HL Deb 13 May 1969 vol 302 cc91-110

7.10 p.m.

THE EARL OF KINNOULL rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are considering reviewing the Air-Sea Rescue Service at present provided by the Royal Air Force. The noble Earl said: My Lords, the hour is rather late and Members have somewhat emigrated from the Chamber. Nevertheless, I hope that the House will grant me a few minutes on this Question. The Question I wish to put before the House to-night is on the Air-Sea Rescue Service provided by the Royal Air Force around our shores. Principally, I have two main objectives in asking the Question. The first is to seek further information on this splendid service—a service that many of us may one day be thankful to benefit from—and the second is to ask Her Majesty's Government why it is that this service is still officially restricted to military purposes only when, in practice, for the past ten years over 85 per cent, of its work has been involved in the rescuing of civilians.

As the House will know, the Air-Sea Rescue Service is but one of a number of rescue services around our shores. These include, of course, that wonderful voluntary body the Royal National Lifeboat Service, the In-shore Rescue Service, the Coastguard Rescue Service, the Policeboat Rescue Service and a number of local authority services. All of these are co-ordinated under the Coastguard Service, a body which comes under the wing of the Board of Trade; and it is the Coastguard Service which decides which particular branch or branches should be asked to answer a distress call. It is true to say that, under the Coastguard Service, the rescue services around our shores have few equals in the world in skill, devotion to duty or outstanding bravery; and we are all, I am sure, justly proud of this. But, my Lords, the helicopter service, for its part, makes, I would suggest, an outstanding contribution to the overall service, for over the past few years, as I understand it, it has rescued no fewer than, on average, some 350 civilians a year from the sea; and perhaps when the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, comes to reply he will confirm this figure.

The advantages of the helicopter service, as I see them, are many, and I would mention three of them briefly. The first is that it offers a fast service and is capable of picking up survivors far out at sea in a matter of moments when a lifeboat or an in-shore boat would take hours, rather than minutes, to achieve it. In the second place, it can operate in virtually all weathers except fog; and here, perhaps, one can pay a special tribute to the pilots of these helicopters, who so often show outstanding skill and courage. When the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, comes to reply perhaps he will mention whether there have been any accidents at all while the service has been in operation. The third main advantage—and it is, to me, a vital one—is the capacity to spot survivors in the sea. This capacity of spotting is particularly valuable, for instance, where unfortunate holiday-makers—and this happens all too often—are swept out to sea on lilos, for then it is found very difficult to spot them from boats. It is from the helicopters that, so often, the information is passed to the boats, so saving many valuable hours.

I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, would agree, bearing in mind these advantages and its great record of successful service, that so far as the general public is concerned the Air-Sea Rescue Service is a vital and integral part of the services operated by the Coastguards. And yet this present service has one great cloud over the horizon, and that, of course is the Ministry of Defence. The Ministry of Defence reminds us from time to time, and often quite frequently, that this service which we all enjoy and on which we rely, and indeed expect to rely, is not in fact for us. The service has two main functions. The first is to operate to meet the Service requirements of R.A.F. personnel, and the second is to meet the I.C.A.O. requirement, which covers an area from the mid-Atlantic to the North Sea. The service provided to us, on the other hand, is just a bonus—admittedly a free bonus. It is a service which can be withdrawn by the Ministry of Defence at any time without special notice, without a public inquiry and in the face of total opposition from local authorities.

The rights and wrongs of this situation have recently come to a head with the withdrawal of the service from Manston. This base, as I understand it, is one of seven bases from which the Royal Air Force operate their air-sea rescue helicopter services. At each base, I am told, there are always two helicopters, each with a fully-trained crew, offering a round-the-clock service. The service is such that the helicopters can become operational within fifteen minutes in the daytime or thirty minutes at night. We see, thus, the total service operated by the Royal Air Force amounting in fact to only 14 helicopters—not exactly, I would suggest, an extravagant service, but one that truly gives value in performance. It would be of interest to learn from the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, to-night what the total cost of the service is and what proportion is concerned with rescuing the general public. It would also be of interest to know which are the busiest stations and how far down this league Manston comes.

