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The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)
It is an immense joy, Mr Davies, to serve under your illustrious and benevolent chairmanship. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman secured this debate on an important issue. It is important because coastguards are important. Their work is immensely valuable and I want to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate them on all they do to keep our shores and our people safe, not only the professionals, but the volunteers. They deserve a particular mention because in my constituency and in constituencies of other hon. Members here, volunteer coastguards do a superb job.
The provision of search and rescue is an obligation enshrined in international law and convention, including the UN convention on the law of the sea and the international convention on maritime search and rescue. The UK coastguard service’s area of operation extends as far west as the mid-Atlantic and in all other directions to internationally agreed meridians.
Picking up the hon. Gentleman’s last point, national coastguard services must operate across international boundaries to provide a search and rescue capability that is most appropriate in each incident at sea. The commitment from all professional coastguards is to protect and to save using whatever assets and resources are available, even those that may belong to other national authorities. Fear, risk, safety and rescue know no national boundaries and it is important to remember that that has always been the way and the habit of our coastguards.
From December 2010, this Government entered extensive consultations to find a way of addressing combined challenges: resilience, preventing skills-fade, improving the job offer for coastguard officers, and giving greater leadership and training support to community volunteers that make up the coastguard rescue service. Hon. Members, and particularly the Select Committee on Transport, were very much involved in those discussions and the consultation, and helped to shape the blueprint that we announced in November 2011. That was further refined in September 2013, because it took longer than we all hoped to agree new pay arrangements to reflect properly the different roles and responsibilities of coastguards working in co-ordination centres.
The unions were properly and heavily involved in that process, as they should be. I work closely, and always have as a Minister, with the trade unions that relate to the sector for which I am responsible.
Bill Esterson
The Minister is absolutely right to praise the volunteers, who do a fantastic job in my constituency, as in his. I am sure he is aware of a point that was made in arguing the case against the closures—I am looking at the 2011 report from Crosby. What assurances can he give about the relationships between officers in the MCA and those volunteers where coastguard stations have closed, as they have in my constituency?
Mr Hayes
I take that relationship very seriously indeed. I have already celebrated, in this all too short contribution, the work of those volunteers, and I see them as being critically important to the link between the coastguard service and the community. They are model examples of how voluntary involvement can not only enliven communities, but provide vital services. I take the relationship very seriously, and under this Minister, it will always be taken in that way.
Nevertheless, as the hon. Gentleman will know, the national network, made up of a new National Maritime Operations Centre in Hampshire and a series of geographically spread coastguard operation centres that, in effect, retain each of the existing paired sites, has been the product of the consultation that we described. The retained sites would move progressively into the national network over time until December 2015, whereas other centres would either close completely or would remain open but would no longer be responsible for search and rescue co-ordination.
The blueprint included new and exciting coastguard roles and responsibilities with improved pay and terms and conditions. As I said, the unions were involved in developing that package for coastguard roles, which, for example, would see shift patterns redesigned to reflect better seasonal demands, and with more weekends off over a year. In the union ballot, 79% of those who voted supported acceptance of the new terms and conditions.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency has moved on a long way from the concept phase of this programme. We are now making real progress in establishing a joined-up national network for rescue co-ordination. The new National Maritime Operations Centre near Fareham became operational from 1 September this year, when it assumed responsibility for coastguard functions along the south coast that were previously handled by the Solent and Portland maritime rescue co-ordination centres.
Coastguards at Falmouth now operate in the first of the new breed of refurbished and refreshed coastguard operations centres, and in effect, joined the national network in October. Just as envisaged by the blueprint that we published in November 2011, any coastguard function, including search and rescue, in the areas covered by the network can be handled by anyone in that network, allowing the national commander at the National Maritime Operations Centre at Fareham to make decisions about the distribution of work loads, given the people, resources and experience available. It is that improved co-ordination, better use of resources and more efficient use of skills that lies at the heart of the blueprint and its implementation.
