UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE
To be published as HC 948 - i

House of COMMONS

Oral EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE the

transport Committee

the coastguard, emergency towing vessels and the Maritime Incident Response Group

Tuesday 26 April 2011

Steve Quinn, David MacBeth, Steve Todd and Allan Graveson

Stewart Henderson, David Balston, Davd Offin and Steve Jellis

Steve Demetriou, Mervyn Kettle and Gary Walsh

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 125

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the transport Committee

on Tuesday 26 April 2011

Members present:

Mrs Louise Ellman (Chair)

Jim Dobbin

Mr Tom Harris

Julie Hilling

Kwasi Kwarteng

Mr John Leech

Paul Maynard

Iain Stewart

Julian Sturdy

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Steve Quinn, President of Coastguard Section, Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), David MacBeth, Assistant Secretary, Coastguard Section, Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Steve Todd, National Secretary, RMT, and Allan Graveson, Senior National Secretary, Nautilus International and Prospect, gave evidence.

Q1 Chair: Good afternoon, gentlemen, and welcome to the Transport Select Committee. Would you give your name and the organisation you represent, please? This is for our records. I will start at the end here.

Steve Quinn: Steve Quinn, PCS.

David MacBeth: Dave MacBeth, PCS.

Allan Graveson: Allan Graveson from Nautilus International, also representing Prospect.

Steve Todd: Steve Todd, RMT.

Q2 Chair: Thank you very much. Does the Coastguard need modernising?

Steve Quinn: I would say the short answer would be yes. We certainly need to move with the times and embrace new technology. The current proposal is offering wholesale cuts to the Coastguard Service with no real benefit that we can ascertain.

Q3 Chair: Who else has a view? Does the system need any change?

Allan Graveson: Yes. I believe there is always room for change in any organisation. An organisation that ceases to have change, shall we say, does not meet the challenges that are required. But, however, change should not mean wholesale and indeed random-or what appear to be random-cuts.

Steve Todd: I think pretty much the same as my colleagues. Without repeating what Allan has just said, along those lines, while we welcome change for the better, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there have to be cuts.

Q4 Chair: Can you identify any weaknesses in the way things work now, or do you have any suggestions of what change for the better might mean?

Steve Quinn: Change for the better would be if there was better resilience within the Service and if better technology could be used. At the moment we are very much reliant on radios and BT telephone lines. With the best will in the world, if the BT telephone system goes down, then we lose all our communications. There are areas that could be investigated where better technology, if it was available, could certainly be utilised.

Q5 Chair: Do you think that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency proposals will bring improved technology?

Steve Quinn: Certainly not that we have seen. We have seen no details of any new technology at all. The proposal that is on the table at the moment is utilising the existing technology but cutting frontline coastguard officers by 48%. Cuts of that magnitude can only end up leading to putting people’s lives at risk.

Q6 Chair: Does anybody else have a view on what kind of changes could be beneficial?

Allan Graveson: Yes, I do. If you are going to make change, you have got to invest and inevitably there is an upfront cost as a consequence. You could introduce some of the systems which are extensively used in the military in order to manage your situations in a different way and also make utilisation of technology that is available to them. But, of course, that requires capital investment.

Currently, I believe the coastguard stations are, essentially, paired. That geographical pairing itself is a weakness. Certainly, if you could integrate, as we do with the internet, all of the stations together in one command and control system, I believe that would give significant benefits, but it does require investment in new technology.

Q7 Chair: Is that kind of investment in the proposals that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency have submitted?

Allan Graveson: I would regretfully say no, I don’t think it is there. They do allude to the idea of new systems of communication, but it is, I would suggest, insufficient. We have to look at this not just in a single context. We have to look at this in a much more holistic way.

We have lost the Nimrod aircraft with Searchwater radar and the search and rescue capability is reduced. We have an ageing helicopter force. Potentially, we are looking to lose the MIRG and then the coastguard stations as well. This is wholesale change that is taking place and there doesn’t seem to have been any thought given to what our end position is. We want to provide truly to this nation and its people a proper Coastguard of which we can be proud and that has a reasonable prospect of carrying out the job for which it is designed, and that is to rescue people at sea and provide the necessary support, indeed inland, in the event of certain natural disasters occurring.

Q8 Chair: Mr Todd, are there any changes you would like to see? The Maritime and Coastguard Agency say that many coastguards are underemployed and that the load of the work is very unevenly spread. Would you agree with that assessment?

Steve Todd: I can’t say, hand on heart, I could agree with that assessment. But, at the same time, if there were any improvements, I would like to see that the Coastguard would be funded properly and not based on a volunteer basis, to see more full-time people employed by the Coastguard Agency and not so many in the volunteer sector. The shipping industry brings so much money into our economy that it should be wholly funded. That is my view. If you are aware of the amount of funding that they receive at this moment in time and the proportion, on the balance of payments, of what the shipping industry brings back into the economy, it is far too disproportionate.

Q9 Chair: Mr Quinn, do you agree with the MCA statement that many coastguard officers are underemployed and that the workload is very unevenly spread?

Steve Quinn: With regard to the statistics that the MCA have put out in that document, there is no balance or weighting given to any of those statistics whatsoever. They state on the south coast during the summer months that the stations are very busy. This is a fact. What they don’t say is that, for instance, the more northern or westerly stations can be handling an incident that might run for days at a time. So there is no weighting to them at all. Whereas the bald facts would indicate a north-south divide on the number of incidents, when you delve down into those statistics there is no weighting at all. As I say, in the northern part of the UK you can have an incident running for three, four or five days. Whereas on paper you can say, "Yes, that station is quiet; that station is busier", there is no relevance in those statistics at all at the moment.

Q10 Mr Leech: Mr Quinn, you said you weren’t aware of any plans to improve technology in the new structure. Would I be right in thinking that the proposed new structure is more of a call centre operation than the way the coastguards work at the moment?

Steve Quinn: The current proposals are reducing from 19 24/7 coastguard stations, that are ever present, to four coastguard stations that will be 24/7 and five day watch only stations. The idea behind it is that, during the day, the stations that are open could handle calls and handle incidents in their own area. During the night time, those stations will be closed and the incident will be handled from the two main Maritime Operations Centres.

The technology that we have at the moment and the technology they are envisaging using is the same technology. So we have asked the questions. We have had no answers. If a day station is open during daylight hours, will they coordinate incidents in their location, or will that call go through, as you say, a call handling centre, the Maritime Operations Centre, and somebody will then make a decision that that will then be passed out to the station in whose area that incident is occurring? We have asked those questions a number of times and we have never really had a definitive answer.

Q11 Mr Leech: As far as you are aware, the MCA believe that their existing telephone network will be sufficient to deal with it under a more centralised telephone system.

Steve Quinn: They must be of that opinion because they are not giving any evidence of any new technology. They have actually said that the technology for the new system is basically the same technology that we are using now, with some more enhanced databases to store telephone numbers more efficiently. That is basically the same technology.

Q12 Mr Leech: I just want to move on to something different. Obviously, over the years, a number of coastguard stations have already closed. Can you tell me what impact the closure of those stations had on the work done in the other stations and, most specifically, what local knowledge may or may not have been lost as a result of those coastguard stations closing?

Steve Quinn: There has been no hard evidence gained to define what happened since the last round of coastguard closures, unfortunately, not that I am aware of anyway.

Certainly with regard to the local knowledge, at the moment local knowledge is a vital tool that the Coastguard use every day in every incident they come across. You used the words "call handling centres" a moment ago. If you have somebody in difficulty in the water or somebody hanging by their fingertips off a cliff top, minutes count.

I will give you a perfect example if local knowledge is diluted into two centres during night-time only and all the other stations are closed. At the moment, if a phone call went into a station in, say, Liverpool, Clyde or Belfast, telling us that somebody was in trouble on Blackpool Beach, the chances are those people in those operations rooms have a fair idea they are talking about Blackpool in the north-west of England because that is where they are based. However, if that call went into a southern MOC, they might think it is not the Blackpool in the north-west of England but a Blackpool down on the south coast, because there is another Blackpool Beach down there.

I am sure the professionalism of the coastguards would resolve those issues, but it will take time. It will take longer than knowing that information instantly. You have to go through a system of trying to ratify which part of the world you are talking about. My colleague here from the Western Isles can give you examples of four, five or six place names all with the same name.

Q13 Chair: Mr MacBeth, can you give us a couple of examples?

David MacBeth: Yes, sure. We have four Tarberts, plus a Tarbet. We have four Crathes; we have two Scalpays. We also have places that sound the same. We have two Mallaigs, Melvaig, Maravaig and Moraig.

Q14 Mr Leech: We have a situation here where we are going to close or it is proposed to close further coastguard stations, but I want to know whether there is any evidence that, when the other ones have closed previously, there are examples of where this has caused a real problem, resulting in someone not having the local knowledge from a particular area that no longer has that coastguard station?

Allan Graveson: I can’t give a specific example because that was evolution and not revolution. At the time that was considered a relatively modest change. It was spaced over time and there was an ability for people to adapt. So that was evolution. What we are looking at here is revolution. We are looking here at very substantive cuts. We believe the minimum that you could operate with would be three in Scotland, with one to the east, one to the west and one to the north; one in Northern Ireland; two in Wales, one to the north and south; and five in England, one to the east, one to the west and three to the south. That will give you 11 stations.

I do believe, with the technological change that has taken place such as AIS, which has been brought in, and if there is massive investment in technology and there is support for the local coastguard, change could happen. We are not against change, but we are for evolution and not revolution. This is a step here that is highly dangerous and you cannot afford to get it wrong; it is so critical.

We will be quoting statistics, but the problem with a lot of the statistics is that it is small sample analysis. We get a major shipping incident involving pollution about every 12 years, a major ferry incident about every 18 years, a fire on a ferry every five years. We have also got to deal with the leisure industry and indeed the fishing industry, which has an increasing number of callouts. There is a greater demand being placed on the Coastguard. So there can be evolution but not revolution.

Q15 Mr Leech: Just one last question. You said three coastguard stations minimum for Scotland. Would that really provide local knowledge for someone on the east of Scotland, someone on the west or someone on the north? Would they really have the local knowledge for that whole area that they would be covering if there were just three stations?

Allan Graveson: There is a question of degree here as to what could be. Clearly more coastguard stations would give you a greater degree of local knowledge; I agree with you on that. That cannot be denied. We have things like Google Earth today, for heaven’s sake. We have AIS; we have satellites. If we actually bring everything into play properly and we do invest in technology, there is that potential for an element of substitution, but only to a point.

