BANFFSHIRE and BUCHAN COAST Liberal Democrats

SINGLE POLICE FORCE IS BAD FOR MOST OF SCOTLAND, SAYS McINNES

Last year when the Scottish Government announced its initial consultation on reforming Scotland's police services, ministers did so with the claim that they were going into the debate with an open mind.

A clear majority of respondents to that consultation were not in favour of the proposed single national police force. Even so, in September Alex Salmond announced that "after detailed consideration . . . persuaded that a single national police service is the right option."

Now we have the detail in the newly-published Bill, it is clear why the Government was so easily persuaded.

Far from being a reform aimed at improving efficiency, or creating more local accountability for our police, this reform is about one thing alone - political control. Under these plans, we will have a single police authority, the members of which are appointed directly by Ministers.

That authority will then appoint the chief constable - an appointment that must also be approved by Ministers. And on top of that, the Government will retain the right to "determine strategic police priorities", directing the authority not only on how it should carry out its own functions but, more worryingly, also on matters pertaining to "the policing of Scotland."

The Scottish Government is quick to trumpet support for the reforms from existing local constabularies and by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS).

What they won't say is that that qualified support has only been given after they realised the inevitability of the changes. Indeed during the initial consultation, ACPOS were of the opinion that "it will affect frontline policing delivery" and that "any change programme will increase the risk of a fall in performance over the short term. In policing terms, this may result in more crime and more victims."

Individual police forces and local councils have also expressed serious concerns over the plans. This is not least due to the dramatic loss of local control over policing - from budgets to staffing levels to local reactiveness. Worse, it threatens to damage the vital link between police and local residents that is the hallmark of our progressive, community policing.

The fact is that a single, national police force - run from the central belt and under the influence of politicians - cannot hope to address the local policing needs of Aberdeen or Inverness with the same responsiveness and awareness to local issues as our existing regional forces can. And this is even more the case when you move out of the cities and into rural Scotland.

The Government has tried to defend this attack on localism by introducing the idea of local commanders, responsible for liaising with each local authority on the policing plan for that area. Not only will that be a poor substitute for local policing, but it also rather misses the point.

Local commanders may be able to draw up a local policing plan, but the decisions about how it will be managed, how it will be implemented and whether it can be fully resourced will no longer be made locally.

They will be made by a single chief constable and by a national police authority. An authority that can - and inevitably will - be influenced directly by the Scottish Government.

Local authorities will be able to have an input. They will be able to discuss what they feel the priorities for policing in their area are. But they will have no recourse to get those priorities acted on. They will have no say over how many officers are deployed in their area, over what operations are given priority, or over what resources are allocated to local issues.

In short, policing in every community in Scotland will be reliant on the whims of a small group of people, all of whom will have been personally handed their jobs by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats are the only party to oppose these ill-advised proposals. We believe that policing is best when it is local - truly local. Genuine accountability to the people they serve is not an unreasonable demand of our police, it is a minimum expectation.

Our police are at their best when they are working with communities, for those communities. These reforms risk doing irreparable damage to that work, and represent little more than a Ministerial power grab.