JUSTICE Secretary Michael Matheson (pictured) is being urged to come before MSPs in the wake of “shocking” new allegations about Police Scotland.
It is claimed corruption complaints and criticisms of senior officers were removed from an internal report into the early days of the amalgamated police force.
The Conservatives, Labour and the LibDems all said the claims, which are made in a new TV documentary about the national force, raised serious questions for the Scottish Government.
Tory justice spokesman Liam Kerr has tabled an urgent question at Holyrood and said: “The allegations would suggest that some Scottish police officers have, at the very least, been conducting themselves in a highly questionable manner.”
Meanwhile both Labour and the LibDems want Matheson to make a statement to MSPs on the issue.
It comes after a BBC Scotland investigation raised concerns that bad practices and unlawful behaviour in the previous eight regional forces had continued after Police Scotland was established in 2013.
A report was commissioned by former Chief Constable Sir Stephen House in 2014, a year after the single national force began.
The investigation claims drafts of the report show the chief constable’s office wanted negative comments deleted, tenses changed to suggest problems had been fixed, and an entire section, where frontline officers described working in a culture of fear, removed.
It also claimed early drafts of the report detailed officers conducting unauthorised surveillance, threatening and intimidating witnesses, unlawfully detaining suspects, colluding while compiling statements and failing to reveal evidence, but these were removed from the final version.
Police Scotland said “significant changes” have been implemented in the four years since the report and Iain Livingstone, the current interim Chief Constable, has “already acknowledged that in the early days of Police Scotland process was put ahead of people”.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: “The Scottish Police Authority are seeking assurances from Police Scotland that matters raised were dealt with at the time.”
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