Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360-379)
19 NOVEMBER 2003
PROFESSOR SIR
GEORGE BAIN
AND MR
BOB EVANS
Q360 Chairman: You have talked very
much about wanting the whole thing to be audited but is it easy
to audit a culture change?
Professor Bain: I do not think
it is easy to audit a culture change and I would not suggest that
you do audit a culture change. I am actually not here thinking
of the Fire Service but my own career where on three occasions
I have been involved in very, very large scale change. I would
argue that you do not start by changing cultures. I think you
change behaviour and culture change comes at the end when people
actually see that the new behaviours are better than the old behaviours.
So if I was being asked to reform the Fire Service I would not
start by changing cultures, I would start by changing behaviour.
I think once you change behaviour perhaps attitudes and values
begin to change and ultimately culture change because people say,
"Gosh, this is a lot better than the old ways," not
just because in this example perhaps we save more lives but also
people say, "You know, I didn't really want to be climbing
ladders with a hose when I was 45—50. I'd rather be doing
fire prevention work," or, "I'd rather be doing another
kind of job with the broader career structures which this is going
to give me." So I would not audit culture, I would be auditing
output. It was a very interesting point Mr Betts made. I think
you do not want to audit inputs, you want to audit the outputs
and ones that you can measure and say we are moving on.
Q361 Chris Mole: Could I just follow
up, Sir George, the point you were making there about savings
accruing three years down the line in the example you were giving.
To whom do those savings accrue? Do they accrue to the Fire Service?
Because if they do not, the concern is that they are not clearly
available for reinvestment in pay.
Professor Bain: I had better turn
to Bob on this, who would know much more about it, but I assume
they accrue to the local authority, would they not, or the Fire
Service?
Mr Evans: They should accrue to
the fire authorities. I think the important point is that of course
they do not accrue equally. There is no reason why the costs of
the pay award in a fire authority will be necessarily exactly
the same as the savings from these measures but that was one of
the reasons why—there is some reference to this in chapter
12—we thought it was appropriate to have transitional funding
to actually even out these imbalances and I understand the Government
has agreed that with the local authorities.
Q362 Chris Mole: So in terms of co-responding
it is not a question of the saving accruing to the Health Service
rather than the fire authority or anything like that?
Mr Evans: No. You have to be careful
when looking at the figures in our review. We were trying to demonstrate
a point there, not trying to cost the whole exercise accurately,
but we did not actually assume there are cash savings from some
of the medical advances like the carriage of defibrillators. What
we said was, quite rightly in investment appraisal terms, there
are certain external benefits such as you save lives and you improve
people's quality of life by getting to them early. So there are
benefits there, but we did not put that in the cost equation;
it would not have been right to do so.
Q363 Mr Cummings: Your position paper,
Sir George, highlights many deficiencies in the institutional
structure of the service. You criticise local authority employers,
you criticise the Fire Brigades' Union and the senior management
of the Service. Do you believe that the proposals in the White
Paper can really be implemented in the context of the deficiencies
you have identified?
Professor Bain: I think so. You
are quite right, the Fire Brigades' Union, I suppose, got a good
deal of the flak but we were very much at pains in the report
to point out that what we found was not the responsibility of
any single institution or group of people, it was very, very widely
based; it was a systems failure really. The reason I think it
can work is first of all the report and the White Paper based
on the report recommend a different set of institutions to actually
drive policy in the Fire Service forward. So to some extent the
older institutions which were not particularly functional from
our point of view, like the Central Fire Brigades' Advisory Council,
are going to be put to one side and replaced by new bodies. I
think the second reason why it is possible is the role of chief
fire officers. What we found was that the right to manage by chief
fire officers was very, very constrained. On the one hand there
was pressure from above (ie from the fire authority) and my own
view is that the fire authority should be acting almost like non-executive
directors on a company board (ie not interfering in operational
matters, trying to set broad policy) but in many cases they did
interfere in operational matters, as we saw it, and the ability
of chief fire officers to operate in the way they thought best
was constrained. Then of course there was pressure from below,
from the workforce and from the trade union and one of the things
we were at pains to stress, and I see that the White Paper is
at pains to stress, is that chief fire officers must have the
right to manage and indeed the Association is going to be given
the lead role on the practitioners' forum, which is specified
in the report and in the White Paper. So I think there is room
for some optimism that these changes can be brought about given
new institutions, new policies and a stronger role for chief fire
officers.
