Coastguard Service

Russell Brown Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) and her colleagues for securing this debate through the Back Bench Business Committee. I also thank Mr Philip Naylor of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency for listening to my pleas to include my area in the recent series of public meetings. My area has a coastline of some 200 miles with two ferry companies and a number of fishermen operating out of it, so it has a significant amount of maritime activity. It was good of Mr Naylor and his colleague, Bill McFadyen, to come to the maritime meeting last Thursday.

Before I run through a couple of important issues that were raised today, let me say that my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (David Cairns) is not in the Chamber, although he would have loved to be here. He has made a submission to the consultation, putting the case for retaining the Clyde maritime rescue co-ordination centre. In a document on the planned closure of MRCC Clyde, a shipping industry expert says:

“I honestly believe this is utter madness and will end in disaster.”

The document is first class and worthy of consideration, as is the case made by my hon. Friend.

If I repeat anything that has already been said this afternoon, it is because of its importance and significance. We have heard a great deal about local knowledge today, but local dialect is important, too. We have heard many dialects in this debate. Members who live 300 or 400 miles apart are beginning to understand some of them. It is important that we get this matter right. There are two fundamental issues in the entire process: minimising errors and chasing the clock. When we talk about minimising errors, we are referring to the initial information-gathering processes: the location identification, the casualty incident description, the response required, the assurance of effective communication between the casualty or first informants and the resources and co-ordinators. Minimising errors also relates to work-load distribution and the management of resources.

Chasing the clock is as it sounds. We all recognise that when HM coastguard receives notification of an incident, the problem or the disaster has already taken place. Given that the incident is being reported after the event, action must be taken as quickly as possible. The race against time starts at the exact time of receiving the call. The time difference between call reception and incident commencement can be anything from a few minutes to a matter of hours. Irrespective of the amount of time that has passed, the search and rescue response is already lagging behind.

The remote handling of search and rescue co-ordination from the maritime analysis and operations centre increases the risk of error as a result of the many additional assumptions that the new system would employ in trying to establish area, nature and appropriate response from the initial call. That leads to the insertion of time into the process, which equates to the potential loss of life. It is about that information gathering and handling that information as appropriately and as quickly as possible

The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth mentioned the table-top exercise that took place last year. If we proceed with this process, or any other process—I recognise what my hon. Friend the Chair of the Transport Committee had to say on this matter—all the information that goes through that exercise on its own must be what people will identify as being good, decent information. From what I can gather, that table-top exercise did not provide the full information that is required. I make a plea to the Minister: before we process any of this any further, that table-top exercise needs to be handled in real time. I accept that the exercise was based on information that came in about incidents on a specific day in summer 2006, but all that was done was a redistribution of each and every one of those incidents on to a map. There was no real-time activity, which would determine how individual sites might handle those cases as they came in.

I am not in denial—I recognise that this process is about making financial savings. It must be recognised that the process began back in 2007. There was an industrial dispute, and off the back of that dispute there was an agreement between the two parties involved: the management and the unions. I have not come across a single union member who is opposed to change in the process, provided that it delivers a service with which they are comfortable, and which they believe they can deliver to help to save lives. That is their duty; that is what they see as being paramount. So, even if there is little that the Minister can do, I hope that he will go back to that table-top exercise and ask for at least part of it to be conducted in real time. I will say nothing more than that because I want other colleagues to be able to make their contributions to the debate.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Penning]

I take the point that my hon. Friend is making. I pay tribute to the family and personal experience of the coastguard and the sea that she has gained over many years. She understands the sea better than anyone else in this Chamber. From my emergency service background—the shadow Minister also has such a background—I know that such a situation occurs in the other emergency services. It is not a be-all and end-all. It is not a case of this being the only method of doing it. I am not saying that at all. Only the other day, I was in Shetland. The communications there go down regularly when we have to send volunteers out—whether it is the BT line, the broadband line or our own communication systems. That happens around the country. I am not saying that if a new system is brought in, it will take away any of that local knowledge. It will augment the current situation as we go forward.

May I touch on what we have today? Many hon. Members and hon. Friends have said that we could leave the service roughly where it is, but we cannot. The coastguard service is telling me that it cannot—from the most junior person on the watch through to the volunteers and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution at the top. That organisation does not want to be dragged into the politics of the matter, and I can understand why. However, to use the modern slang, it is also saying to us, “Is the service fit for purpose in the 21st century? No, it is not.”

