Police pay must be kept on the government’s radar amid '25 per cent real terms pay cut'

Chair Zoë Wakefield said she had written to local MPs asking them to endorse an Early Day Motion, which calls on the government to urgently explain what the federation says is a ‘more than 25 per cent real-terms pay cut since 2010 for police officers’. This is set to increase further with rises in the cost of living and inflation.

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The EDM sets out to ‘recognise the outstanding contributions made by police officers to the security and wellbeing of communities across the UK’. It was important that the EDM got enough support to be discussed in parliament, Zoë said. However, MPs said they did not endorse Early Day Motions.

Zoë said: ‘MPs said they were happy to raise the issue and discuss it with the policing minister. I think that the motion could be worded better in terms of what we’re actually asking, because we’re not just asking for an explanation of what’s happened in the past, we want to know what’s going to happen in the future.

‘But we definitely need to keep the issue of police pay on everybody’s radar – we need to keep going on about it in any way we possibly can. Some officers are already leaving the force over pay. We are managing to recruit new officers, but we’re losing experienced officers at the other end. The vast majority of officers who leave are now earning more than they were as a police officer.’