Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
180-189)
RT HON
HAZEL BLEARS
MP, RT HON
MARGARET BECKETT
MP AND RT
HON JOHN
HEALEY MP
27 OCTOBER 2008
Q180 Andrew George: A lot of the
critics of the scheme were very cynical that you would achieve
the kinds of savings that were originally projected and they were
also cynical that it would achieve the resilience and in fact
the local delivery of a safe fire response service. As you are
not meeting the financial objectives of the project, to what extent
can you reassure the Committee that you are capable of meeting
any of the other objectives?
Hazel Blears: Mr George, I think
you have been in correspondence with us in the Department particularly
around the financial assumptions that were put forward by the
Fire Brigade's Union and were given a fairly detailed response
as to why the initial estimates of the FBU were not in fact accurate.
I think that is a matter of record. In relation to the major gains
on both resilience and on local service, I would like to give
the Committee a genuine reassurance on this. I think if we were
still to have 47 different control centres with the kind of challenges
we are likely to face in the future then I do not think we would
be doing our duty by the people of this country to be able to
respond in very, very difficult emergency circumstances. At the
moment those control centres are not what is called interoperable
in that they cannot share information. Many of them rely on a
kind of informal buddy system so that when one control centre
gets overloaded because there is a major incident then people
from another area can apparently fax in where their fire engines
are and somebody else faxes back as to where they would like to
deploy them to. I frankly think that in the 21st century that
is really not a good enough service and under the new system of
the nine regional control centres there will be technology that
will enable people to see on a big screen where the resources
are, where the fire engines are, where the hazard is, what kind
of chemicals there might be in a particular incident. The fire
safety staff can prepare for that; the firemen and women will
actually be safer because they will know the kind of event they
are going to. I think that prospect is a real gain for us. We
now have eight out of nine of these centres ready for practical
completion; the one in London is well on the way. I think in terms
of a better service I can certainly give that assurance and I
think actually it is likely to be needed in the future on many
more occasions than we have seen in the past and I do think it
will be an improvement.
Q181 Chair: On the issue of the savings
which have apparently been shared with Mr George, could we as
a Committee actually have the breakdown of what savings were predicted
and what they have actually turned out to be?
Hazel Blears: I would be absolutely
delighted to do that. I am told that four out of the nine regions
will make savings; they approximate to £2 million. Five out
of the nine regions will not make savings. We have undertaken
to give them a resilience payment of £3.6 million which means
it is going to cost us £5.6 million, that will be fewer savings
than we originally envisaged. There are very good reasons for
that; I will just give you two of the top line reasons because
I know time is pressing. One is that the original estimate of
how much it cost to run the existing system I think was over-egged.
It was based on a very busy metropolitan centre and when that
was extrapolated across to the smaller centres it had been over-estimated,
so we were saying that it cost an awful lot of money to run the
existing centres and therefore we would make a lot of savings,
when actually for some of the smaller centres it was not that
expensive. On the procurement side the costs of land have gone
up, the costs of steel have gone up, the cost of utilities has
gone up, so there is a good breakdown of the reasons for the national
procurement being more expensive. Having said that, we still anticipate
savings of around £7 million and actually the improvements
in the service are well, well worth it.
Q182 Mr Olner: I certainly do not
have a problem with smart services and I think sometimes smart
services need to be put in place, however I have two questions.
One, has the smart service that we are putting in got the local
knowledge? We all see evidence of Tom-Toms sending people in the
wrong direction so it is the smart knowledge that I am concerned
about. The other concern I have is the interactivity between the
fire and rescue service and the police. I represent an urban area
and I suppose it is no different to many others where sometimes
the fire and rescue services under a hoax problem get into severe
difficulties from local yobs in coming under attack. I just wonder
whether the smart services are able to connect both where the
call is going to and also who is able to protect the fire and
rescue people when they go there.
Hazel Blears: Those are two very
important issues. Local knowledge is often essential in terms
of response times and for those local calls the system will not
feel any different to the system now. You will be able to ring
up, get your fire engines with people with local knowledge. The
resilience part of this system is to say that if you get overloaded
because in your area there is a massive industrial fire you can
then call on aid from your neighbouring fire authorities to be
able to support you in those circumstances. That cannot happen
at the moment. The local knowledge will remain immediate and central
but you will have access to a whole range of other resources to
be able to ensure that the people in your area who are in trouble
get a very swift response which is what they would expect to happen.
In terms of the—I hate this word—interoperability,
then the FireLink system that we are bringing in together with
FiReControl is actually based on the same technology, the Airwave
technology, that has been installed both for the police and also
for the ambulance service as well so that you will have all of
our emergency services able to share data and to share information.
Again I think that will be a massive step forward. The case that
you have highlighted of sometimes fire officers being subjected
to physical harassment and intimidation has been a concern; I
am pleased to say that that is a little less than it was in many
of our areas but it is still a matter of concern for those fire-fighters.
Chair: Can we move onto climate change?
Anne?
