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Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cirencester and Tewkesbury): The hon. Gentleman is being very disingenuous. First, I hope that he will not talk down the future of the Fire Service College, because we want it to go out into the world and secure the maximum amount of business. Secondly, he knows full well that I have been working extremely hard, with the greatest possible co-operation from the Minister of State, Baroness Blatch, and the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Kirkhope). They are giving the matter a good deal of attention, and I believe that they have concrete proposals to restructure the trading fund so that the loss of £2.5 million can be taken into account.
In a letter to me, Lady Blatch wrote:
"You are right to believe that we are at one in our determination to ensure that the college has a secure future."
8 May 1996 : Column 303
We want the college to go out into the world and have a good future--and, what is more, we want to encourage all fire authorities to use it or lose it.
Mr. Straw:
The hon. Gentleman raised an interesting point in his closing remark--use it or lose it. For many years, there was no question mark over the future of the college. It was used by the fire authorities, and was centrally funded by the Home Office. It took the incompetence and dogma of the present Administration, in 1992, to set it on a financial basis on which it could not possibly make a profit.
Mr. Straw:
I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman. I am now responding to what he said. As for talking down the college, let me remind the hon. Gentleman that on 13 March 1996 he devoted an entire speech to talking down its future because he was so worried about it.
Mr. Straw:
This is a short debate. Nothing that has been said today or in the past by Ministers has categorically guaranteed the future of the college. Tonight, we need to hear the Secretary of State--I believe that this is the first time that he has spoken on the fire service--make a clear and categorical statement guaranteeing the future of that college.
Mr. Clifton-Brown:
The hon. Gentleman may be misleading the House. The Home Office funds the£2.5 million loss, so there is no loss to the fire college. It is funded by central Government.
Mr. Straw:
I was paraphrasing accurately the point that the hon. Gentleman made in the debate on 13 March. He went through various options for funding the college and said that, if they did not work, the college should revert to the Home Office vote. That is exactly the position that we take.
Dogma has driven policy on the Fire Service College and pure dogma lies behind moves by the Government, especially the Deputy Prime Minister, to reduce fire safety by cutting fire regulation. Since the Government's so-called deregulation initiative, all sorts of hares have started running--on foam-filled furniture, children's nightwear and houses of multiple occupation--about which fire regulations might be watered down.
Thankfully, not even those Ministers have been rash enough to implement such change this side of the election. The annual report tells us that the Government's preliminary decisions on deregulation have been referred to the deregulation task force. Perhaps the Secretary of State will tell us when the task force's final conclusions on watering down fire regulations will be announced.I hope that he understands that the interminable process of deregulation, which has been led not by the need to protect the public better against the risk of fire, but by some weird ideology, has been very damaging to those who serve in the fire brigades and those who rely on them.
In February last year, the Audit Commission published a special report on the fire service, "In the Line of Fire". It raised a number of important issues on which I hope
we may receive a considered response this evening from Ministers. It suggested that about £67 million could be saved by various changes in working practices and management structures. Coming from a body of the commission's reputation, the recommendations should receive the greatest attention from fire authorities, and are receiving that attention. Sensible improvements in the efficiency of all public services should always merit our support.
Two things need to be said about that £67 million. First, contrary to the impression given by the Secretary of State in the House on 14 March, for example, a saving of£67 million is not achievable in a single year. The report provides no alibi for the Secretary of State's failure to secure a reasonable settlement for the fire service in the last spending round. The Audit Commission has repeatedly made it clear that such savings are bound to take three or four years to come to fruition.
Secondly, changes in structure and working practices are most readily achieved not by hectoring, but by commitment and co-operation, which is scarcely a hallmark of this Administration. The local authority associations have made that point in telling terms. Their fire service expenditure working group said:
The Audit Commission's report was also significant for the warnings that it gave the Government and fire authorities about future liabilities from the fire service pension scheme. Since that scheme is not funded, the commission estimated that so great are the prospective liabilities, fire pensions alone could absorb a quarter of fire service expenditure by 2007. It described that prospect as a "pensions time bomb". That is plainly not sustainable, and I hope that we shall hear about that from the Secretary of State. The annual report said that there would be a consultative document on that scheme and the pensions time bomb. Will the Secretary of State let the House know when we may expect to see that?
The most important section of the Audit Commission's report was that concerned with the upward trend in the number of serious fires and the increase in non-fatal injuries. Paragraph 15 said:
It said that the challenge in relation to fires and serious fires and the growth in non-fatal but serious injuries "should not be underestimated". The report continued:
The Home Office has to some extent recognised the importance of those recommendations, as we can see in the annual report, but just as targets have been adopted with success to cut road deaths and injuries, the time has come for a clear, nationally led strategy to achieve the same results in fire safety.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Michael Howard):
I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
The danger to the public from fire is devastating. I know that the hearts of everyone in the House go out to the surviving members of the Good family, whose four young children died in a fire in Southampton on Sunday. We look to the fire service to be our front line of defence against the threat from fire. The tragic events of recent months have reminded us yet again of the special risks that firefighters routinely face. We recall the courage of Fleur Lombard, who died fighting a blaze in Avon, and of Steven Griffin and Kevin Lane, retained firefighters who died attempting to rescue a child from a domestic fire in Gwent.
It goes without saying that the Government, like the general public, have a very high regard for the fire service and the professionalism and bravery that we associate almost as a matter of course with the men and women in it. We have seen the fire service at its best in responding magnificently to major disasters such as those at King's Cross and the docklands. Our firefighters do an excellent job of which they can feel justifiably proud.
"The apparent lack of recognition or value created to justify the scarceness of resources, whilst responding to tighter deadlines and increasingly complex issues is taking its toll on service morale."
"The high level of public satisfaction with the fire service tends to disguise the fact that the nation has failed to respond as effectively as it could to the challenge of fire."
"It is possible to reverse such trends, as experience from abroad illustrates . . . there may be benefits in reviewing the national arrangements which circumscribe the operations of the fire service and place emphasis on fighting rather than preventing fires. Compared with some other countries, England and Wales could do better in their overall response to fire."
'recognises that fire brigades in the United Kingdom provide an unfailingly effective service to the public, pays tribute to the bravery of fire-fighters, who risk their lives in difficult and often dangerous circumstances, and welcomes the Government's continuing support for the fire service.'.
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