As a colleague mentioned here, I am mindful in Scotland of the Gaelic language. I am mindful in Wales of the Welsh language. That is why I suggested two stations in Wales, to provide resilience. We must bear this in mind. I do think that that would probably be the absolute minimum. That is not what I would prefer. I would prefer more than three, but three is the absolute minimum, I would say, so that you could actually put your hand on your heart and say, when things go wrong, "It wasn’t our fault."

Q16 Iain Stewart: Mr Graveson has actually touched on the question I was going to ask and perhaps the other panel members could comment. That is, if you get your wish list of new technology, will you require the current number of stations and also the number that will be open 24 hours a day?

Steve Quinn: Until we know what that technology is and what it could achieve, I really couldn’t give an answer on that one at the moment.

Q17 Iain Stewart: But do you think there is a potential for rationalisation, or will we, in your best guess, still need the current number?

Steve Quinn: The PCS is still in the process of putting together a response to this document. I wouldn’t like to pre-empt what that response would be, but certainly at the moment if the MCA or anybody else could come up and say, "This is the technology we propose to use. This is what it can do. This is how you can operate it", then we could certainly have a look at it. We have been calling for the MCA now to have a live exercise for over two years to put forward their ideas into a live exercise scenario so that we can test it, and they can either prove it will work or it won’t work. But, at the moment, despite our requests time and time again, we have not had this live exercise yet. So I can only assume that they haven’t got the technology that you are envisaging.

Q18 Iain Stewart: If I can follow that up, do you have evidence from other countries that have introduced new technology in their coastguard stations and been able to rationalise, or have they kept the same number of stations?

Steve Quinn: In fairness, the UK Coastguard is unlike just about any other coastguard in the world. In the UK, the Coastguard not only task assets but they co-ordinate that incident from start to finish. By and large, other coastguards around the world will task an asset and basically take a step back then and leave the professional asset themselves to organise that rescue. The two are not exactly compatible. We have no figures or facts to back that up one way or the other.

Q19 Julian Sturdy: Just following on from Mr Stewart’s question, there has been a lot of talk about the need for new investment in technology. Could you just highlight to me what sort of new technology you are talking about? Obviously we have been talking about satellite systems and things like that, but where would you like to see the direct investment going? A number of you have touched on this already, but I would just like a bit more detail on this, if I could, from across the board.

Steve Quinn: As I said before, at the moment we are very much at the mercy of the BT telephone system in its simplest form. If a workman with his digger digs up a telephone line that happens to go to our aerial site or an exchange, we lose that aerial site. That is a weakness inherent in the BT system. If we could use satellite or cableless communications, that would then give us more resilience in the fact that we are not then at the mercy of somebody digging up a piece of wire.

If these technologies are available-and I know some are-I don’t know at this moment in time whether they would give us the resilience we need, but certainly that is an area that I think should be investigated. If that technology is there, then it should be put into the system.

Q20 Julian Sturdy: Is that the feeling from everyone?

Allan Graveson: Yes, that is the feeling-that it should not only be the coastguard stations. I start out at the further limits here of aircraft with Searchwater radar. We know the Nimrod has been scrapped. I believe the chief executive of the MCA was not aware of that when these proposals were made. We do have some existing aircraft that could be used equally well. We could buy in smaller aircraft in order to provide that capability of Searchwater radar. Remember, we are responsible for half of the North Atlantic as a country and we have to borrow assets from Ireland and France. That is really quite impossible.

Steve Quinn: If I can just make one more comment on that one, the AIS has been mentioned. The AIS system we have in the UK at the moment for vessels is VHF radio-based, so you are looking at 30 miles best range. There is an option to have satellite-based AIS, but, as I understand it, the MCA are not looking into buying into that technology at the moment. If we got satellite AIS, we could potentially have global notification of vessels anywhere in the world that are intending coming to UK waters.

Q21 Julian Sturdy: If I may, I have a supplementary on that exact point. Mr Stewart asked about what other countries were doing. Are any other countries buying into that already? Is that operational in other parts of the European waters?

Steve Quinn: The Norwegians, as I understand it, and certainly the Americans are using this technology or they are bringing it on stream as we speak.

Q22 Julian Sturdy: So it is being developed at the moment.

Steve Quinn: Yes. I don’t know how far down the road it is. I do know it is more than a concept, if I can put it that way. The satellites are already in place, I understand.

Q23 Chair: Am I right in saying that, if there was a different kind of technology being proposed, you might have a different view on these proposals, because the whole thrust of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s proposals is that technology can deliver results in a much better way than it does now and that then would justify the change in the arrangements? I just want to be clear that you are saying that, as you understand the proposals, that new technology isn’t there.

Allan Graveson: No, Chair. If I may say, Chair, it is people that use technology. You can use technology to help a system, yes, to some extent substitute, but there is a limitation on that. You still need people and, arguably, you need more highly skilled people as a consequence of the introduction of this technology. You must remember the range of cases with which the Coastguard have to deal. It is not with the Deepwater incident in the mid-Atlantic. It is on our beaches, our coastal areas and, indeed, inland even into our rivers that they have to operate. Therefore, there is a limitation on the technology. It will help and assist, but it is no substitute for sufficiently qualified and able personnel.

Steve Todd: What I was also concerned about, as Allan quite ably said, is that you need people to use the technology and you need to train those people to a higher level if it is going to be new and improved technology. Without seeing what has actually been proposed, how can they even contemplate reducing the number of people already, without looking at what technology is going to be in place?

In addition to what they are doing with the Coastguard, don’t forget that the intention is also to withdraw the emergency towing vessels and the Maritime Incident Response Unit for firefighting. All that has to be taken into consideration in what is being proposed here. It is just far too much.

Q24 Paul Maynard: I have listened carefully to what you have been saying and I read your evidence carefully. It is a very powerful act of oratory from Mr Graveson in particular. I am very clear as to what you are against. I am struggling to a certain extent to establish what you are for in terms of the Coastguard. In particular, I am still not clear to what extent you believe that the introduction of new technology-technology you have not been able to describe in any great detail but that is out there somewhere, you seem to suggest-would impact the number of coastguard coordination centres required. Can I ask you, Mr Graveson, with regard to Wales in particular, how you arrived at the number of two as the ideal number of coastguard coordination centres?

Allan Graveson: Of course I said three for Scotland, two for Wales, one for Northern Ireland and five for England. I felt that two was right for Wales was because you need some resilience. Of course, we are looking at North Wales and South Wales. We also have to link up with our colleagues in Ireland of course. There is a dual responsibility here.

I thought that would be the absolute minimum for Wales. More would be desirable, I fully agree, but I think two, because if one goes down you’ve got another one. I did mention the Welsh language there. I think that is very important and it is certainly very important to the people of Wales. So, if one goes down, you have another one available. I appreciate the majority of incidents will be reported in English; in some cases it might be very fractured English from many of the seafarers that are on the ships around our shores today.

Q25 Paul Maynard: Can you just confirm that, in making your apportionment, you did not refer to the existing caseload of current coastguard stations?

Allan Graveson: Yes, I think you can look at caseload because-

Q26 Paul Maynard: Did you?

Allan Graveson: I only looked generally because of the different seasons of the year. We can be affected by different meteorological conditions, and, clearly, when you look at the Coastguard, the demand does change seasonally. That is a reality.

Q27 Paul Maynard: May I ask a further question to the panel more generally about the issue of local knowledge? Clearly you have stressed its importance already. Do you have confidence that the members you represent working in coastguard coordination centres have a sufficiently high level of local knowledge? I use "local knowledge" in the definition adhered to by the MCA, i.e. in terms of the tests that people have to sit.

Steve Quinn: Certainly, as you say, each coastguard officer has to requalify in local knowledge for the station in which they are based, every two years as a minimum. Local knowledge is a never-ending thing. You will always gain more and more local knowledge the longer you stay in any given area.

Certainly, since the consultation was announced, we have travelled round every single coastguard station in the UK, and I would say maybe three or four people have said they would be prepared to move to one of these two Maritime Operations Centres if it came about. The MCA is saying that local knowledge will be retained within the MCA by people moving from the stations where they are now into these two stations. But, for various reasons, not the least of which is the expense of moving to these stations, the chances are that the MCA personnel coastguard officer will be the second earner in that family rather than the main earner. People just cannot afford to move. So, as I said, in every station we have visited, there will be three or four people who have said, "Yes, I will move to one of those new stations." Therefore, that local knowledge will not migrate to these MOCs.

Q28 Paul Maynard: Are you concerned at all by the striking variation in the quality of the local knowledge tests set by each maritime rescue coordination centre? The pass marks vary from some that have no pass marks at all to some that require 80% and others that require 50% in specific sections. Do you have any concern at all that your members are not adhering to the very highest standards in each maritime coastguard centre, because, having looked at what has been deposited in the library, I have some very grave concerns about the quality of these tests, and yet you are basing so much of your argument upon the importance of retaining local knowledge?

Steve Quinn: I can’t comment on how other stations would do their local knowledge tests. I have no first-hand knowledge of that myself. However, as I say, they are tested as a minimum every two years. With the best will in the world, it doesn’t matter what technology we introduce, and it could be the best technology possibly in the world for communications, but there are certain things that technology cannot provide.

If I can just give you one very brief example, just a couple of weeks ago in the part of the world where I work, we took a call. A very distressed gentleman was watching another gentleman drown. He was using the name of the beach. He was saying it is New Aberdour beach. You can search any database, any chart, any piece of technology you like; you will not find anywhere called New Aberdour beach. New Aberdour is a village some three miles inland, but all the locals know that that beach is New Aberdour beach. It was only local knowledge that managed to solve that problem. It doesn’t matter what technology you have. The technology would not resolve that problem. There is nowhere called New Aberdour beach, but the locals refer it to as that and the officers in that coastguard station knew exactly where they were talking about.

Q29 Mr Harris: Just for the benefit of people watching this, Mr Quinn, did the gentleman survive?

Steve Quinn: Unfortunately, no.

Q30 Mr Harris: All of you have come today to respond to what the service is suggesting in terms of cuts. I think all of you have responded by saying that, instead of cutting, the Government should actually be spending more money on the Coastguard Service. Is that realistic? Would you expect that to succeed in your negotiations with the Government? At a time when every other public service is facing major cuts, you are walking into the Minister’s office and saying we should spend more on coastguards. Is that right?

Allan Graveson: If I can answer that, with regard to the rational argument that you can cut 20% of everything, yes, you might well do that in economies like Canada and Sweden, with high natural resources and low population. Here, yes, you could cut 20% of everything.

