HC Deb 14 June 1995 vol 261 cc759-66 1.29 pm
Mr. John Sykes (Scarborough)

One of the topics with which I intend to deal is sparsity of funding for the county council's fire services and, judging by the sparsity of Members in the House, I have ample reason to address that topic.

This is something of a novel experience as I have never before applied for an Adjournment debate. I have come here straight from Room 11—fresh from the Dogs (Fouling of Land) Bill—and I hope that you will bring me hack to order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I somewhat inadvertently refer to hon. Members as my honourable chum or my honourable pedigree chum, but I shall try to remain in order.

I decided that I would apply for an Adjournment debate only if there was an emergency in my constituency, and I fear that such an emergency has cropped up. Just over a year ago, at 2.30 am on 5 May 1994, a fire swept through the Richmond hotel, which is a Department of Social Security hostel in my constituency, killing a 20-month-old toddler, Terry Jones, and a 33-year-old girl, Katherine Harrison. The baby's four-year-old sister, Natasha, was left fighting for her life.

I received a letter at the time from one of the firemen involved, who said: I shall never forget the initial scene that greeted us when we arrived or the screams from so many people from windows and also from their friends already out on the street … it was my specific task … to enter the building and to search the locked rooms on the second and third floors for two people reported missing. It was a very long and difficult night, despite the many successful rescues and the mood back at the fire station was 'quiet' … you should know that our job (already very difficult and extremely dangerous that night) without the attendance of the Scarborough's retained firefighters, would have been almost impossible… When I arrived home the following morning I was surprised to find that I was too upset for some time to tell Christine"— his wife— what had happened. Stephen (my youngest son) was getting ready for school and the similarity with some of the children seen the night before was a distressing reminder. We're very fortunate … This tragedy will no doubt add weight to your argument and of course anyone unfortunate enough to be residing in such places at least deserves to he protected properly. I was also heartened to see that the Prime Minister is willing to address the problem. What the House does riot know is that that fire station is directly opposite the Richmond hotel. How many others might have perished on that dreadful night but for that? I know that hon. Members will appreciate what a painful subject this is for us to deal with and will also be shocked when they hear that the county council wants to cut one fire engine from Scarborough, Whitby and Filey respectively, together with other cuts for north Yorkshire, which total about £178,000.

When most of my colleagues think of Scarborough and Whitby, they think of going on holiday there. Many of them will be surprised to hear that we have lots of other things to offer. There is a dynamic economy on that coastline. We have an amazingly vital manufacturing sector. Indeed. I have my own factory in Filey, which is not in my constituency—if we built an extension, it would probably he in my constituency. We also have an interesting fishing community and lots of farming. Thirty per cent. of the people who come to live in Scarborough retire there, so we have a large nursing home industry. We have 45 miles of the most beautiful, craggy, coastal scenery that one could imagine. Tiny villages such as Robin Hood's Bay, Runswick and Staithes shelter in the coves.

Then there is Whitby itself—England's finest and most unique town, surrounded on one side by thousands of square miles of open moorland, which sometimes catches fire, and thousands of square miles of sea on the other. If one sails out of Whitby harbour and looks hack, one does not see much that one's 19th century counterpart would not have seen. The architects of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s have left it alone and it is still very much as it was. Along its ancient streets Tudor, Stuart and Georgian buildings—houses, shops and offices—are all packed tightly together, yet the county council wants to cut the number of fire engines.

In Scarborough, the pattern is repeated and a reliance on tourism is common to both Scarborough and Whitby. In summer, the population of Scarborough swells by 300,000—we have 1.5 million visitor days there every year. Visitors often come via the A64, which is clogged and choked, making rescue work very difficult for the fire services when they are called out.

