Today’s article by Calum Steele (The Herald, 28/10/25), former General Secretary of the Scottish Police Federation (SPF), makes for compelling reading. The SPF has been much maligned in commentary surrounding the resignation of Lord Bracadale as Chair of the Sheku Bayoh Public Inquiry, yet it has responded with notable restraint and dignity. In reality, the Federation has done nothing more than exercise its lawful rights in defence of its members — a group whose rights are already curtailed by the very nature of their profession. Representing and protecting those members is, after all, the Federation’s core purpose.
Amid the sound and fury surrounding Lord Bracadale’s resignation, observers will draw their own conclusions about the likely outcome of the SPF’s judicial review — and whether his Lordship’s decision to step aside reflected an awareness of how events were unfolding. The most vocal critics of the SPF’s actions tend to come from quarters that would have been outraged had the situation been reversed — if the Chair of the Inquiry had held private, unminuted meetings with Core Participants from policing. Were that the case, the ensuing rhetoric and reaction would have been intense.
With around £50 million already spent, the public is entitled to question what progress the Inquiry has made, what conclusions can realistically be drawn, and whether there is any end in sight. That expenditure represents money no longer available for frontline policing — at a time when demand has never been higher and officer numbers have fallen back to pre-2007 levels. After all this time and cost, the central facts remain unaltered: Mr Bayoh became intoxicated on drugs, assaulted a friend, armed himself with a knife, and went out in public, prompting alarmed members of the public to call the police. When officers attended, he attacked them — assaulting a female officer and requiring to be restrained. These facts are not in dispute.
It is, of course, a tragedy that Mr Bayoh lost his life. But it is also a tragedy that PC Nicole Short was so severely injured that she could never return to duty. The fact that a young woman lost her health and career that day is too often forgotten.
Statements by the current Chief Constable, Jo Farrell, and former Chief Constable, Sir Iain Livingstone, regarding the existence of institutional discrimination or systemic bias, reflect a mature and honest acknowledgement of a reality many other public institutions still struggle to confront. Systemic bias exists not only in policing but across all large bureaucracies — from health to housing to justice. Yet two things can be true at once: policing can acknowledge its historic shortcomings while recognising that, on that day in 2015, the officers involved would have acted no differently had Mr Bayoh been white or of any other ethnicity.
Within policing, there is now a tangible sense of fatigue — and even dread — that the Inquiry may have to be effectively “re-run.” For the Scottish Government, the spiralling costs risk becoming a textbook example of the sunk-cost fallacy. And for the public, the question is: after all this time and expense, are their interests truly being served?