British Transport Police Federation

ANNUAL CONFERENCE
BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE FEDERATION
SPEECH BY CHAIRMAN: MR ALEX ROBERTSON
0830 HRS ON WEDNESDAY 5 MARCH 2008 AT THE
PARK INN HOTEL, YORK

Minister, welcome to our conference. The role of the police is rarely far from the news headlines. Usually it is in the context of police concern about crime - whether there are enough officers on the street and the growing fear of crime.

These days, however, on top of those perennial issues we have had an ongoing row about police pay. And it is a row which refuses to go away. It is also a row which should never have happened. Now the British Transport Police Federation is not a main player in the dispute. But we are directly affected because of our 100 per cent parity pay agreement with the Home Department police service.

I appreciate, Minister, that the Department of Transport is not a central player either in this dispute. Nevertheless, you and your Ministerial colleagues are the Government and we are frequently told that the decision to take on the police over pay was not solely Jacqui Smith's as Home Secretary but a Cabinet Government exercising collective responsibility.

On 23rd January over 25,000 UK police officers marched through London. I am proud to say that 80 officers from the federated ranks of the BTP were there with them - shoulder to shoulder in an unprecedented show of solidarity. The Government, of course, wants to see more police on the streets but that is hardly what they meant.

But the Government has only itself to blame. For almost 30 years we had a formula for agreeing police pay which had worked extremely well. The formula recognised the covenant that there needs to be with the police, indeed with the armed services. The police are the ultimate emergency service. We put our lives at risk in order to do our public duty; we work unsocial hours; we have a job and a lifestyle which severely strains family and personal relationships and when we are unhappy about pay and conditions, we are denied that most basic of all employee rights - the right to withdraw labour. Last night's bravery awards were an ample testimony of how much the public expects of its police officers and how committed we are to meeting that expectation. I am grateful and thank you Minister that you made the extra time to join us and to see and hear for yourself what frontline policing is all about.

There is no other civilian group of employees working in similar circumstances. The 1979 Edmund Davies Report understood this and compensated officers accordingly. Now after nearly 30 years of comparative harmony on pay settlements, the Government no longer likes the results. To put it baldly, the Government - and the Prime Minister in particular - thinks that police officers are too expensive - that they are paid too much. In fact he declares that police officer pay has risen 39% in ten years. Well I have news for him - his pay in the same period has gone up a healthy 28%. I don't hear any clamour from him or his colleagues that he is too expensive.

I can understand that the Government might want to change the way police pay is determined. I don't agree that it should be changed but Governments have the right to revisit pay agreement arrangements to ensure that they continue to give value and that they work efficiently. The truth is, however, that both the police and Government have been well served by the Police Negotiating Board. With minor alterations to the comparator group mix, we have, until the last two years, been able to move swiftly to an agreement on the pay levels of 172,000 police officers.

Two years ago the signs at PNB became ominous. We moved to conciliation after failure to agree at PNB but at least - if somewhat ungraciously - the Home Office agreed the outcome of the conciliation award. 2007 was different. It was a year of duplicity and unfair delay.

Duplicity and delay because the Home Office knew from the beginning that it was never going to accept the outcome of PNB, the conciliation process or the decision of the Police Arbitration Tribunal. The year was characterised by bad faith - for why go through a process when you have no intention of complying with the outcome.

Nor is any excuse afforded by the fact that we had a change of Prime Minister and of course, yet another change of Home Secretary. The Prime Minister brought with him the baggage of his years in the Treasury. Ms Smith was new to the Home Office so we generously gave her a further month to read herself into the job beyond the date when she was required to make the decision on pay.

2007 was a year also of failure to manage the legitimate expectations of the police service so that we have ended up on a collision course with a determined, united police service at odds with an unthinking Government isolated even within its own party.

The covenant between the police service and Government should be one of trust. But the Government has so mismanaged its relationship with the police over the past eighteen months as to make us deeply suspicious about entering into discussions on future pay arrangements.

Your own Department, Minister, is not entirely blameless is this matter either. The key issue of the 2.5 per cent award was that it was only 2.5% if paid from the due date of 1st September. The Scottish Government had the power to implement the award and quite honourably, they did just that - paid in full from 1st September. By the way Minister as you know, your Glasgow constituency office is but a stone's throw from the Scottish Police Federation's office.

Those officers are now more highly paid than the rest of the UK police service. You are right next door to a pay anomaly of your Government's own making.

When we sought to pursue with Ruth Kelly, that as Secretary of State for Transport, she had the power to make the award from the due date it became apparent that this would not be a straight forward 'yea or nigh' Ministerial decision. Apart from the constraint on the Minister of Cabinet collective responsibility we became sufficiently concerned that the process that it might lead to a wider agenda on pay and conditions than we would wish to contemplate. We therefore drew back from such a path.

