Coastguard Service

Debate between Bill Esterson and Lord Campbell of Pittenweem

Thursday 24th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend makes a vital point. We have exactly the same issue around the coast of Liverpool, where many different locations are known by the same names. Local knowledge is crucial, as she says. It was crucial in the Morecambe bay tragedy, which was called into the Crosby coastguard station. The one life that was saved was saved because of the ability to respond quickly. Although many lives were lost, the coastguard was able to save one life because it was able to get there quickly.

It is important to recognise the difficulty of transferring local knowledge to the two MOCs in Aberdeen and Southampton. Staff in Liverpool have told me that they will not relocate to either Aberdeen or Southampton, and I know that the same is true of many other stations. Moreover, however long the training might take—whether it takes months or several years—replacing the detailed local knowledge and hands-on experience is not the same as theoretical training. The inability to replicate that local knowledge which, for a lot of the staff, has been built up over many decades, is a big enough issue in itself to make the Government rethink their approach.

[Sir Menzies Campbell]

I agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman has said about local knowledge. I wonder, however, whether his experience at the meeting that he attended was the same as mine. I attended a meeting to consider the fate of Forth station, which is based in Fife Ness in my constituency. The officials who attended were considerate and went out of their way to attempt to deal with the audience’s questions. On many occasions, however, they simply did not have the information to enable them to deal adequately with the questions. Indeed, I ended up feeling slightly sorry for them. In particular, they had nothing to say about the point raised by the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) about what trials have been carried out in relation to the new proposals. They simply did not have an answer to that question.

[Bill Esterson]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman makes an important point about the importance of carrying out real tests on the robustness of the new system. There is no answer to that, because it is just not possible without running the two systems alongside each other, and I do not see that being proposed, even if it were desirable.

Another concern that staff and unions have is the lack of a risk assessment at the start of the consultation. I know that a risk assessment has been added, but the concern is that it was added late, as an afterthought, and that it is inadequate. I am sure that the Minister will address that. Another point made at length at the Liverpool meeting was the importance not just of local knowledge, but of the relationship between staff and the volunteers who carry out the search and rescue activity, and of knowing which search and rescue team is best placed to carry out any given rescue. They know them all personally, which is something else that will, I suspect, disappear as a result of remote stations.

The Select Committee on Transport held an inquiry, but its findings have yet to be analysed by Government. One of the results of a previous reorganisation was the high-quality new facility at Crosby, which I have visited a couple of times recently, but there has not been an assessment of the results of that reorganisation. Those two gaps have not been addressed by the proposals.

One of the strong themes of the Liverpool meeting was the impact on leisure users, such as people with leisure craft or fishing boats, as well as tourists and other visitors to the coast. Those people do not necessarily have access to the kind of technology that fits well with what is being proposed. Although commercial users would undoubtedly be able to use the new system, the issue of the leisure industry causes great concern not only to the people affected, but to the staff.