May I return briefly to Manston? The principal reasons for closing this station were given by the Government on March 10. They were, first, that this service was urgently required in North Africa; and, secondly, that no other helicopters were available at that time. Whereas, of course, one accepts the first reason, the second reason, I would suggest, takes some swallowing, when one considers that the Royal Air Force has approximately £45 million a year to spend on equipment. It seems a little hard that they have to "pinch" two out of the 14 helicopters that are protecting these shores and our population of over 60 million.

The closing of Manston was, I believe, significant for a number of reasons. It is a station with a history of a pretty busy rescuing service, particularly for holidaymakers. The decision to close it became operative at the very start of the holiday season, against the strongest possible pressure from the local authorities. The local authorities have discovered that a contract with a commercial helicopter service to operate similar helicopter services is prohibitively expensive. The local authorities and the Coastguard Service will now, it seems, have to rely on the U.S. Air Force helicopter services based in Essex to cover this area. The local authorities may well be wrong in thinking that Manston is such an important station to them, and perhaps the Ministry of Defence are correct when they say that other stations can cover this area; but if the local authorities are proved right, as I suspect they will be, it would seem chat they have received pretty shabby treatment; and perhaps the noble Lord can tell us whether a helicopter service will be resumed in the near future at Manston.

But whatever the rights and wrongs of Manston, it has demonstrated that it is surely time now for the Government to review this service and to give the Royal Air Force a new peace-time role—a secondary role, albeit—to meet the civilian requirement of a helicopter service. Such a role, I believe, could usefully provide the valuable experience which the Royal Air Force get from supplying such a service and with it the possibility that part of the cost may be borne by the local authorities. I am glad to see that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, is to reply to this debate. He has great experience in this subject, having served in Coastal Command during the war. Also he was good enough to provide us with a good deal of information on this subject in December, 1966, when he was the Minister responsible. On that occasion he described the service provided to the general public as a "byproduct". I hope that in the light of what has happened in the case of Manston he will be able to tell us that this "by-product" is to be upgraded to an official duty—a duty similar in character to the almost full-time unofficial service which the R.A.F. have provided, with such skill and courage, over the past decade and which we have all come to expect.

7.21 p.m.

EARL AMHERST

My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for putting down this Unstarred Question which gives us the opportunity of hearing from the Government what they propose to do with Air-Sea Rescue and possibly with special reference to the gap, if there is to be a gap, at Manston because of the squadron there now being sent overseas. I think it is correct to say that the area covered by Manston runs from the North of the Thames Estuary, along the whole of the Kent coast and probably as far as Hastings and, it may be, Eastbourne in East Sussex; and it covers the Channel which is probably the busiest sea lane in the world. The amount of shipping which goes up and down the Channel is fantastic and many are the calls upon the Air-Sea Rescue Service.

I think we might look at the functions of Air-Sea Rescue. I think they are fivefold. In the first place, one of their functions is to be able to locate ships in trouble or reported to be in trouble, which are out of sight of land through fog or which are too far away, and who do not carry the radio equipment to enable them to be communicated with or spotted. Secondly, they keep track of all ships who say that they anticipate requiring assistance; thirdly, they keep track of those ships whose skippers are not very happy about observing inter national regulations and who will wash out their oil tanks and cause oil slicks. The helicopter service can spot the slicks, see the direction they are going and warn the people on shore what to expect so that they can take appropriate action. The fourth function, a very important one, is that they can provide medical assistance and relief crews to lightships and lighthouses off shore at those times when the weather does not permit the Trinity House boat to do the job that it normally would do. That is a very valuable service indeed.

