Portland Search and Rescue Helicopter

Norman Baker Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)]

In the seven or so minutes my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) has left me, I will try to respond to all his points and questions. I congratulate him on securing this debate and recognise his strong and genuine interest in this matter on behalf of his constituents and the wider public in Dorset and elsewhere.

I am responding today in place of my ministerial colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), who is in Brussels attending the Transport Council. Therefore, to answer one of the questions put to me, I have visited no search and rescue stations, as it is not part of my portfolio to do so. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has visited any, but I imagine that if he has not, he will want to do so, as he is very keen to discharge his responsibilities in a serious manner.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset recently met my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, and he referred in his speech to the letter that followed that meeting, issued on 17 December. I am pleased that he received a copy before this debate, because it deals with many of the points he has raised. As he will know, therefore, last year approximately 23,000 responses to incidents were co-ordinated by the coastguard service, many of which were responded to by the service and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Search and rescue helicopters responded to approximately 2,500 call-outs. I pay tribute to the brave men and women who often undertake challenging operations in treacherous conditions to save lives.

As I do not have much time, I will not bother the House with a run through of the history of the service. I should point out, however, that the oldest of the Sea Kings used in search and rescue entered service in the early 1970s, so the fleet is clearly nearing the end of its useful life. As a result, the military are withdrawing the Sea Kings and their personnel from search and rescue in 2016, and, as the most recently awarded coastguard helicopter contracts expire in 2017, the Department for Transport is running a procurement to put a new, modern, state-of-the-art contracted service in place for the whole country, to be managed by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

Helicopter technology has developed over the past few years, and we will put in place a new service that benefits from those technological improvements. The new service will therefore utilise a full fleet of state-of-the-art aircraft. These aircraft will provide greater reliability and faster flying times to many more locations than the current military helicopters. The Department is determined to provide at least the same level of service as now, but in the current financial climate we must also consider the most cost-effective way to achieve that objective. That has led us to decide to alter the basing arrangements for the service. The increased capability of modern aircraft will enable us to move from 12 bases to 10 and provide at least the same capability as today while reducing costs.

We chose to prescribe 10 bases with 98% availability. We could, according to procurement and other experts, have had a lower figure but we have settled on 10. That enabled us to ensure that the future service would be at least as good as the existing capability and not endanger life by risking an overall increase in response times. My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset referred to the statement from the Select Committee and, to be fair, read out the response. In linguistic terms, “having a concern that the withdrawal of bases will lead to” is not the same—I agree with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary—as saying that that will be the inevitable consequence of any change. Clearly, the impact on the capability of the service and the ability to deal with incidents has been foremost in the Department’s mind in considering the future configuration of the service.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way very briefly?

[Norman Baker]

If my hon. Friend does not mind, I will not, as I have been left seven minutes to try to respond sensibly to a debate. I am very sorry and will happily take any interventions in a subsequent debate—if that is technically possible—when I or my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will respond.

This is obviously a matter of concern in South Dorset, but the Department is confident, as our independently verified analysis shows, that the arrangements we are putting in place will provide a comprehensive level of coverage that will not compromise our ability to reach persons in distress. Furthermore, the future service will bring substantial overall benefits to the country as a whole. It will require helicopters to be airborne within 15 minutes of being tasked during the day and to have a minimum availability of 98%. Within 60 minutes, the fleet will be able to reach all areas in the UK where there is a very high or high risk of incidents occurring, and modelling shows that average flying times to incidents would improve by approximately 20% under the future arrangements.

Currently, approximately 70% of high and very high risk areas within the UK search and rescue region are reachable by helicopter within 30 minutes. Under the new contract approximately 85% of the same area—therefore more of it—would be reached within that time frame. I recognise that Portland is of particular significance for my hon. Friend and other colleagues on the Government Benches. I am advised that approximately 5,000 coastguard co-ordinated incidents are handled by the Brixham, Portland and Solent coastguards annually, but over the past three years, an average of 214 a year required assistance from the Portland helicopter—that is about four a week. Other bases operating Sea Kings have performed up to double the number of taskings in a year, so it is not unreasonable to expect that neighbouring bases with modern helicopters would be able to respond to future incidents that Portland might respond to today. Indeed, other bases already do so at night because, as my hon. Friend said in his opening remarks, Portland only operates during the day.

It is of course true that a helicopter, however modern, can only be in one place at a time, but there are three other bases in the region, all within reach of the areas the Portland base often flies to when responding to incidents. Of these other bases, the closest are Chivenor and Lee-on-the-Solent, just 20 minutes from Portland.

[Richard Drax]

Will the Minister give way for just one second?

[Norman Baker]

I will, as it is my hon. Friend’s debate.

[Richard Drax]

Will he answer just one question, because—dare I say it—I have heard all this before? Will he guarantee that someone will come down to Dorset to listen?

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Baker]

I was trying to respond to that point. His request has been clearly heard and I shall pass it on to my colleague the Under-Secretary and to the Secretary of State. It is their responsibility to deal with this issue and they will make a judgment, but he has made his point very firmly and I am sure that it has been heard by others in the House, too.

Let me try to deal with one more point before I run out of time. Over the past three years, Chivenor and Lee-on-the-Solent have been tasked at the same time as Portland on only five occasions. He cited the figure of 21, but I am advised by officials that the concurrent tasking figures to which he referred were from the Aeronautical Rescue Co-ordination Centre, the RAF tasking authority, and relate to three bases—Portland, Chivenor and Lee-on-the-Solent—not just to one. That might account for the difference in figures to which he referred—