Good morning and welcome to the ninth meeting of the Justice Committee in 2012. I ask everyone to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices completely as they interfere with the broadcasting system even when switched to silent. No apologies for absence have been received and once again I welcome Lewis Macdonald to the meeting.
When asked about preparations for the legislation’s implementation, the police service expressed major concern about timescales and the ability to deliver in the time available. By way of opening up the discussion, will the witnesses say something about the time that is available, problems that might be arising with the plans for implementation and any other issues that they want to bring to the committee’s attention?
The Chief Fire Officers Association is broadly content with the timetable, although events in one or two strands are perhaps not as aligned with the legislation as we might, in ideal circumstances, have chosen.
The Association of Principal Fire Officers Scotland has been critical of the pace of development of the outline business case. Although there was an opportunity for all stakeholders to engage with the process, we felt that it was limited and we are concerned that the bill is moving forward on the basis of the outcomes of that work and the latest outline business case. We believe that the timescale is challenging and we question the ability to deliver an efficient and effective fire and rescue service on 1 April 2013.
To reinforce a comment that Mr Sweeney made, I make it clear that no one who views reform of the fire and rescue service as a large technical piece of work expects it to be completed by 1 April 2013; it will be an on-going process. A good partnership has developed between Scottish Government officials and fire and rescue service leads on reform to clarify exactly what needs to be done by next year’s cut-off point and what can be put off and developed in due course.
Richard Haigh mentioned the outline business case. In the normal process, one would expect a gateway review to check the detail of the outline business case and, quite properly, look at budget arrangements. You said that, largely, you will be able to deliver the mechanics of what the bill requires. Are you happy that the financial arrangements will be in tune with those deliverables?
There are some questions, which colleagues from the Chief Fire Officers Association provided to the Finance Committee—I do not want to rehearse those. The association broadly has no disagreement with the quantum of savings that the Government is setting out to achieve over the next three years. In the Government’s outline business case, the quantum of savings is somewhere between £21 million and £31 million.
Will you develop that point?
The bill sets out the purpose of the fire and rescue service. The provisions on the fire part of the service are nice and clear, but the provisions on the rescue part, in my opinion and that of the Chief Fire Officers Association, are unclear in a number of material ways.
What is line rescue?
An example of line rescue is a situation where someone is trapped in circumstances where they have to be rescued by a team equipped with lines, who can save them in almost a mountaineering sense. They may be trapped in a collapsed building, a mineshaft or something similar.
Thank you. It is helpful to have that on the record. We will now have questions from Jenny Marra, to be followed by Alison McInnes and John Finnie.
My question follows on quite well from what Mr Sweeney said, as it is about the prevention agenda. I notice that the Chief Fire Officers Association states in its written submission that it is unfortunate that more attention is not being paid to the prevention agenda. I have been impressed with the performance of Tayside Fire and Rescue, which was recently rated top in Audit Scotland’s report for its success in the area of prevention. Will you elaborate on the prevention agenda in the bill and say where you think that it should be stronger?
I will try to be as brief as I can as I am conscious of the limits of time. The question strikes at the heart of the issue. On the prevention agenda, we are broadly satisfied with the arrangements for preventing fire and educating people about its consequences, but we do not believe that the legislation gives enough weight to the prevention of road traffic collisions, the development of young people—the young firefighters programme in Tayside is an excellent example—or water safety. It does not give enough weight to safety in contexts other than fire. It would be helpful if the committee could point out those issues with the framing of the legislation and the functions.
Is there a cost implication if the prevention agenda is to be as robust as you, the committee and the public would like it to be?
The cost implications are broadly negligible. The staff are in post. The programmes are delivered, in the main, by station staff, who may be full time or part time. The programmes need resourcing, energy, partnership and power. This is only the second time that the legislation has been changed in 50 years. If something is not mandated and the bill does not give effect to it, it will become someone else’s problem—it will become a road safety initiative or a police-only initiative. The legislation needs to be clear about the purpose and functions of a 21st century fire and rescue service. That is what we are calling for.
Are you saying that your service is best placed to deliver the most effective road safety and prevention programmes?
No, that is not quite what I am saying. I am saying that we are one of a number of agencies that need to be mandated, almost in a neutral, third-party sense, to work with young people at secondary 5 and 6 in Scottish schools—which all services do. Unlike, perhaps, our colleagues in the police, we take a much more neutral stance. We come at the issue from the point of view that it is about young people’s safety, their lives, and peer pressure. There are some fantastic examples from Fife to Tayside to Grampian, where the fire and rescue service’s involvement is critical, but that work is part of a broader partnership. We do not want to be, and we are not, the sole agency with such responsibility.
The Cabinet Secretary for Justice’s office will be noting your written and oral evidence, and I am sure that he will take that issue on board.
I will pick up on two points to reinforce what Brian Sweeney has said. First, to the association, the functions that the bill sets out do not harness the potential contribution of the fire and rescue service in its wider community safety role, which is work that we are already very much involved in right across Scotland.
I, too, am interested in exploring the concerns that have been expressed that the bill does not fully capture the functions that you carry out. Jenny Marra successfully explored the issue of prevention. To go back to the rescue part of the service, have you estimated the resources that would be required if the bill was to make it clear that that was part of your remit?
Rather than go through all the funding issues, if the committee were so minded and it would be helpful, I would be more than happy to provide a short paper that sets out the functions that we believe are missing and the associated costs. That might help you in your deliberations.
That would be helpful. Did you respond to that question when you went before the Finance Committee?
I was not at the Finance Committee; it was the deputy chief who was there. However, having read the Official Report of the proceedings, I do not believe that the issue was specifically raised.
If you are not in a position to provide that information to Alison McInnes today, we would be most obliged to have it in writing.
The point is important. You make a cogent case for putting such functions in the bill, but we need to understand the implications of that.
The concern relates to our border with our colleagues in England and I clarify that it applies to only two services: Lothian and Borders Fire and Rescue Service and Dumfries and Galloway Fire and Rescue Service. There are issues of insurance and insurance liability when firefighters travel from the area in which they are insured and liable for operating to another country, but I believe that that is being considered in relation to technical components of the bill.
The system must function just now. I have a border constituency and I know that people nip backwards and forwards. What is the position now?
The issue relates just to technical liability, indemnification and insurance.
Surely the position must be resolved at the moment.
I am unaware whether that is the current position. In Strathclyde, I do not have a border with England.
We will require that information, but I pretty well think that the issue will have been resolved by now. I do not think for one minute that, when English firefighters come over here, indemnification problems arise. Clarification would be helpful.
Good morning, panel. My questions are to Mr Torrie. Some submissions suggest that an opportunity has been missed for the bill to pick up on a number of issues. The review of open water and flood rescue in Scotland that Mr Tomkins undertook recommended that a register of water rescue assets should be held. Does that have broader application? Coastguard services have been retracted. Does an opportunity relate to that? If so, how would that fit with the framework document and the integrated risk management planning system?
I—
And, sorry—
Wait a minute, John. I am happy to let you ask several questions, but it helps witnesses if you ask one question at a time, after which you can add another question.
