House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Jun 1990

Mr. Marlow : It has been explained to me, although I do not know whether the explanation was accurate, that some police forces had their rent allowances uprated last year according to housing costs and other forces are having the rent allowances uprated this year according to the RPI. It is suggested that similar police forces in similar parts of the country with similar housing costs are getting different allowances. Is that correct? If it is, how does my right hon. and learned Friend justify it?

Mr. Waddington : I shall come to that in a moment. I can tell my hon. Friend now that rent allowance always differed from force to force because it was based on different housing costs in the sense that it was based on the typical value of a police house in one area compared with

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another. Some police forces have always had their rent allowances updated in an even year while some have had them updated in an odd year. Simply as a result of that, representations were made to me by my right hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow), my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and Police Federation officers. As a result of their representations I made an important concession. Perhaps my hon. Friend will bear with me and I shall deal with that.

Mr. Hattersley : May we have the point raised by the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) cleared up? As he said, the uprating is done on a different basis from the previous uprating, thus leaving, let us say, Thames Valley and the Metropolitan police unequal in that one force does not benefit to the same degree as the other. That is a simple fact and I do not understand why the Home Secretary does not agree with his hon. Friend.

Mr. Waddington : That was always the case and if the right hon. Gentleman had been listening he would have heard me say that. Housing allowances and costs differ from area to area. If one takes a 10-year period for one force and compares it with a 10-year period for another, one will find that sometimes the even-year force does better and sometimes the odd-year force does better.

Mr. Marlow : May I put my point again? Is it possible that in two areas where housing costs are the same or similar the rent allowances now available to police forces are different?

Mr. Waddington : Under the existing system, the allowance differs according to housing costs. Under the new system it will differ in the same way. [ Hon. Members :-- "Answer the question."] I am answering the question. The only difficulty arises because 33 forces are updated in an even year and 20 are reviewed in an odd year. When I announced my proposals in January I received representations from colleagues about the alleged unfairness to the 1988 officers of continuing to pay them an allowance assessed in that year and not uprated to take account of changes since. As I said, I had representations from a number of people, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Woking, my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and the chairman and secretary of the Police Federation.

Because I was impressed by the strength of the pleas made to me, on 15 March I announced a significant change in the original proposals. In effect, officers in the forces last reviewed in 1988 will have their red circled amounts, as they are called, uprated by the retail price index for the period between the date of their last review and 1 April 1990. I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge will mind if I say that that was twice as good as the proposal that he put to me. He suggested that the grievance could be met by an uprating for the 1988 forces which would increase those allowances by one year according to the RPI. We actually decided to uprate them by two years.

Mr. David Alton (Liverpool, Mossley Hill) : Does the Home Secretary accept that one grievance felt by many police officers is that, while the review is taking place, it would have been better to resolve some of the other anomalies? Bearing in mind the point made by the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow), there will be a £2,000 discrepancy between the Merseyside force

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and the Cheshire force as a result of the Home Secretary's announcement about rent allowances. Does he accept that that will cause considerable anguish among serving police officers in difficult areas like Merseyside?

Mr. Waddington : I do not think that the hon. Gentleman's figures are correct. In any event, the anomaly, as the hon. Gentleman was generous enough to admit, has always existed. We have tried to correct what was perceived to be an injustice by not freezing the 1988 forces at the valuation then placed on their rent allowances, but by having an uprating according to the RPI.

Mr. Shersby : If my right hon. and learned Friend will reflect on what he has just said, he will recall that I pressed him originally to bring those forces on the 1988 revaluation up to the same level as those that were revalued in 1989. I went on to say that if that proved impossible, at the very least I expected and hoped that he would bring those officers on the 1988 revaluation up to the 1989-90 level through the movement in the RPI over those two years, not one year.

Mr. Waddington : My hon. Friend is in error in his last point. However, the basic fact remains that my hon. Friend made a proposition to me and I readily accepted his suggestion.

Mr. John Ward (Poole) : While my right hon. and learned Friend is dealing with that point, will he reflect on the fact that despite the concession that he made or negotiated with my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby), a Dorset policeman will be £856 a year worse off than a Hampshire policeman under the new arrangement? Would it not be sensible, as was suggested, to share the misery and ensure that at least in each region everyone gets roughly the same allowance? Otherwise, recruitment will be badly affected.

