A Welsh police officer spoke openly about her struggle to survive when she confronted Priti Patel about how she has to borrow money from her mum to make ends meet. Vicky Knight was just one of the officers who blasted the Home Secretary over poor police pay.
The detective constable, who said she worked in child protection as well as with vulnerable adults and has been working in the police for 23 years, asked Ms Patel if she would be able to “survive” on £1,200 or £1,400 a month. The single mother described how she had to borrow money from her own mother to pay the school dinner bills, and described herself and some colleagues as "desperately struggling to do the job that we love and to make ends meet".
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After paying professional subscriptions and pension, she said she takes home £2,300 a month and works overtime twice a month to “make ends meet.” Because wages are measured before pension deductions, she does not receive any support apart from child family allowance, telling the conference: “Apart from that I’m on my own”.
Describing how she is paid “a couple of hundred pounds a month more than the workers in McDonald’s flipping burgers” and less than her “local manager at Lidl”, Ms Knight told how ahead of her most recent pay day she had to borrow £40 from her mother so she could put fuel in her car and buy food for her son’s school lunches “because I had no money left at the end of the month”.
She was met with applause when she asked: “I work … with the most vulnerable members of our community and I love my job, but if the rates of interest goes up, and I can't pay my mortgage and I can't pay my fuel I am not going to be able to continue to go to work.
"I went to see an accountant, and the advise was, leave the police, work for 22 hours a week, and claim benefits, and you will be better off." Ms Knight added: “I tell this story not because I’m here for sympathy, I just want to be heard. I stand here to represent myself and many people in the force that are like me.
“We are desperately struggling to do the job that we love and to make ends meet at home. So I need you to be on our team and to help us, to represent us … to get us fair pay.” The Home Secretary was also told that some officers are resorting to using food banks as she attended the Police Federation Conference in person for the first time since the pandemic.
Ms Patel said that pay and conditions was something she was "committed' to working with the Federation on and thanked Ms Knight for sharing her story, adding: "I think it just it really illustrates so strongly and powerfully why we need to actually find solutions to pay issues and actually give you the support that you rightly deserve. We have to move this forward. You have that commitment from me, you absolutely do."
Speaking to BBC Radio Wales on Wednesday she said that it was "embarrassing" to have to talk about something so personal.
"It is quite personal, and actually quite embarrassing that you are professional, in a professional organisation, and the amount of time I have been in it, and you are at a point where you feel like you are going backwards," she said. "I have got a house, I have got a mortgage, but potentially I might have to sell it and move back in with my parents."
The comments came as it was announced on Wednesday (May 18) that inflation had soared to a 40-year high today with Chancellor Rishi Sunak facing massive pressure to come up with cost-of-living help. The headline CPI rate rose to 9% in April - up from 7% in March and the highest level since 1982.
The Bank of England expects the rate will get even worse, peaking at 10.25% during the final quarter of the year amid biggest squeeze on incomes since records began in the 1950s. Read the Bank of England warning here.
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