THE chairman of Lancashire Police Federation has urged members to \u201cstick together\u201d following a \u201cshocking\u201d speech from Home Secretary Theresa May.<\/p>\n
Rachel Baines has said she was left \u201cshocked, surprised and very upset\u201d by Mrs May\u2019s speech to the Federation conference, in which she told officers: \u201cMake no mistake\u2026 If you do not change of your own accord we will impose change on you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Baines described the speech as an \u201cattack\u201d on police officers.\u00a0\u201cMembers need to do what they can in terms of whether they vote for this current government or not,\u201d she said. \u201cI really don’t think now is the time for people to be pulling out of the Federation. We have got to stick together and try to fight this government together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Baines said the Home Secretary did nothing in her speech to recognise the brave officers and the daily duties that police officers carry out. She said that it is\u00a0clear that building bridges between the government and the Federation has not worked and that the government does not like the power held by the Federation.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of it seems to be about money,\u201d said Ms Baines. \u201cI think the less money we have in the bank, the less powerful we are, and I think that is one of the reasons why she has made some of the recommendations she has done today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mrs May announced that public funding to pay for the salaries and expenses of the chairman, general secretary and treasurer would be stopped from August and officers would have to opt in to join the Federation.<\/p>\n
The government’s move to make Federation\u2019s subject to Freedom of Information requests was not a problem, said Ms Baines. \u201cWe are open and honest with our members and the public anyway. But certainly I think the government doesn\u2019t want us to have the money in the bank to fight them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The chairman added that the Home Secretary had not given a clear response on compulsory severance. \u201cTo me, rightly or wrongly, that is a message that it is still clearly on the table,\u201d said Ms Baines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE chairman of Lancashire Police Federation has urged members to \u201cstick together\u201d following a \u201cshocking\u201d speech from Home Secretary Theresa May. Rachel Baines has said she was left \u201cshocked, surprised\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lancsfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}