I HAD the pleasure of spending the evening with the police on the night shift in Grays recently.

I have always had the highest admiration for our police officers. Arguably, today, we are asking more of them than we ever have.

Today we are asking our police officers to be crimefighters, social workers, and everything in between. At the same time, the respect for police officers, and for anyone in authority has declined.

We all call on their services when we need them, but how many of us really do all we can to help them when we have witnessed an offence.

It is too easy to not get involved, but it is undermining the rule of law and our criminal justice system when we as citizens choose not to assist police officers in the course of their duties.

A number of our local police officers stepped up to the plate during the London riots. Many of them will be available during the Olympics. They absorb these additional demands because it goes with the job.

Contrast their honourable attitude with that of the London Tube drivers. Their basic salary of £42,000 is more than that earned by a police sergeant and double the starting salary of a police constable in Essex.

And while the Tube drivers demand a £1,200 bonus for not striking during the Olympics, the police quietly and honourably take whatever society throws at them. We could forgive them for feeling taken for granted. In these straightened times we are asking more of all our public servants.

It is heartening that despite the best exhortations of their union leaders many chose not to strike last October. In the true ethos of public service they remembered that whatever their difference with their employers in Government, they had a duty to the public.

Last week I had the opportunity to address the Conservative Parliamentary Party on the importance of public service and the contribution that all our public servants make to our society.

It is a message I will continue to give.