Lastly, and I think possibly the most important function of all, is the ability to provide medical assistance to a ship in which there is a passenger or a crew member who through illness or accident urgently requires medical assistance. Before this service, the National Lifeboat people went, often at their own great risk, to collect such people. But it was a rough ride; and even if they could get alongside a ship—and this was not always possible—it meant a rough ride for the patient, especially if a gale were blowing. The Air-Sea Rescue Service helicopters can winch down a doctor or winch up a patient and fly him quickly to a shore hospital; and do it smoothly and quietly which would not be possible by carrying him in a lifeboat.

May I look at the machinery of the service. At the present moment the coastguards are the authority who take care of this. They are the people who decide where and when and with what. They press the appropriate button. All the other services, including the police, the firemen and the other rescue services, are really the machinery of rescue which are called upon by the coastguards. But it is the coastguards who are the authority and they come under the Board of Trade. It could be suggested that the coastguards now that there seems to be some doubt whether the R.A.F. can go on providing this service, might have their own helicopter service. But even if it were only one helicopter complete with crew, maintenance and engineering back-up for a year, it would be a very expensive business. And if the helicopter is not kept in the air all the time it gets more expensive. It is an old principle of transport that any vehicle, whether train, bus or aeroplane, that is not going somewhere with a payload is eating money. At this moment of financial stringency I do not think that it possibly could be thought that the coastguards should have their own helicopter service. Previously this service was paid for in the operational flying of the R.A.F.; it came under part of their operational flying and it was taken care of by those who take care of the finances of the R.A.F.

I am going to suggest that it might be possible or useful to consider whether the coastguards (if indeed there is to be a gap at Manston or at other places) should not be empowered to hire commercial helicopters as and when they want them from whatever responsible air company is operating helicopters in the country. There are some. They could take use of that helicopter only as and when they wanted it. The cost should not be anything like as great as would be involved in having their own fleet. It should be really a question of balancing between Government offices; because the flying done by the R.A.F. is taken care of by one Government fiscal office and the Board of Trade is another one. It is really transferring the cost from one to another. I think that suggestion is worth while thinking about, because if there are to be gaps in the R.A.F. service, it is serious; because this service really should go on. It is vitally important both in rendering assistance and in saving lives.

7.28 p.m.

THE EARL OF SELKIRK

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for raising this Question, because it gives me the opportunity to pay my tribute to what is not only a very fine service, which is very widely reported, but which has frankly become almost a national institution. I can appreciate easily that the Ministry of Defence is probably slightly embarrassed. This is a service which has in some ways grown up slightly haphazard since the end of the war—not that the work is haphazard; but because there has been no deliberate and willing attempt to undertake wider services. But I think that the Government should remember that this creates a very important image for the R.A.F.—not only in its air-sea rescue but also in its mountain service, which attaches more closely the idea of this service to the general public. This is not less important because the reserve services in this country, which always form an attachment to the regular units, have gradually become rather more attenuated.

It is very sad that the Government have found it necessary to curtail these services. I can understand their reluctance to accept an obligation to do what they are doing. I can see that might be difficult; but I hope that they will bear in mind that this is something which has grown up strongly in the public mind. If it is dispensed with, the Services will not be reviewed quite in the same close and warm way which they are at the present time. I should have thought that certainly 50 per cent, of this work, if not more than that, provides straight-forward good training—good for the pilots taking part in it, good for the organisation to see that they can carry out their work properly. For that reason I hope that the Government will not precipitately throw aside a service which if not directly connected with Defence is still one connected with the saving of lives from the sea, about which this country is always extremely conscious.

7.30 p.m.

VISCOUNT DAVENTRY

My Lords, I rise rather reluctantly, because I am old, but I was the person who first started the Air-Sea Rescue Service It was called by the Air Force, "Sea Rescue". I pointed out to them that that meant nothing to anybody, and we started the Air-Sea Rescue Service in 1940. Then the argument and difficulty concerned the question of who was to be in charge of it. Eventually, because there was a war on, the areas of the sea were put in charge of naval officers who were in charge of that particular part of the sea. At that time, there were no helicopters.

