Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that last-minute cancellations in magistrates courts are largely caused by the inability to recruit and retain legal advisers, who are paid a lot less than other Government legal advisers? What steps will the Minister take to ensure an increase in wages and better terms and conditions for those legal advisers? Will he sit down with the PCS Union to try to resolve this intolerable situation?

[Mike Freer]

We look carefully at why all cases are vacated; in fact, the biggest cause of vacation is often the non-availability of prosecution or defence counsel, not of legal executives.

Cammell Laird Workers Imprisoned in 1984

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship as ever, Sir Christopher. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) for bringing this debate to the Chamber this afternoon. I will declare an interest: I am a proud trade unionist—always have been, always will be.

In 1984-85, I was a striking miner. A lot of the things that have already been said resonate with me, my friends, my family and our communities. This is simple; it is about justice for ordinary people. It is important that people are seen to get justice from the state. They need answers. Who was behind this? Who was behind the instructions that ensured that 37 hard-working people were put in jail for contempt of court? It is ludicrous, man! It is unreal to think that could happen to ordinary people who were fighting for employment. That was the charge: fighting for employment. They wanted to keep their jobs, they wanted to put food on the table, they wanted to clothe their kids. Those are not crimes, yet they were put in jail because they fought for that, for heaven’s sake.

It is not acceptable. It is not acceptable no matter which way we look at the situation. It was a severe miscarriage of justice. They were incarcerated for trying to secure the future of their families and their communities. They had not committed a crime and they were put in prison with murderers, armed robbers and rapists just because they wanted to maintain employment.

Of course, it was all about privatisation—the industrial cancer of working people—wasn’t it? They were trying to maintain their standard of living and sustain their economies. There is a lot to be answered. The potential merits of a public inquiry into the imprisonment of Cammell Laird workers? Of course there is potential for an inquiry because many people would not believe that this sort of thing would happen in a free and democratic —or so-called free and democratic—nation such as the UK.

The Shrewsbury 24 have already been mentioned twice by colleagues. It was the first ever national building workers’ strike in 1972. Again, pickets were jailed. In fact, one of them died shortly afterwards as a consequence of being imprisoned. They fought. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) mentioned Eileen Turnbull. She and her campaign team campaigned vigorously to get these convictions quashed. You know what? Forty-seven years later, it actually happened. On 23 March 2021, the court quashed the convictions against the Shrewsbury pickets. I urge the campaigners and everyone concerned to learn from what has happened in the past. Never give in, because you are on the side of the angels; never give in, because you are right. That needs sorting as quickly as we can. There needs to be a demand for justice.

The consequences of being put in prison for something to do with retaining employment are never getting a job again and being blacklisted. If someone is put in prison, people look at them as if they are something else. I could not imagine ever being in prison. I was in a police cell a number of times during the miners’ strike. That was bad enough. To be locked away from their families and from the people they were seeking to support in the first place is so degrading that I could not begin to think what it might be like.

Margaret Thatcher’s fingerprints are all over this. They were all over the papers during the miners’ strike and it was the same time. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West mentioned, Margaret Thatcher’s name and fingerprints are all over the situation with these 37 lads from Cammell Laird. They need to find out whether that is the case; they need to find out who made the decision. Who deliberately targeted these ordinary people? It happens in the Chamber every other day now. If someone dares to question the Government, they are a militant. If someone is fighting for their job, if they are fighting for wages, terms and conditions, and if they are fighting for health and safety, they are a militant. That is strictly not true—and by the way, I wish there were more militants. I will be perfectly honest. I wish there were. This is the way that ordinary people are being tret.

I believe that people being sent to prison for contempt of court is absolutely unreal and that needs to be looked at. There needs to be some sort of public inquiry, as has been suggested. It has been mentioned that the Hillsborough disaster inquiry took a long time. The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign is still campaigning for an inquiry into the policing of the miners’ strike. It has done a fantastic job. I pay credit to the GMB union, by the way, for the campaigning and support it has given to the 37 individuals. It is about time we realised that being in a trade union and standing up for your rights is not a crime. It is about time we realised that being in a trade union and standing up for your community and what is right is not a crime and people should not be castigated for it in any way, shape or form. That is the sad situation we have had with the Cammell Laird 37. It is a serious miscarriage of justice and I strongly urge the Government to think about a potential public inquiry into what happened all those years ago. It is a scar on the lives of the 37, their families and their communities. Sort it out!

Prison Officers: Pension Age

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Henderson]

I certainly do agree with my right hon. Friend, and I will cover all those points in my speech.

The truth is that prison officers deal every day with individuals who have been locked up to keep the rest of us and our communities safe. Too often, those men and women face violence and hostility just for doing their job. Despite that violence and hostility, which would be challenging for fit young people, these dedicated emergency workers are still being told that their retirement age will rise to 68.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as a life member of the Prison Officers Association.

In his 2011 report, Lord Hutton said that firefighters and the police had a pensionable age of 60 because of the “unique nature” of their job. A lot of people in the Commons are at, around or above the age of 60. How many of them would be able to work in a prison and grapple with some of the most vicious and violent people in this country?

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[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

As ever, Sir Charles, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) on securing this really—I wish I could say it was a timely debate, but it is not a timely debate, is it? It is something that we have discussed many times before. Eight years ago, when I was a flying Parliamentary Private Secretary to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), I resigned my position on this very issue, because for the life of me I could not understand why prison officers had to work until the age of 68 before they got their pension. To be honest, I still have not had any answers; we still have not had any facts, figures or answers to qualify the fact that prison officers should work until they are 68, while at the same time the police and firefighters get their pension at 60—and rightly so; I agree that they should.

Basically, we should not keep having this competition between different frontline public services, because it is not a competition. What we see is something that is terribly, terribly, terribly unfair. What is also strange is how we allow a French company that deals in hospitality to run some of the prisons in this country. However, that is a subject in itself, for another debate.

I congratulate the staff—every one of them—at HMP Northumberland. I agree that “68 is too late”; it is far too late. I have been speaking to prison officers who are frightened; I have been speaking to prison officers’ families who are frightened; I have been speaking to prisoners who are frightened; and I have been speaking to auxiliaries who are frightened. The stress levels, because of what is happening in our prisons at this moment in time, are unacceptable.

We have got to deal with this situation. I hope that the Minister agrees, if she only agrees to do one thing today, to meet the Prison Officers Association to discuss a way forward, so that pensioners in the Prison Officers Association who are working in prisons can get a decent pension at the age of 60.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Thank you very much, Mr Lavery. Mr Day has up to five minutes in which to speak.

