Coastguard Service

Sarah Wollaston Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Albert Owen]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising the issue of language. I wish to refer to the Welsh language and phonetics in relation to place names.

My first example is, fortunately, an empty canoe that was drifting of Morfa Nefyn in Gwynedd, which the coastguard had to spell phonetically as “mor fen evon” and which he wrote down as Morefen Effon. I shall give the Hansard reporters the correct pronunciations because I would not expect them to have that local knowledge, but the serious issue is that outside people would not be able to local Morfa Nefyn. A holidaymaker had failed to look after their canoe, which drifted off, but if the incident had been serious, and if someone had fallen out of it, they might have been lost for ever. I am making a serious point. I am grateful to the Minister for giving me the information, but the proposals would not have been adequate in such a situation and no team could have been tasked for that one.

In another incident at Cemaes in my constituency, in the north of Anglesey, a casualty had fallen down a 20-foot cliff. Like many parts of Wales and of the United Kingdom, we have some great coastal walks. According to the incident log, it took 13 minutes to make a decision, and the Holyhead coastguard was given the task when there was an initial response team located at Cemaes itself. That added to the time taken to respond. Following the request being made by the initial response team and Cemaes being paged, a staggering 48 minutes had passed since the initial call was made.

The terrain was so bad that a helicopter had to be scrambled for safe evacuation, and the irony is that the 22 Squadron search-and-rescue helicopter was just down the road on Anglesey. If there had been local knowledge, the scramble would have happened instantly and the victim’s injuries would have been less serious. My point about time factors is important. When RAF Valley was tasked to go to the incident, it was 68 minutes later.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but the problem is not always pronunciation. Sometimes there are problems with the sheer number of locations with the same name and spelling. We have 12 Cod rocks in my area, and someone local wrote to me recently about a serious incident when he was stranded off Cod rock.

[Albert Owen]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention, but I have moved on from pronunciation to actual mistakes.

My third and final example of problems with place names is extremely important. It involves a call to ambulance control about a person in the water at Tywyn in Meirionnydd in Gwynedd, but the Rhyl coastguard team was scrambled and departed to Towyn in Conwy. I hope that the hon. Lady is listening, because she has just intervened on this point. Towyn and Tywyn are 80 miles apart. It was realised that a mistake had been made, but it was some 16 minutes later that the air ambulance picked up the victim. That is serious and those examples are evidence.

The Minister may check that those incidents happened, because they were logged as errors. They are good examples of what might happen if outside areas were involved. In my area, the suggestion is that there might be a hub at Liverpool or Belfast, but they, let alone the marine operation centres at Aberdeen and on the Solent, could certainly not deal with such incidents. It would be impossible to have Welsh or Gaelic speakers in all those locations all the time. Local knowledge is extremely important and I make no apology for describing those incidents to the House.

Holyhead is the busiest seaport on the western seaboard and an extremely important location. It is a long way from Swansea, which would be the only day centre left open in Wales. I say to the Minister that coastal tourism must be factored into the matter, because many people go to the coast for their holidays and they need to know that coastguard stations are manned by people with local experience and local knowledge.

The flawed consultation document of 16 December was vague on leisure activities. Does the Minister have detailed information that was not in the consultation document about the different levels of leisure incident that have taken place? I know that some larger vessels have technical equipment—certainly, they are improving—but we must also consider walkers, sailors, climbers, hikers and people who go out on sea beds and drift away. We need that information, because a growing number of people are visiting our coastlines and they do not have the satellite equipment that is carried by, for example, many larger vessels.

There has also been growth in the number of incidents. The consultation document states that there has been a 25% increase in coastguard incidents off the United Kingdom coastline over the past five years alone. We have a growing industry that will be threatened by the mass closure of coastguard stations.

I understand that in 2009— [Interruption.] I am sorry, Mr Crausby, but I must refer to the MCA, who are smiling as I raise those issues. It is not helpful for coastguard officials to smile during this debate. I am not smiling, and I am sure the Minister would not be happy to see it. I am providing empirical evidence and giving my opinion on behalf of coastguard stations along the coast. I have experience of coastal communities and have worked at sea, so I do not like to see this happening and it is not fair. A degree of arrogance is coming from senior MCA managers towards local knowledge, and that is being echoed by somebody smiling at me while I am making pertinent points in the debate.

