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Plenary, 10 Sep 2009

10 Sep 2009 · S3 · Plenary

Item of business

Fire and Rescue Framework

Tolson, Jim LD Dunfermline West Watch on SPTV

I was not aware of that detail. However, when it comes to working with others, the minister might recall that, when the Liberal Democrats raised the issue of reserve firefighters, his colleague Rob Gibson said that our intervention was unhelpful scaremongering. Of course, this morning, the minister very much backed our position. I hope he feels that there should be some consistency in his group on that matter.

It takes a Liberal Democrat amendment to add some substance to the debate. It took the Liberal Democrats to make the Government realise that the effects of the European working time directive on our retained firefighters would have a devastating impact on our rural and island communities. Fortunately, the Government eventually saw sense, but it took a while.

The flexibility that the Government showed then needs be shown again. The draft fire and rescue framework needs to offer clear guidance to Scottish fire and rescue services if we are to avoid a repeat of the situation that we got into as a result of the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005, which led to a loss of common standards and consistency in relation to training, governance and so on. According to the FBU, the result has been a wide divergence in service delivery across the country. I strongly urge the minister to ensure that the ministerial advisory group, which he chairs, is diligent in setting a consistent and workable framework that will provide robust guidelines with some degree of local flexibility.

It is fair to say that there has been some progress with the Scottish fire and rescue service under this and previous Scottish Governments. One example of such progress is the proposed introduction of firelink—a highly resilient communications system that will replace a fragmented legacy radio system with one wide-area radio system. That new system will allow not only better communication within and across fire and rescue services in Scotland but quick communication with other emergency services.

The firelink system will also include a priority call function to help give protection to our firefighters when, as has unfortunately become all too prevalent, they come under attack from mindless thugs—often the same mindless thugs who deliberately call out the fire services to false alarms, seeking to corner firefighters and attack them while they are on duty. Fortunately, such incidents are on the decline but they are nowhere near eradicated. Across Scotland, every fire and rescue service has seen a reduction in the number of false alarms. The drop in Fife is nearly 75 per cent, which is significant and much better than the Scottish average. Still, 158 false alarms in Fife in 2006 was 158 too many.

I am sure that there are a number of reasons for the decline, but the direction of good firemasters and a huge effort by serving firefighters to educate young people has ensured that Fife has blazed a trail—if the minister will forgive the pun. Many young people are realising the deadly consequences of sending a fire engine to their street for a false alarm—they realise that their own family could be affected.

The Government's motion does not go nearly far enough. It does not provide the assurances that either the FBU or the Liberal Democrats require. I hope that the Government realises that, by accepting our amendment today, it will give more substance to the framework, and that if the minister puts all his efforts into the ministerial advisory group, we will have a Scottish fire service that is truly fit for the 21st century.

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Plenary, 10 Sep 2009

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