Q183 Anne Main: I was pleased to
hear the Secretary of State saying in an earlier response that
we are much more aware of climate change but of course the Committee
inquired earlier this year into Existing Housing and Climate
Change and recommended that the Government push ahead with
smart meters within a decade. The Government actually pledged
to roll out smart meters to all households. However, the Government's
response to this Committee's report actually seems to row back
from that and says, "At present, the economic case for domestic
roll out is more questionable". I raised this last week and
I was actually somewhat surprised that we could not have any answers
from that. So could I ask you on what economic grounds is the
roll out to all homes now questionable? Does that mean that economy
has championed over green issues? What does the fact that your
officials declined to answer questions on smart meters—on
what had been a joint representation to this Committee—say
about your Department's ability to influence its strategic partners,
namely Defra?
Margaret Beckett: I do not have
an up-to-date briefing on this but I can certainly make sure that
we find the answer and let the Committee have it. First of all,
as our officials said, this is still very much a Defra issue,
it is certainly not a CLG issue. There have been some questions
about some of the technologies. Smart meters are a tremendous
thing; they are something that people are very keen to develop.
I think people are looking at the different kinds of options and
it may be that it is a question like that that has meant that
there has not been the scale of roll out that the Committee was
expecting. Personally I take the view that it is absolutely the
kind of technology that can be beneficial to us in the future.
As, for example, we look at things like zero carbon homes this
is exactly the kind of provision that can help people to monitor
and all the evidence we have is that it does really assist people.
Q184 Anne Main: The majority of our
housing stock is older housing and smart meters are supposed to
be rolled out to all households, it was an intrinsic part of the
Government's plan, working through housing and therefore the DCLG
that people who had smart meters would be able to go onto better
tariffs, manage their fuel efficiency and also at the same time
relieve fuel poverty. The very fact that it appears that the DCLG
now does not seem to have a great deal of clout on those ambitions
that the Committee welcome worries me. I will ask you again, how
can we influence Defra on this one if it appears that it is just
suddenly all handed back to Defra?
Margaret Beckett: Defra does not
provide them, it is an issue that first came to light through
Defra because of Defra being the department that handled climate
change (although now of course we have a new department which
will be dealing with some of these issues). All I can simply say
is that it is an issue of importance; it will be particularly
key I think—as you are right in saying—in existing
housing. It is a programme we should be looking to roll forward
and when I have the information that the Committee is seeking
I will write to you about it.
Q185 Chair: I think what we want
to know is which department is responsible for making sure it
happens. That is what we would like the answer to.
Margaret Beckett: My feeling is
that it may not be a department, it may be something like the
Energy Saving Trust which is why I am saying I think it would
be wise if I wrote to the Committee.
Chair: We would like to know who is responsible
and ultimately which minister is responsible.
Q186 Anne Main: When it was the ODPM
there was a problem communicating its vision to other departments.
Do you accept that is still a problem?
Hazel Blears: I absolutely reject
that. I think you only have to look at the progress that has been
made in the last 12 to 18 months on Local Area Agreements, on
the National Indicator Set which is now the interface between
all of the different government departments in Whitehall.
Q187 Mr Hands: We are talking about
this vision; not about achievements, we are talking vision.
Hazel Blears: If we are talking
vision then in the past it was alleged that CLG was not able to
influence its partners in achieving a vision of sustainable communities,
of places where people want to live, work, invest and bring up
their families. That is still the vision of the Department and
we now have achieved it through something that people were incredibly
sceptical of, that we would be able to get every single government
department lined up, agreeing targets, agreeing inspection regimes,
agreeing resources, to be aligned in a way to actually make a
difference out there on the ground. I think now that CLG is in
a dramatically different position of having been able to persuade
people right across Whitehall to be able to be part of the vision
that we are promoting.
Q188 Anne Main: How are you going
to get smart meters over to Defra? The DCLG I believe supported
the idea of introducing smart meters.
Hazel Blears: Mrs Main, I commend
you on your tenacity and determination on this issue. In response
to that, as you have already heard, we will come back to the Committee.
We will leave no stone unturned to find out who is responsible
for this area, which minister, which agency and make sure that
vision does not simply remain vision but, as all of us are focused
on, turns into something that actually makes a difference on the
ground.
Q189 Chair: Can I finish off then
with an area where the Department seems to have overachieved and
that is the reduction in your staffing levels? I would like to
ask whether the reduction of nearly a thousand staff in the past
few years means that the predecessor department, the ODPM, was
significantly overstaffed or inefficient.
Hazel Blears: I do not think it
would automatically lead me to that conclusion. As with most developing
situations there is a constant drive in the Department. Hunada
Nouss was here last week and she said to drive out efficiencies,
to make sure that you put more people at the front end delivering
policy and fewer people in administrative roles. In a way it is
a little bit similar to the discussion we have just had around
the FiReControl system: introducing smarter ways of working very
often can release people to do the jobs that you think are a priority
and I think that is what has been happening in the Department
over the last couple of years, trying to ask if there is a better,
smarter way of doing our business and that means that we can prioritise
other areas. One of the areas that I am quite keen to look at
is in Government Offices because I think they have gone down by
about 30 per cent. I think as we move to this new situation where
we are asking Government Offices to be the link people in many
cases between local authorities and not just CLG but the whole
of Whitehall then managing that relationship is quite a task for
people. Therefore I want to look at the skills capacity and numbers
we have got who are able to deliver that new way of working for
us. I think that will be a priority for us to look at. I do not
think it is automatically the case that because we can do our
business on fewer people than before we were completely bloated
and inefficient.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed. I
think you will find that we are all as tenacious on following
up issues and pursuing the information.
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