Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service

Alan Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon), on securing this important debate and on making a powerful case for our local communities, as she always does. I, too, place on record my appreciation of the vital work of our firefighters in keeping us safe. We are about to enter the festive period, when many of us will, I hope, be safe at home with our families. We must remember, however, that the emergency services, including firefighters, will be on duty over that period, as they are every day, keeping us safe.

Recently, I too met the Tyne and Wear chief fire officer, Chris Lowther, and a fire authority representative. More recently, I met Russ King of the FBU and firefighters at the fire station in Tynemouth. I therefore understand why the fire authority felt the need to propose the changes in the integrated risk management plan, given the financial constraints within which it has to operate, but I am sceptical and indeed critical of the suggested changes as they affect my constituency. To be clear, however, we should not simply fight for our own areas; this should be a whole Tyne and Wear issue, and the plan should be one that keeps every community safe, whichever constituency it happens to be in.

As my hon. Friend said, under one of the proposals offered, fire engines at Wallsend will simply be day-crewed, with an engine from Tynemouth taken over there to provide cover during the night. My first concern, therefore, is about the dilution of cover and the time taken for sufficient engines to arrive at a major fire incident. According to the consultation document, an average delay of simply 17 seconds will result from the change, but for someone who lives in St Mary’s ward in my constituency, with the second engine at Wallsend, the delay will be considerably longer in practice.

The fact is that, while the speed of response is important, the weight of response is crucial. For a fire involving people, at least three appliances are sent, so a thinner spread across an area would mean drawing engines from further away, and that adds time. In addition, as a result of previous cuts, as we have heard, some crews have already been reduced to only four members. For a person in the first engine reaching the fire and believing someone is in that fire, the enormous moral pressure to act is great, and that increases the risk. Under the proposed changes, that will get worse. Tynemouth station also has a mass decontamination vehicle to decontaminate firefighters and indeed the public. In theory—or in practice—that requires 28 operatives, but under the proposals that number will be reduced to only 16. To be clear, resources are already stretched, and the proposals will stretch them further.

Tyne and Wear appliances are already thinly spread, in particular when they are drawn into Northumberland. In recent years, Northumberland fire service has made cuts, and those at West Hartford, for example, mean that Tyne and Wear appliances are regularly drawn across the border into Cramlington. This summer, in Blyth, a major incident required five engines: three came from Tyne and Wear, and two of them were from Tynemouth fire station. Section 16 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 provides for mutual assistance, but the situation in Tyne and Wear is already stretched, so cuts might make mutual assistance impossible in future.

Even without engines crossing the border, the situation in Tyne and Wear is overstretched. Last Thursday, in North Shields, firefighters were called to a fire on the Meadow Well estate. At the same time, a further fire was reported in Cullercoats, which required an engine to be called from Fossway in Newcastle, seven miles away, leaving east Newcastle, an area of considerable industrial activity and housing, with a lack of cover. In April 2018, four engines were called to a fatal house fire in the Knott flats in North Shields—under the proposals, four engines will not be available locally. Earlier in the year, a fire at Hillheads in Whitley Bay was also, unfortunately, fatal. If the changes go through, the risk will be even greater. Firefighters tell me that it was becoming very rare to go to a house fire in which there was a fatality, but that has not been the case in recent times. Under these proposals, that could get worse.

Fire prevention is a crucial part of keeping people safe. The fire authority says that if the job losses continue in Tyne and Wear fire and rescue service as a result of these changes and what has gone before, 70 posts will be lost, and the FBU says 82 posts will be lost. Either number is considerable. One effect is likely to be a reduction in fire prevention work. There is already little time for fire prevention work in schools. Attacks on crews are also up by 25% nationally, and antisocial behaviour, which is increasing, is often linked in my constituency to fire raising. Uniquely, there was a bonfire night campaign this year, which is the first time I remember that being the case. There is an ever-diminishing resource and an ever-increasing risk. Although we see that in our constituencies, this is not about turning one area against another.

