Emergency Services (Interoperability)

David Hanson Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pawsey]

My hon. Friend is well ahead of me. I will talk at some length about the Olympics, which is one of the biggest challenges our country faces in terms of a possible security threat. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the need for gold command, led by the police service.

On the broader issue of who responds on our behalf in an emergency, taking the simple example of a serious accident on the motorway, attendance of the police and the ambulance service, responding to dangers to life, and of the fire and rescue service—to free people trapped in vehicles—will be necessary, but it is just as crucial that the Highways Agency is there to assess the situation, to help to minimise the effect on traffic and get the motorway moving again as quickly as possible. That example shows why joint working is paramount.

If we accept that the services responding on our behalf to an emergency need to work more closely together, where does responsibility for joint working currently lie? The three main blue-light services are the responsibility of different Departments. The police service is the responsibility of the Home Office; the ambulance service is administered by the Department of Health; and the fire and rescue service is administered by local authorities, under the control of the Department for Communities and Local Government. In theory, that may be no bad thing, but in practice there is grave danger that each service is considered in isolation. Since becoming an MP, I have learnt about silo thinking, and with each emergency service attached to a Department, there is a danger of such thinking.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

There are even more silos, because the health service and local government in Wales are devolved to the Welsh Assembly, and the position is similar in Scotland. The Home Office has a responsibility nationally for such matters. Rather than three silos, there are in fact five or seven.

[Mark Pawsey]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, which adds to the argument in favour of some overarching control or administration to ensure close working between the various agencies involved, so that we do not drift to silo thinking.

I welcome the fact that the Crime and Security Minister is here to respond for the Government, because the police take the lead at incidents—my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley) drew attention to the police taking command—and he is best placed to speak about interoperability between the emergency services. I hope that he accepts that there must be greater focus on the need for joint working between the services and between Departments. The Government must understand and appreciate the need for greater collaboration.

Interoperability between the emergency services means that each of the three Departments that I mentioned must work together, and the Cabinet Office, which is charged with ensuring effective development, co-ordination and implementation of Government objectives across the board, must play its part in ensuring that interoperability becomes a key facet of our emergency services. For there to be a unified service response, there needs to be a unified Government response to the pressures faced by the services.

The problem was highlighted in a 2011 report by the Royal United Services Institute, “Anatomy of a Terrorist Attack”:

“Political understanding of the complexities of major incident response is critical to the future of the emergency services.”

The report also contrasted the civil situation with the military situation. In the military, all three emergency services report to one body, the Ministry of Defence, but the civil emergency services do not have an equivalent. In the absence of a Minister with specific responsibility for the broader emergency services, there is no one to argue for ring-fenced or increased budgets, making the recommendations of the report on 7 July difficult to implement.

We can see a difficult picture emerging, although given the structure of the civil service and how government is organised, there is some sense of inevitability about that. It is important, however, to understand how vital interoperability between the services is. Communications between the services—their ability to talk to and understand each other—is also a key point in joint working. Lady Justice Hallett reported:

“It is also well known, particularly as a result of the report of the 7th July Review Committee, that there were considerable failings in radio and mobile communications...The unprecedented volume of radio and mobile telephone communications caused congestion on the airwaves because of a lack of capacity. The emergency services and London Underground were further inhibited in their communications by restrictions on the coverage of their radio systems.”

My awareness of the issue arose from a visit to Airwave, a company with a substantial presence in my constituency of Rugby. The company designed, built and operates the largest public safety radio communications network in the world. It delivers voice and data communications to all the organisations involved in the public services, including the blue-light services as well as local authorities, utilities and transport providers. It has its own Tetra—terrestrial trunked radio—network in the UK, which was purpose-built to meet the needs of the emergency services, and covers 99% of the country’s landmass. Since 2008—after the 7/7 bombings, clearly—the network has included the entire London underground system. Importantly for us, given what we are discussing today, Airwave’s network is interoperable, which means that the emergency services and public safety organisations can communicate effectively with one another.