Mr. Waddington : It will not affect recruiting. The anomalies always existed and it would have been even more anomalous if we had paid the same rent allowance to all officers irrespective of the area in which they live when we all know perfectly well that the cost of renting a house differs greatly in different parts of the country. The allowance was always based on the difference in the market rent of a typical police house in a particular part of the country. Because that differed so much, rent allowances always differed greatly between one part of the country and another.

Following discussions with the Police Federation and my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge, I made a further change to help officers living in free accommodation provided by the police authority. It was represented to me that such officers were at a disadvantage compared with officers in receipt of rent allowance, the latter having their former levels of rent allowance including the rates element, protected as I have described on a mark-time basis. It was suggested that something needed to be done to help those officers who lived in police houses or quarters and who, up to 31 March, were living there free of rates.

Here again, I am glad to have been able to do something to meet the representations that were made to me. Hon. Members will see that the amended regulations provide for the payment of a transitional allowance of

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£300 a year for three years to officers in a police house or police quarters who were living in provided accommodation on 31 March 1990. The Scottish regulations make similar provision from 31 March 1989. The allowance does not apply in Northern Ireland, because there is no community charge, and police officers therefore continue to occupy police houses or quarters free of rates.

Even that is not the last of the concessions that I have been prepared to make. As the police authorities came to implement the new arrangements, various other matters were drawn to my attention--much mocked, I might say, by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook, but obviously considered important by those who mentioned them to me--I thought that they should be put right, and I have proposed three further changes that will benefit serving officers.

First, it appears that some officers serving on 31 March would have been due to receive compensatory grant on not only their previous year's rent allowance, but the tax paid on compensatory grant itself in years before 1989-90. Although struck by the infinite complexity of the arrangements, I am content that those amounts should also be included in their red circling. Not only do those officers continue to get tax back on the rent allowance ; they continue to get tax back on the tax back! It is as complicated as that.

Secondly, I have decided that, where police officers were married to each other and receiving flat rate rent allowance on 31 March, the husband should move up to full rate if his wife goes on unpaid maternity leave. Finally, if a similar married couple were living in a police house or quarters on 31 March and the wife goes on unpaid maternity leave, it seems to me right that when she returns she should resume her entitlement to provided accommodation allowance. Draft regulations on all those matters have been sent to the police negotiating board for comment and, subject to that, will be laid before the House as soon as possible. They cover forces in England and Wales ; similar drafts for Scotland and Northern Ireland will follow as soon as possible. I am sure that the arrangements are fair and reasonable.

Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : There is a widespread belief among policemen that the real reason for the anomalies to which the Home Secretary has referred--and to which other hon. Members have drawn attention--is that the cost of implementing the tribunal's findings would have been extremely heavy. What calculation have the Home Secretary and the Government made of that cost?

Mr. Waddington : I can tell the hon. Gentleman that rent allowances now take up 13 per cent. of total police remuneration. I can also tell him that, if more and more is spent on rent allowances, less and less will be available for other parts of the police service.

Mr. Robert B. Jones (Hertfordshire, West) : I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend : he has been very patient with interventions.

The problem is, I think, one of recruitment rather than anguish. Those of us whose local authorities are next to comparable authorities--in cost terms--are very worried about police moving from one authority to another. I am informed that, in Hertfordshire, 40 police officers have asked for transfers to other authorities in the past two

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months. If there are recruitment problems as a result of the regulations, will my right hon. and learned Friend have another look at this and other aspects of them?

Mr. Waddington : Obviously, it is my duty to ensure that recruitment is maintained at a proper level for the sake of efficiency, and I can therefore give my hon. Friend the undertaking for which he asks. I must add, however, that I see no evidence of a fall in police recruitment ; in fact, I think that we are about 0.2 per cent. below establishment at present. That is contrary to the position back in 1977, when people rushed out of the police force because of the paltry wages that they were getting under the Labour Government. No Government could have allowed a system under which rent allowances continued to roar out of control in the way that I have described. All of us would have wished to protect serving officers by ensuring that they did not lose anything in cash terms. That is what we have done.

I must stress that the new allowance still represents a most substantial addition to police pay--police pay which, under the Edmund-Davies formula, has increased well ahead of inflation since 1979. Let there be no doubt about it--we reaffirm our commitment to Edmund-Davies.

