Scottish Labour has pledged to keep police control rooms in Aberdeen and Inverness open.
In an exclusive interview with the Press and Journal, the party’s justice spokesman Graeme Pearson threw down the gauntlet to the SNP by committing not to shut the call centres if they win power in May’s Scottish elections.
There have been fresh calls to halt the controversial closures after the M9 crash scandal, as well as revelations that 999 calls from north and north-east Scotland would be handled in the central belt.
Mr Pearson – who recently carried out a wide-ranging review of Police Scotland – said “local knowledge” was being sacrificed by the closures.
More than 430 people have already signed a Press and Journal petition calling for the call centres to be kept open.
Mr Pearson said: “Any sensible organisation would ensure that belt and braces are in place to make sure no risks are being taken.
“There is all that local knowledge that would be lost.
“I would have expected the government to have offered the assurance that we have the best mapping, the best intelligence systems in place – but they have not done that.”
A damning Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary Scotland report has already said the closures should not go ahead without there first being independent checks.
But Justice Secretary Michael Matheson dismissed any suggestion that the closures – currently on hold – would be reversed by external experts, raising fears that an independent review would be “merely a box ticking exercise”.
When asked whether Scottish Labour would commit to keeping the control rooms open, Mr Pearson said “yes”.
He added: “A police force must exist first and foremost to serve the public. These changes have reduced the service to the public.
“They have closed local call centres, police counters, local stations – these changes have removed local policing from our streets.
“The only sensible thing to do is to call a halt to the current program of closures.”
According to Mr Pearson, who is an MSP for South Scotland, a lack of planning from the SNP on how a single force would operate is behind the problems facing the force.
He said: “There is not a business plan that has been put together in terms of the control room closures. As a result, they (the SNP) have got themselves in the mess they are in.
“What they should be thinking about is cross service control rooms – control rooms that would be able to share the intelligence, share the local knowledge. I raised that with the (then) Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, but he just rejected that out of hand.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “The partnerships between our emergency services are strong.
“The Scottish Police Authority, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Scottish Ambulance Service are actively working to identify opportunities for joint working and collaboration.
“The proposed regional control room model will allow each service to serve the country from strategically located sites that will enable a strengthened and effective approach to call handling and dispatching of resources.”
Sign our petition by visiting www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-our-call-centres-keep-999-local