Q364 Mr Cummings: Several authorities
have flagged up to the Committee their concerns that, whilst the
Fire Service was being reorganised on a more integrated risk-management
basis, the building regulatory process is divorced from all of
that. The authorities' concern is that the IRMP process may thus
be denied some of it most effective strategies to prevent loss
of life by improving the built environment. Is this a concern
of yourself?
Professor Bain: I must admit that
building regulations is not a topic which I am really very knowledgeable
about, I must say. Bob, have you got an observation on that?
Mr Evans: I think one of the points
we made in the report was that Government had to play its part.
So Government had to come up both with the leadership for the
Fire Service, which in a sense it is now doing having published
the White Paper, but also with the legislation to give more flexibility
and building regulations are clearly part of that. I think George
is right, we were very concerned not to get too involved in the
detail in the report because in a sense we want flexible solutions
at a local level, but we recognise the point you make.
Q365 Mr Cummings: Do you believe
that the Government is being too cautious on this particular aspect
of building regulations? Will you be quite pointed in any remarks
directed towards the Government in this direction?
Professor Bain: Mr Cummings, this
is not a point upon which I have the knowledge to offer an opinion
on.
Mr Evans: I think we recognise
that the Government has to take action in this area, as other
areas, but I do not think we feel we are professionally qualified
to say what action it should take.
Q366 Mr Cummings: Do you believe
that the Fire Service Inspectorate, the College and the Audit
Commission are up to the tasks outlined for them in the White
Paper?
Professor Bain: I think this is
an area where perhaps I can speak with greater knowledge than
on building regulations.
Q367 Mr Cummings: The reason I ask
is because there has been tremendous criticism levied upon those
particular bodies during the course of this inquiry.
Professor Bain: That is absolutely
right. Let us just take the three you have mentioned—the
Inspectorate, the College and the Audit Commission. In the report
I think we are suggesting that the Inspectorate really had an
ill-defined role and over-inspected but in a sense many of the
inspections were not particularly effective. Basically we were
arguing for the Inspectorate to play a less important role in
the future than it had in the past and indeed for a great deal
of what it did in a sense to be taken over by the Audit Commission,
which I will come to. So I am not too worried about the Inspectorate
because I do not see it as being key to the new modernised Fire
Service. I think the College, however, is key in many ways. First
of all, we see the role for the College to be one of really a
centre of excellence for a variety of things, not just in training
but for the integrated personal development system and for a whole
range of other things. We also see it being key in terms of research
on matters of fire safety, disaster, control, etc., and I think
the College as reconstituted will play that role, particularly
if, as we recommended in the report, you are putting bright young
men and hopefully increasingly bright young women in the Fire
Service who have reached upper-middle rank and then go back into
the Service later in their careers. I would hold out a lot of
hope for the Audit Commission because I think the role it has
played in auditing in local government, in the National Health
and in doing comprehensive performance assessments is exactly
what is required in the Fire Service. I think also the reason
I am very hopeful is that there were over 100 reports written
on the Fire Service in the last 30 years and in my judgment the
two best reports (I will leave aside our own) were those done
by the Audit Commission four or five years ago, In The Line of
Fire and the second one it did on getting value for money. So
I think the Audit Commission is already quite knowledgeable about
the Fire Service and I think it has proved its worth in local
government and the NHS. I see no reason why it will not triumph
here and certainly I think it will be much more effective than
the Inspectorate has been historically.
Mr Cummings: Thank you.
Q368 Mr Betts: You sound slightly
dismissive of the Inspectorate and you are saying now there is
a new role for the Audit Commission and you have spoken about
the work they have already done in the past, which has been one
of the better things that have happened in terms of reviewing
the Fire Service. Is there any need now for an Inspectorate at
all if they are going to do things like technically advise the
Deputy Prime Minister and advise on the efficiency of regional
procurement? Do we really need a separate Inspectorate to do those
sorts of things?