Now, my Lords, we have to start practically a new service altogether. I do not think that the Royal Air Force should be in charge of it. I do not think that the Navy can be in charge. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, will give us some indication of how this service is to be run. To put it on record, I must say that it is true that in the first two years of the war, when there was the argument about who did most, the Lifeboat Service picked up far more Battle of Britain pilots than anybody else: it was a most remarkable record. Anyhow, my Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will tell us how this particular service is to be organised and run, and by whom.

7.31 p.m.

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, must be rather satisfied: his Question has given rise to a most interesting little debate. Towards the end, it ranged rather far. The noble Viscount who has just spoken took us back almost to the old inter-Service wrangles of the 1940s and I felt my Coastal Command hackles beginning to rise. It is perhaps not surprising that during those years the lifeboats saved so many people, because they save a great number of people to-day. This is not a question of competition; it is a question of using resources suitable and available in different areas.

Perhaps I might at the beginning say that I noted the reference by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, to the mountain rescue teams in which he and I are both very interested. They do not actually come within the terms of the noble Earl's Question, but I shall be happy to talk about them on some other occasion, if only because a few weeks ago I heard a rescue team being called out when some climbers were lost in a blizzard on the Cairngorms. These teams are a very fine, interesting, adventure-training—in fact, my Lords, I could go on for hours about them, so I think perhaps I had better get away from that subject.

My Lords, the Air-Sea Rescue Service has recently been the subject of public interest and a number of Questions have been asked. It is natural and proper that this should be a matter for consideration by Parliament. I must say one thing right at the beginning to the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk (I think it was he who referred to it): the Air-Sea Rescue Service did not just grow up; it was deliberately planned to meet Service requirements. It is equally true that it is a pure coincidence, historically, that when his Government were in office—it was very fortunate for us that this should have been so—the needs of the Air Force also met, happily, the needs of holiday-makers and others.

When the noble Earl, quoted an earlier speech that I made I began to get nervous. One always begins to get a little nervous when people quote from one's earlier speeches, and I was very relieved to find that what I had said on that occasion is precisely consistent with what I have to say now. I hope to illuminate it somewhat, because clearly one does not look at a subject of this kind, involving the saving of human lives, in a purely mechanistic way. The points are of importance.

The search and rescue helicopters are established in a manner calculated to provide the best cover for the sea areas over which military aircraft operate and carry out a large proportion of their training. There is a very great deal of training, much of which takes place at relatively short distances from the coast every day. There are aircraft flying out over the sea, and some of them, particularly the high-performance aircraft like the Lightnings, fly out over the North Sea to practise interceptions and so on. It is undoubtedly a comfort that, to meet a real need, this service should be provided.

It has always been the practice for the Services to provide their own short-range facilities for aerial search and rescue, in the form of helicopter aircraft, in support of a very large and continuing programme of military flying. Perhaps I might say straight away that at longer range this is the responsibility of the Shackletons of Coastal Command, certain of which are kept available and at a certain degree of readiness. I should perhaps in that connection say to the noble Earl, Lord Amherst, that when it comes to locating ships, fixed-wing aircraft are, on the whole, better than helicopters. The Coastal Command aircraft, the Shackletons (and they will be succeeded in due course by the Nimrods) are particularly suited for this. I propose to confine my remarks to the helicopter units.

Let me say straightaway that the provision of this service is not cheap. The present Royal Air Force organisation costs about £1 million a year to operate. I think this answers one of the first of the questions put by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. There are limits to the number of aircraft, trained crews and supporting personnel that can be spared from other Service tasks for this purpose. It is, I fear, no argument to say that air-sea rescue provides good training. This is not a question of good training; they are engaged on operations as much as anybody else, and there is not the reserve of helicopters that one would want. In passing, I would mention that the service is now equipped with Whirlwinds which, although they go out in all sorts of weather, are not in fact all-weather aircraft. In due course, when the Wessexes come in, they will have a greater all-weather capability.

