Police Retention (Hansard, 19 November 2001)

§ 6. Tony Baldry (Banbury)
When he expects to meet the chief constable of the Thames Valley to discuss retention of police officers. [13344]

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Beverley Hughes)
The Home Secretary has no immediate plans to meet the chief constable of the Thames Valley police. However, the hon. Gentleman will know that, since April this year, officers and rejoiners appointed to the Thames Valley police on or after 1 September 1994 and not in receipt of housing allowance have benefited from a new allowance of £2,000 per annum. In addition, the starter home initiative will help around 170 officers to buy first homes in the next three years. Both those measures will help not only recruitment but retention.

§ Tony Baldry
While I thank the Minister for that answer, may I ask a question of which I have given her notice? Are not Thames Valley police officers in the worst of all possible worlds: their cost of living, including housing, is high, yet they do not benefit from the allowances paid to Metropolitan police officers? Metropolitan police officers receive an annual London weighting of £1,773, an extra London allowance of £1,011 and a further London allowance of either £1,000 or £3,327, depending on when they join. In other words, a Metropolitan police officer, doing exactly the same job as a Thames Valley police officer, can be £6,111 a year 10 better off. It is not surprising that the Thames Valley force is losing officers—they are joining other police forces in the country, where their pay and conditions are better.

§ Beverley Hughes
As the hon. Gentleman says, the current differential between Thames Valley and the Met for recruits is about £4,000 a year. That reflects the different pressures that those forces face in terms of recruitment and retention as well as other factors. He will also know that the Police Negotiating Board set the pay differentials for recruits to those two forces and that the police arbitration panel rejected the claim by the staff side on the board for additional allowances for all forces. At the same time, the panel endorsed the two levels of allowance—£2,000 and £1,000—for the two groups of forces around London. In the tribunal's view, the respective allowances reflect the different circumstances and pressures that those forces face.

§ Mr. Andrew MacKay (Bracknell)
Does the Minister appreciate that people in Bracknell and elsewhere in the Thames valley will see her responses as hopelessly complacent and out of touch? Let me try to explain to her once more that the Thames valley is stuck between the Met, with its high salaries, and areas further away from London where there are lower house prices. Consequently, we are not getting the right level of retention, and people in the Thames valley are suffering. Will she now answer the question properly?

§ Beverley Hughes
That is a bit rich from a member of the party that scrapped the housing allowance. As I told the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), the issues facing different forces—the pressures on recruitment and retention and other factors such as the relative cost of living—have been assessed by the Police Negotiating Board and reconsidered by the tribunal. The tribunal decided that the levels of the allowances were right, given those pressures. It is up to the Police Negotiating Body to consider any further changes.

§ Mr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire)
Does the Minister agree with the previous Minister with responsibility for the police, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke)? He told the House: The number of people leaving the service may be taken as an indicator of morale."—[Official Report, 11 December 2000; Vol. 359, c. 63W.] What conclusions, therefore, does she draw from the answer given to me on Friday by the Minister for Police, Courts and Drugs—that non-medical resignations from the police force have risen by 75 per cent. in the Thames valley and by 27 per cent. overall in England and Wales under this Government? Figures also show that officers spend only 17 per cent. of their time on patrol, so what is the cost—in terms of rising crime, public concern and taxpayers' money wasted on training—of the crisis that clearly now exists in police morale?

§ Beverley Hughes
That point is true, to the extent that the wastage rate in Thames valley is somewhat higher than the national average. It is about 2.4 per cent. compared with a national figure of about 1.1 per cent. The wastage rate in the police service across the board is very 11 low compared with that in other occupations, and that reflects the additional allowances in that area, terms and conditions and the £1.6 billion of extra resources that the Government have put into policing over three years, precisely to enable the police to do a better job for people in our communities.