THE evidence of detective chief inspector Paul Settle to the House of Commons' home affairs committee should trouble us all in Scotland (“First detective in Brittan inquiry feared a ‘baseless witch-hunt’”, The Herald, October 22).
Mr Settle gave evidence that the case against Lord Brittan “fell at the first hurdle”, but that as a result of an intervention by Tom Watson MP, his superiors in the Metropolitan Police were thrown into a “state of panic” and immediately ordered that the terminally ill peer be questioned.
If an opposition politician can have this effect on such a major police force, how much more susceptible must Police Scotland be to political pressure from the Scottish Government? Of course, some believe that the single police force was created for precisely that reason.
Evidence of the Scottish Government's authoritarian tendencies and contempt for civil liberties is all too plentiful. The most egregious example is the Named Person Scheme under which every family in Scotland is to be spied on and every parent treated as a suspect. Attempts to abolish corroboration in criminal trials, which has long protected us from miscarriages of justice, are another example.
The creation of Police Scotland was a mistake. If we value our liberty, we must re-establish regional constabularies, each with its own chief constable and accountable to its own elected police board.
Otto Inglis,
6 Inveralmond Grove, Edinburgh.
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