HC Deb 05 July 1994 vol 246 cc120-1W
Mr. Michael

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to his answer of 28 June,Official Report, column 458, (1) if he will provide the evidence available to him on the extent to which benefits may accrue (a) to the organisation and (b) to the individual; and what assessment he has made of the benefit to the public of introducing performance-related pay;

(2) if he will list the specific benefits that will accrue to the police service as a result of performance-related pay and the defects resulting from the present system which he aims to correct;

(3) if he will list his targets for the improvement in the performance of police officers (a) in terms of specific activities and (b) in terms of improvement sought.

Mr. Charles Wardle

We have made it clear on a number of occasions that police pay should be related to overall performance. This does not mean judging performance against crude indicators such as numbers of arrests or crimes cleared up. The introduction of an element in police pay related to overall performance will enable the police service, in a tangible way, to distinguish the especially good performance from the average performance, which is not possible under the current pay system. Together with the other police management reforms being introduced by the Government, performance-related pay will assist in the process of improving quality and increasing efficiency by providing a sensible incentive to police officers and a better basis for managing police pay, which constitutes some 80 per cent. of all money spent on policing.