Coastguard Centres (Staffing)

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, in the last, but I hope by no means the least, debate of the day. I look forward to hearing the response from the Department for Transport on the issues I will raise.

It is now about three years since the coastguard went through the upheaval of reorganisation, changes and closures, onwards towards its new structure. Of course I mourn the loss to Scotland of the Clyde and Forth coastguard stations. Scotland has 66% of the UK’s coastline, but, alas, only 33% of the coastguard stations. I am glad that we managed to save Stornoway station, which is now a very important coastguard station. It has a search and rescue helicopter—at one point, it had an emergency towing vessel, a tugboat—and is located in an important sea area. I am glad that we also still have in Scotland the Shetland and Aberdeen stations.

Stornoway is located between Belfast to the south and Shetland to the north, and covers a large sea area, not least because the next station to the west—perhaps the one direction I have not yet mentioned—is in Canada. Stornoway station’s area of responsibility covers about 250,000 square miles of sea, and meets the Canadians’ area at 30° west, about a time zone and a half away; Stornoway lies about 7° west. I had thought that Shetland station’s area of responsibility would be larger, but the Faroe Islands lie to its west and Norway to the east and north.

Those are just a few facts that can be found out by your average MP when they visit the local coastguard station. I bring them to hon. Members’ attention because they emphasise the international aspect of maritime activity, which could doubtless be further underlined by the station to our south, Belfast, which no doubt deals with coastguard colleagues in other jurisdictions such as the Isle of Man and the Republic of Ireland.

As I said, it is now over three years since the announcement that, importantly for me, confirmed that the hard work had paid off and Stornoway coastguard station was saved. The date was 22 November 2011, and it was a Tuesday—one that brought great relief not just to me but to those working at the station and people round about. We kept our coastal maritime expertise in Stornoway, and with it the associated local knowledge and jobs, as well as the intimate interaction with our local fishing community.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I do not want to take away from what the hon. Gentleman has said about the people of Stornoway, but on that same date the people of Crosby coastguard station had exactly the opposite reaction, because of the announcement of the closure of that station with the loss of jobs unless people were prepared to relocate to either Southampton or, in some cases, Holyhead. The subject he has chosen for his debate is the staffing of coastguard stations, and I am interested to hear what he has to say on that point. Many of the staff at Crosby have not been able to transfer, and grave concerns have been raised with me about the standard of recruitment and training of replacement staff. Have similar points been raised with him?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr MacNeil]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He will recall, I think, that the word I used about Stornoway was relief. To see that the stations in Forth, Clyde, Crosby and other areas were to close and the jobs of professionals with years of expertise under their belts were to be lost brought no pleasure at all—in fact, it brought great sadness. I am interested to hear what he said about staff, because I am coming on to that point. If there are surplus staff somewhere, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency might consider that fact when dealing with some of the problems I will be highlighting.

It has been three years since the reorganisation, so we would have thought that most of the changes would have been brought through by now and the organisation would be running as smoothly as it could and should be. Many people would expect the changes to have bedded down, yet reports have come to my ears—actually, to my eyes—of one coastguard officer saying to another, “Let’s hope the latest Minister does something, because the whole issue—the closure of stations, the loss of experienced staff, the undermanning—is a disaster waiting to happen.” Those are strong words—not my words, I stress, but words I feel need to be checked up on.

We must remember the value of our coastguard staff, as the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) pointed out with regard to the staff in Crosby, who sadly lost their station. We know they are trained to a high standard and that their professionalism is exemplary. I know that not just from visiting coastguard stations as an MP but from an earlier life working on fishing boats, and travelling regularly on ferries as I do, I am aware of yet another aspect of the work of coastguard staff. Each time I have been in the wheelhouse of a fishing boat or on the bridge of a passenger ferry and the words “Stornoway coastguard” have come over the radio, that radio has been turned up and there has been silence from those assembled within earshot, because, nearly always, serious and important words are coming across the airwaves.

