Fire Service (Metropolitan Areas)

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Wednesday 7th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to open the debate under your chairmanship, Mr Williams.

May I first thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) for all the work he has done on the funding cuts in metropolitan authorities? Those who have been following the issue know the sheer amount of work he has done to build cross-party consensus. That includes organising meetings, especially with the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), who has responsibility for the fire services. I also thank those right hon. and hon. Members who are attending the debate, as well as those who could not attend, but who have been campaigning on this issue.

I want to pay special tribute to Steve Morris, who was part of the green watch at Bolton central fire station. He was part of a nine-man crew that was called to attend a fire at a house in my constituency. The narrowness of a nearby alleyway meant that the fire brigade vehicle could not get near the house, and the hose was not long enough to get into it. Steve and three other brave firefighters therefore ran towards the house, taking a massive risk. Steve said that

“when inside searching for occupants there was a flash and I realised that my uniform was on fire. I was like a human torch. The skin on my face felt like it was melting and my gloves had shrunk on to my hands.”

Steve was unconscious in hospital for seven weeks. After he woke up, he stayed in hospital for a further eight months and had numerous operations. He suffered burns to 52% of his body and had to have all his fingers amputated. He also broke an elbow and damaged his spine, and he had to learn to walk again. I know the family he tried to rescue—Mrs Begum, aged 71, and her granddaughter Alana, aged four, who was visiting from Australia. Mr Morris is now married to his long-term partner, Pauline, and he is still contributing greatly to the community.

Today’s debate is about recognising the special work of firefighters and the daily risk that they take on our behalf. I hope we can continue to build the spirit of cross-party consensus on this issue—for them and for ourselves. I am sure the Minister, too, is concerned about the safety of our citizens.

The background to the debate is the settlement for the six metropolitan fire authorities—I will refer to them hereafter as the mets—which have been adversely affected by the funding proposals. In purely alphabetical order, they are: Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire.

The six mets serve 11 million people, and that does not include the transient population. The mets provide more than 50% of professional full-time firefighters. In the event of a major national disaster, the mets would be expected to provide half our national resilience capacity, as they have in the past.

If the cuts proceed in the present format, services will be unsustainable, leaving the UK more vulnerable. The risk and the economic effect of disasters would be significantly greater in the met areas. The Trafford centre in Greater Manchester is the largest industrial estate in Europe, and two of the biggest football clubs in the world are in the same area.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on obtaining today’s debate which, as Members can see, has generated huge interest. Does she share my concerns about the resilience of the fire service? Last year, we had the disturbances in Greater Manchester—in Salford and Manchester—and there was also the possibility of national incidents. Does she feel that the unfairness of the settlement could result in a reduction of our resilience and our ability to tackle such challenges?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. Greater Manchester also faces the threat of possible terrorist attacks.

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[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

I am grateful, Mr Williams. I am sorry; I thought you would call someone over on the Government side first.

In my constituency, Sedgley fire station has already been closed, as a result of the cuts and savings that West Midlands fire service must make. When it closed, Dudley station was allocated an extra targeted response vehicle, so it had one of those—it is basically a smaller fire engine—and the two standard engines that it had before. Now it will lose one of those, and the targeted vehicle will go as well, to be replaced by a Range Rover. When Sedgley closed, we were told that other parts of my constituency would be covered by fire engines from Tipton station, but that will also lose an engine.

The background is that when all fire and rescue services were expecting to face cuts as part of the comprehensive spending review, they planned well in advance, to protect their communities. However, when the exact figures for each service were announced, it was immediately clear that the cuts were anything but fair. As we have heard, some were handed increases to their formula grant, whereas others were handed cuts, such as West Midlands, which is being given the biggest cut to its revenue spending power—7.73%—of any brigade in the country. Even taking into account the effect of the proportion of council tax to grant and the small special grant to encourage a council tax freeze, a number of brigades still receive more money in formula grant than they received in 2010-11. Cheshire is an example.

In addition to the unfair way in which the grant is calculated, it is based on an illogical formula, which does not take account of a number of key considerations. As we have heard, many of the most deprived areas are among the worst hit, despite the well-established link between deprivation and fire. Four of the top five most deprived fire authority areas in the country are covered by metropolitan brigades, and they have been handed the heaviest cuts. Also, no consideration was given to the reforms and efficiencies already made in services when the cuts were calculated. For example, in West Midlands new crewing systems have already been introduced. Cover has been reduced in quieter periods. New appliances have been brought in to deal with specific incidents. However, brigades that have not yet undertaken such reforms, such as London, have been cut far less.

[Hazel Blears]

On the important point that my hon. Friend is making about reform, many metropolitan authorities, including Greater Manchester, have been making reforms, reducing jobs, reskilling and redesigning the service for years. Does he agree that these proposals are incredibly short-sighted because they will cut prevention? Therefore, rather than saving money in the long term, this unfair grant settlement will increase the cost to the whole fire service.

[Ian Austin]

That is absolutely right. Brigades that have not undertaken these reforms should be the ones that come under the most pressure to achieve them now. If savings have to be made, those are the areas from which they should come.

One of the reasons why West Midlands stands to suffer the most is that we maintain the lowest council tax precept in the country. It is just £47.83 for a band D property, compared with £87.84 for residents in County Durham. We are therefore more heavily reliant on formula grant than others, so we receive a much higher cut to the overall force budget. Furthermore, part of the difference has been caused by the Government’s decision to award a specific grant to fire authorities and councils that is equivalent to a council tax rise of 2.5%—if council tax is frozen this year. That has benefited those with higher council tax, as they have obviously received proportionately more.

Representatives of the metropolitan authorities have put together a series of cost-neutral proposals that will ensure a fairer settlement in 2013-14 and 2014-15. They are asking the Minister to consider implementing a flat percentage cut to formula grant, so that all fire services play their part in achieving the savings that he says have to be made. They say that that could easily be achieved through ministerial use of the floor damping mechanism and that metropolitan authorities would still shoulder the heaviest cuts over the four years.

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[Paul Goggins]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I welcome his support for the overall thrust of the argument, which is for fairness in the allocation of grants in the final two years of the spending period, which we have not seen in the first two years. I encourage him and all his colleagues to discuss constructively with the Minister the best way forward. We all hope that the Minister will have constructive things to say when he winds up the debate.

[Hazel Blears]

My right hon. Friend has referred to the settlement as a grotesque unfairness. He has made a powerful case this morning. Is he aware of the Department for Communities and Local Government’s own figures that say that, in areas of deprivation where there is high unemployment, where people live alone and where there are many disabled people, someone is perhaps four times more likely to be in a fire? Apart from the unfairness of the settlement, it is actually downright dangerous. On its own figures, the Department ought to review, as my right hon. Friend says, this grotesquely unfair settlement.

[Paul Goggins]

I am aware of the higher risk, and I am glad that my right hon. Friend has placed it firmly on the record. I am clear that, if the unfair grant distribution is applied in the final two years of this spending period, my constituency and others will lose appliances, staff and fire stations, imposing huge risks on our constituents’ lives. The grant allocation must relate to risk, and must take account of the national requirements for resilience and responses to emergencies.