Independent Cultural Review of the London Fire Brigade

Lord Greenhalgh Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for securing this timely debate. It is important that this House considers the implications of this shocking review. I declare that I was not only the Fire Minister until July but the first London Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime. We have had two reviews—the Casey Review and Nazir Afzal’s review—that really give us pause for thought about what we need to do and what action needs to be taken so that the sort of racism and misogyny, to be frank, that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, campaigned against is a thing of the past.

As someone now well into middle age, I was struck by the phrase in Nazir Afzal’s report that 20th-century banter can lead to the vile abuse, racism and misogyny that can lead to loss of life. I grew up in the 1980s and was at university in the 1990s. I think we all experienced that culture of the mob when growing up—there was quite disgraceful behaviour, and you had to choose. The best I can say about myself is that I chose not to participate and stayed silent. I was not brave enough to intervene, but perhaps I was a child. We must recognise that that sort of 20th-century banter has no place in the 21st century.

I was also struck by the comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, about the need for this to be not a talking point but a turning point. That is why I feel I need to reflect on why this happened and what we need to do about it in the time I have available.

As to why, both the police and the fire and rescue service are essential front-line public services that we need at times. The police keep us safe and the fire and rescue service rescues us; we rely on them in dire times. They go forward and face danger, and of course we love them for doing that, but they also promote from within their organisations. That means that every leader, whether of the union, right to the top of the national executive, or the leadership of the London Fire Brigade, passes through the ranks. It is a “promote from within” organisation.

I support the comments that we must commend the leadership of Andy Roe. He had the courage, with the support of the mayor, to commission this review and has accepted all 23 recommendations, but he has to look at the leadership around him and ask who is fostering that culture that is so unacceptable in the workplace and root them out, starting at the top and working all the way down. That is the only way that we will solve this problem.

I listened very carefully to the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. She talked about how co-operative the London Fire Brigade’s union has been in engaging on this, but I have heard different stories about the national executive of the Fire Brigades Union. I have had conversations with the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross; we need leadership in the union at a national level that is as strong as we see from Andy Roe as the commissioner of the London Fire Brigade. It is one of the world’s largest fire and rescue services, with 6,000 people working there. We have to look at a change in leadership to understand why this happened and what we can do to ensure that it never happens again.

What do we do about it, so that it is no longer a talking point? I spent two years and three months as Fire Minister. I will not say it was an easy—I may be using the wrong word—assignment; in fact, after a 20-year local government career, the two years as a Minister of State across levelling up and the Home Office were probably the hardest and least fulfilling of any element of public service in my political career.

However, we did produce one thing—an idea of the late James Brokenshire, who said to me, “Stephen, that thinking on reforming fire and rescue services needs to be wrapped up in a White Paper”. Nazir Afzal says that this culture spreads well beyond London; it is a national issue that requires a national solution. There is a blueprint for reform. To misquote Sir Robert Walpole, I am certainly no saint, no spartan, but I am a reformer. I ask my noble friend the Minister to think very carefully about how we can move now, based on this review, to deliver this White Paper, which sets out a blueprint for reform around improving the access of people of all types across this great global city to join the service—women, men and women of colour, and all minorities—to reflect the capital they serve. It would increase, drive forward and boost professionalism and strengthen governance.

The governance model in London is right in the sense that it is mayoral oversight, but the resources of the Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience are woefully inadequate, as is the structure elsewhere. Governance to hold people to account must be strengthened at the London level. Democratisation—having an elected leader in the mayor overseeing an important service such as this, with the requisite resources to challenge and support the commissioner to deliver for London—is important. I call on my noble friend to say whether this will happen. Having been in his seat for over two years, I know that it is often down to something called PBL—getting a legislative timeslot—but we need action now to bring about change in our fire and rescue services. We should implement the blueprint now and in full.