Ms Evans has raised a couple of points that I hope I can clarify. The first is about ethos, and Mr Crowther is correct to say that there is a very strong ethos in the BTP, which we would want to retain. However, Police Scotland has the same ethos across the whole force area. It is about keeping people safe and protecting Scotland’s communities, which is the same as the BTP’s desire to protect the travelling public in Scotland. One of Police Scotland’s strengths is not necessarily our single ethos or aim of keeping people safe, but the multiple cultures that we have within the organisation. The culture of policing in Mr Finnie’s area, in the Highlands and Islands, is completely different from the culture of policing in Glasgow city centre or Edinburgh city centre, and the culture in my firearms unit will be different from the culture of our community safety officers. The diversity of cultures within policing is a strength, because it reflects the communities that we serve right across a third of the UK land mass.
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We will be embracing what is clearly excellent good practice within the BTP and unashamedly squeezing it in relation to how fatalities and crimes on the line are dealt with. There is no doubt that the BTP can have the line opened up again within 90 minutes; there has to be some learning from that. It is not about bringing the BTP into Police Scotland and throwing out everything that it has done over the past couple of hundred years—that would be foolish.
Let me give some assurance around that. When the forces merged to form Police Scotland, the smallest force in the UK was Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, which had the best process for dealing with licensing inquiries. Although that is not my area of responsibility, I understand that the processes that were used in Dumfries and Galloway have now been rolled out right across the nation. That is evidence that we look to see where the best practice is taking place, and we roll it out.
On training, should the will of Parliament be to pass the bill, we will run an upskilling programme for existing officers; in addition, we will extend the initial probationary period for every new recruit to Police Scotland from 11 weeks to 13 or 14 weeks, to incorporate the additional training that current BTP students studying at the police college at Tulliallan receive once they have passed their Scottish training. It is correct that, post 2019, every Police Scotland officer will be trained in policing the railways.
I am not making light of the task and how it would be achieved. We would rely heavily on the BTP to support us in delivering that training and making sure that it was fit for purpose. However, that would be our plan, and ultimately it would mean that pretty much every officer in Scotland would have some knowledge of how to police the railways. A great many officers, over and above those who are deployed full time within the transport environment, will have specific and specialist knowledge.