| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire): I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
Downham Fire Station
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. McLoughlin.]
Mrs. Bridget Prentice (Lewisham, East):
Before I begin--[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes):
Order. Before the hon. Lady continues, I ask those who are leaving to do so quietly, out of courtesy to her.
Mrs. Prentice:
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I hesitated--
It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. McLoughlin.]
Mrs. Prentice:
I should like to begin a debate on the fire service by paying tribute to the two firefighters, Kevin Lane and Steve Griffin, who lost their lives today in a tragic incident in Gwent. I am sure that the House would wish to send our condolences to their families and to the family of young Daniel Hartford, whom they tried so courageously to save.
I want to raise the question of the future of Downham fire station, in my constituency, and also to mention the possible closure of three other fire stations in London and the withdrawal of 22 further appliances. I believe that all that will have a serious effect on the quality of service that the London fire brigade can offer Londoners.
I am distressed that I should have to raise the issue at all in the House, because, when I was the Labour candidate for Lewisham, East in 1991, Downham fire station was threatened with closure. We fought alongside the local community group to keep it open--and we won. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) visited the station with me, as he was then the shadow Home Secretary.
I shall mention again one of the issues that we raised then--the definition of risk categories. That will not be the main thrust of my argument, which will be about keeping the fire station open and raising the standard spending assessments for the fire service in general, but I hope to show that, if those categories were redefined, it would support that main argument.
Downham fire station is in Reigate road, in the centre of the Downham estate, a large inter-war housing estate. Many of the people who live there have done so since the estate was built, and it has the largest percentage of pensioner population in Lewisham borough. More than30 per cent. of the borough's pensioner-only households live in Downham. In fact, one in four of Downham's residents is a pensioner, compared with 21 per cent. in the borough as a whole and a similar percentage in London as a whole, and compared with fewer than one in five in the country as a whole. Downham is also the area in the borough with the highest percentage of people with long-term illnesses.
There are seven primary schools in the immediate area, as well as two secondary schools and two schools for children with special educational needs. I am aware that
the fire authority takes the needs of schools into account, but Downham is in risk category C. That means that only one fire engine is required to arrive within eight to10 minutes. Had it been in category A, it could have expected two fire engines to arrive within five minutes and another within eight minutes.
Those are the Home Office minimum attendance standards. Fortunately, the London fire service tries to send two engines to category C incidents. In other words, it tries to provide cover above the Home Office minimum standards. Surely we do not want to reduce the standard of service provided to Londoners.
Mr. John Austin-Walker (Woolwich):
Is myhon. Friend aware of the research that has been carried out by Greater Manchester fire authority, which argues for a total review of risk categorisation for the very reason she gives--that category C areas like Downham are where the greatest number of deaths occur? Does she agree that attendance times based on those risk categories determine the allocation of resources? Is it not crazy that we seem to have a system that gives more priority to the protection of property than it does to the lives of Londoners?
Mrs. Prentice:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is absolutely right. The Greater Manchester survey is very important, and I want to come back to what the Audit Commission said later.
It is quite wrong that the categories are weighted in favour of protecting property rather than lives, and I have never accepted the sense of that. It is particularly unfair given that modern buildings now incorporate sophisticated fire prevention detection features, while estates such as Downham and others in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich(Mr. Austin-Walker) clearly do not. I have said, and I still hold to it, that something is not quite right when Members of Parliament here in the Palace of Westminster are in a higher-risk category than my elderly constituents in Downham.
I hope that the Minister will be aware that the Audit Commission document "In Line of Fire" has recommended that there should be a fundamental review of the levels of fire cover which would take into account the extent to which circumstances have changed and are changing. That is now a matter of some urgency.
Another point that my hon. Friend might have made is that the services that the fire service now provides are very different. It is not just about putting out fires: firemen are called to all sorts of emergencies and disasters. None of that is properly taken into account when the categories are assessed.
That is a matter of great concern, because all the evidence--as my hon. Friend has mentioned--is that it is in category C risk areas, such as the whole of Downham, where people are most at risk from injury or death from fire. Those people, and people who suffer socio-economic deprivation, are most at risk. It would seem logical that the risk categories should be weighted in their favour.I believe that it has now become a matter of the greatest urgency that they are protected, and protected well.
I should say, in fairness, that the London fire service has done its level best to do just that--it provides cover above the minimum standards set by the Home Office. But if the present funding arrangements are not changed,
it will cease to provide that level of service for Londoners. The leader of the fire authority in London, Councillor Tony Ritchie, said today that he believes the cuts are inevitable, but I do not want to believe that.
The closure of Downham fire station--along with those at Shooters Hill, Manchester Square and the Barbican--as well as the loss of pumps at 22 other stations, must inevitably mean a serious reduction in service. Downham fire station takes more than 1,000 calls a year, and those calls will have to be taken up by stations elsewhere. If that is compounded by the loss of engines around the capital, the system will not be able to cope. If the system cannot cope, people will die--it is as simple and as horrifying as that.
Councillor Ritchie also said that the effects would be disastrous, but I think that that may be an understatement. The people of Downham cannot understand why, having worked together as a community to save the fire station in 1991, they should now have their safety threatened again. They are especially angry that the station is threatened with closure when £852,317 has been spent on raising the station to a proper standard.
The chief fire officer, Brian Robinson, told me in a letter:
When did that happen? It happened over the past three years. Where is the sense in making such a commitment to the people of Downham if it is to be destroyed three years later?
I close by paying tribute to the people of Downham and the surrounding area, who have banded together again to protest publicly about the threat to their fire station. They have been out in the streets of Lewisham and Bromley during this cold winter, and collected more than 2,000 signatures from local people in the hope of persuading the Government that the fire station is essential. The feelings of people across the capital are such that the Fire Brigades Union has a petition with some 30,000 signatures protesting at the possible closure of the four stations.
I was in Bromley tonight speaking to a public meeting about the closures. People there asked me to ask the Minister whether he would be prepared to come back to the House, should the closures go ahead, and tell us the number of people who will have died or been seriously injured because the fire service could not reach them in the times that it now sets itself. This evening, in Ballamore road in Downham, there was a fire involving an elderly resident who might have been seriously injured but for the quickness and alertness of the local fire station.
9.59 pm
"as a result of the works that were carried out, the asbestos problems have been remedied, better working conditions and a modern, much larger appliance room have been provided and better security afforded from the provision of new appliance room doors."
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |