Brown adamant on police pay row

LONDON - Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Thursday the government would not back down in a dispute with police over pay, a day after the body which represents hundreds of thousands of officers called on the Home Secretary to resign.

The Police Federation, which represents 140,000 officers in England and Wales, has also agreed to ballot its members on whether they should overturn a ban preventing them from taking strike action.

The row has grown in intensity since last week when Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced that a 2.5 percent rise agreed by an independent arbitration panel would come into effect in December and would not be backdated until September as expected.

Police say this cuts the rise to 1.9 per cent, which is far less than the rate of inflation but will save the government an estimated 30 million pounds.

However, Brown was adamant that the controversial decision was in line with other public sector pay deals and had been made in the national interest.

"Nobody wanted to say either to the nurses, or the teachers, or to the doctors, or to the prison officers that public sector pay awards had to be staged," Brown told parliament's heavyweight Liaison Committee.

"But it was the right thing to do for the national economy as a whole. People should look at the bigger picture here about the future of the British economy."

The hard-line approach, which the government says is necessary to keep a lid on public spending to help keep down inflation and interest rates, has angered police officers and their senior commanders.

Tuesday's meeting of representatives of rank and file officers from all England and Wales's 43 forces concluded with a vote of no confidence in Smith and a decision to ballot members on whether they should consider industrial action.

Police are currently banned from striking under laws introduced in the 1990s.

Peter Smyth, vice-chairman of the Federation branch which represents officers in the London's Metropolitan Police, the country's biggest force, said on Thursday his members were "at war with the government".

"The government's attempt to trample on police officers' well-being by shredding a long standing, fair and effective mechanism for deciding pay has goaded officers into doing the previously unthinkable -- contemplating seeking the right to take industrial action," he said.

Members of Brown's own Labour Party have called for the government to rethink the issue.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, asked the prime minister: "Is it worth all this hassle with motions of no-confidence being passed .. over a three-month staged pay award?"

"I value the police," Brown said. "I would like to pay the police more ... under circumstances in which we did not have to counteract a major economic issue that had to be dealt with."