I am surprised at the right hon. Gentleman's comments. I am bound to say that no reasonable person could have read what he said at the Police Federation conference and think that it was a reaffirmation of Edmund- Davies, so the right hon. Gentleman has had to do some pretty swift thinking since then. As he has now said that a Labour Government would be committed to Edmund-Davies, perhaps, some time before the end of the debate, he will tell hon. Members what additional amount an incoming Labour Government would be prepared to dedicate to rent

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allowance over and above what we are prepared to spend. In other words, let him tell us precisely what is the financial commitment of a future Labour Government. Of course, he has not said one word about that.

In view of some of the right hon. Gentleman's comments, there is only one motto for the police service to remember--"Never trust Labour". I say to the police, "Labour let you down in the 1970s when officers were leaving the service in their tens of thousands because of such poor pay, by the standards of your fellow workers, and they will let you down again." When, during the miners' strike and at Wapping, the police were protecting the right of every man and woman to work and to get to his or her place of work free of molestation, they got no support at all from the right hon. Gentleman. I remember the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), with his usual weasel words, condemning violence from wherever it came--by which he meant action taken by the police to contain violence, as much as the mob violence making that action necessary.

Not so long ago, too, the Opposition reaffirmed their determination to repeal the prevention of terrorism legislation. Those people, masquerading as friends of the police, would deprive the police of powers that every policeman in the land knows to be essential in the fight against terrorism. I do not take lectures about my responsibilities from a mess of a party like that. When it faces up to its responsibilities, I shall perhaps be prepared to listen.

Several Hon. Members : rose --

Mr. Speaker : Order. A large number of right hon. and hon. Members wish to participate. I ask for brief contributions, please.

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11.3 pm

Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : It is perhaps a measure of the weakness of the Home Secretary's case that he found it necessary to resort to the jejune arguments relating to police powers and did not answer the substantial questions that were raised earlier on the level of police remuneration and the structure and method of determining police pay. It is bizarre also that the Home Secretary reaffirmed his support for Edmund-Davies, when at the heart of the Edmund-Davies report is a clear message that police pay is to include rent allowances and that the whole structure of police pay was based upon that assumption. Perhaps that was an inappropriate formula for the future, and therefore it was necessary for the Government to raise some of the issues that followed the introduction of the poll tax in the police service. However, it was not appropriate simply to override the Edmund-Davies formula on remuneration, and in so doing to set aside the arbitral process that was so integral to the ultimate determination of police pay.

It is quite clear that Edmund-Davies has been honoured more in the breach than in the observance in this round of negotiations. It would have been better if, as soon as he took office,, the Home Secretary had made clear his judgment that there was a need for a round-table conference on the future of police remuneration, in the light of the circumstances that he has described, and not resorted to the simple procedure of rejecting the findings of the arbitral tribunal. As the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) said, they were difficult negotiations. Both sides had to make compromises, which were then embodied in a recommendation. It is true that the Government are not bound in law to accept that recommendation, but most Home Secretaries would regard it as foolish not to do so. On previous occasions when arbitral findings have been questioned--between 1984 and the time when the Home Secretary took office, there were some six occasions on which the police negotiating board could not reach agreement and the matter was submitted to the arbitral tribunal--those findings were upheld. Even at the time of the ill-fated intervention of the previous Home Secretary on 23 October, when he meddled in the negotiations in the manner described by the Home Secretary, it was thought that it was the Government's clear intention to abide by the results of the process. Why, otherwise, bother to meddle? If, at the end of the day, the previous Home Secretary intended simply to lay down the law and utter his fiat, what was the purpose of his intervention?

Mr. Waddington : Has the hon. Gentleman had the opportunity to read the whole of my right hon. Friend's letter? In paragraph three, he said :

"However, in present circumstances we do not believe that we can commit ourselves to meeting the recommendations of the Police Negotiating Board."

My right hon. Friend fairly intimated, on 23 October, that there would be difficulties if the police negotiating board produced conclusions along the lines of those that it eventually produced.

Mr. Maclennan : I have the whole of the former Home Secretary's letter in front of me. As I read it, the difficulty that he mentioned related to the cost of the proposed settlement. The reluctance of the Home Secretary in his speech tonight, and in answer to my intervention, to reveal

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the possible cost of carrying out the arbitral finding reinforces the impression that finance is at the bottom of it. Cash is at the bottom of it, not any schematic difficulties. There are always schematic difficulties in dealing with police pay, and there probably always will be--so long as there are 47 different police authorities in England and Wales, and different police authorities in Scotland, there will be no nice solution to these problems. Money seems to have been at the heart of the matter.

