§ Mr. Nicholas WintertonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the impact of his proposal to reduce police officers' enhanced overtime rates on the morale of frontline officers. [30113]
§ Mr. DenhamThe Police Negotiating Board (PNB), on which both the Secretary of State and the Police Federation are represented, reached agreement in principle on 27 December 2001 on a package of changes to police pay and conditions of service. The changes are set out in the heads of agreement.
One of the proposed changes is to reduce the premium rates of pay, but not to plain time, for working overtime, on rostered rest day and on public holidays. The reductions would be phased in over two years, the first stage on 1 April 2003 and the second stage on 1 April 2004. The savings from reducing the premium rates of pay would be re-invested into the new pay framework.
The proposed reductions in premiums have to be seen in the context of all the other changes set out in the heads of agreement. Those changes include shortened pay scales for all federated ranks, a minimum increase of £402 on 1 April 2003 on each point of the pay scales, a new competence-related payment of £1,002 at the top of the scales.
There will also be a new special priority payments scheme to reward those officers working at the sharp end of public service, doing the most difficult and demanding tasks. Officers in qualifying posts will receive a payment of between £500 and £5,000 a year. The national criteria are that posts carry a significantly higher responsibility than the norm for the rank; or are particularly difficult to fill; or have specially arduous working conditions. All parties in PNB recognise that there are a number of specialist posts where long hours are a necessary and integral part of the officers' role rather than due to management failure.
In addition, chief constables will be able to award bonuses of between £50 and £500 for occasional work of an outstandingly demanding, unpleasant or important nature, such as hostage negotiation, or fingerprinting and searching badly decomposed bodies.
83WThe Government believe that, taking all the elements of the package into account, the vast majority of officers will be better off.