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Priti Patel was challenged to survive on a police officer’s wages as one told her she was reduced borrowing from relatives to survive despite 23 years in the force.

The Home Secretary faced groans and saw officers pass a vote of no confidence in her at the annual Police Federation conference of rank and file staff.

Detective Constable Vicky Knight told her that officers were ‘desperately struggling do the job that we love and to make ends meet’.

‘I went to see an accountant and the advice was leave the police, work for 22 hours a week and claim benefits and you will be better off,’ the single mum told Ms Patel.

‘How can that be right?’

Last year the federation withdrew from the Police Remuneration Review Body (PRRB), an independent system that sets salaries, after widespread outrage over the Government’s decision to freeze pay for officers who earn more than £24,000.

Rich Cooke of the West Midlands Police Federation, was met with cheers and applause from the audience when he told Ms Patel: ‘It’s about time you and your colleagues put your money where your mouth is and did something about the terrible state that our colleagues are finding themselves in.’

Vicky Knight of the North Wales force said she worked in child protection as well as with vulnerable adults.

She said she takes home £2,300 a month and works overtime twice a month to ‘make ends meet’, and does not receive any support apart from child family allowance.

She claimed her pay is ‘a couple of hundred pounds a month more than the workers in McDonald’s flipping burgers’, and less than her ‘local manager at Lidl’.

She also 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’.

‘I work with the most vulnerable members of our community and I love my job,’ she told Ms Patel.

‘However, if the rate of interest goes up and I can’t pay my mortgage and I can’t pay the fuel, I’m not going to be able to continue to come to work.’

‘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 said she was ‘committed’ to working with the Federation on pay and conditions, and thanked Vicky for sharing her story.

‘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,’ she told the conference.

‘We have to move this forward. You have that commitment from me, you absolutely do.’

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