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[Victoria Atkins]

As I have said, I have already met the Prisoner Officers Association. I hope I was very clear when we first met that this was the beginning of a constructive and positive relationship. I will happily meet the POA, of course, and I would be delighted if my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey would join me in that meeting. I want to be frank, though. I do not want there to be any claims of inadvertently misleading people. I cannot commit today to discussions on pensions per se, but I am very happy—as I have said in the past, in fairness—to listen to the Prison Officers Association and its members. I am very keen to do so.

I am conscious of giving my hon. Friend time to respond. The retirement age for prison officers is linked to their pension arrangements. Prison officers are classified as civil servants, so are members of the civil service pension scheme. This is a defined-benefit scheme that pays a pension for life without investment uncertainties. It has one of the lowest employee contribution rates across the public sector; employers make contributions of 27% into the scheme on behalf of the employee.

When a pension age of 65 for new entrants was introduced in 2007, I am told it was done so following great consideration of the prison officer role and the demands it makes of prisoner officers and other operational roles in the civil service. I am told that the POA signed up to this scheme. Following the introduction of the alpha scheme in 2015, the normal pension age for prison officers is set at state pension age, which is between 65 and 68.

[Ian Lavery]

Will the Minister give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am conscious that I have only 4 minutes, so I will continue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey has already made the point that we have tried to make change on this before. When the Prison Officers Association membership were balloted eight years ago, they did not accept the package to retire at the lower age of 65 with heavily subsidised additional contributions to the scheme. Although POA members rejected the offer, the Prison Governors Association accepted it and as a result some manager grade staff now have a lower pension age. Another offer was made in 2017, in which prison officers would have incurred no cost to access a pension at the age of 65, but again this was rejected by a union ballot union.

Fire Service: Flooding and Statutory Duties

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mike Penning]

I may give way in a moment. Time will be difficult.

The fire service continues to evolve and not every fire service will come under police and crime commissioners. Around five PCCs are looking into this, but other PCCs and clinical commissioning groups are considering whether the ambulance service could be included. My views on this are pretty well known. I think the blue light emergency services must work much more closely together than now. I am chuffed that in London we have co-responding, but that is just the start. In Hampshire, there are qualified paramedics who are firemen. I apologise to the ladies, I mean firefighters. When I was in the job, there were only firemen.

It is important to see where the job is going. Yes, we are going to more flooding. We have always gone to flooding, I went to flooding and the London fire service went to a flood yesterday. None of the national resilience back-up was used yesterday. I asked the question before coming here today.

I am a former member of the Fire Brigades Union. I met the leadership and it put similar arguments to me. I will keep the matter under review. I will not comment too much on the numbers, not least because in other parts of the country we have seen firefighter numbers drop, but there has been a different way of delivering the service, including retained firefighters. London still has this policy, which I thought was an anomaly when I was in Essex—it will not allow retained firefighters on to its ground even if in their day job they are fully qualified firemen. I have never understood that and it is something that must be addressed as we evolve. I know that the union is trying to protect jobs, but in retrospect it is probably not doing that.

Lancashire has developed a completely different model. The union there wanted to protect jobs and to keep stations open. There was a risk of them closing so it went to the eight-eight day model, so that they were manned during the day with back-up crews during the evening. That is a completely different model. That is why local decision making is vital.

I am not denying that there are fewer firefighters, but there are dramatically fewer turn-outs. Fire prevention work started during our time in the job. I remember vividly arguing that firemen should go into homes to help to install smoke detectors. The situation has dramatically changed but there are still too many deaths and there is a lot more work to do.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

It is often said that there are far fewer fire incidents, but that varies from region to region, as I am sure the Minister is aware. The fact is that there are more and more flooding incidents in this country than ever before. Does that not mean we should be looking at the recommendations of the Pitt review in 2008 and give the fire and rescue service a statutory duty on flood and resilience?

[Mike Penning]

I will try to make my point a bit stronger. Respectfully, I disagree with the hon. Gentleman, and the reason is that I cannot find an instance in which the fire service is not doing what it would do if there were a statutory duty. In fact, I have real concerns that, if we put in statutory powers, fire services would have kit—and crews—sitting there, at huge expense, and the likelihood of it being used regularly would be completely different from what it would be in Cumbria, York and other parts of the country.

I know that the former Fire Minister understands this: if we say to the fire service, “You have a statutory duty,” it will put the kit in place. In many places, they have that kit. It would really worry me if we had lots of kit sitting around in areas where we know the risk is very minimal. I will keep the situation under review, but I am confident as to where we are. I am meeting in particular the metropolitan chief fire officers later today to discuss the issue, so I am not in any way saying that I will never look at it. I will keep it under review, but at present our position is like that of the Government in 2008. I accept that there are more flooding situations, but in terms of manning levels, we are going out to fewer calls, even though we are doing different sorts of calls. I remember going to flooding incidents quite extensively when I was in the job in the 1980s.

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[Mike Penning]

I agree that the fire service is top-heavy in administration terms, which is why I am looking at PCCs who want to take over that administration and limit those costs, so that we have more money for the frontline; I am sure that we would all agree with that. Perhaps it is a question for another debate, on the number of fire and rescue services. That is a really emotive subject, because a local community relate, they tell me, to their fire service.

[Ian Lavery]

I will ask a very simple question and I am sure I will get a very simple answer. If it is right and correct that there is a statutory duty in Scotland and Northern Ireland, what is the difference with the people of England?

[Mike Penning]

I go back to the decision that was made in 2008. Devolved Assemblies will make their decisions on their priorities in their way. I have no evidence whatever that creating a statutory duty would enable our firefighters to do their job in regard to flood rescue and prevention any differently from how they do it now. However, I have said that I will keep an open mind. It is not a uniform view across the myriad fire and rescue services in this country that this should be statutory. The union has a view, and in most cases I agree with many of the things that the union says. I would do: I was a branch secretary for a short time. But on this issue, I do not agree, and the leadership know that I do not, so it will not come as a big surprise to them. This is really personal to me. I am sure the former Fire Minister will appreciate that if I thought that in any way, shape or form, this would do what it says on the tin, I would do it. I have real misgivings that actually there would be ongoing costs that would be disproportionate to what we were trying to do.

It has been very useful to discuss this issue this morning. I can probably look forward to further debates with the former Fire Minister and I am pleased to be giving him a few seconds now to respond.

