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12.21 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): I join everybody else in congratulating the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing his second debate on the fire service in London, which has provided us with a useful opportunity. I understand the importance that all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate attach, on behalf of their constituents, to the quality of the fire service in our capital city. As the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) and several of my hon. Friends have conceded, we have every reason to be proud of our fire service. It is a great privilege for me to work with a service that is highly regarded by the public, and which achieves consistently high standards of performance--often, as many hon. Members have said, in very difficult and hazardous circumstances.
In the time available, I doubt whether I shall be able to cover all the points that have been raised. I undertake to reflect on Hansard and to write to hon. Members in more detail and at greater length on any points that I do not cover. My comments similarly apply to the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway).
Last week, the Audit Commission published its timely report on performance indicators for local authorities, which showed that, in 1997-98, the London fire brigade met the national standards for responding to fire calls on 91.5 per cent. of occasions. That is its best performance in the four years that the Audit Commission has been collecting such figures. The figure was slightly below the national average of 96 per cent., but, given the more problematic circumstances of a capital city, several of which have been described, it is a very creditable performance. My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Dr. Vis) made some very trenchant criticism of the London fire and civil defence authority, and the brigade and its leadership. He should take time to read the report. Perhaps then he would take a slightly different view.
I should like to say a word about pensions, which have been mentioned quite extensively. We of course recognise the implications of increasing pension expenditure for the overall settlement and for changes to the fire standard spending assessment distribution formula for 1999-2000. Although it has not been said in this debate, it has occasionally been reported as fact that it is not true that we take no account of pensions in the formula. The matter is given weight; we consider it important. We are considering responses to the pensions review in consultation with colleagues, and over coming months plan to publish our proposals for the future of the firefighters pension scheme.
We are keen to adopt a consultative approach; we shall be consulting all interested bodies as the proposals are developed. I say to hon. Members who have said that there has been very little action, even though the problem has been apparent for many years, that we are moving towards some solution. It may not be ideal or short term,
but we recognise the need to consult. Points and suggestions made in the debate will certainly be taken into account.
We published the findings of the review that the previous Government set up. I do not want to be too partisan, because nobody else has been, but it was notable that the previous Government ensured that it was not published before the general election. They left us to publish it. We did so, and are consulting on it. I wanted to make that point because it is important.
The fire authority for London, like all fire authorities in England and Wales, will of course be subject to the proposed duty of best value, which is set out in the Local Government Bill. That places an explicit duty on authorities to secure continuous improvement of the delivery of their services. The focus is on quality and efficiency. The driving force will be the use of performance indicators, standards and targets, and most important, the use of various ways of consulting the public. The importance of that has emerged in several ways.
The hon. Member for Ryedale raised the question of efficiency. There is continual scope, not just in London but elsewhere, for greater efficiency in the fire service. I welcome the fact that the leader of the London fire authority, Councillor Ritchie, is a member of the forum that is considering best value for the fire service. So there is scope for best value and greater efficiency in London.
I should point out, although it is slightly repetitive to do so, that, following the comprehensive spending review in July, we announced that authorities in England would receive an overall increase in the fire service element of the total standard spending of £143.6 million--an average increase of 3.5 per cent. That includes £47.1 million--or 3.6 per cent.--for 1999-2000. Details of the settlement were published on Monday, and will be debated in due course. I am particularly proud that London has done very well over the past two years, as the hon. Member for Twickenham acknowledged.
I should say a brief word about applications concerning fire cover arrangements--several have been referred to--that the London fire authority may decide to make that would affect the constituents of several hon. Members present. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will grant approval for such applications only if he is satisfied that the proposals have been widely publicised; that representations have been considered by the fire authority and, most important, that Her Majesty's fire service inspectorate advises that national standards for fire cover will be maintained. We take those responsibilities very seriously. Before we agree to any such proposal, we must be convinced that it does not represent a risk to the public.