Q31 Chair: Mr Graveson, Mr Harris is asking you about increasing spending and how realistic that is.

Allan Graveson: However, in order to get savings later on, you need to invest up front in technology first, in order to generate the savings later. That, I believe, is what you need to do first. It requires some investment. The Coastguard, arguably, here is operated on a shoestring in this country. You have to face the reality of this. We therefore should look to investment to bring savings further on in the time frame.

Q32 Mr Harris: Could you explain how those savings would be materialised further down the line?

Allan Graveson: Yes. I mentioned quite clearly earlier that you could have 11 stations: three in Scotland, one in Northern Ireland, two in Wales and five in England. Yes, by bringing the communications systems together, the introduction of new technology, enhanced training, and the improvement of databases. That would require the investment up front. It could be achieved, but it cannot be achieved overnight. You need to do this with a proper risk assessment, arguably even a formal safety assessment, even to that degree. Adopt a scientific approach to the cuts.

Here we are seeing 100% cuts in some capability. We are not seeing a 20% cut. We are seeing a 100% cut in some capability, which I would suggest is highly dangerous.

Q33 Mr Harris: Mr Quinn, PCS, in written evidence suggested that you were concerned about the social effects on your local economies if certain coastguard stations close. Would that be right? Is that one of PCS’s concerns?

Steve Quinn: That is one of the concerns, yes. I think my colleague here could better answer that one, with due respect, because he works in one of these small coastal areas where, if that station were to close, I would imagine it would have quite a devastating effect on the local economy.

David MacBeth: We are very much part of the community where we are, and most of our operators are second incomes because of the poor wages. It is not just the coastguard which would be affected. It is the local shops that would lose money. It is the contractors we have that maintain our vehicles, buildings and so on. They would all lose. Our unemployment rate is one of the highest in the country.

Q34 Mr Harris: But is it the Government’s job to be worried about that? Surely, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s responsibility is to maintain safety in the sea. Surely this is a kind of "by the way"; it is an incidental effect of having these coastguard stations. Is the Government responsible for that?

David MacBeth: I feel it should be taken into consideration.

Q35 Mr Harris: Isn’t that an argument for saying you should double the number of coastguard stations and then you will improve local economies everywhere?

David MacBeth: No, I am not saying that at all.

Q36 Jim Dobbin: Obviously this is a very high profile health and safety matter, not just for the general public but for your members. I am not sure whether we have established this yet, but were you concerned that your members got real indepth consultation?

Chair: What kind of consultation was there?

Steve Quinn: The short answer is there was no consultation whatsoever. The staff were not consulted on any of these proposals. They were not asked to put forward any alternative proposals until after this proposal was actually published. The PCS was promised by the MCA that we would have a sight of this document well in advance of it being published. In reality, we got to see it two hours before it was published. So there was no consultation with staff before this document was published and there was no consultation with the union either.

Q37 Jim Dobbin: Are they basing their proposals on statistics?

Steve Quinn: I think by and large they are, yes. Since this document has been published and the consultation process, then, yes, everybody has been asked to put forward their proposal. But prior to that document being published there was no consultation whatsoever.

Q38 Jim Dobbin: That really worries me. Just following on that, I understand that there are a number of substations that are not going to be open 24 hours. A number of them-I think there are five in total-will be open during the hours of daylight. Does that not worry you?

Steve Quinn: Very much so. Again, you can look at statistics and you can say some stations are busier during daylight hours than night-time hours and busier during summer rather than winter. But you can look at other stations and there is no seasonal or diurnal variation whatsoever. Some stations can be as busy at 3 o’clock in the morning as they can be on a bank holiday Monday. So, yes, the fact that you are assuming you are only going to have major incidents during daylight hours, I think, is a very fraught assumption to make.

Q39 Chair: What would the impact of the proposed closures be on volunteers?

Steve Quinn: It is worth saying that the UK gets search and rescue very much on the cheap. We have 7,000 volunteer coast rescue officers; they are volunteers. The RNLI, mountain rescue and cave rescue are all volunteers. If these proposals go forward, then one could argue that there is going to be more reliance on these volunteers because the local coastguard station won’t be there. So these volunteers will have to be more available than they are now. At the moment we have no guarantee that, when we set the pagers off, anybody will respond or enough people will respond. As a consequence, if we want, for argument’s sake, a cliff rescue team, we might have to page two or three teams to get the numbers up. If that local coastguard station is no longer there, then the eyes and ears, the local knowledge, is going to be resting more and more on these volunteers.

Q40 Chair: Do you think the willingness of volunteers to be involved would be affected by the closures if they went ahead?

Steve Quinn: It is difficult to say. I am not in that position myself, but, if the station that you have been working with for a long time is no longer there, then the potential is there that these volunteers could feel as if they are being left out on a limb and neglected. I don’t know; that is just my own feeling on it.

Q41 Julie Hilling: I have listened to what you have been saying. You think, really, there has been underinvestment in the service in the first place. I just wanted to pick up on that because some of those arguments you have had are around the issues of language and local knowledge, etcetera. With the current set-up of the coastguard stations, is there that indepth local knowledge of all of our coastline? What is the resilience of the communications structure that we have now? In terms of language, yes, okay, people are speaking Welsh, Gaelic or English, but what about those other languages? Part of the plank of your argument is that you need that coverage. I am just wondering then, in reality, whether we are covering those issues now.

Allan Graveson: If I could answer that, we have talked a great deal about local knowledge, but, clearly, with the number of stations we are down to now, there is a limited capability to that extent of local knowledge. I would prefer to use the words "regional capacity", and you need to maintain the Coastguard in the regions. Countries in Europe recognise this and I think we need to have that regional capability. That regional capability can be construed as local knowledge or extended local knowledge, to a point.

Q42 Julie Hilling: What do you mean by "regional capacity"?

Allan Graveson: I alluded to this earlier. With the devolution which has taken place in these islands, which we have to accept, feelings are running extremely high, but also you have to look at the geographical nature of these islands too. We are much more exposed on the western northern shores of these islands, and the further north and west we go we are certainly more exposed to adverse weather. The topography is very different. You must also remember that we have the most severe waters in the western world. That is another factor to bear in mind, with a hydrographic programme that is starved of resources.

With the new technology that is now coming on to ships, will they be able to navigate to the precision they can around the shores of other countries? The answer is no, they cannot, to the same degree of certainty as a consequence.

I believe that we need to maintain the capability, recognising the different geographical nature of these islands. The variance is wonderful but it does present its problems. Also, with the location of these islands, we are susceptible to changing weather. Just look at how it has changed in the last two days.

But on this issue, too, of the night-time, the sea has no respect for day and night-that is the reality-and little respect for life as well, as we only too well know. Therefore, I do believe that the stations need to be 24/7, and we need to have that regional capability which you can call extended local knowledge. That, I believe, is necessary.

Q43 Chair: But the MCA have produced figures saying there are more accidents during the daytime than there are at night. What would your answer to that be in relation to the daylight only savings?

Allan Graveson: I can give you an answer to that, Chair. The problem is the statistical analysis, I would argue, is flawed because we haven’t got a sufficient span of time. Yes, we can look at the leisure incidents and, indeed, some elements of the fishing industry which can have some degree of repetition. But we have to have the capability to deal with the very big incident when it occurs: whether that be a passenger vessel, as we saw with the collision of the Norwegian Dream with the Ever Decent, or whether it be a ferry incident as we had with the Princess Victoria over half a century ago in the Irish Sea.

These very serious incidents occur at intervals of 18 to 25 years. If you only take a small snapshot of five years, your statistics will be flawed. It is small sample analysis. It will deal with the minor issues but not the capability. We must bear in mind a major incident could cause £1 billion, £2 billion or £3 billion of economic damage to a coastline, and I would say the western northern coasts are more susceptible.

Q44 Chair: What about the proposals to change the plans for emergency towing vessels and remove the state from supplying them? Is that going to be a dangerous thing to do or do you think that change can be made?

Steve Todd: If you look at where those tugs were first put into place, when you follow the Braer disaster and other disasters which happened similar to that, and you look at what has happened since then, we have an ever-increasing coastline where you have more and more oil and gas rigs and platforms on the coastline. I wouldn’t say we now have overcapacity, but there are more and more wind farms. The coastal line around us is becoming more and more difficult to navigate, I would say. Therefore, you need those vessels on standby when you have small pieces of coastline like the Minches and places in the north of Scotland where vessels could run aground very easily. They are an essential part of that rescue.

Q45 Chair: But can this be done by the commercial sector rather than by the state, Mr Graveson?

Allan Graveson: No. Arguably, there is a market in the Channel and the southern North Sea and some elements of the North Sea, where you have the potential capacity for towage. But, when we move to the west and north of these islands, it is not a question of the market coming in to pick up here where the state doesn’t provide; there just is no market. The reality is there is no market. This was recognised in the Donaldson report, and I think section 85 recommended this, that the state would have to intervene and provide such provision. It does not mean to say that it will be at the state expense. A properly drafted contract could surely bring money back into the state.

Q46 Chair: There are proposals for change, too, for the Maritime Incident Response Group, whether by disbanding it or by changing it. Do you have views on that? Would anyone like to comment on that?

Steve Quinn: Again, the system is in place now and it is like an insurance policy. Just because you have never had reason to call on it, you don’t get rid of it. The facility is there. My personal view is it should be retained. It is just a question of who would finance it.

Allan Graveson: It is a relatively modest cost. At the time of inception we had 22 brigades coming down to 16. We now have a national strategic plan, with a regional provision using nine teams of 50 firefighters. They can actually be dispersed not only to ships at sea but into harbours and could be used for other civil contingencies. For the price of it, it is an absolute bargain.

Q47 Julie Hilling: I have a question about the view of other countries. I guess that you are involved with other associations internationally and I am just wondering what other partner organisations are saying about the proposals for our cut. Are they raising concerns for their mariners on these issues?

Steve Todd: I think the shipping industry itself would have to answer that question. If you asked the ship owners themselves what their concerns were, as far as we go for the ratings that we represent, we are concerned for their safety and for their future.

Allan Graveson: If I may, Chair, we are an Anglo-Dutch organisation and in the Netherlands they think what the United Kingdom is seeking to do is absolutely incredible. Admittedly, they have a relatively small coastline and a relatively small search and rescue area, but they find it absolutely incredible what the United Kingdom is doing.

Q48 Chair: What is t hat in relation to?

