General Matters

Andrew Bingham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

We are all aware of the three main emergency services, the fire, ambulance and police services, all of which are available to all of us whenever we need them. However, I want to talk about another emergency service—the mountain rescue service. It is called upon by the fire, ambulance and police services, and it stands by not only to help climbers and walkers who are in trouble, but to assist rural communities when conventional services cannot get to where they have to because of the weather. So when, on a winter’s day in Glossop in my constituency, which is very hilly, the ambulance service cannot get up a certain road, it will call the mountain rescue to help out.

The mountain rescue service, unlike its publicly funded counterparts, relies on a network of 3,500 volunteers operating in 56 teams nationally. Four of those teams are in my constituency—the Buxton, Edale, Glossop and Kinder teams, all of which I have visited. Every time I visit, I leave very impressed by what they do. Each team is a self-contained unit with its own equipment, supplies, vehicles and communications. The teams carry equipment required to remain operational—unsupported—for more than 12 hours, and they are trained in first aid and casualty care.

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has said in the past that in a

“cold snap, the values of the Big Society are more important than ever…Volunteers in mountain rescue teams worked round the clock to help the stranded…We should celebrate that community spirit.”

They are fine words, but celebrating the community spirit is not enough; we should support these men and women, who risk their own well-being in appalling conditions to save and help others. I am talking about people such as my constituent Paul Hitchen. On three occasions when I have been out with him and his wife socially, he has left us early because he has been called out to go up on Kinder Scout to rescue ramblers, hikers and the like. This has been in weather that may not have appeared too bad in the towns and the villages, but it can be a very different world on the hills of High Peak.

The Government do not fund the mountain rescue service; we do not fund it as a country. We actually take revenue from its funds, which goes into the Treasury’s coffers. It is estimated that if central Government had to provide these services, the cost would be about £6 million a year. I wish to acknowledge the funding for the mountain rescue that was announced last year, which will help the teams, but the vast majority of their money comes from voluntary donations; they do bag packs, coin collections and all sorts of other things to raise their money. Not only is that money necessary to purchase the vehicles, fuel, equipment and clothing they need to do their job, but the service also has to fund about £250,000 of VAT that is payable to the Exchequer each year.

It has been suggested that, while acknowledging the need to tax mountain rescue sympathetically, the Government would not want to pursue a policy that would favour one charity over another. However, distinctions are made elsewhere: the Royal National Lifeboat Institution can reclaim VAT and can access red diesel; St John Ambulance can claim back VAT on fuel and vehicles; and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals can do the same in respect of its rescue vehicles. The mountain rescue is not able to access many of the benefits that those other charities enjoy.

Some vehicles enjoy access to fuel that is not subject to duty, known as red diesel. Red diesel has a significantly reduced tax levy compared with the undyed diesel fuel used in the ordinary diesel road vehicles that many of us drive. It can be used in registered vehicles such as tractors, forestry vehicles, excavators, snowploughs, gritters and boats. Working vehicles, including four-wheel drives that are used mainly on the land, can also use red diesel regardless of whether they are being used commercially or for charitable purposes as long as the vehicle is used on a public road only for a distance of no more than 1.5 km while passing between different areas of land occupied by the same person. So, if the mountain rescue teams owned the land on which they operated or restricted their activities to specified national parks, they could get the lower fuel duty. They are volunteers acting for the benefit of the whole community who are willing to go out and help whenever and wherever they are needed and that works against them.

Let me give the example of a cold winter day in High Peak, on Kinder Scout, with a sheep in distress in one field and a rambler in another field. The farmer going to help the sheep could go up using red diesel, whereas the mountain rescue team bringing back the hiker would pay the full price for diesel. That team is going to rescue someone in distress, so to me the difference in the price paid seems wrong.

At sea, all rescue vehicles qualify to use red diesel. On land, conventional ambulances qualify yet they cannot get to the difficult terrain where the mountain rescue teams need to go. Yet again, mountain rescue pays for the fuel. Over the past decade, rescue teams in England and Wales have paid about £500,000 in tax on fuel as well as VAT on other items that they have had to purchase to carry out their work.

In answer to a written question, the then Treasury Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening), said:

“It would be difficult to make a clear distinction between vehicles used by mountain rescue teams and privately owned vehicles”.—[Official Report, 14 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 487W.]

I do not believe that to be the case and if I had more time—I am conscious that many other Members wish to speak—I could dismantle that argument. I believe that a mountain rescue vehicle dedicated to mountain rescue—let us face it, they are usually big ambulances with logos and so on all over them—could quite easily be allowed to run on red diesel.

The growing burden of high fuel costs and high inflation and the downward pressure on wages, particularly in rural areas such as High Peak, means that volunteers are less likely to be able to finance the provision of the service and I think we should help them. There has been a spectacular lack of common sense in seeking a way forward. The cost to the Treasury of permitting vehicles that are registered to mountain rescue teams and used for mountain rescue purposes and for no other to use red diesel would be negligible in the grand scheme of things. It would be simple to introduce and to police.

When national or regional emergencies devastate areas of the UK, mountain rescue is the only service that can help. It is adaptable and can go anywhere at any time. I think it is time that we replaced the warm words of support and congratulation with some practical action to help. No more excuses. No more time for reflection. Let us have some action. We could do a lot. We could make the change on red diesel that I am calling for today. We could make a direct payment to rebate the VAT, we could revise the ambulance rules to allow more all-terrain vehicles to qualify or we could just offer a direct grant.

I am aware of the difficult financial circumstances in this country, as we all are, so I ask the Treasury to allow mountain rescue to use red diesel in their own vehicles—I am sorry that no Treasury Minister is in the Chamber, but I hope the message gets back as I am determined to keep pressing the point. It would save each and every team in this country money that would help them to continue to provide the service. Some of us might never have used it, but I suspect that we will all—particularly those of us with rural seats—know somebody who has seen it in action. For example, the mountain rescue website gives details today of a busy weekend for the Buxton mountain rescue team.

I once set off on Kinder Scout in shorts and a T-shirt—[Interruption.] Someone laughs, but I promise hon. Members that it is not that bad. As I got higher up, the weather got worse. Fortunately, as I am from the area I was well equipped but by the time I reached the top of Kinder Scout I was wearing three layers of waterproof clothing and had my torch, whistle and everything I needed. I still saw somebody coming back the other way wearing flip-flops, would you believe, because people set off from what seems like a different world. The only people who can get to them if they get into trouble are the mountain rescue. There are many examples, such as the people who get stuck in peat bogs because they follow a global positioning system or satellite navigation device on the hills. We are at the mercy of the elements in High Peak and mountain rescue is our lifeline.

I repeat my call and hope that the message gets back to the Treasury, because if it does not I shall keep repeating it. Let us consider allowing such vehicles to use red diesel. When the call comes to mountain rescue for assistance, doing nothing is not an option. Now, in my view, it is our turn. Doing nothing is not an option for us, so we should consider this idea. We should do it, because it will not cost a lot, it is easy and it will make a big difference to mountain rescue teams up and down the country.