Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service

Mike Penning Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice (Mike Penning)]

It is, as everyone has said, Mr Hollobone, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship yet again.

I welcome the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), to her role. I thought we had got rid of each other after the psychoactive substances debate, but here we are again. I do not know which of us feels sorrier. This is the first time that she has attacked me, which is probably a sign of the future, but we can still be friends outside the Chamber.

Colleagues from Merseyside are present today and I understand what they have said, although I do not understand or recognise some of the figures that have been used. I will come to those in a moment.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) on securing the debate and on making all these colleagues come out of the main Chamber for this debate, which is obviously important. I will answer as many of the points as possible. Naturally, if I cannot answer them all, I will write to colleagues. Actually, I want to write to colleagues from throughout the area—to colleagues who are not present as well—to clarify some of the figures, because I just do not recognise some of them. If I am wrong, I will obviously make that clear later and apologise, but let me give an example. The shadow Minister talked about core spending power between now and 2020, and a 41% cut was alluded to. Actually, it is 3.4% and a reduction of £2.1 million. There is obviously a discrepancy between the figures that my officials have produced for me and the figures that have been used in the debate.

One thing that slightly surprised me was this. The local authority is concerned and obviously has lobbied extensively, yet my notes tell me that Merseyside had the opportunity formally to respond to the local government financial settlement if it was concerned about the funding cuts, but it did not do so, so it did not take part in the consultation. I might be wrong, but those are the notes I have. I would think that if there were concerns, they would have been expressed.

[Steve Rotheram]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I will make a tiny bit of progress and then give way.

I am very conscious that a former Minister and a former chair of the Merseyside fire and rescue service are present. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd), because he went through an enormously difficult time in reforming the Merseyside service. I know that that was not an easy thing for him to do, so I pay tribute to him for the work that he and his board did.

For a short period, I was a fireman in the fire and rescue service in Essex, and I was the branch representative of the Fire Brigades Union for a very short period—until we fell out—and so no one is more conscious than I am of the work that our firefighters do on a daily basis. A lot of it is not seen by the public, even though the public expect them to do it. I am very conscious, having been to Lancashire, of the work that is done through mutual aid agreements. I saw help come across those borders—there were no borders and no lines on maps; firefighters just went across to help in the way that they should have. Firefighters from my constituency in Hertfordshire were also in the north-west, assisting with high-velocity pumps. A lot needs to be learnt from the type of flooding and rescue work that was done. The Prime Minister has already announced a review of not only how we protect the public better from flooding, but how we respond and where the facilities should be.

It is also important that we acknowledge the changes that have taken place in the structure of the fire service, certainly since I joined in ’82, as well as what has happened over the past few years. I pay tribute to the Fire Brigades Union, which in my time, would never have agreed to some of the changes that have taken place, especially in the manning of stations. However, practicalities relating to the modernisation of the service meant that when I was in Lancashire only the other day, all the whole-time station staff I met were what I would call day-manning staff. Other crews come down at night and are on call. It seems to be working really well there. It was first piloted, I think, in Woodham Ferrers in Essex, back in the ’80s. When I was there, we went to day-manning stations. It is about a different sort of facility, looking at what the requirements are and when staff can come in.

[Mr George Howarth]

rose—

[Mike Penning]

I give way to the former Minister.

[Mr Howarth]

I am grateful to the Minister. I join him in paying tribute to the FBU for the concessions that it has been willing to make, but does he not recognise that, because it has already made those concessions, the scope for any further reductions is inevitably much smaller?

[Mike Penning]

In some respects, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. We have come some way, but I do not think that anyone would say that we have fully come through. For instance, the figure I have for the number of retained firefighters in Merseyside is 25, which is very low. That may be because we are looking at day-manning stations among other things, but the use of retained firefighters is how it is done in many parts of the country. Sadly, that is not the case in London, where there are no retained firefighters, which I find strange. We need to continue to look at that.

I do not have the full figures for Manchester, because the debate is about Merseyside fire and rescue service, so I will have to write to the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes). My officials were scurrying away behind me to ensure that I had some details, but it is probably better if I write to her. I will say again that I do not recognise some of the figures on the amount of losses. We can all throw figures around, but let us get down to the facts.

Colleagues have talked about the small but significant increase in deaths in Merseyside, and that needs to be addressed. The statistics are always difficult: one death is too many, and one of the first things I said when I took over this responsibility just over three weeks ago was, “Yes, we have reduced deaths nationally enormously, but hundreds of people still die in fires and we need to get that figure down even more.” With the fire service in Merseyside and my specialist teams, I will personally look and ask for analysis as to why that figure has moved.