My Lords, deployment is necessarily governed—and always has been—very strictly by the pattern of military flying. The noble Earl knows something about the organisation, because obviously he has gone very fully into this matter. There are the seven units, as he mentioned, each of two Whirlwind Mark 10 helicopters located at Leuchars, Acklington, Leconfield, Coltishall, Thorney Island, Chivenor and Valley. In addition, there are the land-based helicopters of the Royal Navy which operate from four stations on aerial search and rescue duties as the programme of naval flying requires.

My Lords, these facilities are of great importance to the Services. Much of the flying takes place over sea areas and calls for the exercise of the highest professional skills. It is carried on throughout the year, often when sea conditions are bad and the sea temperature is very low; and when, incidentally, there is little likelihood of any bathers being swept out to sea, and probably not many yachts in evidence. A good deal of this flying is in areas which are sparsely served by civilian search and rescue facilities. Accidents are very few, but some degree of risk is inevitable. I think that was one of the questions which I was asked I have not the figures of the number of accidents involving air-sea rescue aircraft. There was, regrettably, one quite recently, but it was not actually engaged on task at that particular moment.

Regarding other kinds of accidents, it is of course true that the helicopter may be the only means of rapid rescue in circumstances in which the survival time—this is the crucial point—may be very short; and the existence of an effective aerial search and rescue organisation is not only an indispensable insurance against the loss of aircrew lives—very valuable and highly skilled air crews— but also an essential factor contributing to the confidence with which the aircrews engage in their flying duties. I must say that when flying out over the North Sea in a supersonic Lightning in spring or winter, knowing that if anything happened one's survival time, even wearing an immersion suit, would not be long, I had a comfortable feeling that there was a helicopter there to pull me out.

As the noble Earl said, we also have responsibilities under international understandings. But here again helicopter services are designed for the Services, though they can be called upon to provide aerial search and rescue for civil aircraft and for the military aircraft of allied countries which may, unfortunately, crash in coastal waters around the United Kingdom. In the case of an aircraft lost far out at sea, usually the Shackletons, with their equipment, are out looking for it. These are the regular tasks and accepted obligations of the helicopter service. However, it has always been the practice of the Services, subject to overriding military considerations, to respond to calls for assistance of a non-military nature, and, subject to operational requirements and practicability, assistance is given to vessels reported to be in distress in waters around the United Kingdom when, at the request of a recognised authority, the use of a helicopter is thought desirable. These helicopters have always been quick to respond whenever possible to other emergency calls—for example, those involving holiday-makers in distress as the result of boating or swimming accidents. The Services are justly proud of the assistance they have been able to give on such occasions.

The noble Earl, Lord Amherst, referred to medical services to ships and trawlers. Of course these will continue. The fact that there will be no helicopters at Manston does not mean that the type of service he has in mind, which is not so much one of air-sea rescue, will not still be provided from Thorney Island and Coltishall when required. The R.A.F. will continue to meet the requests of all kinds from the civil authorities. It is a fact that the lighthouse authorities are experimenting with civil helicopters and further developments of this kind may well take place. Meanwhile, I can assure noble Lords that there is no question of the R.A.F. not providing the sort of services that have grown up in recent years and we have learned to expect.

There is particular drama about a rescue by helicopter, which sometimes take place with all the quality of saving life just in the nick of time. We recognise the concern which is expressed when changes are made in the Services' helicopter search and rescue organisation. I am sure that all noble Lords will accept that the size and deployment of this organisation must be related closely to military requirements and that it would be difficult to justify the expenditure of monies voted for defence on maintaining a larger organisation than is needed to meet these requirements, or to deploy the organisation in such a manner as to follow, for example, the pattern of civilian holiday activities in coastal areas, when this would mean reducing cover in the sea areas in which military flying is concentrated. I was a little surprised at the noble Earl's reference to the Ministry of Defence. It has been called many rude names in its time, but never before called "a cloud over the horizon". I think it is unfair, at a time when there is great stringency and great pressure on public and defence expenditure, to blame the Ministry of Defence. It must give priority to the purposes for which the money is voted.

