By Steven Bell

WITH LESS than two months to go before world leaders arrive for the G8 summit, the justice minister has revealed that police still don’t know how many officers will be required to cover the event.

This emerged in a parliamentary answer after one MSP asked how many officers from south of the border would be travelling to Scotland for the event in July.

The Gleneagles Hotel summit will see the largest security operation mounted on the UK mainland.

There will also be demonstrations and the threat of public dis-order in Edinburgh and elsewhere.

Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson said, “Chief constables can call on mutual aid from other forces in Scotland and in the rest of the UK as appropriate and planning for this is in hand.

“Decisions on the number and deployment of such officers are operational matters for the chief constable of Tayside police.

“It is too early to be precise about how many such officers may be needed.

“That will depend on operational decisions to be taken in due course by the Scottish Police Service.”

It has been suggested that the figure may be as high as 10,500 officers—about two-thirds of Scotland’s strength—between the summit itself and other events around the country.

However, police are keen to emphasise that figure is the total available complement, and it is not anticipated that they will all be pressed into service.

One source gave the example of the Make Poverty History demonstrations in Edinburgh.

They would require 1000 officers if all were to go according to plan, but twice that if serious trouble were to break out.

A spokesman for the Scottish Police Service confirmed that there would be officers from English and Welsh police forces drafted in.

“All of the Home Office forces—the ACPO forces in England and Wales and ACPOS forces in Scotland—are prepared to provide officers as required,” he said.

“It is no secret that a figure of between 10,000 and 10,500 officers has been bandied about, but that is not just for the event—it’s also for Faslane, Dungavel, Edinburgh and the rest of the country.

“The contingencies are in place, and we can have any number of officers as we need them.

“But we won’t know how many are actually required until then.”

A Tayside police spokeswoman said that “several thousand officers” would be available to the force during the G8 summit.

“There will be mutual aid support from other Scottish forces and forces south of the Border.

“For operational reasons, we will not discuss exact figures or deployment patterns. The number of officers deployed will be the number required to provide for the safety and security of the event and the local community,” she said.

The Executive, meanwhile, was also asked what its expenditure will be both in the run-up to and during the summit.

Finance Minister Tom McCabe said it would not be possible to give an accurate figure until after the summit as planning would continue until the event.

He added, “The information will be made available once it has been collected and analysed.”