Taxpayers should not have to pick up the bill for public sector waste

SIR – Francis Habgood of the National Police Chiefs’ Council has warned that increasing pay for officers may come at the expense of staffing levels unless taxpayers cough up more money (report, September 13).

His statement shows the difference between the private and public sector. An entrepreneur risks everything when running a business and often works longer hours and earns less than his employees. In the public sector, the taxpayer picks up the bill for incompetence and waste.

There are many areas of policing where better decisions are required to maximise the value of taxpayers’ money. The pursuit of imaginary sex offenders among high-profile figures, for example, was hardly a sensible use of resources. Perhaps it is also time to look at the terms enjoyed by senior officers, confined largely to desk duties, who can retire at 55 on a reduced pension and then take up similar work elsewhere.

John O’donnell

Bowness-on-windermere, Cumbria SIR – There is considerable evidence that public-sector pay at both ends of the scale exceeds private-sector pay.

Even before evaluating job security and pensions, the private sector is worse off. The Government’s move to scrap the pubic-sector pay cap promises to make the situation worse.

Andrew Smith

Epping, Essex

SIR – It is important to remember that many public-sector jobs have pay scales that provide an annual increase in addition to the overall pay award. Those receiving annual increments have done rather well in recent years.

The Government needs to do more to keep the public informed about all aspects of public pay in order to counter the trade unions’ propaganda.

Peter Crawford

Sheffield, South Yorkshire

SIR – Your leading article of September 13 opens with the assertion that “The increase in annual inflation rate to 2.9 per cent made sustaining the publicsector pay cap hard to justify.”

One year in the early Eighties, when inflation stood at around 23 per cent, Ford workers received a rise of around 27 per cent in accordance with an agreement with their employer that wage increases had to match those of profits which, as it happened, had been high enough to justify that figure.

The company for which I worked, which was a component manufacturer for motor vehicles, gave us 11 per cent, with nothing the following year, and 5 per cent the year after that when inflation was about 11 per cent. We employees had a choice: accept the increase as it stood, or find employment elsewhere.

Public-sector workers should now be given that same choice. If, in consequence, they move in numbers sufficient to damage the service that they provide, then a wage increase of a level which stops that is justified.

Stanley Eckersley

Pudsey, West Yorkshire