I believe that we can maintain and improve what we do as a result of the changes. If I did not believe that, I would not support them. It is as simple as that, because there is no way that this Minister or this Government would compromise safety or inhibit effectiveness. It is simply not our intention; it never would be and it never could be. It is important for hon. Members to accept that. As the national network evolves, the number of officers on duty at a particular site becomes less significant. Measurements of input, in the end, are bound to be less significant than measurements of effect. What matters is how the coastguard operation deals with need at the point of need.
Every month, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is either moving an existing co-ordination centre into the evolving network or ending the search and rescue function in one of the centres that was earmarked for closure.
Mr Hayes
I will not, because I am very short of time. I know the MCA is far from complacent and will continue to give the closures and transitions to come the same management, attention and care, so that people, their allegiances and emotions are handled with sympathy.
I appreciate that there are always issues with this kind of radical programme, but I want to assure the House that after each transitional closure, there is a period of review, to learn lessons and improve the process before moving on to the next transition. I can further reassure the House that I will continue my regular face-to-face meetings with Sir Alan Massey and HM Coastguard officers to scrutinise and challenge the agency’s progress against that blueprint, including monitoring any particular pressure points, so that we can all have confidence that Her Majesty’s Coastguard continues to deliver the first-class service that we have all come to expect. It is absolutely right to examine and review this process to ensure the effectiveness at the point of need that I have described, in line with some of the arguments that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar has made in this debate.
The new coastguard roles and responsibilities are more demanding, and I am delighted that we are taking large numbers of our existing coastguard officers into the new set-up, supplemented by many new recruits. The hon. Gentleman mentioned recruitment, and he acknowledged generously that lots of people want to join.
Mr Hayes
These five minutes will be exciting, because we have had a break and are waiting with anticipation for the culmination of this wonderful address.
I want to talk about recruitment, because for the operations centres the MCA has recruited against 78% of the roles, while for the roles to support the volunteer Coastguard Rescue Service the recruitment figure is 90%. Of the posts that have been filled, only 21% have been filled by new recruits; 79% of the vacancies have been filled by experienced coastguards taking up new opportunities. That is very important. The need to maintain continuity, to take advantage of experience and to ensure that the skills that people have developed over time play a key part in the new operation seems to me to be salient.
I do understand that there is particular concern about the adequacy of staffing at some centres that are transitioning into the growing national network. Many of the concerns expressed by hon. Members stem from the fact that the MCA has undoubtedly found it a challenge to staff existing maritime rescue co-ordination centres to the levels set out in historical watch-keeping risk assessments. Those levels were set several years ago and erred on the side of caution.
I can tell the House that I have had an assurance from Sir Alan Massey and the chief coastguard that there are sufficient officers with the right skills available across each existing pairing arrangement, backed up by additional cover, to sustain the comprehensive search and rescue service that we would expect. I have made the effort to challenge the service on that basis; I have asked those questions and asked to be regularly updated on recruitment and staffing. Hon. Members will understand that getting everyone in place for the new roles, both at co-ordination centres and on the coast to support our coastguard volunteers, is a complex jigsaw that must be carefully handled in terms of logistics and sequencing.
Mr MacNeil
I would like an undertaking from the Minister that he will seek to speed up what has been a glacial process. Eight months is too long. Can he look at shortening the period so that we do not see the undermanning in operations rooms that we have seen?
Mr Hayes
Senior managers closely monitor staffing on a daily basis and take action to ensure that safety is not jeopardised. That is certainly true for a lot of the west coast of Scotland and at Aberdeen. The essence of the plans that we have put in place is that they must have at their heart continuing operational effectiveness. I regard it as a key responsibility to ensure that that is the case.
I end by paying tribute to the professionalism and dedication of all those wearing the uniform of Her Majesty’s Coastguard. They should rightly continue to be proud of the job that they are doing and look forward to being part of a new and exciting future. Transitional arrangements are always challenging, and new ideas are sometimes regarded with suspicion, but we must move forward and we must get this right, because we owe it to the future to do so.
Question put and agreed to.