The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-15036, in the name of David Stewart, on protecting front-line fire and rescue services. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes the reports that the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has said that it is “gravely concerned” that budget cuts will continue to impact on the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service budget and have a detrimental effect on 999 response times and the vital lifesaving service that firefighters provide; notes claims that 300 fewer firefighters are on duty since the national service was created in 2013; understands that reassurance was given by ministers that the establishment of a single fire and rescue service would not result in reductions to frontline services; notes the FBU’s concern at the “unrelenting pressure” to save money, which, it is claimed, is “impacting on the delivery of frontline services”; considers that the job that firefighters and support staff carry out is invaluable to communities throughout the Highlands and Islands and across Scotland; condemns what it sees as the Scottish Government’s underfunding of the service, and notes calls for ministers to take immediate steps to protect the future of frontline firefighters and the service’s support staff.
17:09
First, I thank all the members who have stayed behind this evening to support the debate and those who have signed my motion. To those who have not signed it, I say that I am a great believer that sinners may repent in the future, and I look forward to a few sinners who are in the chamber signing up at 6 o’clock.
I expect that there is not one person in the chamber who underestimates the job that our firefighters do day after day responding to industrial disasters, terrorist attacks, floods and chemical spills. They keep our communities safe in the event of fires, through their vital preventative work, through their crucial role in attending road traffic accidents and in many other ways.
When the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service was created, the Scottish Government gave the Parliament a clear and categoric assurance that the introduction of the single service would not result in the loss of front-line jobs, yet on 28 April last year chief officer Alasdair Hay advised the Justice Committee that the service, in an effort to live within its budget, had worked with the Fire Brigades Union to agree a resource-based crewing model that would reduce the 3,890 whole-time firefighter posts to 3,709—a reduction of 181 posts.
The service had to reduce its cost base by £48.2 million in the first three years, and the situation was made much more difficult because the service is not VAT exempt. I will touch on this again later, but the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is the only fire and rescue service in the UK that pays VAT on goods and services. It pays about £10 million per annum in VAT, which is equivalent to 350 firefighter posts.
In November last year, the Fire Brigades Union submitted a written statement to the Justice Committee noting its grave concerns that budget cuts will have a detrimental impact on 999 response times. The union stated:
“There has been a continual year on year reduction in the numbers of frontline firefighters since the decision to introduce a single SFRS was taken in 2011 due to sustained periods of recruitment freezes.”
It stated that
“There are now over 400 fewer full time firefighters than there were in 2010 and almost 300 fewer than there were in 2013”,
when the national service was introduced. The Scottish ministers assured us that that would not happen.
The FBU claims that “unrelenting pressure” to save money is impacting on front-line services, and it states that the reductions have inevitably affected the staffing levels and the ability to adequately crew all the front-line fire appliances all the time. I understand that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service took a decision to remove up to four front-line appliances each day, in part from the west service delivery area, which was formerly known as Strathclyde Fire and Rescue.
In January 2014, a decision was taken to reduce the number of fire control rooms in Scotland from eight to three, with the control rooms in Inverness, Aberdeen, Fife, Falkirk and Dumfries being marked for closure while those in Johnstone, Edinburgh and Dundee would remain open. With my colleague Rhoda Grant, I fought hard against the closure of the Inverness control room, which serves the Highlands and Islands, and I know that many of my Labour colleagues—and indeed MSPs from across the Parliament, including Mary Scanlon—also fought against the closures in their respective areas.
The decision still provokes controversy. Indeed, some have argued that control room staff are front-line staff, too, being the first point of contact for members of the public in emergency situations. We have been assured that technology is in place to safely allow the closures to take place, but I ask about the loss of the local knowledge that local staff build up. In my region of the Highlands and Islands—which, as members will know, is the size of Belgium—years of specialist geographical and logistical knowledge have been built up by staff, but it will soon be lost to the service in the Highlands and Islands when the Inverness control room closes.
