Asleep in its kennel, the watchdog body that’s meant to be the link between public and police
THE moment when a football club owner voices their full support for the manager is normally a portentous one.
The mere fact that it was deemed necessary to give them public backing is seen as a bad sign for the coach’s prospects.
In the political realm, the same axiom holds true: a Prime Minister’s statement of ‘full confidence’ in a controversial Cabinet minister usually signals an imminent resignation.
Former TV executive Andrew Flanagan, embattled chairman of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), is in something of a no man’s land — his boss can’t bring himself either to back him or to sack him.
Asked recently whether Mr Flanagan should ‘stay or go’, Justice Secretary Michael Matheson failed to answer, instead stressing the need for the SPA to be ‘open and transparent’.
That equivocation may well be more ominous for Mr Flanagan than the conventional expression of ‘full confidence’.
The reason for Mr Flanagan’s current discomfiture is that the secretive organisation which he chairs was compared to the Kremlin at a recent parliamentary committee.
The allegation was all the more damaging because it came from SNP MSP and former Health Secretary Alex Neil.
Labour MSP Monica Lennon has stated that the ‘reputation of the SPA is in crisis’ and Mr Flanagan himself was branded a ‘control freak’ and asked whether he had considered his position — he said he had not.
The backdrop to that growing crisis is a series of decisions that called into question the ability of the police watchdog to do its job, including a move to hold some key meetings in private.
Often complex board papers were distributed only on the day of meetings that are held publicly, a practice that was recently changed but caused huge frustration not only for the media but also for bodies such as councils and unions.
The SPA’s secrecy culture comes at a time when the public spending watchdog Audit Scotland has warned Police Scotland is facing a financial black hole of nearly £200million.
It suited the SPA to meet in private, officially to allow members to speak more freely, and away from public scrutiny, because the subject matter — axing officers and police stations — was so contentious.
Mr Flanagan was also rocked by the resignation of Moi Ali who quit the SPA in February amid claims she had been silenced after speaking out against the decision to hold meetings behind closed doors.
So, just another chaotically run public sector quango — but you would be wrong to dismiss this drama, because the SPA matters.
The single force was foisted on us by former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, who admitted its creation was driven by the need to save cash.
One of the main objections was that the amalgamation of the eight former territorial forces would risk the concentration of power in the hands of one chief constable.
These warnings were prescient: the first chief, Sir Stephen House, stepped down after Nicola Sturgeon issued a thinly veiled public rebuke of his autocratic style, most notoriously his secret decision to authorise holstered handguns for officers on routine call-outs.
But the Scottish Government reassured critics ahead of the 2013 launch of Police Scotland that the SPA would be an effective bulwark against power-mad chiefs, ensuring robust and fearless scrutiny.
Yet even within the SPA there is an acknowledgment that many of its well-meaning members have all the intellectual firepower and inquisitorial flair of a damp dish-cloth.
Live online broadcasts of its meetings (the ones that aren’t held in secret) should be prescribed on the NHS to insomniacs as an immediate and long-lasting remedy.
Violent crime and sexual offences are rising — but SPA members are more likely to quiz top brass on paperclip shortages.
Indeed the SPA, in its last annual report, wrote off an increase of around a quarter in the number of serious assaults in the last year as statistically insignificant.
The annual accounts of the SPA also revealed its chief executive John Foley received a pay rise this year, from £110,000-£115,000 to £115,000-£120,000 (which does seem statistically significant).
The SPA then helped to produce a document known as Policing 2026, a vision of the future of Police Scotland — one with about 400 fewer officers.
Consultancy firm Deloitte was also paid nearly £700,000 of taxpayers’ money to shape the proposals.
All of which is another reason why the SPA matters — its bosses are in the throes of a huge shake-up of the service, so proper management is pivotally important.
In 2015, Mr Flanagan’s predecessor Vic Emery, who had been embroiled in an unedifying turf war with Sir Stephen over the carve-up of policing powers, was forced out of his job after an internal revolt.
The first few years of the SPA’s existence have been turbulent — and yet the man now at the tiller stands accused of presiding over a Kremlin-like bureaucracy designed to stifle dissent and keep the public in the dark.
In his previous life, Mr Flanagan was the man who — as £500,000-a-year chief executive of Scottish Media Group (SMG) — sacked Chris Evans, then the enfant terrible Virgin Radio breakfast show host.
Mr Flanagan has described policing as a ‘people-driven business’ (rather than a public service).
The ensuing corporatisation of policing under Mr Flanagan’s tenure saw the appointment last August of former banker David Page as Police Scotland’s director of corporate services, strategy and change, earning £173,000 a year — about £30,000 more than the Prime Minister’s salary.
Mr Flanagan and Mr Page were both board members of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) at the time of the hire.
The appointments panel chaired by Mr Flanagan also allowed Mr Page to apply for the lucrative job after the deadline.
Mr Page, like a character from the BBC’s self-satirising comedy W1A, has described the force’s deficit as an elephant — and said ‘we’re going to eat it one bite at a time’.
Even Mr MacAskill, principal architect of this mess, has remarked that ‘bringing in this hot-shot finance guy from outside was just bonkers’.
Mr Flanagan, who has signalled a U-turn on secret meetings, has been accused of misleading MSPs over Miss Ali’s case but is largely unrepentant, and has said he believes the SPA is becoming ‘more effective’.
His stewardship of the SPA has been poor, even in the context of the financial quagmire he inherited, and it is clear that confidence in his chairmanship is haemorrhaging. He may well be heading for a Chris Evans moment of his own.
But Mr Matheson’s decision to leave Mr Flanagan swinging in the wind also echoes the latter days of the troubled reign of Sir Stephen — who was left in position for several months, the subject of relentless criticism, as a fall guy for SNP failings.
Now history is repeating itself, as ministers again attempt to shift the blame for the myriad shortcomings of the single force they created to a man who is doing an excellent job of undermining his own position — while the ‘people-driven business’ of policing pays the price.
