§ 2.38 p.m.
§ Lord LEATHERLANDMy Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
§ The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, because normal breathing apparatus is said to be unsuitable for fire-fighting troops, they can provide these men with chemically treated cloth hoods of the type issued to frontline troops in France in 1915, before gas masks became available.
§ Lord WINTERBOTTOMMy Lords, the Government do not believe that Servicemen involved in fire-fighting would be assisted by chemically treated cloth hoods of the type described in the noble Lord's Question.
§ Lord LEATHERLANDMy Lords, does not my noble friend think that that is rather unfair to these semi-skilled men who are required to enter burning houses to put out fires? Could he give us the assurance that the Fire Research Department is devoting some attention to this question?
§ Lord WINTERBOTTOMMy Lords, the problem is that the danger of going into a smoke-filled room is not a complex chemical, such as the cloths were devised to cope with, but carbon monoxide, and 1457 neither a cloth such as described by my noble friend nor a gas mask is effective against carbon monoxide. The problem with modern breathing apparatus as a whole is that, whereas you can train a soldier to use such a device, you cannot protect him from lack of knowledge of the dangers of fire-fighting unless he is there for some time.
§ Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEYMy Lords, in view of the fact that the strike has now lasted for three weeks, would it not have been sensible for these Servicemen to have been trained in the use of proper gas masks from the beginning? Secondly, is it not rather a blot on our present situation in this country that, if there were a sudden war of any kind or sort, nobody is trained in any form of fire-resisting equipment or smoke device, in view of the fact that the ARP and the Civil Defence have been disbanded? Would not the Government look at this problem from a very serious point of view?
§ Lord WINTERBOTTOMMy Lords, at the moment a number of specialist RAF and Royal Navy firemen are equipped with breathing apparatus, have been deployed, and have been helping in dealing with the problems that are facing the Armed Forces. The problem is that the kinds of fire where breathing apparatus carries advantages are precisely those which contain enormous dangers for the inexperienced, and therefore other Servicemen have not been equipped with breathing apparatus. As I said earlier to my noble friend, you can train a man to use the breathing apparatus but you cannot, in a short period, teach him how to fight a fire.
§ Lord CLIFFORD of CHUDLEIGHMy Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that this problem would never have arisen if the Government of the time had not abolished the Civil Defence services? We should have then had plenty of trained fire-fighters and equipment would have been brought up to date. Would he remind the House who was the Home Secretary responsible for abolishing the Civil Defence at the time?
§ Lord GISBOROUGHMy Lords, can the noble Lord say whether or not the Services have on issue gas masks which are available in the event of war, with its obvious risks, and, if so, to what extent they are any good?
§ Lord WINTERBOTTOMMy Lords, that again is another question. This is a highly technical subject, and I was asked about chemically treated cloth hoods of the type issued to front-line troops in France in 1915.
§ Lord CARRINGTONMy Lords, did I hear the noble Lord aright? Did he say that it was easy to train somebody in using this breathing apparatus in a short time, but that it took a long time to train a soldier to fight a fire? Is it not precisely that we are asking the soldiers to fight a fire and training them in a short time and not giving them breathing apparatus?
§ Lord WINTERBOTTOMNo, my Lords. The point is that there are trained men in the Armed Forces—trained in the use of this apparatus and trained in the use of it within a burning building or other structure. They know the dangers in addition to the problems of breathing contaminated air. The problem is that one has to learn what happens inside a burning building when one goes in with the breathing apparatus which one can use, but one does not know the other dangers which may face one. There may be, for instance, live cables from which the insulation has been burnt off, and which can be extremely dangerous.
§ Lord BOYD-CARPENTERMy Lords, would not soldiers be better equipped to fight the fires which the Government are causing them to have to fight if they had the breathing apparatus which is now sitting unused in fire stations?
§ Lord WINTERBOTTOMMy Lords, so far as I know it is not the Government who have caused the strike.
§ Baroness EMMET of AMBERLEYMy Lords, does not this situation show that the whole of the country would be totally exposed to a completely defenceless condition if war were suddenly to break out? Is there not in the present circumstances a lesson which the Government should learn?
§ Lord HAILSHAM of SAINT MARYLEBONEMy Lords, can the noble Lord tell the House how long it would take to train a soldier not merely in the use of the breathing apparatus but in its use in the circumstances which he has described? Surely it must be known how long it takes to train them.
§ Lord WINTERBOTTOMMy Lords, I am told that it takes some minutes to learn how to use the apparatus, and some months to learn how to avoid the dangers of using it within a burning building.
The Earl of HALSBURYMy Lords, would the noble Lord agree that prevention is better than cure, and that knowledge of how to fight a fire when it breaks out is now vested in the older generation, who were indoctrinated in how to do so during the war? Could not an effort be made to mobilise the older generation in blocks of flats and other places so as to form inventories of the fire fighting equipment available, and put ourselves on a citizen army basis for fire fighting by utilising the expertise which exists among the general population?
§ Lord WINTERBOTTOMYes, my Lords; but let us hope that the strike does not go on for ever.