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The chair of the Police Federation described the process of getting the salary rise as “torturously slow and cumbersome” – and now appeals to Westminster for “a bail-out” of the PSNI, arguing the force needs millions of pounds in extra cash to cover multiple funding shortfalls including the pay increase. Liam Kelly welcomed moves to give officers a wage hike, though the move still needs to jump through several hoops at Stormont before it can come into effect. The Justice Minister now has to ask for a business case for the boost from the PSNI, he said, which has to be approved by the Department of Justice before final scrutiny and ratification by the Department of Finance. But Mr Kelly hopes that can be fast-tracked "with the minimum of bureaucracy and that officers will receive their entitlement in their December payslips”. “This is progress, even though it’s torturously slow and cumbersome,” he said. “There is a caveat. Police pay has steadily been eroded over the past 10 years and while the pay increase will help, it won’t be enough to address the decade-long decline. “This averts one crisis in policing, but there are other ‘big ticket’ items in ministers’ in-trays. Pay is but one, relatively small, component of the multimillion-pound settlement that is required to put policing back on an even keel.” Mr Kelly maintains that without a lot more money coming in from the government, policing in Northern Ireland is “staring down a very dark tunnel indeed”. He’s now appealing for Secretary of State Hilary Benn to sort out large amounts of extra cash. That includes, he said, funding to cover the cost of the Chief Constable’s recovery plan to hire more officers, as well as sort outing a long-running dispute over holiday pay, and arranging compensation for a 2023 data breach. The breach saw hidden details on a spreadsheet sent out as part of a freedom of information request reveal the surnames, initials, ranks and roles of all 9,483 PSNI officers and staff. The police later said they were working on the assumption the file is in the hands of dissident republicans. An estimated bill said the workforce could be awarded over £100m in compensation – but last month, the PSNI told a court hearing they don’t have the money to pay it. Mr Kelly described the situation as “a perfect funding storm”, adding that if Stormont hasn’t got enough money then “urgent, direct intervention by the Labour government” has to happen. “In short, we need a bail-out to cover all outstanding financial elements,” he said. “Mr Benn has a duty to go into bat at Cabinet and Downing Street for the PSNI, and the men and women I represent. He cannot do a Pontius Pilate and maintain he cannot interfere because policing is devolved. “You can’t play politics with policing. The government’s presiding over a service that is actually shrinking, and that wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else in the United Kingdom. This is an SOS distress message to Mr Benn.”
