General Policing Issues

Scottish Budget Update

Police and Pensions Funding

Yesterday in Parliament, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Development, John Swinney MSP, tabled an amendment to the Budget which will increase the funding available for the recruitment of additional police officers. The amendment will, of course, be subject to approval by the Parliament.

Last November, Mr MacAskill announced an investment of £54m over the next three years to support additional recruitment, building capacity at a national level as well as supporting key retention and redeployment initiatives. This included direct funding of an additional 500 officers. As he said at the time, this was a first step towards achieving the Government's commitment to deliver a more visible policing presence on Scotland 's streets and make an additional 1,000 officers available in our communities.

The Government's amendment, if passed, will see £10m added to the Police Central Government budget for 2008-09 which, together with additional amounts of £13m and £17m being made available in 2009-10 and 2010-11 will allow for the recruitment of a further 500 officers by March 2011. Taken together with the plans already announced, this means that the Government will be directly funding the recruitment of an additional 1,000 police officers by March 2011.  The management arrangements for these extra resources will remain the same as for the first tranche, with the Government directly reimbursing forces for the additional recruits and overall delivery of the commitment under the scrutiny of the additional capacity programme board.

The vote on the Budget will be held next Thursday.  At Stage 2 last week, the SNP, Conservatives and Margo MacDonald MSP voted for, Labour and Liberal Democrats voted against and the Greens abstained resulting in a vote for the general principles 64-62. The Greens have said they will either vote for or against the Budget next week and if they vote against it would be 64-64.  In that event the Presiding Officer is expected to vote for the status quo which in effect is last year's budget and the Government would have to propose another budget. It is clear therefore that while yesterday's developments are welcome, we do not have a positive result as yet.

Police Pension Funding

You will have seen some media coverage reporting concern over funding for police pensions. In Parliament yesterday, Pauline McNeill MSP asked Mr Swinney about funding for pensions.  She said that in Strathclyde alone, the pensions shortfall was in excess of £50 million over the next 3 years.  Mr Swinney replied that as he'd said on 13 December, funding for pensions was included in the local authority settlement and it was for police boards to negotiate with constituent councils to ensure police pensions were provided for.

We do not have sufficient information to bottom this out. In previous Spending Reviews the full cost of pensions was included in the allocation of resources to the police service. Now that the money for pensions is, apparently, included in the local authority settlement, we do not have the information which would allow us to confirm that.  C learly local authorities have financial pressures beyond police pensions and this is where the concern lies.