Allan Graveson: The cuts in the Coastguard at all of the levels. Their impression is that there has not been any thought given to what the UK has a responsibility for. We have a responsibility for half of the Atlantic as well as around our shores. Holland has a very modest area.

Q49 Julie Hilling: Have they already raised concerns about the level of coverage that we have and the level of support that is in place? You have given an impression that we should be investing much more. Have you received concerns from other places and other organisations at all? I appreciate you have heard it from within your membership, but have you also picked up things from outside about that level?

Steve Quinn: I do believe that, yes. Mr Gautrey, our full-time negotiations officer, who is not here today, has been dealing with people in France and Brussels and a lot of European countries. They are all expressing grave concern, as has just been alluded to, that the UK is proposing these quite drastic cuts right across the piece, not only in the Coastguard but doing away with the emergency towing vessels and the Maritime Incident Response Group.

Chair: Thank you very much for coming and answering our questions.

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Stewart Henderson, Offshore Development Manager, Svitzer, David Balston, Director of Safety and Environment, Chamber of Shipping, David Offin, Managing Director, JP Knight Caledonian & Anglian, and Steve Jellis, President, British Tugowners Association, gave evidence.

Q50 Chair: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Welcome to the Transport Select Committee. Could you give your name and the organisation that you represent, please, for our records? I will start at the end here.

Steve Jellis: Steve Jellis, British Tugowners.

David Offin: David Offin, JP Knight.

David Balston: David Balston, Chamber of Shipping.

Stewart Henderson: Stewart Henderson, Svitzer UK.

Q51 Chair: Thank you very much. Could you explain how the Government decided to sign the contract to fund the four emergency towing vessels it has today? Would somebody like to explain to me how that came about and why it would seem to be so important?

David Offin: It starts with the Donaldson report or the incident of the Braer in 1993. The Donaldson report, as was said earlier, in recommendation 85, suggested the use of emergency vessels. That went on to the Chris Belton report, which defined the areas they thought were most suitable for where emergency towing vessels should be positioned. As a result of that, there were separate areas put in place. Some of them were primary areas and some of them were secondary areas. It started, as you probably know, with the two vessels and the winter service, it then went on to three and then finally four vessels. We were lucky enough to be awarded that contract for the four vessels in 2001.

Q52 Chair: How often are those vessels actually called out, Mr Offin? Could you tell me that?

David Offin: Those vessels are called out for taskings. Probably, we have about 180 to 190 taskings that we go to on an annual basis. Some of them lead to further intervention, further towage, but we do get called out on about 180 occasions per annum.

Q53 Chair: How much business is generated for your company through the whole operations?

David Offin: The company receives the award from the MCA for the contract itself. In addition to that, it may receive salvage; it may not. But, at the same time, we then do not stay as part of the MCA. We come out of contract. There is a win win situation, and some of that money obviously goes back to the MCA as well.

Q54 Chair: But how much is generated and how much goes back to the MCA?

David Offin: 15% goes back to the MCA.

Q55 Chair: Out of how much?

David Offin: I can’t tell you that figure off the top of my head. It is in the order of £70,000 to £100,000, somewhere in that range. It is not big sums of money.

Q56 Chair: There seems to be some disagreement about how much the vehicles are actually being used or have been used in recent times. Would anyone else like to give me their view on that? I know the Chamber says that you do value the vehicles. Would you like to tell us why you think it is important to maintain them?

David Balston: I think the situation has not changed since Lord Donaldson originally wrote his report. It is still very clear that we need to have some form of emergency towing service to be available should a large vessel or any vessel actually get into difficulties. There have been numerous occasions in recent years-a large number-which could have gone very badly wrong and perhaps didn’t go wrong because there were emergency towing vessels quickly on hand to be able to provide that level of service.

Q57 Chair: Mr Henderson, you seem to have slightly differing views on this. Would you like to tell us why you think the current system should be changed, which is what your evidence is saying?

Stewart Henderson: The need for the provision of a service, on the assumption that the ETVs are going to be discontinued, fully recognises the rationale behind having a service which still exists. The commercial market can take up some of that slack with existing operators. There is a case of saving money, which was the rationale behind this in the beginning. The Government felt it wasn’t right that the taxpayer should be funding the ETVs.

That does not mean there shouldn’t be a service. We fully support the fact that there should be the search and rescue capability, but I think the commercial market and other operators can possibly do that in other ways with existing fleet or modifications to its fleet should there be no ETVs.

Q58 Chair: Are you confident the commercial market could do that within the timetable the Government have put forward?

Stewart Henderson: Do you mean by the end of September 2011?

Chair: Yes.

Stewart Henderson: There would need to be some further discussions on that and there would need to be some changes, but a lot of the slack could be taken up in that time, yes. But there would need to be some further talks on how we went about it, to put detail on it.

Q59 Mr Leech: What circumstances would there be in which you would have a situation where the commercial market wouldn’t deal with a particular problem?

Stewart Henderson: Perhaps I can answer that. In the present circumstances "commercial" means just that. There has to be some recompense, and a tug owner or a vessel owner has to see some point in providing the service. If it is purely on a commercial basis and it is either not within their capability or there is no perceived reward for it, they are not going to want to do it.

Q60 Mr Leech: What I am trying to establish is what the circumstances are, lack of insurance or whatever it might be, which would mean that a commercial operator would say, "I’m not touching that with a barge pole."

Stewart Henderson: Each incident is done on its merits and at the moment it is done through negotiations with a vessel owner. We are talking about vessels in distress or, with the risk of pollution at the moment, it is a commercial negotiation between the vessel’s owners or insurers and an individual commercial operator. Only through that would you determine whether there were sufficient funds or whether you would want to deal with that.

There are existing commercial salvage contracts which cover those aspects. They are generally used in negotiations, and there are different forms of that to cover eventualities. But a commercial operator will make his own judgment on that.

Q61 Mr Leech: What I am trying to establish is whether there are going to be circumstances where action will not be taken because a commercial operator won’t provide the support. If so, what are the circumstances that create that situation where a commercial operator is not prepared to intervene?

David Offin: There are a lot of circumstances where it could not take place. One is if somebody doesn’t have any insurance in place; secondly, where they haven’t got into the location where the incident is happening; thirdly, they may already be employed doing other things, so it is a commercial aspect where they have to do one thing as against another.

There are a number of cases you can take. There was Yeoman Bontrup last year at Glensanda, where it took a long time for people to get there and it was on the west coast. Commercially, there wouldn’t have been anybody there for a long time had it not been for the ETV in place that was stationed in Stornoway.

Q62 Mr Leech: Of all the times that the ETVs go out, in a different situation, if we get rid of the ETVs, how many of those incidents in your view would not have been attended by a commercial operator?

David Offin: I would say round about 50% would not, in time, have been attended by a commercial operator. We have seen a lot of cases where they have been the only one there or thereby, or logging. In fact, it has the prior warning. If we come back to the taskings where we go out to things, they may come to nothing. There are a number of cases where a vessel can be in distress or have an engine failure and is dragging an anchor where we get called to the scene, but we do not actually have any physical tow. But we are there prepared and ready, and it is prevention rather than being active in trying to take it on in itself.

Q63 Mr Leech: I understand the point about reaching them in time, but could you foresee circumstances where vehicles simply wouldn’t get any support at all?

David Offin: It would depend on the location of the casualty in the first place, I would think.

Q64 Mr Leech: But you could foresee a situation.

David Offin: I think you could foresee a situation where a disaster would occur if there wasn’t intervention taking place. Yes, I can see that happening, and I fear for it, to be honest.

Q65 Chair: Mr Jellis, in your written evidence, it is a little ambivalent, isn’t it? You welcome the idea of market forces being involved, but you don’t seem very sure that that could actually deal with all eventualities. Could you tell us any more about your concerns? Mr Jellis, in your statement you say that.

Steve Jellis: The British Tugowners operate all around the UK coast. We cover probably 80% of all tugs in the UK in harbour towage. But these are primarily harbour towage tugs and they certainly are not of the size of the ETVs. An ETV is a 150-tonne bollard pull. Our tugs range from 20 tonnes to over 100 tonnes, but these are spread commercially to carry out full-time commercial contracts.

I think the weakness in this case would be if an incident occurred with a very large ship in very bad weather. In those circumstances, which is what Donaldson was looking at when he specified these very large ETV tugs, in that situation, you could have a real problem. In the majority of incidents around the UK coast, the members of the British Tugowners would be able to offer support, as they have done for many years. I can see situations developing, due to size, technology and weather conditions-the very things that Donaldson was concerned about when he made his recommendation.

Q66 Paul Maynard: Can I ask you all, how would you differentiate the role of an ETV from other marine aids like, for example, lighthouses or buoys in terms of their function and potential funding models?

David Offin: I am contemplating how to answer that carefully.

Q67 Paul Maynard: It is based partly on your evidence, because there was mention of experience from Australia, where fundamental change had been undergone that had borrowed from all elements of the marine navigation issues to ensure a better service coming out the other end. I wanted to try and establish why you felt that ETVs were needed to be funded differently from, for example, lighthouses. That is what I am trying to get at.

David Offin: I don’t really mind where the funding comes from, to be quite frank about it. But if you go to the Australian model, for instance, most vessels are going to Australia, whereas a lot of vessels around the UK are not actually visiting the UK. So how would you define a similar kind of levy? You have your lighthouses that I am sure take all their money from Trinity House.

If we had a similar thing for the funding of ETVs, I would gladly sponsor that as well. I am quite happy to be there. But at the moment we haven’t got such funding. From what I hear, it is not that people don’t understand the need for ETVs. It is, "How can we pay for ETVs?", and there is a difference. What has happened is the cut of the funding as from September. But I don’t think that that stops the reason for having an ETV in the first place. It is still important that we have it there and it is available for all those things. It was mentioned earlier, "How often do you get used?" It is not how often. It is the ones that are important that get used. That is what it is there for.

Q68 Paul Maynard: Clearly there are two debates. Do you require ETVs in the first place, to which you are all issuing a virtually unanimous yes, from what I hear. But the second one is that, if you do wish to retain ETVs, we are looking at either the Government funding them or the market in some way, shape or form funding them. The discussions we have had so far have focused on, if you withdraw an ETV, what would arise to fill the gap. Can you explore, though, other ways in which the market can fund existing ETVs-the existing service? That is perhaps what I am trying to ask you.

David Offin: There are some elements in salvage as well; that is a form of funding. I don’t believe that what we receive from the MCA covers all of our costs. It doesn’t. We found our model based on some of the income, or lack of income, that we get from salvage, as the case may be, because of how good we do as rescue.

