Federation continue to lobby MPs over officer vaccine priority

SOUTH Yorkshire Police Federation will continue to lobby MPs to provide Covid-19 vaccine priority for officers.

Chairman Steve Kent is due to meet MPs in the coming weeks, and will be keeping up the pressure on the Government in the ongoing fight to get officers jabbed early.

Every Police Federation in the country spoke of officers’ betrayal earlier this month, when it emerged that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation would not in fact be providing earlier protection against the deadly virus.

Steve said: “It’s an absolute betrayal to police officers up and down the country and shows yet again when the cards are on the table that police officers are on a lower value in the Government’s eyes than their colleagues in other sectors.

“It is looking unfortunately very likely that we’re not going to get officers vaccinated before anybody else but I’ve still got MPs meetings around the coming weeks to apply some pressure.

“The good news on the flip side of this is that our force have been extremely proactive in getting any surplus vaccines from our regional colleagues and to that end there’s quite a few officers who have been vaccinated through those surplus vaccines through the force.

“We do seem to be quite ahead of the ball with that one. There’s quite a lot of officers who have been vaccinated but it’s not the way it should have been done.”

Steve said the vaccine snub was the “second of two blows to policing” – after the pay freeze.

He added: “It’s just not good enough. We get some of the nice words sometimes about the Policing Covenant but it’s never backed up with reality so sadly even though there has been a tone change compared to Theresa May’s Government period in terms of the Government wanting to work with us and whatnot, the underlying issues are still the same.

“They are still treating us as, unfortunately, as unimportant and valued less than some of our other colleagues in other public sectors.”