This discussion has really arisen over the withdrawal of the Manston detachment, and I should like to deal with this particularly, because I want to explain precisely why these changes have been made. This is not in detriment to the noble Earl's general proposition, but because I do not want anybody to assume that it was undertaken regardless of the general public interest. The problem facing us was that, over the five years ending in 1968, the Manston helicopter detachment had been called out for only four incidents involving military aircraft, all of them in the first three years of this period and none in the last two. That reflects the great change which has taken place in the pattern of military flying, in particular the shift in the main incidence of R.A.F. activity towards the North-East. Your Lordships are familiar with the developments right up the East Coast and the East coast of Scotland.

Over the same period (I want to choose my words with great care) it has become increasingly apparent that we must provide aerial search and rescue facilities in Libya where, under Treaty arrangements, the Army and the R.A.F. carry out training both over the sea and in desert areas. Not long ago the pilot of a Hunter aircraft was in the sea in his dinghy for 10 hours off the coast of El Adem, in the Tobruk area, before he was picked up. A helicopter could have rescued him in perhaps a tenth of the time. And there have been several other marine incidents in which helicopters would have proved invaluable. Furthermore, there is the desert, which imposes on those who use it no fewer risks than the sea. In 1968 there were frequent cases in which soldiers had to be brought back to base as quickly as possible from desert areas with such injuries as broken limbs and severe burns. Surface movement in these areas is arduous and slow, particularly for an injured man. A helicopter service would have been a great mercy.

Faced with these facts, and in the absence of any other Service resources for meeting the requirement, the Ministry of Defence came to the inescapable conclusion that Service requirements made it imperative to re-deploy the Manston unit to El Adem. I have gone into this at length, and I am sure that the noble Earl will fully see the reasons for the Services' action in this matter. As I say, he is taking a particular example to raise an important general issue.

I do not think that the Government or the Ministry of Defence can be criticised for the action they took in regard to this matter. The decision was not taken until the Ministry had consulted other Departments and a study had been made of the other facilities for research and rescue which exist in the Manston area. There are the other helicopter units at Coltishall and Thorney Island, though the distances, of course, are greater. There are also in the area many other search and rescue facilities.

Here the point raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Daventry, is relevant. There are 11 regular and seven auxiliary coastguard stations holding rescue equipment; 13 fast in-shore rescue boats and 12 lifeboats operated by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, and a number of privately owned boats which take part in the Inshore Rescue Scheme organised jointly by the Coastguard and the R.N.L.I. This is a very extensive range of services, as the noble Earl pointed out. It is worth adding that the United States Air Force has detachments at Wethersfield and Bentwaters, which are within range of the Manston area. These are established for the same kind of military purposes for which our own Services' organisation exists. But they, also, are willing to respond to emergency calls for assistance from a recognised authority, subject to military requirements. The United States Embassy has only recently reaffirmed this generous and helpful policy in a letter sent to the Mayor of Southend.

Let me say that the flying services of other countries based in this country do not seek to duplicate our Air-Sea Rescue Service, and they rely on the R.A.F. to provide the necessary insurance. So the decision to withdraw the Manston unit was taken only after very careful study of all the factors, and I believe that it represented a proper sense of priority, given the nature of the Service requirements for which the Ministry of Defence is responsible.

THE EARL OF KINNOULL

My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt the noble Lord before he leaves the subject of Manston. I think he says that the argument is, basically, that of cost. I wonder whether he can advise us what it would cost for the R A.F. to purchase two more helicopters. He has already given an indication of what it costs to run these 14 helicopters a year which I think amounts to £1 million.

