Chamber and committees

So, you do not send every complaint to the PIRC. You filter out the ones that you think comply with—

An issue that has come up a few times is that police officers are not always notified at the time of the detail of the allegations against them.

Good morning. Thank you for your evidence; it has been helpful to hear it.

You have partially answered some of my questions, which are around time limits and getting the balance right. The committee does not have a lot of information about the categories of complaints against police officers—we are a wee bit in the dark—but there are two scenarios that I can think of. If we insisted that the Government attach time limits, would that undermine the provisions in the bill?

The idea of extending proceedings against former police officers up to 12 months, or beyond if the PIRC thought it was proportionate to do so, seems to be generally welcomed. However, those police officers might have sought other employment and gone on to new lives during that time. Notwithstanding what you said about the possible complexity of the cases, would setting some time limits undermine the new provision?

I would have thought that those were quite simple matters to deal with, although I do not know. I am thinking about serving police officers. We have heard about many instances in which it has taken up to two years to deal with such matters. To me, as a layperson, it seems a simple matter that should not take two years. We are trying to strike the balance of fairness. Despite what you have said about the power of police officers, it seems an awful long time to have a case hanging over them, so time limits might be appropriate in simple cases.

Thank you.

It is when a case goes to the procurator fiscal that it can take up to six months, although the times are getting better.

I am thinking that complaints of assault against police officers must be quite common.

We heard from the PIRC yesterday that it has a target of up to 90 days, and it seems to be meeting that.

It is good to know that you are meeting the 90-day target. Is it fair to say that the PIRC does a lot of the work in preparing reports for the Crown?

In the case of an accusation of assault—I thought that a typical accusation might be, “When you handcuffed me, you actually assaulted me” or something like that—why would it take six months for the Crown to duly decide on sufficiency of evidence in what is quite a simple case?

That makes sense. Thank you very much.