Oral Answers to Questions

Russell Brown Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

The Minister for Women and Equalities was asked—

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

1. What steps she is taking to tackle unemployment among women.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

3. What steps she is taking to tackle unemployment among women.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

The Government are supporting women to move into employment through the Work programme and into self-employment through our business mentoring scheme. Over 10,000 mentors have now registered, 40% of whom are women. We are also encouraging more women to enter apprenticeships, and the latest figures show that record numbers of women have started their training.

[Mr Brown]

Does the Minister believe that when the Prime Minister addresses his hand-picked audience in Dumfries this afternoon he will say anything about the 20% increase in female unemployment in Dumfries and Galloway in the past year, and about what a waste of talent, skills and experience it is?

[Mrs May]

I am well aware of the need to help women into the workplace, which is why we are putting in place a number of programmes that do that. The Work programme will give tailored and much more individual assistance to people to get them into the workplace. The hon. Gentleman quotes the figure for those who are unemployed in his constituency. Obviously, unemployment is a matter of concern, but I gently remind him that under the previous Government unemployment among women rose by 24%.

Amendment of the Law

Russell Brown Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Labour Members have learned nothing from the mess they handed over to us. They see us in a debt crisis and their solution is to keep on borrowing—keep on digging—and we all know who would pick up that bill.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

rose—

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

If the hon. Gentleman reads the whole OBR report, he will realise that Britain is an economy that operates in a global marketplace. Of course, his solution to the challenges faced in that global marketplace is to go and join all the countries that are facing problems, not to tackle our own economic crisis that his party left us. I assume that most, if not all the interventions that I get from Labour Members will be cherry-picked statistics that offer no alternative solutions to the challenges facing Britain.

[Mr Russell Brown]

rose—

[Justine Greening]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has an alternative.

[Mr Brown]

I am not about to cherry-pick a statistic, but let me give the Secretary of State some facts. I appreciate that she was not here at the time, but when the Labour Government came into power in 1997, the servicing of the debt that was left behind amounted to more than was being spent on transport and defence combined. That was a major task to be handled by the incoming Labour Government, so everything was not rosy in the garden.

[Justine Greening]

The previous Conservative Government handed over a golden economic legacy. It was the Labour party that handed over a Britain loaded up with debt, costing us £120 million a day in debt interest, and that left unemployment higher than when it came to office, like every single Labour Government we have ever had. I will take no lectures from the party opposite on economic management, and neither will the British people.

Rail Services from and to Scotland

Russell Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Absolutely. As a regular user of east coast trains, sometimes using the services that go through to Aberdeen, I know that they are very well used. I have had feedback from the business community in Edinburgh, speaking not just for Edinburgh but more widely, about the potentially very damaging consequences for Scotland’s economic interests, because of the effect both on business travel and on the wider travel services between important parts of the Scottish and UK economies.

Another feature of Transport Scotland’s proposals that concerns me is the suggestion that having all journeys in Scotland north of the central belt run by one operator—ScotRail—would in some way be an advantage because it would remove other operators. I am not sure that it would be an advantage, because apart from the difficultly of having to change trains, passengers travelling north of Edinburgh would not have the option of using alternative operators if they so wished. Having said that, it is interesting that these Transport Scotland proposals seem to some extent to contradict others it puts forward in the same document. Elsewhere, it suggests that the Scottish franchise could be broken up into two or three franchisees, including one that would run the “economic” day services, presumably the profit-making ones, and another that would run the social services, presumably the loss-making ones. In my view, that would be a retrograde step, but it is probably not an issue to be discussed at length today.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I compliment my hon. Friend on securing the debate. In the rural location I represent, there is a deep concern that we will see a central belt locality with lots of passengers and rail services, offering, to all intents and purposes, a first class service, alongside the potential for second class services—I hate to use that term—being offered just on and off in rural localities, and not really meeting the genuine needs of people living there.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

That is a genuine concern. I obviously do not know the detailed financial arrangements inside ScotRail and its franchise, but there is currently some cost subsidy between the different sections of the route, and we could well see a situation in which the economic franchise took all the good routes, with the profits going to the shareholders or the Scottish Government, and the social services suffered, as very much the poor relations. That would certainly be a consequence if that line was followed by Transport Scotland. To be fair, it is only an option, and I do not want to misrepresent it as the preferred option.

