The head of Scotland’s troubled police force will not be returning to work for the foreseeable future, The Times has learnt.
Chief Constable Phil Gormley has been on special leave since September while investigations into allegations of bullying, which he denies, are investigated. The Scottish Police Authority (SPA) agreed to assess his leave status every month and the watchdog is due to make a decision on Mr Gormley’s immediate future tomorrow.
Senior SPA sources have revealed that the watchdog has decided to keep Mr Gormley on leave for at least another month. It is also now likely that he will not be invited to return to work until all the investigations into his behaviour are concluded, a process which is expected to take several months, meaning he will be away from his desk until at least the end of spring.
This decision marks a complete change from the SPA’s attitude in November last year when the authority’s board members decided to let him return to work. That decision lasted just two days; after the intervention of Michael Matheson, the justice secretary, the SPA reversed its decision and kept Mr Gormley on leave.
Susan Deacon, the new chairwoman of the SPA, said yesterday that she would have taken the same decision had she been in Mr Matheson’s position. He had demanded to know whether provisions had been put in place to protect the complainants on Mr Gormley’s return and whether senior figures had been informed. When he was told that neither of these steps had been taken, he advised the SPA to reverse its decision, which it did.
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With these provisions now having been met, the SPA could have decided this week to invite Mr Gormley back but it has decided not to do so. The approach is understood to reflect the leadership of Professor Deacon, the former Labour health minister. She has been highly critical of the authority’s decision in November.
She told MSPs on Holyrood’s justice committee yesterday that she would consider it a personal failing if she made the mistakes her predecessor, Andrew Flanagan, had made in inviting Mr Gormley back. “If, at any stage, in my tenure as chair of the SPA, the processes that I follow require to be questioned in that way by a cabinet secretary, then I would regard it that I would have failed in my duty,” she said.
In Mr Gormley’s absence the deputy chief constable, Iain Livingstone, has been running Police Scotland. He insisted yesterday there was “no crisis” in Scotland’s police force, despite the problems at senior management level. He told MSPs on the justice committee: “There are issues within Police Scotland, there are issues around governance and accountability.” However, he added: “There is no crisis in policing.”
Mr Livingstone said that he had been kept in the dark by Mr Flanagan, who was then the head of the SPA, over Mr Gormley’s aborted return to work in November. Mr Flanagan had refused to tell him that Mr Gormley was poised to return to work, even after the decision had been taken. Mr Livingstone said: “I heard nothing from Andrew Flanagan on the 7th [November] and on the morning of the 8th, in response to my request for an update. I was told that deliberations were ongoing. Now it would appear that that wasn’t the case and there had actually been a decision taken on the 7th, but I was told that deliberations were ongoing and I would be briefed in due course.”
After the SPA decision, Mr Matheson had a meeting with Mr Flanagan and persuaded him to look at the decision again. Mr Flanagan did so and the decision on Mr Gormley’s return to work was reversed.
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Mr Livingstone said all these deliberations had taken place without his knowledge.
“The next I heard from Andrew Flanagan was a text message on the Friday of that week. I called him back and I was told that the authority had taken the decision to extend the chief constable’s leave, but I wasn’t told actually there had been a decision, a reconsideration and then another decision,” Mr Livingstone said.
Mr Flanagan will give evidence to MSPs tomorrow and is expected to be asked to explain his actions in the chief constable’s aborted return to work.