Police Scotland could become a “quasi-paramilitary force” which is only able to respond to the most serious incidents if planned cuts to its budget go ahead, a top officer has warned.
Deputy Chief Officer David Page told a Holyrood committee the force may also have to suspend its 101 non-emergency phone line and lose thousands of officers and staff.
He warned that this would result in more people dialling 999 instead, which would have the dangerous knock-on effect of slowing down emergency response times.
The Scottish Government has proposed giving the criminal justice sector, including Police Scotland, a total of £11.6bn over the next four years.
This would result in most services receiving the same amount of money every year, but high inflation has led to fears that the force is facing a massive real-terms cut.
Holyrood’s criminal justice committee was told that the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland would have to make cuts of between £200m and £300m.
They warned that in order to make this level of savings while continuing to offer existing officers annual pay rises, about 4,500 staff would have to be lost.
Mr Page said this would make Police Scotland more reliant on support from other forces in England and Wales when keeping order at major events.
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“We’re looking at things like having to pull back from the types of policing we do at the minute because we won’t have bodies to do it, to be quite frank,” he told MSPs.
Saying the police often have to pick up “slack” from councils who were facing their own funding cuts, he added: “Our ability to answer 999 calls, it will be slowed. The 101 service, do we continue with that?
“If we don’t continue with the 101 service, all that will do is shift people into dialling 999 who would have previously dialled 101.
“If you’ve got more people dialling 999, what will happen then is it will take longer for you to get through and longer for us to respond.”
Response policing, digital forensics and public protection were all areas which would be squeezed, he said.
He continued: “There’s a real concern we won’t be able to discharge our duties as we currently do. You don’t want Police Scotland to become a kind of quasi paramilitary force where all you can deal with is the most serious incidents. That’s not what Police Scotland was intended to be.”
Conservative justice spokesman Jamie Greene said Mr Page’s comments were “devastating and terrifying”, adding that the planned cuts could put the public at risk.
Justice Secretary Keith Brown said: “Our largely fixed budgets and limited fiscal powers means the UK Government needs to provide the Scottish Government with sufficient funding to support public services and the economy in these difficult times.
“While policing matters and budgetary prioritisation are always a matter for the chief constable, we remain fully committed to using the resources available to us to support the vital work of Police Scotland in delivering effective and responsive policing across Scotland.”
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