Coastguard Service

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing the debate. I am pleased that we are looking at the co-ordination role of the coastguard co-ordination stations, which has not always been focused on in other debates, and at their role in overseeing incidents at sea. It is the local coastguards who pull together the emergency services during an incident and who, over many years, have built up relationships with those services. We remove that local relationship at our peril.

I firmly believe, as did my late husband, that there should be modernisation of coastguard equipment to allow, for example, the position of vessels transmitting with the voluntary class B automatic indicator system to be identified easily, but that there should be no cull of marine rescue co-ordination centres. Because of my personal position, I have received representations from concerned sea users all over the country, but it is appropriate for me to concentrate on my own area.

The marine rescue co-ordination centre in Brixham covers my constituency of South East Cornwall, and has built up unique experience from so many incidents over many years. The search and rescue area covered by Brixham stretches from Dodman Point halfway along the south coast of Cornwall to Exmouth in Devon, and it is essential to emphasise something I am sure the Minister will recognise and agree with—that local knowledge of topography saves lives. The care that I was afforded on 25 March by Looe RNLI crew and Brixham and Looe coastguards was beyond anything I could have expected, and I thank all those involved in the emergency services, and indeed the south-west fishing industry, for their kindness.

This past Saturday I spent time with my local RNLI personnel and my local volunteer coastguards, who are all concerned about the Minister’s proposals. They feel that he has not had the opportunity to speak to people who operate at the sharp end, and I would like to invite the Minister to visit Looe—if his busy schedule allows it—to hear for himself their concerns.

Some examples of co-ordinated sea rescues undertaken by Brixham are the Santa Anna, the MV Willy, the MV Kodima, the Ice Prince, the Kukawa and the Bothnia Stone.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

Would I be right in saying that Brixham dealt with 1,300 incidents in 2010, saving 300 lives? Its work is absolutely valuable. When we talked about introducing technology, we said that we would move to a paperless society, but we have not, and although technology undoubtedly has a place—we need modernisation—without local knowledge we will not save the numbers of lives that we have done in the past.

[Sheryll Murray]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I was coming on to the number of incidents. As far as technology goes, it was only last Wednesday that the London ambulance service system failed, and it was recording emergency calls with pen and paper.

The incidents involving MV Willy and MV Kodima both happened off the coast of my own county division, when I sat on Cornwall county council. I witnessed at first hand the superb co-ordination provided by the Brixham marine rescue co-ordination centre, with the marine emergency rescue organisations and the Cornwall fire service and its emergency planning department. I doubt that the Minister has experienced that unique way of working within a coastal fire and rescue service, but I appreciate that he has absolute expertise as far as an inland fire and rescue service is concerned.

I would like to highlight in more detail three incidents in which Brixham MRCC has been involved in co-ordination with other emergency services. The first occurred just before midnight—that is, outside daylight hours—on 13 January 2008 and involved the Torbay and Salcombe RNLI lifeboats, coastguard rescue helicopter India Juliet, HMS Cumberland and several merchant vessels. They proceeded to merchant vessel Ice Prince, with 20 persons on board, 27 miles south-east of Start point after its cargo shifted in heavy weather and it began to list to port. The vessel was abandoned by 12 crewmen, one with a suspected broken leg, and they were airlifted to Portland by helicopter. The remaining eight were rescued by Torbay lifeboat and conveyed to Brixham. A French tug attended the scene, and damage was assessed in daylight.

The second incident occurred on 11 October at 8.38 am and involved a missing person. Brixham took broadcast action and tasked the warship Westminster and coastguard helicopter R106 to assist the French coastguard at Cross Corsen in a mid-channel search for an 80-year-old male reported missing from passenger vessel Balmoral.

Finally, on 10 February this year at 6.43 pm—again, outside daylight hours—Brixham coastguard received a mayday distress call from fishing vessel Amber J reporting that fishing vessel Admiral Blake had collided with MV Boxford approximately 30 miles south of Start point. The Amber J reported that two crewmen from the Admiral Blake had entered the water and only one had been recovered. Salcombe RNLI’s all-weather lifeboat, coastguard rescue helicopter 106 from Portland and Royal Navy helicopter 193 were tasked to search for the missing crewman. After a mayday relay, numerous vessels assisted in the search, along with a rapid rescue craft from the Boxford. After a brief search, the missing crewman was located by the Boxford’s rapid rescue craft, winched aboard the coastguard rescue helicopter and taken to hospital. Rescue helicopter 193 stood by while the Salcombe lifeboat assessed the damage to the Admiral Blake. After the damage was assessed and controlled, the Admiral Blake was towed back to Plymouth, where the Plymouth lifeboat met the vessel and took her into port. That shows essential local partnership working among our local coastguard stations at the moment.

Complicated incidents at Brixham have increased year on year since 1998, when 767 incidents were recorded. In 2002, there were 903 incidents, in 2003 there were 1,025, in 2009 there were 1,324 and last year there were 1,355. Of greater concern is the fact that this year, there have already been 546 incidents, an increase of 90 from the same period last year. I acknowledge that, taken at face value, the number of incidents at Falmouth appears higher, at 971. However, that can be broken down into 233 incidents similar to those that I have just described and another 738 that occurred under the international global maritime distress safety system. Some of those incidents might have been search and rescue, but others would have been passed to the relevant MRC centre to deal with.

I am afraid that I must take issue with the Minister’s comments about Falmouth’s international role during a debate on 2 February this year. He said:

“Falmouth is internationally renowned for its international rescue capabilities. If we have a problem in Falmouth, where does that get picked up? Nowhere.”—[Official Report, 2 February 2011; Vol. 522, c. 320WH.]

He is clearly unaware that Brixham takes over GMDSS when Falmouth suffers an outage, and has taken over the system every Thursday for the past 12 months. Perhaps he will take the opportunity when he speaks to correct the statement that he made in February. It would also be interesting to hear from him whether there have been any incidents in which both stations in a pair have gone down at the same time.

As I am sure the Minister knows, Falmouth was allocated GMDSS due to its proximity to Goonhilly Downs satellite earth station, which has closed. Many incidents are subsequently passed on to other coastal co-ordination stations, and it is unfair of him to include them in the number of incidents dealt with by Falmouth alone.

I am disappointed that the Minister chose to describe Brixham and Falmouth as “ridiculously close” during the Adjournment debate last week. In fact, Brixham and Portland, Milford and Swansea, Thames and Yarmouth, Portland and Solent, and Forth and Aberdeen have fewer road miles between them, and if we measure as the crow flies, we can also include Holyhead and Liverpool on the list. Does he consider those stations to be ridiculously close?

Brixham MRCC is bought and paid for. We now need to cover only the station’s running costs. It contains an operations co-ordination room, an emergency planning room, a coastal safety manager’s office, a sector manager’s office, coastguard rescue equipment for the Berry Head rescue team, a coastguard rescue emergency vehicle, a marine surveyor’s office, a coastguard training office for the region and an aerial site, and it still has space to expand. Brixham has been approached to lease a whole floor to another emergency service for its offices and operation area. If the property is sold, new premises will need to be found and bought for all of the above.