THE CHAIR ASKS
THE CHAIR ASKS
John Apter, the National Chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, sits down with the Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds and finds out his views on current policing issues.
Nick Thomas-Symonds trained as a barrister before being elected for Labour in the Torfaen constituency.
A keen historian who has written two biographies of Labour politicians, he could find himself in the political hotseat in 2024 or before.
With the Federation issuing a vote of no confidence in Home Secretary Priti Patel in July and withdrawing from the Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB) after the zero per cent pay award, the former lecturer in politics had a lot of ground to cover when he chatted with John.
JOHN APTER (JA): We speak regularly about the pressures within policing, and they have been relentless. Have you experienced this?
NICK THOMAS-SYMONDS MP (NTS):
I think the pressures PFEW members have been under throughout the pandemic have been so intense. I’ve been lucky enough to join officers on the frontline to see what they have been going through, and it’s been a remarkable effort from policing. You deserve great credit.
JA: Your thanks mean a lot to members. But many colleagues reading this will ask: “What does that mean in reality?” We have had constructive dialogue since
06 I POLICE I OCTOBER 2021
you were appointed. But we didn’t have a very constructive relationship with your predecessor, and that was damaging.
NTS: The Labour Party is under new leadership, and we take a very new approach. The Leader of the Labour Party has a background as a barrister and was Director of Public Prosecutions. I know how passionate Keir Starmer is about law and order, about criminal justice, about policing. I share that legal background as a barrister.
Policing and public service means a great deal to me. One my first acts as Shadow Home Secretary was to begin that constructive relationship with you as the Chair of PFEW. Clearly, we’re not going to 100 per cent agree – I wouldn’t expect that. But what we’ve always had is an open door. We can always express our views fully and frankly to each other. Having that relationship with PFEW for me is an absolute cornerstone of the role of Shadow Home Secretary and Home Secretary.
JA: Unlike those in other parts of the public sector, police officers are not members of a union. The mechanism we have around pay and discussion is not a negotiation. It is a process and the Home Secretary of the day plus the Home Office hold all the cards.
They make all the decisions. No matter what evidence PFEW puts to PRRB — the so-called independent body — we were not going to get a pay rise. That’s why our zero per cent pay award felt so personal.
As a result, we had no confidence in the pay mechanism process. We walked away from it. Despite the warm words from the Home Secretary, PFEW took a strong stance and said it had no confidence in her. What are your views on all of those warm words that we’ve had, Nick and what you’ve done in response?
NTS: I think personally that policing was let down extraordinarily badly on pay. Firstly, let me say I think our frontline workers across the board deserved a pay rise. Some parts of our frontline — and I don’t grudge a penny of that — thoroughly deserved what they received as a rise. Why on earth was policing left on zero per cent?
If I had been Home Secretary, the instruction letter I would have given to the remuneration body last December would have been about a rise. What is a reasonable rise? The pay body would make the recommendation and I would then abide by it.
But that doesn’t mean that I think this particular mechanism for deciding pay
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