Police and Fire Shared Services

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend enormously on securing this debate. Many of us have been discussing these issues with our police and crime commissioners, police forces and fire services. I certainly have been doing so in Somerset with my MP hat on. I would like to widen it even more. Avon and Somerset police already have a loose arrangement with Wiltshire, but there is certainly interest in sharing back-office IT and admin, which would allow our police officers to stay on the street doing their jobs.

Equally, I recently had a very successful meeting with Somerset fire and rescue service. I urge that we bring the ambulance service into the picture, because it is something of a model case, with the biggest fire service outside London. [Interruption.] Oh my goodness, that is my phone going off. I apologise, Mr Pritchard.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions need to be short so that other colleagues and Members can speak later.

[Rebecca Pow]

Thank you, Mr Pritchard. The Somerset service is working so well that it has the largest number of retained firemen, who work closely with the ambulance service. It is working exceedingly well and saving a lot of money.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

I ask Members to check that their phones are on silent or mute.

[Amanda Milling]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. There are a number of examples around the country of services that are collaborating. It is not just police and fire; it is fire and ambulance, police and ambulance and all three of the blue-light services. I will come to those points in a little more detail.

On collaboration, I am not alone in posing the question that my hon. Friend asked in her intervention. The concept of greater collaboration between the blue-light services, particularly police and fire, has been the subject of debate for some time, well before I was elected to this place. I read with interest the Knight report, published in May 2013. A number of its key findings relate to this discussion.

As I have said, the number of incidents has decreased by more than 40% in the past decade, while at the time when the report was published, expenditure and firefighting numbers had stayed broadly the same. That suggests scope for reform and efficiencies to better match risk and response. The report also found evidence of a disparity in the amount of money spent per person per year across the different fire authorities, with little to explain those differences and a limited relationship between expenditure and outcomes. There was clear widespread duplication among fire and rescue authorities across England: each had its own management structure, leaders and operational differences.

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[Ian Lavery]

Thanks—

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. That remark was made from a sedentary position. If Members want to intervene, I encourage them to stand up.

[Ian Lavery]

I have lost my thread, Mr Pritchard. I was in full flow until I asked people to call me a dinosaur.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

Order. We have three speakers and 14 minutes left, so can we have a time limit of four to four and a half minutes?

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[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time in this Parliament, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) on securing a hugely important debate that matters particularly to Lancashire Members; the idea of sharing services to reduce costs will be particularly important there, given changes to the police funding formula. The Minister will not have scope to respond to me on that matter, but I want to thank him for meeting me and a cross-party delegation of Lancashire MPs who expressed concern about potential savings. His Department and officials have supported us every step of the way and have enabled Lancashire MPs to contribute to the continuing consultation to try to protect services.

Blue-light services are under pressure throughout the country because of financial constraints such as those I have mentioned. When MPs talk in the House about blue-light services—police, fire, ambulance, the coastguard and the Mines Rescue Service—they should reflect on the huge contribution that they make. My grandfather patrolled the docks in Bootle in Liverpool during the blitz—a tremendously brave thing to do—while he was in the police service. He put his life at risk every night to try to keep people safe in the city. We had a tragic reminder of the risks yesterday in the same city, at the funeral of PC Phillips at the Anglican Liverpool cathedral, where there were amazing scenes as more than 1,000 police officers lined the streets. I know that the Minister attended, to pass on the condolences of everyone in the House. When we discuss the blue-light services, we must remember that they are like no other part of the public sector. We ask and expect the people in those services to put their lives at risk to keep us safe.

Nevertheless, the new funding environment is here to stay. There must be savings and all services must play their part in helping us to pay down a record deficit. There is an opportunity for blue-light services throughout the country, but particularly in Lancashire, to begin saving by sharing more back-office services, to protect the frontline. When our constituents dial 999 or 101, they really care about whether someone will arrive on their doorstep in the worst of emergencies—or perhaps for a more minor incident if they dialled 101. Will someone arrive to help them? They do not particularly mind whether those people share headquarters or training facilities. We heard a fantastic example from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about the sharing of training facilities in Northern Ireland. I support services sharing if, and only if, all the savings are used to maintain investment in and support of officers in all front-line services.

I was involved in running a business before I came to the House, and we had 1,500 employees, who were all fantastic and made a huge contribution. They would have thought it bizarre if we had had five HR, payroll or training departments for our five offices. They would have thought it even more bizarre if I had told them that to maintain the five payroll departments, we would sack people doing the work in the five different offices. That does not work in business, and it should not work in blue-light public services. For too long, there has been a silo mentality, and public services have not wanted to co-operate with each other, because they thought of that as a bit of an attack on their independence. The hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) made some fantastic points, with some momentum. We agree on quite a lot and he made some constructive comments about how we can share services but still maintain independence. I agree that if I phone the fire service I expect someone to turn up in the uniform of a firefighter, not a police officer. We have a special relationship with firefighters, which is to do with the fact that they are independent and not linked to crime fighting. That needs to be maintained.

I want to keep my remarks brief; perhaps I have already gone over the time limit. I just want to say that there is an opportunity, through PCCs, to look at increasing democratic accountability. I outed myself as unable to name everyone on the fire panel in my constituency. I doubt whether many hon. Members could do so for theirs. I can name a few whom I have met in my constituency, but there is an opportunity to increase democratic accountability, and that is why I support the Government’s consultation.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

I will, because of Standing Orders, have to call the Front-Bench speakers at 3.30 pm, so I call Chris Davies, who has 70 seconds.

[Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. My speech goes on a lot longer than 70 seconds, so I shall leave it where it is. I agree with most of what has been said. It is clear that first and foremost our blue-light services must be not buildings or machinery, but people on the frontline. That is what the general public want and what our voters are after, and the Government must give that priority.

In areas such as mine—I represent the largest rural constituency in England and Wales; it is 85 miles long—the reality is that we must have a mix of services. We have first responders; it may be the fire service that responds, doing a marvellous job and saving lives. The crew may not be putting fires out when they do that, but they save lives doing the work of paramedics. They have trained accordingly and keep people alive until the paramedics arrive. There is a need for this crossover, and thank goodness we have it. I will sit down within the 70 seconds, but I want to pay tribute to the blue-light services and to the Government for having the consultation. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) for securing this debate.

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

May I also pay tribute to Mr Berry and Mr Smith for keeping their remarks brief? I am sorry, Mr Davies, that you did not have as much time as I anticipated. I remind newer colleagues in particular that if they want to speak, they have to put their names forward. That allows the Chair to introduce a formal time limit, rather than an informal one, as exampled in the past few moments.