We have the hydrographic services that are carried out as well that were mentioned earlier. They are another form of funding for it. There may be other things within the ports themselves. Don’t forget the ETV is about prevention of pollution. It is assisting, but prevention of pollution is its primary role. If we are going to have pollution incidents, who pays for the clean-up of them? How do we get our money back for that?

Q69 Julian Sturdy: Just to follow on Mr Maynard’s point, I agree entirely that there are two debates here. First, do we require ETVs, and, secondly, how are we going to fund them? But on the first part, "Do we require them?", I just want to pick up something Mr Jellis talked about earlier on when he talked about the power of the ETVs compared to the tugs.

What we are saying, just for me to be correct here, is that there are certain vessels that would only be able to be manoeuvred in certain conditions by the current ETVs, i.e. the current size and horsepower that they carry. There would be no other commercial tugs that would be able to do that in certain conditions.

Steve Jellis: In certain conditions there would be limitations.

Q70 Julian Sturdy: When you say "limitations", could you elaborate a bit more on that?

Steve Jellis: It obviously depends on the weather conditions, the situation of the ship and so on, and how many tugs could be deployed and how quickly. But, certainly, a very large ETV arriving promptly is going to be able to handle a very large ship much better than, say, a 50-tonne bollard pull tug.

Q71 Julian Sturdy: Is there a point when, actually, only the ETVs could manage certain vessels, because shipping vessels are increasing in size, aren’t they?

Steve Jellis: There are very large container ships and very large tankers, and, in particular, there are very large LNG ships now coming into the UK. In my view, depending on where that incident happened and what the local tugs were, that could create a situation that could get out of control, yes.

Q72 Julian Sturdy: Are there certain areas of the country that are better equipped than others? I am talking without the ETVs.

Steve Jellis: There are gaps in where commercial ports are located with commercial tugs and areas where there are not.

David Balston: Can I possibly just give an example of this? For instance, in 1996, when the Sea Empress went aground off Milford Haven, the rescue was attempted by local harbour tugs from Milford Haven and not by ETVs. The result was 73,000 tonnes of oil spilt, with a clean-up bill of about £120 million, which in today’s money equates to about £200 million. I am not guaranteeing that an ETV, obviously, could have done the job, but it is far more likely an ETV could have done the job.

Q73 Julian Sturdy: Would everyone on the panel agree that ETVs are pretty much essential in the general operations?

David Offin: I would say that you also have to take account of the amount of time that harbour tugs are used in that type of situation. The people that are employed in ETVs train to do this type of work, and harbour tugs do it maybe occasionally. ETVs have a very strong rapport with MCA stations and with the sales rep. They train and they carry equipment on board which you would not normally see on a harbour tug. Harbour tugs usually have four people on board or less. ETVs have 10 to 12 people on board. If you have an incident where you have to take action with a ship that has taken all its crew off and board that as well, then you would not be able to do it with harbour tugs. You have got to use ETVs if they are available.

Q74 Chair: Mr Balston, would you agree that ETVs are essential?

David Balston: Absolutely. I certainly believe that ETVs are essential, yes. But the essential question, to which again at least two members have alluded, is obviously the funding and how that funding is arranged. We are not disagreeing necessarily with the industry having to pay, for a number of years now there have been discussions about how that might be effected and how the industry might achieve that. That has led nowhere. We have now been given, basically, 12 months in which to address this issue-something which has not been addressed over the last several years. It is essential that Government retains its lead to ensure that a system of funding is brought into place before it walks away.

Q75 Chair: Mr Henderson, do you want to put any different view?

Stewart Henderson: I would echo everything that my colleagues on the panel have said in terms of appropriate provision. We have been focusing on harbour tugs, which I don’t think is necessarily right. I wouldn’t suggest for one minute that you would simply disband a service and replace it with illequipped, illtrained harbour tugs. The service exists and it is important, yes, with the right vessels, properly equipped, properly trained, in whatever form that is. Whether it is current ETVs or other vessels, there would need to be some upgrade in modification of the existing fleet. Some of that capacity does exist but it needs to be properly managed. There needs to be some central Government control and intervention on this and monitoring of the same.

Where does the funding come from? You can try and make a saving, but nobody on a commercial basis will do it without some form of recompense. The MCA is now negotiating and consulting on the correct protocol with various bodies to try and develop what alternative protocols there are to ensure that potential commercial providers can give that level of service with some form of recompense. It is that that needs to be negotiated. But I think we should not focus on harbour tugs as being the answer to replace ETVs. I agree with that, with my colleagues. They have to be properly equipped.

Q76 Mr Harris: Mr Henderson, do you think that Lord Donaldson got it wrong in his recommendation on ETVs?

Stewart Henderson: I would say not. At the time everybody said there was a need for a service provision. I don’t believe that he did get it wrong, no. There was a need for a service provision-an emergency response.

Q77 Mr Harris: I can’t remember exactly the phrasing in the report on the Braer, but isn’t it right that he was putting the onus for the provision of that service with the Government rather than the commercial sector?

Stewart Henderson: At the time, because there was no guarantee from the commercial sector that it could be provided because of the issue of recompense, there needed to be some intervention.

Q78 Mr Harris: In your opinion, the commercial sector in that respect has developed in the interim so that it can now provide that role that it couldn’t back in the late 1980s.

Stewart Henderson: In actual fact, in some ways the fleet has changed in regard to the average size of vessels and bollard pull. Probably the technology on vessels has improved and there are better available vessels. It could potentially have provided that service back in 1994 with the Donaldson report, but the incentive commercially wasn’t there. It could be made. With the correct protocols in place, that could be put in place, but vessel technology has improved.

Q79 Julie Hilling: Do other countries have ETVs and how do they fund them?

Stewart Henderson: It varies. Other countries do have ETVs. Some of them are centrally funded. I can’t answer on where and how they collect those funds. Some of them are taxpayer funded.

Someone alluded to the Australian model, which I can give as an example, where they only have one ETV for the Australian coastline and the rest is performed by commercial tugs. But there is an element of them being properly equipped. There is one ETV in a particular area of coastline where there aren’t many commercial ports. The rest of them are done through existing commercial providers but with some central retaining, which is collected through the light dues system, as far as I know. But, as David said before, all ships are going to Australia and not passing it.

It can be collected centrally, but most Governments do it through central funding, with varying degrees of commercial arrangements. If an ETV attends, there are varying degrees of different arrangements as to who gets any potential salvage reward or commercial reward for the attendance. Some Governments will take more of that than others.

David Offin: Germany, France, Holland, Norway and Spain have them.

Q80 Julie Hilling: How are they funded?

David Offin: Principally from Government. As far as I am aware, they are all funded from Government.

Q81 Julie Hilling: It does seem to me that in the Channel, presumably, there is enough business so that somebody may be prepared to fund a ship that sits there and just does emergency work or whatever else there is. Is somebody commercially going to sit there with an ETV up in the north of Scotland and wait until they have to tow a ship or tow something else that will then pay their money?

David Offin: With France, there is a collective one. The ETV at Dover is funded 50% by the French as well, through the MCA. That is their business. We just charge the MCA.

Steve Jellis: In answer to your question, the answer probably is no; you are absolutely right. People will post a tug at Lands End for the winter months because they know there is a reasonable possibility of it being utilised. But, in Scotland, where that might not be the case, the answer to that is probably no, in certain parts on the west coast.

Q82 Julie Hilling: I can’t quite get my head round this. Are you saying there will be ship owners that say, "Yes, I will buy one of those. I’ll support it and I’ll just take money in"? Or are you saying there is any chance of the industry collectively paying taxes into this? Or are you just saying, no, it has got to be the Government? Can you help me, please?

Steve Jellis: Where there is a possible incident of salvage situations, then tug owners, be they British or foreign, will place a tug in a particular area. It is a gamble, if you like, whether they will be used or not. No one is funding them. But, if they get enough calls throughout a period, then they will deem that successful. So, in truth, it is where the incident is likely to be. Where the incidents are less likely, it is not to say there won’t be a very serious incident like the Braer, for instance. Incidents don’t just happen because people have taken precautions. Who knows where the next incident will be. I think that is the weakness in the situation.

David Offin: There are fewer salvers about than there were. It is a declining market. There are less salvage vessels on station specifically looking for salvage cases. The Greeks still have some. There are two operators that I can think of, and they operate them from the Azores and from Gibraltar. So they are some way from the UK coast.

Q83 Julie Hilling: So they would be really quickly there to save anybody.

David Offin: In the Western Approaches in wintertime, when people are without other commercial activities, they will post vessels in that area on the off chance that they may pick up some salvage. They may also do so at Dover, but I think that is less likely. In the north of Scotland and on the west coast of Scotland, it is highly unlikely, because not only is it a long way from anywhere but there is very little traffic that is going to come into their bag from the point of view of positioning. There is always the danger of having salvage or having incidents there, but there is not much other activity. You won’t pick up a tow or very few tows from the Western Isles. You won’t pick up many tows from the Northern Isles. You are likely to pick something up from the Western Approaches and you will very strongly pick up something from the Dover area. If people are waiting for something else to do commercially, that is where they would put them. They wouldn’t put them north. Or that is what I would do.

Q84 Chair: How many of you were involved in the consultation, if there was any, on this proposed change in relation to emergency towing vehicles? Were any of you involved in any consultations with the MCA?

David Offin: We did have discussions with the MCA on continuation of the ETV programme.

Q85 Chair: But not on the possible change.

David Offin: We were aware that we may have looked to possible changes, but we had no idea of the scale of what was going to happen.

Q86 Chair: Was anybody else involved in any discussion on the possible changes?

David Balston: Only post the announcement.

Q87 Chair: Was anyone involved before?

Stewart Henderson: Post-announcement we are now involved.

Q88 Chair: Is that the same for you, Mr Jellis?

Steve Jellis: Yes.

Q89 Chair: What would the impact of a change in the system for emergency towing vehicles be on the plans for coastguard centre closures and changes there? What would be the impact there? Does anyone have a view on that?

David Offin: The coastguard stations and the ETVs work very closely together in their different locations. I suspect that there would be an impact, as has been talked about a lot earlier on, in local knowledge. There is obviously an awareness and a training that takes place between the coastguard stations and the ETVs themselves. So I imagine there would be an impact in that if they become more remote.