It is clear, not least from what my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside said, why we are in this position. Tyne and Wear is a metropolitan fire brigade; metropolitan fire brigades have taken 50% of the cuts since 2010. One of the root causes is the linking of funding to band D council tax. That means that better-off areas in the south tend to do better than metropolitan areas in the north, where the typical council tax band is more likely to be A or B than D.

There is a way that fire authorities could raise more funding. If they wanted to increase the precept by more than 2.99%, they could have a referendum, but I am told that the cost of holding a referendum would be greater than the money that would be raised to spend on the service. Understandably, that is not a route they would want to go down. Tyne and Wear has said that it has not had capital grants since 2010-11 and that equipment needs to be replaced. Reorganisation sometimes means that the location of fire stations has to be remodelled. It is important that the fire authority looks at reserves, but it must be careful because it cannot spend that money and still have the reserves in future to spend again.

I hope that the Government will reconsider changing the funding formula in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside described. I hope they will think carefully before they go too far down the sparsity route. Sparsity added into the funding will not do anything for metropolitan areas such as Tyne and Wear. I hope that we get some kind of equalisation. Whether it is business tax, council tax, or whatever other kind of taxation or funding, we have a habit of using a national model that does not look at needs in different areas. If fire authorities in the south have sufficient resources to run a good service, why are they being rewarded while other areas, such as Tyne and Wear, lose out?

The Government must face up to the consequences of the proposed cuts. The Home Office is responsible for fire and rescue—the police and fire Minister is in his place. It is odd that the funding still comes from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government—perhaps the Minister will confirm whether that is true. It is very odd for one Department to be responsible for making decisions, and another to be responsible for going to the Treasury to lobby for money. HCLG has its own priorities, so I am not sure another Department’s priorities will be at the top of its list.

I have a lot of respect for the Minister, but the Home Office cannot perpetuate a laissez-faire approach where decisions on police cuts are the responsibility of the police and crime commissioners, and spending and decision making on the fire service are down to chief fire officers and fire authorities. If the Government do not provide the funding in the first place, fire authorities and police and crime commissioners will simply manage cuts. That must not be allowed to continue.

There is a consultation, but the period is truncated. Whether or not it continues to be truncated, I hope that residents in Tyne and Wear will find time to look at the consultation and to make their views known. I certainly will.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hurd]

No. I made the point only because I would not want the people of Tyne and Wear reading about this debate in the local newspaper to have any sense of, or have, a lack of confidence in their fire service as a result of representations made by their Members of Parliament.

Let me address the heart of the issue, and subject of this debate, which is the integrated risk management plan that the fire authority is putting forward, and make several points. In case residents were not aware, the authority is required to do that. It is regular business for fire authorities: they are required to produce these plans and show how they plan to respond to a range of emergencies on the basis of risk assessment and management for their locality. Quite rightly, the plans are based on the professional and expert advice of senior fire and rescue officers and are made in consultation with local communities. The fire and rescue national framework requires authorities to produce a plan that reflects up-to-date risk analysis, including assessment of all foreseeable fire and rescue-related risks.

I point out that the Tyne and Wear reserve strategy makes it clear that the actions proposed in the current IRMP, and which are being consulted on, represent a review of organisational changes required by the authority to operate more effectively—its language, not mine. That is the context for the plan. It is not laissez-faire but a fact that it is not the position of the Government to have a view on the efficacy of the plan. It is for local experts to draw up these plans, although over time, with the new independent inspection regime that we have introduced, all of us will have a clearer picture by being able to compare the operational effectiveness of individual fire authorities in a way we have not been able to in the past. It is not for me to have a view on whether this is the right or the wrong plan. To repeat the point made by various Members of Parliament, it is for local people to have a view.

