Welsh leads seek meetings with MPs

10 July 2024

The election of 13 new MPs in Wales provides an opportunity for stronger links to be built between policing and the Westminster Government, according to the Federation’s Welsh co-lead Zac Mader.

Zac said relations between the Government, the Police Federation and its members had become strained in recent years after budget cuts led to officers seeing a 20 per cent real-terms reduction in their pay.

“Police officers are not happy at the way they feel they have been treated by the Government in Westminster and this was highlighted in the latest Federation pay and morale survey,” says Zac.

“The Federation has also been calling for a fairer mechanism for determining officers’ annual pay award since it believes the current Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) lacks independence but had no success in convincing the previous Government to change this process.

Arbitration

“Hopefully, now we have some new MPs to represent us in the Houses of Parliament, we can secure some support and bring about a change so that at the very least we have an independent pay review mechanism with access to binding arbitration.

“We will be seeking meetings with all MPs representing the Welsh constituencies so that we can share our members’ views, spell out the issues officers are facing and hopefully convince the Government to address their concerns, not just about pay and the pay mechanism but also about the other pressures on the police service.

Prime Minister Sir Kier Starmer, with wife Victoria, outside No.10.

“The new Prime Minister has talked extensively about bringing about change and improving links between policing and his new Government would be a very welcome start.”

Leigh Godfrey, who is the Welsh co-lead with Zac, also wants to see the new Government commit to longer term, sustainable funding for policing.

After years of cuts during the austerity years, the previous Government invested in Police Uplift Programme which increased police officer numbers nationwide by 20,000 in the three years up until the end of March 2023.

But Leigh says the Government must continue to invest in the police service and work to rebuild the relationship with police officers.

“The cuts put policing under huge pressure and it’s taking time for us to recover from that,” says Leigh, “We have ongoing issues around officer retention that have to be tackled if we are to provide an effective police service for our communities through reinvigorated neighbourhood policing.

Low morale

“But we also have officers who are suffering low morale and that is not conducive to having a motivated workforce.”

In its election manifesto, Labour set out plans to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour and said its mission was to ‘take back our streets’, reducing serious violence and rebuilding public confidence in policing by getting officers back on the streets.

The party said it would introduce a new Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, restoring patrols to town centres by recruiting thousands of new police officers, police and community support officers (PCSOs) and Special Constables and putting 13,000 extra neighbourhood police and PCSOs on the beat.

It pledged to introduce new penalties for offenders, get knives off the streets, set up a specialist rape unit in every police force and launch a new network of Young Futures hubs.

Funding for its manifesto pledges would come from ending private schools’ tax breaks and a Police Efficiency and Collaboration Programme.

Read the Labour manifesto.