MPs urged to engage with Federation

13 September 2024

Local MPs are being urged to show their commitment to law and order, and improving policing services by engaging with West Midlands Police Federation.

Federation officials had planned to host a drop-in at their Birmingham office for all the region’s 24 MPs this week (Monday 9 September), but were forced to cancel after only five MPs replied to an invitation to attend.

“We really want to engage with our new MPs and have now emailed each of them three times, twice to invite them to the drop-in, and a third time to explain that we had cancelled the drop-in basically due to a lack of interest,” says Tim Rogers, secretary of West Midlands Police Federation.

“We know members of the public are concerned about crime, about the safety of their communities and about the policing service they receive but we are starting to question if these are issues of interest to our newly-elected MPs.

“Often, in the run-up to an election, we hear candidates talking about policing and about law and order, but do our MPs actually see policing as a priority?

“Having cancelled the drop-in, we are now hoping MPs will respond to our requests for a meeting so that we can discuss the challenges our officers are facing.

Frontline police

“West Midlands Police is the second largest police force in the country and, as a Federation, we represent the majority of officers policing this region – the constables, sergeants, inspectors, chief inspectors and, for the last couple of years, members of the Special Constabulary too.

“On behalf of our members, we really can give MPs an accurate picture of the state of policing right now, and we can also discuss our ideas of how improvements could be made. We would, of course, be interested to hear MPs’ ideas too.”

The Federation has held a constructive one-to-one with Dr Neil Shastri Hughes, the Conservative MP for Solihull West and Shirley, and is in the process of setting up meetings with the four other MPs to have responded, including Birmingham Ladywood Labour MP Shabana Mahmood who is the Lord Chancellor and justice minister.

It has offered to meet with MPs in London, in their constituency offices or at the Federation office in Coventry Road, Shirley.

“We are keen to engage with MPs and, as such, we will meet with them where ever it suits them best,” says Tim, “It is interesting that when the Government found itself challenged by the civil unrest, the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and other MPs stated their unwavering support for policing and yet our experience is that many do not have the common courtesy to respond to our emails.

Policing issues

“There are so many issues we want to discuss with them – police pay, the pay review mechanism, officer morale and wellbeing, and knife crime, to name just a few.

“These are all issues affecting police forces nationwide but here in the West Midlands we have the additional pressure of coping with the fact that we have £28 million less funding when compared with Greater Manchester Police, and yet we have 150,000 extra members of the public to police.

“That is further exacerbated by the Force being placed in special measures by the inspectorate and only just coming out of ‘engaged’ status.

“We are aware MPs have met with the Force executive but we want them to get the balance of opinion from rank and file officers, and we provide a unified voice for those who are on the frontline of policing.

“We would urge our MPs to contact us so that we can arrange a meeting, get to know more about each other and work together to improve policing for the benefit of the Force, for police officers and, above all, for the communities we all serve.”