POLICE ANGER AT JACQUI SMITH “DECEIT”

12-12-2007

The chair of West Midlands Police Federation has been describing the “anger and disappointment” felt by rank and file officers about their new pay deal. Paul Tonks, who’ll be meeting with colleagues in emergency session in London today, accused Home Secretary Jacqui Smith of “deceit”.

Ministers decided last week that a 2.5% pay award by the Police Arbitration Tribunal should be delayed from September to December – making it, effectively, an increase of just 1.9%

Tonks says he hasn’t seen such resentment among his members since the Sheehy Report in 1994, which advocated wholesale changes to police working practices.

“That was the last time I saw this kind of anger and disappointment, and the feeling of being let down” he told us this morning.

“The worse thing is that we’ve got a Home Secretary who is also a local MP who is complicit in this. There’s a feeling of deceit. We all entered into independent binding arbitration, but the one person who won't accept that it's binding is Jacqui Smith."

Meeting the award in full would be around £36 million, but £15 million of that would go straight back to the Exchequer – making the real cost just £21 million (“a drop in the ocean” compared to the overall police budget says Tonks).

In Scotland, the award is being met in full and backdated to September.

To Tonks this has two implications: "They obviously want to give a slap a face to the government down here, but it also shows they really value their police officers in Scotland."