I have a comment rather than a question, which is that all that I have described leads to the suggestion of the service’s designation as the primary rescue service.
I will try to deal with that. On water rescue, the Fire (Additional Function) (Scotland) Order 2005, which derives from the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005, asks the existing fire and rescue services to provide facilities to deal with serious flooding. As part of that, the Scottish Government has provided funding over the past few years for boats and other water rescue equipment such as personal protective equipment. There is a range of functions across Scotland at the moment.
Yes, it is.
It would be helpful if the bill broadly recognised the fire and rescue service as the rescue organisation for Scotland, as long as we do not get caught up in too much detail at the level of the law.
I agree with the principle that it does not matter whether we are the primary rescue service; as a rescue service, we should be involved in co-ordinating and engaging with partners to plan, prepare and deliver whatever the rescue is. It would be most helpful if that were clear in the bill.
We are not “honourable members” here.
I am sorry, convener.
Some of us may be, but we do not boast.
In my eyes, you are all honourable.
I had intended to raise the point about marine firefighting. I want to generalise on some of the other rescue functions that the panel has described. If the bill were to reflect—as has been suggested—a formal responsibility for rescue and prevention, what would be the implications in legislative terms? In other words, is what is being suggested merely the addition of a couple of lines of formal description, or would it require significant change in resourcing the bill’s provisions or in its timetable?
That would require a fairly simple amendment. The arrangements are already being effected practically, so the bill would merely formalise arrangements that already exist in respect of all the functions. It would be a technical legislative amendment to reflect what already happens in real life.
Is that also Mr Torrie’s view? Clearly, you have advised ministers.
That is absolutely my view.
That is very helpful.
Councillor Durham—that is your cue.
Thank you, convener. The Scottish fire conveners forum has always had some concern about that. When reform was first discussed with CFOA and the forum about two years ago, there was a clear view within the forum that reform had to come, although the general view of the forum was that the service should remain within local government rather than be centralised. Now that the principle of a single service has been established and is being implemented by the bill, the forum has come on board. Everybody has come on board and is going forward willingly into the new framework.
It is so tempting when somebody says, “The other issue ...” and then stops. Why not just say it, please? If there is another issue that you want to raise, the committee would like to hear it.
There seems to be a gap in the bill. There is a clear route whereby the Scottish fire and rescue service will produce a plan and, having agreed that plan with Parliament and Scottish ministers, will then produce local plans. However, given the level of savings that will have to be found in the years ahead, there are almost certainly going to be tensions between local aspirations for service provision and what the national plan might say. There is a clear route in the bill whereby the service will engage with the 32 local authorities and, when agreement is reached, the local plan will be published. However—I have been in this scenario recently—change of local service provision can be hugely emotive, and it is crucial, so I foresee scenarios in which there is intransigence in the local authority and the SFRS. If that happens, there must be resolution. It cannot be left hanging, otherwise the reform will be seen from the local perspective as being just centralisation of the power within the service, which would be a great loss.
What are they?
There are two democratically elected sides: a Parliament and Government on the one hand, and local councillors and a local authority on the other. To me, the resolution must be found between those two elected bodies. I cannot in my mind get past the fact that, ultimately, either the Parliament or the ministers will have to engage in resolving disputes. From experience over the past five years, I say that disputes are inevitable.
I want to keep to this topic because it is a fresh one for us, so we will stay on the number of people on the fire board and disputes between national and local plans. I will take supplementaries on those issues.
Councillor Durham suggests that there might be different ways of dealing with the issue. During evidence on the police service, we heard the suggestion that a link between the national and local levels might be achieved by having a number of local representatives—people with local government or other local connections—involved in the national authority. Is that applicable to the fire service or do different circumstances mean that that would not work?
Such representation is very important, particularly in the transition board of SFRS. You have to take existing expertise into the new set up.
I know the feeling. A few of us on the committee are the same. The members concerned will not admit to it, but I know who they are.
The problem is that when local authority representatives—local councillors—come on to the board, they have to leave behind their local issues, because once they join the board they will be responsible for the whole service across Scotland.
It has been put to us that the role would be about holding to account rather than being representational. You are making the same point. It is necessary to leave the local hats on the hat rack outside the door.
I will make a brief comment to add to Councillor Durham’s argument. The concern that he articulates is something that I have heard from day one, when reform was first discussed: if you create a large national organisation, you become remote from local communities and decisions are taken remotely. I will offer a couple of thoughts on that. The fire and rescue service is fundamentally a local service. Its only purpose is to operate at local level; that is all that it does. The fire and rescue services currently engage well at local level. In my past life, I have attended local community meetings here in Edinburgh to try to persuade people that it would be a good idea to shut their local fire station and move it up the road a bit. If you want an example of local accountability and local engagement, you should come along to one of those challenging events.
MSPs also have such meetings.
I do not recommend it.
I will not comment on behalf of MSPs.
Whatever the shape and form of the management of the service, it exists only at local level and will always be accountable at local level. Mr Sweeney is responsible for an organisation that provides services to 49 per cent of Scotland’s population but is designed to work at local level. Everything is about the design of the new service and ensuring that things happen at the local level.
Has Lewis Macdonald finished on this point?
Mr Sweeney perhaps wants to respond to the initial question. I am interested to hear his view.
We are broadly content on the membership of the national board. The suggestion is that its composition will give councillors, local government and COSLA their voices on the board. Our submission points to the need for business, commerce, insurers and the fire industry also to have their voices on the board. In the context of the board, it is not so much about quantity but about quality; the bill needs to take into account the quality of the board membership.
There you are, Mr Torrie. I will let you think about that.
I want to ask about local accountability and local plans.
Fine. We will then have questions from John Finnie and Jenny Marra on the same train.
The bill envisages that local plans will be devised and will fit into the overall national plan. At present, with our eight fire and rescue services, do we have eight local plans or 32, or do we have none?
There are eight local plans, which are referred to as integrated risk management plans. Some of the eight existing fire and rescue services subdivide their plans into individual plans for their constituent authorities, but others do not. There are definitely eight plans, although there might be more, because some services break down their plans for their constituent authorities. Of course, two of our eight authorities are unitary ones—Fife and Dumfries and Galloway.
What, in that case, is the logic of the proposal to have 32 local plans? Will we end up with a situation in which one plan is duplicated, a new cover is stuck on it and we say that it is the plan for Clackmannanshire rather than for Falkirk? Is it the reality that there will not be 32 separate plans, but a number of regional plans, broadly corresponding to the present fire board areas and, within that, there will be further plans with different covers on them just to appease local sensibilities?
Mr Torrie, do you want “to appease local sensibilities”?
I will try my best, convener. In addition to the integrated risk management plans from the eight fire and rescue services, there are 32 single outcome agreements and 32 community planning partnerships and community safety partnerships. All that detailed work at local level goes on at present in the 32 authority areas.
