Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

I am pleased to speak under your stewardship, Mr Hollobone, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) on securing this important debate.

As a former chair of Merseyside fire and rescue service, I feel I have a little knowledge—some would say very little knowledge—of the area that it serves. As a former Fire Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) also shares significant knowledge of the service. The headquarters of the fire service is in my Bootle constituency. I visited the service HQ only a few weeks ago, and I am pleased to say that there is a jointly located command and control centre, shared with the police. That was an initiative taken and implemented without Government diktat, so Merseyside is already ahead of the curve in that regard. Discussions have also taken place to one degree or another with the ambulance service over the potential relocation of its control centre within the Merseyside fire service.

The service has excellent partnership arrangements with the police and local authorities, and, over the years, has developed excellent relations with community groups, voluntary organisations and the faith sector. It is no easy task to go out and make contact day in and day out to build up relationships with those organisations, and they respond constructively and positively.

Merseyside fire and rescue service can truly claim to be an integrated partner within the various communities that go to make up Merseyside. In addition, its relationships with the business community are absolutely second to none. Put simply, Merseyside has an excellent service that has a record of being proactive—in that, too, it is second to none. Over the years it has not only responded in the physical sense to actual fires, but has been responsive in ensuring that prevention has been at the top of its agenda. That takes time, determination and both financial and human resources, which are incrementally disappearing.

Merseyside fire and rescue service has risen to the financial challenge, albeit an unfair one, that the Government have set it over the past five years. Merseyside is a diverse community. It has a major river running through it, with two strategic road tunnels running beneath. It has major dock estates on both sides of the river and a burgeoning cruise terminal, with a major expansion of the Seaforth dock under way. It has an airport, two universities and major regional, national and international hospitals of repute within its care. It has two excellent football teams, in addition to Liverpool FC. It also has Aintree racecourse, which hosts one of the largest horse-racing events in the world. Meanwhile, Merseyside fire and rescue service has brought down the number of fires over the years with an innovative fire prevention strategy. The number of deaths and injuries have gone down to remarkably low levels, and that excellent record is in jeopardy. There is no doubt about that at all. It has done all that without kicking up a fuss and under great financial pressure, but that can go on only for so long without having serious effects on the resilience of the service.

The six metropolitan authorities, out of a total of 46 services, accounted for 57% of the budgetary reduction in the service as a whole between 2011 and 2013. Little is changing under the Government’s proposals; in fact, it is getting worse. During the same period, Merseyside fire and rescue service’s budget was cut by 13%—one of the highest cuts, and double the average—while others received increases. That is simply not fair and not equitable, and it is on top of all other the major cuts to local government services across the region over the past few years, which my right hon. and hon. Friends have mentioned. Put simply, that financial inequity is wrong, particularly when lives and livelihoods are at risk. The Government really have to think again.

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[Margaret Greenwood]

I thank the Minister for his response and his proposition to look carefully into the increase in deaths; that is welcome. However, I have to say that I find his response on the business of figures somewhat baffling, because all the figures I have presented to him have come from Merseyside fire and rescue service. I wonder why he has not challenged the figures I have come up with of £26 million in cuts during the coalition and a further £11 million cuts to come. It does not matter whether we talk in percentages; those are huge cuts and that is a vast amount of money. Talking about merging HR functions and so forth is all well and good, but it does not really go to the nub of the issue. This is all about saving money, and that is the issue we are so concerned about.

[Peter Dowd]

In 2010-11, Merseyside received 63% of its funding from Government grants, so any cut in Government grant has a disproportionate effect. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister would do well to look at that particular element in his assessments?

[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.