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Mr. Clifton-Brown: I have been listening carefully to what my right hon. and learned Friend is saying about the Fire Service College. I am grateful to him for making the provision that he has made both for last year and for the forthcoming year, which will reassure the management of the college, and above all my constituents who work there. Will he give serious and urgent thought to how the operation can be restructured so that we can come to a positive conclusion as soon as possible, and my constituents can be reassured that their jobs are safe?
Mr. Howard: I can indeed reassure my hon. Friend that we are pursuing that question as a matter of urgency. I pay tribute to the conscientiousness with which my hon. Friend has pursued the subject on behalf of his constituents. He has taken a close interest in it for several years now, and we certainly take seriously all the representations that he makes on the subject.
However, as my hon. Friend said in an earlier intervention, the bottom line is that if the fire service wants the college to continue, as I certainly do, fire authorities must make use of its facilities by sending their staff to take advantage of the training on offer. That training is world class, and it is up to fire authorities to make the most of it.
The hon. Member for Blackburn referred to the scrutiny of the fire service that is taking place, but he did so in terms that serve only to confirm the Labour party's continuing dedication to regulation for regulation's sake. I make no apology whatever for the fact that in this as in all other areas, we are looking to see what scope there is for lightening the burdens that regulations place on business and on private citizens in this country. It would be reprehensible if we could not do that.
Mr. Straw:
Is it not even more reprehensible that included in the list for possible deregulation, or relaxation of the fire regulations, were the regulations applying to children's nightwear? Is that not utterly reprehensible?No amount of dogma should override the safety of children.
Mr. Howard:
Of course nothing should override the safety of children, but all such matters must be examined
For the past two years the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) has been at pains to stress that his party would not spend more. Yet week after week at that Dispatch Box Labour spokesmen carp and complain about alleged underfunding in Government services. Again and again they make promises that would cost the taxpayer more. We have heard that again today.
The hon. Member for Blackburn talked about a squeeze on spending, but he did not say what action he would take to increase spending, or by how much he would increase it. He admits that Labour would abolish capping, so that local authorities would be free to spend at will. I have no doubt that they would do so. The local authority associations have admitted that they would have spent£1 billion more this year if they could have done so.
To date compulsory competitive tendering has saved local authorities about £400 million. Yet new Labour would abolish it to keep its paymasters in the trade unions happy, and that £400 million would be denied to local authorities. The truth is that whatever Labour may say now, if it were ever to get into government it would spend more, less efficiently, and taxes would have to rise as a result.
As the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), who knows a bit about the Labour party, said:
Mr. David Clelland (Tyne Bridge):
The Home Secretary would have us believe that fire authorities throughout the country are deliberately cutting life-saving services, training, and health and safety when all they have to do is turn to a generous central Government who will provide all the resources necessary to avoid the cuts. Anyone who believes that must believe in the tooth fairy. Why are fire services screaming about the problems that they face if it is as simple as the right hon. and learned Gentleman says to resolve them?
It is an outrage that it has been left to the Labour party to bring the debate to the Floor of the House. On8 February, I asked the Leader of the House for a debate on our emergency services in Government time, and I drew attention to the Prime Minister's recent praise of firefighters during Prime Minister's questions, when he referred to their "selfless bravery". Tyne and Wear fire authority faces a £2.6 million shortfall in its budget because of Government policy. If that is not an example of hypocrisy--and of saying one thing, yet doing another--I do not know what is. The Leader of the House promised to consider my request, but I am still waiting for a reply. Had it not been for the Opposition, the nation would still be waiting for this debate.
The Government's vicious and unrelenting attacks on our public services have led to a looming crisis in the emergency services, which now affects ambulance services, police resources and the subject of the debate, the fire service. In March, representatives of the fire services in the north came to Parliament to impress on hon. Members the consequences of the shortfall in their 1996-97 budgets. Today, they are here again, in the hope that the Home Secretary will recognise the seriousness of the situation.
Last year, there was a £1.8 million cut in the Tyne and Wear fire authority's budget. At that time, there was outrage in the region. The local morning daily newspaper--The Journal--quoted local Members of Parliament who called on the Home Secretary to make sure that there were no further cuts in the budget, and said in an editorial on 13 January 1995:
Its sister paper, the Evening Chronicle, echoed those sentiments in an editorial on the same day. It said:
Those comments came after a tragedy in which lives were lost within yards of a previously closed fire station in Whitley Bay.
Did the Home Secretary listen? Perhaps. But if he did, he was not impressed by the views of local people about their local services. A petition opposing the cuts accumulated 8,500 signatures in two weeks and was presented to the Home Office by my hon. Friends the Members for Gateshead, East (Ms Quin) and for Sunderland, North (Mr. Etherington) and me. Again the Home Secretary was not impressed. With the Secretary of State for the Environment, the Home Secretary is to preside over even more draconian cuts this year of some £2.6 million.
What will be the consequences of the cuts? Some 92 front-line firefighter jobs--the very people whose "selfless bravery" was praised by the Prime Minister--will be lost. Dual staffing of control units and foam tenders will mean that appliances will no longer be immediately available when needed. Special support for emergency incidents will be reduced, and two fire appliances will be removed from the operational fleet--a loss of seven life-saving appliances in all.
That is the reward that the Prime Minister thinks appropriate for dedication and "selfless bravery". Only last week, two firefighters were injured in the course of
duty in Washington. During the past few weeks, seven people have been rescued by firefighters from house fires in Gateshead. They were saved by firefighters from two of the stations that will be downgraded as a result of the Government's policies.
When I protested to the Secretary of State for the Environment about the settlement that is causing the cuts, I was told that the Government standard spending assessment--a Mickey Mouse figure that Ministers use to make things appear to be what they are not and which does not take account of special services and the specialist equipment necessary to deal with road traffic accidents, people trapped in lifts and machinery and, as has been mentioned, payments to the pension fund--allowed the authority to operate within the minimum standards.
In the past five years, 550 people have been rescued from property fires in Tyne and Wear. The view of the chief fire officer is that, had the authority operated only the minimum standards--standards on which the Government rely and which have not been reviewed since 1985 or updated since 1955--many of those lives would not have been saved.
In addition, the constant erosion of resources to other fire brigades has meant that the continued existence of the Fire Service College--now a profit-pursuing agency--is under threat. Fire authorities cannot afford to send firefighters there for specialist training, and attendances are down by more than 50 per cent. As a result, specialist life-saving skills will be lost.
Even in-service local training is being cut because there are insufficient staff to cover for colleagues engaged in training. There have been cuts in school visits and visits to youth clubs, at which firefighters try to impress on youngsters the importance of fire safety and the dangers of hoax calls. Tyne and Wear was previously held up as a model to other authorities in this area of work.
"Labour now has a clear choice. It can be either the party of higher taxation and proud of it, or the party of higher taxes which it is ashamed to describe, afraid to admit and incapable of calculating with any accuracy. It cannot be the low taxation party."
"If Michael Howard does not wish to find the blood of more innocent fire victims on his hands, he will be advised to do precisely that.
What a pity that he didn't listen to the experts' warnings earlier. It must not take more deaths to bring him to his senses."
"The Home Secretary must not impose these cuts on the people of Tyne Wear."
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