We must remember that Scotland is a varied place. Delivering fire and rescue services in a town in the central belt is different from delivering them on far-off islands in Shetland or Orkney, so plans vary. Fire and rescue services have worked under the current system since some time between 1993 and 1996—I cannot remember exactly when the relevant statutory instruments were put in place. One of the culture changes that will happen relates to funding for the services, which has been done in a historical manner. From a local government perspective, it has been done in a somewhat unusual way, whereby central Government has maintained the capital funding and then headed it out, but the revenue funding has come through the constituent local authorities. To some extent, that pattern of funding over the past 15 years has dictated community expectation throughout the eight different fire and rescue areas.
I understand that—
Before you come in, Mr McLetchie, I think that Mr Sweeney wants to say something.
Thank you, convener. I just wanted to pick up on the point. The opportunity that a national service will have to consider Scotland irrespective of boundaries should not be lost; there is a fantastic opportunity to examine the issues that Councillor Durham raises. Where a certain service has been bound both administratively and financially by its borders and boundaries, the fact that they will be removed will offer a tremendous opportunity.
Thank you.
I very much concur with that. It is an important point. There is little that a police service or a fire service does in isolation. In fire and rescue, we routinely work with health, housing and social work services, social services, the education authorities and others to advance our agenda. “Scotland Together: A study examining fire deaths and injuries in Scotland”, which was provided to Parliament late in 2009, gives effect to consideration of those points. Merely by creating 32 blue-light committees, we would create a silo within which police and fire and rescue services would operate, whereas the reality is that they operate in a common environment with health, housing, social work and other colleagues. I therefore concur whole-heartedly with the point.
Councillor Durham, would you like to give a view on that?
Perhaps not surprisingly, you would not get quite the same view from local government. As the Government led on the issue, it took the view that local councillors were not all engaged in the process of governance and accountability, and that the joint boards were perhaps not the best way to govern.
Is the problem partly that community planning partnerships are full of professionals and do not have enough local councillors on them, beyond the heads of the council administrations concerned?
That is a fair comment.
So, the problems with accountability stem from the fact that the vehicle that is meant to create co-ordination does not have enough elected representatives on it to represent the people in the community. If we are going to have an integrated accountability mechanism, we should look at who is included. I see that Councillor Durham and Brian Sweeney are both nodding; I am glad that we have some agreement on that. I will put that in my report. [Laughter.] I am sure that there will not be a dissenting report.
There is more of a historical framework to it. As I said at the outset, the fire conveners forum started debating reform together with CFOA quite a while before the major decision came from the Government and Parliament.
I am sure that that is a fair representation of his views. Your group is saying that it has now accepted—if not enthusiastically—that we will have a single service, and that we are now considering the bill in the context of how the service will work.
It is fair to say, now that the principle has been established, that everybody in our group wants to do their best to make the single service a success for everybody in Scotland, from the northern tip of Unst to Dumfries and Galloway and Campbeltown.
That is a diplomatic answer.
To be perfectly honest, most of my points have been covered by what has been said so far. Just for my benefit, if for no one else’s, will the panel clarify what the local plan is expected to contain, particularly if there is an overlap with community planning? What do you expect to see in local plans, whether the number of services be eight, 32 or one?
I will be very brief, because I am sure that my colleagues will want to add some thoughts. Earlier, Mr Sweeney mentioned something called an integrated risk management plan, which is a clunky title for an important piece of behaviour for fire and rescue services. What it means is that the fire and rescue service needs to understand the risks in its local community and design its services around them, along with putting a great deal of emphasis on prevention work. The fire and rescue service would much rather prevent fires and accidents than deal with the consequences. Integration means that we can apply all that collectively.
What I would say is broadly similar. The integrated risk management plan has three facets. We seek to prevent incidents from occurring, whether that is a road traffic collision, someone drowning or someone having an accidental fire in the home. Prevention is clearly a multi-agency function; it cannot be and is not a sole function of the fire and rescue service. There might be health workers and social workers in the home, and there might be lots of duplication of data about vulnerable people who are at risk but, when the fire and rescue service arrives, we find out that we did not know about that. In a community planning partnership in Scotland in 2012, that cannot be allowed to continue. The fire and rescue service working on prevention in a community planning partnership context is absolutely unavoidable; it must happen.
I concur with the professional advice that the committee has been given, but I have something to say with my layman’s hat on. The most important thing to the general public is that, when someone’s house is burning and they dial 999, they get a fire engine as quickly as possible. Driving risk down has become a fundamental part of fire and rescue services in the past few years, and it has been hugely successful—risk has been driven down. However, there is a danger in simply saying that because, for example, the likelihood is that a life will be saved once every 3,000 years in a remote community, there is no need for the response element. That will not be the view of that community.
MSPs are well aware of what will happen if there is an attempt to close fire stations, schools or post offices—there is a list of things. Obviously, councillors, MSPs and members of Parliament represent their constituents. There will, understandably, be a great deal of community resistance.
Councillor Durham, until you made the comment that you have just made, I was not going to mention the following issue, but I will be gentle—I think that you know what I am going to touch on. I take it that you do not think that everything in the existing arrangements is sound. Such a position is certainly not borne out by the Audit Scotland review of the role of boards. The northern joint police board’s submission says:
Yes.
I have a question for the panel about an issue that came up in relation to the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the tension that can exist between resources. We heard from the assistant chief constable of that organisation that it has a tactical tasking service, so that if additional resources are requested locally, they are bid for centrally. Does Mr Torrie envisage such a system working in the national fire service?
Less so, I think. The functional arrangements for operational cover in the fire and rescue service are pretty different from the police arrangements. Fundamentally, they are based on local fire stations, and attendance times, for example, have been worked out over long periods. When large incidents occur, there will be support from a broader area. The current services have mutual assistance agreements so that they can pass resources between them but, as a general principle, a local resource will attend operational incidents.
Can I touch on the issue—
Does Mr Sweeney want to come in on that point before John Finnie asks another question?
I agree with HMI Torrie. Such activity would not routinely occur in fire and rescue services, but there will be peak or spate conditions in the eight services on bonfire night or if flooding or storms and high winds occur, and all the services will prioritise the order in which they respond to incidents. For example, it would not be unusual in Strathclyde to have 50 or 60 incidents stacked in a queue on bonfire night and for officers to prioritise on that basis. The same goes for flooding.
I will touch on the cross-border issue. Do the mutual aid arrangements apply across the border? It is clear that Lothian and Borders wants to be a good neighbour to Northumbria and that Dumfries and Galloway wants to be a good neighbour to Cumbria. What reassurance can you give about terms and conditions, the pension aspect and liability?
I cannot give the committee any reassurance on any of those things, but my understanding is the same as Mr Sweeney’s. The Scottish Government and the UK Government are looking at the issue as a technical matter.
We will be able to clarify that. Some arrangement must be in place.
Both our existing border services have mutual assistance arrangements with our neighbours in Cumbria and Northumberland.
John Finnie touched on the question that I will ask. Councillor Durham, do you think that local accountability currently works well?
The honest answer is that I have experience only from my local area and I believe that local accountability works well.
You are uniquely placed on the panel. The best-value audit of the Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service showed quite serious failings, so there must be some discrepancy if the local accountability element is currently working well in the Highlands and Islands. Can you tell us what that is? If you think that things are working well, how come those audit results were found?
