As the dispute over this year's police pay settlement continues, the government has said it acted to maintain economic stability.

Hundreds of officers from England and Wales attended a Police Federation summit to discuss further action after home secretary Jacqui Smith refused to backdate a 2.5 per cent pay rise to September.

It is currently illegal for the police to take industrial action, but officers could vote to renegotiate their working rights.

At Wednesday's meeting, senior members of the federation called for Smith to resign after a vote of no confidence.  

However, speaking at prime minister's questions in the Commons, Gordon Brown told MPs: "No policeman and no person across the country would thank us if their pay rise was wiped out by inflation."

Commons home affairs committee chairman Keith Vaz is among 78 MPs who have signed a motion on the subject.

And the prime minister's spokesman acknowledged on Wednesday that it was "quite a lively issue" but said the government needed to control inflation.

"We are very grateful for the hard work which police officers carry out every day, but we also have a responsibility to ensure that pay settlements in the public sector are affordable and are consistent with wider government pay policy," he said.

"Clearly this has been a tighter public sector pay round than we've seen in recent years. It's important that the government makes its contribution to controlling inflation to enable the Bank of England to keep interest rates as low as possible at this difficult time in the world economy."

Speaking earlier, police minister Tony McNulty said the government would stick to its policy over pay.

He told BBC Breakfast: "We are wedded to a public sector pay policy across the whole of the public sector - £40m here, £50m there, £60m elsewhere, does add up to significant inflationary pressures.

"I have enormous respect for the police but we do need to keep those inflationary pressures down."

Jan Berry, chairman of the Police Federation, said officers were "very angry" with the government's decision not to backdate a 2.5 per cent pay award - effectively reducing it to 1.9 per cent.

She told the same programme: "For the last 28 years, the home secretary has honoured the police arbitration tribunal and the police negotiating board agreements.

"What she has done in one fell swoop is not only unite the whole police service against her decision but she has also broken and shattered the trust and confidence that police officers have in their pay negotiating system."

And appearing before the Commons home affairs committee on Tuesday, MPs warned that ministers were rebelling as a result of the row.

Vaz said 10 ministers had raised concerns with him over the issue.

However, Smith told MPs that she had a responsibility to "ensure that I put in place arrangements that are fair but also are affordable for the police service and the taxpayer".