By 1919 staff
Scotland went to the polls this month to elect a new government that will be in charge of policing and justice for the next five years – so what is at stake for frontline officers?
The SNP won the election and will form the new Holyrood administration.
However, the party fell short of a majority and may therefore need to rely on other parties in key votes.
Ahead of the election, all the political parties published manifestos that outlined their vision, which we highlight below.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) also analysed all the manifestos and provided independent insight on economic policies, which we have summarised.
Justice and policing are devolved to the Scottish Parliament, which means the new crop of MSPs will set the £1.7 billion annual budget for Police Scotland.
This dictates how many officers are on the beat, and how much can be spent on stations and repairs.
Holyrood also makes laws that cops must enforce, and is responsible for addressing the mental health crisis that is taking up so much time for those on the front line.
There were six main parties contesting the election on May 7 – with the leaders sparring in a series of debates including one on STV hosted by Colin Mackay (main picture).
SNP
The SNP has pledged to maintain the highest number of officers per head of population in the UK.
While many of the policies in the manifesto reflect existing government commitments, it acknowledges the need for further reforms and improvements for the front line.
Key policies include:
- Reduce the hours police officers need to spend in courts and hospitals, including through the expansion of mental health triage cars when people are reported as being in mental health distress.
- Work with Police Scotland to assess the equipment police officers have, to ensure frontline emergency staff have the uniform and kit they need to face operational challenges.
- Increase police powers to confiscate and retain e-bikes and e-scooters that are being used antisocially or criminally.
- Provide £10 million over the next three years to tackle retail crime through Police Scotland’s Retail Crime Taskforce.
- Roll out ‘bleed kits’ to community settings and public areas, including high schools, supermarkets, community centres and parks, which can be used in the event of a stabbing or car accident.
- Fund two new prisons to open in the next parliamentary term.
- Invest in community sentencing as an alternative to prison, improving early intervention measures, increasing bail support, and using GPS technology for home detention.
- Increase the use of football banning orders so that they can be used in a targeted way to tackle dangerous and abusive behaviour.
IFS overall verdict: “Fails to properly confront the fiscal implications of its plans… paying for these plans would require further tax rises or deeper cuts to lower-priority spending.”
Scottish Conservatives
The Scottish Conservatives’ manifesto focuses on tougher punishments and sentences for criminals. But it also addresses the financial challenges facing the force.
Key policies include:
- Protect police and fire service budgets so that they at least rise with inflation in every year of the next Scottish Parliament.
- Set targets that would increase police patrols on Scotland’s streets.
- Prevent the closure of operational police stations over the next five years.
- Stop police from being the default responder to mental health incidents, by implementing the ‘right care, right person’ model.
- Require that Police Scotland stops recording non-crime hate incidents and repeal the Hate Crime Act, with crimes motivated by prejudice being punished through statutory aggravators instead.
- Give police enhanced stop-and-search powers for under-18s to prevent knife crime, with those repeatedly caught in possession of knives getting a mandatory minimum sentence of six months in prison.
- End early-release schemes and require criminals to serve prison sentences in full.
IFS overall verdict: “Big tax cuts… which may not survive contact with reality.”
Labour
Scottish Labour’s manifesto advocates returning officers to the front line and cutting the time they spend waiting to give evidence to court or on mental health callouts.
It states that a “lack of a local police presence” means that many crimes “go uninvestigated and unpunished”.
Key policies include:
- Give every neighbourhood a named community and crime prevention officer.
- Create a new emergency mental health response service, staffed by paramedics and mental health professionals, so people in mental health crisis get specialist NHS care, and reduce the hours officers spend on non-police work.
- Set up a new trauma support service for police officers, to help them deal with the pressures of the job and reduce sickness levels.
- Drive technological improvements across Police Scotland, including finishing the rollout of body-worn cameras.
- Ensure that fingerprints are recorded at the time of arrest for better UK-wide collaboration, and fast-track work on the digitisation of evidence across the justice system.
