POLICE Scotland’s oversight body has been heavily criticised for using a gagging order to stop a whistleblower airing allegations about possible crime within the organisation.
The Scottish Police Authority (SPA), which has previously been condemned for secrecy, has secured an anonymity order to keep names under wraps an employment tribunal.
The tribunal will hear claims from an SPA employee about possible misuse of public funds.
The whistleblower charity Public Concern at Work (PCaW), which has contested the order, accused the SPA of trying to shield itself from “embarrassment”.
The order was applied for before Susan Deacon became the new SPA chair in December.
However SNP MSP Alex Neil, who criticised the SPA’s previous leadership for Kremlin-like secrecy, urged her to abandon it and not repeat the mistakes of the previous regime.
He said: “Susan Deacon should ask the [tribunal] judge to reverse the anonymity order because it runs contrary to everything the Parliament expects in this area.
“The SPA has in the past been run as a secret society and it is a very good opportunity for Susan to send a loud and clear message that the SPA has changed."
PCaW chief executive Francesca West said the order blocked the release of “the names of individuals connected with the alleged wrongdoing”.
She said: “The public have a right to know about matters of misuse of public funds - particularly in the case of sizeable sums of money. Unfortunately our application for the anonymisation order to be lifted was refused and we are considering appealing.”
An SPA spokesperson said: “Confidentiality within an ongoing legal process is appropriate and we will not comment on an individual case.”
The chair of Holyrood’s policing committee is also facing criticism over his apparent failure to declare a previous relationship with Scotland’s acting chief constable, Iain Livingstone.
Scottish Green MSP John Finnie question Mr Livingstone when he gave evidence to his justice sub-committee in September, and at the full justice committee in January.
However there is no public record of him telling MSPs that he represented Mr Livingstone at a disciplinary tribunal in his previous career with the Scottish Police Federation.
Mr Livingstone was accused of sexual assault by a female officer after a drunken party at the police training college in Tulliallan in 2000.
Five allegations of sexual assault were dropped at an internal hearing in June 2004, but Mr Livingstone admitted falling asleep uninvited in the woman’s room.
He was demoted four ranks from superintendent to constable in the then Lothian & Borders force, and his salary was cut from £56,000 to £25,000, but he was reinstated on appeal.
Mr Finnie said at the time it showed how the complaints system “can be abused”.
Labour MSP Daniel Johnson said: “I am alarmed he did not see fit to declare this link with the acting chief constable. I would urge him to correct the record.”
A Green spokesperson said: “The Parliament’s guidance on declarations is rigorously followed by all of our MSPs, including on this particular meeting of the justice committee.”
Meanwhile, former SPA board member Moil Ali is lobbying MSPs to change the allow to stop misconduct probes into senior police officers being dropped when they leave the force.
South of the border, officers can be pursued for gross misconduct after they resign or retire.
But in Scotland, the police watchdog drops its investigations, as happened earlier this month when Chief Constable Phil Gormley quit while facing five misconduct probes.
Ms Ali, who is using Holyrood’s petitions committee to push for the Scottish regulations to match those in England and Wales, said the current system made “no sense”.
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