Mountain Rescue

Chris Kane Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. In Stirling and Strathallan we are served by three outstanding teams: Lomond Mountain Rescue Team, based in Drymen; Killin mountain rescue, operating from Killin and Callender; and Ochils mountain rescue, operating from a neighbouring constituency, but also on the hills that dominate the backdrop of the city of Stirling. Those teams are made up of highly trained volunteers—people with jobs, families and everyday lives—who are ready to respond at a moment’s notice, often in the most difficult conditions and terrain in the country.

Such teams are not an add-on to the emergency services; they are the emergency services in certain areas. They have the medical training to treat people on the mountain, but crucially they are the only ones who can get them off the mountain, to safety and further treatment.

I want to talk about some specific issues that have been raised through the volunteer rescue services all-party parliamentary group. The steps the Government are taking to regulate independent medical care at temporary sporting and cultural events are welcome and necessary. But mountain rescue teams are not properly part of the conversation, and are perhaps being unintentionally captured by an approach that was never designed with them in mind. The consequences, as we have heard, can be significant. These teams are facing new layers of bureaucracy, increased administrative requirements and potential financial liabilities that simply do not sit easily with a volunteer model.

As we have heard, the reality is that many teams are now considering stepping back from providing event cover altogether. That matters for two reasons. First, those events are a key source of fundraising for teams that rely heavily on public support to fund their operations. Secondly, it has an impact on public safety. If mountain rescue is not present at events, it is no longer able to provide immediate care. Instead, it is called out later, often when situations have become more serious. Some 10% to 15% of the UK’s geography is such that mountain rescue is the primary emergency service, because the police, ambulance and fire services cannot operate effectively in that terrain. So there is a clear and reasonable ask here: that we give serious reconsideration to how this new approach applies to mountain rescue.

There is also a wider lesson. If we want to avoid situations like this in the future, we need to involve mountain rescue and the wider search and rescue community much earlier in the policymaking process. They must be part of the conversation from the outset. Search and rescue services interface across multiple—[Interruption.]

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Order. The sitting is suspended for a Division in the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

The sitting is resumed. The debate may now continue until 4.15 pm. I call Chris Kane.

[Chris Kane]

Thank you, Ms Lewell, for calling me back. Please give me one second to find out where I was—is it still Tuesday?

As I was saying, if we want to avoid such situations in the future, we need to involve mountain rescue and the wider search and rescue community much earlier in the policymaking process. They must be part of the conversation from the outset. Search and rescue services interface across multiple parts of Government—Transport, Health, the Home Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Cabinet Office all have a role. From the perspective of those delivering the service, that can feel fragmented.

There is a strong case for a single point of contact within Government—a clear champion who understands the role of volunteer search and rescue, and who can bring the different strands together. The Cabinet Office, given its co-ordinating role, might be a sensible place to consider having that, because ultimately, this comes back to people: highly skilled volunteers giving up their time, raising their own funds and stepping in when people need them most. They do not do it for recognition, but they deserve support.

When something goes wrong on the mountain, what matters is simple: that someone comes—and whether it is in Stirling and Strathallan or any difficult terrain anywhere in the country, they always do. For that they have our thanks and support, and I hope a commitment from the Minister to engage in the specific asks that our volunteer rescue teams have around Care Quality Commission registration and other issues. The Minister is always welcome at a future meeting of the APPG for volunteer rescue services to hear more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) for her passionate, articulate exposition of the great work that mountain rescue does in her constituency. We also heard the passion for mountain rescue and the great outdoors from the hon. Members for Bolton West (Phil Brickell), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane), and from the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), and a few others who intervened.

I too have a passion for the great outdoors and mountain walking. I spent a bit of the recess that we just had doing some of that in south Wales. It is often quite hard to articulate exactly why walking up a hill or a mountain is so tempting. Of course there is the reason that it is there, but beyond that it is the combination of the satisfaction of having done so, the exhilaration of overcoming a challenge and pushing one’s own boundaries. But the risk that we have heard about today underlines the importance of our all respecting the hills and mountains and the great outdoors more widely. With greater numbers seeking enjoyment of it, but with skills such as paper map reading and compass navigation not necessarily what they were, mountain rescue will continue to play an essential role, particularly as even those with reasonable experience in mountain environments can get things wrong, experience bad luck or get into bad habits.