In Scarborough and Whitby we also have DSS hostels, as we have heard. We should be very concerned about the fire risks in such hostels, as the Richmond hotel shows. The borough council is doing a sterling job within the limited powers that it already has to deal with the problem. We have 560 DSS hostels in Scarborough and Whitby, 86 of which have been inspected by the borough council, but only 17 were found to be satisfactory. Yet the county council wants to cut the number of fire engines in Scarborough and Whitby. We have a large and thriving population and it is a long way from other large and thriving populations.

I represent a coastal constituency. This afternoon, the House will turn its attention to the boundary commission. One of the advantages of having a coastal constituency is that the commission cannot do much with the right-hand side of it, but I suppose that I have lost so much of it to the North sea—including a famous hotel—that one might argue that an altogether higher authority was dealing with my boundaries. I am trying to illustrate a point because, if one lived in Huddersfield, one's house caught fire and the Huddersfield fire brigade was not as quick as it should have been, one would always have Halifax, Wakefield, Barnsley or Bradford to fall back on. According to the map, the nearest fire station in an easterly direction on which we can call is in Hamburg. That is why we need the extra fire stations in Scarborough and Whitby.

That brings me neatly to the question of sparsity because, as everyone knows, Yorkshire is England's biggest county and North Yorkshire county council, England's biggest council. The county has two population centres—York and Scarborough—and, in between, hundreds of tiny villages and hamlets, which stretch the county council's resources to the limit.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) and I have repeatedly asked the Government to take sparsity into account. I am glad to be able to say that the Minister responded favourably by writing to me in March to say: The Government accepts that there should be a further review of the fire Standard Spending Assessment formula for 1996–07. The Home Office will be participating with the local authority associations in that review. I am pleased to hear that news, but the sums involved in these cuts arc paltry in comparison. They amount to £178,000, so why in the name of God does the county council seem so hell bent on pursuing cuts, when it knows that it might be pushing at an open door?

It may be relevant to point out that, in 1994, the public protection committee was faced with the self-same proposals and rejected them. It wrote that on the grounds of public safety, none of the reductions set out in Item 5 can be accepted and the Finance Sub-Committee be recommended to remove these items from the budget process entirely". It continued, in defence of the very same retained crews for whom I am trying to fight today, to say that item 13—cutting back on those retained crews— cannot be accepted because if these appliances are removed the ability to meet attendance times and weight of attack would be seriously jeopardised when the Brigade is engaged in more than one incident at any one time, or when the Brigade is involved at a major incident which requires the mobilisation of many appliances". The county council rejected those cuts on the ground of public safety in the previous financial year, yet 12 months later—after a disaster of national proportions in my constituency—the same council has stood on its head and changed its mind. It may he relevant to say that an election was held between those times, following which the Conservatives lost control of North Yorkshire county council. That is a matter for conjecture.

Mr. Hugh Bayley (York)

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate on an important subject. People throughout north Yorkshire are concerned about the cuts to the fire service. Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the Government have reduced the standard spending assessment for the fire service in north Yorkshire this year by £238,000? Does he accept that at the moment the county council spends £2 million more than its fire service SSA, which is the amount that the Government believe should be spent on the fire service?

Does the hon. Gentleman also accept that when the public protection committee considered the loss of the five fire appliances—including the two in his constituency—a proposal was placed before the council by Labour members that the cuts in the fire service should not reduce the number of appliances, but that the cut was voted through by Conservative and Liberal members of the county council?

Mr. Sykes

I do not accept that at all. The hon. Gentleman knows that the county council received a I per cent. increase in funding this year from the Government. He will have heard me say that the Under-Secretary of State has accepted our arguments about the importance of sparsity. I hope that more money will be made available. There has been cross-party support in Scarborough and Whitby for the argument, and no political point scoring has been carried out. I asked for today's debate as a Member of Parliament—not as a Conservative or Labour Member—because I am concerned about the issue.

I shall now address the question of the allocation of resources, and I am glad that the hon. Gentleman brought me to that point. It has been suggested that the Government did not give the county council enough money, and that that is the reason why the cuts proved necessary. The taxpayer subsidises the council to the tune of £290 million a year, with local ratepayers providing an extra £154 million a year.

