The leading players in the row over police centralisation squared up in public for the first time, with the head of the Scottish Police Services Authority being labelled a "messenger boy" for civil servants.
Yesterday members of the Strathclyde joint police board unanimously rejected moves to place any further police functions under the "SPSA umbrella" and any attempts to create a single national police force.
It was revealed that Strathclyde has still not signed off the service level agreement with the authority on Information Computer Technology (ICT), despite the fact the services were transferred on April 1.
The force has also refused to sign off on the quality of forensic science services, 11 months after they were transferred to the new support agency, referred to yesterday as the "state police services authority".
A report by the board's audit sub-committee said it is "deeply concerned at the potential for failure of service delivery by the SPSA in the future leading to a serious impact on the continuing provision of an effective police service in Strathclyde".
Councillor Barbara Grant suggested the board needed to go over the head of David Mulhern, chief executive of the SPSA, and call in senior civil servants to ask them to explain the accountability of the authority.
"Mr Mulhern is really only their message boy," she said. "What we need to have is the head of the justice department answering these questions."
Established under the Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2006, the SPSA was set up 12 months ago to produce efficiency savings by centralising the provision and procurement of training, IT and forensic services.
It also maintains the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA), the country's leading crime fighting unit.
However, questions were raised about its efficiency last year when The Herald revealed that, unlike the police boards, it would not be VAT exempt and would incur extra charges of up to £5m a year.
Questions have also been raised about the interpretation of the legislation following the decision of Graeme Pearson, former head of the SCDEA, to take early retirement after complaints by politicians that the agency's autonomy had been compromised by the new authority.
Mr Mulhern yesterday explained that in relation to the procurement of ICT equipment, the authority might have found a way to avoid paying VAT but admitted that the authority paid VAT on its work last year.
"The preliminary response from HMRC was that they thought it was workable so we are quite hopeful," he said.Stephen House, the Chief Constable of Strathclyde, said: "We are looking at this in a positive manner and we are looking ahead rather than looking back to the quite torturous birth on the ICT side of it."On the question of police centralisation, Mervyn Rolfe, chair of the SPSA board, said: "SPSA is not actively seeking any expansion of services but we would be ready to accept any proposals by the Scottish Government, the forces, joint police boards and Cosla."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article