Safety in Custody and Violence in Prisons

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous]

It was a great pleasure to go round HMP Northumberland with my hon. Friend not long ago, and I commend her for calling these terrible drugs “lethal” highs. From 26 May they will all be completely illegal when the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 is enforced. That is very welcome, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will not waver in our determination to crack down on those substances.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for an amicable meeting last week about HMP Northumberland. The common denominator throughout the whole prison estate across the country is simply a lack of manpower. That is causing the violence—whether it be prisoner on prisoner or prisoner on staff—mental health issues and the problems with alcohol, “spice” or whatever. The Minister has said that this issue is challenging. What extra measures can he take to ensure that plenty of staff are employed in prisons to maintain a safe environment for everybody on the prison estate?

[Andrew Selous]

My door is always open to the hon. Gentleman, and if he has further concerns about HMP Northumberland, he is welcome to come and see me again. If we analyse what has happened across the prison estate, we see that the increase in violence has taken place in prisons where there has been an increase in the number of officers and in prisons where numbers have stayed the same, and where there have been reductions. He is right to say that we need adequate levels of staff, which is why I give him the commitment that I have already given the House that we will carry on recruiting at our current level, which included a net increase of 530 officers last year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I applaud my hon. Friend for the work that he did when he served on the Justice Committee in pioneering the case for a transformed approach towards justice. He is absolutely right. If we get prison reform right and get rehabilitation right, crime will fall, individuals will be safer, and of course the number of inmates in our prisons will fall.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

On a basic point of clarification, can G4S sell the Government contract it has in place on the secure training centres to the highest bidder without any Government veto or Government involvement? It really is concerning that that could be the case.

[Michael Gove]

First, I take this opportunity to thank the hon. Gentleman for his diligence in asking questions on behalf of his constituents, and also for his historic work for mineworkers in distress. I know that over the past couple of days there have been reports in the press. I want to say in the House that he is an exceptionally dedicated worker for people who have fallen on hard times and the vulnerable. As someone from another party, I want to say how much I admire him for that work.

The hon. Gentleman’s question was in that tradition. It is absolutely not the case that G4S can simply sell the contract to the highest bidder. We have the right to ensure that any transfer is done appropriately. I will make sure that he is briefed on the progress that we are making in order to ensure that these young people are looked after well.

Emergency Services: Closer Working

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Richard Fuller]

Not only do I agree, as usual with my hon. Friend, but I would take his idea and move it another step forward. There are opportunities not only for co-location but for training, skills development and establishing career paths that enable people to join a fire and rescue service and an emergency medical responder service and then determine whether they want to have a pure firefighter career path or whether they want to have a career path that includes achieving medical qualifications that make them capable of being EMRs. Such opportunities are relevant to the vision that the Minister wishes to outline, but the Government’s proposals give a free pass to the ambulance services to continue thinking in their own silo. There is an imperative on the Government to bring that under the overall arch of their recommendations.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I spoke to firefighters on the frontline in my constituency last week about that point, and it is not a difficulty—they have a pilot with the ambulance service. Last week alone, the fire and rescue service saved two people’s lives in Northumberland because of that joint approach. However, there is a huge difficulty with amalgamating with the police service, which is quite different.

[Richard Fuller]

I have a lot of empathy with what the hon. Gentleman says, which is another reason why the lack of effort, as it seems from the Government’s proposals, to try to bring in the humanitarian, ambulance and EMR capabilities will store up problems for later. There is a concern that it will be not a merger but essentially a takeover of the fire services by the police. I know that that is not the Minister’s intent—I am sure that as a former firefighter himself, he has a passion for the fire service and understands the unique skills it has better than many hon. Members—but unless the Government introduce stronger measures on collaboration requirements for the ambulance service, the fears outlined by the hon. Gentleman are likely to continue. It is the Government’s responsibility to try to cut them off.

A number of points in the proposals deal with governance and PCCs, and with management. When I read the consultation document originally, I thought that on governance issues, a pretty straightforward case could be made for or against, but that the management issues involved quite a lot of detail and potentially some weeds that we would not wish to get into. In their response, the Government rightly clarified the issues for chief fire officers, such as that the position of chief officer in a combined service is now open to them. It is now clear that they can take part in that way, but what about the terms and conditions for the bulk of the workforce in the two arms of the police and fire service? What will the single-employer structure mean for them?

The Government has rightly considered potential back-office savings. That is quite right, and we know all about co-location—those are the easy bits—but a single employer also has responsibility for human resource management, training and development, terms and conditions and pay. What is the Government’s plan on that? Can they give us some reassurance on terms and conditions that the changes are not a stepping stone to a substantial change in working relationships and opportunities for the fire service and police?

I am sure that there will be questions about force boundaries, as there were in the debate in November. As the Government have moved forward with their proposals, I can see instances working where multiple fire authorities are under a single PCC, because the PCC is the apex, but what are the Government’s proposals for the admittedly limited number of areas where the PCC is not the apex of the fire authority? It is not just that the boundaries are not coterminous; they go beyond the scope of the apex. Can the Minister address those issues? For example, Cornwall and Devon police forces are merged, but Devon and Somerset fire services are merged and Cornwall is independent. What does he suggest there? It is also proposed to merge Wiltshire and Dorset fire services, but there will be two PCCs for those areas. Can he give us some thoughts about that?

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[Kate Hoey]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will be a very good Minister, particularly given his background. He was an FBU representative at one time, I think. For me, however, this is about all the emergency services working together, and somehow the ambulance service and the whole medical side have been left out. That will genuinely affect the very good work that firefighters do in prevention and protection. The level of that work is already falling, and there will be fewer school visits and that kind of thing—I can see that that is the way it is going.

I am also a little disappointed in the consultation. There is no substantial evidence in the document for bringing about the change, and it has the usual kind of civil servant feel to it, with questions being asked to get an answer that coincides with the preferred outcome, because the decision had already been taken. The document did not ask the crucial question, whether having a single employer for the two services is a good idea. I do not think it is. The public have great trust and confidence in firefighters, even when, unfortunately, they occasionally have to withdraw their labour. Support from the public has been enormous, unlike in many other areas where strikes have led to huge public dissatisfaction. There is huge confidence in them, and they are seen as independent and impartial lifesavers. The hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) have left, but firefighters in Northern Ireland had to work hard for all the communities during the many years of difficulty, and there was confidence in them.

