National Federation Meeting On Industrial Rights

THE Chair of Hampshire Police Federation has met with other Federation Chairs from across England and Wales to discuss the implications of the police seeking industrial rights.

At the meeting on 15 May, a KC spoke to the group about the potential issues that could arise. It is currently a criminal offence for anyone to cause disaffection among police officers or to induce any police officer to withhold their services.

Hampshire Police Federation Chair Zoë Wakefield said that it was a useful session, though there were still many questions to be answered.

She said: “We received legal advice from a KC around the potential issues of causing disaffection, which was helpful. Everybody needs to be informed on what trying to get industrial rights could mean, and what we could possibly lose. There’s going to be a further discussion and potentially a vote at the national council meeting in June.”

Zoë continued: “Industrial rights would be a very unknown path to go down. For instance, the Spanish police tried to get industrial rights and it went all the way to the European Court of Human Rights and failed. So we need to take that into account.

“But that doesn’t stop us starting the process and seeing where it goes. It may be that we never get all the way to the point of industrial rights, but we may be able to have some positive impact along that journey.”