It is interesting to read about the twinning system—an issue that I raised when I was in Bangor. The arguments that were put to me in Northern Ireland on resilience, the special circumstances and how they liaise with the Republic of Ireland—particularly with regard to helicopters—were very powerful. I thank the Republic and pay tribute to it. We get helicopters for free and we help them in other parts of the coast on other matters. Of course, there is the issue of what happens if communications go down. What happens if a station goes down? Will the Clyde back us up? There is no logic to the idea that all that local knowledge is transferred instantly to the Clyde—it cannot be. I accept that, as we look at different stations around the country, but the present twinning system does not work properly. If we look at where stations are around the country at the moment, they are not set up with a proper regional structure, as we would probably expect them to be. There are some stations that are very close, and some that are very far apart. The Humber station, which was mentioned by two hon. Members, covers 300 miles of moving sands. How on earth could it transfer in a twinning system? How does that work? Where is the resilience there? We need to look at that.

We need to look, as I have said in previous debates, at a service which offers a basic starting salary of £13,500 per year. How would anybody survive on that in some parts of the country? The answer is with more than one job, just like when I was first in the fire services—I am sure that the situation is not dissimilar for firemen today. We have to offer coastguards a salary that is suitable for the 21st century and give them the skills and training, so that they can have a career progression, too. It is very much dead man’s shoes, looking at the age profile. There are very young people and people coming towards the end of their careers, but the middle section is very difficult indeed.

The whole country relies on the coastguard, whether on holiday, in the shipping industry, in their community or where they work. Is this a done deal? No, it is not. Will we come out of the end of this process with a different set of conclusions and a different modernisation programme from when we started? I am sure that we will—I am convinced of it.

[Mr Russell Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I am not going to give way, because I am really restricted on time. I apologise. I am not summing up—I have to hand over to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth.

Is this just about money? Yes, there are savings required, but if this was just about money, it would not be £4.8 million a year. As hon. Members have said, it is a tiny amount of money. Will there be savings throughout the MCA? Yes, at the top and at the bottom. In my own Department, every single member of staff has had to reapply for their own job. That is the sort of situation that we are working under. Did I come into politics to do that? No, of course I did not, but we have to be realistic about the money and the income that we have to work with.

I welcome the Transport Committee’s commitment to its own report. I welcome the fact that the Chair of that Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), has sat through the debate and been part of the debate. I say to her that I will not, under any circumstances—and neither will the Secretary of State—come to any conclusions until her Committee has reported. I promise and I make that commitment. If I can—it is difficult, because bureaucracy is involved—I will try and release to the Committee as much data that I have received, and which has been submitted to us, as I can, particularly the detailed submissions about reconfiguration. I will not release the submissions that are nasty about me, of course. If I can release that data I will do so. If I cannot do that, I might write back to those people who have made submissions and suggest that they send them to the Transport Committee. It is imperative that the Committee see that some of the submissions from the coastguard do not say, “We all should stay open; everything is perfectly fine”. They actually say, as I have alluded to, nine stations or 10 stations. There are others that say there should be more or less.

I think that this is the start of something new in government. Consultation had to start somewhere. I inherited a situation; we started somewhere. We listen. We come out with a service that is fit for purpose in the 21st century. Not everybody is going to be happy, because I have got 19 stations and there is a proposal for 10 closures or nine closures. Clearly, not everybody will be happy. There is, however, a sense in the coastguard service, without any doubt if people are really honest, that we have to move on from where we are now. We have to get away from the disputes that have been going on for so many years, which are divisive, and have a service that has the resilience, the modernisation and the service to the front line, which is being left untouched and will be enhanced.

Finally, channel 16, under international regulations, will be monitored in the stations. That will not be on headphones, but over loudspeakers. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax). I should have come back to him on that. On that note—I am sad that I have to cut my comments short, due to procedure—I will hand over to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth. This is a proper consultation. No deal is done. I have visited many stations and have one more to go. I cannot visit all 19—that is not possible. If hon. Members look at the political make-up of the stations that I have visited, that has nothing to do with party politics—it is to do with my job.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

Like everyone else, I am reassured by what the Minister has said: saving lives is in his blood; he will now make all the information available to the Transport Committee; no decisions will be made until the Transport Committee has published its findings; and there will be plenty of opportunities between now and then for further representations by coastguards, without fear. That was a very important point. Coastguards are frightened, and I think that there are volunteers in the RNLI and other organisations who are frightened to come forward. They can do so with the absolute guarantee that they have been given by the Minister today.

[Mr Russell Brown]

As the Minister would not allow me to intervene, may I, through the hon. Lady, ask if the table-top exercise will be undertaken again, but in real time to give a real indication of how that might develop on the day?

[Sarah Newton]

I am sure that the Minister has heard that. I had better let other hon. Members intervene.