Despite the Department's lack of enthusiasm we are angry rather than demoralised. Because of the Government's tactics we have supported whether we should have the same employee rights as other employees. It is not that we want to take industrial action. But if we are to be treated as just another public sector employee group, then we should enjoy the same protection in law from the excesses of our employer. It has not escaped our notice that other public sector bodies such as police community support officers and police support staff have had the 2.5% award paid from the correct due date. On the one hand, the Government insists that 2% is the pay norm. Yet the evidence is that this norm is only applied to the frontline police. Teachers are also to get 2.5%. The fact that their award is part of a three year deal is irrelevant. No doubt they all deserve their pay rises but it is incredibly mean-spirited for the Government to insist on only 1.9% for a police service which never lets it down.

Somehow the wheels have got to be put back on the wagon. The present dispute detracts from efficient policing. No-one wants this situation to continue a moment longer than it should be. We urge you, Minister, to carry a message to your Government colleagues - sort this out, establish a reputation for working in good faith and win over the trust of this police service.

Instead we will find ourselves in court next month as a result of a judicial review being granted. This Federation has not stayed on the sidelines of this dispute. We have contributed financially and willingly to the costs of the court action by the Federation of England and Wales. At stake is the Judge's view as to whether the Home Secretary can treat an independent arbitration as a sham - that she can set aside its decision because she deems the difference of 1.9% and 2.5% to be a matter of grave national importance. We all look forward to that decision.

Longer term at risk, I believe, is a battle with the entire public service. This Federation is suspicious that the government would like to see the regionalisation of all public sector pay. Police officers would be paid according to the market rate pertaining to their area, a rate which could fluctuate wildly between major cities and the geographical extremes of the UK. Apply that argument to the civil service, to teachers, nurses, indeed any public sector funded position and you have the opportunity for massive savings in pay. This battle by the police service with Government for fair and equal pay for doing the same job throughout the UK should be watched and supported by all of the public sector.

I am not convinced the Government understands how dependent it is on the regular police service to maintain order and uphold the law. For instance the Institute of Public Policy Research seems to think that the role of Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) should be expanded, that they be given police powers. The Federation does not wish to see police work being devolved from regular officers to uniformed civilians. I am not even sure that PCSOs want more powers either. As it is there are increasing examples of PCSOs unable to deal with any kind of out of the ordinary circumstances.

The surrendering of proper police powers, especially neighbourhood policing duties, to the PCSOs leaves police officers at the sharp end of policing unrelieved by normal public contact. It introduces two-tier policing - a service which will confuse the public. As it is the public are becoming more aware the PCSOs are not real police officers - that their ability to deal with many situations is severely limited and creates frustration.

The adoption of key recommendations in Sir Ronnie Flanagan's Report, if wholeheartedly embraced by Government, should release frontline officers from the burden of paperwork and back into contact with the public. I have already expressed this Federation's doubts about how well other recommendation's relating to PCSOs will actually work to the benefit of the public. But there is much still to discuss here.

Over the past few years, especially with the change in the licensing laws to a more liberal regime, the 24/7 dimension to policing has intensified. Previously, members of the public were heading for late trains in the run up to midnight. Now they are heading to more late night pubs and clubs. When they do try to get home they are in an intoxicated state. It is well after midnight and or they are even getting home using early morning commuter trains. The resources of the police are being severely stretched because of the need for periods of night-time duty to last several hours longer.

From a policing perspective, the cultural change in how society manages alcohol may still have to work through to a greater level of maturity. But at the moment young people are vulnerable at railway stations; passengers are equally vulnerable to the anti-social activities of revellers and too many of our town centres have become no-go areas for families even in the early evenings and certainly late at night.

The Federation would like to see a tougher attitude taken to the consequences of excessive drinking. Zero tolerance works but will only be successful if police resources are put in place. And that certainly does not mean expanding PCSO powers as suggested by the Institute of Public Policy Research and other reports.

Over the last couple of conferences Minister you have been used to me expressing deep concern about the Metropolitan Police Service trying to take over the BTP in London, especially that they have coveted our London Underground Division. That argument has been comprehensively demolished on several occasions as lacking either intellectual or operational merit.

Just when you think we can concentrate on the job another threat to our operational integrity has emerged, this time from north of the border in Glasgow. Since the attack on Glasgow Airport, the BTP and the rest of the Scottish Police Service have been on the alert for further dangers. Not unreasonably this has led to an increase in our use of stop-and-search powers. Suddenly, we are being accused of being heavy-handed just for trying to protect the public thoroughly.

The criticism by the Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill, that we would damage community relations is irresponsible and you were right Minister to take such a robust line in rebutting this allegation. He was indeed likely to damage the morale of officers who were simply trying to do their job. No doubt Mr MacAskill would be in the vanguard of our critics if an attack got through because of our failure to be sufficiently vigilant.

