Chamber and committees

All companies when applying for RSA have to meet the scheme criteria before grant is offered. Criteria include viability, economic efficiency and the demonstration of the need for grant. Need for assistance can be demonstrated in a number of ways including filling a funding gap, return on investment, risk reduction and choice of location.

RSA will not be offered if we believe a project would proceed in an Assisted Area regardless of our involvement.

In his statement the Deputy First Ministermade clear that the Scottish Executive would support the ACPOS PresidentialReview which took responsibility for implementing HMIC’s recommendations. Healso indicated that the ACPOS Presidential Review would consider the positionof the four fingerprint officers concerned.

In a statement on the sameday the Lord Advocate indicated that an independent external check wouldbe carried out in all current and future cases where fingerprint evidence wassubmitted by SCRO. In July 2001 the Lord Advocate decided that independentverification of SCRO fingerprint evidence was no longer required.  In theprevious 13 months over 1,700 cases were reviewed and in each case the accuracyof the identification was confirmed.

In August 2000, thePresident of ACPOS and the Chairman of SCRO’s Executive Committee concludedthat the four members of staff should be suspended on a precautionary basis. Anad hoc investigation and disciplinary procedure was carried out and inMarch 2002 the SCRO Scrutiny Committee announced that no disciplinary actionwould be taken. The four officers returned to work in on 9 April 2002 on aphased return basis, moving to full-time working from March 2003.

The full HMIC report ScottishCriminal Record Office: The Fingerprint Bureau Primary Inspection 2000 (availableon the Scottish Executive website) contained 25 recommendations and 20suggestions and was published on 14 September 2000. The recommendationscovered a range of issues including the need for improvements in training,testing and quality assurance measures, consideration of a national fingerprintservice, move towards the introduction of a different evidential standard forfingerprints in Scotland, strengthening the administrative support for thefingerprint service and setting up a task force to take forward the changesrecommended. All of the recommendations and suggestions have been successfully implemented.

Following therecommendations in this report and the ACPOS Presidential Review, the SCROExecutive Committee, senior management at SCRO and the Scottish Executive haveput in place an extensive programme of change management.

This has included:

Appointing a Head ofScottish Fingerprint Service in April 2001 to lead the work to establish the Scottish Fingerprint Service (SFS) based on 4 bureaux in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen.The model was approved in principle by the SCRO Executive Committee in June2001 and rationalisation of the existing structure commenced.  This work wascompleted in early 2002;

Relocating SCRO and the Glasgowfingerprint bureau from Strathclyde Police Headquarters to Pacific Quay.  Thiswas intended to help create a distinct and independent corporate identity forSCRO and the SFS; 

The SFS uses theinternationally accepted process of identification which conforms to thescientific principles of analyse, compare, evaluate, verify (ACE V) withverification by two fingerprint experts following the initial expertidentification. Enhanced independent verification was introduced. Only afterthe independent verification procedure is complete will an identification beintimated to the police investigating officer and the Procurator Fiscal Servicefor their consideration in any court proceedings;

Quality assurance andtraining officers have been in post at Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh bureaux since 2002. Within the Glasgowbureau the roles of quality assurance and training are separated with distinctstaff employed in each area.;

All four bureaux have beenaccredited to ISO9001:2000, an internationally recognised quality managementsystem, since 2004. The system entails independent external audits conducted ona six-monthly basis and an internal audit regime managed by the bureau quality assurancemanager;

All fingerprint experts inthe SFS Glasgow Fingerprint Bureau have been subject to external annualcompetency testing since 2001. This was introduced in the three other bureauxin 2002. The external testing is provided by Collaborative Testing Services, aUSA-based forensic testing service;

All experts have beensubject to a continuous professional development programme since 2003. By 200486% of experts were accredited by the Council for the Registration of ForensicPractitioners. To achieve expert status in Scotland all experts must beexternally assessed as competent in their ability to explain theiridentifications. As part of the SFS common training policy this assessment iscarried out by Centrex National Training Centre for Scientific Support (NTC),based at Durham. The NTC provide this external assessment forbureaux across the UK. Training in the non-numeric standard and court roompractice has been in place since 2003;

Court skills trainingsessions facilitated by Bond Solon, the UK’s recognised leading provider of training in thisarea, are attended by experts from across the four bureaux;

National Guidance onFingerprint Standards and Procedures was published in 2003;

Robust arrangements formonitoring sick leave and providing management support for staff have beenintroduced. This includes access to an occupational health service and anexternal employee assistance programme provided by Independent Counselling andAdvisory Service Ltd; and

New governance arrangementsfor SCRO were put in place in April 2004 with the establishment of the CommonPolice Services Programme Board to oversee the existing common police servicesand to manage the transition to the establishment of the planned ScottishPolice Services Authority.

In the Scottish CriminalRecord Office Primary Inspection 2004 published on 17 March 2005 (availableon the Scottish Executive website), HMCIC welcomed the extent of progress sincethe Primary Inspection of the Glasgow Fingerprint Bureau in 2000 and he discharged all the outstanding recommendations andsuggestions from that Inspectionalthough he noted that further work was needed to achieve total integration of the Scottish Fingerprint Service. Hefurther concluded that SCRO was overall efficient and effective.

The Police, Public Order andCriminal Justice (Scotland) Bill, currently before Parliament, includesprovisions to establish a new Scottish Police Services Authority to deliver arange of central services to the police service in Scotland.The SCRO and the SFS will be an integral part of that organisation which is dueto become operational in April 2007.

The likelyfuture number of prisoners we wish to hold in open conditions is one factortaken into account when we periodically assess the future size and shape of theprison estate. Prisoners are only considered eligible for the open estate aftera rigorous individual assessment of their suitability for open conditions. Irefer the member to the answer to S2W-20543 answered on 21 November 2005, for details. Places in the open estate are restricted andtherefore a prisoner who meets the criteria set out in S2W-20543 must wait foran available place before he can transfer.  The prospect of a transfer, oncethe person has met the relevant criteria, acts as an incentive to goodbehaviour.

All answers towritten parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, thesearch facility for which can be found at:

I am very concerned about the continued delays in delivering this much-needed facility. The Executive’s grant is available until the end of March 2007, and I therefore expect construction to begin shortly to ensure completion by then.