MEMBERS of the public are being put at risk while Scotland’s police officers are unarmed, the Scottish Police Federation’s general secretary has warned.

Speaking ahead of the funeral of PC Keith Palmer, the policeman murdered in the Westminster terror attack, Calum Steele said Police Scotland’s Chief Constable Phil Gormley needed to say how he wanted officers to react when dealing with offenders with knives or guns.

Steele said that while there is no agreement within the federation on carrying guns, there was consensus that what officers “have at the moment is not good enough.”

“Nothing should be off the table when we’re talking about protecting officers from harm, and the lives of others,” he added.

When police officers were faced with people carrying knives or firearms, and had to wait for specialist units, there could only be two expectations, Steele added: “That officers are likely to be maimed or killed, or are they to stand back and allow something to happen to members of the public? Neither is acceptable.”

Steele called on ministers and top officials in the force to look at the Norwegian model, where all officers are trained in the use of firearms and keep a gun locked in their cars. He argued there needed to be a debate on the possibility of all police carrying Tasers, warning that the incapacitant spray and batons carried by most officers were of little use for threats of this nature.

Police Scotland said it prided itself on being an unarmed service with the ability to draw on armed capability “at speed and in numbers” when needed.

On Tasers, superintendent Kirk Kinnell, head of armed policing, said: “Police Scotland is very sensitive to any use of force and only allows such weapons to be carried by our highly trained firearms officers. Only per cent of our officers carry weapons so that the remaining per cent do not have to. Since the inception of Police Scotland in 2014, Police Scotland officers have fired these weapons on only 10 occasions, which I believe demonstrates the highest level of judgment our officers display on a daily basis.”

PC Palmer’s coffin was taken through Old Palace Yard, near where he was stabbed to death by extremist Khalid Masood last month.

Draped in a police flag, it was taken by hearse to the resting place on Sunday afternoon, where it will stay overnight before his full police funeral at Southwark Cathedral today. Uniformed police lined the edge of the square to pay their respects.