Professor Bain: Well, we perhaps
need a smaller one! The White Paper says that it is going to really
have, I think, three functions: one is as a professional adviser
to the Government, the second one is to support the Audit Commission
in its work and the third one is to support the service improvement
teams. I think there may even be some evidence that the Inspectorate
today is smaller, significantly smaller than it was at the time
that we reported last December.
Q369 Chairman: Could I pursue you
a little bit on this question of the right to manage. You have
got a democratically elected or appointed body which runs the
Fire Service and they are likely to respond to the views of their
electorate or the local people. When you are talking about closing
fire stations, is it something that the management should be able
to push pretty strongly or ought there to be rights of people
in the local community to say, "No, we're proud of our local
fire station. It's served us well. We want to keep it"?
Professor Bain: When I was saying
"the right to manage" it was in a more general sense.
On the specific issue, Chairman, which you raise with respect
to the closure of fire stations, I think it is made quite clear
in the report and also in the White Paper that obviously there
has to be consultation carried out with local communities about
any question of closing or moving fire stations. But speaking
personally, I would have thought that a local community would
not necessarily have the right to veto that because on many occasions
the fact that it has served us well in the past is not the criterion
necessarily for whether it will serve you well in the future.
For example, if there are going to be larger fire authorities,
I do not necessarily mean regionalisation but if we are going
to begin to have Brigades merging, etc., you may well have two
fire stations virtually cheek by jowl, which would not make a
great deal of sense. Also, fire stations were set up of course
in many cases, because some of them are very fine Victorian buildings,
at a time when centres of population were as they were in say
the Victorian period and when perhaps the only thing that fire
stations did were house people who fought fires. Today, of course,
many fire stations would be better located next to the M6 or the
M1 because they actually spend more time saving lives on the motorway
and dealing with the consequences of that. So the public's view
is certainly one major ingredient and clearly they must be consulted,
but I would have thought it would be wrong for them on a technical
matter to actually have the right of veto.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q370 Chris Mole: Sir George, the
proposals in the White Paper will mean that the Fire Service is
going to have a wider remit, which could include almost anything
from environmental disasters to animal rescues. Your position
paper emphasized that the Fire Service should have specific responsibilities.
Is the White Paper specific enough or have they left it rather
too generalised?
Professor Bain: I have not done
a very close textual analysis but we set out at paragraph 4.5
of our final report the things we thought the Fire Service should
do and we said that it should be first of all, to make this short,
reduction in risk management, secondly community fire education
and safety, thirdly fire safety enforcement, fourthly emergency
response (ie fire-fighting, disasters, chemical spillages, traffic
accidents) and fifthly one which is going to increasingly engage
us and we are reminded of it as we walk around the streets today
and tomorrow, what is sometimes referred to as "new dimension",
large-scale terrorist incidents. So those were the five things
that we thought the Fire Service should be involved in and as
far as I can see the White Paper perceives it to be broadly as
we do. So I do not see a difference there, no.
Q371 Chris Mole: So when they say
"rescuing people from whatever dangers they may face,"
you see that as being pretty much the same thing?
Professor Bain: I think it is
the same. We have spelt it out. I suppose, as you well know, at
the moment really the only statutory duty which the Fire Service
has is to fight fires. They do not have a statutory duty to deal
with terrorism, road accidents or indeed with fire prevention.
So there is clearly a need to spell it out and there is also a
need obviously to have it more explicitly recognised, I assume,
in terms of the funding which is required for these different
activities.
Q372 Chris Mole: Now we will talk
about risk reduction and I am trying to put together what you
said earlier about the lack of expertise on building regulations
because it seems that there is a doubt as to whether the intention
of the White Paper can actually be achieved without building regulations
being brought more effectively into the new fire and emergency
management arrangements. Sprinklers is a good issue which seems
to have bounced across the Committee in its hearings so far. Can
the intentions of the White Paper really be achieved in terms
of risk reduction unless those building regulations issues are
addressed at the same time?
Professor Bain: I will not repeat
what I said earlier about my expertise on this point, but I must
say that during the inquiry with all of the people who submitted
evidence to us, all of the people who appeared before us, building
regulations did not loom large; it was not a burning topic. I
would not want to trivialise it because obviously it is a priority.
