Senior police figures are calling for the resignation of Scotland’s chief constable amid a growing political crisis over a series of allegations of misconduct.
Phil Gormley, who leads Police Scotland, has been on special leave since July pending the investigation of the claims. He has denied any wrongdoing.
But after the seventh in a string of misconduct allegations was filed against him this week and his wife Claire published a furious defence in the Scottish Daily Mail claiming he had been subjected to anti-English prejudice, he faced fresh calls to stand down.
The former chief superintendent of Strathclyde, Niven Rennie, told the Guardian: “For the good of Scottish policing it would be probably best if he were to say, ‘I’m going to fall on my sword and go’. The longer he hangs on, the more damage it does to policing in Scotland.”
Also this week, the Scottish government’s justice secretary stands accused of improper interference in Gormley’s return to work – after a turbulent few months in which four other officers have been suspended as part of a criminal inquiry.
Adding to the tumult, four other senior officers have been suspended in recent months, two as part of a criminal inquiry into the unauthorised use of a police firing range. The general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, Calum Steele, said the morale of his members was not significantly affected by high-level suspensions, but added that the Scottish Police Authority needed to turn it’s attention to appointing a new chief constable “very quickly indeed”.
“Regardless of what happens with the misconduct process, Phil Gormley was given a three year contract, and there is now less than a year of that to run. So regardless of whether he comes back to work or not it is inevitable that in the very near future the SPA will be advertising for a new chief constable.”
In the Scottish Daily Mail article, Claire Gormley – herself a retired senior police officer – claimed her husband had been treated as an “outsider” because he “doesn’t have a Scottish accent, he was born in Surrey not Stirling”. Steele said the intervention was “unedifying” and suggested that Gormley’s leave has created a “domino effect ... I am of no doubt that I have members that are suspended from duty only because more senior officers are suspended.”
In a further escalation, the former chair of the SPA told a Holyrood committee on Thursday that he felt he had “no choice” but to reverse the decision of his independent board to allow Gormley to return to work last November after the justice secretary, Michael Matheson, told him it was “a bad decision”.
Gormley’s lawyer has previously accused Matheson of acting “unlawfully” in intervening in a decision of a supposedly autonomous oversight body, but the justice secretary has insisted that he was simply questioning “clear deficiencies” in the decision-making process. On Tuesday, the new chair of the SPA, Susan Deacon, backed Matheson in the ongoing row, but Thursday’s committee revelations brought calls for him to consider his position.
The Scottish Conservatives’ shadow justice secretary, Liam Kerr, accepts that, with Matheson receiving backing from Nicola Sturgeon at Thursday’s first minister’s questions, in addition to Deacon’s support, he appears “pretty entrenched”. However, Kerr remains critical of the “manifest lack of transparency” apparently in Matheson’s dealings over the issue: “He hasn’t kept minutes of crucial meetings, and he hasn’t come before parliament until more than two weeks after a meeting took place about one of the most crucial decisions taken in relation to the police service”.
Steele insisted that, beyond the headlines, day to day policing is unaffected. “It is absolutely unfair to say there is a crisis in policing. In the papers it’s all about whether a minute was taken at a meeting: That is not indicative of problems with the police service, that’s indicative of a political drive to undermine policing.”
Rennie agreed, saying: “Even in the discussion about whether to have a national service, there was the concern that it would become political. It was the first big public sector reform by the SNP government. It then becomes a major plank of their policy and its up there for the Conservatives and the Labour party to shoot at. What’s getting lost is the good of the police service and the safety of the public.”
Since the unified force was created out of eight regional divisions in 2013, Police Scotland has faced criticism over a series of policing failures and controversies over civil liberties.
Kath Murray, the Edinburgh University researcher who exposed the force’s excessive stop and search policy in 2014, said: “After five difficult years, it is time to review the policing structure. While the recent events may have the feel of a soap opera, these revolve around exceptionally powerful state players. It’s also clear from the debacle over the chief constable’s return to work that the lines of accountability and governance remain blurred.”
•This article was edited to remove an erroneous suggestion that Mr Gormley was facing allegations relating to dishonesty and “high value items” bought for the force going missing. This allegation was incorrectly attributed to him due to an editing error.
•Mrs Gormley does not consider her statement that “It is very easy to attack the outsider, Phil doesn’t have a Scottish accent, he was born in Surrey not Stirling” to amount to a claim of anti-English prejudice within Police Scotland.
