A report published for next week's meeting of Strathclyde Police Authority shows that police caught 529 people urinating in public - exceeding their five per cent improvement target.

Police chiefs want officers to improve their rate of detecting people caught short in public by five per cent this year. However, the corresponding target increase in the detection rate for serious assault is only two per cent. 

"People want to see less urinating in the street but at the end of the day people are more concerned with more serious crimes," said Labour justice spokesman Richard Baker.

"I do not see why targets for more serious crimes should be less ambitious than those for more minor crimes.

Conservative justice spokesman Bill Aitken said: "Urinating in the street is a nuisance and distasteful but it is less serious and threatening than people carrying knives, for example. The police have to target priorities and those should be knife-carrying and more serious violent crimes." 

Starthclyde police are currently 50 per cent behind their target for seizures of class A drugs.