English police must retain democratic accountability

Many good people have served on the Scottish Police Authority, but none have had a democratic mandate.

This is the subject of my column, out in today's Scotsman (3 Feb 2026).

There’s no doubt that police reforms in England and Wales are long overdue. Last reorganised in the 1960s, various attempts to overhaul structures have been successfully nudged into the long grass.

Now we have another bold new vision. Don’t hold your breath, but if this initiative does go ahead, I hope our neighbours can learn from our triumphs and disasters.

First, let’s dispense with some of the ‘smoke and mirrors’. The new ‘British FBI’ – formed by combining the National Crime Agency, national anti-terrorist branch and regional crime squads – is a rebadging, pure and simple. All these agencies already work seamlessly together.

Likewise the ‘new’ power to dismiss Chief Constables is anything but. Police authorities have always been able to dismiss chiefs for ‘limited efficiency’, but of course they need evidence, not just political whim.

However, there are important proposals in the new plan, not least the splitting of the police service into two tiers: the national force, tackling serious crime, and regional forces dealing with less serious offences.

Having a single tier of policing has always been a strength of the British model and we should beware moving away from it. We just need to look across the Atlantic to Minnesota to see what can happen when different tiers of law enforcement don’t work in harmony.

That’s not the only risk. If local policing entities are formed, they must not be seen as a pool of resources to be drained whenever there are shortages on the national side. One of the failings of the current model is the stripping out of community policing. We should not repeat that mistake.

So, what can England and Wales learn from the formation of Police Scotland ten years ago? The first lesson must be about funding. If the new plan is motivated by cost savings, it won’t work.

The restructured Police Scotland has now seen close to £2 billion stripped from its budget since its formation. This bleeding of resources has seriously affected the force’s ability to achieve its potential. Large-scale restructuring of public bodies can bring long-term savings, but in the first instance a spend-to-save approach may be needed.

The second major learning point is democratic accountability. In the old Scottish and existing English models, local police boards of elected politicians direct policy while the Chief Constable retains operational autonomy.

When Police Scotland was created, the old boards were ditched and replaced by the Scottish Police Authority, whose members are appointed by the Scottish Government. Many good people have served on the SPA over the years but none have had a democratic mandate or been accountable to the communities who pay for their police service.

The gap between locally elected politicians and their policing has been hard to bridge. We can only hope that England and Wales learn from this and do not repeat the mistake.

Lastly, it must be remembered that policing is but one component in the larger criminal justice system. Reforming the police without also addressing the court, prison and criminal justice social work services will miss the point and reduce the benefits.

Police reform in England and Wales is long overdue, and there are lessons, good and bad, to be learned from our experience in Scotland.