Alas, I know that only too well myself. A combination of bad habits and a bit of bad luck meant that I needed to be rescued by mountain rescue in Italy, when 36 hours on the side of a mountain with no food and water turned into the not entirely welcome exhilaration of being winched on to a helicopter and then spending 27 hours in an Italian hospital. Thanks to mountain rescue, I lived to tell the tale and learned from my experience. I have significantly added to my previous experience and made sure that when I do these things, I have better risk mitigations. I pay tribute to that particular branch of the Italian mountain rescue, as well as the mountain rescue teams who have saved so many people in this country.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo) in his comments on Lowland Rescue Oxfordshire, which was honoured to receive the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. Between its creation in 2008 and 2022 its volunteers attended more than 600 incidents, equating to more than 18,000 hours deployed on searches, both in and out of Oxfordshire. They were initially focused on foot search, but they expanded their skills to incorporate water rescue, dog search and drone search.

As we have heard, mountain rescue teams are a de facto fourth emergency service, especially during major incidents such as flooding and heavy snowfall, yet they do not have the equivalent funding streams or protections of other services. As climate change leads to more serious weather events in the UK we will, alas, come to rely on mountain rescue services more and more—and that reliance will not be reserved just for avid hikers, climbers, mountain bikers or other forms of adventure, but for whole communities, as flooding events become more common. In some teams, annual call-outs now exceed 150 to 300 incidents. As we have heard, drivers of the growth in those incident numbers include an increase in outdoor recreation and tourism, social media-driven locations attracting increased numbers of inexperienced visitors, and the impact of climate change on weather-related incidents.

The accounts of Mountain Rescue England and Wales show a total income of approximately £1.25 million in 2024, with the majority coming from donations and charitable activities rather than Government support. Since 2011, the UK Government have provided grant funding, historically around £200,000 to £250,000 per year across the whole UK. That funding is project-based rather than being core funding, and is primarily for equipment and training, rather than operational sustainability. That is a challenge faced by many other third-sector organisations—charities, museums and so on—where the grant funding system is focused on capital rather than operational sustainability.

As we heard from the hon. Member for Stirling and Strathallan, Scotland operates a distinct model. The Scottish Government provide direct annual grant funding to Scottish Mountain Rescue in recognition of its team’s role in delivering land-based search and rescue on behalf of Police Scotland. That includes an annual grant totalling more than £300,000 per year, which is distributed to teams via an agreed formula; allocation reflects call-out volume, team size and assets, including funding in the Scottish Government’s fairer funding pilot, providing assurance of continued funding until at least March 2027 and giving those organisations the ability to plan ahead.

[Chris Kane]

As a former council leader, I always say that the Scottish Government have to keep on top of what that figure is and invest in it, because volumes can change, and the amount of money is never enough to do all the work required. They need a robust approach to ensuring that the funding model is adapting and changing, particularly with all the additional costs and fees. They have to make sure that they are investing enough, and that requires constant vigilance to make sure that they have done so. Does the hon. Member agree?

[Olly Glover]

The hon. Gentleman’s ask is entirely legitimate and justified. We hope that the current Scottish Government will, in the first instance, build on the wonderful achievement of the Scottish Liberal Democrat-Labour coalition in 2003 of introducing a Scottish Mountain Rescue grant.

In terms of our asks of the Minister, it is clear that the Government need to better support mountain rescue teams. At the very least, the Government need to ensure that they are not adding pressure through cumbersome bureaucracy and administrative costs that stretch their finances further. That is the risk of the current interpretation of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) Regulations 2025 and the impact they will have on mountain rescue teams. Those regulations are very serious, and we understand that they came from the findings of the inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombings, but their implementation should be proportionate to the risk and the nature of the organisations concerned.

Mountain rescue teams have been in touch with Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament to raise concerns over the impact those regulations will have on their ability to provide services at temporary sporting events in remote locations, such as fell races or mountain bike events. They have emphatically said that, as things stand, the regulations will mean that they cease providing rescue cover at those events, due to excessive administrative burden and costs. Without cover at events, mountain rescue teams will be forced to scramble from their homes should an injury occur, increasing the wait time for patients, with potentially catastrophic implications for patients’ health. We hope that the Government will heed the calls from mountain rescue teams and the Liberal Democrats for a carve-out for rescue cover. Steps should be taken to ensure that that change is as smooth as possible, and that the negative impact of the cost is mitigated as far as possible.

My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) raised these concerns in Committee with the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed), who stated that he did

“not want small events…to be overregulated”

or

“volunteers to be over-burdened with financial registration fees”—[Official Report, Fifth Delegated Legislation Committee, 15 April 2026; c. 9.]

He promised to look into the issue with the Care Quality Commission. The Minister present today is not responsible for this piece of delegated legislation, but I hope she will be able to assist with those discussions in the Department of Health and Social Care, and that she, with the Department, will consider some of the ideas put forward for supporting mountain rescue services if the changes are enacted.

If the changes take effect, they will be catastrophic for many mountain rescue services. It is essential that Government support via other routes is ramped up to mitigate the impact, so that mountain rescue can continue to provide the critical functions we have heard about in the debate.