You have raised a number of points, which I will try to cover.
We are very keen to work with the SSPCA as partners. At the moment, the SSPCA brings a lot of expertise and resource to wildlife crime investigation. We have suggested areas in which its powers could be enhanced. However, that anecdote about Dave Thomson’s experience of water bailiffs highlights an issue that concerns us, which is that the SSPCA is not well equipped as an organisation to take on powers of the nature and strength that are proposed in the consultation.
The world has changed quite dramatically in the past few years. When, as an investigating agency, the police uses its powers to interfere with people’s lives in any way—whether that is through the seizure of property, or by preventing people from going about their business or being at liberty—we are subject to strong scrutiny measures and an increasing legislative framework. That directs the way in which we use those powers. Rigorous measures are put in place to capture and record how that is done.
The example of water bailiffs probably illustrates a good reason why we would not want to move towards anything akin to that in another organisation. I take the point that you are not making a comparison with the SSPCA. However, you will see from Police Scotland’s written response to the consultation that we would have concerns that the same level of scrutiny, governance and accountability—in a day-to-day sense and an organisational sense—that sit over Police Scotland in its use of various powers and the discretion that it applies, and the independent scrutiny of how we utilise those powers, would not be in place for the SSPCA. Our concerns are based on all the work that we have done recently, for example on how we conduct ourselves as an organisation, or on the issue of people coming into custody or having their liberty taken from them—in other words, not being free to go about their movements. We have presented some cases where that is applicable.
The final point is about the overall resource. You mentioned some types of crime in which there is a higher detection rate. Those include not only salmon and sea trout poaching offences, but poaching in general. However, crime is not exclusive to those areas, and those areas are not exclusively more likely to be detected because of the presence of, for instance, water bailiffs. They are offences that are more easily detectable than some of the other crimes that we have been talking about, because they tend to happen in specific locations that can be easily targeted. They tend to come to the attention of members of the public more readily, as well as of people who are specifically focused on those crimes, such as water bailiffs.
Then there are the other types of offences. We have just had a series of discussions about the events round about Conon Bridge, which are far less likely to be detected. Indeed, I do not think that giving the SSPCA additional powers would lend any additional support to such offences being either detected or recorded in higher numbers.
The SSPCA suggests that it has about 60 officers who it could put to the work, but I do not think that those officers are currently underdeployed or sitting free. In the scheme of the commitments that Police Scotland is able to make, and the numbers of officers that we have, those additional numbers would not outweigh or counterbalance our concerns about those powers being given to the SSPCA.
We appreciate that there is a difference of view. We have to work through that with the SSPCA and continue all the good work that we do with them, but that difference is based on a foundation of principle and our understanding of where we can most constructively and properly work together.