Coastguard (Maritime Incident Response Group)

Debate between Angus Brendan MacNeil and Gordon Marsden

Thursday 17th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure and privilege, Mr Rosindell, to serve under your chairmanship and to speak for the first time as the Front-Bench spokesman with responsibility for this area. Like others, I pay tribute to the work of the coastguards. Both the regulars and the volunteers do a fantastic job, as do the other sea rescue agencies that they work with.

I am conscious of the fact that this area is both complex and difficult and one to which I am new. Having served as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in a range of Government Departments and sat on two Select Committees, I know that there are no easy answers, either political or administrative, in such issues. However, the business of Government can be improved by three things: evidence-driven policy, wide consultation with stakeholders and using Select Committees as a critical spur to challenge too many paper or computer-driven scenarios.

Evidence-driven policy has often been lacking, as the Select Committee discovered after much prodding and probing over the past two years. The deficiencies in the process are clear. As the Select Committee pointed out, there was no thorough public consultation and the original proposals were deeply flawed. To their credit, the Government responded to those points, but it is concerning none the less that, even at this stage, the Select Committee, two years on from the original proposal, still has some specific concerns about the direction of responsibility.

There are big issues around greater local interoperability and they seem to have been ignored or ducked. In many cases, the Government seem to have put the cart before the horse, closing MRCCs before the maritime operations centre is fully operative, and there are widespread woes, as we have already heard this afternoon, that local knowledge is being spurned and not transferred.

We know that the day-today co-operation between MOC and the centres is soon to be replaced by the coastguard operation centres. The Government say that coastguard officers will be trained more broadly and extensively, making them more flexible. We have already heard about how local knowledge can be shared between local coastguards. However, I have a question, which echoes what the Chair of the Transport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), said—how can local knowledge be shared when so little time has been allowed for handover between the closing of MRCCs and the neighbouring centres? Also, how will staff in the MOC gain this information for all their areas? I understand that on one occasion the Department for Transport spokesperson said that they could use social media, but the Minister must be aware that there are very strict conventions within the maritime service about how social media are used, so perhaps he would like to examine that issue or comment on it.

The Government have also said that the MOC will oversee a range of services, including search and rescue, but do more resources need to be put aside for it also to manage the introduction of a newly privatised search and rescue service and to have the capacity to adapt to the longer term search and rescue solution? I ask the Minister, specifically, what confidence he has that Dover, as a back-up to the Fareham-based MOC, will be far enough away from Fareham to provide an effective back-up, so that a serious event could not result in both centres being incapacitated at the same time?

At the close of the second consultation, at the end of November 2011, the then Minister—the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning)—admitted that concerns had already been expressed about having both an unmanned centre and back-up in the south, when they should perhaps be more geographically separated.

Of course, there are also wider issues of collaboration here. If the Government boast that this change is a thorough overhaul of the service, why has there been no broader assessment at any stage of the relationship between the coastguard and the MOC, and the other traditional rescue services—the beach patrols and lifeguards that local councils run, the fire and rescue services, and crucially the relationship with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which is not only about central administration but local volunteers?

Recently, I have put a couple of written questions to the Minister on that issue. I will just quote from the reply to one of them:

“The RNLI, like coastguard rescue teams, independent lifeboats, rescue helicopters and other rescue facilities, are not affected by these changes.”—[Official Report, 15 October 2013; Vol. 568, c. 661W.]

I submit that if anyone ever wanted to see an example of silo mentality in a Department, there it is. I invite the Minister to comment on why I received that written response.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman take this opportunity to state whether he believes an emergency towing vessel should be based in Stornoway? Indeed, will he commit to such a vessel being based in Stornoway in the future?

[Mr Marsden]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He and his colleague, the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid), have already raised that issue and I will return to it later in my speech.

How do the Government expect fire and rescue services in particular to develop proposals for an at-sea presence without direct central funding, at a time when local budgets are more stretched than ever? I know that there is, of course, a piecemeal arrangement along the south coast, but so far as I am aware that does not extend elsewhere.

