The coalition government has extended its temporary civil service recruitment freeze at the same time as Home Secretary risked confrontation with police by warning that cuts to their pay and conditions would be necessary to avoid thousands more job losses.
Home Secretary Theresa May told the 140,000-strong police service in England and Wales yesterday that she wanted officers’ pay to be frozen over the next two years in line with the rest of the public sector in order to save an estimated £350 million from an £11 billion wage bill.
Pay accounts for three quarters of the entire police budget, but May warned that the situation must change. She also signalled that she backed reforms to a salary structure in which constables can double their income through overtime payments. The police overtime bill in 2009 was nearly £400 million. The government plans to cut police funding by 20% over the next four years.
May’s speech came ahead of the publication of a review of police wages and conditions next Tuesday. The review, undertaken by former rail regulator Tom Winsor, is expected to recommend a radical overhaul of police pay and conditions, including sharp reductions in overtime payments, housing and travel allowances as well as changes to shift patterns and retirement and redundancy procedures.
Previous attempts to overhaul pay and conditions have failed, however. When the then Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith rejected a recommended pay increase in 2008, she was forced to back down following marches by officers, who are banned from striking and so took alternative action.
In what may be a signal of more to come, Simon Reed, vice president of the Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said that May’s talk of reform was simply a “euphemism for cuts”. He also accused her of undermining the Winsor review by making her speech before it was published.
“She clearly undervalues what we do, despite what she says. Words are cheap, but actions speak louder,” he said.
The controversy came as the government announced that it was extending a temporary recruitment freeze imposed on the civil service last May and originally intended to end with the 2010/11 financial year.
Restrictions on filling empty posts will now continue subject to ongoing review and may last until the end of the Comprehensive Spending Review period in 2015, but the move is said to have already saved £120 million. Redundancy payments under the civil service redundancy scheme will also need to be approved by the Cabinet Office in order “to ensure value for money”.
Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said the aim was to save £3 billion by the end of this financial year. Office for National Statistics figures indicate that civil service employment dropped by 8,000 posts between the second and third quarter of 2010, while initial Cabinet Office estimates suggest that external recruitment fell by 75% in 2010/11.
