PFEW Conference: Politicians should have pushed harder for officer vaccine priority

10 June 2021

Politicians should have pushed harder to make police officers a priority for the COVID-19 vaccine, the Chair of Kent Police Federation has said, following the Home Secretary’s speech at the Police Federation Annual Conference.

Despite the Home Office originally saying police officers would be prioritised for the vaccine, Priti Patel said they eventually had to follow the advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). She said: "We absolutely had to prioritise the vaccine rollout in line with the overriding risk factors of age and clinical vulnerability."

Kent Police Federation Chair Neil Mennie said: “The Government should have perhaps explained more carefully to the JCVI the unique position that police officers are in, particularly when they’re having to intervene in private homes, private spaces and physically go hands-on with people because that’s their job.

“They were exposed to a very particular kind of risk, not least of which is being spat at by people who didn’t want to comply with the regulations and presented a real risk to our officers.

“Also I think both the Home Secretary and other speakers gave the impression that the decision was made to prioritise more vulnerable people, such as elderly people. The Federation has only ever asked to be prioritised after the most vulnerable and after the NHS workers. I wouldn’t want the public to be left with the impression that we were demanding to be at the front of the queue, because we absolutely weren’t.”

He continued: “The answer that the JCVI were really the ones making the decision is a little bit disappointing and I think the politicians probably should have been a little bit more robust with the JCVI.”

Neil said that Priti Patel’s speech was “largely supportive” of police officers but needed to be “backed up by tangible outcomes”, especially on issues such as the Police Covenant and tougher sentencing for offenders who assaulted police officers.

He said: “The Home Secretary did allude to the fact that she was going to work with the justice system to try to improve the sentencing, because we are seeing inconsistent sentencing at the moment. But the proof of that will be when we see the sentencing improve. We still have officers that are being assaulted who go to court and end up with, quite frankly, hard to understand outcomes.”

Neil added that he was pleased PFEW Chair John Apter and Secretary Alex Duncan had addressed the pay freeze: “It’s going to be very hard for officers to understand why they’re in the midst of a pay freeze, given the work that they’ve had to put in and the challenges they’ve faced, particularly in the past year.

“It’s something that needs looking at because of the 18% cut in real terms that officers have had over the last decade. It’s really important that the Government perhaps enters into an agreement where they will agree with the findings of the Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB).

“At the moment the PRRB is supposed to be the pay body for the police and it makes recommendations, but then the Government doesn’t seem to necessarily want to follow its recommendations, which makes it difficult to describe it as an independent pay and review body.”