The success and importance of interoperability within the emergency services was noted in the coroner’s report on 7/7, which drew attention to the need for inter-agency liaison and communications:

“The 7th July 2005 Review Committee concluded that communications within and between the emergency services ‘did not stand up on 7 July’. It further observed that individual emergency service personnel could not communicate effectively, in some cases with each other and, in other cases, with their control rooms…There have been substantial improvements brought about by the introduction of the CONNECT and AIRWAVE radio systems.”

Where are we now? How can interoperability help? Each day, the emergency services need to ensure that they are working with each other efficiently. Furthermore, working together takes on even more importance during major events.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) on raising this important subject. He made some very sound points about the need for national co-ordination, efficiencies and interoperability between emergency services. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. Co-ordination is vital.

I am reminded, as you will be, too, Mr Havard, that only this weekend there were very difficult circumstances of flooding throughout mid and west Wales. Looking at the reports from places not too far from my constituency or yours, we see that major rescues were undertaken involving Royal Air Force Sea King helicopters from the military, inshore lifeboats, fire service rescue boats, Dyfed-Powys police, the Environment Agency, Ceredigion local council and voluntary agencies, all working together to respond to an emergency that flared up in a very short time.

A lot of planning is done for events such as flooding, major aircraft disasters, fires, building collapse, and indeed terrorist incidents. That planning is vital. Interoperability of the emergency services and the need to co-ordinate their efforts is an important part of the planning process, but, as the hon. Member for Rugby highlighted, it can be improved. Whatever any Government do, now and in the future, there are always efficiencies, improvements and information exchanges that can help those services to be provided in a much stronger and more efficient way and to prevent failures. I echo the tribute paid to those who put their lives on the line on any occasion. It is valued by all Members.

The flooding happened this weekend, but as has been mentioned, a simple, regular, unfortunate incident, such as a road crash, involves operability between services. Major events such as the recent jubilee weekend, the forthcoming Olympics and the events of 7/7 also demand responses from a range of agencies across the board. The riots of last summer involved police forces coming into London and needing to work with other police forces. I can recall as a Minister being in Cobra for 7/7, for fuel and prison strikes, and to look at the question of riots and services in Northern Ireland. There is a need for planning, but it is also vital that operability and information flow requirements are met.

The landscape that the hon. Gentleman outlined is indeed complicated. There are not only the three UK Government Departments that he mentioned, but, as I said in my intervention, the devolved Administrations, which deal with health and the fire service in Wales and Scotland and with much of everything in Northern Ireland. We have a range of bodies—the national health service, the coastguard, the police, the British Transport police, the Army and voluntary agencies outside Government, such as the air ambulance service, St John Ambulance and the Red Cross—that very often deal with emergency response.

The hon. Gentleman made some valid points, and I agree with him on the need for the dissemination of common language and an examination of efficiencies in equipment, and to ensure common equipment that is compatible with all services. I will return to Airwave in a moment, but I want to talk about common practices. I was struck by the example of arguments about whistles and what they mean. Common practice is important, and common information should be provided. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) that there should be a drive toward shared facilities by Government and local authorities. The ambulance service in one town in my constituency is considering removing its station and sharing a facility with the police and fire service, to provide a better service—the same level of service but provided more efficiently. We can look forward to that.

In the few minutes available, I want to focus on the dichotomy highlighted by the debate between the need for greater central planning and control, with efficiencies driven from the centre through the Cabinet Office, Government co-operation and work with devolved Administrations, and the present Government agenda. I do not say that to be critical, because this is not the time to be critical; but it is fair to say that the Government agenda is driving many services into a more local context. That is true of a range of issues highlighted by the hon. Member for Rugby. Cobra will have an overarching view from the Cabinet Office, as Ministers and officials look at major international and national events, and there will be co-operation between the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Home Office and others at national level, but I want to put things into context and get a feeling from the Minister about how things fit together.