The outcome of the changes to cross-border services is pretty clear. Instead of having one through ticket on one through train, passengers could have to change services, wait sometimes in the cold—Edinburgh Waverley is not the warmest station in the world, I regret to say—and have the hassle of negotiating various pricing deals offered by different rail companies as they change trains. More passengers would therefore stop using rail. They would fly or add to traffic on already busy roads, and some tourists might not come at all. They would certainly be less likely to travel north of the central belt to areas where tourism is so important to the local economy. The proposals would not only affect passengers on long-distance cross-border services; there would also be a loss of choice for passengers from places such as Edinburgh to destinations further north, including Dundee and Inverness on the east coast services, and, dare I say it, there would be a loss of competition as well.

The operational arguments for maintaining cross-border services seem overwhelming, and the benefits to passengers are certainly clear. I am concerned that it appears that one of the motivations for the proposed termination of cross-border services at Edinburgh and Glasgow is what can only be described as a narrow financial interest. I quote again from the Transport Scotland report:

“The provision of these services, whilst providing additional capacity, also takes potential passengers and revenue from ScotRail services, and thereby affects the levels of subsidy required from the Scottish Government.”

The first priority should not be whether a few pounds, euros or even Scottish dollars should be saved for the Scottish Government; it should be the needs of passengers. I hope that the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland will recognise that, and the other concerns that I am raising. I urge Transport Scotland and the Scottish Government to keep our cross-border services, and I hope that the UK Department for Transport will make those views known to the Scottish Government.

Many of the arguments against cutting cross-border services also apply to Transport Scotland’s proposals for sleeper services between Scotland and England. In its report, Transport Scotland suggests that all or at least some services be removed from the requirement to operate under the ScotRail franchise and allowed to operate under a separate franchise. The report gives various suggestions about whether that franchise should be supported financially or run commercially only. It also suggests that only services to and from Edinburgh be franchised, leaving other services to be operated on a commercial basis only. Effectively, that would almost certainly mean that they would not be operated.

Leaving aside the fact that removing sleeper services from the ScotRail franchise, thereby jeopardising their future, would be an extremely odd move at a time when the UK and Scottish Governments are considering financing new sleeper stock, if such a cut were made or sleeper services were totally withdrawn, it would be bad news for passengers, and particularly bad news for the business and tourist sectors. I spoke last week to people from the Edinburgh business sector who expressed concern that a threat to the Edinburgh sleeper service would damage the business and tourism connectivity of Edinburgh and of Scotland as a whole.

I hope that the Minister shares my concern about both those issues, and I hope that her Government will reflect to the Scottish Government the concerns shown by many in Scotland in business, leisure and local communities, as well as workers in the rail industry. I certainly hope that Transport Scotland will think again.

I emphasise that I am not against change in the ScotRail arrangements or anywhere else, but I am against change so damaging to the travelling public. I would like some imagination from both Governments and from the rail industry in general about how existing service patterns might be improved to provide better connections between Scotland and England and better cross-border services, rather than making it more inconvenient to travel across the border. For example, at a time of big increases in rail travel on day services, could we not consider providing more sleeper services in the UK rather than fewer, perhaps reinstating some of the services cut a few years ago, or even overnight services from Scotland and the north of England to the continent of Europe?

On day travel, is it not time to consider how to improve cross-border services rather than cutting them? On my recent visit to Liverpool for the Labour party conference, due to the non-existence of through services, I was reminded again of the number of changes involved and the difficulty of connections from Edinburgh and Glasgow to that major city. There are also other places in England where through services to Scotland are not what they could be. In my view, we should be considering improving the service rather than cutting it in the way proposed by Transport Scotland. I hope that Transport Scotland and the Department for Transport will consider those thoughts for the future, as they will have to work together on the issues due to their cross-border implications.

I have spent some time referring to and criticising some of the proposals for rail services made by Transport Scotland. There are many others on which I have a view, but I will not mention those that are primarily of devolved concern. There are obvious overlaps between both devolved and reserved responsibilities. I know, for example, that people in Scotland are angry at the increase in fares announced for Scotland, as for the rest of the UK, but that is obviously the responsibility of the Scottish Government and Parliament, so I will not go into it in more detail, although I emphasise that views on the issue are extremely strongly held.

I will comment on one area of future policy that concerns both Transport Scotland and the Department for Transport: high-speed rail. Having so far been critical of Transport Scotland’s proposals, I will now be more positive about some of its recent ones. Indeed, I warmly welcome its recent report, “Fast Track Scotland: Making the Case for High Speed Rail Connections with Scotland”. The report was published earlier this month and resulted in numerous conclusions with broad or all-party support. The first is:

“Scotland stands united in support of high-speed rail. It is vital that a high-speed rail network be established across the UK to secure its future competitiveness and economic prosperity”,

as well as the competitiveness and economic prosperity of the entire UK.

