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12.44 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. George Howarth): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Cryer) on securing this debate on Hornchurch fire station and my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Mr. Darvill) on his speech. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster is aware that this Minister is always willing to meet right hon. and hon. Members if they have a problem, as they perceive it, in their constituency. He may not be aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch has already written to me asking for a meeting, and in a letter of 8 March I responded saying that I would be willing to meet him. If the arrangements have not been completed, they are certainly under way.
As hon. Members will know, there was a serious, tragic and horrific fire in Chingford last week. Our sympathies go out to all the friends and relatives of those who died in that fire. The cause is very suspicious and arson is strongly suspected. Regrettably, arson has increased considerably. In the past decade, 1.7 million fires have been started deliberately, causing 22,000 injuries and 1,100 deaths. We shall be publishing shortly the outcome of a Home Office review, which has examined the current arrangements for combating arson and will recommend a range of new measures arising out of that.
Hornchurch appliances were not called to the Chingford fire so I can now turn to the subject of today's debate. I fully understand the concern that my hon. Friends have
expressed today and during last month's debate on the London fire service, about the proposal by the London fire and civil defence authority to remove a fire appliance from Hornchurch fire station.
As I said last month, we have good reason to be proud of the fire service in this country. It achieves consistently high standards of performance, often in difficult and hazardous circumstances. The fire service's high level of performance in responding to fire calls has been confirmed year after year by the Audit Commission. So it is with good reason that the fire service is highly regarded by the public, both in Hornchurch and elsewhere in the country. The key point to stress is that the statutory responsibility for the provision of an efficient fire service rests with the fire authority, and, in the case of Hornchurch, with the London fire and civil defence authority.
It is for the authority to keep its fire cover provision under review and to set a budget that will allow it to meet its statutory and other obligations and, in particular, to provide a service that meets the national standards of fire cover. However, under section 19 (4) of the Fire Services Act 1947, the fire authority cannot reduce the number of fire stations, fire appliances or fire-fighting posts without the express permission and consent of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
My right hon. Friend has a specific role in considering section 19 applications. He will grant approval only if he is satisfied on three counts. The first is that the proposals have been sufficiently widely publicised, in sufficient detail and with adequate time to enable any interested party to make representations. The second is that the representations have been considered by the fire authority. The third is that Her Majesty's inspectorate of fire services advises that the national standards of fire cover will be maintained if any of the proposals were implemented.
There is no statutory requirement on the fire authority to consult, but my right hon. Friend and I consider it important that proper consultations are undertaken. Once a section 19 application has been made, we will also take into account representations made to us direct. We will consider and reflect carefully on the points made by my hon. Friends today. Our primary concern is the maintenance of the national fire cover standards. Successive Secretaries of State have interpreted the duty to provide an efficient fire service against those standards.
At the beginning of this month, we received the authority's application to remove the second pumping appliance from Hornchurch and from four other fire stations around the capital. We are seeking advice from Her Majesty's inspectorate of fire services on the authority's proposals. We shall ask the inspectorate to look carefully at the representations of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and any that other hon. Members, organisations or individuals may make. I assure my hon. Friend that we shall not approve any proposal unless we are entirely satisfied that national fire cover standards will be maintained.
The authority's latest proposals result from a review of its fire cover. All fire authorities are obliged to review the fire risks in their area regularly against the national standards to ensure that the brigade's deployment
of resources is updated in the light of changing circumstances. That is not contentious. Most people agree that it is sensible to do so.
It may be helpful if I explain the national standards in a little more detail, because they were an important part of my hon. Friend's speech. The standards are not just nationally recommended; they are nationally agreed in the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Councils for England and Wales and for Scotland, which are constituted under the Fire Services Act 1947 to represent fire service interests in advising the Secretary of State. The standards lay down terms for the number of appliances and also the speed of response in the initial attendance to a fire. They rest on four main standards of service, which depend on the risk category of the area, and assume for each category that a predetermined number of fire-fighting appliances should attend within a specified time. The area served by Hornchurch fire station has been assessed as 55 per cent. C risk and 45 per cent. D risk. My hon. Friend has suggested that Hornchurch should be reclassified as B risk.
Under the national standards, a brigade should aim in normal circumstances to meet the following response times: in a B risk area, one pumping appliance to arrive in five minutes and one within eight minutes; in a C risk area, one pumping appliance to respond to the incident within 10 minutes; and in a D risk area, one pumping appliance to respond within 20 minutes.
In considering the section 19 application, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will want to be assured by Her Majesty's inspectorate that the area has been correctly categorised for fire risk and that, if a pumping appliance was removed from Hornchurch, the brigade would continue to meet the above standards.
In 1995, the Audit Commission recommended that there should be another review of the standards of fire cover. The commission recognised that no fundamental change should be considered without careful research. That recommendation was taken forward by a further joint committee of the advisory councils. Its report "Out of the Line of Fire: Modernising the Standards of Fire Cover" was published in July 1998.
The advisory councils have endorsed the report's conclusions in favour of risk assessment as a more flexible approach to planning fire cover that explicitly addresses the risk to life. Pilot trials are in hand with a number of brigades, including London, to confirm the practicality of that approach and, if successful, what the arrangements for implementation should be. However, that is a longer-term project. In the mean time, the existing standards of cover continue to apply.
When the authority set its budget for 1999-2000 on 18 February, it had to take into account the local government finance settlement and the implications for its reserves and assess what savings it should seek to make. The local government settlement provides a £143.6 million overall increase in the fire service element of total standard spending in England--an average annual increase of 3.5 per cent. over the next three years. That includes £47.1 million--3.6 per cent.--for 1999-2000. London's share is an above-average increase of £9.9 million--3.8 per cent. That follows an increase of 5 per cent. in 1998-99. The settlement, which I am proud of, acknowledged future funding pressures, notably on
pensions and training, which were identified by fire service interests. It should help fire authorities to plan ahead on a more stable funding basis. The settlement has also set the fire service a challenging efficiency target of 2 per cent. a year. The best value initiative should play a key role in assisting fire authorities achieve that target.
I shall reflect carefully on the points that have been raised in the debate. There are matters of significance and concern that we have to take into account.
It might be worth spending a few minutes on our approach to community fire safety. We want progress to be measured against our commitment to community fire safety. To that end, we have publicly set a target of reducing the average number of house fire deaths by 20 per cent. over the next five years. That move towards prevention is a step change for Government policy and for the work of brigades. Prevention work should be regarded as the first line of defence against fire. The vast majority of fatal fires are accidental and therefore preventable. However, the speed with which fire spreads and smoke kills often means that no matter how quickly the brigade arrives, it can be too late.
In this financial year, we have provided an extra £12 million to the fire service in England to undertake community fire safety work, thus implementing a key recommendation of the Audit Commission report on funding fire prevention. We have also recently established a national community fire safety centre, which will take forward the objective of reducing fires and casualties and act as a resource for fire brigades in England and Wales. I announced last December that we would be providing the new centre with £14 million of funding over the next three financial years to run high-profile safety campaigns in conjunction with every brigade. We have also conducted a major national smoke alarm television campaign for fire brigades, including London, to make sure that every householder has a smoke alarm and maintains it properly.
It is disappointing that house fires and fatalities in London have increased, particularly when other metropolitan brigades have been able to achieve significant reductions in recent years. However, the brigade is not alone in seeing such increases and the national trend has been upwards since 1994.
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