Hansard

Like other members, I thank Brian Sweeney for his extensive report. I also thank the Fire Brigades Union for its extensive response to the report. We have now seen both sides of most of the arguments and are, therefore, in a good position to discuss what the issues might be.

Let us consider the statistics, which can sometimes get in the way. I will make a couple of observations. Sadly, fatalities are the easy thing to count. They are also, as all parties recognise, the very small numbers in the statistics and show a variability that is sometimes confusing. It would be useful if, in the future, we had statistics not only for the tip of the iceberg, but for the iceberg itself. Having statistics within a comparable timeframe for the number of injuries, rescues and fires would allow us to focus on the general trends of such things instead of having to concentrate on the small numbers, which might be going in the other direction.

The report suggests—we encounter this suggestion often in our statistical analysis in the Parliament—that smoothing out the data over a number of years would remove some of the inconsistencies. I fear that, by and large, that is an illusion. If we were to decide to look at the data on a cumulative basis over a three-year period, we would get a reliable number only every three years. If we were to look at the data over a three-year rolling period, we would merely substitute the variation between 2006 and 2009 for the variation between 2008 and 2009, which would not help much. We need to be careful about the numbers that we quote and what they mean.

Yesterday, like some other members, I had an interesting discussion about sprinklers with Chief Fire Officer Sweeney and Chief Fire Officer Hunter. The clear conclusion that I came away with is that the present specification for sprinklers is probably an overspecification as far as household use is concerned, for the good reason that most sprinkler systems are used in industrial premises or large buildings such as hospitals, where a much higher specification is undoubtedly appropriate. It is entirely clear to me, as a chemical engineer, that there are some interesting engineering challenges involved: there are pressure issues, substantial backflow issues and major issues of bacterial growth in stagnant water. However, it ought not to be beyond the wit of man or woman to overcome them. It would be a good idea for the Government to encourage the engineering profession in all its manifestations to look at ways of coming up with a pretty cheap standard system that could be installed in households, because it is quite clear that such a system would offer substantial benefits to our communities.

It seems clear to me, as it does to others, that RIP cigarettes have major benefits, but I am sure that members such as Stewart Maxwell will speak about those, so I will not dwell on the issue.

The main issue that worries me is the information technology that is available to public services. We have talked about the need for cross-departmental working and partnerships, of which we are all aware. People try to work across borders, if they can. By now, we should be getting to the point at which public service databases are interactable—if that is an acceptable word. I am talking about databases that can be accessed by other services so that information that is relevant—a lot of which the report that we are discussing points to—is sharable. I do not know to what extent that is the case, but I am mighty sure that the extent to which it is not the case is no longer acceptable.

That brings us back to the relatively recent but important concept of best value. I have a suspicion that every public service thinks that it must install a computer system that offers best value for that service but completely overlooks the fact that how best value can be achieved would best be looked at on a national basis across all public services. That, of course, is a function of Government—it is not something that we can expect individual public services to do for themselves. It requires Government to decide to standardise its IT systems—or at least the databases within them—over a period of time. That is a challenge for Government.

Another issue is the need for the development of a common language to cover terms such as "risk"—which has at least three meanings in the English language—and "deprivation". If we do not yet have such a common language across the public service, we must address that issue rather quickly.

I turn to alarms. Like others, I was concerned to discover that in a large number of cases, fire took hold without the smoke detector having the desired effect. I do not find that terribly surprising because I have a suspicion than a lot of smoke detectors are still sitting in the cupboard in their box and that quite a number of the ones that are on the wall are in the wrong place on the wall. Moreover, I suspect that an even larger proportion of the ones that are in the right place no longer have a working battery. It would be interesting to know what the statistics are on that. I would prefer some right answers to my guesswork, from which I draw the conclusion that hard-wiring is the only way forward. The challenge—again, it is a challenge for Government, which must lead—is to determine to what extent it is sensible, prudent and good value to insist that, in the right circumstances, hard-wiring be included in building regulations.