I have a lot of confidence in my local police, particularly Commander Richard Wood, but there is no doubt that the public do not feel the same way about the police as they do about firefighters. I genuinely think that the reforms could damage the reputation that firefighters have built up in their neighbourhoods over decades, so I am concerned. Co-operation will come about if people want it to happen, not because it is made to happen from the top down. The Hampshire examples are good, and the system works there because everybody wanted to work together.

The example that my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) mentioned of the fire and ambulance service working together shows that it can work, and that it does not have to be just about saving money. Of course we all want to save money, but I am keen to hear from the Minister what is really at the bottom of the reforms—unfortunately, I will have to leave slightly early.

I particularly want to pick up on the point that the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) made about the role of the PCCs. They are not popular, as the turnout at their elections showed. It is crass to try to lump the two services together. It means we will lose accountability, which is very important in London. We need democratically elected people who have an overview and a link into the community. We need to be able to feel that people can be got rid of, which I do not think people feel at the moment.

There are many questions I could ask the Minister, but I do not have time. The Minister should look at this matter again. As enforcers of the law, the police do not have the universal access that the fire service has to people’s homes and to the many hard to reach communities. It is vital that the fire service retains its distinctiveness to ensure continued trust in it. That is my most crucial point.

[Ian Lavery]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the fire and rescue service and the ambulance service could do a lot of business together? Those services are humanitarian services that have the confidence of the people in their communities. The police service, which seeks out crime, is not a life-saving organisation, and it does not have that same confidence of communities. Further integration will jeopardise any community spirit in the places we are trying to secure.

[Kate Hoey]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. He sums up why I feel so unhappy about this move. It has been rushed through, and I do not think it will work. Even people who felt that there was a role for PCCs are now beginning to say that their introduction was a mistake. If the reforms go ahead, I think we will be back here in a few years saying that they were a mistake.

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[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond), who demonstrates that some local authorities are ahead of the game on this issue. It is also a pleasure to see you in the Chair this morning, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) on securing the debate and on the eloquent way in which he described the conundrums and dilemmas facing the Government.

I should declare an interest. I was a member of the London fire brigade for 23 years. It celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. I was a former Fire Minister. I am secretary to the fire and rescue service all-party group and am chair of Fire Aid. I am also a Member’s representative on the House’s Fire Safety Committee. If colleagues have not done their online fire training yet, go on to the intranet. Only 30 out of 650 Members have done the training for their own safety, let alone the safety of the staff and constituents who come in, and it takes only 10 minutes.

There are two key questions for me: governance and the question of operational issues. As has been mentioned, the Government recently changed control of the fire service back to the Home Office from the Department for Communities and Local Government. As the Minister has already said, it was there before. Government moves things around; I do not think that matters too much. We have had a national fire service and we have had local government controlling the fire service. In London we have had the London County Council, the Greater London Council, the Greater London Authority, the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, and now control is going to the Mayor. Do the public know? Do they care? I do not think it matters at all.

The key question, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) and others, is about accountability. Having someone to go to to make a complaint or to congratulate and praise is the most important thing. Given the state of the fire service in recent years with the disputes and strikes, we have hardly had a model of a successful operation of the fire service. I do not think the integrity of the service will be affected by a transfer to police and crime commissioners, although my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) made a powerful point about the integrity of the fire service, which was accepted by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and which the Minister knows is out there in the public domain. I am not a big supporter of PCCs. Police and fire services would be better located with local government, along with some health matters, as many colleagues know, although I do recognise the points made about shared services.

More important for me is operational effectiveness. As the Minister knows, the fire service will always respond. A great recent example is its response to the floods. There is a suggestion that the fire service should have a statutory flood duty, allied to those of the Environment Agency and the water companies. The Government’s response so far has been that we do not need a statutory duty because the fire brigade will always turn up. Well, the fire brigade always turned up to fires before it became a statutory duty. The point is to make somebody responsible, and for it be somebody’s job to do the planning and argue the case to Government for the resources for a particular job. That is another question that is out there.

The fire service is a victim of its own success. The reduction in the number of fires, deaths and injuries has led to reductions in the number of fire engines, fire stations and firefighters. The service is being cut because it has been successful. The Minister knows all the reasons why that has been the case: better building construction, double glazing, central heating, and fewer candles and paraffin heaters. As my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall said, there has also been much better fire protection, with the fire service reaching out to communities. That is another important factor, which goes back to the Fire Precautions Act 1971.

[Ian Lavery]

We need to be clear about the suggestion that there are now fewer fire deaths. That is generally the case in some regions, but regions such as Merseyside have seen a huge increase in fire deaths, and the trajectory is likely to go up over the next couple of years.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. If we cut services when the service has been successful, at some point it hits rock bottom so it has to start bouncing back. The statistics demonstrate that we do not have enough police officers or firefighters, but they show that only after there has been a rise in crime or in the number of fire deaths.

The hon. Member for Bedford made a powerful point about the number of fire brigades. One reason why the last Labour Government’s botched attempt at regionalising the fire service failed was the intrinsic opposition of so many fire empires throughout the country. The Minister knows only too well who I am talking about.

This is a missed opportunity: it is not until question 15 of the consultation document that the ambulance service is even raised. That is despite the successful operation of combined fire and medical services in most states in the United States of America and the fact that most European Union states have combined fire and emergency medical services. That is despite the greater need for first-aid skills in firefighters; despite the arrival of idiot-proof defibrillators—I am not saying that they have to be idiot-proof for my fire colleagues to be able to operate them, but it makes it easier for us all; and despite the 2013 report from the Government’s fire adviser at the time, Sir Ken Knight, called “Facing the Future”, which looks mainly at the more developed area of co-working with ambulance services. That ought to be a key recommendation.

The fire brigade in London has been cut because of its success. We see the London ambulance service under pressure, with a rising number of calls. It is criticised for not making its call times and is under budget pressures. More lives could be saved in London through the more efficient use of the emergency services, particularly the ambulance and fire services—frankly, if the Minister wants to add the police to that list, that is not the most important issue to me. More savings could be made in London through co-location, the disposal of property assets and closer working. I have not seen any of the candidates for the mayoral election bring that up, but I have been feeding it out to them and am still hoping.

In conclusion, I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedford again. He says that the Minister intends a higher level of collaboration. I look forward to hearing what both the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), and the Minister, with his excellent knowledge of the fire service, have to say. I am interested to hear whether the ambulance service and the fire service can be brought together.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. We have had an excellent, well-informed debate and hon. Members have made many good points.