The report continues:

“The investment case for high-speed rail is strong, but is stronger when Scotland is included.

Scotland supports a high-speed rail strategy which brings Edinburgh and Glasgow closer to London and the UK’s great cities, and which preserves and enhances aviation links with London’s airports for the north of Scotland.

A new high-speed line must be built to Scotland to realise the fullest economic and environmental benefits for the UK.”

I endorse those comments completely. I believe that high-speed rail is important to improve journey times, for environmental reasons and to improve capacity on the rail network as a whole. Transport Scotland’s report presents a powerful case for connecting Scotland with the high-speed rail network. Equally, the report highlights how a failure to connect high-speed routes to services on other lines could damage Scotland’s interests by placing it and cities in the north of England in a relatively worse position, in terms of journey times and rail capacity, than cities linked to the network.

As I have said, it is in the interests of the UK’s high-speed rail network as a whole that Scotland should be part of the network, because of the benefits that it would bring to the business case for the whole network. Business leaders throughout the UK support Scotland’s inclusion in a high-speed rail link.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) on securing this debate on the last day before the recess. Let me also say how much I always enjoy serving under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. You wisely advised us to take our time and look in some depth at the important issues under consideration.

The goal the coalition Government set themselves was to tackle the deficit we inherited and to build a solid foundation for economic recovery and growth. That means not only getting the best value for every pound of taxpayers’ money spent, but prioritising the spending that can best support growth, jobs and prosperity. That is why transport, including rail, came out of the spending review in a much stronger position than most people expected, and why the Chancellor gave the go-ahead for a further list of road and rail improvements in his recent autumn statement.

Rail services—be they services within England, the cross-border services we are discussing or services in Wales—are very much at the heart of our transport strategy. The programme of capacity expansion we are taking forward is bigger in scale than anything undertaken since the Victorian era. The comprehensive spending review allocated about £18 billion to rail, while the autumn statement provided further support, including £50 million for the replacement of vehicles for the Caledonian sleeper, as we heard in this morning’s debate.

As we also heard this morning, however, that is subject to co-funding by the Scottish Government. They have not yet announced whether they are prepared to co-fund the project and to match the funding the Westminster Government are prepared to provide. As we know, there are no nationalists here to defend the position of their Government north of the border, so we are, sadly, unable to question them about it directly. However, we will continue to engage the Scottish Government on this.

[Mr Russell Brown]

I thank the Minister for the information she has just given us. Is there a finite time for which that offer of money will lie on the table, after which she will need to say that it is no longer there? In her interaction with the SNP Government in Edinburgh, she will discover that they will prevaricate on a whole host of issues and that they tend to put one obstacle in front of another. Does she therefore have a finite time for how long that offer of money will lie on the table?

[John Woodcock]

Good question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Villiers]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that officials from HS2 and the Department for Transport have regular discussions with Transport Scotland about high-speed rail. I have discussed it with Scottish Ministers on several occasions. The Secretary of State for Defence also discussed it, when he was Transport Secretary, with Scottish Ministers. Indeed, HS2 is already considering options further to reduce journey times to Edinburgh and Glasgow. We recognise the enthusiasm for further work on expanding the proposed high-speed rail network. As I have said, we share the aspiration of establishing a genuinely national network, which must of course include Scotland.

[Mr Russell Brown]

I would like to share with the Minister and hon. Members an infrastructure-related problem—albeit not to do with rail—which my ex-colleague the former Member for Carlisle, Eric Martlew, experienced when the M6 was brought north to Carlisle. For some reason it stopped there. When he asked an official why it stopped at Carlisle, he was told the road did not go anywhere. In other words, there was no need to take it to the border, or even into Scotland, which fell under the remit of the Scottish Office at that time. I have to share that worry with the Minister. We have a line that comes so far north, and we have this mindset that it goes nowhere. Colleagues in Scotland will be forcing the issue with the Scottish Government to engage in a process to make sure that something is happening north of the border that ensures that we get UK coverage of this railway.