I regard it as my job as the Member of Parliament for my constituency to try to make sure that we get a fair share of the national cake. I am glad that the Minister has accepted the arguments that my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale and I have put for more resources as a result of sparsity. But it is equally important for the county council to give a good account of its own spending. The council must be able to show that it has its priorities in the right order, and it is self-evident that the fire service is a priority of the first order.

As a business man, I know that a company that needs to make savings must first look at its head office costs and cut any unnecessary overheads. I took a look at North Yorkshire county council, which, for example, owns 13,000 acres of glorious north Yorkshire farmland. Has anyone in the county council asked himself what on earth the council is doing in 1995 owning 13,000 acres of farmland? More importantly, those acres are divided into 154 separate farms, which approximates about 84 acres apiece. That is almost French or German in its inefficiency, with regard to farming.

In business terms, the situation is worse. If the tenanted land was sold, it would raise about £10 million at today's prices, from which the council would receive an income of approximately £830,000 a year. That would be enough to pay for a whole fleet of fire engines year in, year out for every single village in the area.

I campaigned along with other people from Scarborough and Whitby—unsuccessfully, as it turned out—to get North Yorkshire county council to change its mind. The arguments raged backwards and forwards. I have said that the minimum standards are wholly inadequate, and I am sure that the hon. Member for York (Mr. Bayley) agrees. I live in Scalby, north of Scarborough. If my chimney caught fire and a fire engine got there within five minutes, that would be all right. But in the meantime, the Grand hotel or the Royal hotel could catch fire and burn to the ground. However, the minimum standards would still have been adhered to.

A document produced by the Audit Commission entitled "In the Line of Fire" addresses the minimum standards problem, and I hope that the Government will look closely at it. The report tells us that the majority of fatalities in fires occur in the category of property that is most predominant in my constituency. Yet we are faced today with applying the minimum standards in my constituency.

Why should we rely on Filey which, while it does very well, is also losing a tender'? It takes 18 minutes to get from Filey to Scarborough—how many houses can burn down in 18 minutes? However, the county council still refuses to budge. Even the council's consultation period was odd. When similar proposals were put forward in 1990, the county council allowed three months to discuss the matter and consult the public. That did not happen this time. On this occasion, we were allowed four weeks for consultation during Christmas and new year, when most of us were at home with our families and most of the shops and businesses were closed. That consultation process was fundamentally flawed.

Whitby and Knaresborough town councils offered to raise the necessary funds themselves to pay for the fire engines, but still North Yorkshire county council refused to budge. In fact, the council bent over backwards to find a reason not to allow that. The council's reply to Knaresborough town council was that the council should be thanked for its offer to pay North Yorkshire County Council an annual sum equivalent to the cost of providing and staffing the second fire engine … for operational, legal, financial and administrative reasons, it cannot be accepted. That is gobbledegook, and the council is saying that it does not want to allow that to happen. We know that where there is a will, there is a way.

In the meantime, unknown to me and to the people of Scarborough and Whitby, the county council asked the fire officer of Scarborough to conduct a review of fire standard cover, which will be published in August. By that time—if the county council has got its way—it could be too late.

Liberal, Labour and Conservative councillors in Scarborough and Whitby and parish councillors have worked together with me to try to stop the arrangement in its tracks. The whole community has risen in support of the retained crews in relation to the threat that they face from Northallerton.

I have worked closely with those retained crews. I have attended fires with them, and spoken to their families. Without exception, every one of them is an honourable and decent person. They arrange their own lives so that they may save other people's lives, and it breaks my heart to see them sacrificed by the county council's brutal determination to throw them on the scrap heap and to score points. The council knows that the Home Office recognises that there may well be a need to put more money on the table in the weeks following this debate.

