that programme now. So we have actually shut down multiple sites but we are actually only delivering modest savings. So I think we will have to actually be a bit more realistic about maintaining a footprint and what we can actually deliver in terms of localism across Scotland. I think we will have to move away. Technology is developing at such a pace that we can actually look at how we maintain that footprint and profile within our communities. I suppose that this is a catch-all right. It has been said that the cabinet secretary has said that at present, despite the transformation, then the right balance between civilians and officers in order to get the correct mix of staff has not been achieved. You have already given us lots of examples of that today but really what I want to drill down to is what kind of analysis, in-depth analysis is there of this is of civilian staff, this is what they do, this is the core function, this is what we need to operate regardless. You come to committee, you tell us that but where is this written down so it is right up there in every single decision that is taken and the same with the number of police. Callum has already mentioned various things, this fear about going to cyber crime is really a priority when there are so many other things that are not recorded as crime but you are involved in today today. So where do you actually get this down in paper there to see whenever this discussion comes up so you do not have to keep coming to whichever committee it is to keep telling us these things that that is a given right there to be looked at from the very beginning when we are looking at where we have to make the difficult decisions about what to fund. Could I make a plea that the witnesses answer very briefly because we are running short of time? Again, thanks convener. I think that the very simple answer to that question is very little. Ironically, the area of the service that you would expect to undertake has its corporate function. That is going to be reduced significantly which is going to make it less likely that they are going to have the capability to do that in the future. Of course, with any element of analysis, you create a degree of bureaucracy and there has to be an acceptance that in any large organisation bureaucracy is going to be a part of the machine and we have been stripping out much of what we have considered a necessary bureaucracy over the past number of years. I think that is what 2020 is about. Unfortunately over the last few years we have been looking at reducing our police staff members because we have done that to cut budgets and we have done that in quite a brutal and caring and not very sophisticated way. You are right, we need to start building up from the bottom again saying what we actually need to deliver and what skills we need to deliver that. I think that that is part of what 2026 is about. Certainly, there were certain situations of business cases that were presented where police staff would be removed and there would be a justification that say 20 per cent or 30 per cent of those duties would then be absorbed by local policing. It simply is not true. There are some units that deal wholly with citations work, fair arms enquiries and so forth. That is a problem. We have stripped away the police staff resources and taken capacity away from police officers. As there are no further questions from the committee, I thank her witnesses for coming along today and for the evidence that they have given us. We now move into private session. I am going to suspend briefly to allow the witnesses and the gallery to clear. Thank you.