Meeting to stop Met poaching Thames Valley police |
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Police Minister Tony McNulty today met Thames Valley MPs campaigning to stop the Metropolitan Police from continuing to aggressively poach Thames Valley Police Officers.
The Labour MPs for Slough, and Reading West, Fiona Mactaggart and Martin Salter were joined by Conservatives MPs for Buckingham and Banbury, John Bercow and Tony Baldry, at a high level meeting in the Home Office. Police Minister Tony McNulty has agreed to examine proposals for the introduction of “transfer fees” payable to police authorities who lose fully trained officers to other forces. He also agreed to refer the matter to the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) for their consideration. The meeting followed a debate on police funding in the House of Commons on Wednesday 31st January. The two Labour MPs worked together four years ago to win an additional pay supplement of up to an extra £2,000 for police officers on the borders of London. However, basic police pay in the Metropolitan Police is over £6,000 higher than rates in the Thames Valley. This, coupled with the offer of free travel, had triggered a large exodus of police officers from the southern part of the Thames Valley Force. More recently the Met have been adopting aggressive recruiting techniques including the payment of bounties to officers who successfully persuade officers in other forces to transfer to the Met. The MPs presented Mr McNulty with a briefing paper from Thames Valley Police which outlined the true financial cost to the Police Authority of losing experienced officers. The paper revealed that in 2006/7 28 officers transferred into Thames Valley compared to 80 who transferred to other forces – a net loss of 52 officers. It also showed that the costs of recruitment alone are running at £55,000 for patrol constables right up to £77,500 for highly trained specialists such as firearms officers. Martin Salter said: “Given that Tony McNulty is a London MP I was pleasantly surprised to find him receptive to our proposal for the introduction of transfer fees to encourage police forces to grow their own recruits rather than ruthlessly exploiting the reservoir of talent that has been developed at council taxpayers expense here in the Thames Valley and in the other areas surrounding London. "I am particularly concerned that when Terminal 5 opens at Heathrow Airport that there will be a further mass exodus of experienced officers from the Thames Valley especially as the Met not only pays more money but also offers free travel up to a 70 mile radius.” He added: “Of course it’s right and proper that officers should be free to move around the country for family or career reasons but the current system has an inbuilt, perverse disincentive for the Met to recruit and train its own officers. "Good progress has been made since 2002 when we won an extra £2,000 pay supplement for Thames Valley officers in the M4 corridor but this is slowly eroding and I do not want to return to the days when places like Reading and Slough were being policed by inexperienced probationers. There is no doubt that experienced officers solve more crimes and provide a better standard of policing.” The MPs suggested to the Minister that a transfer fee payment of around 50% of the costs outlined in the paper would be a valuable contribution to resolving the problem and has the advantage of being budget neutral for the Home Office. However, they also drew attention to the need for an overall reduction in the pay differentials between London and the neighbouring forces. 25/04/07
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