Policing UK 2013 - Police Federation

THE POLICE REFORM PROGRAMME
Fair play on pay
and conditions?
Peter Neyroud gives a personal
assessment of the Winsor Report
Peter Neyroud is former Chief
Constable of Thames Valley;
former CEO of the National
Policing Improvement Agency;
and Editor, Policing UK 2013
Alongside the reforms of
accountability, the other
major plank to the coalition
government’s reforms of the police are
the changes to terms and conditions of
employment set out in the two reports by
Tom Winsor.
Most of these have now been through
the pay negotiation machinery, but a key
battle remains for 2013: the question of
the employment status of police officers.
Historically, police have been ‘officeholders’
rather than employees and,
by virtue of the agreements brokered
after the only major police strikes in
1919, unable to exercise the right to
strike. In the minds of almost every
police officer this restriction on their
employee rights demands a reciprocal
degree of responsibility in the way that
their ‘employer’ – the government –
treats them in respect of their pay and
conditions.
The need to meet this ‘covenant’ has
proved increasingly problematic for
government as the cost of police has
increased over the last 30 years, since
the last major renegotiation between
the two sides following the Edmund
Davies agreement. It is perhaps ironic,
given that a Conservative coalition has
led the current retrenchment from that
agreement, that implementing Edmund
Davies was one of Margaret Thatcher’s
first moves as a new Prime Minister.
In that case, the rise in police starting
salaries and the push to fill vacant posts
followed a dreadful period through the
late 1970s when forces had struggled to
recruit and tabloid papers regularly ran
stories about police officers on benefits.
As the Winsor report states, the next
30 years are not likely to be like the last
30 years.
The starting point is very different.
Winsor’s economist, Professor Disney,
pointed out that most forces are not
having difficulty recruiting. This
continuing glut of applicants lies behind
the controversial decision, now confirmed
by the Home Secretary, to reduce the
starting salary for a constable to £19,000.
The move is controversial, because
it appears to fly in the face of the other
thrust of the Winsor report – to raise
standards, including the educational
qualifications of those joining the police
service. Experience suggests that the rise
in the starting salary brought about by
Edmund Davies was a very significant
driver of changes to the quality of
recruits and an influx of graduates at the
beginning of the 1980s.
Key proposals
There are a number of other key
proposals in Winsor’s recommendations.
He places considerable emphasis on
‘fairness’ and the ‘Office of Constable’
as the ‘bedrock’ of British policing. The
result of this is a series of proposals that
shift the rewards in policing towards 24-
40 | POLICING UK