A couple of comments are very important. I am brand-new into the job. I was a firefighter, but that was a long time ago and the service has changed enormously since then. The one thing that has not changed is that, while we go in one direction, the fire service and other emergency services are going in the other direction, so it is right that we continue to pay tribute to fire services across the country and acknowledge the work that they do and that there have been many changes. In the debate, I was listening carefully about who is manning what and where.

Some colleagues said that their fire station may not open—I refer in particular to the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn). It might well open if it were a fire and police station. It is difficult to convert a police station into a fire station because the big red trucks do not get into the foyer so well, but we can plan constructively in the community. I always use the analogy that a church is not about buildings; it is about people coming together, and that is what we are talking about with the emergency services.

The reforms we announced today based on the consultation are not top-down but an attempt to move further forward. As chief fire officer Paul Hancock said today, there is a general warmth towards them in the service. This is not about taking one force, putting it under another and undermining it—as a former firefighter, why would I do that? I am trying to ensure that those on the front line have the opportunities and finances there and that we do not waste money in silos with headquarters here and there when they could come together. Why is it that in any part of the country the fire and police headquarters are not in the same building? Why are human resources and procurement not done together?

Since I took over responsibility for the fire service, I have published information on the 43 police authorities in which I listed about 20 average products that they buy for front-line operational use, so that the public can see how much each PCC and chief constable is spending on that equipment. The variation is enormous. For instance, on a type of approved body armour, there was a £300 difference between one piece of kit and another. On batons, the figure was about £80. I intend to do similarly for the fire service. I am not telling anyone that they should go to a specific organisation to buy their equipment, but I think the public should know what is being spent and how it is being spent. In vehicle procurement, the fire service should be part of the e-auctions process to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent correctly.

[Mrs Ellman]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I will give way in a second, but I want to make a tiny bit of progress.

The equipment has changed dramatically from when I was in the fire service. We need to look carefully at the equipment we have for the 21st century. For instance, when I was in Lancashire, six fire appliances were sadly damaged due to the flood. Their crews watched the Army vehicles go through. Squaddies will drive through anything, but their vehicles are adapted to go through it, whereas six of the fire appliances got trapped in the water, went off the road straight away and were quite seriously damaged. The engines were damaged as well. We need to look at the manufacturers to make sure we have the right equipment.

[Steve Rotheram]

In case there is any confusion, Merseyside fire and rescue service submitted a response to the consultation on behalf of and jointly with other metropolitan authorities; I want to clarify that point. My hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) may well be mistaken and myopic in his choice of football team, but he was absolutely right on the statistics we used, which were provided by Merseyside fire and rescue service itself. He was there, along with a number of other Merseyside MPs, when the Leader of the Opposition visited the joint control centre that the Government are pushing in Bootle. The chair of Merseyside fire and rescue service, Councillor Dave Hanratty, has asked me to extend the same invitation to the Minister. The chief gave out that information, and he is very careful about being absolutely non-political and impartial, so the Minister can come along and get the briefing for himself.

[Mike Penning]

I will come. I have been to Merseyside many times in my ministerial role, not least when I announced the decision to open the cruise terminal in Liverpool, which was opposed by many areas in the south of England. I know Merseyside very well, and I will come as soon as my diary allows.

I would never say that anybody has intentionally used a figure that is not correct. Of course, everybody thinks that the figures they use are correct. All I have said is that the information I have is slightly different. It may be a question of semantics—who knows? Let us get the facts right, and then we will know.

The biggest thing I want to make sure I get across to the House is that I am new and I have an open mind. The Prime Minister has put me here for a reason, and it is obviously a logical reason. The role of Fire Minister is back in the Home Office where it was when I was a firefighter in the ’80s, interestingly, and it is logical that the emergency services are together. I will look carefully at why Merseyside has seen this slight but significant increase in deaths. It is very important we look at that and find out what has been going on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Greenwood]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Of course, not all areas of the country receive that level of grant, but to us it is massively important. These cuts are real, and they are being felt already. We have already lost 300 firefighters. I am losing all the fire stations in my constituency. These cuts have not been magicked out of a small percentage; they are real cuts we are seeing.

I commend the Minister for paying tribute to the way in which the FBU has responded to modernisation, but I wonder what more he wants. The FBU has gone a long way to meet the cuts dealt to it already. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) said, with the fire services having made those concessions and responded so valiantly to the scale of the cuts last time, there is nothing left to cut without detriment to services.

Finally, I would like to welcome the Minister to come to Merseyside and urge him to look at the figures very closely indeed.

[Mike Penning]

I will look at them before I come.

[Margaret Greenwood]

I therefore urge the Minister to consider the possibility of dropping the cuts. If the cuts are of the scale that we have presented today, which I believe they are, there is a strong case for cutting them. Merseyside deserves a fire service that it can rely on and that is well funded, well resourced and does not put its firefighters at risk.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the funding of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service.