The modest changes that have been made as a response to the substantial outburst of anger in all parts of the country from the police, who are not a noticeably militant organisation, have created further anomalies and difficulties. I do not propose to repeat those mentioned by the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook in his understandably long speech. However, in this short debate, I wish to draw attention to at least one of the problems that has arisen, and about which concern has been expressed by the Northern constabulary in Scotland, as an illustration of the Secretary of State's failure to deal with the problem.

I refer to the proposed £300 allowance to those living in police accommodation. That has not been a source of gratitude ; it has brought about an awareness of the inequity of what is proposed, because many officers who have been living not in police-provided accommodation, but in lodgings that they have had to find, are very much worse off than those who are the beneficiaries of the modest change. I must advise the Home Secretary and the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), who is with him on the Treasury Bench, that there is the gravest anger and disquiet throughout Scotland at what has been done. One letter that I received from the Northern constabulary states :

"The regulations have torn us apart--my telephone is red hot every day and the Force morale as far as rent allowances is concerned is at rock bottom, and I can assure you that it is the same in every Force in Scotland."

It is probably the same in every force in England, too. Evidence that I have received from a number of different forces in England suggests that there is a seething anger about the way in which the matter has been handled. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton) drew attention to the concern on Merseyside about the differentiation between the positions in Cheshire and Liverpool. I have also seen letters from, for example, Norfolk, addressed to Conservative Members as well as to myself, also expressing anger.

The Home Secretary failed to explain why he was not willing to enter into negotiations and discussions with the police, not only about the matters before the police negotiating board, but about his proposition that there must be a wholly new approach to police pay, which departed so fundamentally from Edmund-Davies in ruling out the rent allowances, and which set at nought the long and painful negotiations that had taken place. The Home Secretary has argued that he was not "obliged" to implement the proposals--I acknowledge that he was not "obliged" in law, but he was "obliged" in honest decency at least to recognise that the Edmund-Davies formula on police pay had, in the past, taken into consideration the unsocial hours, the restriction on private lives, the exposure to danger, the need to be on call, and the denial of the right to join a trade union. All those matters were in the Edmund-Davies formula on police pay.

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Rent allowances were taken into account when setting the basic pay scales. The increases in the rent allowances were designed to reflect movements in housing costs, not living costs. The Home Secretary has departed from that formula in the regulations. If we assume a continuing rate of inflation at 7.5 per cent., which may not be a fair assumption in the light of current rates, the transitional rent allowance will be worth only a third of the current value by the time it has caught up with the housing allowance.

The Police (Amendment) Regulations were originally laid before the House on 9 March. The right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Sir D. Steel) prayed against both the English and Scottish regulations, yet there was no debate. For months a most peculiar silence fell over the Government. Why? It was a bizarre failure of our democratic process to take the necessary step in the implementation of the police regulations. I can assume only that it was because of some internal Government battle about the sum that might be made available as a sweetener to try to rob the debate of some of the bitterness that it has assumed. Perhaps the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook is right in believing that some of the sting has gone out of Tory Members. Perhaps they are no longer so angry as they were when the regulations were first announced. The facts have not changed and it is to be hoped that hon. Members on both sides who expressed themselves so strongly earlier will reject the regulations, which do a serious disservice to the policing of the country. The police are not a militant organisation, but they rely on us in the House to safeguard their interests so that they do not require the protection that others in the public service have enjoyed. If the Home Secretary is saying that there are grave matters of public import that led him to take the decision to set aside the tribunal, he has not spelt them out tonight. He may have said that there were some anomalies, and certainly there were, but that is not a reason for introducing regulations that in themselves are anomalies. They certainly cannot be regarded as being necessitated by reasons of grave national importance, to use the terms of Edmund-Davies. Although the problems will be felt throughout the country, in urban and peripheral areas, they will undoubtedly be most acutely felt in rural areas, where those who must live in the village police house will not receive the allowance. Those who live in a tied house do not acquire capital in a house of their own. They have the future disadvantage that they will have no rates allowance.

We are not talking about small sums. The Northern constabulary of the Scottish Police Federation has calculated that there is a difference between the maximum old and new allowances of £1,546.25. By any test, that is a significant decrease in take-home pay. I hope that the House will take the only sensible step open to it, and will avoid continuing widespread discontent and dissatisfaction in an already demoralised police force, by voting against the regulations. 11.19 pm

Mr. Michael Shersby (Uxbridge) : As the House knows, I am parliamentary adviser to the Police Federation of England and Wales, and I want formally to declare that interest.