For example, on 15 November, England and Wales will get 43 police and crime commissioners, who will be able to set their budgets, issues and agendas locally. The National Policing Improvement Agency will soon be disbanded, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. It recently issued guidance on issues pertinent to this debate. There is also the potential for the abolition of the Association of Chief Police Officers, which has a co-ordinating, overarching responsibility for many policing issues. The Government have not yet made it clear to me what will replace it for the co-ordination of operational policing services and the provision of operational guidance on the issues we are debating today. In the context of search and rescue and coastal agencies, the Government recently split and put out to tender private contracts covering two different parts of the country. As I understand it, the Government have so far failed to provide the assurances needed about how that will work operationally. Major changes are being made to the coastguard service at local level—again, devolving downs and removing services.

For me, there is the smidgin of a question about how things will fit in together at the local level, when the Government’s agenda, rightly or wrongly—I have my own views—is driving things down locally. How can the co-ordination that the hon. Member for Rugby so eloquently advocated be required when police and crime commissioners decide their budgets, the National Policing Improvement Agency has disappeared and ACPO is no longer in place? How can it be achieved when contracts are let to the private sector for coastguard services and local government is under pressure in relation to fire services, reportedly resulting in, at the last count, more than 2,200 firefighters being cut, 50 stations being closed and 1,000 non-operational staff being lost? A separate issue is the loss of 16,000 police officers, which I shall always mention, in every debate about emergency services.

The localism agenda needs to be examined in the light of how we co-ordinate services nationally. What are the Government’s thoughts when the demands of operational activity are becoming ever more national and regional—including the Olympics, the jubilee, the terrorist threat and major operational challenges such as the flooding at the weekend? Set against those are the Government’s drive to localism—local decisions and local budget control. How will the Minister and his Department deal with mandating services and co-ordinating the efficiencies to which the hon. Members for Rugby and for Hexham rightly drew attention, when the localism agenda says, “Do what you want in the regions and nationally we will stand back a little bit more than perhaps we have in the past”?

Airwave is an important topic in the constituency of the hon. Member for Rugby, and I have also taken an interest in it, both as a Minister in the Department and, recently, shadowing that Department. The Minister will know that the current contract for Airwave comes to an end in 2016. In a written statement on 26 March the Home Secretary said that the

“management of the contract for the Airwave radio system and its replacement (including associated staff)”—[Official Report, 26 March 2012; Vol. 542, c. 95WS.]

will be further considered by the Home Office shortly. She said that the matter will be transferred into the Home Office later this year. I have tabled questions to the Minister, and the answer I have had is:

“The programme is at an early stage and is in consultation with all stakeholders, including the police, to define their requirements.”—[Official Report, 17 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 305W.]

I should be interested to know the Minister’s current thinking on Airwave, because in Government terms 2016 is not that far away. What is the Minister’s vision of Airwave’s replacement, post-2016? How does he envisage the replacement being commissioned? What does he think about the requirements for the system, taking on board the points that the hon. Member for Rugby made about operability, and the devolved Administrations and Government Departments? Does the Minister plan to have management of the system located in the Home Office permanently? What representations has he had from outside groups about the post-2016 contract? What discussion is engaged in with the Department for Communities and Local Government, the national health service, Scotland and Wales and other colleagues in his Department about the system requirements? It is important that there is efficiency in the system and value for money for the taxpayer, but it is also important to have something that works and meets the needs of the whole community.

I am anxious to give the Minister time to reply to the questions raised by the hon. Member for Rugby, but I want to mention the three driving forces that should come into play in his consideration. The first is effectiveness. The speed and type of response that the emergency services give save lives and prevent injury and are incredibly important. We need to ensure that whatever we do, and however we organise the system—I have some worries about the localism agenda supplanting the national and regional ones—there is a speedy and effective response to all incidents, and that it is planned in advance, measured on delivery, and evaluated afterwards for continuous improvement. There is a need for efficiency and cost to be considered by Ministers in relation to such matters as the potential helicopter contract now coming to light, and in terms of contracts generally. We need to consider how we drive efficiency and cost improvements in national contracts. Again I ask how, with 43 police and crime commissioners, the changes in the NHS and the localism agenda, the Minister believes we can drive the value for money agenda forward and make savings. Even more than in the past, the Minister will not be in control of how budgets are spent, unless he mandates forces and organisations to sign up to contracts, in which case he will have to set their criteria, and co-ordinate and oversee them.