The results found by Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission reflect the historical situation that the Highlands and Islands service has faced since it was restructured in 2002. I will go on, if you want me to.
No.
This is probably not the right place.
So the issue is historical problems rather than local scrutiny and holding the service to account.
I suggest that a number of issues have come together and the situation has finally come to a head.
In fairness to Councillor Durham, he is here talking on behalf of all the boards.
Indeed.
It is rather difficult for him to talk about the specifics of the Highlands and it would also be unfair to the other fire conveners. As a convener myself, I am always fair to other conveners.
My question is close to what Jenny Marra was going on about and is for Mr Haigh. In the submission by the Association of Principal Fire Officers Scotland, the comments under point 4 about the principle of councillors taking part in decision making and the scrutiny of performance seem to be both supportive and non-supportive of the idea, so I would like to hear your expanded view. Given the difficulties that you point out, how do you see that working?
Colin, you should declare an interest. You are still a councillor.
I apologise.
I am only teasing.
I am an elected member of the City of Edinburgh Council.
Your point is at the heart of the matter. Engaging more councillors in the framework sounds very good in theory, and the association would support that, but how will it operate in practice? How will more councillors across the 32 councils be engaged on fire issues? I do not have an answer, but I would be keen to see the idea worked through, and you will be aware that a number of pathfinder projects are being developed to put it into practice. The difficulty, perhaps, will be that each pathfinder project will have the resources of the relevant fire and rescue service behind it to support and drive it and help its delivery, whereas with a single service the support, drive and direction will be more remote. There are therefore questions about whether the pathfinders will truly reflect how things will operate in a single service.
I will make a brief observation about the functioning of joint boards—I cannot speak for unitary authorities because I have never worked in one. In a joint board context, the arrangements have some difficulties because of the third-hand nature of elected member involvement. Members are elected to their council and have council responsibilities in social work, licensing or education, for example, but they are also members of a fire or police committee, so the engagement of some of them can be third hand and at arm’s length. That does not place blame on any existing elected members but reflects the reality of politics and the level of engagement and busyness of elected members.
Given the comments that we have just heard, do you think that the present arrangements with the boards are satisfactory?
No. I do not believe that the arrangements are satisfactory at the moment.
It has been a pretty upbeat panel, which has talked about “a huge opportunity” and so on. Others might think that it is a serious risk to local provision. Much has been made of the fact that local plans already exist and will continue to exist. The difference is that local plans are resourced locally now. The proposals mean that local plans will be drawn up locally and resourced nationally—or not, depending on the small board of 11 people. Does the panel think that financial and human resources can be properly allocated by such a small national board?
I see no reason why not. Richard Haigh commented that it is about the quality of the person who sits on the board. I will qualify that to an extent in that, although I agree with him, it is terribly important that the people who sit on the board have an understanding of matters of fire and rescue.
Will you address the funding issue? Should it be local, central or whatever?
We are in an extended period of austerity, which affects resourcing in the fire and rescue service, like every other service. Between the professional voice—the Chief Fire Officers Association—and the Government’s outline business case, the saving looks like being a quantum of about £25 million. That is against the baseline budget of £388 million.
So you see the pattern of, for example, retained fire service stations being very similar to what we have at the moment. You see all the savings being achieved through back-office services.
I would see some fairly significant changes coming through in the new single fire and rescue service, but I would be very surprised if the existing footprint of full-time and part-time stations changed or there was any large movement in the number of stations. I do not think that stations across Scotland will close now or in the next five years.
I will move on to Graeme Pearson, then David McLetchie and Jenny Marra. I hope that these will be the last few questions. I do not want to curtail members—I know that we like to ask questions—but we have overrun again.
A lot has been said about the conflict and rub between national accountability and local responsibilities. Last week, we heard persuasive evidence from the Auditor General about the involvement of democratic accountability in the governance process. I note that the Fire Brigades Union refers specifically to the need for the Scottish Parliament to be involved in such processes. Indeed, it suggests a number of roles for Parliament to play and identifies a committee to fulfil them.
Is there no response?
I was waiting before answering in case any of my colleagues had a strong view. I have read the FBU’s submission, which makes a valid point on the issue. Perhaps fellow witnesses were in danger of commenting on the existing arrangements and the factual aspects of the bill, rather than seizing the opportunity to examine another level of scrutiny and engagement.
It is, of course, open to any committee of the Parliament, within its remit, to conduct an inquiry and hold witnesses to account. It might be the Local Government and Regeneration Committee or this committee that will hold people to account for the delivery of the fire and rescue service in Scotland.
My question was more about the process of governance than conducting an occasional review.
That would happen as well. There are too few members to serve on and do justice to all the Parliament’s committees. My comment was meant merely as an observation.
The FBU’s submission states:
I am happy to open the responses. Industrial relations across Scotland are stable. During the past 10 years, there has been a process of modernisation and reform, with stations closing and shift arrangements changing, and I commend the FBU’s approach. As a result of consultation and negotiation with management, we have reached a stable industrial relations position where most authorities throughout Scotland work directly in partnership with all the unions, not just the FBU, in a mature, stable environment.
Would anyone else like to comment?
No one else has indicated that they would like to speak—I am sorry; Councillor Durham has a comment to make.
I would support the Parliament having any such role as proposed. If that could be worked into the bill, it would be welcome, certainly from the perspective of the existing fire conveners. It would give confidence. There is always a concern about the centralisation of power. It would be good for the bill to give the Parliament a role.
Thank you very much.
I welcome our second panel. Sir Hugh Orde is president of the Association of Chief Police Officers. He is accompanied by Oliver Cattermole, who is ACPO’s director of communications. Good morning—yes, it is still morning. It feels as if it is the afternoon.
Good morning, Sir Hugh. The discussions that we have had about a single police force always tend to come down to the importance of local policing. You will identify with that. The idea of a single police force is always played off against the idea of local policing. From your experience, is it possible that a single police force could enhance local policing and, indeed, levels of accountability?
The short answer is yes. The size and scale of the operation are not such that, by definition, the bigger the organisation gets, the less commitment there is to local policing. During my time in Northern Ireland between 2002 and 2009—it was seven years to the day—we had a substantial report to implement. The whole focus of the Patten report was on a local style of policing that was based on a human rights training agenda. It was very much about embedding the police in communities.
You had 174 recommendations to implement.
Yes. Looking back, I think that the Patten report was an incredibly sensible report. It was sensible because it was not rocket science—it was a very practical report. It put forward a model of policing that could be implemented around the world, albeit that there were some bespoke issues.
In your experience, whether from your time in Northern Ireland or from your work in England and Wales, what is the best model when it comes to reconciling the tensions that may exist between local and national priorities? The fact that such tensions exist was borne out when we looked at the creation of a single fire and rescue service but, in the police context, what is the best model for reconciling the differences that will inevitably emerge?
