Gordon Brown explains decision on police pay

Speaking to MPs during Prime Minister's Questions, the PM said that the latest police pay award was part of a wider strategy to keep inflation down and that the Government hoped to move to three-year pay deals for police and other workers in order to bring "stability to the economy" and "certainty to families". Police pay had risen by 39 per cent in the last 10 years, he added.

The PM said:

"I think people do understand that in the fight against inflation it was necessary to stage public sector pay awards.

"I would like to have given the police more, I would like to have given the nurses more, I would like to have given those public sector workers who found there wages staged more.

"But if pay rises are wiped out by ever rising inflation then no benefit goes to either the police or to anybody who receives these benefits."

Mr Brown's comments came as an estimated 20,000 police officers held a protest in central London calling for a 2.5 percent pay award to be backdated to September 2007.

In August last year, the PM announced staged pay awards across the public sector and insisted he would not put economic growth and stability "at risk" by losing discipline on pay increases.- Source: By 10 Downing Street