Jonathan Edwards
Main Page: Jonathan Edwards (Independent - Carmarthen East and Dinefwr)Department Debates - View all Jonathan Edwards's debates with the Department for Transport
(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Mike Penning
I thank the hon. Lady for her honesty, but she should take a look at what I did around the country. The Western Isles is a Scottish National party constituency; Holyhead is in, I believe, a Labour constituency; and I have shut Brixham in the west country, which is in a Conservative area. I have taken huge amounts of flack, but people should look around the country before throwing those sorts of accusations at me. I knew the hon. Lady was alluding to those with her smirk, which is why I gave way. I have not taken that approach in any shape or form. If I had done so, why am I looking at Holyhead in the way that I am? The Labour Government were going to close two and leave one in Wales, but I will definitely come out of this procedure with two in Wales, no matter what happens.
Mike Penning
I am not going to give way, because I have exactly five minutes left. I wanted that answer out, because I saw the hon. Lady’s smirk.
Mike Penning
Sorry, Mr Speaker. We have known each other for many years, and I am sure you will not take offence. Oh, dear.
We looked at the main concerns, which included 24-hour stations and local knowledge. In the Secretary of State’s statement, we accepted those two points. We felt that leaving the station open as what I, as an ex-fireman, would call a “day manning” station was not right and we had to come up with a formula that would allow us to come down to the numbers that we needed to come down to while having the national resilience that we were looking for and a maritime operations centre or headquarters that could feed out in major incidents. So we made two decisions. The first was to come down to the key 24-hour stations and to have one MOC, not two, which actually will give us enough money to keep stations open 24 hours a day.
The second decision was obvious. It was obvious to me when we were doing the work that, if we were worried about topography, as I call it, being an ex-fireman, and local knowledge, which was the general concern, we ought to look at the pairs—or the twins or whatever we want to call them—which cover for each other regularly. That is how they have been structured. We did not have national resilience, which is why the coastguard co-ordination centres were paired off. They covered for each other. Some were paired off quite arbitrarily. For instance, Belfast was paired with the Clyde. But they did it and it worked. We decided that, if those were the criteria for pairing, we would take one of the pairs away. They are in the consultation now because initially the proposals did not include Swansea. However, having decided to move one of the pairs, logically we had to consult on Swansea and Milford Haven, as well as Liverpool and Holyhead—Liverpool was in the consultation with Belfast and the plan had been to close Holyhead—the 24-hour centre in northern Scotland and the Western Isles and the single MOC. That was the basis of the consultation now.
Mike Penning
No, I am not going to give way because I have time issues.
On Milford or Swansea, I have listened carefully to hon. Members’ points, particularly on local knowledge, the skills, the amount of work that the centres cover and so on. I can tell the hon. Member for Gower that, when I was there on Tuesday, the Swansea centre was closed. The co-ordination centre was closed—Milford was covering Swansea that day.