Met Office

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time in Westminster Hall, Mr Streeter. I thank the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for securing the debate. It is directly relevant to my constituency, which is not a million miles away, and to your constituency of South West Devon. We will almost certainly have constituents directly affected by this decision. However, although there is a link between Torbay and south Devon’s economy and the location of the Met Office, my focus, like that of the preceding speech, will be on the overall impact of the decision and what it could mean for our country.

It is safe to say that anyone who represents a coastal community knows the absolute importance of an accurate weather forecast and of that being disseminated to the public more widely. It is not the person who has a large shipping operation who relies on the BBC shipping forecast. It is the person deciding whether to go out in their own small boat the next morning. It is the person going to the beach. It is the person who might take their family to the coast. For each of them, it is critical that they can easily get hold of an accurate weather forecast. I see here my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray), whose area has a large fishing industry. I have the bay, but I do not have Brixham. That is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), but there is certainly a fishing community in Torquay that goes through Torbay, and all rely on being able to have accurate forecasts, with many using the BBC to supply them.

What speaks to me about the importance of the weather is this. We all remember the iconic hanging tracks at Dawlish. Had those winds been true east rather than slightly to the south-east, that storm would have hit Paignton directly, causing a very severe impact. That is why, for me, the relationship between the Met Office and the BBC is crucial.

The BBC has a reputation for gold-standard accuracy in its weather forecasts—perhaps with the exception of Michael Fish not quite seeing the hurricane that was on its way. Therefore, it is vital that it also has the accuracy of the Met Office’s gold standard of weather information and forecasting. The right hon. Member for Exeter was right to talk about potential conflicts between Met Office severe weather warnings, which again are the gold standard for keeping people away from harm, and another provider advising of a slightly different outcome in the weather. It is hard to see how an organisation that has been accurately forecasting Britain’s weather for nearly 170 years will be bested by any other organisation suddenly picking up this contract for the BBC.

It is vital that we look at the need for a resilient source of weather information, as the right hon. Gentleman said, for the military, for our civil authorities and for Government itself. We need to look at everything from energy security to potential issues with our agricultural sector. Many things will depend on knowing the weather and being able to provide what support we can by having had notice well in advance of what the weather conditions are likely to be.

For me, what shows the importance of the weather to Government decisions and planning is that we banned weather forecasts during world war two, because that was seen as such useful information to the enemy that we did not want them to have it. Seventy years later, it is still a vital part of Government planning. It is not just about whether we will get wet when going out for a walk, but about planning services—planning when power stations will need to be brought on to supply, and planning when staff may need to be on standby for everything from snow and ice to flood and wind. Ensuring that we can maintain a resilient and durable Met Office is crucial to the way we run our country.

I accept that the Government do not direct the BBC in its contracting. It is right that the corporation has a level of independence. It would be strange for us to stand in this House one day demanding that it is completely independent of Government and then the next day demand that the Government take various decisions for it. That said, it is concerning that this decision was taken purely on a fairly narrow set of criteria. I, too, would be interested to hear the Minister’s remarks on what consultation was done, given that ultimately the BBC is not a service that anyone can choose to receive. If someone has a television, they have to pay for it under the law, and in fact they are still branded a criminal if they do not pay the licence fee that goes towards it, so I would certainly be interested to hear what consultations were done.

I hope that the BBC will take a close look at the impact of the decision. My concern, as a constituency Member, is for my constituents who will be affected, particularly as such an iconic employer brings quality jobs into Devon that will benefit the community in the long term. I agree with the suggestion from the right hon. Member for Exeter that the BBC should pause this issue during the charter review, in which we debate the whole relationship between the Government and the BBC—between the state and the public broadcaster. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts and comments. As I said, we cannot say one day that the BBC should be independent and the next that it should do whatever we direct it to do.