[Guy Opperman]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an impressive speech, but I am a little curious about a couple of points. Clearly, there would always have been reductions and changes, even under the Opposition’s budgetary proposals. What would you have done differently to avoid the impacts that you describe as the Minister’s problem?

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

I could outline what I would have done, but the right hon. Gentleman will no doubt want to say what he thinks.

[Mr Hanson]

I could argue about funding for ever, but this is not the time for such a discussion. The hon. Member for Rugby talked about the need for national standards, national training, national examination and national co-ordination, but the Government’s agenda is to drive things locally, with the new police and crime commissioners, a national health service that is freer from the Government, and a general lack of target setting. There is a dichotomy. Although I would happily debate at any time the difference between the 12% cuts that I proposed as Minister and the 20% cuts in police that the Government are introducing, my question is how, when the challenges are regional and national, the Minister intends to meet the challenges of greater co-ordination during a period of localism, when the levers he has available are becoming ever more distant from his Department. There is a real challenge there that he must address. How will he drive forward that agenda? How will he make those efficiencies and savings, and who ultimately retains accountability in that changing landscape?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Havard. I echo the clear and common message that has emerged from this debate, which is to thank the emergency services for their contribution, day in, day out, to keeping us safe. I thank them for their significant professionalism and bravery, examples of which have been cited during the debate. I am sure that the House would underline that clear message of gratitude for the work of our blue-light emergency services.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) on securing the debate and on chairing the all-party parliamentary group on the emergency services, following that work through and facilitating a good and constructive discussion on the issues that are relevant to interoperability, to which I will seek to respond in my comments. I am certainly pleased to have this opportunity to update the House on some of the work that we have been doing to support the emergency services and to promote a better joined-up working approach.

It is clear that police, fire and ambulance teams work together on a daily basis with successful outcomes. Although the response to major incidents from our emergency services is among the best in the world, we are not complacent. The emergency services face significant challenges in responding to major incidents, particularly in the initial stages of a complex and fast-moving situation when the picture can be confusing and there may be unseen dangers. The three services must be able to come together as quickly as possible to share information about what is going on, to manage the risks and rescue any casualties. When the emergency services work together in that way, they save lives.

We continue to learn from events, such as the 7/7 London bombings and the shootings in Cumbria, and from regular national exercises designed to test the joint response. The severe impact and complexity of major incidents and other civil emergencies mean that we must strive for continuous improvement in the combined performance of the emergency services in joint operations.

The Home Secretary has asked the emergency services to set up a new programme of work designed to further improve our joint response to emergencies. The overall aim is to ensure that the blue-light services are trained and exercised to work together as effectively as possible in response to a major incident, including fast-moving terrorist scenarios, so that as many lives as possible can be saved.

The programme will be led by the emergency services through a joint forum, which will enable them systematically to plan, test and learn together. We fully support the delivery of the programme and have provided dedicated resources to look at how future improvements can be made.

I am conscious that a number of contributions highlighted the need for effective co-ordination and joined-up working at national level. Let me assure my hon. Friends the Members for Rugby and for Hexham (Guy Opperman) that the Government are working collectively on this important issue. There have been a number of cross-departmental ministerial meetings to agree how to promote interoperability. The most recent was last month when the Home Secretary and her colleagues met senior representatives from the emergency services to discuss the plan for the new joint emergency services interoperability programme, which I will talk about in more detail shortly.

It is also worth highlighting that the Home Office, the Cabinet Office, the Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government are working closely together on a daily basis. The Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Health, the Minister for the fire and rescue service, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), and the Minister for the Cabinet Office will oversee that work through a cross-departmental ministerial board. We understand that we cannot work in silos and that a unified Government response is required.

