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11.28 am
Mr. Brian H. Donohoe (Cunninghame, South): As a member of the Transport Sub-Committee, I welcome the opportunity to speak. I shall be brief, because I know that a number of my hon. Friends with constituency interests also wish to speak; but I want to make a number of points.
Having been a member of the Committee under the last Administration, and having been party to its full examination of the coastguard service--which reached similar conclusions to those reached on this occasion--
I do not want it to be thought that I am a hypocrite, and have changed my mind just because I am now a member of the party that is in government. I want the Minister to give closer attention to this issue, to heed what is said both this morning and in the report and to exercise more common sense than has been exercised so far. I believe that the Committee has made the case, and has made it very well.
I want to reinforce what has been said about two matters. Local knowledge has been mentioned. In preparing our report, we took evidence from a number of sources, including two former Chief Coastguards. We were told:
Only those who have local knowledge, especially in my own constituency, are able to understand peculiar local tides. The tide at the bar of the mouth of my part of the River Irvine, for example, could take any one of five possible directions. On many occasions, people get into difficulty on the river, and the only ones who are able to save the situation are those with local knowledge of the tides. Local knowledge is so important.
The report also deals with the presumed savings to be made by closing stations. If it is correct that closures will create savings of £500,000, that is but a mere pittance in overall Government expenditure. A possible consequence of the Department's desire to save £500,000 is loss of life. I should not like to have that on my conscience, and I imagine that my hon. Friend the Minister shares that feeling.
Last week, in his Budget statement, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor dealt with the need to support Customs and Excise in combating smuggling and more closely safeguarding our borders. When we consider allocating resources to achieve that objective, we should appreciate the importance of local knowledge. I should, therefore, think that--in the light of the stations' value in stopping the smuggling of goods--Transport Ministers will have the Chancellor's support when reconsidering the value of the savings to be made by making closures.
I ask Ministers to reconsider the matter, and to give the House a positive reply.
Mrs. Ray Michie (Argyll and Bute):
Like everyone else, I congratulate the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) on securing this debate, and congratulate the Transport Sub-Committee on its excellent report. I should also like to express my appreciation, and that of the people of Oban, for the effort that the hon. Lady made in visiting the town. I should stress that she visited in a personal capacity, not as the Committee Chairman. She spoke with many of those working in search and rescue, and with many who could, at any time,
I do not want, in the short time available to me, to rehearse all the arguments against closure of the Oban coastguard station. The Minister knows the arguments well enough--particularly those on the increase in maritime activity along the lengthy Argyll coastline, and the dangerous waters round all the islands and many sea lochs. Involved now in the area are ferries, fishing trawlers, yachts and year-round diving. Salmon fishing is intruding ever more into the sea. Liners are coming to dock in Oban bay, as are bulk carriers from the Glen Sanda quarry. It is a very busy area, and all parts of it require a co-ordinated rescue service. It is inconceivable that the Oban coastguard station might no longer be there to give that service.
Hon. Members have mentioned the work done by coastguard station personnel. In Oban, they have fostered and developed an excellent relationship with the other emergency services--they know one another, and they trust one another's knowledge and expertise. There are seven lifeboat stations in the area--at Oban, Portree, Mallaig, Kyle, Tobermory, Barra and Islay--and the Oban lifeboat is one of the busiest in the whole country. Last year, it recorded more than 100 call-outs, whereas the coastguard station itself recorded a 22 per cent. increase in operational work.
It is a treacherous and often very stormy part of the country, and the situation is likely to get worse. In a letter to the Committee, the North Argyll Development Agency said:
I should like to highlight two specific points, which have already been highlighted today by other hon. Members. Time and again, the report returns to the matter of local knowledge: it is invaluable. It is invaluable in deciding what resources to deploy and, most importantly, where to deploy them--particularly in an area such as the west coast of Scotland, which is similar to the area of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) in having Gaelic place names scattered throughout the many islands and indented coastline. We have been told that the similarity of the names often leads to confusion.
As the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich said, the overwhelming majority of incidents dealt with by rescue co-ordination centres are either on the coast or just offshore, exactly where local knowledge is so valuable. We all accept that, whereas local knowledge is not the only source of information for coastguards, it is, as the report said, a fundamental tool in watch officers' armouries.