How are those in the stations—the people broadcasting into the wheelhouses of fishing boats and the bridges of passenger ferries—faring at the moment? No one would know it from the professionalism that I hear coming over the radio, but in reality, although they may not show the strain, it seems that the stresses are most certainly there. When I visited Stornoway coastguard recently, the watch was at 75% of its strength. That brings us back to the point about Crosby. There is a problem with staffing, and people are working overtime to cover a shortage of staff—it is a regular occurrence. Some retired coastguard officers are coming in to help out, if only for a limited time due to the restrictions on what they can earn, and their expertise is still looked to. The demands on present staff are high.

I have good news for the Minister. I am sure he will be pleased to know that fortunately there are many people waiting to join the coastguard service. Sadly, I have not got much more good news than that—that is where the good news ends. Perhaps, by extension, we could say that the fact that 60 or so people came to Stornoway coastguard station in May and June to apply to join the service is good news, but six months later there is still a shortage of staff, and none of those people has been appointed. I am told that that pattern is being repeated across the service; in fact, some at Stornoway would argue that their situation is better than that at many other stations.

The problem has lasted for six months and is set to go on until February. That means the MCA’s recruitment process for the coastguard will have taken eight months in total. And there is more: although three staff are in the pipeline for Stornoway—they are due to start in February—the reality is that eight more are needed and the glacial pace of recruitment could go on for ever.

Can anything be done? There are indeed things that can be done, which were identified quite quickly by the staff I have met—these ideas are not mine, but are emerging within the coastguard. The bottleneck seems to be the fact that new recruits cannot start until they go to training, which takes place in Fareham or perhaps Highcliffe. There are certain dates set aside in March and new recruits can start at their stations six weeks before, hence the eight-month delay. However, there will be a knock-on effect. When will the next opportunity be? Surely the Minister and the MCA either have to look to increase training so it starts at more regular intervals, in order to shorten the recruitment period, or else think of another solution so that stations are not left with such stresses on the shoulders of their watch staff—stresses that have obvious knock-on effects on morale.

The most obvious solution would be to let new recruits into the operations room once they have been through the application process and have been accepted, so that they can do most of their training in there. Coastguard officers—seasoned people with a wealth of knowledge under their belts—tell me that that is where most of the training occurs anyway. The training centre helps to top and tail those skills; it is a useful check on quality, and is useful, too, as a refresher course.

The current situation cannot be allowed to fester—that is how it feels to many at the moment. Some in the service feel that it could be a cack-handed way to save money, but I am not sure it is that sophisticated. I would not say it is incompetence. Perhaps it is mismanagement, or I might be a bit kinder and say that it is not mismanagement but people cleaving to a system and a model idealised for some time, which they think should be delivering for the coastguard. However, it is not—it is simply not cutting the mustard.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The coastguard station at Bangor in Northern Ireland was saved when the last changes took place. I was aware earlier this year of issues similar to those outlined by the hon. Gentleman at Stornoway. Action was taken in Belfast and at Bangor coastguard station in regard to issues of sickness and overtime, and I understand that those matters have been addressed. When changes have taken place successfully, that might be a precedent for what to do in Stornoway.

[Mr MacNeil]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I understand from what he says that, unfortunately, Stornoway is not the only place affected like this, but I am pleased to hear that Bangor had a successful localised approach.

The situation facing some of us is an eight-month delay, which has had an unfortunate result for at least one new recruit, who gave up her job when she accepted the coastguard job, only for it to become apparent later that she would have to wait many months, until February, without salaried employment while she waited to start the job with the coastguard.

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Gentleman is raising some worrying examples, and I can add to them because information given to me suggests that existing coastguard staff have felt criticised by senior agency management—so much so that some of them have left, which perhaps explains some of the evidence he gave earlier. That concerns me not just in terms of what is going on with the closure at Liverpool, but what is happening at Fareham and elsewhere and the knock-on effect on the service’s ability to deliver. It does not bode well if quality and experienced staff are being criticised.