We need to know that the gold standard of weather forecasting is available; we do not want a standard that blows with the wind. I hope that the BBC will look again at this opportunity to keep its historic link with the Met Office.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Vaizey]

Clarity is clearly not my strong point this afternoon. As I said earlier, the BBC’s contract with the Met Office is a commercial contract, paid for out of the licence fee. The BBC will continue to pay for a commercial contract, whether or not we agree with whoever eventually wins that procurement—whether or not we morally agree, as it were, that it is the right company. It may well be a foreign company, although it could well be a British company. That is one thing, but the fact is that we are not paying twice for the service. The licence fee pays for a weather service provided by the BBC that happens to be provided by the Met Office. It is not provided for free. As far as I am aware—again, it is a commercial procurement process—at no point did the Met Office offer to provide that service free to the BBC.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank the Minister for the response that he has given so far. On the comment that he just made about the BBC being a small percentage of the overall Met Office contract, will he confirm, to help deal with perceptions in south Devon, that he is satisfied that the Met Office will still be a viable and effective organisation going forward?

[Mr Vaizey]

My hon. Friend’s question is helpful, because it allows me to segue into the wider part of my speech. I want to talk about the wider work of the Met Office, because it is a more than viable organisation. As I said in my opening remarks, it is a widely respected international organisation with a turnover of around £200 million, and it is highly successful. For example, regardless of whether the BBC continues to use the Met Office, its website is one of the most used websites in the UK Government family. It delivers weather information and critical weather warnings via a huge range of digital channels. The mobile app has been downloaded more than 12 million times, and there are 430 million user sessions every year. Some 900,000 people follow Met Office social media accounts.

The Met Office provides a huge range of services, not just to Government but to business. Its day-to-day forecasts and weather warnings are the most high-profile, but it also works with, for example, the Environment Agency on flood forecasting. It will continue to provide shipping forecasts, mountain weather forecasts and services to the aviation industry. It provides air quality and volcanic ash monitoring, which is not such an esoteric service when we remember what happened with the ash cloud a few years ago. The Met Office’s work touches almost every aspect of our lives, in many ways of which we are unaware. It may interest hon. Members to know that just last week, the Met Office won the most prestigious award at the “top 50 companies for customer services” awards.

The Met Office is not only known for weather forecasting; it is home to the Hadley centre for climate science and services, one of the most famous research institutes in the world. It remains an important part of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy; she was the Prime Minister who opened the centre in 1990, and this year it celebrates its 25th anniversary. As we head towards the crucial negotiations at the United Nations conference on climate change in Paris in November, the UK, thanks to the Met Office’s brilliant work, is in a much stronger position to influence and secure the outcome we need as a result of that expertise and world-leading knowledge.

While I am discussing the international climate change conference in Paris, I should say that it is important to stress the global role played by the Met Office. It is one of only two world area forecast centres delivering forecasts globally, and it is recognised by the World Meteorological Organisation as the national meteorological service with the most accurate prediction model in the world. It is internationally respected for its unified weather and climate model, the accuracy of its weather prediction, its research, and its support for developing countries. It helps to save lives and it delivers improvements, such as helping to establish local meteorological services.

I will give just one example of the Met Office’s work. During Hurricane Patricia, which has recently battered Mexico, the Met Office has been, and it will continue to be, the source that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office uses to provide weather advice to citizens in the affected area. So we as a Government are immensely proud of the Met Office, its international standing and the international recognition it brings, but most importantly we are proud of the difference that it makes to people’s lives every day.

That is why, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the Chancellor is backing the Met Office through investment in a new high-performance computing facility. Last year, he announced plans to invest £97 million in a new supercomputer, which will cement the UK’s position as a world leader in weather and climate prediction. The supercomputer’s sophisticated forecasts are anticipated to deliver £2 billion worth of socioeconomic benefits to the UK by enabling better advance preparation and contingency plans to protect people’s homes and businesses. I am told that the installation programme is progressing very well; indeed, it is five weeks ahead of schedule. Also, the Met Office recently released its new five-year science strategy, which aims to deliver science with impact, maximising the benefit to society of its weather and climate expertise, and making the most of the UK Government’s investment in its high-performance computing.

It is a credit to the Met Office and to all the highly skilled staff who work there, obviously including those who work in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Exeter, that it is recognised as a world-class institution that all of us are rightly proud of. Having protected the country for more than 150 years, the Met Office is a trusted voice for the British public, businesses and emergency responders when it is needed most.