LORD SHACKLETON

I cannot give that information; nor should I regard it as an appropriate way of looking at the problem. Helicopters need to be established for certain particular service purposes. It is perfectly arguable that what would be required is not merely another two helicopters for Manston (and there are other areas of the country which are at some distance from helicopter bases). It is necessary to look at the totality that can be made available, and I shall go on to give some figures. If one were doing thorough cost-benefit studies it would be arguable that the sort of money that would need to be spent for that pur pose might be better spent in some other direction from the point of view of saving life—perhaps in regard to highway accidents, fire rescues, and so on. So I do not think we can look at the matter only in terms of providing two more helicopters to replace the Manston service, bearing in mind that there are still very extensive facilities available.

I think the noble Earl wants us to consult various public authorities before we alter the pattern of the Service's helicopter Search and Rescue organisation—whether the responsibility for aerial search and rescue for members of the public should be made a formal responsibility of the Royal Air Force. I should like to reply to this point against the background of certain wider studies which are now in train. I am glad to be able to inform noble Lords, if they are not already aware of it (I am not sure whether it has yet been announced), that the Board of Trade, which has responsibilities for safety at sea, has in being a committee which is making a wide review of the marine Search and Rescue organisation in the United Kingdom. A number of outside bodies, as well as Government Departments, including the Ministry of Defence, are being consulted.

It is within the terms of reference of the committee to consider the contribution which can be made to search and rescue operations by helicopter aircraft, and the committee will take fully into account the existence of the facilities operated by the Services and the considerable amount of information which the Services have now amassed as a result of the assistance they have given to civilian authorities in the past. I cannot anticipate the findings of this committee. I think I might say to the noble Earl, in passing, that I should not be surprised if his debate to-day provided a further stimulus to the committee.

I should however like to add a few further details about Service helicopter operations—the sort of information which the committee will be considering—and this is in amplification of what was said by the Minister of State for Defence Administration in another place. According to the latest figures over the period of two years, ended on March 31, 1969, Royal Air Force helicopters responded to requests to assist in sea-rescue operations in aid of members of the public on about 750 occasions. On by far the largest number of these occasions, 600 of the total, the helicopter proved to be unnecessary on arrival, because rescue was already being effected by other means or because the request was, in one way or another, a false alarm.

On those occasions on which helicopters played an active part in operations—roughly 140—they brought 285 people ashore. We estimate, however, that the helicopter was probably essential for saving life on only 20 of these occasions, involving 32 people. Over the same period of two years the records of Her Majesty's Coastguard show that there were 4,605 marine and coastal incidents, during which 5,377 people were rescued. The helicopter operations I have described brought ashore little over 5 per cent, of the people involved in this total of recorded incidents. And, as I have mentioned, only in a very small proportion of these cases was the use of the helicopter probably essential for saving life.

Noble Lords will say that a life is without price, and that one ought to do nothing to diminish the facilities that are available. None the less, I think one is bound to look at this matter in cost benefit terms, by which I mean that one needs to look at it properly and see what are the right sort of facilities that ought to be made available in order to provide the maximum safety that our dangerous civilisation can allow us. Therefore I have given this information not to depreciate in any way the courageous and effective operations which have been conducted by Service helicopter pilots in assisting members of the public in distress, but to put into perspective the relative value which must be attached to the helicopter among other means of effecting rescue in coastal areas. They attract very much publicity, but we must not exaggerate the contribution that they make or suppose that they can, or should, replace the patient, valiant and long-tried work of such bodies as the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and Her Majesty's Coastguard. The figures that I have given noble Lords do not support any such conclusion. It will be for the Board of Trade Committee to reach a balanced view in the light of all the factors.

My Lords, I am sorry that I have taken rather longer than I intended, but I thought that this question called for a fairly full reply. I have already said that I cannot anticipate the outcome of the inquiries by this Committee. It would not be justifiable to assume that the provision of any helicopter service for assistance to civil authorities would best be undertaken by the Royal Air Force or the Royal Navy, who have, as I have described, their own essential requirement for markedly different purposes and in markedly different areas than those in which civilian activities of a kind likely to give rise to call for emergency assistance take place.