I support the upgrade and the modernisation of technology. That needs to happen and in the 21st century we must have more than two stations talking to each other; we need a fully integrated system. I back that idea and the review carried out by my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), when he was Minister responsible for shipping, on improving the conditions and wages of coastguards. That needs to be looked at, but it is not necessary to have a mass closure programme to improve the safety of our coastlines.

Even at this eleventh hour, I appeal to the Minister to scrap the proposals, await the Transport Committee report and listen to what people—whether Members of Parliament or members of the public—have been saying. We need a proper debate so that we can improve our coastguard services and have confidence in an improved, 21st-century technology. We must have the safest coastlines so that people can feel safe, whether they ply their trade at sea or use the sea for recreational purposes. I know that the Minister wants that outcome. It is certainly the outcome that I want, but there are better ways of achieving it than having this flawed consultation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

I will cut my speech short, as other hon. Members wish to contribute. We are not disputing the need for modernisation. We accept that the technology of Her Majesty’s coastguard is outdated, but the staff are not. I dispute whether we can reduce the number of staff from 491 to 248 without a significant loss of local knowledge.

Detailed local knowledge is important, as is recognised in the fact that coastguard officers take rigorous local knowledge tests on their area of responsibility every two years and must receive an 80% pass mark to continue carrying out their highly professional role. I dispute whether two maritime operation centres could carry out such a role. To illustrate, if a child on a lilo is in difficulty off Blackpool sands, is the maritime operation centre likely to send the rescue effort to the west coast or to my constituency, which has a small cove by that name?

As time is short, I ask the Minister to consider the alternative proposals from Brixham coastguard. When he met Brixham coastguard, he invited its members to propose an alternative. They have discussed it with at least 14 other coastguards, who have endorsed their proposals. Time is short, but I hope that he will agree to consider them in detail.

To summarise the proposals, Brixham coastguard recognises the possibility of reducing the number of stations, but it proposes reducing that number to 14 rather than adopting the current proposals. It disputes the rationale for having two central maritime operation centres, but it understands that it might be necessary to review how duty rosters are managed and to use more of an evidence base to consider the details of call-outs, for example. That would be much more rational.

Brixham coastguard feels that it is possible to improve rostering, reduce staff and rationalise the management of the coastguard. For example, it disputes the need for regional management and suggests that we need only one national management centre for the coastguards. Again, that would generate considerable savings.

A review of technology is essential, but Brixham coastguard suggests that we consider electronic charts. It currently buys its own. Electronic charts are used by the RNLI and shipping, but not by Her Majesty’s coastguard. The current system is outdated.

Brixham coastguard asks the Government to reconsider the replacement of radio equipment. There is a strong feeling in the coastguard that the system has not been adequately piloted. I have heard, for example, that it has been difficult to page rescue teams. I ask the Minister to reconsider and definitely to pilot any new system before it is rolled out.

The Minister knows what issues have arisen with fire and rescue centres, so I will not reiterate them—many Members have already made the point—but I will mention the fiasco of the NHS’s over-reliance on IT. More than £12 billion has been spent on a system that has not been fit for purpose. It is a question not of just throwing money at the problem, but of piloting systems and ensuring that they do the job required of them.

The Brixham proposals ask the Minister to consider an alternative method of linking stations. We all recognise that resilience is an issue within the coastguard, but will he consider extending stations’ areas of responsibility, so that they cover the stations to either side and are linked in triplets? That would increase resilience, rather than having centralised maritime operation centres, about which all Members who have spoken have expressed concern. That way, we can retain local knowledge and improve resilience. We feel that that, as well as considering staff rostering, would be a much better way forward.

I reiterate the strength of feeling nationally. Within my constituency, my local paper, the Herald Express, published an article on the issue and had 6,625 signatures and letters. That shows the strength of local feeling. I am sure that every Member will have seen similar responses in their constituencies. It is a national matter that we hope the Minister will take back to the drawing board and start again with a blank sheet of paper. The coastguards who do the job on the ground feel that they were not consulted and that experts or coastguard officials who had been away from operational responsibilities for some years were involved. I ask him to consider proposals from grass-roots coastguards with multi-centre support.