[Mrs Villiers]

Mr Hollobone has given us great latitude to wander far and wide in the debate, but I am afraid that I do not have a very detailed knowledge of the history of the construction of the M6. I assure the hon. Gentleman that it is always wise to learn lessons from what has gone wrong with previous transport projects. I reiterate the importance that we place on playing our part to supply a high-quality transport network for the country as a whole. As I have said, infrastructure matters north of the border are rightly devolved to Transport Scotland, but we recognise the importance of our decisions on high-speed rail taking into account fully the interests of the economy and passengers in Scotland. That is why we are happy to engage with Scottish hon. Members and the Scottish Government. We need to view, with careful scrutiny and perhaps some scepticism or reservation, the promises that Scottish Ministers are now making about high-speed rail. It is difficult to judge whether their promises on funding are watertight, but we certainly welcome the enthusiasm with which they support the principle of high-speed rail.

Before moving on to through services on the current network, I will respond to the shadow spokesman’s criticism that the Government were somehow insufficiently supportive on high-speed rail. I remind the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness that we were the first to champion the benefits of high-speed rail. Indeed, we were doing so when Labour’s 30-year strategy for the railways, published in 2007, had no place at all for high-speed rail.

One of the other key issues raised by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith was the controversial consultation document issued by Transport Scotland on the service pattern for the new ScotRail franchise to be let from 2014 onwards. As we have heard, that has posed a question on whether services north of Edinburgh should be a matter for the Scottish franchisee. As we have heard, that would mean cross-border services terminating at Edinburgh Waverley, with onward connections to Aberdeen and Inverness provided by ScotRail. That proposition has been dubbed the “Edinburgh Hub” by Transport Scotland.

As we have heard, the Scottish Government make three assertions on the effect of that change. First, they assert that it would return greater revenue to the Scottish franchisee and reduce taxpayer subsidy—that might be a controversial claim. Secondly, they claim that moving to just one operator would improve resilience—that ought to be carefully tested. Thirdly, they claim that the change would give the ScotRail franchisee more freedom and flexibility in timetabling and running services. Fourthly, they claim that there are advantages in vesting control over services north of Edinburgh in a Scottish franchisee with no reliance on services specified by the Department for Transport.

One of my concerns is whether that is an ideologically-driven proposal motivated by a wish to control as many rail services in Scotland as possible. I would be very concerned if that was a motivating factor behind Transport Scotland’s fairly startling proposals. It is very important for the decision to be made on a clear and calm assessment of the potential effects of such a change.

The proposals generated considerable opposition and debate in Scotland. We have had discussions with the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland about the implications of such a change. As hon. Members might recollect, this issue has cropped up before. In considering whether to proceed with the intercity express programme, the Westminster Government looked at whether east coast services should terminate at Edinburgh, so that they could all be provided by electric trains. We decided against a rolling stock option that would have required passengers to change trains at Edinburgh, because we were concerned about the implications of such a change. That is the conclusion that we reached, so, as the hon. Gentleman invited me to say, I certainly would have reservations about the Scottish Government’s proposal.

If, following the consultation, the Scottish Government decide that they would like this change to take place on the east coast line, we would of course consider their proposal in accordance with our mutual respect agenda. However, hon. Members have been clear in outlining the disadvantages of such an approach, which, as I have said, would have to be very carefully considered. It is disappointing that no one is here to defend the nationalists’ position or explain why they have chosen to consult on such a controversial proposal.

Coastguard Modernisation

Russell Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

One of the great things about having the RNLI is that it is a brand known worldwide and a fantastic facility. However, little is known in this country about the volunteer lifeboats. There are huge numbers, including the one that I visited and went out to sea on at Caister recently, where the crew desperately tried to make me seasick, unsuccessfully. I can assure the House that not only will the facility be as good as it is now, but it will be better.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Minister will recognise the bitter disappointment of those in my locality who campaigned so hard to retain both the Liverpool and Clyde facilities, which serve 200 miles of coastline. The Scottish Government Transport Minister failed to recognise the significance of Liverpool to the Solway coast, but did the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Under-Secretary of State make any representations to him about retaining the Clyde facility?

[Mike Penning]

The Scotland Office was fully informed of the proposal. I phoned the Minister yesterday to tell him, and I did the same for the Wales Office. This is a national emergency service, so the House and the Government are fully responsible for it. I understand the concerns, but we must reiterate that at the moment we do not have a national resilience service. If two of these pairs go down, there is no way that we can provide the cover necessary in a 21st-century service. This should have been done years ago, as I know the hon. Gentleman will admit.

Coastguard Service

Russell Brown Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) and her colleagues for securing this debate through the Back Bench Business Committee. I also thank Mr Philip Naylor of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency for listening to my pleas to include my area in the recent series of public meetings. My area has a coastline of some 200 miles with two ferry companies and a number of fishermen operating out of it, so it has a significant amount of maritime activity. It was good of Mr Naylor and his colleague, Bill McFadyen, to come to the maritime meeting last Thursday.

Before I run through a couple of important issues that were raised today, let me say that my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (David Cairns) is not in the Chamber, although he would have loved to be here. He has made a submission to the consultation, putting the case for retaining the Clyde maritime rescue co-ordination centre. In a document on the planned closure of MRCC Clyde, a shipping industry expert says:

“I honestly believe this is utter madness and will end in disaster.”

The document is first class and worthy of consideration, as is the case made by my hon. Friend.

If I repeat anything that has already been said this afternoon, it is because of its importance and significance. We have heard a great deal about local knowledge today, but local dialect is important, too. We have heard many dialects in this debate. Members who live 300 or 400 miles apart are beginning to understand some of them. It is important that we get this matter right. There are two fundamental issues in the entire process: minimising errors and chasing the clock. When we talk about minimising errors, we are referring to the initial information-gathering processes: the location identification, the casualty incident description, the response required, the assurance of effective communication between the casualty or first informants and the resources and co-ordinators. Minimising errors also relates to work-load distribution and the management of resources.

Chasing the clock is as it sounds. We all recognise that when HM coastguard receives notification of an incident, the problem or the disaster has already taken place. Given that the incident is being reported after the event, action must be taken as quickly as possible. The race against time starts at the exact time of receiving the call. The time difference between call reception and incident commencement can be anything from a few minutes to a matter of hours. Irrespective of the amount of time that has passed, the search and rescue response is already lagging behind.

The remote handling of search and rescue co-ordination from the maritime analysis and operations centre increases the risk of error as a result of the many additional assumptions that the new system would employ in trying to establish area, nature and appropriate response from the initial call. That leads to the insertion of time into the process, which equates to the potential loss of life. It is about that information gathering and handling that information as appropriately and as quickly as possible

The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth mentioned the table-top exercise that took place last year. If we proceed with this process, or any other process—I recognise what my hon. Friend the Chair of the Transport Committee had to say on this matter—all the information that goes through that exercise on its own must be what people will identify as being good, decent information. From what I can gather, that table-top exercise did not provide the full information that is required. I make a plea to the Minister: before we process any of this any further, that table-top exercise needs to be handled in real time. I accept that the exercise was based on information that came in about incidents on a specific day in summer 2006, but all that was done was a redistribution of each and every one of those incidents on to a map. There was no real-time activity, which would determine how individual sites might handle those cases as they came in.

I am not in denial—I recognise that this process is about making financial savings. It must be recognised that the process began back in 2007. There was an industrial dispute, and off the back of that dispute there was an agreement between the two parties involved: the management and the unions. I have not come across a single union member who is opposed to change in the process, provided that it delivers a service with which they are comfortable, and which they believe they can deliver to help to save lives. That is their duty; that is what they see as being paramount. So, even if there is little that the Minister can do, I hope that he will go back to that table-top exercise and ask for at least part of it to be conducted in real time. I will say nothing more than that because I want other colleagues to be able to make their contributions to the debate.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Penning]

I take the point that my hon. Friend is making. I pay tribute to the family and personal experience of the coastguard and the sea that she has gained over many years. She understands the sea better than anyone else in this Chamber. From my emergency service background—the shadow Minister also has such a background—I know that such a situation occurs in the other emergency services. It is not a be-all and end-all. It is not a case of this being the only method of doing it. I am not saying that at all. Only the other day, I was in Shetland. The communications there go down regularly when we have to send volunteers out—whether it is the BT line, the broadband line or our own communication systems. That happens around the country. I am not saying that if a new system is brought in, it will take away any of that local knowledge. It will augment the current situation as we go forward.

May I touch on what we have today? Many hon. Members and hon. Friends have said that we could leave the service roughly where it is, but we cannot. The coastguard service is telling me that it cannot—from the most junior person on the watch through to the volunteers and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution at the top. That organisation does not want to be dragged into the politics of the matter, and I can understand why. However, to use the modern slang, it is also saying to us, “Is the service fit for purpose in the 21st century? No, it is not.”