[Mr MacNeil]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I have some evidence that I was not going to use because I thought there was not enough support behind it. Essentially, it is an e-mail containing implied criticism of existing staff, saying that there were better, more highly trained, more experienced or higher quality staff—I cannot remember the exact words—and existing staff felt undermined by that. I will be charitable and say that that was unfortunate, but there seems to be more than one example, or it may be the same example in many places, but it is unfortunate that the situation arose.

I return to the new recruit at Stornoway. I cannot help but think that that person has been mucked about by the MCA system—I will be kind and say that it is the system. We cannot treat grown adults, whom we trust to run one of our most important emergency services, like that and expect them to go months without paid employment because of the MCA’s procedures not being clear during the recruitment.

I have outlined some of the problems of undermanning in the ops room and taking in retired people, but there are other knock-on effects. Coastguard volunteers around our coast are also affected. Some people are destined to leave the operations room to train volunteer coastguards and to give them the training they deserve and the professionalism that anyone who is ever in need of their services deserves, but they cannot leave the operations room because of the demands there, so one of the knock-on effects is that that training is not happening. Those who would oversee development of the volunteer teams cannot be in place due to the glacial recruitment issues. Courses that should be happening in rope rescue, water rescue, first aid, land search, and equipment control and maintenance, to name but a few of the 20 courses in the guide, are not happening and cannot happen. We are back at the root of the problem, which is getting people into the service in a timely, speedy, correct and clear manner. This is not good for morale.

I may have sounded critical of the MCA and operations within the coastguard, but I do not mean to. There has been a general pattern of events in the coastguard service over the last few years and I have been critical, but although I am still being critical today, I hope that the criticism is constructive. We would all like nothing better than to have a properly functioning coastguard service. It is important to get to grips with that goal, and it could be happening, but it is not.

I want to spend a few moments putting on the record the importance of another aspect of guarding the coasts: emergency tug vessels. I want the Minister to understand the seriousness with which we on the west coast of Scotland regard them. We have nuclear movements going through the Minch—the stretch of water between the Hebrides and the mainland. The Minch is used by boats carrying nuclear material from Scrabster near Dounreay to the reprocessing facility at Sellafield, and we certainly do not want to contemplate one of those boats with that cargo requiring assistance, but the possibility exists. We also have fuel tankers, and those of us who do a bit of maritime trainspotting with the automatic identification system online often see tankers transiting north and south of the Hebrides between Tranmere and Mongstad in Norway. They carry fuel into some of the roughest European waters. We also have cruise ships in ever-increasing numbers, and the coastguards tell me that these sometimes carry the same amount of fuel as a tanker, which surprised me. They also carry something else very important: passengers. There are many people’s lives at stake, and we do not want one of those ships losing power along the rocky coastline of Scotland’s west coast.

If there are problems on the west coast, we will not be ready to tackle them like other nations, which take their responsibilities seriously and have plans in place to deal with problems. We have been told that we could get a tug from the oilfields west of Shetland and north of the Hebrides, but to my knowledge no simulation of a tanker or cruise ship in trouble has been carried out at the drop of a hat so that we have some experience of what would happen in real time trying to source one of those boats. I ask that such an exercise should take place. I fear that it will not happen and that our first experience will be an emergency.

I have a couple of final points. I mentioned the Faroes, Norway, the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and Canada—the internationalisation of the coastguard. I am disappointed that the Smith commission on Scottish devolution has left only a consultative role for the Scottish Government. The issues I have brought to the fore would be dealt with faster and better in Edinburgh. As we saw today in the autumn statement, some of the things that have happened in Edinburgh, such as on stamp duty, have been a good example and have been copied. We have nothing to fear from devolution and control by Government outside Westminster. Sometimes, it may be for the benefit of us all.

As I said at the start, Scotland has 60% of the UK’s coastline but only 33% of the coastguard stations. Those coastguard stations are undermanned. I hope that if anything comes out of this debate, it will be that the Minister looks at the system so that we do not have the same situation in a year, and after four years a new system will have bedded down and we will have the necessary manpower in the coastguard station at Stornoway so that people do not suffer stress, can do their job professionally, and are released from the operations room to train volunteer coastguards.

--- Later in debate ---

[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 MacNeil]

Will the Minister give way?

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.