#PolicePay: Police officers have given everything – the Government has given us nothing.

POLICE officers have given everything – the Government has given us nothing.

Officers have missed out on a wider public sector pay increase, which has seen nurses and NHS workers get a 3% rise and firefighters get a 1.5% pay rise.

Whilst not begrudging their 999 colleagues their rise, officers feel they have been ‘singled out’ for a 0% police officer pay rise.

Fuming officers and their Federation have now tabled a no-confidence motion in Home Secretary Priti Patel, who directed the Police Remuneration Review Body that it could not award police officers a pay rise – and then accepted the decision they came to!

Whitehall said the decision was taken to ensure ‘fairness’ between private sector and public sector pay, even though officers have been out on the frontline risking their lives to protect the communities they serve.

“The Federation has tried to build a working relationship with Ms Patel, particularly after the situation we were in with [former Home Secretary] Theresa May,” Hampshire Police Federation Chair Zoe Wakefield said.

“It was in the hope that we would be listened to, but that clearly hasn’t happened.

“She [Patel] is meant to be the person who looks after us. She’s told the press we’re brave and courageous and told us at the PFEW conference that she had our back.

“Well, clearly, she hasn’t got our back at all. She said this was all about fairness because the private sector has suffered so much during the pandemic, but if it was that, firefighters and local authority workers wouldn’t be getting a raise.

“We’ve been singled out.”

Confidence in the Home Secretary is so low, Zoe said, that she and other officers weren’t surprised when the news that policing was missing out was confirmed.

“Sadly, it wasn’t much of a shock,” she said.

“If they had just given the NHS a well-deserved pay rise, then it would have been understandable, but for policing to be missing out is hard to understand.

“Is it something personal? Or is it because we can’t fight back by striking? It will be interesting to see what pay rise MPs give themselves.”

*A protest took place outside Downing Street during a reception aimed at thanking emergency service workers for their efforts during the pandemic. Officers and Fed Reps from across the country made officers’ feelings clear by displaying banners saying ‘No Covid vaccine, No Pay Rise, No confidence in Priti Patel’.