You can see that the way in which buildings are constructed is
an important factor. It is also one where I thought expert opinion
on fire safety was taken into account, but I will not get into
that. Certainly, leaving building regulations to one side, there
is no doubt in my mind that if you have an integrated risk-management
plan this will make an enormous improvement to both the safety
of the public and to the cost-effectiveness of the service. Building
regulations no doubt would help as well but, as I say, I cannot
comment on that.
Q373 Chris Mole: I hope I am not
barking up the wrong tree with the next question as well. In your
position paper you refer to the need to bring forward a proposed
regulatory reform order to amend fire safety legislation. Why
do you think that one is a particularly important one?
Professor Bain: Well, mainly—and
perhaps Bob can expand on the detail—because at the moment,
as I understand it, a lot of these regulations are all over the
place, in different bits of documents, are sometimes confusing
(the business community finds it difficult) and the reason for
that recommendation was really to tidy things up and make them
much more user-friendly, particularly for the business community
as such.
Q374 Chris Mole: So simplifying the
red tape?
Professor Bain: It is simplifying
the red tape.
Mr Evans: Going back to the position
paper, the position we were looking at then was that this was
another area where people had identified things which needed to
be done but we were not seeing the progress. Our final report
pressed very heavily for the Government to take forward legislation.
We have seen one Act already and we have got another Bill in preparation
and the Regulatory Reform Order I think is still going through,
as I understand it. So we have seen some useful progress on that
in the last year.
Q375 Chairman: Last week I managed
to persuade one of the witnesses to refer to the question of cats
in trees, which was then denounced by the Telegraph for the fact
that people wanted the Fire Service to continue to rescue cats
from trees. Do you think the Fire Service should really be providing
a service so far as the rescue of animals is concerned?
Professor Bain: That is probably
the most contentious question you have asked, especially, if I
may say so, with my Canadian accent in Britain with the lovers
of animals! Let me come at it this way. I do not see why not,
although it was not a recommendation. There is a certain range
of services which you might argue the Fire Service could charge
for as well. If people have cats which are constantly climbing
trees but do not know enough to climb down you might want to actually
levy a charge in the same way as for false alarms and so on. We
did not, as you know, actually make that a formal recommendation
but certainly a lot of the time of the Fire Service is—well,
in the case of saving cats I will not say wasted, but spent on
activities which are perhaps not central to its activities. In
the case of false alarms it is central to its activities, of course,
but I think with automatic fire alarms 98% of them turn out to
be false. That is obviously very, very unfortunate.
Q376 Chris Mole: You touched on cultural
change earlier on. If I could return to that. Could the retained
firefighters really ever get away properly from their second-class
status?
Professor Bain: I do think so,
actually. Just to reinforce that, there is no question that they
have a second-class status at the moment and the report and the
White Paper are saying they should not. They should meet the same
standards for recruitment, they should get the same training,
they should get the same opportunities for promotion, etc. I think
if that happened one way of thinking of retained firemen is as
part-time firemen. Perhaps analogies are often difficult, but
think of the TA. At the moment if we can staff up the Army in
Iraq with part-time soldiers from the TA, etc., which I would
have thought is at least as complex an operation as a fire brigade
in a local community, I see no reason at all why this cannot happen.
At Queen's just very recently the OTC there, a lieutenant-colonel
who is a full-time career officer was in charge. He had recently
got re-assigned a month ago and he is being replaced by another
lieutenant-colonel who is in the TA and he will do exactly the
same job. So I think if we stop thinking of them as almost boys
who are enthusiastic about being firefighters and turn out on
a Saturday afternoon every once in a while and look at them as
professionals who want to work part-time, and if you think of
the report saying that we would like the service to have many
more diverse types, not just in terms of ethnic minorities and
women, etc., you might have lots of other part-time firefighters
because if there is one thing which is clear from all the reports
it is that the incidence of fire and risk varies over time. It
varies between regions, it varies between communities in terms
of their socio-economic status. If you think of the way now that
such a very large proportion of the labour force is composed of
part-time people why should this not be true in the Fire Service,
as it is in virtually every other sector? I imagine many of the
people working in this building other than MPs, etc.—you
can comment on your own position—are on something less than
a straight 9.00-5.00 eight hour day and I would have thought the
Fire Service is exactly the same.
