THE police officer blinded by killer Raoul Moat yesterday added his voice to the discontent over pay and conditions in the force.

David Rathband asked Home Secretary Theresa May if she thought his wage packet was too high.

Mrs May was accused of betraying police and the public over her pledge last year to always fight for forces.

Her keynote speech at the Police Federation conference in Bournemouth yesterday was met with stony silence after she said it was ‘‘not my job’’ to tell them what they wanted to hear.

The Home Secretary refused to relent on her police cuts, as angry rank and file officers said she had lost their trust.

PC Rathband appeared via videolink to back the federation’s claim that policing would go into meltdown over the cuts.

The 43-year-old father-oftwo asked Mrs May: “I was paid £35,000 last year. Do you think I’m paid too much?”

Mrs May later replied: “I’m not sitting here saying to any individual officer your pay is wrong.”

Sarah Adams, a federation member from Derbyshire police, accused Mrs May of failing to deliver on the Conservative manifesto pledge to “always back the police” and “spend more on services which matter most to people”.

To rapturous applause and a standing ovation from more than 1,000 officers at the conference in Bournemouth, she said: “Home Secretary, how can you expect police officers and the communities we serve to ever to trust you or this Government again?”

Mrs May said: “I am backing the police. I’ve shown I’m backing the police.”

Anger has been building in frontline policing since former rail regulator Tom Winsor said the most wide-ranging analysis of forces pay in 30 years showed more than £1bn of savings should be made.

In her speech, Mrs May said it was simply not true that the Government was singling out police over the cuts, but insisted changes needed to be made.

“Not all of you will like some of the decisions I have taken,” she said.

“And not all of you will like what I have to say. But it’s not my job to duck the difficult decisions and to tell you what you want to hear.”

She insisted the Government was doing everything it could to protect frontline jobs.

The Home Secretary said it would be the easiest thing in the world for her to back down and stop the reforms, but it would not be the right thing to do.