The council is playing with fire, the consequences of which could be injury or worse, such as another disaster like the one that occurred at the Richmond hotel. Those fire engines did not appear magically from nowhere. They have been there for a long time, and they were provided by the community because the community needed them. The community still needs them, and the community is entitled to be angry when dedicated firemen are chucked on the rubbish heap because the county council prefers to be a farmer, rather than-a fire engine keeper.

1.38 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Nicholas Baker)

It gives me great pleasure to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough (Mr. Sykes) on securing this debate on the fire service in Scarborough and Whitby. I understand the concern that he and his constituents feel about the quality of their fire service and that he expressed recently in a meeting with my right hon. and noble Friend the Minister of State. It is a sign of the seriousness of the issue for those in Scarborough and Whitby that this should be the first Adjournment debate raised by their Member of Parliament so ably and passionately. I extend my sympathy to all the victims of the tragic fire at the Richmond hotel, which he described.

The Government, like the general public, have a high regard for the fire service, its professionalism, the bravery of its firefighters and the quality of the service that it provides. In its recent report on value for money in the fire service, "In the Line of Fire", the Audit Commission noted: the fire service can be proud of its record in responding to incidents. My hon. Friend referred to fire safety and in particular to the licensing of houses in multiple occupation. The Department of the Environment published a consultation paper on licensing houses in multiple occupation in November 1994. The responses to the consultation exercise have been considered carefully and the Government expect to publish their decision shortly in the housing White Paper.

My hon. Friend also referred to Government funding of local authorities and standard spending assessments. The local government finance settlement is realistic in the current economic climate, particularly when seen in the context of low inflation and the Government's view that pay increases in the public sector should be met from increased efficiency. It will also ensure that fire authorities contribute fairly to reducing public sector borrowing.

It is inevitable that updating the fire standard spending assessment formula means that some authorities will benefit at the expense of others. Although the fire element of North Yorkshire county council's standard spending assessment fell by 1.8 per cent. this year compared with last year, it benefited in 1994–95 by an increase of 7.2 per cent. However, with the Department of the Environment and the local authority associations, we shall look at the fire standard spending assessment formula again for next year, taking account of pensions, fire safety and other factors—my hon. Friend mentioned population density or sparsity—that the associations may wish to raise.

Before I deal specifically with the fire service in Scarborough and Whitby, it will be helpful if I explain the framework within which decisions about fire cover are taken. It is important to remember that the fire service is a local authority service. That has been the case since the Fire Services Act 1947 transferred firefighting functions from the wartime national fire service.

Mr. Bayley

Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Baker

I apologise, but I do not have time to give way.

Statutory responsibility for providing an effective and efficient fire service to meet all normal requirements rests with the local fire authority. It is for the fire authority—North Yorkshire county council in the case of Scarborough and Whitby—to decide how much of its overall budget to spend on its fire service in order to comply with its statutory responsibilities.

What, then, is the Government's role? My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary has various duties under the Fire Services Act 1947: he monitors performance through Her Majesty's inspectorate of fire services; he is responsible for promoting high and consistent standards in such matters as training, equipment, promotion and recruitment; and he can require collaboration between brigades and a combination of them if that would be more efficient. I might add that he will exercise those powers of combination to ensure that, from 1 April 1996, a combined fire authority comprising the new unitary council of the City of York and the remainder of North Yorkshire will maintain the existing brigade on its existing boundaries following local government reorganisation.

Under section 19 of the Fire Services Act, my right hon. and learned Friend is required to be notified of the fire authority's establishment—the number of its fire stations, fire appliances and firefighting posts—as at I January each year. It is particularly relevant to this debate that the fire authority may not reduce its establishment—although it can increase it—without his consent.