This has been a good debate. Unfortunately, time has not allowed me to acknowledge and respond to every point. Although many items that arose under the previous Government still need to be discussed before the fire service is absolutely as we would want it to be, we aim to maintain the mood of co-operation in local government and other interests. Between us, we can start to move on and to modernise an already good fire service, to take us into the next century--
Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Kelvin):
Britain's relations with the Muslim world are unarguably at a difficult and testing juncture, and in this debate I want to probe the Government's mind on the difficulties and tests that face them in relation to the strategically placed, vast and growing world of Islam, with its more than 1,000 million adherents across many continents--including, of course, perhaps 2 million citizens of our own country.
Inasmuch as my speech, limited as it is to 15 minutes, will be something of a Cook's tour, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will at least heed the general direction of my concerns, some of which are well enough known to him, but not to others.
I want to start at home, with what I believe will be a major headache for the Government in the weeks to come--the trial of a large number of British nationals in Yemen. They are charged with forming an Islamic extremist terror group with intent on creating mayhem in that poor Arab country, which has already suffered much from the near decade-long crisis in the Gulf. Public opinion in the Arab world is simply dumbfounded at the allegation that, rather like selling coals to Newcastle or sand to Arabia, Great Britain may now be exporting such terrorism to Muslim countries.
I do not want to add to the difficulties of the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett), but I must tell him that I do not like the look of Finsbury's Park's "ayatollah", Mr. Abu Hamza al-Masri--and I do not, of course, mean his hooks for hands or his glass eye. I do not suppose that I am alone in that opinion, but the difference is that I never liked the look of the rag-bag of obscurantists who constituted the so-called "holy warriors" of the Afghan jihad. But of course these elements, who have now razed Afghanistan to stone age ruins, and who have grievously affected the economic, social and political life of neighbouring Pakistan, were conceived, financed, armed, trained and politically supported, not only by the United States of America, but, it is clear only now, by previous British Administrations. So we and our allies played Dr. Frankenstein in the creation of some of the monsters that we now bemoan.
Of course the individuals on trial in Yemen must be tried fully in accordance with the law in that country. That criterion is an important distinction from the demands being made in some of the commentary on the case. Of course Yemen will be expected to conform to the international norms to which it has signed up, and to the norms of diplomatic practice; but terrorist suspects cannot expect to be dealt with differently in Yemen just because they are British. The irony will not escape the House that the alleged targets of the alleged terrorists included the British embassy, which is now being asked to mount a defence campaign.
I regret to say that our position is not helped by the fiasco that surrounded the release, after serving a fraction of their sentences, of the two British nurses convicted of the murder of their colleague, Yvonne Gilford, in Saudi Arabia. If my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister had asked my advice, I would have said that it was exceedingly unwise to intercede with King Fahd to try to secure the early release of those prisoners. The lucrative
festival of crude anti-Muslim, anti-Arab racism in which sections of our media wallowed over those two women was entirely predictable and deeply offensive and damaging in itself.
Of course, we shall now be under considerable pressure to make the same type of intervention in Yemen--and already, with their courtroom outbursts about torture and even sexual abuse, the Yemen Eight are clearly not unmindful of the highly successful script first written on behalf of the Saudi Two. If we do not intervene, there are no prizes for guessing what charge will then be levelled against us; or for predicting that the whole affair will give a further twist to the alienation of so many in the Muslim community in our midst which is caused by the perceived racism, Islamophobia, discrimination and perceived double standards in British policy towards Muslim countries.
In the past three years, surveys conducted by the Runnymede Trust and other important surveys have amply demonstrated that anti-Muslim racism is a virulent and increasing issue in this country. It is not the province of bovver-booted skinhead lumpen thugs only. Indeed, it has been said that Islamophobia is the last "acceptable" form of racism, suitable for even the dinner tables of Islington and Hampstead.
Although in this short debate I do not want to over-dwell on the issue that the Minister and I have often debated--the conflict in the Gulf--it clearly cannot be separated from any review of the problems of relationships with the Muslim world.
Till the day I die, I will never understand what possessed the British Government to participate in the bombardment of an Arab capital city during the holy month of Ramadan. With all the centuries of collected wisdom, not least the once almost unique understanding of the Arab world within the British Foreign Office, how could it be that the devastating effects on Britain's standing in the region were not foreseen?
12.30 pm
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