The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) rightly highlights the need for engagement with the devolved Administrations, as policing, health and fire and rescue are devolved matters. We continue to work with our counterparts in the devolved Administrations, as do our emergency service partners, on the breadth of the programme, to promote a consistent approach to the development of responses and response capabilities and to facilitate the sharing of best practice.

At local level, the local resilience forums have an important role to play. Emergency services are required by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 to come together with other organisations defined as Category 1 or Category 2 responders to identify and assess the risks in the area and develop and validate plans to respond to them.

Let me talk a bit more about how we will address the need for overarching co-ordination. At national level, the Government have set out in both the draft strategic policing requirement and the draft fire and rescue national framework, the requirement for connectivity between the emergency services. The strategic policing requirement will, for the first time, set out the national threats and the appropriate national policing capabilities that are required to counter them. The election of police and crime commissioners allows Government to get out of the way of local policing, rightly putting accountability in the hands of local people. The strategic policing requirement demonstrates our commitment to get a better grip on the national threats that we face and to ensure a unified approach. Under the strategic policing requirement, police forces will consider consistency between forces and connectivity with other emergency services so that we can improve interoperability between the police, other blue-light emergency responders and other partners in responding to significant emergencies.

The new police professional body will take on the policy functions of the Association of Chief Police Officers and set standards for police professionals. It will ensure that police officers and police staff have a common skill-set and common tactics, where appropriate.

We have talked about the need for interoperability. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby said that it was important to recognise joint working between individual agencies: the fire service, the ambulance service, the police and other agencies. Equally, there is a need for individual agencies to operate effectively themselves, and communication is certainly one element of that. I shall highlight some of the work that has been done around communication.

At this stage of the programme, our highest priority is the interoperability of police, fire and ambulance responders operating in a time-critical environment, where speed and accuracy of information are fundamental to the saving of life. However, we accept that the requirement for interoperability extends to a wider group of emergency responders and other agencies, who will be involved in and consulted on the development and implementation of the programme. I join right hon. and hon. Members in praising the work of local resilience forums, including their efforts to bring local responders together and to plan for risks that local communities might need to deal with, and I agree that such forums are a strong example of interoperability in action.

Future work, led by the joint emergency services interoperability programme, will ensure that responders have effective communications, guidance, training and exercises to support their response to a major incident. In response to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham, the programme will also consider opportunities for equipment and procurement sharing.

There are three key priority areas for the programme. The first is communications. Rapid sharing of information and intelligence is at the core of an effective response. It is needed to establish the type of incident, and to mobilise and co-ordinate the appropriate response. Ongoing communication within and between the emergency services will support on-scene commanders, who need to work together to make decisions and take urgent action.

The sharing of information within and between the emergency services is supported by Airwave radio communications. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby clearly highlighted the importance of strengthened joint communication. The programme will seek to ensure a common approach to the use of mobile communications during major incidents. Effective communications will also be enabled by the national resilience extranet, which is an information-sharing tool. In addition, the Government are working to pilot the direct electronic incident transfer, which will allow the electronic exchange of incident logs between front-line responders.

The right hon. Member for Delyn highlighted the future of Airwave and it might assist him if I gave a further response on that subject. The Airwave contract across the police and other emergency services expires between 2016 and 2020; I think that the right hon. Gentleman himself indicated that that was the case. As a consequence, the emergency services mobile communications programme has been commissioned by the Home Office to examine potential replacement solutions for the emergency services post-Airwave. Future service provision will be based on a review of the anticipated operational needs of the emergency services, and the technical capabilities and commercial opportunities available. Various technologies are being considered, but at the moment the programme is at an early stage of technology evaluation, with the first version of the strategic outline business case due in October.

For the future, interdependent relationships with the emergency services mobile communications programme will ensure that interoperability is a central feature of the future replacement for the Airwave service, when the current commercial contract expires. We will certainly provide further details to the House, as and when they are available.

[Mr Hanson]

I seek clarification from the Minister on just one point. Will it be mandated that police commissioners have to allocate budgets to purchase the system replacing Airwave? Is that the plan?