Coastguard Centres (Staffing)

Bill Esterson 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 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.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

It is an immense joy, Mr Davies, to serve under your illustrious and benevolent chairmanship. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman secured this debate on an important issue. It is important because coastguards are important. Their work is immensely valuable and I want to take this opportunity to thank and congratulate them on all they do to keep our shores and our people safe, not only the professionals, but the volunteers. They deserve a particular mention because in my constituency and in constituencies of other hon. Members here, volunteer coastguards do a superb job.

The provision of search and rescue is an obligation enshrined in international law and convention, including the UN convention on the law of the sea and the international convention on maritime search and rescue. The UK coastguard service’s area of operation extends as far west as the mid-Atlantic and in all other directions to internationally agreed meridians.

Picking up the hon. Gentleman’s last point, national coastguard services must operate across international boundaries to provide a search and rescue capability that is most appropriate in each incident at sea. The commitment from all professional coastguards is to protect and to save using whatever assets and resources are available, even those that may belong to other national authorities. Fear, risk, safety and rescue know no national boundaries and it is important to remember that that has always been the way and the habit of our coastguards.

From December 2010, this Government entered extensive consultations to find a way of addressing combined challenges: resilience, preventing skills-fade, improving the job offer for coastguard officers, and giving greater leadership and training support to community volunteers that make up the coastguard rescue service. Hon. Members, and particularly the Select Committee on Transport, were very much involved in those discussions and the consultation, and helped to shape the blueprint that we announced in November 2011. That was further refined in September 2013, because it took longer than we all hoped to agree new pay arrangements to reflect properly the different roles and responsibilities of coastguards working in co-ordination centres.

The unions were properly and heavily involved in that process, as they should be. I work closely, and always have as a Minister, with the trade unions that relate to the sector for which I am responsible.

[Bill Esterson]

The Minister is absolutely right to praise the volunteers, who do a fantastic job in my constituency, as in his. I am sure he is aware of a point that was made in arguing the case against the closures—I am looking at the 2011 report from Crosby. What assurances can he give about the relationships between officers in the MCA and those volunteers where coastguard stations have closed, as they have in my constituency?

[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.