Q90 Chair: The Chamber of Shipping’s evidence expresses quite a lot of concern about the proposed coastguard centre closures. Is that concern increased at the prospect of a change in the emergency towing vehicle systems, Mr Balston? Is there anything you would like to say on that?

David Balston: Not necessarily. Our concerns with respect to the coastguard changes are that, whatever changes are taken, they don’t impact negatively on the level of service which is currently provided. I think, in general, actually, it would be fair to say that the majority of our members recognise that the Coastguard Service is in need of modernisation. Many of the changes being suggested in terms of better communications seem actually to be quite sensible. But, as I said, it is absolutely essential that, whatever changes are made, and the same applies to ETVs as well, it does not lead to a diminution of services.

Q91 Chair: Your written evidence draws attention to concerns from your members about the proposals in relation to the eastern Irish Sea. You have quite a bit of detail in there about your members’ concerns. That’s correct, isn’t it?

David Balston: It is, yes. I think it would be fair to say that the views of our members come in three camps. We have about 140 members, which represent something like about 930 million tonnes of British shipping, so it is the majority of British shipping. There are those who strongly support the changes and there are those, who, frankly, are probably the majority, who are fairly indifferent. I think those that have expressed concern, particularly in the Irish Sea, as you have mentioned, are very regional companies who work regionally and obviously have very close working relationships with the coastguard services in those areas and obviously are supportive of the work they are doing. They are plying in particular a ferry route between two particular ports-one in Ireland and one on the UK mainland. They clearly do have local concerns.

Q92 Chair: There are also plans for changing or possibly disbanding the Maritime Incident Response Group. Do any of you have concerns or views on the issue of firefighting at sea? Would you be concerned at the disbandment of that group?

David Offin: Yes, I am concerned about that, because, again, a lot of the incidents that seem to be taking place these days are incidents of fires. They are trained to do that specific job and it is a very specialised job. We have had two incidents in the last 12 months in the Yeoman Bontrup and the Athena, where both were fires. These people are trained to deal with this, and it is important that that is maintained-or in my opinion it is.

Q93 Chair: Does anyone else have any views on the possible changes or disbandment of the Maritime Incident Response Group?

Stewart Henderson: As a vessel operator we benefited in the past from their services. We have worked with them and they are an important service provider. So we would support their continued existence.

Chair: Thank you very much, gentlemen, for coming and answering our questions. Thank you.

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Steve Demetriou, CFOA MIRG Lead Officer, Chief Fire Officers’ Association, Mervyn Kettle, former Project Manager for the National Firefighting at Sea project, and Gary Walsh, Deputy Fire Officer, East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, gave evidence.

Q94 Chair: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Could you identify yourselves, please, with your name and the organisation that you are representing, for our records? I will start at the end here.

Steve Demetriou: I am Steve Demetriou. I am the Director of Operations for Kent Fire and Rescue Service, but I am the national lead for the Chief Fire Officers’ Association on the Maritime Incident Response Group.

Mervyn Kettle: I am Mervyn Kettle. I am a retired fire officer and I was the project manager for the National Firefighting At Sea project.

Gary Walsh: I am Gary Walsh. I am the Deputy Chief Fire Officer for East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service.

Q95 Chair: Thank you very much. Could you tell us the circumstances in which the Maritime Incident Response Group was set up and whether you feel that the same reasons for it being brought into existence exist today?

Mervyn Kettle: Could I pick up on that one, Madam Chairman? Thank you very much. Just to give you some brief background on it, the coastal fire and rescue services around the UK have, for a number of years, responded to incidents on ships on fire at sea. It is quite an historical issue. It goes back as far as 1947. It has always been done on a voluntary basis because it is not part of the core role of fire brigades to respond to ships on fire at sea. Back in the early 1990s, we had over 20 fire brigades around the UK coast all acting independently, with no standard procedures, which did give some cause for concern at the time. As time evolved, more and more fire brigades were finding they had to concentrate on their core roles and the numbers diminished. So therefore the Coastguard Service and mariners were not getting that level of support around the UK.

In 2003, the Chief Coastguard instigated what they call the Sea of Change project, for which I was the project manager. Over a two or three-year period we actually went from research to implementation because the number of fire brigades was still dropping out of the equation. Therefore, the level of cover and the level of resilience around the UK was severely diminished. Hence, in 2006, the national group was set up, where we had at that stage 15 fire and rescue services all carrying out similar initiatives, which was more cost-effective, with standard operating procedures, national risk assessments, and it probably still is one of the foremost organisations supported by fire and rescue services in dealing with fires on ships at sea. I hope that helps with a bit of background.

Q96 Chair: The Department for Transport has said, and I quote from a press release that they issued, that "there is little evidence that the MIRG has changed the outcome of ship fires". The Government have also said that MIRG has not been involved "in any significant incidents" since its formation in 2006. Does anybody agree with that statement? If not, could you tell us why it is wrong?

Steve Demetriou: Following on from Mervyn’s introduction to MIRG, we now currently have 14 fire and rescue services that operate as part of the MIRG group. Lothian and Borders Scottish Fire and Rescue Service withdrew just recently. So we now have 15 and we are starting to see a decrease in the number of fire services that can commit to this level of capability.

One of the things within the original project was a formal basis for a review of MIRG. Initially it was thought that that would be undertaken after three years, but the review has taken some time to be put in place by the MCA. We were in discussions with the MCA and, indeed, we participated in a review of the current risk arrangements for a ship fire or other incident around the UK coastline. In fact, the MCA in October did release the outcomes of that report which, hopefully, some of the Committee will have seen.

What that quite clearly says is that, although there have been six incidents in that time period that the MIRG group has attended, actually some of those were significant incidents. There is clear evidence to show that MIRG did improve the arrangements or the set-up of the incident at that time, provided timely advice, equipment, and specially trained firefighters to assist the ship’s master in that time of need.

What the report also indicates is that, having analysed the Marine Accident Investigation Branch statistics and other statistics across the EU and internationally, there is a requirement to have a capability to deal with that type of incident. There is a credible risk. The assessment is that there is a likelihood of an incident of that nature occurring twice every year. We have seen-and hopefully you have looked through the CFOA submission to the Committee-a number of significant incidents that have occurred in UK and international waters which would have the potential for a deployment of MIRG to that incident and specially trained firefighters.

We have an independent piece of work here which clearly outlines the level of risk and it also goes on to state that the current capability provided by MIRG is the most appropriate way of dealing with that risk. We would really counter the statement that you have just read out from the press release from the MCA that MIRG, through those incidents, has not provided any additionality to the situations.

Q97 Chair: It seems that MIRG receives about £1.2 million funding from both the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and from the Fire Service. Is that amount of money justified or is there any way that efficiencies could be introduced?

Steve Demetriou: Undoubtedly, there are efficiencies and we have been very proactive in discussing those with the MCA. I think, even to a point when MIRG was first introduced, it was felt that an effective model could involve maybe eight to 10 fire and rescue services in that model, which was clearly why the review time scales were set in place. We have proposed some changes to the way that MIRG operates and we have highlighted the fact that some significant savings and efficiencies could be returned by the reduction in overall trained firefighters in MIRG.

Q98 Chair: How much do you think you could save?

Steve Demetriou: We have identified that there could be a 49% reduction in the number of team members across the 14 fire and rescue services, which would return 36% efficiencies in the overall budget. That would reduce the MCA contribution from £600,000 to approximately £380,000 per annum.

Q99 Chair: Are you in discussion with the Agency at the moment on this?

Steve Demetriou: I think it is fair to say we thought we were in discussion with the MCA in around November about a reformed MIRG and changes to the way it operated, and obviously events overtook us. From January onwards, it became quite clear that the MCA stated that there would be no funding for MIRG going forward. From then on, a more formal consultation process has now taken place between the MCA and the fire and rescue authorities, with whom they have a formal memorandum of understanding on the deployment of MIRG.

Q100 Chair: Mr Walsh, are you involved in any of those discussions?

Gary Walsh: There has been no direct involvement and consultation with the MCA. Obviously, as our professional body, the Chief Fire Officers’ Association steers me to represent us in discussions and we have a fire liaison manager working within the MCA.

But, in terms of direct consultation, the first we became aware formally of the report that Mr Demetriou refers to was on 8 March, when a letter was sent to the Chief Officer of East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service identifying that the funding was not to continue and therefore asking them pertinent questions about whether we were prepared to continue with our MIRG response as a maritime response.

The Fire Authority has considered its position and is considerably concerned at the continuation of the maritime team response from East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, and it has identified the need to identify fundings within our operational budget to maintain that response for the rest of this financial year.

Q101 Iain Stewart: Looking at models that other countries might operate, is there scope for raising additional revenue from vessels and operators in a similar way to light dues? Is that a viable alternative source of funding?

Mervyn Kettle: Can I maybe just step back to where we were pre-2002? A lot of the coastal fire and rescue services at the time, if they were asked to respond to a ship on fire, would contact the owners-and it could be done relatively quickly-to see if that fire authority could recover reasonable costs. In a lot of cases, fire authorities actually covered their costs-in some cases but not all-for responding to those incidents.

An incident on a vessel called the Kukawa, back in 1999, changed all that and there is case law around that. As for the European issue, I know Steve is having some discussions with European colleagues at the moment.

Gary Walsh: I understand that there were attempts in the 1990s to talk through Interreg with European countries, and obviously we would want to work with other organisations to identify improvements. But they do look to the UK Fire and Rescue Service and the provision of the MIRG as best practice in terms of the way it is developed through the Sea of Change project and the safe systems of work that brings to the firefighters and in terms of its response.

I would just like to counter what you said before about the effectiveness of the MIRG response. In terms of the evidence that is provided through an incident, with regard to the MV Calypso, which was the first MIRG response from East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service in 2006, it identified that there were a number of failings in terms of the systems around the firefighting crews on board and that the prevention of further deterioration of the damage to the ship was in effect as a result of the response from East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service. That is a similar response that would be made from any of the 15 MIRG fire and rescue services because we are completely interoperable and we can support each other in that response.

Steve Demetriou: Might I add a couple of points to that? There is a current draft proposal for an EU project which involves four Member States-ourselves, Belgium, Netherlands and France-to develop work around the MIRG capability. Initial meetings have clearly shown that there is some capability within some of those states, but they look to the UK for the experience that we have developed, all the procedures, etcetera, to be potentially made available to them.

Obviously, unfortunately, we are in a position where potentially there could be a demise of that current arrangement because of funding issues. We are working very closely with them to try and develop those arrangements and to see whether or not there could ultimately be an EU MIRG capability. That is one thing. But we can certainly really work very closely together and collaborate on some of the thinking, the procedural issues, how we have undertaken risk assessment, the training, the equipment and some of the concepts of MIRG.

