Letter to Home Secretary re pursuing industrial rights for police officers

23 September 2008

        

Dear Home Secretary,

The Government and the public expect police officers to perform a challenging, demanding and dangerous role; to be accountable, to work to the highest standards; and to be available for duty on a 24/7 basis.

In return we deserve to have our unique status and the sacrifices we make respected, including how our terms and conditions are determined.

It is a criminal offence for police officers to strike or to take any other form of industrial action, and as the body representing the 140,000 rank and file officers throughout England and Wales, the Police Federation is constrained in the action we can take to secure proper terms and conditions for our members.

Our members quite rightly expect there to be compensations to ensure that there is fairness in determining police officers' conditions of service and provisions to ensure that we, their representative body, can be effective.

The High Court judicial review decision this year, found that you as Home Secretary had a wide discretion to interfere with recommendations on pay reached by an independent arbiter, or by agreement between the two sides of the Police Negotiating Board.

Leaving the terms and conditions of service of police officers to the wide discretion of the Home Secretary is not fair. It undermines the effectiveness of the Police Federation to represent the rights of police officers.

Your proposals for a Pay Review Body (in respect of which we will comment separately) will not alter this, and will indeed make things worse.

Our members have expressed their view in a membership poll earlier this year; 93 percent said they believe arbitration should be binding on the Home Secretary and 86 percent said in the absence of this binding arbitration they want the right to take industrial action.

To redress the balance; to secure appropriate recompense for the current bar on industrial action; to show respect to our members and the Police Federation; we seek your confirmation that you will introduce an amendment to the Police Act 1996 to provide that the Home Secretary is bound by the decisions of the independent arbiter of any future police officer pay agreement, whether that be through the existing PNB or (if introduced notwithstanding our views) a Pay Review Body.

If such provision is not announced in, or before, the Queen's Speech on
4th December 2008, then the Government will have left us with no option but to seek industrial rights for police officers in England and Wales as part of continuing action to redress the unfairness in the current position.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

         
PAUL MCKEEVER
Chairman     

IAN RENNIE
General Secretary

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