Police and Fire Shared Services

Mike Penning Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lavery]

The hon. Gentleman makes a viable point, which can and should be discussed if we want a top-class blue-light service, whether it be the ambulance service, the fire service or the police service. That can, and will be I am sure, the topic of much discussion in the future.

[The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)]

It is unusual for me to intervene, but there are four emergency services in this country. We must not forget Her Majesty’s Coastguard. It would be inappropriate for me, as a former Shipping Minister, not to raise that point.

[Ian Lavery]

I thank the Minister. There is actually a fifth emergency service—the Mines Rescue Service.

[Mike Penning]

We could carry on.

[Ian Lavery]

Of course we can. The only problem is that we have only one mine left—but anyway, I am sure we will discuss that. The coastguard is an important service as well.

The issue that has been brought to the House is the greater collaboration and work between the police and the fire service. I think we all agree that we want a top-class service, across all four blue-light services. We want to have the best possible and the safest service we can have—top class, with the best technology and everything that the communities that we represent need. The real cause for concern is that this is not just about having a top-class service or enhancing the blue-light services; it is being approached as a cost-cutting exercise. That is what the general public are concerned about.

Since 2010, there has been a huge reduction in the police service and the fire service and we cannot get enough people in the ambulance service. People are rightly concerned about the cuts in the services, whether front-line or back-office staff.

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[Ian Lavery]

Well, that is interesting. That could be put on the table in the consultation with other people up and down the country who work in the services. We need consultation and discussion with those delivering services, such as the gentleman that the hon. Gentleman just mentioned.

There is a huge difference between a firefighter and a police officer. They have completely and utterly different remits. The police are law enforcers—it is as simple as that. The fire and rescue service is basically a humanitarian service. The two services have totally different remits. For example, firefighters need to be neutral in their communities and politically neutral. They cannot be seen as law enforcers or even to be connected in any way to law enforcement. In many areas, they have built up trust that the police probably do not have.

[Mike Penning]

I am listening with great interest to the hon. Gentleman, and I declare an interest as a former firefighter. The fire service is exactly as he described—part of the community—but its members have been law enforcers since day one. As a fire prevention officer, I used to do that sort of work. We would go to clubs and we would shut them down because we were protecting the public, as the police do in their way. It is wrong to say that members of the fire service are not law enforcers, because they are, they will be and they must be.

[Ian Lavery]

That is something we must disagree on. I think that the two roles have to be completely different. Firefighters are not law enforcers in the name of the law or in statute—[Hon. Members: “Yes, they are.”] I disagree. Perhaps the Minister can send me the information that shows that each firefighter in each community is, as part of their job, a law enforcer.

[Mike Penning]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. We are good friends, so it is right that we debate this matter. As a young fire officer, I used to do FPO inspections in clubs. If that club did not adhere to the recommendations made, in statute that club could be closed and sometimes it was closed. That was the fire authority; it was nothing to do with the police or anybody else.

[Ian Lavery]

I understand the instances to which the Minister refers. In my constituency, fire authorities have checked alarms and different things in buildings, and I understand that, but what I am describing now is the different in terms of law enforcement. As the hon. Member for Cannock Chase said, we will not have fire and rescue service officers detecting crime and clipping young people around the head or doing things of that nature. It will be completely different. I understand that there is a duty and obligation on the fire and rescue services in relation to alarms and things of that nature, and they do an absolutely fantastic job; they have built up a great reputation. The Minister was a member of the fire and rescue service many years ago. I am sure that he was up to the task then and that he will support the issues we are raising today. When he was in the service, I am sure he had the utmost respect of his community, because that is what happens with the fire and rescue service.

There are alternatives that will not compromise the trust in and integrity of the fire and rescue service, and they are what we need to look at. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase mentioned joint procurement, which is absolutely on the money. Why should there not be joint procurement? There is no reason not to look at sharing administrative services and, potentially, servicing roles with other public sector bodies where that is appropriate—but not necessarily between the fire and rescue service and the police service. It should be with other public sector services that share the humanitarian remit, rather than the crime remit.

That brings us on to a number of points, such as the difference in the roles and remits. As I have just explained, there is a huge difference between the fire and rescue service and the police, and that needs to be considered. The police and the fire service perform very different roles and consequently have very different command and control structures. If the proposal went ahead, that would limit the opportunities available for any joint working.