There will always be tensions. The reality is that we have a decreasing resource. It seems to me that one of the strongest arguments for building a single force is that it involves removing overheads and focusing on the front line. Although the police in England and Wales are not going down that line—the present UK Government and, indeed, the previous UK Government decided that they were not persuaded of the need to reorganise the basic policing model of 44 forces, including the Police Service of Northern Ireland—I am seeing huge efforts being made on collaboration and cross-boundary working to drive out efficiencies, whether from back-office functions or operational units, to maintain front-line service delivery. That challenge is not faced if there is just one force, but it is necessary to work out the balance in the policing model between local and national.
Previous panels have discussed the need for accountability and transparency and the idea of holding public meetings.
It is not for me to form a view on your plan, but I will describe what I think worked.
Thank you very much.
I declare an interest in my membership of Amnesty International, which has provided the committee with evidence. It is that evidence, along with evidence that we have received from the Scottish Human Rights Commission, that I would like to ask about.
The first thing that I did was take the oath. It is very important. Lord Patten was trying to deliver a police service for all the communities. He wanted it to be seen not as a force serving one side or the other but as an inclusive police service. It had to be set up using a set of clearly recognisable principles. He, quite rightly, chose the human rights agenda. That is not a soft, flaky notion; it is a recognition of the basic rights of all citizens and it is about how we manage it when policing impacts on and, on occasion, collides with those rights.
The experience of embedding human rights in processes has been explained in the submissions that we have received. To what extent should those practices be imported into police forces in Scotland or, indeed, in England and Wales? In many ways, what was done in Northern Ireland is promoted as an exemplar for other forces and is not seen as unique to Northern Ireland’s circumstances. Do you believe that to be the case? Should those practices be imported into police forces in the rest of the UK, or are there unique aspects in Northern Ireland that mean that those practices are not suitable for importation?
One of the unique aspects was the starting point, which was a substantial change in name and then the implementation of a substantial independent report. In a way, my job was quite straightforward in that I had a roadmap. All the clever thinking had been done, but we had to make it happen, and implementation is always challenging.
So we should import them then.
They are there already, but they are not as explicit.
That is the question for us. Should such practices be explicit rather than implicit?
Far be it from me to dictate what you should be doing. As I said at the beginning, the Patten reform programme is a good blueprint for policing if one distils out some of the specifics, such as 50:50 recruiting, which was bespoke for Northern Ireland. It is a very good model for policing.
I want to cover two areas. One follows on from our discussion with the earlier panel on how to resolve the tension between national interest and local demand. You were in the public gallery earlier, so you will have heard the views that were expressed about where conflict and friction can occur between the local delivery of service and national strategic aims. From your experience in Northern Ireland, and perhaps in your role in ACPO, how would you best resolve those issues? Given that we are at the planning stage for a Scottish police service, what lessons can we learn and how can we avoid some of the pitfalls?
Thank you for the easy question, Graeme.
Sorry, but what is a TSG?
Sorry—it is a territorial support group.
I am not sure that I am any wiser after that.
It involves the sort of officers who are trained in public order that Scotland kindly sent down to help to deal with the English riots not that long ago. In Northern Ireland, they are full-time officers who operate in units, whereas many such officers here are not full-time. That is a specialist post. By definition, those officers routinely deal with conflict. We said that we were not prepared to have an officer in that role, or in other specialist roles such as intelligence, with less than three years’ service. Officers had to stay at the front end and learn their trade, for want of a better description, before they moved on.
You mentioned that board meetings were televised. Do you feel that the rehearsal of those arguments in public was healthy?
There is no question about that. Frankly, I do not think that any chief constable thinks that operational independence means that you can do what you want and you simply pay lip service to the police authority. In my experience—and, indeed, in my current role, in which I speak to them all the time—chief constables take the police authorities’ role very seriously. The public aspect is critically important and entirely proper, because it goes to the heart not only of transparency but of the relationship between the police and the press. It should be an obligation on chief constables to speak to the press about what they are doing because it is another form of accountability. Whether they were held in public at each month’s main board meeting or held in the sub-committees, those conversations without question shaped and changed what we did without interfering with the role of the board or the independent chief.
The move to a single Scottish police force will mean that many of the previous organisations and connections will go. What might that mean for the national UK response with regard to information and communications technology, organised crime and other such issues?
I do not think that those connections should or indeed need to go as a result of reorganisation. Without consent, any model of collective policing that involves—crikey—65 million people and 140,000 or 150,000 police officers just will not work. Of course, things can go wrong. For example, in the recent riots, in which my role was not only to keep the Prime Minister informed of what was going on through the Cabinet Office briefing room but to co-ordinate the movement of officers around the country, there came a point where I had a conversation with the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, as a result of which you kindly sent us critical support at a critical time. The situation was tight, but the whole national infrastructure held. I am mindful of the Olympics and, indeed, the G8, when several thousand officers travelled south to north to support policing in Scotland. That kind of collective effort has to survive; it cannot fail.
But you will appreciate that, with the move to a single police force, ACPOS—if there are sufficient numbers to maintain something like ACPOS—and the committees within that structure will change. Should we make it a priority in Scotland to ensure that whatever mechanism exists connects properly with the UK environment?
Again, I do not know what will happen to ACPOS post-event. Although with its 300 or so members, including senior support colleagues, ACPO is far bigger, it, too, is shrinking. Although the law requires each force to have a chief constable and a deputy chief constable, an assistant chief constable might be shared between two forces. Interestingly, however, ACPO and the Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales together account for only about 1.5 per cent of the whole policing organisation, so perhaps we need to think differently about who leads these things. Chief superintendents and superintendents are highly able people who I am sure could take on some of that work for the collective good, but we simply must not allow this effort to fail.
John, do you have a supplementary?
I had, but Sir Hugh covered the point in his final comment. It is all about positions rather than ranks.
I think that we have already decided that rank is not relevant. I have to say that I am still chewing that over.
With regard to the debate about having a sterile corridor between the police and forensic services, what in your view should the chain of command be in that respect?
I note that the plan is for an independent structure. I am not a forensics expert, but I can say that, when I was in the PSNI, I had officers involved in forensic recovery to ensure that there was no confusion about who was doing what. Such work is not beyond the wit of front-line officers; indeed, because of resource issues, we spent considerable effort on training new officers in it at training school. It can be expensive if you do not allow people to make professional judgments about the likelihood of recovery and about what they should be recovering. It would be easy to have a Rolls-Royce model. In a world in which, in my judgment, we are sadly becoming increasingly risk averse and less encouraging of people to take more risk, I can envisage situations in which an expert could require a lot to be done, which would cost the service a lot of money. I have read about and understand the service’s concerns, and I encourage you to listen to them. Could what is proposed work? Yes, of course it could. A great thing about the police is that they will make anything work, but I am not sure whether the numbers add up for a completely independent service.
I am interested in your overview of policing across the United Kingdom. A body that we have not touched on, and which is perhaps an exception to the traditional local authority base of policing, is the Metropolitan Police. My question is similar to Graeme Pearson’s questions about learning lessons. From the ACPO perspective, are there lessons to be learned for Scotland from how the Metropolitan Police balances ministerial command with local accountability?