My right hon. and learned Friend has a specific and limited role in considering applications under section 19. He grants approval where the following conditions are satisfied: first, the proposals must have been sufficiently widely publicised, in sufficient detail and allowing adequate time, to enable any interested party to make representations; secondly, the representations must have been considered by the fire authority; and thirdly, after taking advice from Her Majesty's inspectorate of fire services, my right hon. and learned Friend must be satisfied that the nationally recommended standards of fire cover will he maintained.

I emphasise that it is not my right hon. and learned Friend's role to decide whether the proposals that the fire authority puts forward represent the best option for making savings that the authority determines are necessary. Her Majesty's inspectorate of fire services is available to advise the authority. Ultimately, however, primary responsibility for fire cover rests with the fire authority, which is accountable in law for the service that it provides.

On standards, the Fire Services Act does not define the test of an effective and efficient fire service, which a fire authority must provide to meet normal requirements for fire cover, but it is longstanding practice to interpret that by reference to the nationally recommended minimum standards of fire cover. Those standards are not just nationally recommended; they are nationally agreed in the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council, which was established by the 1947 Act and on which the relevant fire service organisations are represented. They were also extensively reviewed by the Joint Committee on Standards of Fire Cover in 1985 for the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Councils for England and Wales and for Scotland. The standards enable all concerned to know where they stand as regards the minimum level of service that they should deliver. They also largely dictate the resources needed to meet those standards.

A recent Audit Commission report called for greater local flexibility in the application of the fire cover standards, particularly in A and C-risk areas. The commission did not say exactly how the standards should be changed and recognised that no change should be considered without careful research. The issue is being considered by the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council, but it is a complex matter on which much work will he needed.

Following the 1985 review of standards, all fire authorities in Great Britain reviewed their fire risk categorisation and the resources necessary to comply with the nationally recommended minimum standards. The authorities update those reviews regularly to take account of local circumstances. Each brigade is also inspected annually by Her Majesty's inspectorate of fire services. Following the inspection of the North Yorkshire brigade in 1993, Her Majesty's inspectorate recommended in its report that the brigade should give priority to its review of risk categorisation. That was again referred to in the 1994 inspection report as progress had been slower than expected. I understand that much of that work has now been completed and that the results of the full review are to be presented to the inspector during his inspection of the brigade in August. The inspectorate has a specific remit to look at resource allocation and identify under-provision relative to the national standards, and to ensure that any over-provision is identified to assist the fire authority to make informed decisions.

Scarborough is primarily a B-risk category area and there is little likelihood of that increasing to A-risk, the only category higher, which applies to the higher risks found in major city centres. The standard for B-risk areas says that, in normal circumstances, the brigade should be able to provide one pumping appliance to a fire within five minutes of a fire call and a second appliance within eight minutes. Cover is currently provided by two pumping appliances, a turntable ladder and rescue tender staffed by 72 whole-time firefighters and one pumping appliance staffed by 12 retained firefighters.

Whitby is predominantly a C-risk category area. That means that, in normal circumstances, one pumping appliance should he provided within eight to 10 minutes of a fire call. Cover is currently provided by one pumping appliance crewed by 12 whole-time personnel and one pumping appliance staffed by 12 retained firefighters.

North Yorkshire county council applied on 2 March, under section 19 of the 1947 Act, for the approval of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State to reduce the establishment of its fire brigade. That included the removal of the pumping appliance staffed by retained firefighters and the 12 retained firefighter posts from Scarborough and from Whitby. My right hon. and learned Friend gave careful consideration to the application, noted that the authority had consulted extensively and considered the representations that had been received. The county council decided that the application should proceed after the representations to it had been considered.

My right hon. and learned Friend also took account of the representations that my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and other people, including my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway), made to him direct. He also received professional advice that Scarborough and Whitby had been correctly assessed for category of fire risk and that the authority could continue to meet the nationally recommended minimum standards if the reductions in establishment were made.

My right hon. and learned Friend was satisfied that all the criteria for a successful section 19 application had been met. There was, therefore, no justifiable basis for him to reject the county council's application.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse)

Order. Time is up.