Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessments she has made of the potential effect of planned future budget reductions on the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Authority on its response to future flooding.

The Government commissioned Sir Ken Knight to carry out an independent review of the scope for fire and rescue authorities across England to improve their efficiency. His report, Facing the Future, published in 2013, provided a wide-ranging analysis of costs and benchmarking between fire and rescue authorities on a range of measures of financial performance.

We have delivered a sustainable finance settlement and there is no question that fire and rescue authorities will continue to have the resources they need. The number of incidents attended by Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Authority is 27 per cent lower than five years ago, and injuries requiring hospital treatment are 59 per cent lower.