Today’s national media are reporting concerns at a letter sent by Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill to the General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, the body representing the interests of the members of the police force.
The letter – written in October and addressing the issue of police pensions is focused on drawing the attention of the Police Federation in Scotland to a document recently published by the Scottish Government on ‘Pensions in an independent Scotland’.
The letter is reported as containing the following statements:
‘The document makes clear that following a Yes vote any future Scottish Government would be able to consider again the pension terms of all uniformed services.’
Referring then to ‘the savage cuts imposed on police officers down south following the Windsor review’, Mr MacAskill goes on to say:
‘I wanted to take this opportunity to make clear my commitment that in an independent Scotland, with full powers over pensions available to us, the Scottish Government would be ready to enter into early discussions to re-visit the pension terms of Scottish Police Officers’.
The MacAskill letter is circulating around police officers with one claim published that it has already been seen by around 1,000 Glasgow employees of Police Scotland.
Scottish Labour’s Justice Spokesperson, Graeme Pearson MSP, has said that the MacAskill letter was ‘particularly political, describing it as ‘fairy blatant lobbying of a single group, inferring that they will be better off in the event of a Yes vote’.
This is a moderate response to an approach of a highly questionable nature from one of the most senior of the Scottish Government’s politicians, in what cannot reasonably be construed as other than a sales pitch.
Since it did not come directly from the Yes Scotland campaign, it is an overt and ill-judged attempt to influence the personal votes of police officers – and above all people, it has come from the Justice Secretary, a person who in rank, responsibility and the nature of those responsibilities, can never acceptably act in such a way.
That the Justice Secretary has taken the high level risk of issuing to the Scottish Police Federation a letter whose propriety is so open to question would suggest an increasing level of anxiety within the inner court of the Scottish Government about the possible outcome of the 2014 Independence Referendum.
Regardless of the motivation or of the excuses that will follow, this is a low point of the pro-independence campaign. It lays bare the fact that this nation is consciously being sold for votes.
The explicit mention of a Yes vote, alongside the repeated references to the potential benefits to police officers of an independent Scotland, is clearly a strategic framing of the communication – which actually promises in exchange for votes, no more than a revisitation of the issue. Police officers are clearly seen as a gullible cheap date.