Labour supports close collaboration among the emergency services, but we fear that these proposals come with significant risks and are being carried out in a cavalier fashion. The consultation exercise that preceded the proposals gives us the distinct impression that the Government decided that they would make radical changes before they spoke to the key stakeholders. In any serious consultation, stakeholders would be asked what they think of the substance of the proposals. Instead, they were merely asked to comment on the process by which PCCs will gain control of their local fire service, not on whether the process has any merit, and they were asked a litany of leading questions.

The proposed process by which a PCC takes control of a fire service is rather authoritarian. Although they must seek agreement from the local fire authority, if agreement is not forthcoming the matter will be arbitrated by the Home Secretary, who will decide whether a change is

“in the interests of economy, efficiency and effectiveness or public safety”.

That is a recipe for hostile takeovers.

[Ian Lavery]

In Northumberland, the police and crime commissioner was opposed to further integration with other blue light operations. Will my hon. Friend comment on the position there?

[Lyn Brown]

That one passed me by, but I will come to Northumberland and have a conversation about it. I am sure the Minister has an answer.

The Government are ignoring the advice of the 2013 Knight review. When Sir Ken Knight considered expanding the role of PCCs, he recommended that, if such a policy were pursued, it ought to be trialled through a pilot, rather than be rolled out immediately. Why did the Government choose categorically to ignore that key recommendation?

I fear that these proposals carry a number of serious risks, and I worry about the continuation of the successful, locally driven collaborations that have been talked about at length in recent years and have saved lives. When I was shadow Fire Minister, I visited a number of fire services, including Northumberland’s, and I heard of collaborations with ambulance services. I was particularly impressed by the Lincolnshire fire and rescue service and the East Midlands ambulance service, which ensured a swift, comprehensive service to isolated parts of the county. Firefighters responded to medical emergencies and took patients to hospital if they could do so more quickly than the ambulance. It really did save lives; it was an exceptionally good collaboration.

Only yesterday, we heard that the ambulance service has missed its targets six months in a row. Our paramedics work hard, but they cannot be everywhere at once. Our fire and ambulance services recognise that, and they work side by side to be part of the solution. What will happen to such innovations in the brave new world of combined police and fire services? Will PCCs be charged to continue that work, or will it simply fall by the wayside? What guarantees do communities have that such innovations, which are important to them, will be top of PCCs’ agendas?

To save money and be more efficient and effective, local services successfully share back office functions. A good example is the North West Fire Control project, which set up a single control centre for services in Cumbria, Lancashire and Greater Manchester. It works really well. What will happen to such collaborations? Will those services be disaggregated? I do not know. Perhaps the Minister does. I worry that there is a danger that such locally driven projects will be crowded out as energy is spent on responding to an agenda that has been dreamt up in Whitehall.

I also worry that dismantling the existing structures of accountability will cause a democratic deficit. The next PCC elections are in May, and the major political parties have already selected most of their candidates. Does the Minister expect the candidates to detail in their manifestos their intentions about fire services? Should that be a central issue in the election debates? I gently say that I do not believe that the Home Secretary or the Minister expect the fire service to be a central plank in the PCC elections. Is that not worrying in itself? It is as though the Government see the fire service as a secondary concern to policing.

Peter Murphy, director of public policy and management research at Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University, said that

“if the current plans are implemented there is a very strong chance that the fire and rescue services would go back to the ‘benign neglect’ that characterised the service from 1974 to 2001 when the Home Office was last responsible for fire services. Police, civil disobedience, immigration and criminal justice dominated the Home Office agenda, as well as its time and resources.”

If the fire service becomes the lesser partner in a merged service,

“the long-term implications will include smaller fire crews with fewer appliances and older equipment arriving at incidents. Prevention and protection work, already significantly falling, will result in fewer school visits and fire alarm checks for the elderly, not to mention the effect on business, as insurance costs rise because of increased risks to buildings and premises.”

I think his assessment is right. There is a real danger that fire will become an unloved, secondary concern of management—a Cinderella service. Perhaps the Minister can tell us how he will ensure that the service is improved, that we invest in the best equipment and training, that vulnerable people continue to have fire alarm checks and that schools are visited and children educated.

I want to ask a basic question about reorganisation. The Government appear to assume that it will be easy for fire and rescue services to reorganise to suit the PCCs’ boundaries, but to talk simply about transferring responsibility from a local authority belies the complexity of the situation. Fire budgets are very integrated in some councils to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the service, so it will be difficult to unravel them, as has been shown by previous attempted mergers of fire services. Has any work been done to assess the complexity? What conclusions has the Minister come to about the difficulties he might encounter? What concerns have county and metropolitan councils raised with him about disaggregating budgets and the effect on important emergency services?

Finally, on funding, fire and rescue services have already had to reduce spending by 12% over the course of the last Parliament, which is a cumulative cash cut of some £236 million, and further projected reductions are to come. When I met some fire services, I was told that their service would not be viable in future as a result of the cuts. That is the reality of the tough financial context in which PCCs are being asked to take on fire services.

There are alarming signs that the front-line service is beginning to suffer. Response times are creeping upwards. As the Minister knows full well, every second counts when people are stuck in a car wreck or a burning building. What risk analysis has the Home Office done to ascertain how PCCs will be able to reduce fire spending without increasing response times and reducing resilience and safety? I ask him to publish that risk assessment so that we can all evaluate it. It is not as if police forces have spare money to pass to the fire service, as we heard in the effective speech by the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond). They are still absorbing cuts of 25% to their funding from the last Parliament and face further real-term cuts. They have done amazingly well in such tough circumstances, but one has to wonder whether PCCs are happy that the Government are handing them another Whitehall-imposed funding crisis to deal with. Again, does the Minister expect PCCs to cover the shortfall in funding by introducing privatisation into the fire and rescue frontline? The last time I asked that question, the Minister shook his head but offered no verbal or recordable assurances whatsoever. Will he allow PCCs to end the full-time professional fire service or to sell it off bit by bit? What assurances can he give the House that those paths will not be followed? What control will remain in Whitehall to ensure that our fire services are not privatised or sold?

In conclusion, we genuinely support closer and more effective working between the emergency services, which we have seen work really well, but we have serious concerns about the inherent risk in the Government’s proposals. If the Minister is convinced that they are the way forward, he should publish a risk assessment and be confident that a rigorous pilot will demonstrate their merits. Until he commits to that, I feel that the risks involved are too great and pose too much of a threat to our communities for us to be able to support the proposals.

