Emergency Services (Interoperability)

James Brokenshire Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Havard. I echo the clear and common message that has emerged from this debate, which is to thank the emergency services for their contribution, day in, day out, to keeping us safe. I thank them for their significant professionalism and bravery, examples of which have been cited during the debate. I am sure that the House would underline that clear message of gratitude for the work of our blue-light emergency services.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) on securing the debate and on chairing the all-party parliamentary group on the emergency services, following that work through and facilitating a good and constructive discussion on the issues that are relevant to interoperability, to which I will seek to respond in my comments. I am certainly pleased to have this opportunity to update the House on some of the work that we have been doing to support the emergency services and to promote a better joined-up working approach.

It is clear that police, fire and ambulance teams work together on a daily basis with successful outcomes. Although the response to major incidents from our emergency services is among the best in the world, we are not complacent. The emergency services face significant challenges in responding to major incidents, particularly in the initial stages of a complex and fast-moving situation when the picture can be confusing and there may be unseen dangers. The three services must be able to come together as quickly as possible to share information about what is going on, to manage the risks and rescue any casualties. When the emergency services work together in that way, they save lives.

We continue to learn from events, such as the 7/7 London bombings and the shootings in Cumbria, and from regular national exercises designed to test the joint response. The severe impact and complexity of major incidents and other civil emergencies mean that we must strive for continuous improvement in the combined performance of the emergency services in joint operations.

The Home Secretary has asked the emergency services to set up a new programme of work designed to further improve our joint response to emergencies. The overall aim is to ensure that the blue-light services are trained and exercised to work together as effectively as possible in response to a major incident, including fast-moving terrorist scenarios, so that as many lives as possible can be saved.

The programme will be led by the emergency services through a joint forum, which will enable them systematically to plan, test and learn together. We fully support the delivery of the programme and have provided dedicated resources to look at how future improvements can be made.

I am conscious that a number of contributions highlighted the need for effective co-ordination and joined-up working at national level. Let me assure my hon. Friends the Members for Rugby and for Hexham (Guy Opperman) that the Government are working collectively on this important issue. There have been a number of cross-departmental ministerial meetings to agree how to promote interoperability. The most recent was last month when the Home Secretary and her colleagues met senior representatives from the emergency services to discuss the plan for the new joint emergency services interoperability programme, which I will talk about in more detail shortly.

It is also worth highlighting that the Home Office, the Cabinet Office, the Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government are working closely together on a daily basis. The Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Health, the Minister for the fire and rescue service, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), and the Minister for the Cabinet Office will oversee that work through a cross-departmental ministerial board. We understand that we cannot work in silos and that a unified Government response is required.

The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) rightly highlights the need for engagement with the devolved Administrations, as policing, health and fire and rescue are devolved matters. We continue to work with our counterparts in the devolved Administrations, as do our emergency service partners, on the breadth of the programme, to promote a consistent approach to the development of responses and response capabilities and to facilitate the sharing of best practice.

At local level, the local resilience forums have an important role to play. Emergency services are required by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 to come together with other organisations defined as Category 1 or Category 2 responders to identify and assess the risks in the area and develop and validate plans to respond to them.

Let me talk a bit more about how we will address the need for overarching co-ordination. At national level, the Government have set out in both the draft strategic policing requirement and the draft fire and rescue national framework, the requirement for connectivity between the emergency services. The strategic policing requirement will, for the first time, set out the national threats and the appropriate national policing capabilities that are required to counter them. The election of police and crime commissioners allows Government to get out of the way of local policing, rightly putting accountability in the hands of local people. The strategic policing requirement demonstrates our commitment to get a better grip on the national threats that we face and to ensure a unified approach. Under the strategic policing requirement, police forces will consider consistency between forces and connectivity with other emergency services so that we can improve interoperability between the police, other blue-light emergency responders and other partners in responding to significant emergencies.

The new police professional body will take on the policy functions of the Association of Chief Police Officers and set standards for police professionals. It will ensure that police officers and police staff have a common skill-set and common tactics, where appropriate.

We have talked about the need for interoperability. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby said that it was important to recognise joint working between individual agencies: the fire service, the ambulance service, the police and other agencies. Equally, there is a need for individual agencies to operate effectively themselves, and communication is certainly one element of that. I shall highlight some of the work that has been done around communication.

At this stage of the programme, our highest priority is the interoperability of police, fire and ambulance responders operating in a time-critical environment, where speed and accuracy of information are fundamental to the saving of life. However, we accept that the requirement for interoperability extends to a wider group of emergency responders and other agencies, who will be involved in and consulted on the development and implementation of the programme. I join right hon. and hon. Members in praising the work of local resilience forums, including their efforts to bring local responders together and to plan for risks that local communities might need to deal with, and I agree that such forums are a strong example of interoperability in action.