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This debate is not about pay but about the Government's decision to take the unprecedented step of setting aside a decision of the police negotiating board on rent allowances following the recommendation of the police arbitration tribunal.

The people affected by that decision are the men and women who serve the public in the police forces of our country. They do a difficult and dangerous job. They are the men and women in blue who each year sustain serious injuries in the line of duty and who in some cases lose their lives. They are members of a loyal and disciplined force who by law do not have the right to take industrial action.

They expect the Government of the day to abide by negotiations between the official side representatives--the Home Office and local police authorities --and the staff side representing 126,000 police officers. They expect the Government and the Home Secretary of the day to accept the considered verdict of the police arbitration tribunal if there is disagreement during the negotiating process. They have always believed that the police negotiating board and the police arbitration tribunal were established by Parliament to ensure fair play between the employer and the employee on pay and allowances. But they are not suggesting for a moment that my right hon. and learned Friends the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Scotland and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland cannot disapprove of an agreement.

I am sorry to tell the House that the beliefs of many police officers have been shattered by the decision that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary felt obliged to take. That is why the police believe that, to uphold the principles of democracy, they have no alternative but to have their grievances aired on the Floor of the House, where the decision was taken to set up the police negotiating board and police arbitration tribunal.

Their sense of shock has been all the greater because the Home Office, in its own evidence to the Edmund-Davies Committee in 1977, uttered those famous words :

"The Secretary of State would never withhold approval save for reasons of grave national importance."

My right hon. and learned Friend has not, so far as I know, given specific reasons of "grave national importance" for his decision, but in his letter that he sent to my hon. Friends last Thursday, he stated that his reasons for setting aside the police negotiating board agreement were that he

"could not accept a recommendation which would have meant rent allowances continuing to rise at a rate which bore no relationship to the cost of running a home. And that with pay and allowances taking the lion's share of police budgets, there would have been less and less available for vital expenditure on, for instance, equipment." Those are not reasons of "grave national importance" of the kind envisaged by the Edmund-Davies Committee. Nor do they appear to take account of the savings made by my right hon. and learned Friend's Department and by police authorities which no longer have to pay rates, water rates and, in rural areas, cesspit charges for thousands of police officers, who since 1 April have had to pay those charges themselves.

I should also like to make it clear that the three small changes to the Police (Amendment) Regulations, made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary last Thursday, in answer to a question from me, are outside the police arbitration award that we are debating tonight. They correct technical anomalies which were unfair to the officers concerned. However, I can tell the House quite

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unequivocally that those changes are most welcome, and that they are typical of the constant care and courtesy that my right hon. and learned Friend so often demonstrates in his handling of police matters. I know that my right hon. and learned Friend will not mind my saying that those changes are not related to the fundamental issues of principle that we are considering.

As the House knows, the relationship between the Government and the police has been good for more than a decade. Therefore, if the Government considered that the arbitration award, which contains a new method of updating rent allowance, and which reflects the need for change, did not sufficiently decrease the bi-annual uprating, at least the mechanism should surely include and reflect the housing index element of the retail prices index, of which only 185 points out of 1,000 bear any relationship to housing costs.

However, my right hon. and learned Friend set that recommendation aside, for the reasons that he gave this evening. In view of that, I hope that the House will bear with me as I explain why so many police officers have been lobbying their Members of Parliament and have attended the House today, and why they are so deeply unhappy about the situation in which they now find themselves. I am afraid that, as the Home Secretary and the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) well know, it is a complex matter, but I shall attempt to state it as simply and as briefly as possible. First, it is important to understand exactly what constitutes rent allowance and why it is paid. It is paid to compensate police officers who are not provided with accommodation free of charge as part of their conditions of service. It has been an integral part of police pay since the 1920s. It is also paid in lieu of accommodation, because police officers can be, and are, required by their chief constables to move home to meet operational requirements, and because, in many cases, they have no choice as to where they live. In the past, the allowance has been uprated every two years, following a review of property values, by an independent valuer. For the sake of administrative convenience, roughly half the police forces in England and Wales, and half the forces in Scotland and Northern Ireland, have received their revaluation in one year, with the revised allowance being paid from the following April. The other forces in England and Wales- -about 14--and in Scotland and Northern Ireland, receive their revaluation in the following year, with the revised allowance payable from the following April.

