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8.33 pm
Mr. Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Canning Town): I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing time for this important debate. I am grateful to him and to my hon. Friend the Minister for allowing me the opportunity to contribute.
I should say immediately that I was a member of the London fire brigade for some 23 years and an elected official of the Fire Brigades Union. I am now an out-of-trade member of that trade union.
I shall be brief, because the hon. Gentleman dealt comprehensively with the issues confronting the London fire service. But I want to focus on the key problems which, as the hon. Gentleman said, are primarily financial. As he said, they include the standard spending assessment, the resources allocated to the London fire brigade, and, in particular, the question of pensions.
With regard to the SSA, the amount of money afforded by Government to the London fire and civil defence authority has, as the hon. Gentleman said, dwindled in recent years. Some awards have been below inflation and some have certainly not met the service's needs, and that at a time when there is a clear rising trend in the number of calls received by the service.
The Fire Services Act 1947 takes no real account of the special services which these days the fire service is called upon to provide. It was drafted in the light of the brigade's ability to respond to fires. These days, a third of calls attended by the fire service are for special services, which range from the King's Cross disaster, to road traffic accidents, rail crashes, chemical incidents and humanitarian services. Under the Fire Services Act, the funding formula takes no account of the brigade's responsibility to carry out those tasks. The increasing pressure on the service has led to a growing belief that they should be taken into account and that the funding formula should be revisited.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to the intensified pressure on the pension scheme. As the hon. Member for Twickenham said, the previous Government were aware of the growing pressure resulting from the structure of the pension scheme. In the debate on the Queen's Speech in 1994, my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Mr. Austin) said:
As the hon. Member for Twickenham said, firefighters contribute 11 per cent. of their salaries towards the pension scheme, but it is a non-funded scheme, which means that payments to retired firefighters come out of the revenue account. In the 1970s, firefighters were required to work 56 hours. In 1974, that was reduced to a 48-hour week and in 1979, to the present 42-hour week. As a result, there were some 2,000 new members of the fire service in London alone; their pensions are coming up for payment. The pressure which has been building up for some years will intensify during the next five years, and the situation will obviously deteriorate.
It is generally accepted that, as well as the increased number of calls to which the service responds, there is an increase in the diversity of calls that they have to attend. No one questions firefighters' professionalism and bravery, nor the public esteem in which the fire service is held. I understand from my dealings with the London fire and civil defence authority that every attempt is being made to address the financial crisis which it faces. Income
generation, efficiency measures, cuts over a number of years and private finance initiatives are all being considered as a way of mitigating a difficult situation in which the service finds itself.
Notwithstanding that, a number of London Members are obviously concerned and would jointly request an urgent examination of the funding formula to avoid the immediate crisis. A searching examination should be carried out to find medium and long-term solutions to the problems confronting a service that is regarded as a world leader. Unfortunately, it is in danger of losing that position.
Mr. Barry Gardiner (Brent, North):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing this debate, and on the measured and responsible way in which he presented the issues.
The hon. Gentleman said that it comes down to resources and money, which is the subtext of the debate. Money may be the subtext, but an injection of cash cannot, in itself, resolve the problem, and that was acknowledged. The crisis in the London fire and civil defence authority is due to the fact that there are more fire service pensioners than firefighters in London. Critically, the pension scheme is not a fully funded scheme, but is run on a pay-as-you-go basis.
As the hon. Gentleman said, the complete absence of Conservative Members from the debate is significant. In the past 18 years, they had the opportunity in government to tackle the issues that were constantly raised about the impending problem in the London fire service, but they did not do so. They did not try to reform the pension scheme to take account of the 1970s bulge, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Mr. Fitzpatrick) alluded, which occurred when the fire service expanded its numbers, and thus the number of future pensioners. They did nothing, except to lay off 1,000 firefighters. That is the extent of the reduction in the number of firefighters in London under the Conservative Administration since 1985. It is shameful that the Conservative Benches are entirely empty.
Under the scheme, the authority presently has to make available 20 per cent. of its annual budget to pay its contribution towards current pensions. That shows the incoherence and unpredictability of such a pay-as-you-go scheme. There is no way of taking account of the vagaries of early retirement, perhaps through disability in service, or the increased longevity, thank goodness, of firefighters who have retired from the service. Incidentally, firefighters retire at age 50. Benefits under the scheme accrue rapidly, but firefighters start pension life at a much earlier age than is usual.
My hon. Friend referred to the 1947 Act, under which the early years of the pension scheme benefited by being on a pay-as-you-go basis. The number of pensioners at that time was small, so more of the revenue budget could be used for the needs of the service. In the early days,
the problems were not apparent, but they were predictable. The Government must now tackle those problems for the long term.
Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon):
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing this Adjournment debate.
I agree with everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Mr. Fitzpatrick) said. I was the legal adviser to the Fire Brigades Union for many years. Not having to do it myself, I appreciate how difficult and demanding is the job of a firefighter. The quality of the service given by the London fire brigade to the people of London and the bravery shown by its firefighters are second to none throughout the world. Firefighters deserve every penny that the pay formula, which has preserved industrial peace in the fire service since 1978, has provided this year.
There is a long-term need to update the 1947 Act. My hon. Friend referred to the problem of special service calls not being reflected in the funding formula for the fire service. Last year, under the previous Government, we lost one of the pumps at Hendon fire station in my constituency. Under the fire risk formula as it then was--there were arguments about how it should be interpreted--we were forced to accept that decision. However, if the special service risks in the area had been taken into account, I do not think that the removal of that pump could have been justified.
The A41, the A1, the M1 and the north circular road all go through my constituency; a major expansion at Brent Cross is about to take place; we have the main railway line up to the west coast; and we had the IRA bomb at Staples Corner several years ago. We could have special service calls to rail crashes, car crashes and bomb incidents, but that is not reflected in the fire service allocation, so we lost our pump at Hendon. Because the 1947 Act is out of date, the neighbouring constituency of Finchley lost its emergency tender. This year is the golden jubilee of that Act, and I hope that the Minister will give us an assurance that it will be examined in the long term.
"I hope that we might get an assurance from the Government that, when the standard spending assessments are announced in the next couple of weeks, they will give some guarantee on disregards in the SSAs with regard to the rising costs of pensions within the fire and civil defence authorities. Unless that is done, there is a real prospect that we face dramatic cuts in the cover provided by the fire and civil defence authority in the next financial year."--[Official Report,18 November 1994; Vol. 250, c. 293.]
As has been said today, that pressure is intensifying.
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