THE criticism that has been levelled at SNP members in recent days is most unfair ("Committees curbed by 'cult of slavishness'", The Herald, May 14).
The Public Audit Committee had four private sessions, on March 19, March 26, April 23 and May 7 to consider the report on police reform. We recognised there were different views from members and to fairly represent this, the committee took the unprecedented step of including an annexe with a minority statement, which is a first draft of the committee report prior to scrutiny from committee members. In taking the reasonable and accommodating position of allowing this annexe to be included, we enabled the different views of members as part of parliamentary scrutiny to be publicly represented.
The minority statement included as an annexe is a first draft of the committee report from March 19. The committee process, and an important part of parliamentary scrutiny, involves elected members discussing and redrafting committee reports and therefore changes were made to this first draft report during the committee consideration on the dates above. Also, this minority statement is now significantly out of date - for example, it calls for a financial strategy and corporate strategy to be published. Police Scotland's finance strategy and corporate strategy were endorsed at the SPA Board meeting on March 26. It also argues that savings are not sustainable, when it has been confirmed that savings for the first year have been delivered.
I take my role as a member of the Public Audit Committee very seriously, and as part of this report on police reform there are a number of constructive comments from the committee which I hope the Scottish Government will carefully consider.
Willie Coffey,
SNP MSP, Kilmarnock & Irvine Valley,
53 Titchfield Street,
Kilmarnock.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article