Chamber and committees

Lynn Brown, I will stay with you if you do not mind. What impact will flat cash or a 3 per cent reduction have on the chief constable’s three-year plan?

You have mentioned the domestic abuse protection legislation as incurring a cost, and you have talked about the age of criminal responsibility legislation. Within the relevant financial memoranda, there will have been a prediction of what the cost of that legislation would be for policing.

I am very grateful to you all for those answers.

If I may, I would like to come back to the question of the impact—the point is well made—and I will ask a question to DCC Connors in a second.

Chief constable, you made projections based on a flat cash settlement and on a 3 per cent cash reduction. However, there are on-going pay claims. Can you advise where we are on the settlement of those claims? In any event, what impact could any such settlement have on your projections by March 2026?

Only that it would have been awkward if everyone had not agreed to that. I am delighted to be back and very pleased to see so many familiar faces and so much expertise on the witness panel. It is going to be very enjoyable and I am delighted to be here.

I was very interested in the part of your submission in which you stated that the

“financial implications of current legislation is significantly higher than we are able to absorb within our BAU activity”—

that is, your business-as-usual activity. Many parliamentarians, especially those on the Finance and Public Administration Committee, have been increasingly concerned about that issue, so I was particularly interested in what you said.

Is the cost of that legislation broadly what was predicted in the financial memoranda to the relevant bills at the time? In any event, given that you have built the costs of meeting those demands into your budget ask, what will happen if the Scottish Government does not cover that?

Let me press you on one point. I appreciate that you might not be in a position to answer this question; I might put it to the SPA later. In its financial memoranda to the legislation in question, did Parliament accurately predict the cost to policing? If not, there is something going wrong at this end.

Good morning. I will move to the resource budget. Chief constable, the Scottish Government asked you to model two scenarios, one in which you receive a flat cash settlement and one in which there is a 3 per cent cash reduction. In your submission, you said that a flat cash settlement would mean that officer numbers could drop to 15,100 and that a 3 per cent cash reduction would

“see police officer numbers drop below 15,000.”

How inevitable is that? If the budget shows, for example, flat cash, is that the number of officers that we will see by March 2026?

I would like to hear Martyn Evans’s thoughts on a matter that I put to the chief constable earlier. You will have seen that, in its written submission, Police Scotland said:

“The financial implications of current legislation is significantly higher than we are able to absorb within our BAU activity.”

Do you know whether those financial implications were adequately predicted in the financial memoranda at the time, or did the Parliament pass legislation without fully appreciating, or perhaps understanding, the financial implications of the legislation on Police Scotland?

I am grateful, convener. Good morning.

On a similar note, you heard me ask earlier about the two scenarios that have been modelled: the flat cash settlement that could result in 1,300 fewer officers, and the 3 per cent cash reduction, which the Police Scotland submission suggests could take the number of officers below 15,000. How inevitable is that outcome? For example, if I see flat cash in the budget, will I then see 1,300 fewer officers by March 2026?