A TOP academic has accused police union officials of an "aggressive and angry" refusal to face up to racism claims.

Professor Peter Hopkins dismissed suggestions Police Scotland is not institutionally racist, adding: "Give us a break." He insisted racism and Islamophobia infiltrate all aspects of Scottish society, culture and politics.

It comes after Scottish Labour MSP Anas Sarwar became embroiled in a public spat with police union leaders after he said Scotland's stop and search statistics demonstrated "everyday racism".

Mr Hopkins, secretary of Mr Sarwar's cross-party group on tackling racism, spoke at a meeting alongside the MSP at the Scottish Labour conference.

He told delegates: "We need to create an open dialogue and conversation about racism and Islamophobia, rather than being touchy and defensive about it. The problem here is, to accuse Scottish people of being racist or Islamophobic is met at best with a touchy defensiveness. Or at worst, you get an aggressive and angry counter-narrative of denial - like the Scottish police claiming they are not institutionally racist. Give us a break. These responses close down the victims of racism and Islamophobia, and they leave them marginalised, silenced and suppressed. It really annoys me."

Mr Hopkins said Scotland needed to "take responsibility for itself".

He added: "The default position is that Scotland is naturally tolerant - everybody's friendly and understanding. Get over it. Scotland is not. I'm sick of hearing it. We need to stop displacing it. We need to admit that there's an issue. Everywhere you work, every place you go to you will find racism and Islamophobia."

Mr Hopkins, who is director of research for Geography at Newcastle University, said racism had been sidelined in Scotland because of a focus on sectarianism.

He added: "One of the issues that Scotland has, and I'm going to word this very carefully, is that there's minimal focus on racism and Islamophobia because of the sectarianism agenda.

"Now, I'm not saying that there's not an issue with sectarianism, let's just make that clear - there's a massive issue with sectarianism. But that doesn't mean that racism and Islamophobia are okay and there's not a problem with them".

Mr Sarwar sparked a furious row last week after he claimed government statistics showed ethnic minorities were four times more likely to be stopped by officers.

Senior figures in the Scottish Police Federation accused him of "playing the race card", and pointed out there were heavy caveats in the report he was quoting from.

But Mr Sarwar refused to back down, telling the Scottish Labour conference meeting: "I don't care what personal agenda they say I have, this agenda is personal to me."

David Hamilton, the vice chairman of the Scottish Police Federation, said Mr Hopkins' comments showed a "deep misunderstanding of the issue".

He said: "What we have been objecting to is the misuse of data in a particular report to suggest there's wider racism in the police. If people feel there is racism in the police, then we want to deal with that and get rid of it. But nobody had come forward with any details of that. Our response was not about saying there's no racism in the police. Our response was saying under no circumstances should you misuse data to say there is racism in the police."