THE police watchdog has called for a debate on whether officers should carry body-mounted digital cameras.

Fresh from facing claims the public should have had a bigger say on recent changes to gun tactics, the watchdog's head said the cameras marked such a change in the culture of law enforcement that there should be widespread community consultation on their roll-out.

Last week it was revealed that Police Scotland had concerns that the way it used the body-mounted CCTV system may fail to meet data protection laws.

The cameras are currently only widely used in the north-east, and the new national force is looking at whether it should expand them to the rest of the country.

However, Vic Emery, chairman of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), said this decision could not be left to the police alone.

He said: "The days of a passive public taking the actions of any public service on trust are long gone. Communities want a say in how services are designed around their needs. This a technology that is being used in many parts of the world, and has been trialled here in Scotland.

"There will be a legitimate professional view on whether greater use of this technology would make a contribution to keeping both officers and members of the public safe.

"For the SPA, any significant expansion of a technology like this would require to be assessed on its wider impact - not just its affordability - and also on the relationship between officers and the law-abiding public, as well as between an officer and the minority who offend; and also on the impact on community perceptions of the police and on human rights and equalities implications.

"Ensuring the public voice is appropriately considered is fundamentally good governance. But in policing, it is much more than that. It is at the heart of strengthening the principle of policing by consent."

The old Grampian force ­introduced bodycams shortly before Police Scotland was created. Other pilot schemes have been launched in England.

The Met rolled out 500 such cameras this summer with David Davis, the former shadow Home Secretary, saying they could have prevented controversies such as Plebgate.

His theory, and that of many other advocates of the technology, is that such CCTV settles any dispute between police and the public, such as the altercation when Tory whip Andrew Mitchell allegedly called an officer on guard at Downing Street a "pleb".

However, there are concerns within policing that such cameras change the way members of the public relate to officers.

There are also worries about how images are stored and even over who owns them.