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Mr. Swire: Does my hon. Friend agree that the key to recruiting firemen—retained or otherwise—is that they should fit in with the existing fire team so that they do not present a threat when they deal with fires? Any other consideration of gender or political correctness must be thrown out of the window.
Mr. Bellingham: I agree. If people have to deal with an appalling motor smash, for example on a motorway, and work as a team in the most impossible conditions, surely selection must be on merit alone.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: There is a fire service college at Moreton-in-Marsh and I have seen at first hand that when fire officers approach a difficult fire, in smoke-filled premises, with appalling visibility, each fire officer relies on the other absolutely for his life and to save lives. Recruitment must therefore be done on merit so that the best and most suitable person for the job is appointed.
Mr. Bellingham: That is my philosophy and that of the Opposition. Unfortunately, however, it is not the philosophy of the Government, who are obsessed with social engineering and political correctness.
Andrew Bennett: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bellingham: No, I must press on because other hon. Members want to speak. The hon. Gentleman has already spoken for a long time.
There are some plus points in the Bill. There is a need for change and for more emphasis on prevention, as the Bain report outlined. Furthermore, I entirely accept that terrorism does not respect county boundaries. I am pleased to see in the Bill the emphasis on smoke alarms. I did not know the statistics until the Minister pointed out that 24 per cent. of households do not have such alarms, and that, if they did, 150 more lives would be saved. That is of interest to me because I represent an ageing community, and elderly people are more vulnerable to house fires than younger people. Having smoke alarms fitted is absolutely vital. I was not a Member of Parliament when the former hon. Member for Romsey and Waterside, Michael Colvin, and his wife were tragically killed when their house in Hampshire burned down, but I understand that that could have been prevented if a smoke alarm had been fitted. I think that that incident brought home to everyone in the House the crucial need to have these devices fitted.
My hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) made a very good speech, in which he flagged up a number of important points. I hope that the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Corby (Phil Hope) will comment on them when he winds up the debate. My hon. Friend mentioned the overstretch in the armed forces and the fact that the green goddesses are to be decommissioned in the near future. He also referred to the privatisation of the airfield support services through a private finance initiative scheme. He asked whether the military would be able to provide the necessary support to the Government if we had another dispute on the same scale as that of last winter, in the light of the changes that are to take place. I hope that the Minister will address that question.
The Bill gives rise to other grave concerns. It is a centralising measure, under which the Government are going to grasp huge extra powers in relation to appointments and procurement, giving rise, as the hon. Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr pointed out, to an authority having the power to go into another authority's area, even though there might be a disagreement on the ground over whether it should be allowed in. The power will also be created to intervene in the management of a specific incident. The powers will be more far-reaching than those that were in place during world war two. The Bill contains a substantial centralising agenda, second only to its agenda of regionalisation. The sub-plot underlying the entire Bill is the move to regional structures.
I also want to say something about control rooms. There has not been proper consultation on this matter. I have spoken on the telephone this morning to the assistant chief fire officer of the Norfolk fire service, as well as to a number of other fire officers. They were being very tactful and careful in what they were saying to me, but it was perfectly obvious that there had not been proper consultation. In Norfolk, 22 people work in the control room. The Minister said that there would be no disruption to such work, but that is nonsense. We are talking about 22 very hard-working men and women—professional fire officers—who are probably going to lose their jobs and who are very worried about their future. Of course that is a blow to morale.
Other significant problems will arise from the Bill. My right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) pointed out the challenge presented by multiple place names. A number of villages in Norfolk have very similar names to villages elsewhere in East Anglia—Aldborough, Hanworth and Grimston, for example. Local knowledge is therefore going to be very important. As the assistant chief fire officer pointed out to me, members of staff in the control room often start their career working on the appliances. They go to fires and get to know the communities intimately. They understand the challenges presented by particular villages, streets, trading estates or factories where there might be a fire risk.
Those are the people who end up in the control room. I submit that that local knowledge is vital in providing the professionalism and response that is needed.
Andrew Bennett: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bellingham: No, there are many other Members who want to speak.
I do not see how regional control rooms can replicate that local knowledge. We have heard the Minister talk about modern technology, but I am not yet convinced that modern technology will be any substitute for the local, intimate knowledge that such people have. What we are seeing is creeping regionalisation: first, in the control rooms; then in fire safety, risk procedures, training and procurement. It is ironic that just as integrated risk management planning is being introduced, and just as fire authorities are leaping free from one part of central control and being able to put in place local plans to fit that local agenda, they must embrace the regional agenda. All the progress being made in terms of advancing the local agenda will be subsumed under regionalisation.
I therefore believe strongly that what we are seeing is an agenda to regionalise fire services. If we look at the White Paper "Our Fire and Rescue Service" we see that that must be the case, because the Government make it absolutely clear that they are talking about proposed UK fire authorities and regional management boards. I agree that some areas, such as anti-terrorism, contamination and airport security, require a greater degree of co-operation. What I suggest, however, is that we have a framework in which we keep in place the local structures but try to build critical mass in some areas of expertise. In that way, expertise can be shared across counties, as is already the case in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire and with several bi-service and tri-service projects. We must try to encourage local initiative, local pride and the ability to adapt to local needs, not an over-prescriptive approach.