Members have mentioned the police and crime commissioners. I am sure we will have a massive disagreement about this, but there is already a lot of concern about the police and crime commissioners’ role, without giving them extra responsibility for the fire and rescue services. After all, they were elected by, on average, only 15% of the electorate. I am not even sure that the commissioners themselves want any additional responsibilities; in fact, commissioners up and down the country have emphatically said, “We don’t want any additional responsibilities. We are police and crime commissioners. What on earth have we got to do with the fire and rescue service?” Again, we have to listen to the people who are actually delivering services on our behalf.

It is obvious that, unlike many public sector organisations, including the police, the fire service lacks common guidance and a natural procurement channel. That is a wasted opportunity. We must improve the procurement channel for fire-specific products.

The hon. and learned Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) mentioned the ambulance service. I have to be honest: the ambulance service—certainly in my area—is creaking. The North East ambulance service needs 120 recruits—the paramedics we discussed, who cannot suddenly appear because of the training and expertise they require—so I wonder whether the ambulance service should be involved in these proposals.

We have fantastic blue-light services—the four services—and every member of every one of those services deserves lots of credit. They have all suffered massive cuts. They are all working as hard as they can in the most stringent financial circumstances, and that is very difficult for them. It is easy to criticise them, but I am not sure the answer is to bring them all together and plonk them in one place, although I accept that some of the measures I have mentioned should be looked at for the common good.

The hon. Member for Cannock Chase said it was time to move to a mandatory position, rather than a voluntary one. Well, call me a dinosaur—

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[The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)]

As usual, Mr Pritchard, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) on securing this debate. What perfect timing, with the consultation having just finished and Her Majesty’s Opposition accepting that Vera Baird and Paddy Tipping were absolutely right that police and crime commissioners should be kept. We agree. Thank goodness that the Conservative party won the election, or Vera and Paddy would not have been happy.

I declare an interest: I am an ex-firefighter and an ex-military paramedic, and I have also worked in counter-terrorism, so, perhaps unusually for a Minister in a debate on this subject, I know what I am talking about a fraction. I apologise to the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery): I was in no way saying that firefighters have the same sort of powers as the police. The police are warranted, of course, but it is important to note that fire services have statutory powers as well. At no stage in any part of the debate has it been said from the Government Benches—or anywhere, I think— that front-line operational officers in the police, fire or ambulance services should be amalgamated. I will explain and reiterate what has been said, using anecdotal evidence.

I came out of the military, having done four years as a qualified battlefield medic. I joined the fire service and was told to take a first aid certificate. I attended what used to be called RTAs—road traffic accidents; they are now called road traffic collisions, or RTCs—often with no ambulance in sight, not for minutes but for a considerable length of time. Sometimes, the police were not there. These days, very often the police will not be there, because it will be the Highways Agency traffic officers—they have renamed themselves since I left the Department for Transport—who attend. Having better skills to protect the public is crucial. That is part of what we are trying to do. In my own county, the fantastic chief fire officer, Roy Wilsher, who almost 10 years ago did an amazing job saving half my constituency when the Buncefield oil depot blew to smithereens, is the CEO of the PCC’s office. As well as being the chief fire officer, he actually runs the PCC office. Why? Because it is logical and sensible.

The public often talk about buildings. It is our job to ensure that they talk about not buildings but people. I welcome the shadow Minister to her role. I think we will probably meet fairly often, although I am not the Minister responsible for the fire service—that falls to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Communities and Resilience; I am here because of the connection to PCCs. When she reads Hansard, she will find that she said it is about buildings, not people. I think she meant that the other way around, but I fully respect and understand that. A church is not a building; it is a group of people who come together. Emergency services should not be about buildings, but about how we deliver the best service.

We must learn from the mistakes in the past. The amalgamation of the ambulance service met a fair bit of opposition. I am not a Health Minister, although I was shadowing the public Health Minister responsible for the ambulance service when it happened, and we had real concerns about it, some of which came true. We fundamentally opposed the regionalisation of fire control centres. Thank goodness we stopped that in time, although there are still some very expensive buildings out there, at least one of which is occupied by the coastguard. Actually, this is nothing new. I remember that in the early ’80s—all those years ago when I was a fireman in Essex—there was a tri-service control centre in Warwickshire. They were doing it then, so we have come full circle.

The skills of the people who are there to look after us are rightly interoperable. I hear forces saying, “We are going to lose x amount of front-line people”, “We are going to lose this” or “We are going to lose that,” but have they really looked at where those savings can be made so they can deliver the taxpayer-funded service that the public deserve?

