Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Williamson Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

I am happy to congratulate Kent fire and rescue service on its work. When I visited its headquarters recently, I observed some of the innovative work that it is doing in both protecting the front line and making savings by, for instance, sharing its call centre with the police. I hope that fire services across the country will learn from that innovative way of working.

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

The average spending power reductions are 14.5% for metropolitan fire authorities and 7.5% for combined fire authorities. That has resulted in fewer appliances, fire station closures, reductions in fire-prevention work, and an increased response time in certain areas. However, the fire Minister wrote to me last month that

“savings should be made without… affecting…frontline services.”

As Winston Churchill once said, “The truth is incontrovertible.” Will the Minister now accept the incontrovertible truth that his cuts are adversely affecting front-line fire and rescue services?

[Brandon Lewis]

In the interests of absolute truth, let me reconfirm that the reduction in spending power for fire and rescue authorities was 2.2% for 2011-12 and 0.5% for 2012-13. As was said earlier, that moves to 4.7% in 2013-14, with the back-loading, and to just 3.3% in 2014-15. Those figures are slightly different from the ones given by the hon. Gentleman.