In this connection one has also to realise that many of these rescues take place because of the really intolerable indifference of the public. I wish that bathers, particularly, and some others would observe the rules in this matter. They ought to learn the flag code of beaches; they ought to obey the orders not to bathe at certain times. Children are always drifting out to sea on air beds or inflatable toys, and there are bathers who think they can swim well in a swimming pool but who cannot manage currents and undertows. The Cornish Air-Sea Rescue helicopters have pulled quite a few bathers out of the sea. And of course anybody going out in a small boat ought to wear the proper life-jacket and not just a buoyancy aid, as so many people do. This is one of the substitutes, if I may so call it, for Air-Sea Rescue helicopters.

The noble Earl asked me what proportion of the cost of the Services' Search and Rescue organisation should be ascribed to assistance to members of the public. I believe he asked me that; he certainly gave me notice that he would, if he did not ask it I will give him the answer just the same. The answer is "None". The organisation exists for essential military purposes and its cost is justified in Defence Votes solely in relation to those purposes. The fact that a very large proportion of the effort of the organisation has been devoted to assisting in cases of civilian distress reflects the willingness of the Services to act promptly in a humanitarian cause. This, after all, is comparable with the long tradition of the sea in these matters, and the Air Force does as the sailors and others do.

I hope that I have been able to give the noble Earl and other noble Lords a good deal of the background. I am grateful to noble Lords for allowing me to digress over a wide field. I should like to pay my tribute to Air-Sea Rescue Units. I have flown with them on a number of occasions; I have even had the interesting experience of being fished out of Plymouth Sound one day on a mock sea-air rescue which was a most enjoyable experience. The efficiency and immediacy with which they go into action and the courage of individuals, for instance, the winchmen—and we have had examples of people going down to the sea at great hazard under difficult conditions—is something of which we are all very proud indeed.

The facilities which are provided could obviously be much larger, but I believe that the decision which the Government took with regard to Manston was inescapable. Meanwhile, I will certainly undertake—but without making any promise, because this is determined by the money that is available—that the Government will carefully consider what has been said in this debate, and I do not doubt so will the Committee that is examining the whole question of air-sea rescue in the future.

VISCOUNT DAVENTRY

My Lords, if the noble Lord will excuse me, may I point out that he has not answered one of my questions? In the war, when we had the same difficulty—and if I may say so, this Air-Sea Rescue is now spreading all over the world—we to a great extent solved our problems by putting Sir John Salmon in charge of Air-Sea Rescue. Unfortunately he is dead now. He was a very able man and he made a big difference. I asked the question: Who is in charge of Air-Sea Rescue? I know that the Navy has a bit of it, I know that the Air Force have a bigger bit and I know the Coastguards have a bit. Is there a single authority that can go to the Ministry and say that it wants this and it wants that?

LORD SHACKLETON

My Lords, there are two limbs to this question. First, there is the question of operational control, and this is solved in different areas with different types of co-ordination in relation to the area of the sea involved. This was a matter that we discussed at the time when the pleasure boat was lost in the Channel. Here the Joint Operations Rooms for the 18th and 19th Groups, Coastal Command, play a crucial part. But there is no single authority for search and rescue when, inevitably, so many different agencies are involved. There are a number of people who take the lead in different areas of safety. Undoubtedly there is an argument for a co-ordinated look at the whole situation. This is precisely what the Board of Trade are doing. But I do not believe that the appointment of a single Air-Sea Rescue Controller whose job, so to speak, would be to fight for resources is the answer to this problem. There is a whole range of civilian rescue and military services going out to sea and into land, and I do not think we can visualise there being a single person. However, I have noted what the noble Earl has said, and if there is any further information I can give him I shall be glad to write him on the matter.