Ten days ago, a small blue car crashed just off the M9 near Stirling. A call was made to the Police reporting the incident. Nothing was done for three days. The driver of the car, John Yuill, was already dead. His partner, Lamara Bell was still alive but, sadly, she too died on Sunday.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie is one of the MSPs for the area. He has called for a comprehensive and wide-ranging enquiry to which all police staff should be free to contribute without fear of repercussions. He is concerned at attempts by the Chief Constable to pre-judge the existing smaller scale enquiry. Sir Stephen House apologised for Police Scotland’s failures but made it sound as though the fault was down to an individual. That seems to me to be grossly unfair to a member of staff. We know that pressure on staff has increased as control rooms have been closed and we need to look properly at the impact that these measures have had on staff wellbeing and their ability to provide the service we need from them. 

The Sunday Times (£) this week carried extracts of an email sent to Willie by a staff member before the tragedy.

The whistleblower claims that an internal review of call cards — which are triggered when an incident is reported — revealed that:

■ Police had failed to respond to some 999 calls; on one occasion, a man who placed an emergency call as he was assaulted was not contacted until weeks later

■ Overstretched staff are working through a backlog of 10,000 call cards

■ An emergency call was logged as a minor incident that did not merit police attendance; it later emerged the member of the public had suffered a serious assault

■ No backup was available when plainclothes police officers were attacked and logged an emergency request for help.

In an email to Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, the whistleblower said: “It saddens me that Police Scotland is about to implode, such is the level of crisis it is in. The morale is at its lowest and nobody within the organisation is tackling the problems.”

Willie has recently taken to blogging again. He has outlined what he thinks should happen in the wake of this tragedy:

We also owe it to all the police officers and staff who were involved.  Our duty of care extends to them. Scapegoating individuals to protect others, the reform programme or even the whole organisation is something that should never be tolerated.

From the wave of messages from police, staff and members of the public across the country it is clear that there are real problems in Police Scotland.  The workload is high, systems are creaking, public confidence is low and so is staff morale. The target culture and management style is part of the issue. Funding is a factor and so is the “the only way is Strathclyde” mentality.

The control rooms are short of trained staff after many left when local control rooms in Dumfries, Stirling and Glenrothes closed. Experienced police officers are working overtime in the rooms even though they may not have the appropriate training to do the job. Sickness rates are high because of the pressure.

With all this evidence I have argued that we need a wider inquiry into the operation of Police Scotland. I am pleased that Michael Matheson has ordered an inquiry into the call handling system but disappointed that he seems to have already concluded that there are no wider problems. It is absolutely right that there is an inquiry into the tragic deaths of John and Lamara. But the PIRC and the HMICS inquiries are not enough. A wider, independent inquiry is what we need to plot the way out of the crisis enveloping Police Scotland.

You can read his whole post here.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social