In fact, there is a further meeting in Holland tomorrow to develop that a bit further, with the potential for EU funding. My understanding is, currently, that that funding would only last until 2014. In terms of how MIRG could be funded in the future, we certainly see this as a national resilience issue and not just an issue which should rest with local authority fire and rescue services. We would support trying to get MIRG put on to a national footing, with national funding, because it does impact on the resilience of the UK as a whole.

In terms of cost recovery, within the current systems, the MCA do have the capability and the procedures to reclaim costs from casualty vessels. I am not sure that they have been pursued in the way that they could have been done in the past, but certainly the facilities are there and available to reclaim the costs from particular incidents.

Q102 Iain Stewart: There is a cost recovery from an incident, but I am also interested in finding out if there is anywhere in the world that operates almost like an insurance payment. Any vessel entering a UK port would pay a small levy to cover the eventuality of an incident. On a separate point, you mentioned national resilience. Is there a role for MIRG in monitoring and preventing terrorist incidents?

Steve Demetriou: On the first point, I am not aware of that particular levy being put forward as an option, although potentially that is something to explore a bit further. In terms of counter-terrorism, the Fire and Rescue Service, as you are aware, through the New Dimensions programme, has an overall role on an inter-agency basis to assist in dealing with terrorist incidents or the like. That capability doesn’t currently exist within MIRG, but it is something on which we have been in discussions with other parties and other security services to try and get that put on a more formal footing. Obviously, the risks are assessed on a regular basis, and even more so, in terms of maritime risks in the lead-up to London 2012, it is obviously an issue on which we have got a very close eye.

The Fire and Rescue Service, and MIRG in particular, could have a valid role in dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist incident and also we have detection, identification and monitoring equipment that could form part of a role in the preventative side around counterterrorism. But we are actively involved in that, and, certainly, if the MIRG model was not available in the future, I think that would impact on any arrangements that we could put in place. [Interruption.]

Chair: We will adjourn for 10 minutes and ask members to get back as soon as possible. Would you wait, gentlemen? We will be back.

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

On resuming-

Chair: We have a quorum now. I think the allotted 10 minutes has passed.

Q103 Paul Maynard: I would like to try to clarify some of the terms that I think may be clouding the issue. I noted Mr Demetriou was a little concerned at one of the Department’s press releases referring to there being no significant incidents. In your own evidence you make reference in paragraph 18 to the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, where the Government clearly make the point that a significant transport accident is one in which the accident involves 10 fatalities. Then, subsequently, in paragraph 32 of your evidence, you make reference to the fact that MIRG has attended six significant incidents at sea since its inception. Clearly, you have a different definition of "significant incident" from the Government. For the sake of clarity, could you explain what your understanding of "significant" is?

Steve Demetriou: Certainly, within the statutory guidance for the Civil Contingencies Act, there is a specific definition of a significant incident which you have correctly identified. That extract is taken directly from the independent report which was commissioned by the MCA to look at the review of requirements in relation to incidents involving fire on the UK coastline and it is a direct extract from the Emergency Preparedness guidance for responders who have a statutory duty under the Civil Contingencies Act.

In terms of a fire and rescue service perspective on a significant incident, we would also take recognition of how we would get adequate resources to an incident and I think also the significance of that incident in terms of that individual response from an organisation. So, on the one hand, we are talking about the definition in terms of preplanning and what is laid down in statutory guidance, but we would deem that those six deployments of MIRG have been significant enough for the ship’s master to request additional assistance outside of that which is available on the vessel. So, in the submission, certainly CFOA were not trying to create a difference in terms of how significance is classified, but we do feel that those incidents were significant because they did require additional resources outside of those available on board the vessel.

Q104 Paul Maynard: In the evidence we have heard so far and in our questioning we have been focusing quite a lot on the changing needs of shipping, i.e. increased frequency, more coastguard call-outs, and the increasing complexity of many incidents. I am just interested, from the point of view of fires on ships, how you feel the scenario has changed since your inception. Clearly, there is a greater use, for example, of cruise ships. Do they have a changing profile in terms of risk, from your point of view? How is the risk profile of maritime activity changing?

Steve Demetriou: Our view and our perspective is that it is significantly increasing. You are quite right that in lots of the submissions and certainly the DfT will openly state that there is increased traffic, increased number of passengers. With regard to cruise liners in particular-and anyone can research this if they look across the internet-there are a significant number of fires that are occurring on cruise ships. The potential for a serious incident to occur with a number of passenger’s lives at risk is there for all to see. The statistics that we put within the CFOA submission are very clear. A number of those are cruise vessels, and, whether or not the fire occurs within UK or international waters, the risk and potential is there for a serious incident.

I think we also have to focus on the role of MIRG at an incident, which is to stabilise the vessel and ensure that the vessel can then carry on the journey to port, where the incident can be dealt with to conclusion. It is not about putting out the fire at sea. It is to prevent a mass evacuation of that particular vessel at sea, which quite clearly is a very dangerous and risky situation and is something that we would not obviously want to see.

MIRG has that ability to put specially trained firefighters on board the vessel, stabilise the situation and ensure that the vessel can continue to port where the situation can be brought under control.

Q105 Paul Maynard: Finally, do you feel that the crews on cruise ships are becoming more or less able to deal with incidents on their vessels in UK waters?

Steve Demetriou: We have certainly seen in numerous of the MAIB reports references to the level of training and the level of competence amongst crews on board the vessels. That is certainly in no way a detriment to the crews that are on board the vessels. It is simply because their training is very limited in terms of firefighting. They have an initial two-day course. Some of those crews will go on to a four-day course of advanced firefighting, but it is a very basic introduction to those skills.

We have the ability, through MIRG, to provide trained firefighters. That is their profession and that is what they do day in day out. We enhance that training with specific training to deal with fires on board a ship. It is a very specialised incident and it is something that requires lots of training and ongoing maintenance of that competence, to enable those crews to deal with that particular incident. I don’t know whether my colleagues would have any other comment about specific incidents.

Gary Walsh: May I comment on the report from the MAIB in respect to the MV Calypso, which I mentioned earlier, which identified some concerns about the operations that had taken place prior to the Maritime Incident Response Group team getting on to the ship to assist.

Also, the report into the Oscar Wilde incident that occurred off Cornwall in 2010 identified some concerns about the operations in terms of the fire extinguishing media on that ship. Given that a cruise ship such as the MV Calypso has 708 individuals on board, there are some concerns there about the potential when you talk about significant incidents. The significant incident is the potential of 708 people having to leave that ship as a result of a fire and putting them into the sea, which is what we are trying to prevent in terms of the Maritime Incident Response Group.

Mervyn Kettle: Can I just add one final point there? We have seen an incident within the last week in the Gulf of Mexico with a 40-year-old cruise ship which does not necessarily meet the current IMO structural standards, where they actually evacuated 780 people for what was a relatively small fire. In that part of the world they don’t have the sort of facility that we have in the UK. There is no Maritime Incident Response Group in America. I did that bit of work a few years ago. What we have here is very unique. The fact is that we can send our teams out to provide confidence as well at the scene, but, if we haven’t got those teams, who is going to do it?

Chair: Dr Kwarteng, did you want to ask a question?

Kwasi Kwarteng: I was going to ask a question about funding but I appreciate that I have just arrived. So would anyone else like to ask it?

Chair: It is all right. You can ask it.

Q106 Kwasi Kwarteng: Before the Division bell you were giving some detail on your funding streams, but I did not get any specific undertaking or comments about where you think you can get the funding from if the MCA doesn’t come up with the money. I have a supplementary to that with respect to value for money, but if you answer my first question I would be very much obliged.

Steve Demetriou: Just to recap, the funding arrangements at present are a contribution from the 14 fire and rescue services involved in MIRG for approximately £600,000 per year. Some of that is difficult to quantify because some of the input from the Fire and Rescue Service is not maybe directly attributable to MIRG activities. However, that is probably an underestimation. There is probably more that is contributed by those 14 fire and rescue services. There is a £600,000 a year input from the MCA towards MIRG. Through efficiencies, we have managed to reduce that burden on the MCA to £500,000, and we have put forward proposals to look at a restructuring of MIRG, which would require the MCA to contribute £380,000 per year.

In terms of funding streams-and this is, I think, a very important point-if the proposals went through that are currently under consideration and the MCA could not provide funding towards MIRG, our indications and the indications from the other fire and rescue services currently going through the consultation are that they would not be able to provide that response and therefore they would withdraw from the MIRG group. That is probably the majority of those 14 fire and rescue services. That would leave us without a national MIRG capability effectively, because with two or three fire and rescue services you don’t have a national capability to deal with that type of incident.

Gary Walsh: If I could add to that, yes, there are indirect costs which are associated with the provision of our Maritime Incident Response team that aren’t actually identified even within the £1.3 million. It is very difficult to extract out exactly what that is.

In terms of going forward, if there was no funding coming forward from the MCA in terms of the MIRG response, then there is no statutory power for a fire authority to undertake that work. Therefore, we would then suffer in terms of the funding of that response going forward. We would have to look within our operational budget to fund that, and the burden obviously will fall upon the local taxpayer to provide a national response to an incident, because we would provide that response with the MIRG arrangements on the basis of the 15 fire and rescue services providing support for the larger significant incidents. So there would be, potentially, a burden directly on the council tax payer.

Q107 Kwasi Kwarteng: In summary, what you are saying is that, without the MCA funding, there would be no national provision. Effectively, that is what you are saying, in simple terms.

Gary Walsh: That is the risk.

Q108 Kwasi Kwarteng: I have a supplementary question to that. Given the money you already have, which I think is to the tune of, let’s say, £1 million, or £1.2 million if it is £600,000 from both sources, you are saying that you cut back to £500,000 and you are looking to cut back to £380,000. I am assuming you are getting in near enough £1 million a year. Is that right?

Steve Demetriou: That is if you pool those particular budgets. For some of those costs that are attributable to the Fire and Rescue Service, they are inputs from the Fire and Rescue Service through their own staffing arrangements, etcetera. That is their contribution to MIRG. It is not put into a specific pot and dealt with in that particular way.

Q109 Kwasi Kwarteng: But, willynilly, the amount is about £1 million, is it not?

Steve Demetriou: Yes.

Q110 Kwasi Kwarteng: I just wanted to know how this money was spent in terms of a breakdown of costs.