Future work, led by the joint emergency services interoperability programme, will ensure that responders have effective communications, guidance, training and exercises to support their response to a major incident. In response to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham, the programme will also consider opportunities for equipment and procurement sharing.

There are three key priority areas for the programme. The first is communications. Rapid sharing of information and intelligence is at the core of an effective response. It is needed to establish the type of incident, and to mobilise and co-ordinate the appropriate response. Ongoing communication within and between the emergency services will support on-scene commanders, who need to work together to make decisions and take urgent action.

The sharing of information within and between the emergency services is supported by Airwave radio communications. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby clearly highlighted the importance of strengthened joint communication. The programme will seek to ensure a common approach to the use of mobile communications during major incidents. Effective communications will also be enabled by the national resilience extranet, which is an information-sharing tool. In addition, the Government are working to pilot the direct electronic incident transfer, which will allow the electronic exchange of incident logs between front-line responders.

The right hon. Member for Delyn highlighted the future of Airwave and it might assist him if I gave a further response on that subject. The Airwave contract across the police and other emergency services expires between 2016 and 2020; I think that the right hon. Gentleman himself indicated that that was the case. As a consequence, the emergency services mobile communications programme has been commissioned by the Home Office to examine potential replacement solutions for the emergency services post-Airwave. Future service provision will be based on a review of the anticipated operational needs of the emergency services, and the technical capabilities and commercial opportunities available. Various technologies are being considered, but at the moment the programme is at an early stage of technology evaluation, with the first version of the strategic outline business case due in October.

For the future, interdependent relationships with the emergency services mobile communications programme will ensure that interoperability is a central feature of the future replacement for the Airwave service, when the current commercial contract expires. We will certainly provide further details to the House, as and when they are available.

[Mr Hanson]

I seek clarification from the Minister on just one point. Will it be mandated that police commissioners have to allocate budgets to purchase the system replacing Airwave? Is that the plan?

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

As I think I have already indicated in my comments thus far, the work is ongoing. It is important to recognise—as I think I have done—the need to join up the emergency services, and to consider that broader context for the use of Airwave and its replacement in the future. Therefore, it is clear that careful consideration will be given to the implementation of the new emergency services mobile communications programme.

I am conscious of the need to deal with guidance or doctrine, which is the second element of the joint emergency services interoperability programme. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby pointed out that there is a requirement for a well understood set of joint operating principles that apply to all major incidents and risks, including terrorism, public order incidents and civil emergencies. That is exactly what the programme will seek to develop. I should point out that currently there is not an absence of emergency command doctrine, but we agree that doctrine and guidance is a priority area, which is essential to support the emergency services working together to use a common approach.

If my hon. Friend reads the Government’s response to Lady Justice Hallett’s recommendations following the 7/7 inquest, he will perhaps note that the use of plain English was a key element that was highlighted. Although it was not a recommendation, it is something that the Government have been taking forward in providing an updated lexicon. I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the Government’s response, which was published a month ago.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I have been listening carefully to what my hon. Friend the Minister has said. It is all very well putting all these protocols and procedures in place, but does he agree that emergency planning, emergency training and interoperability between all the emergency services—not only between the blue-light services but between the blue-light services and those in all the other silos that he has mentioned—are equally important?

[James Brokenshire]

I absolutely agree; indeed, my hon. Friend’s intervention is timely, because I was about to come to that precise point. Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, joint training and exercising is a key part of the joint emergency services interoperability programme. It will be at the front and centre of all our future work. We strongly believe that interoperability comes down to individual behaviour—knowing fellow commanders and responders. These foundations are built through joint training and exercising. Of course, interoperability needs to be supported by the right equipment and assets, but at its heart it is about working together at the scene of an incident. Training and exercising work will build on the programmes that already exist, including the counter-terrorism national exercise programme, which involves the blue-light emergency responders. Forward Defensive, conducted in February, was part of a series of exercises to test and rehearse Government and police readiness for the Paralympic and Olympic games, ensuring that the joint operation—going all the way up to how the Government, through Cobra, operate—is followed through and tested.

My hon. Friend will be interested to know that interoperability training is taking place this week in Moreton-in-Marsh, involving the police, fire and ambulance services, specifically training for the response to a firearms attack and examining how such major incidents occur. That is the third set of exercises that we have run to test the joint response since January 2010. I hope he will be reassured by that, and by the emphasis that we absolutely give to the issue.

I shall talk briefly about the co-ordination of air assets. We have developed a project that is scheduled to become operational later this year. The National Police Air Service is a police aviation service designed to provide centralised air support to the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, replacing the current structure. The creation of the NPAS demonstrates co-ordination of air assets within the police service.

In conclusion, I hope that my comments this morning have underlined the importance that we attach to interoperability between the emergency services. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby for securing the debate, and I again thank the emergency services for their continued commitment to public protection, reducing harm and, of course, saving lives.