Emergency Services: Central London

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the availability of emergency services in central London, and what steps they are taking to reinforce them in the light of the attacks in Paris on 13 November.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my entries in the register and beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, working across government the Home Office has developed a police-led capability to deal with large-scale firearms attacks. We are reviewing the attacks in Paris to see if there is anything further we can learn. Further communications will be made in due course.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that Answer. No doubt he is aware that the London Ambulance Service has failed in virtually every London borough in every month to meet its emergency response targets, that the number of authorised firearms police officers has dropped by 760 since 2009 to below 5,000, and that the Police Federation says that the police would struggle to cope with an incident such as occurred in Paris if it were to happen here. Does the Home Secretary support the view of my honourable friend the shadow Chancellor that police emergency response teams and neighbourhood teams should be exempted from the worst of the Chancellor’s cuts to be announced next week?

[Lord Bates]

On the specifics, the noble Lord will realise that we will have to wait for the announcement to be made as a result of the spending review next week. On the points that he made, he will be aware that since the 7/7 attacks in the capital there has been a counterterrorism strategy. There are regular operations as a result of the coroner’s report into those attacks in London. She recommended that there should be much greater interoperability between the different services. That has happened. Only this summer we had Operation Strong Tower, which was a 1,000 personnel strong exercise, following which the Metropolitan Police Commissioner said that he believed we were ready to meet the challenge should such attacks happen in the capital. We want to maintain that at all costs.