- Legislate for tougher regulations on the sale of knives, remove free bus passes from those who carry out antisocial behaviour, and prosecute shoplifting. Introduce football banning orders for pyrotechnics.
- Crack down on drug dealing by properly resourcing Police Scotland’s organised crime teams, and using technology to prevent supply to prisons.
- Crush illegal e-bikes, using drone technology to trace unlicensed ones for seizure, and grant the police powers to issue warnings and fines for dangerous use of motorised and e-bikes in pedestrian and residential areas.
IFS overall verdict: “Lack of big unfunded new commitments is welcome… [but] its ambitions for priority services would still probably require some combination of cuts to other services, increases in taxes, or improvements in public sector productivity.”
Scottish Greens
In its chapter on justice, the Scottish Greens’ manifesto only lists a handful of policies specifically relating to frontline policing.
The most relevant pledges are a commitment to transfer mental health crisis responses away from officers, and to ensure that the force has enough resources to tackle both serious organised crime and cyber-crime.
Key policies include:
- Reduce police callouts and implement a trauma-informed approach by transferring mental health crisis responses from Police Scotland to properly funded community crisis services.
- Ensure police resources are effective at tackling both serious organised crime and cyber-crime.
- Introduce mandatory autism and ADHD training for police and justice services.
- Create a citizens’ assembly to develop proposals to reform the justice system, including the transformation of police and prison services in line with the party’s principles of rights-based and prevention-focused public services.
- Reduce the prison population by investing in community justice, addressing trauma, tackling inequality, and ensuring every sentence has a clear purpose.
- Expand the presumption against short prison sentences, particularly for non-violent offenders, and introduce a legal presumption against remand.
- Decriminalise sex work.
- Review the effectiveness of the Hate Crime (Scotland) Act alongside police and justice practices.
IFS overall verdict: “Welcome to see a party that plans substantial spending increases combine them with a recognition that this would need higher revenues too… [but] increases in taxes would probably have to be even larger than suggested.”
Scottish Liberal Democrats
The Lib Dems’ document places a strong emphasis on preventing crime, reforming local policing, and cutting reoffending through community sentences, better mental health support, and stronger rehabilitation.
While there are no specific commitments to increase Police Scotland’s budget or officer numbers, it includes a number of pledges relevant to frontline policing and accountability.
Key policies include:
- Ensure police and staff have the resources they need to attend incidents, solve problems early, and gather intelligence.
- Reduce police time spent on administrative tasks by cutting back their role in issuing court citations, improving trial scheduling, and expanding remote evidence.
- Expand specialist mental health support alongside police, as part of wider plans to improve crisis response.
- Increase investment in the Retail Crime Taskforce to support responsive community policing and preventative measures based on intelligence.
- Tighten regulations on knife sales to reduce theft and misuse.
- Strengthen local accountability in policing by requiring local policing plans to be approved by elected representatives and reforming appointments to the Scottish Police Authority.
- Prevent the “demise” of the Special Constabulary.
- Update the law to presume perpetrators leave the home in domestic abuse cases.
IFS overall verdict: “Relatively pared-back plans would create the least additional pressure on the Scottish budget.”
Reform UK
At just 23 pages, Reform UK published by far the shortest manifesto of the campaign, focusing less on specific policies and more on key economic ideas such as reducing income tax.
Cutting tax rates would give a police constable with five years of service an extra £695 a year in take-home pay, while a newly-promoted sergeant would have an extra £2,111, the party claimed – alongside a possible increase in salaries.
Key policies include:
- Immediately look into increasing police pay “across the board”.
- Align Scotland’s six income tax bands with the three used in the rest of the UK, with a medium-term goal to set these rates 3p below the rest of the UK.
- Give officers the “right funding, equipment and infrastructure”.
- “Reduce the police workload”.
- Abolish the Hate Crime Act and “restore” freedom of speech.
- Increase prison capacity to “unclog the justice system as a whole”.
- Ensure that police prioritise the shoplifting “epidemic”.
IFS overall verdict: “Not credible… a mirage created by a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the current devolution settlement.”