The police arbitration tribunal decided that rent allowance should be abolished for all new entrants to the police, with effect from 1 April 1990, but that it would be retained and protected--or red-circled, as it is known in police jargon--at the existing level for those officers in service before the change took place. It was the intention that in future it would be uprated every two years by the equivalent of the increase in the new force housing allowance, which came into effect on 1 April. Unlike rent allowance, which was geared to property values, the new force housing allowance will in future be related only to the movement in the retail prices index. Twenty-nine forces in England and Wales are frozen at 1988 levels, before red-circling.

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Instead of agreeing to a revaluation of the existing rent allowance for the 29 forces in England and Wales alone that last had their force maximum uprated in 1988 before they were protected, my right hon. and learned Friend decided in February that their existing level of rent allowance should be frozen at the 1988 level but that the 14 forces in England and Wales that were uprated in 1989 could retain their rent allowance at the higher 1989 level. That was obviously unfair. It discriminated arbitrarily between different police forces.

As a result of that decision, it was calculated by the Police Federation's advisers, Binder Hamlyn, that it would take between 15 and 17 years before the new force housing allowance equalled the existing level of rent allowance, whereas every police officer receiving rent allowance at the protected level naturaly expects it to be increased biennially, as in the past. As a result, most officers will now leave the police before receiving any increase whatsoever in their protected allowance.

Dame Jill Knight (Birmingham, Edgbaston) : I am following my hon. Friend's argument closely. What will be the position of police officers who, under the existing arrangements and with a certain understanding about allowances, choose to buy their homes? Do they not have a difficult choice to make?

Mr. Shersby : If they bought their homes before 31 March, they will qualify for the existing level of protected rent allowance. If, however, they were unable to do so--and they did not have very much time in which to do so between my right hon. and learned Friend's statement and the end of March--they will not qualify for the protected rent allowance if they decide to buy their own homes. That is most unfair in the case of the officers in the 29 forces whose rent allowance was to have been protected at the 1988 level. As a result, representations were made by me, the Police Federation and the staff side of the police negotiating board to my right hon. and learned Friend and Treasury Ministers. After the most careful consideration, my right hon. and learned Friend agreed to uprate those officers in the 29 forces concerned by the movement in the retail prices index between 1988 and 1990. I repeat what I said earlier : that that is what we asked him to do and that is what he did, for which the Police Federation is grateful. The increase is equivalent to 16.6 per cent. for all but five forces, depending on the month in which they were uprated.

The increase is most welcome. I pay warm tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend for his unfailing courtesy and consideration and for his recognition of the fact that the original decision that he announced in February was untenable. I am particularly glad that he was able to persuade the Treasury to relent.

The cost of the uprating agreed to by my right hon. and learned Friend was £26.5 million. I think that the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook will agree that £26.5 million is hardly "rubbish". I understand that that will bring the 29 forces who last had their rent allowance uprated in 1988 to the same level as those that were uprated in 1989 and that it will cost approximately an additional £30 million annually. We referred to a cost of roughly £55 million to bring everyone up to a common starting point. My right hon. and learned Friend has provided £26.5 million.

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Mr. Bowen Wells (Hertford and Stortford) : If my hon. Friend's representations on behalf of the Police Federation have been met by my right hon. and learned Friend and if that was all that the Police Federation wanted, why is it seeking a further concession?

Mr. Shersby : The increase to which my right hon. and learned Friend agreed, welcome though it is, falls far short of the level of rent allowance that is being paid to the 14 forces which had their rent allowances uprated from 1989, and which are protected at that level. Despite my right hon. and learned Friend's welcome movement, thousands of police officers in 29 forces in England and Wales, together with half their colleagues in Scotland and Northern Ireland, will be receiving hundreds or thousands of pounds less in rent allowances than their colleagues in the 14 forces in England and those in half the forces in Scotland and Northern Ireland. I shall give the House an example.

Mr. Waddington : I am sure that my hon. Friend would not think for one moment of misleading the House. I am sure that he will agree with me that officers in the 1988 forces are always worse off than their colleagues in 1989 forces. There are plenty of 1988 forces with rent allowances that are higher than those of 1989 forces. For example, under the new arrangements with the retail prices index uprating for two years, £4,270 is paid in Hertfordshire. The sum paid in Leicestershire, which is a 1989 force, is only £3,350. In 1989, Cumbria was uprated to £2,869. There are may 1988 forces that do much better than that. It is rather simplistic to say that all those in 1988 forces have done badly. There are some that have done very well.