[The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, not least because the Northamptonshire police and crime commissioner is one of the best in the country, offering the sort of innovation that we have heard about during the debate. It is sad that he is not standing for re-election in May.

I welcome today’s debate and the opportunity to bust some myths, which is important and can provide confidence going forward. I am generally a friend of the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), and we get on 99% of the time, both inside and outside this Chamber, but some of her comments frankly amounted to scaremongering. I will address the points that have been made during the debate, but, as always, I will write to colleagues if I cannot cover everything.

Like the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), I have a passion for this country’s fire service. I was a member of it for a short time but nowhere near as long as him. The fire service that turns up to our homes and factories to protect us is a public asset and will stay so—let me throw this privatisation thing out of the window once and for all. However, when my constituency was blown to smithereens on 11 December 2010, I welcomed firefighters from anywhere, including the private sector, which has huge experience in the type of fire that we were fighting.

We must also get away from the London-centric perception that all fire stations stay open 24/7, because they do not. We have an absolutely fantastic voluntary service based on retained firefighters, who make up the vast majority of firefighters around the country. Brilliantly, we now have full-time retained firefighters—it was not allowed when I was in the job. I understand that there are retained London firefighters who live in my constituency, but I must be slightly careful about that as I do not want to get them into trouble. The Fire Brigades Union in London does not like retained firefighters. On Merseyside, there are only 25 retained firefighters for the whole area, even though many firefighters have told me that they would love to be retained when they go back to their villages and homes. We also have full-time day-manning, as I call it, with firefighters being retained and on call later. Only the other day, I was in Lancashire to congratulate firefighters on their fantastic work during the floods. They have just moved to a new system with no 24/7 stations, but the cover is safe and the unions have accepted it. We must therefore remember when looking around the country that one size will not fit all.

However, we must consider—the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse hit the nail on the head—that other countries often have emergency services that work together much more closely than ours and protect their public much better. Of all the countries that I could refer to, it is America, the nation of privatisation, where firefighters have paramedical skills vastly in excess of any fireman in this country. I am really passionate about that. I took five years to qualify as a military paramedic before paramedics were even heard of in civvy street. When I started the job in Essex after passing out, I was posted to the station in Basildon. I was given my trade union card—I had no choice in the matter—and I was then given my first aid certificate, because I was made to take a first aid course during my basic training. By the way, at no stage during my service was I asked to renew the certificate, which is quite fascinating.

We have moved on since then. The vast majority of firefighting appliances now have defibrillators, but so does the cashier at my local Tesco. It is fantastic that this life-saving kit is available to us. When I was in Hampshire the other day, I saw advances in skills for firefighters for which I have been screaming for years, and we could go further. The key thing is whether we can keep a person alive until the other professionals arrive. This is not about replacing the ambulance service or the police; this is about the fire service being able to save a seriously injured person when it is out on a job and an ambulance cannot get there. That happens in most other parts of the world. In Hampshire, I was chatting away with a fireman who had paramedical skills right up to just below being able to insert an IV. I think there are legal reasons behind him not being able to do an IV, but we will try to move on that as well, because, as I know from experience, getting fluids into the body is one of the most important things, alongside keeping the airways open. People have transferred from the ambulance service into the fire service and vice versa, because of their on-the-job experience.

The reason why legislation is so important is that this is not just about money. If it was, I would not be standing here. It is about whether we can get a more efficient service to protect our constituents’ lives day in, day out, 24/7, 365 days of the year. Are there things preventing us from doing that?

In some parts of the country we have gone forward in leaps and bounds, but in other parts we have not; in some parts of the country we have huge amounts of collaboration, but in others not. I freely admit—I will probably get myself in trouble with the Department of Health again—that when I was in opposition I was fundamentally opposed to regionalisation of the ambulance service. As a former firefighter, I saw problems with that. When the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse was the Fire Minister, I was fundamentally opposed to the regionalisation of the fire service control centres. Thirty-odd years ago, however, when I was a fireman, we had a tri-service control centre—only one of them—and it worked really well. Where such things are working in places around the country, issues such as contracts and job descriptions have been addressed, which is absolutely right.

On Thursday, I was at the police control centre in London when the Syria conference was going on here. That was a hugely difficult and tactical job for the Metropolitan police, with the fire service, the Army, the ambulance service and the London boroughs all in that control centre together, but it was a brilliant operation. I pay tribute to those involved in the mutual aid that took place in London last Thursday. We had armed response and other police officers from throughout the country, including from the Police Service of Northern Ireland—the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) have now had to leave the Chamber for other business.

Collaboration does take place, but what do we do when it does not? Do we simply sit back and say that that is acceptable? A locally appointed—not elected—fire authority might say, “No, we’re doing fine. There are 25 of us, and we turn up twice a month. We’re doing absolutely fine”, even though they know full well that in another part of the country collaboration is saving lives and doing the job. This is not about replacing a fireman with a policeman—that is clearly scaremongering. I know what the FBU has been saying, and I will try to work with it on the matter. This is about delivering better care and value for money.

Why are the emergency services not all coming together on procurement? I now publish the lists of what police authorities spend, and I shall do exactly the same for the fire authorities. The accountability of PCCs is in place—they are elected. There are people who are seconded or appointed to different authorities, but at the end of the day the PCCs are the ones in the community who are elected, and the vast majority of them want collaboration.

Nearly every chief fire officer has congratulated me on my new position, although that is probably natural—they do not want to get on the wrong side of me straightaway. They welcome the fact that I am the Fire Minister as well as the Police Minister, so the fire service is not the forgotten body, which to be fair they have felt in the past. I was aware of the extent of that when I took office.

We want collaboration to be as voluntary as possible, but where there is complete belligerence about not doing it, we will take powers. The Bill will be published shortly. There will be evidence sessions, because that is the modern way we do things now, and we will look carefully at a lot of the comments made in the debate today. All that, however, has to be about how to do things—the way we did things in the past is not necessarily the best one. Some of the work we are doing now I was pushing for 30 years ago, and I am pushing to go further.

I would like the ambulance service to work more closely with the others. That is much more complicated because of the regional structure, but we could do things locally. I know of at least one PCC—I will not name him, because I was told in confidence—who has been approached by the new commissioning group in his area to ask whether the PCC could provide emergency blue light cover for ambulances. That is starting to come about not from the top down but from the grassroots.

We should listen not only to the chiefs, the PCCs or the unions—more unions than the FBU alone are involved—but to the individual firefighters, who have had the confidence to talk to me in the past few weeks, since I had this new job, and to say, “Minister, we are thrilled that you are an ex-firefighter and that our voice may now be heard above all the other chatter of people protecting their jobs.” That is the sort of comment I have been hearing.

