Exclusive:Senior Police Scotland figure at centre of contract whistleblowing complaint

The senior officer at Scotland’s national force is facing allegations they “lobbied and secured funding” for a company run by their friends to provide the HR program.

A whistleblower in the force has detailed a series of concerns over the way in which the contract, worth nearly £100,000, was awarded, and has contacted Audit Scotland to formally detail their misgivings.

The latter organisation has advised the whistleblower the independent-appointed auditor of the Scottish Police Authority is considering "additional testing” as part of its annual auditing work to “assess the risks” that have been raised regarding the force’s procurement controls.

However, Police Scotland said the claims were “inaccurate, misleading and defamatory”, adding the procurement process met its own policy standards and regulatory requirements.

Documentation shows there were five tenders received for the HR contract in question, which was issued by the Scottish Police Authority. However, the whistleblower has told Audit Scotland they were “deeply concerned” and “shocked” by the events they had witnessed, and that they had “come to the reasonable belief that criminal offences may have been committed in the awarding of the contract”.

The disclosure made to Audit Scotland by the whistleblower under the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) also claims they and a colleague are coming under pressure from senior figures in the force to “quietly find a new role” elsewhere in the service - a process they they said would “remove all objections to the adoption and embedding” of the HR program and ultimately result in the removal of an “entire strand of leadership from critical posts”.

The whistleblower said they and their colleague had been spoken to by another officer and “asked to quietly find a new role”, a process which they said was not formally recorded, with the approach made verbally. The whistleblower told Audit Scotland: “I am equally shocked that officers would be moved without formal processes, contrary to the standards of professional behaviour of Police Scotland, in order to hide and secure such a process from scrutiny.”

The PIDA disclosure detailing the concerns against the senior officer also claims the services provided by the contract were “already being provided internally at no contract cost”. Despite that, the whistleblower alleged, the senior officer in question “continued to seek funding” for the contracted program and was “lobbying strongly” for its adoption.

The new program, which has subsequently been adopted by the force, was delivering “similar training to the same target audience” as the internal scheme, the whistleblower claimed in their disclosure, albeit at a “significant cost” to Police Scotland and “without any significant additional benefit in a manner of procurement that may have been contrary to procurement rules or based on information that was not correct when those rules were applied”.

An assessment carried out to compare the new program with the internal scheme found both contained “very similar material”, and noted the new initiative was “more academic”. The existing internal scheme, on the other hand, was deemed to be “simpler”, with less of a focus on aspects that had been deemed “too complicated” via feedback.

The whistleblower has also spoken with a representative from the Police Investigation & Review Commissioner (PIRC), and said they were advised by the PIRC representative to make their disclosure to a prescribed PIDA body.

Unlike Audit Scotland, the police watchdog is not a prescribed body under PIDA, and consequently cannot accept or pursue formal complaints via protected disclosures. However, that may change when the Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill comes into effect, having recently passed through the Scottish Parliament.

Angela Constance, the justice secretary, said the legislation would raise and embed the ethical standards of the police service and strengthen the statutory framework on vetting. She also said the Bill would reform how police misconduct is dealt with and broaden the role of the PIRC and provide greater independent scrutiny of police complaints handling in Scotland.

The existing PIDA legislation is designed to protect whistleblowers from detrimental treatment by their employer as a result of making a disclosure considered to be in the public interest.

An Audit Scotland spokesman said: “The external auditors of the Scottish Police Authority will be testing procurement controls as part of their 2024/25 audit work.”

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Police Authority said: “The authority is committed to robust, compliant, and effective procurement processes, which deliver best value to the public purse. We welcome the work of the external auditor.”

A Scottish Police Federation spokesperson said: “We are supporting a member who has made a protected disclosure. We are unable to make any further comment”

A spokesperson for the PIRC said: “We have received no formal complaint and are not conducting any investigation in relation to this matter.”

A spokesman for Police Scotland said: “These claims are inaccurate, misleading and defamatory. The procurement was carried out in accordance with regulatory requirements and internal policy.”