Steve Demetriou: There is a breakdown of costs overall for the funds of the MCA contribution, but, effectively, the majority of the Fire and Rescue Service funding, which amounts to about £40,000 per Fire and Rescue Service that is involved in MIRG, is through payments to staff to attend training courses and the like. But the MCA budget breaks down to a payment of approximately £75,000 for a co-ordinator, a fire liaison manager, whose role is to coordinate all of the arrangements for MIRG nationally, preplanning, training arrangements, and also to deal with incidents as they occur. A point was mentioned earlier that there have only been six deployments of MIRG. Sitting beneath that is a whole range of incidents where the fire liaison manager provides initial advice to ships’ masters or crews about incidents that have occurred but don’t necessarily then transpire to a full deployment of MIRG. There is a training budget of approximately £287,000 and equipment of £100,000.

Q111 Kwasi Kwarteng: That is about £450,000, is it? You have £75,000. This is a back-of-the-envelope calculation.

Steve Demetriou: The budget that is currently set for the next 12 months would amount to £477,000.

Q112 Kwasi Kwarteng: From the MCA.

Steve Demetriou: From the MCA. The model that we put forward for a restructure would require not an overall funding of £1 million but approximately £380,000 from the MCA, a combined total of about £700,000 from the MCA and Fire and Rescue Service. In terms of efficiencies, we feel that we are suggesting a much more efficient restructured model of MIRG, which would still provide the national capability that is needed but it would do it in a more streamlined way and certainly a more cost-effective way.

Q113 Kwasi Kwarteng: Just eyeballing these figures, you started off with a figure of roughly £1.2 million. You are saying that you could get down to £700,000.

Steve Demetriou: Approximately.

Q114 Kwasi Kwarteng: Yet at the same time you are saying that the MCA tranche is crucial. You have already potentially eliminated £500,000 from your costs, so that is a great success. Then, at the same time, you are saying that, without the MCA tranche, you can’t survive.

Steve Demetriou: Absolutely. But the point I made about the Fire and Rescue Service contribution-and Mr Walsh might want to make a comment here from a local perspective-is that their contribution towards MIRG is really around their own staff, and the way that they contribute towards the financial provisions for MIRG is through wages and payments for those staff attending training courses, and so on.

Q115 Kwasi Kwarteng: Just to pursue this, what you are saying is that you can’t see a situation in which your costs essentially are borne exclusively by these local fire and rescue services.

Steve Demetriou: No. I think the local fire and rescue services would actually object to that situation as well, especially given the fact that this is about national resilience. MIRG is deployed across the whole of the UK coastline. For those 14 fire and rescue services that form part of the MIRG, this is not about local risk. It is about providing facilities for a national capability.

Q116 Kwasi Kwarteng: Do you see where I am coming from? You have already got down from £600,000 to £380,000 with the MCA contribution. So you have cut that pretty much by more than a third already. Those are the figures that you are giving me.

Steve Demetriou: Yes.

Q117 Kwasi Kwarteng: At the same time you are saying that that is an absolutely essential tranche.

Steve Demetriou: It is. What we also have to recognise is that, by reducing the number of fire and rescue services that would form part of MIRG, if we extrapolated the thinking that maybe this could all be funded from the Fire and Rescue Service, that would mean an increased cost to those eight fire and rescue services that are left within the model. I think that would be unacceptable to them and unpalatable.

Q118 Chair: What do you think the MCA’s attitude is to these discussions you are having? What has their response been?

Steve Demetriou: The response has been fairly clear since January that there is no funding available for MIRG. Actually, their discussion and the consultation letters seemed to try to elicit some views about what the potential could be to look at maybe the equipment being transferred across the Fire and Rescue Service or a provision where local fire and rescue authorities just simply make that provision without any central funding being put into those arrangements.

Gary Walsh: If I may add to that from a local perspective, obviously it will be a decision for each fire authority to identify whether they would continue to or provide some funding towards the MIRG response. There will be, I believe, a tipping point where a number of fire and rescue services will not continue with a MIRG response, which means that the support arrangements will not be sufficient for an individual fire and rescue authority to agree to allow its staff to go to fight a fire at sea. So there will be a tipping point at which, even if the funding is there, if there are not sufficient fire and rescue authorities committed to that response, the support arrangements around attending an incident, for instance, on a cruise ship, which potentially may go on for two or three days, will not be sufficient and we will not be able to provide a national response to an incident.

Q119 Chair: The essence of this is that it is national resilience and a national response using expertise from a number of places.

Gary Walsh: Yes, that has been grown over a number of years.

Q120 Julian Sturdy: Mr Kettle, I just wanted to go back to a point you raised when you were talking about an incident in the Gulf of Mexico which you raised as an example. When you were talking about what we have here, you said, "What we have here is very unique." If that is the case, I just want to get my head around the provision that other countries provide within this sort of service. Is that really nonexistent, or what is out there?

Mervyn Kettle: It is almost the case, certainly in my experience, and I have tried to keep up to date with most of these things. In Europe, we have reasonable coverage, but there are still only three or four countries. Sweden are very vociferous with their offshore firefighting, predominantly because they had a major ferry fire where 158 people died. That drove them forward. We have other European countries.

Certainly in Australia, going further afield, they are now looking at introducing a MIRG type facility and that is because of some work we did with them a few years ago. Our colleagues across the pond in America have done very little. I think predominantly that is because of the size of the country. That is the limited amount of resources that I am certainly aware of these days, but I think the European issue is a whole new ballgame. We were talking about the use of our facilities and resources. The EU is the way forward with that, surely, particularly for working together. But, to date, it is quite limited.

Steve Demetriou: The independent report that I mentioned earlier covered in some detail what other capability, certainly in the EU states, is available. If you look through that, as Mr Kettle quite rightly said, Sweden have a very comprehensive set-up, as do Germany, which also provide teams with medical assistance as well.

Others have developed models but on the back of work that we have done with them from the UK. Certainly in Rotterdam, they now have a team which is available from that port, which was developed using all of the UK procedures, all of the MIRG arrangements that are in place, and also a team from Northern Ireland. There are other teams around there, but, in terms of the development of that, they look to the UK in the MIRG arrangements that are in place to provide the rationale and the specifics about how it should operate. They see it as best practice.

Q121 Julie Hilling: Can I just be a little bit clearer? I think you said earlier that one authority has already withdrawn. Was it Strathclyde you said?

Steve Demetriou: Lothian and Borders.

Q122 Julie Hilling: Of those fire authorities that are involved, why those? Is there any potential of top slicing-and I hope Manchester is not listening? Why is it just those few, and if there is one-

Mervyn Kettle: If I could just go back to the original assessment we did at the beginning of 2003 when the project first started, as I mentioned earlier on, we did go from research to implementation at quite a gallop because it was really quite necessary at the time. We did an assessment. I wouldn’t say it was the best assessment in the world, but we did an assessment in the UK to identify what current resources we had in place that were still responding to an incident at sea, and it fitted the UK map quite well. They were already there, still operating. It also fitted in very nicely with where the search and rescue bases were because the helicopters are key to MIRG operations, and, also, where some of the key players were with regard to surface vessels.

So it fitted in quite nicely with what we already had in place. It was perhaps a little overzealous in places, but at the time it was seen as a positive move forward, bearing in mind that we identified at the outset and conclusion of the project that the MIRG would be reviewed on a three-year period anyway. That opportunity would then be taken to reassess that.

Gary Walsh: If I may just add to that, if you look at the number of deployments that have taken place during the MIRG response even in those three years, the average time in terms of deployment is around one hour from tasking a particular fire and rescue service to get out to the stricken vessel in terms of the casualty. That is a very quick response because of those arrangements that are in place and they are well practised and exercised; and there are certain arrangements around exercising that are in place as a result of the Sea of Change project in which Mr Kettle was involved that have borne fruit for the longevity of that particular response. So we have a very effective way of responding to incidents when they do occur and that is because of the arrangements of the now 14 but which were 15 MIRG fire and rescue services involved.

Q123 Julie Hilling: I think you have given an indication for this but I want to push you on this as well. I am not in favour of us driving to the bottom in terms of the worst response. I think we should be looking at the best response for the people that are at risk. If the money is withdrawn, then what do you think is going to happen with the service?

Gary Walsh: It is my understanding from discussions that have taken place-and Mr Demetriou may want to add to this-that a number of fire and rescue authorities have already stated that they would remove themselves from the current arrangements for the future if there is no funding, because of the difficulties around funding in their own fire authorities. It is not a statutory duty and therefore members of the public may ask why we are doing this.

Secondly, it may be that the devolved administrations may look to see whether they consider their own response within the devolved administration, which would then put at risk the whole of the aspect of the interoperability that takes place and the resilience around the current arrangements. There is, as I said before, a tipping point and the alternative arrangements that are being proposed are looking at maybe nine to 10 fire and rescue authorities being involved in the approach, which we believe we could maintain going forward.

Q124 Chair: Could a private provider step in? Could the Government commission one?

Gary Walsh: I would like to respond to that. In terms of the evidence of the review, the MCA’s only view is saying that the fire and rescue services that provide professional service at the moment is the most efficient and effective way of maintaining a response. It looks at other opportunities around Royal Navy and other options, on which Mr Demetriou may wish to comment. But, in terms of a private provider, the report of the review indicates that that would be a significant cost because of the number of incidents, and you balance that in terms of set-up costs, arrangements for training, provision and helicopter deployment.

Steve Demetriou: I know I keep referring to the independent report but, actually, there is a lot of information there and I would commend it to the Committee. The key point here is that the report states that they don’t believe a commercial provider would be able to provide that level of emergency response to an incident. Effectively, because the fire and rescue services have already made that investment in their firefighters and their core levels of training, for a commercial company to try and make that provision from scratch, it would be unaffordable and there would be no way that they would be able to match the current provision that is provided through MIRG.

Chair: Thank you.

Q125 Julie Hilling: With regard to the skills that people are using to fight, and I appreciate they are specialist skills, and so on, are they also transferable to other specialist incidents that occur on land?

Gary Walsh: I am happy to respond and report for the East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service because there may be independent issues around other fire and rescue services. But certainly we use those transferable skills in terms of our response to incidents in port. We have also used their skills through the ability for them to train and use a helicopter on cliff rescues. We have also used them at a response to the Hastings pier fire in terms of trying to address it from sea rather than from land. So their transferable skills of their abilities that they have had through their training have been used in other incidents within East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service.

Chair: Thank you very much, gentlemen. We have kept you a long time. We have found your evidence very interesting. Thank you very much.