Police pay

My place of work was on the route the Police marched along over their pay settlement grievances yesterday. I wrote about my complete support for the police getting their full pay settlement last month, here.

I was pleased to see Keith Vaz MP, the Labour Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee at the head of the march today - he has also tabled an "Early Day Motion" (EDM), which is a mechanism MPs have for making statements of support and testing the strength of feeling among their colleagues on the issue.

Any MP can sign an EDM, and I was pleased, on checking just now, that 220 MPs have so far signed up: 115 Labour, 50 Lib Dems, 38 Conservatives and 17 from the smaller parties.

As this shows, this isn't a party-political issue: there is a cross-party consensus that, plain and simple, the Government has made a big mistake not giving Police Officers their full pay-rise up front. But I was surprised not to see Putney Conservative MP Justine Greening on the list of MPs who have signed the EDM.

You may well be surprised that I'm in the position of chastising my Conservative opponent for not joining in the criticism of a Labour government - so am I! Maybe she believes the Police don't deserve a pay rise - in which case she should say so. But if she does, I'd urge her to add her name to the Early Day Motion - it's EDM 512. And I'd urge Putney people to email her asking her to do so as well.