It is interesting to read about the twinning system—an issue that I raised when I was in Bangor. The arguments that were put to me in Northern Ireland on resilience, the special circumstances and how they liaise with the Republic of Ireland—particularly with regard to helicopters—were very powerful. I thank the Republic and pay tribute to it. We get helicopters for free and we help them in other parts of the coast on other matters. Of course, there is the issue of what happens if communications go down. What happens if a station goes down? Will the Clyde back us up? There is no logic to the idea that all that local knowledge is transferred instantly to the Clyde—it cannot be. I accept that, as we look at different stations around the country, but the present twinning system does not work properly. If we look at where stations are around the country at the moment, they are not set up with a proper regional structure, as we would probably expect them to be. There are some stations that are very close, and some that are very far apart. The Humber station, which was mentioned by two hon. Members, covers 300 miles of moving sands. How on earth could it transfer in a twinning system? How does that work? Where is the resilience there? We need to look at that.

We need to look, as I have said in previous debates, at a service which offers a basic starting salary of £13,500 per year. How would anybody survive on that in some parts of the country? The answer is with more than one job, just like when I was first in the fire services—I am sure that the situation is not dissimilar for firemen today. We have to offer coastguards a salary that is suitable for the 21st century and give them the skills and training, so that they can have a career progression, too. It is very much dead man’s shoes, looking at the age profile. There are very young people and people coming towards the end of their careers, but the middle section is very difficult indeed.

The whole country relies on the coastguard, whether on holiday, in the shipping industry, in their community or where they work. Is this a done deal? No, it is not. Will we come out of the end of this process with a different set of conclusions and a different modernisation programme from when we started? I am sure that we will—I am convinced of it.

[Mr Russell Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I am not going to give way, because I am really restricted on time. I apologise. I am not summing up—I have to hand over to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth.

Is this just about money? Yes, there are savings required, but if this was just about money, it would not be £4.8 million a year. As hon. Members have said, it is a tiny amount of money. Will there be savings throughout the MCA? Yes, at the top and at the bottom. In my own Department, every single member of staff has had to reapply for their own job. That is the sort of situation that we are working under. Did I come into politics to do that? No, of course I did not, but we have to be realistic about the money and the income that we have to work with.

I welcome the Transport Committee’s commitment to its own report. I welcome the fact that the Chair of that Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), has sat through the debate and been part of the debate. I say to her that I will not, under any circumstances—and neither will the Secretary of State—come to any conclusions until her Committee has reported. I promise and I make that commitment. If I can—it is difficult, because bureaucracy is involved—I will try and release to the Committee as much data that I have received, and which has been submitted to us, as I can, particularly the detailed submissions about reconfiguration. I will not release the submissions that are nasty about me, of course. If I can release that data I will do so. If I cannot do that, I might write back to those people who have made submissions and suggest that they send them to the Transport Committee. It is imperative that the Committee see that some of the submissions from the coastguard do not say, “We all should stay open; everything is perfectly fine”. They actually say, as I have alluded to, nine stations or 10 stations. There are others that say there should be more or less.

I think that this is the start of something new in government. Consultation had to start somewhere. I inherited a situation; we started somewhere. We listen. We come out with a service that is fit for purpose in the 21st century. Not everybody is going to be happy, because I have got 19 stations and there is a proposal for 10 closures or nine closures. Clearly, not everybody will be happy. There is, however, a sense in the coastguard service, without any doubt if people are really honest, that we have to move on from where we are now. We have to get away from the disputes that have been going on for so many years, which are divisive, and have a service that has the resilience, the modernisation and the service to the front line, which is being left untouched and will be enhanced.

Finally, channel 16, under international regulations, will be monitored in the stations. That will not be on headphones, but over loudspeakers. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax). I should have come back to him on that. On that note—I am sad that I have to cut my comments short, due to procedure—I will hand over to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth. This is a proper consultation. No deal is done. I have visited many stations and have one more to go. I cannot visit all 19—that is not possible. If hon. Members look at the political make-up of the stations that I have visited, that has nothing to do with party politics—it is to do with my job.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Newton]

Like everyone else, I am reassured by what the Minister has said: saving lives is in his blood; he will now make all the information available to the Transport Committee; no decisions will be made until the Transport Committee has published its findings; and there will be plenty of opportunities between now and then for further representations by coastguards, without fear. That was a very important point. Coastguards are frightened, and I think that there are volunteers in the RNLI and other organisations who are frightened to come forward. They can do so with the absolute guarantee that they have been given by the Minister today.

[Mr Russell Brown]

As the Minister would not allow me to intervene, may I, through the hon. Lady, ask if the table-top exercise will be undertaken again, but in real time to give a real indication of how that might develop on the day?

[Sarah Newton]

I am sure that the Minister has heard that. I had better let other hon. Members intervene.