Although new technology is very welcome and necessary, I am concerned that too much reliance has been placed on it. I have a map--which hon. Members probably cannot see--showing all the current communication black spots, which are shown in yellow. There are very many such spots, and there is no evidence that new technology will overcome them.
I also have a note from Seawork International, a company of marine consultants and contractors, on bad weather communication failures. It states:
Mrs. Claire Curtis-Thomas (Crosby):
I extend my thanks to the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee for undertaking the inquiry. My constituency contains the Crosby coastguard station, which was signalled for closure in the Government's recommendations. The people at the station did not anticipate such a great response from the community. We have recently submitted a petition with 53,000 signatures to the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. It was not organised by the staff of the Crosby coastguard station, but came as confetti through the door one day, the result of a voluntary reaction from the people of Merseyside, who intuitively understood the value of the coastguard service and did not want it to be amalgamated or removed.
Since then, many of my colleagues from Merseyside and I have written countless letters on the closure programme, questioning the need for it. I am grateful to them for their support. We have received very little positive response other than a repetition of the mantra of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. However, that has not stopped us. We were delighted when the Select Committee decided to undertake an inquiry, because we felt that it would provide an impartial, objective review of the arguments. I made it known to those who supported the retention of the Crosby station that we should accept the recommendations of the Committee. If the Committee felt that the closures were necessary and that there was no argument against them, we would concede. We recognised the value of the Committee's contribution and decided to uphold its recommendations.
It was with mixed feelings that I saw that the recommendations came out so resoundingly in our favour, calling for the retention of all the coastguard stations.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will concede that there have been oversights, omissions, misunderstandings and a lack of appreciation of many of the points that have been raised this morning, and accept that we should retain the coastguard stations that are considered imperative for safety not just by us, but by hundreds of thousands of seafarers, sea users and coastal shore users.
The arguments for the closure of the Crosby coastguard station included the suggestion that staff would be more effectively used by being stationed at Holyhead. It was envisaged that during quiet periods they would be required to carry out accident prevention and district liaison work. Figures quoted in the five-year strategy group document reviewing the work load for Liverpool appeared to show that Liverpool was not as busy as Holyhead and that the variety of incidents dealt with at Liverpool was not as great. The variety of incidents was stated as being an important factor in the training of officers.
It was also said that the Liverpool building was too old to be adapted for the new technology and that it could not be adapted for the expected increase in the number of staff required to cover the proposed new district. Local knowledge was alleged to be less important with the advent of new technology and it was said that that technology would mean that fewer, not more, marine rescue sub-centres would be required to monitor distress frequencies.
There are many valid, coherent arguments against those reasons for closure. The proposal to base the staff at the new enlarged district at Holyhead is not an effective use of taxpayers' money. Holyhead is at the end of the district. With the greatest respect to hon. Members from that area, it is at the end of a large cul de sac. The notion of staff going into the community and liaising with the other services, who are 60 miles away, is nonsense. That would not be an effective use of the services of coastguard agents.
The figures for incidents quoted on page 20 of the consultative document are seriously misleading. Other hon. Members have already pointed out that they do not accurately reflect the work load at Liverpool. The total figures quoted for Liverpool do not include hoax calls and false alarms. That is a serious omission. The same criteria have not been applied to the figures for other stations. We cannot compare like with like.
It is implied that hoax and false calls need no co-ordinating action. That is not true. At the outset of such incidents, life is believed to be at risk. Many such incidents require extensive co-ordination. Hoax calls often necessitate more work due to their nature: details of incidents are misleading and confused and investigations need to be conducted to find out who the culprits are. A call is regarded as a false alarm when resources are deployed but no assistance is rendered, such as when a large-scale search is conducted for an overdue boat that subsequently returns safely.
It has also been stated that there is a greater variety of incidents at Holyhead, giving officers wider experience and more job satisfaction. That is not true, as an examination of the real statistics shows. The argument that the building is too old to be adapted does not stand examination. We are not talking about a derelict building in the middle of a sand dune. It is a 16-year-old,
single-storey building. We have no reason to believe that there would be any serious opposition to plans to extend it to take on board new technology.
