YP Letters: Divide and rule on pay is no way to run prisons

From: John Rossington, Bond Street, Dewsbury.
Should there be regional pay for prison officers?Should there be regional pay for prison officers?
Should there be regional pay for prison officers?

THE decision by our Government to award a substantial pay increase to prison officers working in London and the South East, and freeze the pay of officers working in the rest of the country, shows how little they care about regional differences in wealth. The whole notion of the Northern Powerhouse has been undermined.

If public sector pay is to be substantially higher in one part of the country, that will be a magnet for the private sector who will wish to invest in those parts of the country where incomes are at their highest and where there is more disposable income. The Government is pitting one part of the country against another. We need national pay agreements which recognise that workers are of equal worth, irrespective of which part of the country they work in.

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Nobody has ever suggested that the problems in our prisons are purely an issue in the South East of the country. The recent disturbing Panorama documentary was filmed in a prison in Northumbria. In January two prisoners died in Greater Manchester prisons in suspicious circumstances. Are not prisons in the North of England and other regions outside the South East entitled to attract the best staff?