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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

My Lords, I will speak specifically about police pay and assure the noble Baroness that we will be supporting this amendment. Independent arbiters, as we have heard, awarded a 2.5 per cent pay award and the Home Secretary can have been left in no doubt about the anger of police officers on the day of their massively successful, well-ordered and well-mannered protest march on 23 January 2008. It was attended by 25,000 off-duty officers. We know that the Police Federation has gone to judicial review; we await the outcome of that. The office of constable is a protected one and has been for almost 100 years since police officers accepted a no-strike clause. How that office has been badly used by the Home Secretary’s decision to override years of clear understanding on all sides that an agreement made by an independent body should be binding. It always was and it always should be. When I was a member of the Police Negotiating Board, some years ago in the time of the previous Government and this one, we all worked hard to maintain that position. It is desperately sad for me to see how this long-standing agreement has been completely overturned without any consultation and absolutely no real understanding of the views of front-line police officers who, day to day, give their services to protect us all. This is what a number of them have told me: they have expressed sheer disgust and outrage at the Home Secretary’s decision not to award a full amount immediately. They mention the amount that MPs pay themselves; fat cats in the City, about whom we heard some lively questions put to the Minister today at Question Time; and the restrictions on their private life when they are off duty. Effectively, a police officer is always on duty. Officers do lots of horrible work. They are hands-on at accidents, deaths and assaults on themselves and others. They really do not feel that they are getting thanks for doing a difficult and sometimes dangerous job. In Committee, my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford said: "““The appointment of a pay review body has been used over and again to take the sting out of an industrial conflict. It has very often been the price that the Government or a state body have paid for seeing an end to industrial conflict. They ought not in our view to undermine those provisions. That is why we support the amendment””.—[Official Report, 10/3/08; col. 1367.]" We continue to support that today.