[Ian Lavery]

With regard to the grassroots and the people on the frontline, who the Minister mentioned—he was one of those people himself—in the event of a single employer model, will he guarantee the people in the fire and rescue service their rights to unionise, to collective bargaining and to industrial and strike action? The police have none of that, so will the Minister guarantee that firefighters may retain their rights?

[Mike Penning]

That is an important point. The operational control of the individuals will always be by the operational officers. There is no evidence whatever that PCCs, since we have had them, have interfered in cases or in operational work. It is crucial that that does not happen.

What are we really saying? More than half of all fire stations—I think this figure is right—have a police station or ambulance station within 1 km of them. Although it is difficult to put a fire appliance into a police station—some ambulance stations could take them, but not police stations—the reverse is easy, and we have seen that in Winchester.

The new fire station in Winchester, which a fantastic piece of kit, is fully bayed, and the police are in there, too. The two services are completely working together, without it affecting their operational control. Someone who dials 999 and asks for a police officer will not get a fireman—that is a ludicrous idea and will not happen. However, elsewhere in the country we already have, for example, police community support officers in Durham, I think, carrying first aid kits. They might even have short extension ladders. They have had the training and are doing that because of the sheer geographical issues involved.

One size will not fit all, and that gives us an opportunity. There are complications, and I am not shying away from the fact that doing something might be difficult, but nor will I shy away from the fact that we need to protect our public better than we do now. Where collaboration works, I will not have belligerence and bloody-mindedness blocking that sort of care in other parts of the country. That is why we are bringing it through.

Prisons and Probation

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

The tone of this debate has been very civil, so let us hope that that continues—I am not sure whether it will. I am reassured by the civil tone taken by the Justice Secretary, a man I have a lot of respect for, as I do for the Prisons Minister, who I have met on many occasions to discuss the prison nearest my constituency. The Opposition’s motion is well crafted and spells out clearly the situation facing not only the Prison Service, but the probation service—the debate so far has not focused enough on the probation service.

It is absolutely clear that the Prison Service is in utter chaos. Now, I am not looking to put the blame on anybody. I am not looking to hold these six fingers up and say, “You’ve been in for six years, so you should have cleared it by now.” And I do not want anybody to intervene and ask, “What did you do when you were in power?” That is not the issue; the issue is how we put this situation right. The Prison Service is in utter chaos, and I am not bothered about what anybody says, because I have had constituents coming to see me about it, including prisoners, members of the public, teachers, chaplains, people who work on the prisons estate and members of the Prison Officers Association. It is right to place on the record our high praise for the men and women in the Prison Service and the probation service, who do a fantastic job in the most difficult circumstances. It is important that they realise that Members of this House understand the problems they face.

It was not just the unions or individuals who have suggested that the Prison Service has deteriorated; it was the chief inspector of prisons himself. He said that they were the worst he had seen them for 10 years. At the same time as the prison population continues to increase—a record 85,000-plus people are now in prison—we are seeing a reduction in the number of staff on the prisons estate. We have more prisoners but fewer people looking after them. Surely that is a recipe for disaster.

The Justice Secretary said there have been 500 new recruits over the past year or so, but we must consider the staff reductions on the prisons estate before then. We lost lots of people with tremendous experience from the Prison Service, and the people who filled that hole are on lower wages, have worse terms and conditions and lack any experience in what is an important occupation. We lost that experience from the Prison Service and have not regained that ground.

All of us, as politicians, have deep concerns about this situation, and I will tell Members why. This has been mentioned already, but let us look at the bare statistics on what is happening in the Prison Service as we sit here debating. Deaths in custody are up by 14%, self-harming is up by 21%, and prisoner-on-prisoner assaults are up by 13%. There were 4,156 staff assaulted by prisoners last year—a 20% increase, which has got to horrify everyone—and 572 serious assaults on staff, an increase of 42%, as Members on both sides of the House have said. At the very least, we should be ensuring that members of the Prison Service, who are doing the job that they are paid to do, should be safe in doing so. These rates show that there must be fear and stress every time they get out of bed in the morning or the evening. We are not looking after them—the statistics show that. We have seen the horrific injuries that many of them have received while doing a day’s work to put shoes on the kids and bread on the table. We should be looking at ways and means of ensuring that these statistics are greatly reduced.

The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) talked about reoffending rates. The adult reoffending rate is now 45.8%—that is wholly unacceptable—and the juvenile reoffending rate is 66.5%. We have to get to the bottom of this, because if we do not, the rates will continue to increase and there will be further chaos on the prison estate. It is frightening. I am not being alarmist, but the Prison Service is in complete and utter meltdown and mayhem.

When we talk about the privatisation of prisons, which has happened many times, it is said, “Well, the Opposition privatised prisons when they were in government.” That is true—it is pointless my standing here trying to erase historical facts—but that does not make it any better when we see what is happening in some privatised prisons today. Sodexo was the successful bidder to operate HMP Northumberland, the prison nearest to my constituency. Immediately, the Sodexo model was to reduce the workforce from 440 to 270. That frightened so many experienced people—I have mentioned them before—that there was a rush for redundancies and many of them left the service, something that we did not want to see.

People who come to see me are frightened. We hear reports about what is happening in the likes of HMP Northumberland with the drugs and the Spice. Spice must be unbelievable. I am not sure if anybody here will admit to having taken it. Certainly I have not, and it would not be my intention to do so. People reckon that Spice is rife—that everybody in the prison is on it, and if not there is something wrong with them, so they should be on it. How are they getting this stuff into the prison? Why has it been allowed to escalate to the proportions it has? Someone mentioned earlier the Bill on legal highs that is passing through Parliament. It does not matter whether these highs are legal or illegal—we must stamp them out on the prison estate, because they are causing problems with violence and everything else associated with the things we are discussing.

Alcohol is a huge problem. There is alcohol in the prisons. People are making their own alcohol. Not last Christmas but the Christmas before, there was an emergency situation in HMP Northumberland where the contact room could not get in contact with one of the prison officers. He was a man who had just been employed; he had not even been checked. He was one of the people who had no experience, but he knew from where he lived a few of the prisoners, who were his mates. Those in charge looked for him and tried to contact him—this was on new year’s day—and when they eventually went up on the wing, where the doors were open and everyone in the prison was having a whale of a time, they found not the prisoners lying intoxicated on their beds, but the prison officer. The real crime was that the keys for the wing were lying there for anybody to get hold of, which I believe is considered a cardinal sin.

