POLICE PAY
On Wednesday the Welsh Conservatives are calling on the Labour/Plaid administration here to lobby the Westminster government to honour the recent pay award for the police in full with immediate effect.
Cheryl Gillan, David Davis and David Cameron have all rightly condemned the government’s handling of the police pay settlement.
I, myself, received a letter from the Leader on 20 December 2007 sharing the police’s sense of outrage at the way they have been treated by the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith. Police Officers Police Officers behaved very properly in agreeing to abide by the decision of the Independent Police Arbitration Panel – whatever that decision was – and it is quite shocking that the Government has reneged on that agreement.
The Party in the Assembly very much agrees with this stance, and it will be interesting to see whether Plaid Cymru back the administration here on an issue that is Westminster based rather than following them slavishly as they did on ID cards and on the loss of security data.
The response we have had from the police has been fantastic. Emails and messages are swarming in, and we are doing our best to keep pace with them. We are also meeting with representatives of the Police Federation as a Group to restate our support.
It does seem monstrous to me that an independent pay award, which the police had undertaken in advance to accept, is now being undermined by the government. It is a basic issue of trust and honesty as far as the Welsh Conservative Party is concerned.
