Pay rise for police and prison officers approved after seven years of caps and freezes

Police officers have been awarded a pay raise in excess of the 1% cap
PA
Joe Murphy @JoeMurphyLondon12 September 2017

The Cabinet today eased the purse strings on public sector pay slightly – but too little to satisfy angry union leaders.

Police will get a one per cent bonus on top of their one per cent salary rise this year, while prison officers will get 1.7 per cent backdated to April.

Nurses, teachers, Armed Forces personnel and others will have to wait to next year to learn what under a new policy of “flexibility” combined with restraint.

But the new terms were dismissed as “a pile of crap” by union leader Mark Serwotka. Critics pointed out the police and prisons pay, which will have to be scraped from existing budgets, come below today’s new inflation level of 2.9 per cent. Although the overall police rise s two per cent, only half of this is “consolidated” into basic pay, the rest being a form of bonus.

And there is no guarantee that future rises will equal or exceed the inflation level. Across the board rises are not expected as they would cost the Treasury £6 billion.

The decision to relax the rules was taken as political pressure to soften the era of austerity came to a head and workers at Sellafield voted to strike over pay. At the Trades Union Congress, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called for an end to the cap in his keynote speech, while militant unions threatened a wave of co-ordinated strikes.

Union studies published this morning said workers would lose thousands in real terms this year, with midwives losing £3,288, teachers more than £3,000, firefighters almost £2,800, and nurses £2,650.

The RMT union said that even Royal Fleet Auxiliary workers helping the recovery effort in the Caribbean were being “hammered” by the cap.

The news came as Labour’s justice spokesman today refused to address threats of illegal strike action against the pay cap.

Richard Burgon, the shadow justice secretary, ducked questions on whether he would back a potential strike, even if fewer than half of union members vote in a ballot.

Len McCluskey, the leader of the Unite union, has said a co-ordinated strike action is “very much on the cards”.

Mr Burgon said the scenario was “hypothetical” and avoided answering questions on the issue five times during a morning BBC radio interview.

Asked if he backed the threat of strike action, he said: “We should be talking about the reality faced by … nurses, care assistants, firefighters, and all too often they get written out of this discussion. That is who this is about.”

Conservative MP Chris Philp said: “For a man who aspires to lead the UK’s justice department, Richard Burgon’s flagrant disregard for the law of the land is deeply troubling but sadly unsurprising.”

Mr Burgon also ducked questions about Mr McCluskey’s call for a second deputy Labour leader.

This is widely seen as an attempt to install a Left-wing counterweight to deputy Tom Watson. Asked by Today show presenter John Humphrys to give a one-word answer on whether there should be another deputy, Mr Burgon said the party was proud of its level of female representation.

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