Hansard

I do not have to defend my position. The committee's position was that, apart from favouring the abolition of the current council, it took no view on a replacement for the council; therefore, it is clear in the report that that is acceptable. I accepted that at the time, in the spirit of working together with colleagues on the committee. Jackie Baillie's attempt to say that I said something else in committee is nothing more than a cheap shot.

On Margaret Mitchell's point about the smoking ban, and to answer Mike Rumbles's point, Margaret will find, if she considers the evidence, that there has been no increase in fires in the home where smoking bans have been introduced; in fact, the level of smoking in the home goes down where there is a smoking ban. The evidence from Australia is clear on that point.

The issue of control rooms is central. The minister said earlier that control rooms are not specifically mentioned in the bill. There is no paragraph in the bill that says that there will be a cut in the number of control rooms or that anything else will happen to control rooms, but it seems clear from the debate today that members understand that the process that is going on will probably result in a cut in the number of control rooms. The choice of Mott MacDonald as consultant loaded the dice from the start. Given that it recommended a reduction in the number of control rooms in England, there was virtually no chance that it would come up with the opposite conclusion for Scotland—it would have looked ridiculous had it done so. The outcome of its report was inevitable.

As other members have said, Mott MacDonald's report is flawed. The Finance Committee has pointed out that it was not convinced by the claimed potential savings, and neither am I. The committee discovered that the figures are based on a reduction in the number of control rooms in Scotland from eight to one. I understand that that idea is supported by virtually nobody. It is very unlikely—in fact impossible—that those savings could be achieved. The report is based on the number of incidents that are reported to control rooms, but that is misleading, as it should have been based on the number of calls. I am sure that nobody is trying to suggest that some calls should not be answered. Operators must answer all calls; they can ignore none. If an incident occurs and it has one call, one call is answered. If an incident has 100 calls, 100 calls are answered. The report is flawed in that area. It has been evidenced, today and in previous Executive statements, that the drive to reduce the number of control rooms in Scotland is for financial reasons, and not for the purpose of service efficiency or to improve the service to the general public. Cutting the number of control rooms will not make a single person in Scotland safer, but it may make some people a lot less safe.

The minister stated in his evidence to the committee that there is little support for the retention of eight control rooms in Scotland and that 23 of the 32 local authorities support the number of control rooms being reduced to three. I am sorry to say that such twisting of statistics gets politics and politicians a bad name. The fact is that only three fire authorities support a reduction to three control rooms, while five authorities oppose the idea. It is interesting to note that the three authorities that support the idea are those that are earmarked to keep their control rooms. As Sandra White and many others said, it is dishonest to count all 12 local authorities that lie within the Strathclyde fire brigade area as in favour of a cut just because the fire authority is in favour of it. COSLA states clearly that the majority of council leaders, including council leaders in the Strathclyde area, oppose any reduction. Agreement between the FBU, the Chief Fire Officers Association and COSLA is a pretty rare event, yet on this issue they speak with a single, clear voice and ministers, the Executive and the Parliament should listen to them.

It is clear that if we reduce the number of control rooms, we reduce the robustness and resilience of fire cover—other members have already covered that. A single control room is extremely vulnerable. It is better to have three than one, but that is not as good as eight. We have all witnessed on the evening news—virtually every night, unfortunately—co-ordinated, multiple and simultaneous attacks by terrorists. Why would we make it easier for them by reducing the number of control rooms from the current eight? New York realised its vulnerability after September 11 and I understand that it has decided to increase the number of control rooms in order to create a more robust system. New York is moving in the opposite direction to us and is increasing its ability to survive an attack by having multiple control rooms. Based on its experience, it is increasing the number of control rooms from one to five to build greater robustness into its ability to protect citizens in the event of another attack. We need to pay attention to the lessons that New York has learned.

One of the many problems that Mott MacDonald has ignored is the fact that there will be a loss of local knowledge if we centralise control rooms—many members covered that point. There will be increased problems with local names, slang terms, pronounced local accents and even Gaelic place names. Those problems will slow down response times and will not provide greater security to the public. To give a personal example, about two years ago I was in a remote part of Scotland for the first time in my life. My car broke down and I phoned a national breakdown service whose call centre is located in the south of England. Its staff had no idea where I was and I could not tell them. I knew the rough geographical area but I did not know the name of the road or any local landmarks. I had no way to tell them exactly how to pinpoint my location so that a breakdown vehicle could attend. In the end I was passed through to a local office in the area, which asked me questions such as, "Did you pass Jimmy's caravan park? Are you anywhere near the river? Can you see a hill from where you are?" The staff pinpointed exactly where I was using not maps, but local knowledge. A breakdown vehicle was dispatched and it was there within the hour. That is the kind of local knowledge that individuals in control rooms hold in their heads, as Bruce Crawford ably pointed out.