I have raised such points with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who has responsibility for prisons. Similar things are happening. We have people with mobile phones arranging crimes from their cells. That cannot be right, and we must stamp it out. We have discussed such things. We have bullying and intimidation as we have never seen them before. Another incident at HMP Northumberland that we need to look at happened when there were not enough prison staff to ensure the segregation of vulnerable prisoners from ordinary, mainstream ones. That caused absolute mayhem, as hon. Members can understand. Faeces were found in the vulnerable prisoners’ food, which cannot be allowed to happen in the modern day.

I will wrap up simply by saying that I hope, in this debate on prisons and probation, that someone will speak about the probation side. Since privatisation, the fragmentation of the probation service has caused lots of problems within the service, which is something else we need to consider.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

8. What support his Department is providing to probation service workers at risk of redundancy.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)]

Community rehabilitation companies are responsible for supporting any of their staff at risk of redundancy, in line with employment law. We encourage them to follow good industry practice and the ACAS guidelines. We are working closely with community rehabilitation companies to make sure that they fulfil their contractual commitments to maintain service delivery, reduce reoffending, protect the public, and deliver value for money to the taxpayer.

[Ian Lavery]

There is the potential for 900 probation officers to be made compulsorily redundant within just three CRCs in the very near future. These are the people who stood by the Government at the time of the transitional period into privatisation. They should not be penalised; they should be praised. Will the Minister guarantee that these professionals receive full voluntary redundancy terms and will not be booted out? They provide a very valuable service in the role provided by these private companies on the cheap.

[Andrew Selous]

I repeat what I said just now—we will make sure that the community rehabilitation companies comply with employment law as they are supposed to do. We closely monitor their performance in line with the contracts that they have signed. Last year, 195 extra probation officers became qualified, and we had 750 new probation officers in training. That is the largest intake of newly qualified probation officers for some considerable period.

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Margaret Greenwood]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that really important point, which I will return to. She is absolutely right. A cut of 41% in any workforce would add stress, but in an environment such as firefighting the resulting stress would be an unacceptable one to place upon firefighters.

With these points in mind, I will set out the scale of the cuts that the service has suffered since 2011 and their impact. I will then turn to the further cuts that were announced in December last year by the Government, and their implications, and I will ask the Minister to consider what all this means for Merseyside fire and rescue service.

Looking at the cuts from 2011-12 to 2015-16, we see that Merseyside fire and rescue service had a total cut from central Government of 32%, which is a huge and damaging cut. Like other metropolitan authorities, Merseyside relies to a much greater degree on its central Government grant than do county combined authorities such as Buckinghamshire. In 2010-11, Merseyside received 63% of its funding from its Government grant. Clearly, when the Government grant is cut, Merseyside receives a disproportionate cut in overall funding.

From 2011-12 to 2015-16, the cuts resulted in Merseyside fire and rescue service having to make £26 million worth of savings. What that meant on the ground is that we have lost nearly 300 firefighters, which is a cut of 31%; we have lost nearly 150 support staff, fire prevention and protection staff, and management staff, which is a cut of 35%; and we have had a 21% cut in our control staff, whose numbers are down from 42 to 33.

Cuts from central Government have also led to cuts in the number of fire engines on Merseyside, and in this respect the numbers are staggering. Back in 2011, we had 42 fire engines; we now have just 28, which is a cut of 33%. That cut has also led to a cut in the number of fire stations. On Merseyside, we are losing four fire stations as we go down from 26 to 22, which is a cut of 15%.

In my constituency of Wirral West, we currently have two fire stations—one at Upton and the other at West Kirby. Both are due to close and my constituents will no longer have their own fire stations but instead will be reliant on fire engines arriving from a neighbouring constituency. That will lead to longer response times, particularly into West Kirby and Hoylake, which are important urban centres. I am extremely concerned about this situation. Merseyside’s chief fire officer, Dan Stephens, has described the closure of those two stations, to be replaced by one station at Saughall Massie, as “the least worst option”. Clearly, that is not a ringing endorsement. The situation is far from ideal.

The loss of firefighters, fire engines and fire stations has led to an increase in response times across Merseyside over the five-year period from 2011 to 2016. Most notably, the response times of the second fire engine to attend incidents have increased by up to three minutes. That is worrying, because the crew of the first fire engine to arrive at an incident have to assess whether to carry out a search for people or to tackle the blaze. The arrival of the second fire engine is crucial, because with two crews the service can both tackle the blaze and carry out search and rescue. The Minister knows that minutes cost lives in a fire and that any increase in response times increases the risk of loss of life.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

The number of fire deaths is often misrepresented, but the facts and figures with regard to Merseyside are that in 2011-12 there were five fire deaths; in the year 2014-15, there was a doubling of that number to 10; and the indications are that the number could even treble in the next year or so. Does my hon. Friend share my deep concerns about this situation?

[Margaret Greenwood]

I thank my hon. Friend for that really important point, because of course someone might say that five is a small number—of course, every life matters—but when we see a trend such as that one it is significant. We also have to consider the wider trauma that is suffered, because of course one person who dies in a fire may have many relatives and children, and so the trauma is not just restricted to that one person. This is a very serious situation.

In addition to the increased risks to the public that we are seeing, we must also bear in mind what these cuts mean to the fire crews themselves. When a firefighter is committed to an incident wearing breathing apparatus, the length of time that they spend dealing with that incident and the activity that they undertake will have a bearing on the length of time they will need to recover away from the area of danger before they can be recommitted. Each time a firefighter wears breathing apparatus at an incident, the potential risk that they face increases, because of the amount of time they are exposed to hazards and the physical efforts of repeated use of breathing apparatus.

The speed at which other fire appliances arrive to provide additional crew in breathing apparatus is crucial to reducing the risk to firefighters and to providing an effective firefighting response. Dan Stephens, the chief fire officer of Merseyside fire and rescue service, has given his view of the impacts of the cuts so far. He says, “The reduction of appliance numbers resulting from the cuts to the Merseyside fire and rescue authority budget have increased response times for the first and subsequent appliances to life-risk incidents. The reduction in appliances has also impacted on the number of crews that can be released for risk-critical training and exercises on any given shift. The organisational capacity to undertake community safety interventions such as home fire safety checks has also been significantly reduced.” It is important that we take notice of the chief fire officer’s analysis of the situation that the cuts have given rise to.