Therefore, I wholly support and endorse the messages about the constituents of Tyne and Wear MPs being encouraged to engage with the consultation. If there are concerns about the length of the consultation period and the consultation running over Christmas, they need to be listened to very carefully, because this is a vital public service. Clearly, uncertainties and concerns are being raised by MPs about the changes, so constituents need to be aware and need to engage with the exercise. To repeat the point made by the hon. Member for North Tyneside, it needs to be a proper public consultation.

Let me make a bigger point, in relation to the future funding. I have recognised that Tyne and Wear has been challenged by the last spending review. I need to make this point at the start, because there is a point of differentiation to be made. I am not tribal at all, but I cannot let comments stand from at least two contributions to the debate. Austerity is not a political choice; it is not ideologically driven. The idea that Conservative MPs went into politics deliberately to reduce public expenditure is deeply insulting. The idea that austerity is somehow disconnected from the actions of the last Labour Government and our inheritance of the largest peacetime budget deficit is absolutely disingenuous. The public are not fools and should not be treated as such. I am absolutely committed to ensuring that the fire service is properly resourced, while continuing to challenge it to be more efficient and to modernise and do all the things that we expect of a modern public service.

[Mr Alan Campbell]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hurd]

There have been concerns about whether the Home Office is somehow detached from the process. I can assure the right hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) that we are not. Fire funding is part of the local government settlement, and that situation is not unusual: lots of health and education funding comes through local government. However, it is the Home Office that is responsible for the fire budget at the spending review and it is the Home Office that is working with the sector to update our understanding of demand and risk and to identify the evidence that we need to take into discussions on the next funding settlement. I am absolutely determined to ensure that our fire service has the resources that it needs, while continuing to be robust in challenging it on efficiency reform.

Mention was made of Grenfell. I am the Minister for Grenfell victims. That has been a huge part of my life for the past 18 months. One has only to listen to the podcasts from the public inquiry and hear the evidence of firefighters to understand what they had to work with and through on that night, in the most terrible of conditions. I have the deepest admiration for the work that they do and I want to be absolutely sure that they are properly supported by means of a proper understanding of the demand and risk that is in front of us, the past not necessarily being a guide to the future.

The fire funding formula is being reviewed, along with all other local authority formulas. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will shortly publish a consultation document on the review of local authority formulas. We have been working with the sector to understand what the new cost drivers for a new fire formula should be, and I strongly encourage Tyne and Wear fire and rescue authority—I will make this point directly to Chris Lowther—to get involved in that process and respond to the consultation. The review will also look at how council tax is used to produce funding allocations. MPs and fire authorities need to engage with the process. That work is imminent. We must engage with it and get it right.

That takes us to the comprehensive spending review. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has signalled that austerity is coming to an end. [Laughter.] There is laughter from MPs, but they laugh at their peril, because cuts are very much a consequence of the actions that they took when they were in power. Austerity has meant tough choices and sacrifices being made, not least by people working in the public sector. We all want to move on from that. The CSR is the right place for that and the right place to ensure that the fire service is properly resourced for the critical work that it does.

I want to close with a point that is not central to the debate, but which was made by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and is very important. We are talking about supporting the fire service. It is absolutely unacceptable that our emergency workers, including our firefighters, should be subjected to abuse, assault and attack. Given the risks that they take on our behalf, that is absolutely unacceptable, and the strongest possible message about that needs to go out from this place. That is why I was so pleased, in an age of tribal ding-dong, that there was strong cross-party support for the Bill that became the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018 and the signal that that sends to the courts on additional protection and powers to deal with violence against emergency workers. We did good work on that measure to send that signal about how completely unacceptable it is to attack and assault our emergency workers.

There have been strong representations from Tyne and Wear. Of course I will sit down with the chief fire officer to discuss the issues in more detail. We do feel that the fire service has the resources that it needs. This is a case of stable funding alongside efficiency. I totally recognise that Tyne and Wear had a tougher settlement than most. In relation to the integrated risk management plan, I urge constituents from that area to get fully involved and engage with it. I give my undertaking to ensure that, in the reviewing of the funding formula and in the CSR, this Government will continue to ensure that our fire service has the resources that it needs.