Fire Service (Metropolitan Areas)

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on securing it.

I want to talk about the impact on Merseyside of cuts that are running at twice the national average—up to 12% over two years. As colleagues have said, Merseyside already has a highly efficient service. My question to the Minister is how on earth does it make sense to make cuts at double the national average in Merseyside, West Midlands, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, Nottinghamshire, Cleveland, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire, with Greater Manchester only a fraction below the figure of those other mainly metropolitan areas, while making real-terms increases in funding for Devon and Somerset, Dorset, Staffordshire, Cheshire, Essex and Hampshire? Is there not a pattern emerging about the nature of the authorities that are facing these double-national-average cuts and the authorities that are seeing real-term increases? I will leave it to Members to draw their own conclusions.

How can authorities such as Merseyside deal with that 12% cut when they have already made the savings over a number of years? Perhaps the Minister can also answer the point about why they have had that cut, while others have had increases at the same time. Merseyside has made the back-office and management savings, put in place a three-year pay freeze and taken money from the dynamic reserve.

The issues of resilience capacity and heavy industry that we talked about in Greater Manchester are also true of Merseyside. Just down the road from my constituency are the docks, which are surrounded by residential areas. Therefore, in the event of a major incident, not just the industrial areas but the nearby residential areas would suffer. Without the necessary back-up, how can those areas be protected?

The plans for future years make various assumptions. The chief fire officer has already assumed the pay freeze, a 4% council tax increase and the fact that no additional contributions will be made to the pension, yet he is still short by £8.5 million. Merseyside has made the savings that it can. If further cuts are double the national average, as they have been so far—the national average is £8.5 million—goodness only knows where he would go to make those savings.

[Maria Eagle]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the chief fire officer would be in the invidious position of not being able to meet his statutory obligations to keep the people of Merseyside safe?

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course the question that arises for the Minister is, exactly how does he define what the statutory obligations are for the metropolitan authorities, such as Merseyside? What level of service does he deem to be necessary to protect the people of Merseyside and the other metropolitan areas?

In the Minister’s written answer to my parliamentary question, which I received only this week, he said:

“It is for elected members of each authority to determine such matters, acting on the professional advice of their principal officers and following full consultation with the local community.”—[Official Report, 5 March 2012; Vol. 541, c. 485W.]

May I tell him that the professional advice of the chief fire officer of Merseyside and his colleagues is that it is not possible for them to maintain the current service on the funding settlement that the chief officer has already received, and it will be even more impossible for them to protect the community that they serve given the proposed future cuts? In addition, I can tell the Minister that the local community do not accept that these cuts should be made at all. In fact, they say that none of the cuts should be happening and that they want to be protected by the fire service. However, they are also aware that, with cuts of this nature, it is impossible for the chief fire officer to maintain the level of service that is needed.

[Mr Watts]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, given what the chief fire officer of Merseyside has said about the inability to do his job, it is incumbent on the Minister now to stop and freeze the changes in the system and to get his own officials to talk directly to the fire officers who have been affected by the cuts, so that we can maintain public safety and protect lives in our areas?

[Bill Esterson]

That is exactly right, and the Minister should be doing exactly what my hon. Friend suggests: listening to the chief fire officers, taking on board their concerns, considering what service is actually needed in each metropolitan authority and ensuring that that service can be supported by the funding that he provides. Otherwise, we run huge risks.

We have already heard about the inability of the fire services to continue preventive work, such as fitting smoke detectors, which saves many lives and has reduced the number of deaths in homes over a number of years. If that work does not continue, there is a grave risk that that very welcome reduction—a move in the right direction—will be reversed, with all the danger that is implied. Of course, the fire services not only carry out preventive work; they also have the ability to respond to call-outs. It will take only one major incident in any of the metropolitan authorities to show the folly of these cuts.

As a number of Members want to speak, I will draw my remarks to a close, but I urge the Minister to look at the impact of these cuts, which in Merseyside and many other metropolitan authorities is double the national average, to listen to what my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Mr Watts) has said and to go back to the drawing board and reinstate the funding, so that the fire services can protect the communities that we represent.