Mr. Shersby : My hon. and learned Friend is right to draw attention to differential housing valuations in different parts of the country. I have a map which illustrates the argument that he is advancing. I shall give the House an example. Thames Valley police force last had its rent allowance uprated in 1988. It will now receive a 16.6 per cent. increase as a result of the recent uprating. Police officers in that force will be substantially disadvantaged compared with officers living in my constituency of Uxbridge, which is in the Metropolitan police area. The rent allowance in the Sussex force is £3,702, whereas in the Metropolitan police area it is £5,864. That is a difference of £2,162.

Mr. Waddington : Surely my hon. Friend recognises that the Metropolitan police, for obvious reasons, has always had a much higher allowance than those of county forces. Generally speaking, property values are much higher in the Metropolitan police area than elsewhere.

Mr. Shersby : I accept that house prices in London are high. I am talking about rent allowances, which are based on property values, and those values in Sussex are very high. The reaction to the differentials is shown in the number of senior and experienced police officers who are applying to leave their present forces to join the Metropolitan police. That is happening in the Surrey and Sussex forces.

Mr. Dalyell : The hon. Gentleman talks about the difference between the allowance in his constituency, which comes within the Met, and that which is paid in the

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Thames Valley police force. Would 40 per cent. be an exaggeration of the difference? If it would not, what is the likely recruitment pattern in the two areas?

Mr. Shersby : I quoted figures to demonstrate the substantial difference between the allowances that are paid in the Thames Valley police force and the Metropolitan police. We shall have to wait and see what effect that has on recruitment in the two areas.

Sir John Wheeler (Westminster, North) : Until recent times--perhaps this trend is continuing--have not experienced Metropolitan police officers been moving out of the Metropolitan police area into the areas which are policed by provincial forces?

Mr. Shersby : My hon. Friend is right. It has been suggested to me in a humorous way that perhaps that is my right hon. and learned Friend's secret weapon, which is designed to boost the recruitment of the Metropolitan police. I am sure that that is not the position. The income from rent allowances, which, before the arbitration award, officers in some 29 forces in England and Wales had every right to expect, has been denied them. That has serious consequences for many officers who have decided to buy their homes because they are not being provided with accommodation. Moreover, they have done so encouraged by the Government's property-owning philosophy. Let us take as an example a police officer in his late twenties or early thirties buying a house in greater Birmingham. He has calculated his ability to meet his mortgage repayments on the basis of his expected pay and rent allowance, which has always been an integral part of police remuneration. Now he suddenly finds that the financial goal posts have been moved. His rent allowance in the west midlands force was last uprated in 1988. It will now go up by 16.6 per cent. to £3,399, thanks to my right hon. and learned Friend's announcement, but it will still fall short of the rent allowance payable to the adjoining force of Warwickshire by £788 to officers doing the same job and buying a similar house. The same officer has to pay the community charge and water rates, and to cope with the current level of interest rates.

The second major problem concerns officers living in police accommodation. The police negotiating board recommends that the 16, 000 or so officers living in provided accommodation should receive a force housing allowance and pay rent. My right hon. and learned Friend made that clear. The police accepted that recommendation, but my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary has decided to maintain the status quo with officers living in provided accommodation receiving no housing allowance and living rent and rate-free. That includes the payment of water rates, and in country areas cesspit charges.

However, as the House well knows, domestic rates came to an end on 31 March and with effect from 1 April, all police officers in provided accommodation, and their spouses if any, will be worse off in relative terms, by anything between £300 and £1,200 a year, depending on the community charge in the area in which they live, plus water rates and, in country areas, cesspit charges.

The Police Federation accepted that all officers should pay the community charge, but 20 per cent. of the officers in provided accommodation have no choice but to occupy that accommodation. For the first time, they will be

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financially penalised for so doing. As a result, a police officer earning £10,000 a year with a spouse and two children living in provided accommodation will suddenly and unexpectedly have to find an additional cash sum for which he or she has not budgeted and which he or she had no reason to think would be payable. In other words, up to 10 per cent. of salary could now have to be paid in local government taxation which had not previously been paid by the police but by their employers, the local police authorities.