That is a nice way of reminding me that I came second in the competition for commissioner. Thank you. It is not for me to comment on London, and I am sure that the commissioner would be delighted to attend the committee.
Do you see any difference between London and the rest of England and Wales?
It is simply scale.
Could you say something specifically on consent and community engagement with the police service?
All services are committed to that, but certainly the Met, under all the commissioners whom I can remember, was very much organised around neighbourhood teams led by a sergeant, with a mixed team of police community support officers. Indeed, routinely, whenever those numbers come under threat, there are questions in the House of Commons—not only does Bernard Hogan-Howe have a mayor and a deputy mayor looking at what he is doing, it is not unusual for London MPs to raise issues in the House of Commons about such things as the resourcing of community teams in south London.
The situation would be the same with MSPs in the Scottish Parliament, I think.
Have you found that there is an optimum ratio between police officers and backroom staff that maximises the effectiveness and the financial efficiency of policing?
The short answer is no. In England and Wales, we are seeing an absolute commitment from chiefs to drive money out of anything that is not operations. However, in the complex legal world in which we all operate—I am not an expert on your legal system, but I suspect that the issues that I am about to talk about are similar—it is impossible to run a police service without a substantial back-office capacity. You can do certain things to minimise that, and we can see things going on, such as outsourcing work to civilians rather than having directly employed staff. A lot of effort is being put into finding ways to deliver the back-office functions. However, you have to step back and look at the national picture. Some forces in England—one or two in particular—have more than 50 per cent unsworn staff. If every force has that level of unsworn staff, when we get the next instance of serious disorder, we could be struggling to be able to inform the Prime Minister that we have enough sworn officers to meet our commitments.
We have no further questions, but you might want to speak about issues that you feel we have not touched on.
You took me slightly by surprise by moving straight to the questions, but I think that you asked about all the issues that I wanted to raise.
I think that Graeme Pearson was trying to indicate that he wanted to ask a supplementary question, despite my ruling. He is not getting to ask it, as that would give him a very special relationship with me, which he is not going to have, and the rest of the committee members might also pitch in with questions.
I welcome our third and final panel of witnesses: John Duffy, Scottish secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, and Sarah Duncan, regional organiser and secretary of the Scottish fire committee within Unison.
Good morning. I flagged up this issue with the first witness panel. The FBU’s submission mentions a range of industrial relations practices that reflect individual circumstances within the current eight fire and rescue services. Can you give me some examples of that variety?
Without going into specific details, the current arrangements rely heavily on relationships. There are eight different chief officers and eight different deputies and assistants. We have an internal structure that matches that: we have eight brigade branches throughout Scotland, and brigade secretaries and chairs who interact on a daily basis.
You should try to be happy about it.
Absolutely. I am hopeful that it is an indication of where we are going, rather than where we have been.
Would Ms Duncan like to comment on that as far as her members are concerned?
We have the same issues about being employed by eight separate employers. The divergence in local practices and policies will inevitably cause a bit of tension when we become one service. People are fearful that their terms and conditions might be downgraded and that their good local policies might be changed to take them down to the level of slightly less adequate policies elsewhere.
Among your respective members, will there be pressure for standardisation at national level from groups who are currently employed in one board area and who believe that the locally negotiated terms in another area are superior? Will they expect you to get them up to the same level?
Yes, of course. That is human nature. If people see someone who does the same job as them in a different location being paid more to do it, they will want to be paid at that level. I understand that all the boards have done job evaluation schemes to ensure that jobs are correctly graded internally to minimise problems with equal pay and so on.
Does the financial model work on the basis of a levelling up, a levelling down, or settling somewhere in the middle?
In terms of staff morale and motivation, which will obviously take a dip with all the uncertainty that is caused by merging services, it would not be sensible for people to talk about levelling down terms and conditions. Staff are already concerned about the future of their jobs. If they think that there is any threat to their earning power when, like everyone else in the public sector, they have suffered pay freezes and are suffering from the increased cost of living, you will find it very difficult to motivate staff to go into the new single service with the right attitude and make it work from day one.
I am sure that that is the case.
A factor that must be taken into account for uniformed staff is that a lot of the duplication that is the focus of attention is at the upper end of the organisation. Our membership covers all uniformed staff. Our members work on the whole-time system and the retained-duty system. Some members work in the control rooms and our membership goes through the rank structure from a new firefighter walking through the door on their first day right the way up. A number of our members who are in quite senior posts are concerned that those posts will not exist. We are keen to ensure that, when the music stops and somebody takes the chair away, the individuals are protected. We raised with the Finance Committee that how the shape of the structure is manoeuvred into the future has perhaps not been factored in.
My understanding of your original description is that it is a two-tier system at present. The UK level sets national pay terms and conditions, and the localised level is represented by the present eight-force structure. I presume that we will move to a three-tier system consisting of a UK level, a Scottish level and certain localised elements that you will seek to preserve.
It would be fair to say that the basic pay and conditions will remain at a UK level, as set by the national joint council. National conditions will be standardised across Scotland, but that may result in anomalies, some of which it may be to the advantage of the organisation to keep. For example, local arrangements are made if someone has to travel from their home station to an away station. One journey in particular—between Aberdeen and Elgin—involves a great deal of travel and there are local payments to cover that. It would make absolute sense to maintain such provisions as a local feature within a Scottish environment.
The submissions are rightly detailed—we are talking about people’s livelihoods. Have you provided evidence to the Finance Committee?
We have given some evidence to the Finance Committee, but it was not as detailed as this.
I do not want to duplicate what other committees are doing.
I was interested in the first panel’s discussion of functions and how the bill could provide an opportunity to redefine them. How do you get the balance right between enshrining vital functions and not being too prescriptive?
My colleagues on the first panel made a valid point that the current Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 does not reflect the much wider role that the fire service actually plays. With all due respect to those who drafted the 2005 act, they probably did not foresee that, when they changed the name from fire brigade to fire and rescue, the public would not read the small print, which was that the rescue was from road traffic accidents. It is now the public’s perception that if they get into difficulty and need to be rescued, the fire service will rescue them.
Thank you for that detailed answer.
Chief Officer Sweeney touched on an incident that related to Strathclyde. I will not go into its details, but the sheriff was the first person who made the link between a mineshaft and a building. Prior to that, the additional function order mentioned things such as urban search and rescue, which would be considered as a result of a structure that had collapsed. All the training was based on that.
We have received that clear message from a previous panel.
I think that both John Duffy and Sarah Duncan have commented on discussions with those who have been involved in designing the bill and progressing it over the past few months. What indications have you had thus far about the jobs that will be removed with the likely changes? How many firefighters and members of Unison do you expect to be removed to achieve the savings as part of the amalgamation? What indications about that have you received thus far?
Unison has not been given any numbers for jobs at risk. I understand that we had a meeting with people last week to raise some concerns about the bill, particularly about the position of staff who are currently employed by local authorities to provide services to the fire boards. Their position is pretty unclear. They might well carry out some of their duties for the local authorities and some for the fire and police boards. Are they going to be transferred or not?
