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2.46 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Mike O'Brien): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Mr. Fitzpatrick) for initiating the debate. These are important matters, and he brings to the subject unrivalled knowledge and practical experience of the fire service.
The fire service is rightly held in high regard by the public, not only for its outstanding bravery and commitment but also for its effectiveness and professionalism. It has been described by the Audit Commission as one of the highest performing public services. It sustains and improves that performance year on year, particularly in its prompt attendance at fires. Unlike people in some other parts of the world, all of us, wherever we live, can rely on the fire brigade to come to put out a fire in our home if we need it to do so. We owe a great deal of gratitude to generations of firefighters, who have stood by and waited for that call, and who in responding to it have often saved lives in the process.
The Government value and invest in public services such as the fire service. Since we took office, we have agreed revenue and capital settlements for the fire service which demonstrate an understanding of its needs that was sadly lacking during our predecessors' last years in office.
Last week, as part of the spending review, we announced a 5 per cent. increase in revenue funding in 2001-02, and 4 per cent. increases in each of the two following years. On Wednesday I was particularly pleased to announce for 2001-02 a 67 per cent. increase in provision for credit approvals to almost £60 million, to help meet the service's pressing capital needs. We will sustain that sort of investment over the next three years.
In return, it is entirely right that the public should expect the service to continue to work to improve its efficiency, and to use these additional resources well. I believe that the latest settlement provides the resources and confidence to carry forward the programme of modernisation on which the Government and the fire service are already jointly embarked.
My hon. Friend referred to the fire service college. Today, I have answered a written question from the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) on the future of the college following the prior options review. We intend to draw on the skills of both the public and the private sector. Fire service interests have canvassed the option of a public service consortium. We will give them a chance to develop that idea, but we are also open to the possibility of a public-private partnership and to including the private sector. Either way, together with the Ministry of Defence, we are drawing up an operational specification of the fire service's central training
requirements. I have asked that that be done straight away; it will be done during the summer. We shall then look for partners in the public or the private sector in the autumn. The fire service college is important, and we want to safeguard its work in future.As my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town has already stressed, combating the ravages of fire matters. The Government have firmly gripped that challenge, and good progress has been made; we want to ensure that that progress continues. It is the result of collaboration between all sectors of the fire service, including the trade unions.
I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to Ken Cameron, the retired general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union. Ken has a strong commitment to trade unionism and an equally strong commitment to ensuring that we have a fire safety agenda in this country. He contributed greatly in both respects when serving as the FBU's general secretary. I also wish his successor, Andy Gilchrist, all the best in his new job.
The constructive relationship that has developed between the Chief and Assistant Chief Fire Officers Association, the FBU and the fire authorities is enormously important, especially in creating the sort of partnership spirit that the fire community has come to embody. My hon. Friend has done a great deal to help to promote the sense of a shared vision of how to proceed.
I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend's contribution as chair of the fire safety framework group, which draws together several fire interests, and has produced proposals for a fire safety strategy, which will provide an invaluable foundation for future work. That initiative is wholly consistent with the thrust of the Government's policy to make fire safety and fire prevention the future priority of the service, and to build new relationships so that all who contribute to policy making are involved from the start in developing such policies.
I take pride in the Home Office national community fire safety centre, which we set up and funded. With brigades, it has run major safety campaigns on chip-pan fires, smoke alarms and escape plans. I welcome the establishment of the fire safety advisory board, which will meet for the first time next week and draws together a wide range of interests. I am also pleased that the new arson control forum will meet in the autumn. It is to our credit that we have introduced the Fire Precautions (Workplace) (Amendment) Regulations 1999, and that despite the difficulties of finding time in the legislative programme for a Bill, we are pursuing regulatory reform to secure the much needed rationalisation and consolidation of fire safety law. I hope that we shall be able to introduce such measures in the not-too-distant future.
The fire service has waited a long time for a fire safety Bill, and patience is wearing thin, but I hope we shall be able to make progress and that they will not have to wait much longer. I cannot promise to introduce a Bill in the near future, but we shall pursue the regulatory options as a way in which to take forward much of that agenda. That will be done broadly in line with what the fire service community would wish to support.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has rightly focused on targets. If there is one thing that characterises the Government it is that we not only invest resources in public services, but clearly specify the service
improvements and reforms that the public can expect in return. We are concerned with measuring what public services can deliver, improving efficiency and focusing on results.We have set the fire service, and ourselves, specific targets to improve fire service efficiency by 2 per cent. a year, to reduce the predicted upward trend in the number of fires by March 2002, and to reduce fire-related deaths in the home by 20 per cent. by March 2003. In addition, I share my hon. Friend's wish not to overlook the economic as well as the human cost of fires, as well as his wish to drive down injuries as well as deaths.
I am glad that our targets are well on their way to being met. Fire service efficiency is improving, and the recent revenue and capital settlements will give that added impetus. The increase in the number of fires is much lower than projected, although we have been helped in part by our rather wet English summers. The number of injuries is falling; it is 4 per cent. lower in the year to September 1999 than it was in the preceding year. The best news of all is that accidental fire deaths in the home are falling faster than the quite ambitious target that we set. For the year to September 1999 the provisional figure for deaths is 319; in 1997 it was more than 400. Thus progress is being made.
My hon. Friend suggested that the targets that we set had been criticised by some as lacking in ambition. The important thing about setting targets is that they should be realistic and achievable within a defined period. Laudable but unrealistic targets are the surest guarantee of demoralising the organisations that have been set them. We need to maintain the high morale that exists in the fire service by ensuring that it realistically believes that it can achieve the targets that we have set. Morale will improve as a result of achieving those targets. There is no point in setting a target that, although desirable in the long term, causes greater problems than it resolves because the fire service fails to achieve it.
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that it is important that we set targets--and that we set the right targets. I also very much agree with what he said about sprinklers and hard-wired alarms with 10-year batteries. We must give full attention to all those things because they are important elements in a broader fire safety strategy. A number of fire service community organisations will consider them, and we hope to say more about them in due course.
My hon. Friend deserves congratulations for his work in this area, and I congratulate him on today's debate. I assure him, however, that there is no room for complacency, which is why it is important to keep reinforcing the key fire safety messages, and to continue to invest in the research that he urges into the total cost of fire to the economies of England and Wales. There is cause for optimism. We can win, and we are winning. We are determined to continue to do so, and with my hon. Friend's help, and the help of his former colleagues in the fire service and those who work in fire authorities and the fire industry, I hope that we can further reduce deaths and injuries, as well as reducing the number of fires that take place in this country.
- Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Three o'clock.
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