Clearly that was unfair, and, as my right hon. and learned Friend said, in response to representations that were made to him, he introduced the provided accommodation allowance of £300 a year. That is only £255 after tax. I observe in passing that it was fixed when the Government thought that the average community charge might be in the region of £300.

However, it is still an additional expense for officers in police accommodation to meet from their family budgets. It has been sprung on them at rather short notice and represents a major change in their conditions of service. Up and down the country, officers in police accommodation can be worse off by as much as £1,200 a year. That is a recipe for discontent and a source of grievance.

To sum up, there are two serious disagreements which will not be remedied by the regulations if they are passed without amendment tonight--the two different scales of allowance and the substantial additional expenses to officers living in provided accommodation. Above all, I believe that it was wrong for the Government, who have constantly urged employers and employees to negotiate and to reach agreement on pay and conditions, to overturn the agreement, particularly as they are the employer. I must ask the House, what sort of example is that?

That error of judgment is compounded by the fact that the police do not have the right to take industrial action. They must rely on the process of negotiation and arbitration for the resolution of their pay and conditions. No trade union or self-respecting staff association that has the right to strike would have readily accepted the agreement.

I repeat, and I stress, that I am most grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend and his Treasury colleagues for the improvements that he has made since he announced his original decision in February. Moreover, I do not wish him to think that either the Police Federation or I are ungrateful. He might wonder what solution I would have adopted had I had the misfortune to be in his place.

Mr. Richard Tracey (Surbiton) : In his summing up, with his deep knowledge of the Police Federation and the personalities involved, will my hon. Friend say whether the leaders of the Police Federation seriously believe that they would be better off under a Labour Home Secretary, given the low police morale under the last Labour Government and the constraints on their economic policy, which the shadow Chancellor keeps spelling out to the country?

Mr. Shersby : As my hon. Friend well knows, the police are non- political ; they do not express political views. That is their duty as police officers.

The Government should have implemented the agreement submitted to my right hon. and learned Friend

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by the police negotiating board following arbitration. Had they done so, the cash difference between what has now been agreed and what they would have had to pay would be relatively small, particularly if one bears in mind the savings being made by local police authorities, which will not have to pay domestic rates because of the introduction of the community charge.

The fact that that has not happened makes it impossible for me to vote for the regulations. Regretfully, I have no alternative but to vote against them, to show the strength of feeling of the police on the major point of principle--the setting aside of the police negotiating board agreement following arbitration. I have not encouraged my hon. Friends to vote for or against the regulations ; nor shall I do so. That is not part of my role as parliamentary adviser to the Police Federation. I know that the concern that I have expressed is well understood by many right hon. and hon. Members, and no doubt they will decide for themselves how to cast their votes in the Lobby tonight.

11.48 pm

Mr. Ken Maginnis (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) : May I first declare an interest? I have recently been appointed parliamentary adviser to the Royal Ulster Constabulary Federation.

The issue that we are debating is one not primarily of detail but of principle. On that basis alone, I intend to question the Government's position. It is imperative that hon. Members who vote, especially Conservative Members, fully understand that they are being called upon to demonstrate the integrity of the House and that no hon. Member is here merely to reflect his or her support of or opposition to Government policy.

At the risk of repeating some of the points to which hon. Members have alluded, I remind right hon. and hon. Members that Lord Edmund-Davies, in his 1978 report, clearly outlined what the powers of the Secretary of State should be in responding to the recommendations of the police arbitration tribunal. He noted the recommendation by all the constituent bodies of the Police Council, except the Home Department, that the findings of a police arbitration tribunal should be binding on all parties including the Secretary of State.

Being assured by the Home Department that the Secretary of State would never withhold approval of a Police Council agreement save for reasons of grave national importance, he conceded that argument in relation to the future arbitration tribunals. In doing so, he took into consideration the fact that should there be any future failure to agree on a pay award or any breakdown of the negotiating machinery, the Government would need the power to make regulations on pay matters for the police, whose efficiency was essential to the maintenance of law and order. Lord Edmund-Davies was influenced also by the unique role of the police and the ultimate responsibility of the Secretaries of State for the maintenance of the Queen's peace. Specifically, on that clearly defined basis, he expressed himself content that discretionary powers would not be used or abused. In paragraph 117 of chapter 10, Lord Edmund-Davies states : "We would, however, like to place on record our view that any award by the Police Arbitration Tribunal should be set aside only for reasons of the utmost national importance."

Could anything be more unequivocal or binding as a matter of honour? In fact, the Secretaries of State have

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