Our use of stop-and-search is being reviewed but what concerns me more is the clear evidence that this has become a pretext to question the present structure of the British Transport Police in Scotland. The BTP is the only national police service dealing on a daily basis with the public. We are a specialist service dealing with travelling crime from the north of Scotland to the very south of England. The kind of crime we deal with knows no borders and does not distinguish between jurisdictions. The current arrangements have worked well. I note that over the last three years that crime on Scotland's rail network has fallen by 27 per cent. The BTP has achieved all its operational objectives in Scotland over the same period.

Scotland has devolved powers on policing and is entitled to review how it operates a police service within its borders. However I am dismayed that there seems to be a deliberate discontent being fostered which could see the creation of a separate Transport Police for Scotland along with other changes regarding the responsibilities of local constabularies for sea ports, airports, and bus stations. These are perfectly legitimate arguments which do the rounds quite regularly in the rest of Britain and are just as often dismissed after considerable, informed debate. But from a purely policing perspective I have to ask: where are there the operational shortcomings which would justify such a re-organisation of the BTP? There is distinct danger that a reorganisation which might satisfy a devolutionist instinct could also damage our operational effectiveness in Scotland and the rest of Britain.

My members are fed up with being pored over as an opportunity for political advantage or even point scoring� whether it is the Mayor of London seeking to create and expand a police empire or now Scottish Ministers wanting more control of police matters within their jurisdiction. We want to be left to get on with the job of being the very successful national police service that we have become.

And that success is considerable: crime down 11%; and detection up from 24.6% to 26.4% over the year despite a 7% increase in passenger numbers. We are also the only force to have met all our policing targets for a third year in a row.

Looking forward Minister I believe that the size of the BTP has to grow from its present strength of 2,800. The number of daily passenger journeys now tops one billion. The Government has said that it wants to increase capacity on the railways to accommodate 180 million more passengers over the next seven years. This represents a growth of 18 per cent and on a straight pro rata basis would mean that the force should increase by another 500 officers, bringing our strength to around 3,300. The pressure on numbers can, of course, be eased with the access to the right technology.

Looking again at Sir Ronnie Flanagan's recommendations in his Review of Policing I note he has placed an emphasis on increasing the use of mobile technology to assist officers. I hope it will not surprise you Minister to learn that BTP pioneered this kind of technology. As you can imagine BTP officers can be quite isolated at times and at some distance from support or from information points. This Force, like the police service in general, has always been willing to embrace the advantages of technology.

We applaud this official acknowledgement that frontline policing can benefit through investment in technology. Perhaps we could see some increased finance from the Department here, Minister, particularly as the Prime Minister himself has recognised the potential value of the use of mobile data.

I am also pleased to hear that in relation to the Olympics, that additional funding will be forthcoming. It is crucial that not only the Olympics as a sporting event is a success, the whole experience for the spectators must be enjoyable and safe. It is not entirely clear whether the responsibility for funding will fall to your Department, Minister, or to the Home Office. I would prefer that the responsible Department should be the Home Office. The Olympic Games will benefit not just London but the nation as a whole. Full resourcing should be additional to our usual policing need and not as a result of the Department of Transport having to offer the money from its own budget.

Lurking in the background, however, is the undiminished threat of terrorism. This is now very much a home-grown threat - which significantly increases the difficulties of prevention and detection. The danger is that the current period of quietness may catch the general public off guard but there can be no such excuse for the police service and, in particular the BTP, which is responsible for the safety of our railway infrastructure. Recent arrests and deportations show that a very real threat is refusing to go away. There are unconfirmed reports that there are as many as 2,000 potential terrorists in this country awaiting their opportunity. The BTP needs sufficient officers with access to the right training, specialist equipment and resources if we are to react with capability, effectiveness and credit in the event of an attack.

Finally, Minister, I want to raise a matter which is within the gift of Government. Through what I believe, or I hope, was simply a legislative oversight to provide for officers transferring either from or to this force to retain their pension rights. Instead they are required to accept the new pension regulations as if they were a new recruit. It will not surprise you that the new arrangements for pensions have several drawbacks compared to the previous provisions. That may be as it must but it is grossly unfair to expect a serving officer of another force to surrender his previous entitlement and to buy into a less favourable pension regime. The law of unintended consequences applies here. We run the risk of experienced officers from other forces not taking up positions within the BTP. And it is simply unfair that officers leaving this force for personal or career advancement should be penalised.

We are not selfish enough to believe that keeping all the jobs and all our officers in-house is a good thing. We do not want to see the operational capability of the BTP impeded through the shortage of experienced officers with particular skills refusing to join us. The Police Service of Northern Ireland was faced with the same difficulty and it was properly addressed to the benefit of the transferring officers and the Force itself. Exchanges between different forces are essential to revitalise thinking throughout the police service.

Putting this anomaly right might take a while for civil servants to address Minister but we would welcome some acknowledgement that something will be done.