We were talking about procurement a moment ago. I am not one to say that one size fits all and that we should procure everything from one place, but I published on the Home Office website how much each police force spends on the average 20 items. We all want our officers to have body armour, but there is a £300 difference between the price that two forces pay for it. Surely, as we approach the police and crime commissioner elections, that is the sort of thing we should be talking about. The fire service and the police both buy white shirts, so why do they not buy white shirts together? If a local provider can match the average national price, I am sure we would all want to support that local business, but if it cannot we have to question seriously whether that would provide value for money. We have changed the way we procure vehicles. There was some criticism from the Opposition, but for the first time the Government are buying huge amounts of very expensive equipment at e-auctions at the best value we can get it for. That is our responsibility as representatives of taxpayers.

There are myriad other things that can be done. Hampshire is very well represented in the debate this afternoon for a reason: it is one of the most forward-thinking authorities in the country. I went to Winchester fire station, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), and met the chief fire officer. The station is shared. I went to the yard, where the fire brigade was carrying out a drill—I am sure they do joint drills with the police in that yard, because that is the sort of thing we need to see—and at the bottom part of the yard is a brand spanking new building for the armed response unit and other police facilities. Nobody would ever know, and, frankly, I do not think the public would care if we explained to them that we want to do this to look after people.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

One of the advantages of what was suggested by our hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) is that it would mean we have the flexibility of having a company, which other authorities can join and move their back-office functions into. Equally, the sort of contracts that he talked about—outsourcing contracts and others of that type—have a flexibility to them. Do the Government support that sort of thing, or are they going to create new institutions through statute?

[Mike Penning]

We do not want to make it mandatory. We need to learn from the mistakes of the past. As an illustration of the support that my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) alluded to, the Home Office gave £1.8 million to support H3, and we supplied extensive moneys for the relocation from the police innovation fund. That is the sort of innovation we are looking for.

The only thing I disagreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase about was her point about compulsion. I know exactly where she is coming from, and I have a huge amount of sympathy with it. I was arguing this point long before austerity was even thought of, when we were throwing money at our emergency services—we have sometimes seriously thrown money at our emergency services over the years, not least for kit that is hardly ever used—because it is right that we have a better, joined-up emergency service. We need people who are trained for the 21st century; we cannot look at the fire service, the police service and the ambulance service in a historical way.

Community first responders were never heard of previously. Communities came together for that. People said, “I want to be part of this community. I would like to do this.” We have them in my constituency, and they do really well. My point is that it is always better if the Government can bring people together and say, “This would be better for you,” rather than say, “This would be better for you, now come together and do it.” The consultation specifically looks at some areas where it would be difficult—for example, where forces and fire authorities are not co-located.

Northamptonshire is a good example, because the Northamptonshire PCC is one of the most forward-thinking PCCs in the country. He is already running the fire service management, but he does not interfere in the operational running of the fire service, in exactly the same way as PCCs do not have any effect on the operation of the police force. He is now looking at the ambulance service to see whether, for instance, the clinical commissioning groups would like to commission non-blue- light or blue-light vehicles from him. The vast majority of the ambulance services that are offered in this country, such as patient transport, do not use blue-light vehicles. It is hugely expensive, and it is often very highly qualified people doing those sorts of jobs. Where we are short of paramedics, we have to ensure they are doing front-line jobs, not administrative jobs or ordinary patient transport jobs.

I want to touch on that point in relation to the police forces, too. It is imperative that highly paid, highly skilled, hugely brave people—I was at Liverpool cathedral yesterday with David Phillips’s family and the thousands of people from across these islands and the world who came to pay tribute to him—are in operational positions, not behind a desk. In some forces, 10% of the warranted officers are not available because they are not fit for duty. How can that be right?

The hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) said policemen have been made redundant, but we have not made anybody redundant. They may have been declared medically unfit for duty, but we do not have the power to make officers redundant. We have got to ensure that as many people are in front-line roles as possible in the fire service, the ambulance service and the police service. They should be doing the jobs they trained for and joined the force to do, and they should be serving the community.

When we go in one direction away from danger, those people go in the opposite direction for us. We should pay tribute to them and ensure that they have the right kit and body armour. When I was in the fire service, we had cork helmets and serge jackets from the second world war. Now, they have the proper equipment. We had body armour that it was almost impossible for me to stand up in, and I am pretty hefty—not as big as them, but still pretty heavy. Now, they have lightweight breathing apparatus. We rightly praise their skills, but let us save money in the back offices, the bureaucracy and procurement before we dream of saying that we are not going to provide front-line officers, no matter which of those services it is.

This debate is a massively important part of the consultation. It is brilliant that we agree on most things, which is what this Chamber was designed for.