Police chief's spiralling costs fears

The cost of reforming the police could spiral out of control in a similar fashion to the Scottish Parliament or Edinburgh's trams, according to a senior officer.

The Scottish Government wants to cut the cost of policing, while maintaining the number of officers at its current all-time high. It argues that the strongest option is to reduce the number of police forces.

However, Chief Constable Kevin Smith, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (Acpos), told members of the potential for "unforeseen spiralling costs".

In his closing speech to the Acpos annual conference in Dunblane yesterday, Mr Smith likened the situation to former US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld's comment about "known unknowns" in relation to his claims that Iraq was linked to terrorist organisations.

He added: "For me it's actually the old Rumsfeld thing: knowing what you know and not knowing what you don't know. By that, I mean the unforeseen costs that, paradoxically, we know will come."