Search and Rescue Service

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this extremely important matter, which has exercised the House for some time. I have raised it on several occasions, and it is time that we looked in detail at what the future holds for the search and rescue service, on which we all depend.

The search and rescue service covers 1.25 million nautical miles of sea and 10,000 nautical miles of coastline, as well as the entire land area of the United Kingdom. It is a joint service, which is operated by the RAF, the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm and Her Majesty’s coastguard. It uses more than 40 helicopters from 12 bases around the UK.

HM coastguard uses Westland AW139s and Sikorsky S-92s, which are under contract to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. The RAF and the Royal Navy use Sea Kings. The Sea King has four crew members—the pilot, the co-pilot, the winchman and the radar operator, who is also the winch operator. There are two versions of the Sea King: the Mk 3, which entered service in 1977, and the Mk 3A, which is slightly newer. The age of the aircraft has been causing significant technical problems, and they require constant maintenance to keep flying—a point to which I will return.

The RAF bases are RAF Boulmer, which is the headquarters of A flight and 202 Squadron; RAF Lossiemouth, on the Moray firth; RAF Valley in Anglesey, where Prince William is based; Leconfield, near Hull; Chivenor, in Devon; and Wattisham, in Suffolk. The Royal Navy bases are Culdrose in Cornwall and Prestwick in the west of Scotland. HM coastguard operates from Lee on Solent, Portland, Stornoway and Sumburgh in the Shetland islands.

The RAF has just celebrated 70 years of involvement in the search and rescue service. It has 16 Sea King Mk 3 and 3A helicopters in service, which are divided between 22 Squadron and 202 Squadron. Each squadron maintains a 15-minute readiness state during daylight hours and a 45-minute readiness state during the hours of darkness. 22 Squadron operates out of Chivenor, Wattisham and Valley, while 202 Squadron operates out of Boulmer, Lossiemouth and Leconfield. The training unit operates out of RAF Valley with three Griffin HT1 helicopters.

In Boulmer, which is in my constituency, the RAF search and rescue service is a source of enormous local pride and satisfaction. It is hugely respected and very involved in the local community, and the RAF helicopter is often to be seen not only engaged in operations or training, but supporting local community events. That, of course, is good public relations for the RAF and adds to its excellent reputation in my area. Indeed, such activities are such a prominent feature of the RAF’s work that they tend to distract attention from the fact that the vast majority of the work done at RAF Boulmer is in the very different field of monitoring and guarding our skies and training people. None the less, it is the familiar yellow helicopters going about their rescue and training work that enjoy the greatest and most immediate public awareness.

Under the previous Labour Government, a private finance initiative contract proposal was developed under the name of search and rescue harmonisation. Commonality of function between the MCA and Ministry of Defence helicopter forces, and similar time frames for the potential introduction of new aircraft fleets, led Ministers in the MOD and the Department for Transport in May 2006 to announce a cross-Government approach to the acquisition of a harmonised UK SAR helicopter service. A joint project team from the two Departments was tasked with running the project, which was essentially a Labour privatisation project. I say that not as a criticism, but simply to set out the context, because if this Government contemplate privatising anything, the Opposition tend to say that they would never consider such a thing. However, the previous Government did devise a privatisation project, and that was because they thought that such a project was essential to ensure that new helicopters could be provided relatively quickly to replace the Sea Kings. The total project contracts were worth £6 billion.

During discussions on the project, a number of concerns arose and were subject to quite a lot of public discussion. What aircraft would be used to replace the Sea King? How long would it take to get them into service? Which personnel would be required to operate the new service? Would they be drawn from the military, civilian life or a mixture of the two? If there were to be a mixture of military and civilian personnel, how would that work in practice, given that the civilians would be covered by the European working time directive, while the military personnel would not? That has already caused issues at the coastguard-operated bases in the Hebrides and the Shetlands. Consideration would also need to be given to the equalisation of pay and other conditions.

What training would air crew receive? At the moment, there is a fairly heavy dependence on experienced personnel with RAF training moving into other areas of search and rescue and other helicopter services. Of course, it is true that RAF training is heavily drawn on in aviation more widely. Furthermore, what arrangements would be provided for SAR cover in the Falkland islands under the SAR helicopter scheme? SAR in the south Atlantic is currently provided by the RAF, using the same crews who man our stations in the UK. That is done on a six to seven-week rolling rotation, with two crews of four personnel based in the Falklands at any one time. A normal feature of a career spent in a search and rescue aircrew will therefore be time spent in the Falklands.

Where do the prospects of a new helicopter with faster flying speeds and a longer range leave the existing basing pattern? What changes would be feasible under SAR? Linked to that, would 24-hour cover be provided by each base? An early answer to that question made it clear that there were proposals to reduce the cover at a number of bases to 12 hours, after which time the area for which the base was responsible would be covered by the base in the adjoining area. That raised great concern. In the Lake district, for example, rescue operations are often mounted by the RAF Boulmer helicopter, and there was particular concern that the area could not easily be served from other bases. Those bases would, like Boulmer, have extensive responsibilities for the North sea and the east coast, and their helicopters could easily be on a rescue operation and be unable to respond. Bases would be covering two huge areas—their own area and the neighbouring area—so there was a lot of concern about the idea of 12-hour operation. Following a number of meetings with Ministers and others, it was decided that RAF Boulmer would continue to provide 24-hour cover, at least until new helicopters with greater range and the ability to reach other areas at greater speed were introduced.

In the course of the project, bidders were identified, although some did not stay the course until the end. On 9 February 2010, the Soteria consortium was identified as the preferred bidder. The consortium was made up of CHC Helicopter, which is the largest global supplier of civilian helicopter services and the current provider of the MCA’s interim SAR service; the Royal Bank of Scotland, as a PFI equity investor; Thales UK, the well known defence contractor, which has been involved in a number of PFI and partnership projects; and Sikorsky, which has long experience in the design and manufacture of military and commercial helicopters.