I warmly support the comments made about local knowledge. I do not want to repeat the arguments, but local knowledge is vital. It is farcical to suggest that it can be replaced or dealt with by a computer or that it is possible to ring around when there is an emergency. Anyone working in an emergency needs expertise at hand. If local knowledge is so irrelevant, why is there an examination for it? It is one of the requirements. Does the move to a more amalgamated service come with an assumption that the local knowledge that can be retained by an individual can be stretched and stretched? I question the ability of an ordinary human being to retain the amount of information that the people at Holyhead will be expected to retain. It is not possible without compromising safety.
The current radio technology is analogue. As an engineer, I am pleased that it is going to be replaced by more modern technology. That will allow considerable savings in the cost of private wires, which will carry signals from the aerials to the MCS. However, the true benefits of a digital system will not be realised until a great majority of the seafaring public also have digital equipment, which is prohibitively expensive. I understand that it costs £2,000. It could be many years before the benefits of the system are realised to all. Those who call on the maritime rescue and co-ordination service do not necessarily have a radio. The new digital system will make no difference to those in dinghies, sailors, sailboarders, swimmers and walkers--90 per cent. of those who currently access the service. The new technology has yet to be tested. I believe that no provision has been made to ensure that an adequate safety system will be in place to protect the owners of small boats, leisure sailors and fishermen. There is no guarantee that we shall meet the specified safety standards.
There is a continued significant expansion in the Liverpool basin of North sea work, with the erection of new platforms, and of the number of people using the area.
The new development scheme includes new leisure facilities and water sports centres, and the number of visitors to the area will rise. The area already has a number of marinas, diving schools, yacht clubs and windsurfing clubs. It is unlikely that the new digital technology will be of benefit to the majority of people using the area for those activities. It is therefore important that the MRCS remains in the centre of this busy area, where the staff--with their local knowledge--are best placed to be of greater service to the community that they serve.
The analysis of the proposed closure states that, in the present circumstances, it would be wrong to close the Liverpool station. Liverpool is situated in a major port and city--with all the infrastructure that that entails--and is ideally situated for liaison with other emergency services and planners. To transfer its responsibilities to Holyhead would not be cost-effective. Holyhead is at one end of the proposed new district, and liaison with other emergency services in the event of a major incidentwould be, at best, difficult and, in some cases,
totally impractical. Staff visiting the district would have greater distances to cover, with all the expense and the loss of expertise at the station that that would entail.
The new digital technology--which we welcome--merely replaces the present analogue system. There is no evidence for the premise that stations can be closed as a result of its installation. No risk assessment has been undertaken of what will happen to those stations when the technology is introduced. The new technology cannot replace the local knowledge of watch officers. The newly enlarged Holyhead district will be the busiest in the UK, and one of the largest, with approximately 1,000 miles of coastline; every nuance of which, I understand, is supposed to be retained by watch officers. Overseeing such a large district will mean a loss of knowledge and, as the number of incidents rise, stress on staff will increase.
"'Local knowledge' is vital to the officers controlling an incident especially in the first few minutes. No computer can replace knowledge and instinct. A computer simply provides facts for use. Local knowledge often saves vital time in effecting a rescue. The suggestion that an officer on receipt of a distress call or 999 call should consult a database or telephone for advice from Section Managers or coastal auxiliaries is totally unacceptable."
Two previous Chief Coastguards gave us that information, which most precisely explains the importance of local knowledge.
11.33 am
"Global warming, meteorologists inform us, is responsible for the deeper areas of low pressure which sweep across the Atlantic and most are hitting the West Coast of Scotland. Rainfall is greater and wind speeds are higher. Forecasters say they will get progressively worse and this means increased levels of danger at sea. The Coastguard agency is going to need all its present resources and more in the future, not less."
I can vouch for that. This has been one of the stormiest winters that we have had in the west, certainly for over 20 years. Moreover, as the North Argyll Development Agency said, it will get worse.
"Power sources for Telecommunications, Radio microwave links, and landlines are notoriously prone to failure on the West Coast, and due to the mountainous terrain, and sparse population, their swift repair is usually impossible. They regularly fail when the Winds and weather are at their worst, in other words, exactly when the Coastguards are likely to need them most!"
It is not at all clear who--other than the Minister, her officials and the hierarchy in the agency itself--is in favour of the strategy. Those who believe that it is wrong can be counted in their thousands. They include experienced seafarers and mariners from throughout the United Kingdom. I have letters to substantiate that claim.
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