Shaun Woodward
Main Page: Shaun Woodward (Labour - St Helens South and Whiston)(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Shaun Woodward (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on securing this debate. The more I listen to hon. Friends and colleagues, the more I feel that it is essential to say one thing to the Minister. He will have in front of him a brief prepared by his civil servants. As Ministers and former Ministers, we know that sometimes we are obliged to act as our civil servants advise, but we also know that we have discretion. I say to him at the outset that I hope that what he is hearing will lead him to go to his Secretary of State and use his power as a Minister to say, “I think we’ve got this wrong.”
As I listen to my hon. Friends, I have no doubt that the present arrangements under the funding formula have not only produced an inequitable position but will put lives at risk. People will die. I pray that that will not happen, but the Minister will know that if, as a result of the cuts next year or the year after, a number of people in any constituency die in an out-of-control fire in a school or business, an inquiry will be demanded. The inquiry will say that mistakes were made, and that the fundamental mistake was that when the cuts were introduced, not enough account was taken of the risks.
The Minister has a chance. He has some months to go to his Secretary of State and say, “I think we may have a problem with the formula we’ve been given.” It is his choice. He can do so. In Merseyside, we have already lost many firefighters. We used to have nearly 1,400; we are now down to 880, and shortly it will be 800. The coming cuts will drive us down to 650. Further cuts will be made to fire stations and to the number of engines. The question is whether it is safe to go further.
This year, there will be no pay increase, and there will be a 4% increase in the council tax precept. That means, at best, an £8.5 million cut to Merseyside. What that means in my constituency is that we will lose one fire station, almost certainly in Eccleston. Hon. Members may feel that we must all share the pain equally, but let me be clear about what the pain means. In 2004, the Merseyside fire service produced an important report in which it concluded that
“for all property fires we intend to get the first firefighting resources to the fire in 10 minutes or less”.
One of my hon. Friends has already referred to the Fire Brigades Union. I ask the Minister to reread its 2010 report, which discusses why response times matter. The report says that
“in the late stages a minute or two can make the difference between life and death”.
It also says:
“If a person has survived near to a fire for nine minutes, one minute later the fire could have increased in size by such an extent that they will be killed.”
I will tell the Minister what it will mean if the Eccleston station closes. The station serves 21,000 households, many of them disproportionately old. It serves 15 primary schools, three secondary schools and two colleges. Last year, the fire service attended 66 fires and 19 road traffic collisions. I asked the chief fire officer to give me his assessment of how long it would take for the two engines from St Helens to get to parts of Rainford, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Mr Watts). He said 15 minutes. That is five minutes more than what everybody knows is necessary to save lives. People will die.
Let us be clear. Numerous stations will close. All of that will cause problems, but when a Minister knows that the consequence of what he is doing will certainly be death, he has a huge responsibility to go to his Secretary of State and say, “If this material from the chief fire officer in Merseyside is correct—he is not a politician; I simply asked him for figures—we need to talk to him, sit down with the fire authority and look at the risks, because we are being told that people will die.” The Minister is a good man, and he has a choice. He can exercise his choice, accept the responsibilities of his office and say, “We have something wrong here, but we have time to change it.” It is his choice, and I very much hope that he has heard my hon. Friends’ remarks this morning, because the policy will cost lives.
Robert Neill
I understand my hon. Friend, but it is right to say that, in 2012-13, formula grant average per head in metropolitan fire and rescue services is £26, as against £19 per head in non-metropolitan areas. We should not think that there are no pressures and fire risks in non-metropolitan areas.