If we go down the regionalised route, we will see the end of local democracy in the county councils as we know it. We will see the end, for example, of Norfolk and Suffolk county councils. We will see much more power concentrated in the region, which will mean more bureaucracy, more cost, and less control given to local people. Ultimately, although the Government are rightly determined to save more lives, regionalisation is not the best way to go about it. That is why I shall support my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition's amendment.
9.12 pm
Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): I shall make my speech much briefer than I had planned, in the hope that others will be able to speak.
I want to comment on the Fire Services Act 2003 and its impact on the current situation. This Bill comes hot on the heels of that Act, which was passed as a result of the industrial dispute about pay. The result of that dispute was a pay award of 16 per cent. over three years, financed by savings. We should bear that phrase "financed by savings" in mind. Four per cent. was paid immediately, and 7 per cent. was promised last November. In fact, only 3.5 per cent. of that has been paid so far, and firefighters to whom I have spoken recently have no idea whatever when the rest of the pay award will be received.
The Act also gave the Secretary of State powers over the conditions of service of fire brigade members, powers over the use or disposal of property—fire engines and fire stations—and unprecedented powers of intervention. It gave firefighters little or no more than a rise in line with that of blue-collar workers, excluding overtime, which they could have expected without a strike. The firefighters did not come out of it well at all. The aftermath of the strike, and what was seen by most firefighters as a highly unsatisfactory outcome, left morale at a low ebb. It is essential that this Bill be dealt with sensitively, and do nothing to harm the fragile process of restoring that morale, which is essential to the efficient operation of the fire service.
Before the strike there were 40 applicants for every job, of which only four were suitable. If morale is not restored, the fire service could go the same way as teaching, the police service and nursing, with a gradual diminishing of the number of people who wish to pursue those careers.
The Minister and the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) have referred to the need for more ethnic recruitment and for more women to go into the fire service. I know from my service on the Essex fire authority that there are some ethnic, cultural and religious groups to whom the fire service is not an attractive job; it does not appeal to them at all, partly because it involves getting dirty. I should like to make a plea that if there are to be more women in the fire service, they must be recruited to the same standard as everyone else. To sacrifice high standards on the altar of political correctness would be most inadvisable, because it is essential that every qualified firefighter have the appropriate strength and ability to do the job. Firefighers work in very close-knit groups—the watches—and each relies on the others in life-endangering situations. If one member of a watch did not have sufficient grip strength, for example, and could not hold on to someone in an emergency, the possible outcome is easy to understand. For that reason, the fire service needs a recruitment policy that is open to anyone who can meet those standards, and whether applicants are of a certain gender or ethnic group should be irrelevant; it is attracting recruits of the right quality that is important.
The Local Government Association—a body with which I do not always see eye to eye—has stated that collaboration should be voluntary, not compulsory, that fire authorities must be able to maintain control of
local services and that the additional costs of regional arrangements need to be considered, as they will be borne across the whole fire modernisation programme. The arguments against regionalisation have been well rehearsed in the debate, so I will not add to them now, but I should like to ask about the relatively new additional responsibility for fire services: dealing with terrorist threats. One has only to recall the role of the New York fire department in dealing with the terrorist attacks on the twin towers to know how important that is, and there is a clear need for strategic planning in unprecedented emergencies such as that. For that reason alone, I can understand the benefits of regionalisation, but not for the whole spectrum of duties that fire services undertake.I should like to ask the Minister to throw some light on the cost of new dimension training—for example, for massive decontamination incidents, where firefighters could be on continuous duty for days at a time. That will have considerable cost complications. Where will the funding for such specialist training come from?
Part 3 has caused most alarm to serving firefighters in relation to setting up the national framework, the draft of which was published on 11 December last year and replaces national standards of cover for fire risk. Following the integrated risk management review, standards should be set according to local knowledge and circumstances. However, given the recent history of industrial disputes in the service, firefighters are concerned that that review will result in a reduction in the level of service either by station closures or by the removal of fire engines—and, therefore, in an inevitable increase in response times, which could cost lives. Would it not have been wiser to pilot a service based on integrated risk management in certain areas first, and to assess the results carefully before introducing a blanket policy? The effect of such a change is bound to differ between rural and metropolitan fire authorities, and between those that are efficient and those that are less so. I hope that that point will be picked up and examined closely in Committee.
Firefighting is not just a job; it is not done solely for the money. There are many easier ways of earning an equivalent income without involvement in life-endangering situations. During the last strike, which caused considerable hardship to those taking part, it was clear that firefighters felt that the Government, if not the general public, undervalued them. The whole exercise was hugely damaging to internal relations in the fire service and the public it serves. The changes proposed in the Bill—they will become law because the Government have a large majority—must be consulted on in a genuine and meaningful way. I hope that any objections will be given a fair hearing and that amendments will be considered, so that the good will among serving firefighters, which was holed below the waterline last year, can continue its tentative recovery.
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