The SNP's pledge to provide 1000 extra officers by 2011 is set to fail, Scottish Labour warned yesterday prior to today's debate on community policing.
The SNP's pledge to provide 1000 extra officers by 2011 is set to fail, Scottish Labour warned yesterday prior to today's debate on community policing.
A letter from Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, to the Scottish Parliament's Justice Committee says that although he hoped that 1000 officers would be recruited, police authorities "face a number of challenges in maintaining and increasing numbers, not least the current high rate of retirals".
Scottish Government statistics indicate that between 600 and almost 800 officers leave the service every year either through retirement, resignation or ill health.
When the SNP made the pledge there were 16,236 officers in Scotland.
Paul Martin, Scottish Labour's Justice spokesman, said: "It's another day and another broken pledge from this SNP Government.
" Kenny MacAskill was happy to boast of his achievement of getting an extra 1000 officers before they were in place, but that means nothing until there are 17,236 officers in Scotland.
"There is a big difference between recruiting 1000 officers and ensuring that there are 1000 more officers by 2011. It appears that the SNP are just starting to understand that.
"Labour increased police officer numbers by 1500 when we were in power. We know what it takes to achieve that kind of change.
"Kenny MacAskill needs to come clean now and say if there will be 17,236 or more officers by May 2011 or not. The Scottish public are sick of his empty words."
Mr MacAskill's letter states: "Across the whole of Scotland, 150 centrally-funded officers were recruited in 2007/08 and an additional 450 will be recruited during this financial year. A further 200 officers will be recruited in each of the two subsequent years. "All of these officers are being fully funded by the Scottish Government and we have set aside £94m over the four years of this parliament for this."
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "We are well on track to meet our pledge of recruiting 1000 additional police officers over the course of this parliament.
"We are not just delivering on this but going substantially beyond it by also looking at recruitment, retention and redeployment."