Q377 Chris Mole: I thought you might
have been on fairly safe ground with some MPs there. Perhaps you
could tell us what you saw which made you, in your words, "frankly
appalled" at the level of racism and sexism in the Fire Service?
Professor Bain: I think it was
not so much what we saw, it was what we discovered and read from
previous reports. The Home Office did a report in 1999 and this
is in paragraph 7.41 of the report: "There were reports of
sexual harassment in all the brigades visited by the Inspectorate.
This ranged from routine harassment such as men urinating over
the floor and toilet rolls in the women's toilets or the display
of pornographic videos at fire stations to more serious harassment
in some brigades. This included exposure, touching and assault
which had catastrophic effects on the women concerned." It
was reading evidence of that kind which horrified us and again
I think I should stress the FBU certainly does not condone such
behaviour, indeed it very aggressively tries to prevent that sort
of behaviour, but the simple fact is that I think the watch culture,
the methods of recruitment obviously encourage a very macho culture
which is not women-friendly, is not ethnic community friendly
and indeed probably more generally is not friendly to anybody
who is out of the ordinary.
Q378 Chris Mole: So is the shift
system really a barrier then? Against that backdrop it hardly
seems to be such a great problem yet the White Paper suggests
that it is something necessary to make the service more diverse,
yet networking women in the Fire Service said they thought that
was perhaps overstated and what they felt women needed was more
certainty about how they could match their work/life balance.
What are your thoughts on the importance of the shift system in
promoting diversity?
Professor Bain: Could I answer
that question perhaps a little more broadly. As you know, about
95% of firefighters work the 2, 2, 4 (two days, two nights with
four days off) and it probably does suit some women. It might
well be, since people's living patterns vary so greatly, that
there are some women who would find that—and indeed the
FBU has argued this—actually a good system. But it is quite
clear that a very large proportion of women, and indeed men and
others, would not find that a convenient shift. It is also not
necessarily the kind of shift that would be best for actually
getting fire cover to vary in a way which reflected risk to people
rather than risk to buildings. So we are not arguing against the
2, 2, 4, we are simply saying that it should not be the only shift
pattern which is available. I thought the White Paper was rather
good on this. In the appendix at the end, as I am sure you are
well aware, they give some examples here on pages 72-74 of different
working patterns for firefighters, of which one could still be
the 2, 2, 4, but some would be 9.00-5.00. In fact 5.00 is not
a very good time to change a shift because one of the big times
for fires is around 5 or 6 o'clock as people are putting on their
chip pans and all that sort of stuff. So you do not actually want
a shift to change at 6 o'clock at night but that is exactly the
point at which shifts do change. So we are just arguing against
one size fits all. At the moment you have got one size fits all,
2, 2, 4. We are simply saying there are many other shift patterns
which would be good, first of all for firefighters and particularly
for women. We are saying there are also many other shift patterns
which would be good for the efficiency and effectiveness of the
service.
Q379 Christine Russell: Sir George,
there still appears to be great resistance to change in many sections
of the Fire Service, particularly over joint control rooms, joint
responses with other emergency services. Why do you think that
opposition is still there and still so strong in parts of the
Service?
Professor Bain: Well, if we take
the joint control room—and I suppose this is a question
which is better put to perhaps the FBU—from reading what
I have read they seem to think that it would result in the loss
of jobs. But there is no doubt in my mind that it would certainly
be more effective and more efficient to have joint control rooms,
certainly between different fire authorities and perhaps between
different emergency services. I think we give a statistic in the
report, and it is repeated in the White Paper, that the cost of
incidents vary from something like £18 per incident in London
to, I think it is, £120 or something of that magnitude in
some of the smaller authorities. So I suppose it is a question
better directed to those who are opposed to it than to me, but
my understanding is that they see employment consequences. Our
answer to it in the report is that there is really quite a large
scope for redeploying people. There never has been redundancy
in the Fire Service, in modern living memory anyway, and I do
not think we would see redundancy here. In fact, if memory serves
me correctly, 20% of the Fire Service will retire in the next
five years, so there is considerable scope for redeploying people
even if this did result in the loss of jobs within the control
room.
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