Paragraph 32 of the committee's report was the subject of much comment in the press at the weekend. It is clear that the Executive has been attempting to spin the idea that the committee supports a cut in the number of control rooms. That is nothing more than an attempt at news manipulation and it bears no relation to the truth. Paragraph 32 is neutral on the appropriate number of control rooms in Scotland as the committee thought that it did not have enough evidence to take a view on the issue. The only exception to that is that the committee completely rejected the lone opinion of Her Majesty's chief inspector of fire services for Scotland that Scotland could have a single control room. The report is silent on whether there should be eight control rooms or fewer.

The logic that is used to reject a single control room applies equally to any cuts to the current eight control rooms: the same problems would occur to a greater or lesser extent. Although the committee was unable to take a view on the issue based on the evidence that it received, I have 10 years' experience of working in the fire service and more than 2 years' experience of working in the largest control room in Scotland, in Johnstone. From that experience, I can tell the Parliament that one size does not fit all. It is necessary to keep the eight control rooms that we have in Scotland, because of geography, efficiency of service, robustness of service and the ability to provide cover and back-up in the event of a major disaster or terrorist attack, and in the interest of serving and safeguarding public safety. No case has been made for a reduction in that number.

I turn to part 1 of the bill, which includes the power for ministers to restructure the fire service as they see fit. I and Annabel Goldie dissented from part of the report because we were concerned about the scope of that power. It seems clear to me that the only reason for a minister to have it is so that they can cut the number of brigades in Scotland; it is unlikely that the minister will use it to increase the number of brigades. The reason why that argument holds good is that there is an unbroken connection between the debate about the number of control rooms in Scotland and the debate about the number of brigades. If the Executive cuts the number of control rooms, it will come along afterwards and say that it is inconsistent and inefficient to have three control rooms and eight brigades and that it is forced to bring them into line for reasons of service efficiency and clarity in the chain of command. The decision to amalgamate brigades will be made on the back of a cut in the number of control rooms and will not be based on the merits of a proposal for fewer brigades. It is a back-door way to cut the number of brigades in Scotland. The power that the bill gives ministers is part of that process, and that is why I dissented from paragraph 21 of the committee's report. That paragraph was supported only by the Labour and Liberal Democrat members of the committee; the other three parties did not support the power.

The minister said earlier that there is no difference from what we have at the moment, but there is a big difference. The power gives the ability to initiate changes. More important, the loss of the advisory council—a statutory body that acts as a buffer and advises ministers—will mean an enormous change. The SNP amendment expresses concern about the proposal to remove the statutory standing of any body that replaces the SCFBAC. I appreciate the Executive's argument that the council is too big and unwieldy and I do not have any great concern about restructuring it, changing the number of members, changing its name and making it more efficient, but the Executive has failed to make a convincing argument for changing its statutory standing. If the replacement body is to have any authority, it should be statutory and I urge the minister to reconsider the matter.

A number of members mentioned the transfer of responsibility for the maintenance of hydrants from fire brigades to Scottish Water. It is a nonsense that Scottish Water is responsible for everything up to the bottom of the hydrant pit and that brigades are responsible thereafter. If the minister wants to do away with unwieldy and bureaucratic systems, here is a chance to do just that. More often than not hydrant faults are identified by Scottish Water employees, who report them to the brigades, who go out and inspect the hydrant, then write a report about the problem and do the necessary internal paperwork for it to be repaired. That paperwork goes to various people for approval until it eventually goes to a purchasing officer who issues an order for Scottish Water to repair the hydrant. That is a circular process, not a dynamic system. It is an unnecessary and wasteful paper exercise. By transferring responsibility to Scottish Water we would achieve efficiency savings and hydrants would be repaired more speedily.

We should have a modern and efficient fire service in Scotland, but the Executive cannot use that as an excuse to try to save money by providing the people of Scotland with a poorer service. Our aim must be to improve the service and not to cut it. We have a number of reservations about the detail of the bill and I hope that the Executive will take our concerns on board. In conclusion, I urge members to support our amendment, which expresses that concern.