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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Only one point should be raised by way of intervention.
Ms Hodge: The two matters are linked.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Hon. Members should recognise that it is a tradition of the House that interventions deal with a single subject.
Mr. Tracey: As she also represents a London constituency, the hon. Member for Barking (Ms Hodge) may wish to catch your eye to speak in the debate,Mr. Deputy Speaker.
We are talking about £27 million in reserves for the London fire authority. I understand that the Birmingham fire authority has only £2 million in reserve, so reserves of £27 million are far and away above the level required. The hon. Lady has led a local authority--we all have views about it--and she must recognise that £27 million is an enormous sum. At the beginning of the year, the director of finance for the London fire authority said that the reserves were too high and should be reduced. He revealed also that the fire authority underspent by £3.7 million last year. What possible reason could it have for threatening to close four fire stations and reduce the number of fire appliances--two of them in Twickenham and in Wimbledon close to my constituency? Naturally, I deplore such plans.
A remarkable thing then occurred. Hon. Members and the London local authorities complained about the plans previewed by the London fire authority. Quite mysteriously, about a week before it was to meet to decide on the budget cuts, we heard that a Labour party caucus meeting somewhere in London had decided that the four fire stations would not close and that several fire appliances would not be removed. Councillor Ritchie, the Labour leader of the predominantly Labour-controlled London fire authority, then announced to the nation what had been decided in the Labour party caucus meeting. That is a disgraceful way to run the fire service in the capital.
We have heard much about the level of protection needed for the millennium celebrations in Greenwich and the protection necessary for the great stores, Government buildings and our built heritage in central London. Fire safety has been undermined by the disgraceful actions of the fire authority which, after scaremongering and politicking, reached a decision in a Labour party caucus meeting and announced its decision via a press release.
Mr. Nirj Joseph Deva (Brentford and Isleworth):
Is my hon. Friend aware that 22 Labour councillors, six Conservatives and one independent serve on the London fire and civil defence authority? In addition to the funding that the authority has put aside and its underspend, the Audit Commission conducted an inquiry and found that the authority's training methods and its expenditure were above the level requested by the commission. As a consequence, is my hon. Friend aware--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I have made it clear that interventions should comprise a short question and not a speech.
Mr. Tracey:
I am well aware of the situation that my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mr. Deva) describes. He has been at the forefront of the campaign against the disgraceful cuts which would have reduced the number of appliances in his area.
I shall draw my remarks to a close as I have highlighted my anger upon hearing about the nonsensical actions of the predominantly Labour-controlled fire authority. Its behaviour has mirrored that of Labour local authorities around the country. There is no basis for the authority's assertions. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Congdon) has tried for three weeks to get details from the fire authority about why it suddenly reversed its decision to close four fire stations and reduce the number of fire appliances. Perhaps he will catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and explain the situation.
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich):
Shortly after I became a Member of Parliament, I was holidaying in the former Yugoslavia when a charter plane crashed. Many British people died in the accident and those who survived suffered appalling burns. I spent four
Therefore, when I learnt that the Cheshire chief fire officer was saying, in an extremely responsible way, that the fire service was now at a considerable risk of not being able to provide adequate and proper fire cover, I took it seriously. I took this issue seriously--not like some hon. Members who seem to think that it is a suitable subject for squalid party political arguments--because there are men and women in the fire service who daily risk their lives and considerable injury. They have a strong belief that our constituents are entitled to high-quality fire services and protection.
It is important to take seriously what the Cheshire chief fire officer is saying. He has looked at the cuts--not one set of cuts but a series of cuts across the budgets over a number of years--and has concluded on behalf of the Cheshire fire service, and many fire services across the country, that one can no longer seriously talk about providing the level of cover that is essential. He has not said that the fire services cannot respond to an external audit that says that there should be some efficiency savings and a rearrangement in the way in which they work.
The chief fire officer has said something more fundamental: that we have now undergone a series of changes, we are still undergoing a series of changes and we are no longer able to provide the level of care that the general public are entitled to assume we will provide. That is the issue--it is an argument about not the political views of individual fire committees, but whether the House of Commons will face up to the fact that we are not allowing sufficient money for the fire service to do the job for which it is retained. That seems to me to be so essential and simple, and I cannot see why it is difficult for hon. Members to understand it.
The Cheshire chief fire officer said--I am talking about Cheshire, but what I am saying applies to many brigades:
He continued:
He then details the figures, which prove time and time again that the fire service is doing a good job. The Cheshire chief fire officer has also given me the effects of the underfunding over these years, including capital costs. It has meant a cut in operational officer cover, a reduction in managerial posts, changes to staffing practices at shift changeover and bank holidays, a reduction in rescue tender provision, a rationalisation of special appliance provision--I could go on. In capital costs, it means that equipment is not being replaced, that modern equipment that is available to save lives is not being supplied and that there are real problems in finding the money for core training for officers.
I shall briefly say what I think of a Government who allow an important service like the Fire Service college to be treated in that shabby way. The Government have seen
fit to write off the debts of innumerable companies when they want to sell them on the private market. The Government have no difficulty whatsoever in writing off billions of pounds of taxpayers' money, but when the fire college was set up as an independent agency, it was lumbered with considerable debts and was told to recover them from the fees that it charges.
The result is terribly simple and plain: throughout the United Kingdom, fire services are not sending the same number of fire officers for core training, which their chief fire officers believe to be essential, because of the cost. Such training is down by 25 per cent. Fire officers in need of proper training are not receiving it, not because no one accepts the need for it but because they cannot pay for it. That is a simple formula. What will it lead to? It will lead to death, to injury and to lifetimes of unhappiness for our constituents who are caught in major fires. It is unacceptable for a so-called civilised country to have got its priorities so badly wrong.
"Our study indicates that the Brigade is very efficient. The Brigade has been required to make significant savings in each of the last three years, in 1994/95 these amounted to £195,000".
"One of the best indicators of the overall cost effectiveness of a brigade is its gross cost per pump. Other statistics may provide an indication of the efficiency . . . but the gross cost per pump, when compared to benchmark figures, gives an indication of the likely savings".
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