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Pay Campaign Update
I wanted to give up an update of planned activity on the Fair Pay for Police campaign in the coming week to coincide with the Labour Party conference in Manchester.
We are placing four different Fair Pay for Police advertisements in several national and regional newspapers on Monday and Tuesday. The adverts have the strap 'Their lives, your safety …. Fair Pay for Police'.
We have also arranged for two Advert Vans to tour Manchester on Monday and Tuesday so that MPs and delegates at conference will see it. We will use the same four images but have a strap line aimed directly at the government 'The cost won't kill you …. Fair Pay for Police'. We opted not to use this strap line on the newspaper adverts as the line is aimed directly at the government and not the general public.
Representatives from each rank committee of the JCC are attending the conference all week and we have arranged a number of meetings with MPs and other stakeholders.
We are also holding a round table discussion with a selection of MPs and the Police Minister Tony McNulty MP and the Home Secretary has accepted an invitation to be present at our fringe meeting where Paul McKeever will be on the panel.
We are holding similar meetings at each of the three main political party conferences.
You will recall that the membership poll we conducted earlier this year asked two key questions. Firstly, should the decision of independent arbiters be binding on the government? Secondly, in the absence of binding arbitration should the Police Federation of England and Wales lobby for industrial rights for police officers. The membership responded with a resounding yes to binding arbitration and gave the Police Federation a mandate to commence the process to secure industrial rights if that was not forthcoming.
We have therefore put in the post this afternoon a letter to the Home Secretary that makes clear if binding arbitration in statute is not announced on, or before, the Queen's Speech on 4th December then that will be the date we start the process of pursuing industrial rights. As the letter will not be received at the Home Office until next week we will also personally hand a copy of the letter to the Home Secretary at the Labour conference on Monday.
As you would imagine this weekend newspapers will be full of political stories just ahead of the Labour conference. We have given the letter exclusively to the Sunday Telegraph and they have this week interviewed Paul McKeever on our future activity. Although we cannot predict what coverage they will give this, as we are up against other organisations promoting a variety of causes, I am hopeful they will give it decent coverage.
Please see below the text of the letter that has been posted to the Home Secretary.
TEXT OF LETTER TO THE HOME SECRETARY
19th 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