What people did you meet? Is it a secret?
No; there was a meeting with someone from the project team to talk about workstreams and the implications for human resources departments.
I suppose that, with around 1,000 non-firefighter staff, you will be able to estimate what some of those figures might mean for the number of posts. Could you share the numbers with us?
No; I do not think that we have done a hard calculation or a head count of the number that would be affected, because there has been no apportionment between the non-uniformed staff and the uniformed staff. If a trade union says that it thinks that 500 or 600 jobs are at risk, that will inflame our members’ opinions. We do not want to do that because we want to make the integration work. It is not in anyone’s interests for us to whip up fears where they should not exist.
Unlike our colleagues in the police service, we do not hear politicians talking about protecting the number of firefighters in every one of their speeches. We would like to hear that even just once; that would be nice.
You were looking straight at me when you said that.
We welcome the fact that the Government has put into its proposals a commitment to protecting the front line but—this has already been said—the outline business case has been roundly turned on by everyone. Some of the numbers that are in it simply do not allow for the protection of the front line and financial savings; it will have to be one or the other.
That all makes a lot of sense. It makes sense to start with the design of the service and then to work through the consequences for the people who work in it. Is the timetable that has been set adequate to allow that to be done properly and in a way that produces savings without an arbitrary cut in the number of posts that reduces the efficiency of the service?
The response to that question would be, “At what point do you want the savings?” Undoubtedly, there are savings to be made from restructuring. I would argue that the fire service has never stopped changing and modernising. Taking 1 April 2013 as a snapshot, some things will be in place that will make it look and feel like a single service, but a great deal of work will still be going on in the background to move to a single organisation. As I mentioned, we will, no doubt, have people in the wrong place. There is currently no facility within our pension scheme for early retirement, we have an undertaking from the Scottish Government that there will be no compulsory redundancies and there is a very limited pot of money for voluntary redundancies. I am not sure how that can be manoeuvred quickly. If you are looking for a longer-term saving, there are savings to be made from reshaping the service so that there is more capacity at the front end and less capacity at the upper end. The question is when you want the savings to be delivered.
Your written submission makes it clear that you see a scrutiny role for the Scottish Parliament, but you do not say an awful lot about the size of the board, its membership or what input of local experience it should have. Perhaps you can clarify for us your views on the board.
Another of my lines that was stolen by the first panel of witnesses was that the board should be about quality, not quantity. Experience not just of the fire service but of scrutiny is vital, and the board must contain people who know the questions to ask. The board will need some members with fire service experience—they will know where the answers are hidden—but it will also need members with experience of scrutinising accounts and the like. That is the balance to be struck, and we would be resistant to seeing the board as a care home for elderly chief officers, for example. A broad range of experience will be required on the board to ensure proper scrutiny.
What do you envisage being in the local plan?
At the moment, each service has an integrated risk management plan. Some of the services create a local plan that is based on an individual station and sets out what that station will do in order to meet the overall plan. We see that happening on a different scale. Instead of there being service plans, there will be a national Scottish plan, and each station will continue to develop its individual work, because that varies from station to station. The work does not necessarily vary from service to service or from one local authority area to another, but two neighbouring stations could have quite different risks. Planning must be based at station level. As stations are grouped in local authority areas, however, it is right that the planning that is done at station level is pulled together so that the councillors can see what the stations in their area are trying to deliver.
As well as all the recommendations from the FBU about the need to obtain the widest possible spectrum of advice and professional input, it is important that the board reflects the geographical diversity of Scotland. Unison has concerns that the board is too small to ensure that there is proper representation from all parts of the country. We think that 11 is too few, and I think that we are suggesting that there be up to 20 people on the board, which would still be manageable and would ensure that every area is represented. The majority of people on the board should be democratically accountable. We think that the principle of local democratic accountability should not be lost when you move to a national service. Ensuring that ward councillors have a power of scrutiny in relation to their local station meets that principle, but we think that that approach needs to feed upwards and become a fundamental principle of the composition of the board as well.
We need to think about whether we are looking at representation or the scrutiny of a national fire and rescue plan. We have raised that issue with the police board as well. Having so many local members on the board creates difficulties because, for a start, they do not all agree with one another. I do not know how you pick a local member who will represent the thoughts of their council.
When we discussed the matter with some of those interested in policing accountability, they pointed out that policing services might well be delivered on a regional basis and therefore there might be a mechanism for regional representation on a national board. Could that apply to fire services? If half the members of a national board were to be locally accountable, how would that accountability be achieved?
Currently, when local accountability from local authorities is needed on national bodies, it is done through COSLA. The councillors, through COSLA, have their fights, and then represent the body. COSLA representatives are on the ministerial advisory group, so why create a new mechanism when there is already a system in place?
Are all councils members of COSLA?
I think that they all are now.
There was a while there when they were not. It comes and goes.
Yes.
We are less concerned about geographical representation than about governance. Ultimately, the Parliament has a role to play—that has been referred to. In my time as a senior office bearer in the Fire Brigades Union, I have been involved in preparing documents for a number of parliamentary debates, and there is a clear interest in the Parliament in what the fire and rescue service does. You are democratically accountable to the people of Scotland, and this is about the ability of the Parliament to scrutinise the legislation, the framework document that will drive the strategic plan, and the strategic plan itself.
Yes, you state that in your written submission.
We have covered many of the items that I wanted to question you on. You have just talked about democratic governance, and on page 5 of your submission you present options for the Parliament’s involvement. I do not seek to put words into your mouth, but you mentioned a “veneer” of scrutiny. Are you frightened that the bill replicates such a veneer and hence you want the Parliament involved, or is there another reason for wanting that involvement? I would be grateful to hear from both members of the panel.
You have hit the nail on the head. We do not want to import our current scrutiny levels and systems. Audit Scotland is clearly in vogue, but in its 2007 report it considered what the previous fire boards had done and came up with two key points: the lack of understanding of the service, and the fact that there was an overreliance on the word of the chief officer. To address the lack of understanding, all the boards were given training, by the chief officer, so dealing with one problem has exacerbated the other.
Even we can see that there is something ironic about that.
Absolutely. A councillor’s understanding of what they are expected to scrutinise the chief on has been derived from information given to them by that chief. That fails straight away.
I am interested in Mr Duffy’s comments in his written submission about firefighting at sea and the cuts in the coastguard service. Will you expand on the possible resource implications? What resources already exist in the fire service, what might you require and what might happen in the longer term if there are further stresses to the coastguard service budget?
In the fire station in Lerwick, there is a room allocated to firefighting at sea, with all the equipment hanging up. However, after 1 April, it will be quite sad because there will be nobody to use it, as there will be no funding. Funding for that came from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which ultimately means the Department for Transport in Westminster. That funding has been cut so, in effect, there is now no budget. The element for the fire service was about £140,000—it was not a huge budget.
Sorry, but you mentioned the Waverley route. It is going fine, believe you me.
Yes, but my point is that, if we had not lost the infrastructure in the first place, we would not need to put it back now.
I am with you there, absolutely. You are my friend. On you go.