In response to the Select Committee, the Minister has produced positive scenarios about the interaction of MOC staff and MRCC staff, but the Committee has rightly pressed the Government on major incident scenarios. If we look at the Government response, we see that page 7 contains a list of actions that superficially seem impressive. I came to this brief from looking at further education funding. In that sector too, there are wonderful diagrams about the process of money and the process of communication, and I am sure that if the Minister got his officials to produce a complicated diagram of the various steps that are listed on page 7 it would be even more impressive. But the crucial question is how long it would take the complex chain of command detailed on page 7 to operate and respond. That will be the determination of how effective the MOC is, and raising that issue underlines the continued concerns and disquiet that members of the Committee and other hon. Members have expressed today about emergency vessels.

I turn now to the issue of staffing, because that has already been talked about in considerable detail. The demographic profile of coastguards is highly skewed towards older employees. The Minister’s own figures, from the Government response to the Committee, show that, for example, in Falmouth 14 of the 33 coastguards are over the age of 50 and in Humber 16 of the 27 coastguards are over 50. So those valued employees will probably be leaving the service during the next five to 10 years and taking their experience with them, at the same time as there is major upheaval in coastguard operations. In addition, there is currently a growing loss of valuable expertise in the service. For example, only one of the London coastguards has more than 20 years of experience. Therefore, the emerging picture is that no replacement generation of coastguards is coming through with the extensive service that is needed both to replace those who will soon leave and to oversee the introduction of the new system.

In 2011, the Government proposals estimated a total reduction in staffing numbers from 596 to 370, with coastguard numbers falling from 491 to 248. Therefore, there will be an increasing reliance on volunteers, with the number required rising from 80 to 105. We have already heard today about some of the problems with volunteers, so could the Minister give more up-to-date figures on the assessment of job losses as a result of this reorganisation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Marsden]

That is a nice try, but the hon. Gentleman knows that we cannot make commitments to future funding until we have seen the books, after the next election. He also knows that the first step in making decisions in this area is to do a proper analysis, which the Government have failed to do.

When the Government responded, initially—

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain the difference between his position and the Government’s? He seems to be talking about investigations tomorrow. There is no firm commitment whatever to looking into the real, pressing need, as identified in the Select Committee report. It is fluff we are hearing from the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Marsden]

I regret to say that the hon. Gentleman would do better to stick up for his constituents, rather than play party political games. He knows perfectly well that the real issue is whether there will be support in the short term, and that is an issue for the UK Government, so perhaps he will turn his attention to that in future, rather than play political games.

[Mr MacNeil]

What is the difference?

[Mr Marsden]

I am not taking another intervention from the hon. Gentleman.

There was an airy response from the Department in October 2010, when it announced why the process would proceed as set out. It said:

“ship salvage should be a commercial matter between a ship’s operator and a salvor.”

In my view, that shows that the Government do not get it. What about the pollution issues, in respect of which ETVs have been proposed as a solution?

We were told in the original assessment that the removal of a commitment to ETVs would save £32.5 million over the spending review period, but, for example, we heard the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) mention her concerns about the length of time it might take for an ETV from the south coast to come and deal with an incident in her area. I have already talked about the problems and deep concerns on the east coast about tanker-to-tanker oil transfers. If a major pollution incident were to take place, how much of that alleged £32.5 million saving would be swallowed up in cleaning costs? This decision is based on an assumption that the private sector would pick up the tab. However, outside Scotland, where, I gather, specific commitments have been made recently, there is no evidence that it will do so. The Transport Committee was right to label this, in June 2011, as potentially a dangerous situation.

The Government’s response to this issue over the past two years has been a curious mix of detailed response to the Select Committee’s excellent report and prodding, and dangerous complacency. It is quite clear that, throughout the process, emotional intelligence and a sense of the need for co-operation from the work force has been severely lacking.

The end of the Department’s most recent response to the Committee’s report slipped back into a Maoist view of permanent revolution, which will do little to assuage the concerns of coastguards and coastal communities, about services that liaise with the general public. The Department dismissed the comments about the future, saying, “You can’t make decisions for a generation.” Of course, no Government can guarantee no further change, but it is important to respond in a considered, thoughtful way to a Select Committee report, rather than arrogantly.

Generations are normally considered as periods of 30 years. Earlier this year, I attended a moving unveiling ceremony in Blackpool on the 30th anniversary of three police officers losing their lives in a sea incident. That brought home to me the need for all emergency coastal services, whether voluntary or statutory, to co-operate and collaborate. That is what we should be looking for out of this process—as well as answers to the detailed questions that the Transport Committee has still to receive.