Scotland's police face accountability vacuum

To those who criticise, the answer should be that if they don’t like the facts, do something to change them. Scottish broadcasting’s inadequacies have involved too little reflection of social realities, not too much, and this was a rare venture into neglected territory.

Much the same programme could have been made for years. The heightened role of racial tension has exacerbated rather than created issues which underlie crime, violence and rampant anti-social behaviour; none of them peculiar to Glasgow but present there in abundance.

One startling statistic was that since 2023, in the few hundred yards of Union Street, there have been 2800 recorded crimes. But then look at the state of Union Street, with buildings lying empty for years without public interventions, culminating in a vape shop fire that almost consumed Central Station, and maybe the figure is not so surprising.

As the police officer interviewed pointed out, what they deal with largely reflects societal issues which are beyond their control. Therefore it was reasonable to seek political accountability in response to the programme’s findings. The least surprising revelation was that the leader of Glasgow City Council, Susan Aitken, was not available for interview.

But let us be fair. While issues like homelessness, dereliction and failure to resist funding cuts are certainly on Ms Aitken’s charge sheet, one matter for which she cannot be held responsible is policing for the straightforward reason that since the introduction of Police Scotland in 2013, there has been no local accountability or democratic input.

Who then would the programme interview on relevant issues of policy and, let’s say, funding? The Justice Minister, currently Neil Gray, who would have been equally likely to run a mile? The chairman of the quango, the Scottish Police Authority, which replaced the role of local government, of whom nobody has ever heard? Not much chance there.

So it ends up with no political response to what is clearly a highly political issue – safety on the streets of Scotland’s largest city where offences against women in particular have multiplied in the past five years, and the racial pot is now being stirred. The same vacuum of accountability would exist if these circumstances arose in any part of Scotland.

There are 1000 fewer police officers in Scotland since the advent of Police Scotland and when the starting number was 17,400 that is a pretty big cut. One of the main messages that came out of Glasgow programme was that the atmosphere of tension and potential violence on the streets increases markedly in the absence of a physical police presence. That is not rocket science so who decided that Scotland needs 1000 fewer police officers rather than more in the front-line? Certainly not Glasgow City Council.

Before it is forgotten entirely, it is worth recalling that Scotland used to have a “tripod” system of accountability that worked pretty well. There were regional police boards of elected councillors, Ministerial responsibility at a safe distance from operations, and Chief Constables answerable to the Boards for running their forces.

Chairing a Police Board was one of the most important, public-facing roles in local government and dissatisfaction with the organisational structure of Scottish policing did not rate high on many agendas. Certainly, there were operational matters on which closer co-ordination was required. That could have been achieved without creating a single force, particularly when the trade-off was loss of local nuance and accountability, to be replaced by an anonymous quango.

As the departing Chief Constable of Grampian said at the time: “The police didn’t want it. The public had no great appetite for it. So why did it happen? It happened because the SNP Government wanted to brand it ‘Scottish’.” And other Holyrood parties, with the exception of the Liberal Democrats, fell into line.

There were warnings at that time about the risk of Scottish policing being too close to its political masters once accountable only to Ministers and a Ministerially-appointed quango, putting the Police in a potentially invidious position which they did not want to be in. That concern has been – and continues to be – borne out by events to a degree which exceeds anything critics could have anticipated, thanks to Operation Branchform and associated matters.

Concerns about the impact on routine policing have proved equally relevant, and not just through the cuts in police numbers. Services which benefit from local knowledge and access have been centralised and, crucially, almost 200 police stations – urban and rural – have closed since the inception of Police Scotland. It is inconceivable that much of this would have happened if channels for public push-back and political accountability still existed.

I am not so naïve as to think the Scottish Government is going to reverse the creation of a single Scottish police force but surely, in the light of experience, it should be possible to reconsider the absence of any localised input or accountability. It is ridiculous that in a city the size of Glasgow, there is not a political figure who is answerable for policing issues that are so clearly apparent.

On a final point about why programmes which reflect real life policing are of value . There is an excellent BBC series called “Highland Cops” which gives an insight into the challenges of rural and island policing. Some (like drug proliferation) are in common with cities; others are totally different. One common feature is that local accountability, not least about station closures, has been abolished.

A simple question: “Why, and in whose interests?”