The consortium proposed a fleet of 24 Sikorsky S-92 aircraft, with a top speed of 190 mph and a cruising speed of 167 mph. The S-92 would have been fitted with an internal fuel tank, increasing the aircraft’s flying radius to 310 statute miles. The aircraft would also have been fitted with the latest high-speed twin hoist, providing for the possibility of single-hoist failure. It would also have had a 300-foot hoist cable and a lift capacity of up to 600 lb at 350 feet per minute. It is hard to envisage being raised on a winch at 350 feet per minute, but such things are necessary in certain situations—for example, on the moving deck of a ship in rough seas. The aircraft cabin would be fitted out to allow paramedic medical care to be administered to a casualty. The ramp at the rear of the aircraft would provide access for loading and unloading stretchers, incubators and medical equipment and access for rescue teams and their equipment. The other major bidding consortium went under the name of AirKnight, but two further consortia pulled out at a relatively early stage in the process.

At some stage—I must confess I now forget when it was—responsibility for the future operation was transferred from the Ministry of Defence to the Department for Transport, which is why the Minister with whom I deal with all sorts of other transport issues is replying to the debate. All that I have described of course preceded the dramatic events of the suspension of the SAR-H scheme and its subsequent abandonment. The first stage of that was just part of the process of the incoming Government reviewing the spending commitments left to them by the previous Government. In June the Chief Secretary to the Treasury announced that the Government had identified several projects, some of which were dropped, while others were to be reviewed. SAR was one of the reviewed projects.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I understand that on average over the past five years there have been between 80 and 120 mountain rescues in the United Kingdom. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that such rescues could adequately be carried out using non-military personnel and equipment, in a way similar to what happens in France and the United States; or should they remain in the hands of the military?

[Sir Alan Beith]

Some of the rescues are done in that way even now. Not all SAR services are provided by military crew, but a high degree of training is required, and there must be consistent co-operation with local organisations such as mountain rescue teams. That depends on consistent good working relations. The military operators such as RAF Boulmer and 202 Squadron have done that particularly well. In general I think that most people feel more confidence about military crew, because they know the high standards of training that are involved. However, it is quite an expensive way to provide the service, and other options probably should be considered. Some of the training and experience that the military has, and some of its operational practices, would need to be transferred if there were any wider civilianisation of the service. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that as a matter of concern.

The review announced by the Chief Secretary was about cost-effectiveness, against the background of a huge deficiency in defence capital programme funding. It was not about the issues that finally brought down the contract. Indeed, Ministers were on the point of announcing the final decision on the contract. Various other things had been going on, however. There were rumours that as part of the comprehensive spending review the Government had proposed that the project should be rewritten, so that an entirely civilian work force would operate the service, rather than a mixture of civilian and military personnel. Of course, if the Government had done that, it would have created a big saving, because it would have taken about 66 higher-paid military personnel out of the project, and probably created up to an additional £100 million over the lifetime of the project in personnel costs for the contractor. It also sidestepped the problem of some personnel being subject to European working time directive rules, while others were not. That issue was rumbling in the background.

On 16 December a dramatic announcement was made—I think that it was the very day on which we were to have heard the final decision about the contractor. The Secretary of State for Defence announced that information had come to light about the preferred bid in the search and rescue competition, which required clarification. The preferred bidder had informed the Government of irregularities in the conduct of the bid team, which had only recently come to light. The irregularities included access by one of the consortium members, CHC Helicopter, to commercially sensitive information about the joint Ministry of Defence and Department for Transport project team’s evaluations of industry bids, and evidence that a former member of that project team had assisted the consortium in its bid preparation, contrary to explicit assurances given to the project team at the time.

I believe that a considerable time previously a letter went to the Ministry of Defence warning it of potential irregularities of that nature. One of the matters that I hope is being investigated is why that warning was not heeded. Of course many other matters are being investigated as well, not just by the Ministry of Defence but by the police. A former member of the MOD team, subsequently employed in the industry, is, I believe, the subject of investigation. I do not know to what extent others are as well.

On that basis, we were told that

“the Government have sufficient information to enable them to conclude that the irregularities that have been identified were such that it would not be appropriate to proceed with either the preferred bid or with the current procurement process.”

The statement continued:

“The Department for Transport and the Ministry of Defence will now consider the potential procurement options to meet future requirements for search and rescue helicopters in the United Kingdom, including options to maintain continuity of search and rescue helicopter cover until new longer-term arrangements can be put in place.

We will make a further announcement once a way forward has been agreed.”—[Official Report, 10 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 17WS.]

That brings me to the focus of today’s debate, which is what progress has been made in reaching those decisions and when we are likely to get a proper announcement about it. Other factors could be at work. There is the potential for legal action involving contractors. An unsuccessful contractor might want to pursue the successful one over bid costs incurred. There might be legal action between the Government and a contractor. The Minister may be inhibited in what he can say about that, but it could be going on at the same time.

What will happen next? The Sea Kings were due to be withdrawn by 2016 or 2017. They are ageing and they continue to need substantial levels of maintenance to keep them operating. Those of us who keep in close touch with the search and rescue service know that there are many occasions when the Sea Kings are not available to fly. I have seen that for myself. I was flying in a Sea King that returned to base because the radio system failed. The other aircraft was on land having returned from necessary maintenance work, and was not yet tested and available to take over. At that point therefore neither was available. There have been moments when no helicopter has been available at Leconfield, Lossiemouth or Boulmer at the same time. That clearly is a situation we cannot allow to continue.