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Police Terms and Conditions of Service (Redundancy) Bill
Police forces facing tough budget cuts should have the capacity to make officers redundant, the Commons has heard.
Conservative MP Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) warned that cuts would fall "disproportionately" on "cheaper" civilian staff in support roles, such as police community support officers (PCSOs) or control room operators.
Presenting a bill under the ten minute rule motion on Wednesday, Reckless said regular police officers, who cannot be made redundant as they are servants of the Crown, would then be forced to move from the streets to the office to replace them.
Reckless told MPs that police forces should be given the freedom to decide who to make redundant.
Introducing his Police Terms and Conditions of Service (Redundancy) Bill, he said that because "no-one employs the police, no-one can make them redundant".
"A police officer is appointed subject to two years' probation - but after that, unless they're found guilty of gross misconduct, their appointment as a police officer simply continues until they retire, generally after 30 years.
"It makes France look like a flexible labour market."
He added: "So how can we make these cuts in police budgets? The answer is that cuts will be concentrated on cheaper civilians."
Chancellor George Osborne had earlier announced tp Parliament that police spending will fall by 4 per cent over the next four years.
On average, police forces are made up of 60 per cent police officers and 40 per cent civilians, he said.
"But as police forces have set out projected plans for reductions, they've had no choice but to target the civilian staff disproportionately."
Reckless added that unless the law is changed, there is the risk of forcing officers off of the streets and back into administrative roles which are now done by police staff.
He said this would be as police authorities are allowed to make their civilian employees redundant, but let them pay police officers until they retire -"whether or not they're needed and irrespective of performance".
Reckless said there were regulations in place for redundancy if an officer had worked more than 30 years or if they were "permanently disabled for the performance of their duty".
But he added: "If we are to require police forces and authorities to make significant savings, then we should allow them to do that in a way which makes most sense for local policing.
"We should certainly not force them to do it by targeting civilians, targeting the old and targeting the disabled."
The Bill was given an unopposed first reading, but without government support it stands little chance of becoming law.
Progress:
House of Commons
1st reading: 20 October 2010
2nd reading: 14 October 2011
Article Comments
I agree with Anonofficer....it seems daft that cuts are being made all over the place without a thought for who will do those jobs and how valuable the person is they are making redundant. It would be far more sensible to offer a voluntary redundancy scheme for Police Officers.
The hearts of the Officers who would take it are probably not in it any more anyway so why not benefit everyone and come up with a packge. As for the problem of not being able to make a Police Officer redundant....just give it a different name!
A None
30th Aug 2011 at 7:53 am
Mark Reckless has completely overlooked the fact that there is already a process in place to remove poor performing officers or those who's attendance is unsatisfactory under the performance rules.
Perhaps the honourable gentlemen needs to do his research properly.
Anon
30th Jun 2011 at 6:39 pm
Why not offer voluntary redundancies with a good financial package to volunteers, its fairly obvious the pension in its current format cannot be sustained so offer redundancies to those in reciept of the higher paying pension and set a parameter on time done and time left.
If you target officers from say 6 to 15 years service you may get more volunteers than is bargained for. The government could reduce the budget and if neccessary recruit new officers on new pension schemes to tackle the deficit and find favour with the voting public as the intention is not to decrease numbers but tackle the pension budget.
With the right package Officers will volunteer, lets not forget many have come from other professions so may be tempted to return, I can definately state one who would.
Don't hit Officers in their pocket to fund budget cuts, this is frankly unfair they are effectively paying twice for a Police service as they also pay taxes.
Anonofficer
8th Mar 2011 at 4:41 pm
So who protects the protectors!
Seems like we are to be sidelined because of liberal views on how to deal with criminals. As police we do not have the right to strike; would we get this if we could be made redundant. The police federation is somewhat of a toothless tiger and never fights the officers' corner adequately.
There is a lot of good will given by officers dedicating a lot of their own time for no pay to ensure a good job is done and crime packages are well prepared. If redundancies were to come on the cards and officers worked to rule then the system would fall apart with many more serious and violent offendersgetting away with crimes they commit.
Studies have shown (as published in Police Review) that police officers get more detections than their civilian investigators.
The status quo must be maintained and the ever inflating number of civilian staff reduced to focus on real policing rather than employing them to think of gimicks and analyse data that has already been analysed 3 or 4 times by other civilians in a different dept in the same organisation.
steve
15th Nov 2010 at 2:15 pm
What a stupid idea. So we keep more civilians. What use are they with no power of arrest. More policing on the cheap whilst criminals get away scot free. They don't even want to send them to prison now.
Anon
15th Nov 2010 at 1:09 pm
If police officer numbers had risen in proportion to police staff numbers in the last 20 years then I would agree with most of the above. The fact is they have not. Police staff have increased disproportionately more, why?
Anon
12th Nov 2010 at 10:12 am
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