Labour to call for committee shake-up as part of policing review

Labour will call for a shake-up of the parliamentary committee system in a bid to bolster scrutiny of emergency services including Police Scotland, Holyrood has learned.

Shadow justice spokesperson Graeme Pearson will publish a review of policing later this week that recommends a full standalone committee be established with a sole focus on the emergency services.

If implemented, this would replace the justice sub-committee on policing – which Pearson was previously a member of – and would dedicate its focus to Police Scotland, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, the Scottish Ambulance Service as well as the coastguard.

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Pearson, who told Holyrood an opposition MSP should chair the new committee, said: “We’ve moved to national services but we haven’t moved to national oversight.”

The Labour MSP had mooted the idea prior to the justice sub-committee being set up in March 2013 to oversee the merger of eight legacy police forces.

Committee reform will be one of ten recommendations the former head of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency will make for the future of policing after Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale asked him to undertake a review in August.

Its publication comes in the same week Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) reveal their findings on the operation of police control rooms.

Pearson’s review was launched to look at local accountability, the relationship between Police Scotland, the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) and ministers, as well as staffing and targets.

Amid continuing questions over the sustainability of the Scottish Government’s minimum officers’ pledge, Pearson will suggest a need to abandon the “artificial” policy commitment to keep numbers above 17,234, which he labelled “political interference at the highest level”.

“We do not believe that there is a need for a politician to set an establishment for the police,” he told a fringe event hosted by the Scottish Police Federation at the Scottish Labour conference in Perth.

“That is entirely a matter for the chief constable in consultation with the Authority looking at the budgets that are available to them and how they believe that budget can most effectively be used.”

The Labour MSP will also point to a need to “rebalance” the police service with greater autonomy at a local level “instead of divisional commanders who merely become a mouthpiece for the centre”.

His report was signed off by members of the shadow cabinet last week and will be published this Thursday.