Even the BBC comedy Scot Squad can’t satirise the enduring farce of our single force
By Graham Grant
BACK in 2010, David Laws, the new chief secretary to the Treasury, discovered a note on his desk with a worrying message.
Penned by Liam Byrne, the former holder of the post who was ousted when Labour lost the General Election, it said simply: ‘There’s no money left.’
As handover memos go, it was hardly a morale boost, and indeed came to symbolise the economic profligacy of Labour’s 13 years in office.
Imagine Andrew Flanagan’s note for his successor at the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), Professor Susan Deacon, due to start work next week.
Mr Flanagan quit as chairman in June after MSPs criticised his management style, including a claim that he was a bully who ran the SPA like the Kremlin.
But he is only now getting round to clearing out of his office to make way for the former Labour Health Minister tasked with restoring the quango’s battered reputation.
One imagines that his handover note, if it were to be a full and honest appraisal of the crisis in policing, would be novelistic – part thriller, part misery memoir.
Or he might opt for brevity: ‘There’s no credibility left’, perhaps, which would be something of an understatement, but would at least have the virtue of candour (however belated).
Earlier this month, a PhD researcher who had interviewed SPA board members found even they believed the watchdog was ‘useless’, and a victim of government interference.
But Mr Flanagan, a former TV executive who clearly has a flair for the dramatic flourish, has primed another hand-grenade for Professor Deacon’s bulging in-tray.
It comes in the form of the suspension of four officers including Assistant Chief Constable Bernie Higgins, who is in charge of armed policing, over a raft of misconduct claims including alleged criminality.
With Professor Deacon preparing to take over as SPA chairman on Monday next week, wouldn’t it have been possible, and indeed preferable, to delay the matter until her tenure began?
As we revealed yesterday, Mr Flanagan also attempted to engineer the return of Phil Gormley – in case you’ve forgotten, he’s the chief constable, currently on ‘special leave’.
Mr Gormley is facing multiple allegations of bullying from senior personnel and from a former personal assistant, any one of which could end his career if proven.
Justice Secretary Michael Matheson, a passive bystander as the leadership of Police Scotland has crumbled to dust, rightly slapped him down, and Mr Gormley remains at home.
He is waiting to hear whether or not his bid to lead a child protection review for the London-based National Police Chiefs’ Council, while on gardening leave, will be successful.
The chief constable, who earns £214,000 a year, wouldn’t be the first officer to try a little ‘moonlighting’, but surely he would be the most senior.
Mr Gormley denies wrong-doing, as does Mr Higgins, who is accused of a series of offences including the burying of a theft allegation and the unauthorised discharge of firearms.
Deputy Chief Constable Iain Livingstone is now leading the force – providing much-needed stability – after cancelling his retirement plans when Mr Gormley stepped aside.
But it is becoming clearer by the day that there is no appetite for Mr Gormley to return, whatever the outcome of the bullying investigations, either politically or among the rank-and-file.
Many of them question why the chief is on ‘special leave’, while Mr Higgins and the other officers were suspended.
The SPA meets in Stirling today (Tuesday, November 28) chaired by Mr Flanagan, when Mr Livingstone is expected to announce moves to bolster his management team.
The board may make a decision on whether to extend Mr Gormley’s leave – or choose to leave it for Professor Deacon.
It’s a soap opera with more interweaving storylines than EastEnders, though BBC Scotland’s police satire Scot Squad might be a closer comparison.
The top tier of Police Scotland is a viper’s nest, where the largely male protagonists are vying for supremacy.
There are some within the service who believe that its recent woes are a product of that political minefield, with Mr Gormley a casualty of a plot orchestrated by his rivals.
It all adds up to a headache for Professor Deacon – though her experience at Scottish Labour means she is no stranger to internecine warfare.
She was consigned to the backbenches when Jack McConnell became First Minister in 2001, after his infamous ‘night of the long knives’.
Later Professor Deacon became assistant principal in charge of external relations at the University of Edinburgh.
But even with this CV, she may be unprepared for the full scale of vicious backbiting, plots and factionalism rife in the world of police governance.
Mother-of-two Professor Deacon, 53, will earn £530 a day for working 12 days a month – up from Mr Flanagan’s rate of £450 a day, a rise of about 18 per cent.
Mr Flanagan’s predecessor Vic Emery, the first SPA chairman, was forced out after an internal revolt, following a tumultuous period in office.
For many, this was all too easily predictable: after all, he was once the boss of Edinburgh’s calamitous trams project.
Continuing the public transport theme, Professor Deacon is a non-executive director of Lothian Buses.
In fact, her challenge will be turning around a tanker that seems locked permanently on course for disaster.
Mr Matheson insists that the SPA is independent – but how truly impartial can such a body be when its interim chief officer is, er, a senior Scottish Government civil servant?
Kenneth Hogg took over after his predecessor, John Foley, criticised in a watchdog’s report for his ‘shortcomings’, was forced to take early retirement.
Just before Mr Hogg’s first day in post at the SPA, earlier this month, it emerged that he had visited the notorious Ashley Madison adultery website – but only out of an interest in data protection issues.
Meanwhile rank-and-file officers, who have to keep the service running regardless of the drama unfolding all around them, can only look on with mounting dismay and anger.
What a desperate hash the SNP has made of policing, saddling it with an unsustainable financial burden so that officer cuts seem inevitable – while attempting to con the public that the quality of the service on offer can only improve.
But its greater mistake was to concentrate too much power in the hands of a chief constable and his colleagues, creating a single greasy pole to the top of the force – which, it seems, has provoked an unseemly scramble for power.
The SPA will also hear today (TUES) that crime is on the rise, with violent or sexual offences reported on average once every eight minutes, while the force hierarchy implodes.
It is true that low-profile Mr Matheson inherited many of the seemingly intractable problems with the single force – but never at any point has he appeared to take full responsibility for the appalling mess on his watch.
Professor Deacon has an unenviable job, but her first task must be shoring up public faith in a vital institution that continues to pay the price for botched political reform.
