SENIOR prosecutors, criminal justice experts and policing watchdogs and reformers have been named as the first £300-a-day members of the Scottish Police Authority (SPA).
The SPA will hold the new Police Service of Scotland and its chief constable to account from April 1.
All 12 members have been appointed for four years and will take up posts this month, with the SPA having the option of appointing another two in due course.
Its initial tasks will be to consult on a strategic plan for how Scotland will be policed, and agree how the public money spent on policing is allocated.
According to the Scottish Government, all appointments were made on merit, with political activity playing no part in the selection process. However, all appointees' political activity had to be made public.
The members include Morag McLaughlin, head of both the High Court Unit at the Crown Office and Policy for the Crown, as well as area procurator-fiscal for Grampian and Lothian and Borders; David Hume, the recently retired chief executive of Borders Council; former Strathclyde Police Authority chairman and Glasgow City Council treasurer Paul Rooney; his counterpart at Lothian and Borders Police Board Iain Whyte; and Jeane Freeman, a board member of the Scottish Police Services Authority and a member of the Judicial Appointments Board for Scotland.
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