Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-227)
MR ANDREW
FREEMANTLE MBE AND
MR MICHAEL
VLASTO
2 MARCH 2005
Q220 Chairman: Do you keep the finances
separate for both of those organisations or do one country's donations
subsidise the work in another?
Mr Freemantle: We work on a holistic
basis, because, of course, if we put lifeboat stations only where
we were able to raise money for them then the service would look
very different, if one thinks of lifeboat stations, for example,
in Scotland or the west coast of Ireland, where hardly anyone
lives, on the west coast of Ireland, and yet we have got a lot
of large, all-weather lifeboats there. To answer your question
directly, we use the money that the public is good enough to give
us to best effect wherever it is necessary.
Q221 Chairman: It is interesting that
you do not seem to think there is a decline in volunteers coming
forward for the actual boat work?
Mr Freemantle: There is a certain
cachet I like to think, and I think our volunteers feel
there is a cachet, particularly in the local community.
It is a risky business. It is exciting. We feel it epitomises
the best of British and I think our volunteers actually do that.
I am not suggesting that getting volunteers is easy and we have
to work harder at it probably than we have had to in the past,
but nevertheless we have been able and are reasonably confident
that we will continue to be able to find enough volunteers in
most places.
Q222 Chairman: You do not really think
there is any need to have some form of encouragement, because
£9 for cleaning one's kit would not be regarded by many people
as an enormous sum of money?
Mr Freemantle: They do not do
it for the money, Madam Chairman.
Q223 Chairman: Obviously they do not
do it for the money, but a lot of them, you have told us, are
self-employed. Have you considered whether or not there ought
to be some form of income substitution for these people, because
they must lose income every time they are called out?
Mr Freemantle: They are prepared
to do that, of course. Occasionally we require a volunteer to
do, say, a full-time course at our college in Poole. Under those
circumstances, we do pay an allowance for loss of earnings, it
is a set allowance and would be given to a solicitor or a doctor,
because we have got solicitors and doctors who are lifeboat volunteers,
just as we have self-employed people, and it is a flat rate. There
is some "loss of earnings" compensation when they doing
full-time training, but that is not very often.
Q224 Chairman: Are we not thinking very
much about the future? Have you done any research at all? Presumably
your work is increasing, there are more people going to sea, so
have you done any work about whether there is going to be future
demand that is greater? Who should be doing that research? Who
should be estimating whether your work is going to increase and
whether you are going to be able to meet that demand?
Mr Freemantle: We are confident
that we can meet the demand. Of course, the pattern of demand
is changing. We refer, affectionately, I might add, to what we
call the Birmingham Navy, which is the number of people from inland,
not necessarily from Birmingham, who buy boats. As people have
more money they buy boats and they drive them to the coast at
the weekend and perhaps do not know how to drive them on the sea
as well as they should, and of course quite a number of our rescues
are caused because of that and that is a trend.
Q225 Chairman: That is likely to increase,
is it not? We have been told that leisure boating is increasing
and, as more and more people regard new toys as being something
they ought to have, presumably there is going to be more and more
of this kind of work? What we are saying is, what planning are
you doing for the basis of more rescues at sea?
Mr Freemantle: Yes, we are continually
improving boats and procedures and we do that all the time. It
is pretty clear that there is a small incremental increase in
our workload each year. We have been able to accommodate that.
If you look at the number of call-outs for the average lifeboat
station, it is actually quite small. It is not small here on the
Thames, it is not small at Poole, but in many cases it is quite
low. The only problem that we might have if the demand goes up
significantly is that employers, who have been good enough to
release their staff as volunteers, and do without them sometimes
when they whip off in the middle of the day, might be less enthusiastic
about that if the call rate goes up. That is a potential problem.
Q226 Chairman: Just finally on VAT, what
is happening with you as far as VAT is concerned?
Mr Freemantle: We pay, I think
it is, £3.9 million or so a year VAT, which is the price
of two all-weather lifeboats, so if anyone would relieve us of
that we could have two more all-weather lifeboats.
Q227 Chairman: You have raised this with
the Treasury, presumably?
Mr Freemantle: Yes, we have, and
with the Tax Office. We are constantly in touch with them, and,
of course, our lifeboats are not subject to VAT but there is a
big grey area as to what constitutes something that contributes
to the rescue service and what is a sort of administrative expense.
Anything which could be done to relieve us of the VAT burden we
would very much welcome, because as far as I know we must be one
of the few charities where, if we ceased to exist, the Government
would have to replicate our service.
Chairman: On that very interesting and
useful point, can I thank you both for coming this afternoon.
We are very grateful to you.
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