Christmas Adjournment

I was most interested in what the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) had to say. I shall not follow him in discussing the reorganisation of local government in Cheshire, but there certainly appears to be scope for some interesting argument between him and the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). We on the Opposition Benches look forward to seeing a lot of that. In this Christmas Adjournment debate, I wish to raise briefly five points that have huge resonance in my constituency and around the country. It is important that these points get an airing. Indeed, I shall follow straight on from the hon. Member for Weaver Vale and from my neighbour, the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), on the question of police pay. I do not know how the Government got into this situation. We have the independent Police Arbitration Tribunal, but the Government, for reasons best known to themselves, have ignored it. The police have been treated very shabbily. I have received, as I am sure most hon. Members have, a huge correspondence, mostly e-mail, from constituents in the police who are extremely upset. I have many issues with policing in this country, including too much time being spent writing up paperwork, and too little being spent on the beat or arresting criminals on the streets. However, the police are hard-working public servants who we expect to put their lives on the line occasionally in our defence. They have received an independent pay award, and the Government should honour it. The Government are behaving very shabbily over this issue. The independent Police Arbitration Tribunal was set up in 1979 and during 18 years of Conservative Government—not all of them, I admit, were times of loose public spending—the award was honoured. This Government have reneged on the deal, and I am astonished by that. They are unnecessarily provoking huge ill will from public servants for the sake of savings of £30 million. That is not a paltry sum, but it could be considered so in comparison with what they have pumped into Northern Rock. Our police officers deserve better.