The decisions on the coastguard were made elsewhere, but the Parliament must consider how to replace that service. Can we replace it if we let the infrastructure go? Could the fire and rescue service assist with that and take on the function as part of the wider rescue remit?
This might sound mildly party political, but if we take forward your recommendations to enhance the sea rescue service, another place may decide that it is a good opportunity to cut completely the coastguard service, as it is known at present. We would end up with a longer-term funding problem, simply because another place deems it to be appropriate to cut the funding completely as we set the service up.
I will try to avoid party politics—
Heaven forfend that the Parliament should do that.
We would need to consider the fact that there is a referendum coming up and whether that would change our entire approach to any of those things.
We will leave it at that.
That is perhaps the answer to my question about functionality, but I also want to touch on the command and control elements. Since I joined the Justice Committee, I have learned more about and been very impressed by the gold command structure and how big incidents are dealt with. I also understand that between half and two thirds of non-uniformed staff will go through natural wastage, and about a third of the command and control staff will leave.
The short answer is no and no. Some of the figures for command and control are contained in the outline business case; I think that that is where the figure of a third of members in control rooms comes from. However, that does not take account of the fact that, in order to do that, you would need to make substantial capital changes to the disposition of control rooms at present.
We could always put in the phrase “inter alia”.
Well, you could.
We, too, think that command and control cannot be maintained at the current level if support staff are cut by a half to two thirds. As I said, they are as essential to the service’s smooth running as the uniformed staff. For example, they maintain the stations and the vehicles, procure supplies and equipment for people and ensure that the staff are paid. You can get rid of half the staff, but it will not mean that half their tasks will disappear with them; they will still need to be done, and that will simply increase the workload and pressure on remaining staff. As we have seen in the national health service and local government, if you cut too far, too fast and too deeply during the transition period when back-office functions are being reorganised, efficiency declines all round. We should be learning lessons from other service redesigns and how services have been integrated and shared in other parts of the public sector to ensure that we do not make the same mistakes when we create the single fire service.
I thank the witnesses for their responses, in particular the FBU for its positive suggestions for the future.
Chapter 9 of the 2005 act sets out the Scottish ministers’ ability to establish a national negotiating body in Scotland. If you had more than one service and you were to bring your terms and conditions negotiations to Scotland, you would need to have something in place to ensure consistency across the country. We are aware of the argument made by the bill’s drafters that if there are no multiple services you do not need a negotiating body; one employer will negotiate with the employees. As we represent the uniformed employees, we are obviously interested in that relationship.
There is a precedent in NHS Scotland whereby the partnership arrangements are in statute. That industrial relations model has been widely praised and has been in very successful operation for 11 years. It seems to Unison that we have an important opportunity, when we are setting up the new organisation, to make absolutely clear the basis on which industrial relations will proceed. Being more prescriptive in the bill would help that. It would build on the partnership working that is already taking place in the service.
Do you both think that the bill should specifically mention agreed facilities for union officials?
Yes.
Yes.
Never ask a question when you do not know the answer.
There is currently a very high level of trust between firefighters and the public. Firefighters carry a warrant card and have a range of powers of entry and, at an operational incident or in support of an operational incident, they can enter a property without a warrant. We do not believe that that level of trust between the public and firefighters is reflected in the current discipline regulations that we go under.
My next question is, again, for both of you. There is a suggestion in the FBU submission regarding the final appeal over discipline and grievance. Can you comment on that, please? Is that an issue for Unison as well?
It is less of an issue for us because our members do not find themselves in the kind of situations that John Duffy has described—positions of trust in the homes of members of the public and in businesses. We expect that there would be a final right of appeal for our members to the board, which is their ultimate employer. That is the standard that is applied elsewhere in the public sector.
We currently have a range whereby staff in some services have a right of appeal to their employer and staff in other services do not—in effect, they are dismissed by an officer and their appeal goes to an officer. We think that it is a basic right for someone to have an appeal to their employer, which is why we included that in our submission. We think that the ultimate appeal should go to the board.
My final question is about the on-going discussions with the fire service about the various workstreams to bring about a single service. Do you both believe that you are sufficiently engaged in that process with management—if I can use that term—or is there room for improvement?
I have only recently taken up these responsibilities and my personal experience is that the engagement is good, although it is at an early stage. As we move towards day one, next April, things will get more tense, but I hope that the good working relationships that the unions have had over several years will be maintained.
It is appropriate to congratulate our senior lead officers within reform on the approach that they have taken as they have engaged consistently with us over the past few months.
I have a point of clarification. Mr Duffy, you talked about the burden of proof and then you went on to the standard of proof. You gave the example of the theft of a Rolex. You said that the standard of proof was the balance of probability, not beyond reasonable doubt, which is the standard in criminal law. However, the burden of proof is a different issue. Who is the burden of proof on? Is it on the firefighter or the householder? I am not quite sure what point you were making.
It used to be the case that an internal discipline case was, in effect, a court martial. There was a high level of order to the process and it was very clear. For example, someone would be told that they would be charged with a specific breach of conduct—I think that there were 13 breaches that it was possible to be charged with. Now, under the ACAS code of practice, someone can go into the room thinking that they have been accused of one thing, but it changes halfway through. We are not calling for the bill to be prescriptive, but we are looking for protections to be built in.
I just wanted to give you the chance to clarify your point.
Interestingly, despite all the discussions that we have had about borders and lines on maps, when someone dials 999, those boundaries just disappear. There is no restriction to prevent crews from crossing between fire authority areas or from going to and from England. There are certain fire stations in the Borders where the fire engine will come out of the doors in Scotland and will take a route through England to get to an incident in Scotland.
That is right.
Boundaries make no difference at the moment, and we do not see them making a difference in the future.
It will be reassuring for people who might think that there could be a big stramash about the issue to hear that, operationally, you do not think that the situation will change.
I hope that committee members agree that, on the basis of the last two evidence sessions—particularly the evidence that we got last week from the Auditor General for Scotland and the worries over accountability and governance that we heard about today—there might be some value in SPICe producing an options paper on how democratic oversight of governance might be delivered in the future.
We are all nodding in agreement. That is fine.
Can I supplement the question that I was going to ask Sir Hugh Orde? Would you allow a letter to be sent to Sir Hugh asking him whether he feels that, in the future, there will still be a need for a strategic command course delivered from Bramshill and whether he sees any value in it being part of the selection criteria in a future Scottish police service? I am just suggesting that we ask for his view.
I do not need to write to him to ask that because it is on the record. We can simply point out to him that he can respond, if he wants to, in additional evidence, which anyone can provide at any time.
Thank you.
Well done, Graeme. I must admit that you find ways of getting things under my radar.
Without a warrant.
Yes.
An elephant never forgets; neither does Graeme Pearson.
No, I am not going to enter into a discussion about, “Let’s ask this and let’s ask that.”
It is the same question.
The evidence is on the record, so if the staff associations want to comment on it, they can. I will not write to them. I am sure that they will look at the record as they consider their evidence. Anyone who wants to comment on any evidence from any witness to this committee can do so through supplementary evidence.
Previous
Attendance