Hansard

Two years ago today, the first national fire strike in 25 years began. I was on the picket line at Liberton fire station in Edinburgh. Little did I realise that I would mark the second anniversary of that dispute standing here in the Scottish Parliament, debating plans for a radical reorganisation of the fire service. I want first to pay tribute to the firefighters whom I met. Those men and women, who provide an outstanding service to the people of this country and across Britain, stood up for their rights to have a decent wage and dignity in employment. I would like to think that it was the support that the Scottish Socialist Party showed them in their hour of need that persuaded so many of them, their families and their friends to put their faith in this party at the 2003 elections.

I believe that the national fire strike is a driver for the bill, because it represents a complete sea-change in the Executive's attitude to the fire service. It places us in an entirely different direction from the pathfinder report and the Executive's own document, "The Scottish Fire Service of The Future", which was published in 2002. Instead, the bill is an amalgam of the much-criticised Bain report and the report that was issued by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister immediately after the strike.

What happened to the proposed investments in decentralisation that were set out in the highly respected pathfinder report? What happened to the plans that were laid out in the previous Executive document? The delayed and long-awaited draft of the national framework, which runs in tandem with the bill, makes interesting reading. For a start, it proposes cuts and a further centralisation of powers. It says that

"fire and rescue authorities primarily provide local service"

and local democracy and are

"accountable to … communities",

but—and here is the rub—change has to be made. The implication is that there will be a lessening in primary provision, local democracy and community control. Furthermore, it counterposes improved services to communities with

"efficiencies linked to the best value agenda".

Local authority and public sector workers across the country know that that is new Labour-speak for cuts.

Perhaps when he sums up, the minister might also tell us whom he means when he says in the pre-consultation draft of the national framework that the service is not to be

"a fiefdom for particular stakeholders".

Who are these chiefs? Whose fiefdom is he talking about?

The Scottish Socialist Party will support the general principle of modernising the fire service, provided that it improves the service to the public. Although we will support the bill today, we believe that it is in need of radical amendment at a later stage. We look forward with keen interest to the outcome of the consultation.

The minister touched on the issue of the control rooms in his opening speech. Many other members who have spoken have highlighted that that plan is one of the serious concerns that I and the other members of the Justice 2 Committee have about the bill. It is the most obviously contentious issue in the bill. The key question is whether the plan represents a better service to the public. To my mind the overwhelming body of evidence that was presented to the committee favoured eight control rooms, one in each fire area. There was unanimity among the employers in the shape of COSLA, the employees in the shape of the FBU and the managers' organisations that the plan represents a diminution of the service to the public, because it means that there will be fewer staff and a poorer service. Fewer people handling the calls means a poorer service, a slower call-handling rate, a longer response time and, consequently, an increased risk to the public of injury and death.

The minister accepted at the committee that amalgamation would mean fewer control room staff. Much was made by Her Majesty's chief inspector of fire services for Scotland—who seems to be the sole supporter of option 1—of the Strathclyde experience, where five control rooms had previously been merged into one. He failed to mention that, unfortunately, Strathclyde is consistently bottom of the table in Scotland on response times and is the slowest of all the Scottish fire brigades. The chief inspector also talked about the need for the fire service's response time to be brought into line with that of the other emergency services. The fire brigade is rightly proud of the fact that it has the fastest response time of any of our emergency services. The changes will impinge on that proud record.

It was suggested to the committee that the plan is needed because for reasons of national resilience—the fear that there might be a need to respond to terrorist attacks and so on—it is preferable to have fewer, but bigger, control rooms. Yet 9/11 was surely the ultimate test of anyone's national resilience and the New York fire department's response was to move in precisely the opposite direction from that which the minister suggests today—it moved from one fire control room to five. Brigades can work together without amalgamation. The Lockerbie disaster was the biggest test of national resilience that the fire service has dealt with in Scotland. That disaster was faced by the smallest brigade in Britain, which was given great credit and awards for the way in which it responded. As Kenny MacAskill said, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. As far as I am concerned, the evidence is that the amalgamations will lead to a poorer service and will compromise community safety.

I found the evidence offered to us on the Scottish Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council curious and somehow suspicious. The body has been in existence for 55 years, yet neither the minister nor the chief inspector of fire services could provide evidence that it had produced a single piece of work of any value in all those years of meetings. It is suggested that the council will be replaced with something dynamic. We do not know what that will be, but it will not be statutory and the minister need not attend. Again, that is a step back from the current situation.

That brings me to the meetings that the minister will attend. There is a clear centralising emphasis in the bill. The bill includes extra powers for the minister, but those are for unspecified purposes. Will he agree to list in the bill the specific categories under which those powers can be used appropriately? Can he assure the Parliament that those powers will not be used to outlaw a future national fire strike, as was much talked about during the 2002 dispute?

At this stage the bill does not get the balance right between the powers of the minister to direct and the powers of the local professionals to manage the service. This is a centralising bill. Local democracy and decision making are further compromised.

I reiterate that the Scottish Socialist Party will support the general principles of the bill in its attempt to modernise the service and update the legislation, but we intend to lodge amendments later in its progress through Parliament.