The police control room at Bilston Glen, which was recently criticised in a watchdog report, was unable to take 999 calls for several hours last month due to technical difficulties in the early hours of the morning that meant that 999 and 101 calls had to be delivered to other centres. It is fortunate that, on that occasion, no tragedies resulted, but if a similar technical difficulty was to occur with fire control, lives would almost certainly be lost.
The FBU believes that the key motivation behind the creation of a single service was to
“protect and improve local services, despite financial cuts, by stopping duplication of support services—like control rooms—and not cutting front-line services”.
However, front-line services have been cut in a bid to balance the books, and the number of front-line firefighters has reduced by around 10 per cent over the past five years. The FBU states:
“Any further reduction of firefighters beyond this shall have an unacceptable impact on public and firefighter safety and our ability to continue to deliver the key benefits of reform; Improved frontline outcomes, equitable access to specialist resources, improved engagement with local Authorities.”
In June last year, my Labour colleague Ian Murray MP tabled an amendment to the Scotland Bill to ensure a review of the controversy surrounding VAT liability for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Police Scotland. The VAT liabilities arose from the Scottish Government’s reorganisation of both services. At the time, the Treasury explicitly advised the Scottish Government that its approach would mean the emergency services losing VAT refunds. However, despite the warnings, the Government pressed ahead with the reforms, costing Scotland’s Fire and Rescue Service millions of pounds.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am in my last minute, but if you allow it, Presiding Officer, I will take the intervention.
Of course, in the circumstances.
I am very grateful to Mr Stewart for taking an intervention at this late stage. I just want to ask him whether he recognises that the Labour Party supported the Government in the reform of the police and fire services. I appreciate that there were issues at the time around the long-term business case, as members have said, but in fact the Labour Party supported the reforms.
That point is not in dispute; the point is to get the VAT right. My colleague Rhoda Grant wrote to the Treasury, and a Treasury official responded:
“In 2011 the Scottish Government were explicitly advised of this potential consequence of changing from regional police forces to a single authority as part of the proposed revised funding model for Police Scotland. At the time they took the decision to make these reforms they would have known they would no longer be eligible for VAT refunds as a result.”
That decision was expensive: it costs £10 million a year.
It is clear that the job of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is to keep our communities safe and to save lives, and that it needs adequate resources to do that. We have a service of dedicated, skilled, front-line staff, both firefighters and control room staff. I call on the Scottish Government to take immediate steps to protect the future of front-line firefighters and the service’s support staff. The Government should not just take my word on the matter: a YouGov survey showed that 82 per cent of respondents thought the fire and rescue service was doing a fantastic job. I ask members to please support the heroes in our fire services and ask the Government to look again at the current model.
We now move to the open debate, with speeches of four minutes.
17:17
I begin by acknowledging that the Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs was not in his post at the time when much of the arrangements for the reform of the service came into play. It therefore might be helpful for me to share some of my experience of that time.
There is no doubt that the Scottish Government knew from the outset that £10 million was to be paid in VAT. Although, unfortunately, no business plan was provided, ministers gave an assurance that that £10 million would be recovered at some time in the future. However, I think that we knew at that time—and we know it from our experience since then—that that prediction had no basis in fact. Indeed, we are no closer to having the VAT issue resolved today than we were a decade ago, when the whole journey began.
Irrespective of that £10 million, the key issue that we are dealing with today is the pressure on the fire service from an unreasonable target being set for cuts, which ensures that the fire service has to not only pay the £10 million but find a way of replenishing savings from an ever-smaller baseline. As a result, the economies of scale have evaporated and the slimming down of so-called support services has been completed. We now have, as my colleague David Stewart said, 400 fewer full-time firefighters than in 2010 and, within that number, we have 300 fewer firefighters than in 2013.
First, I think that Mr Stewart said the figure was 350, rather the 400 that the member referred to, but I do not know whether I have got that right.
On the service not being VAT exempt, who does the member blame for what is happening now? Does he blame the Scottish National Party Government, or does he blame the Conservative Government?
I do not enjoy the notion of blaming. The point is who is responsible, and the person who is responsible—or, rather, the entity that is responsible—is very firmly the Scottish Government.
The Scottish Government has brought about a 20 per cent cut in the budget for the Scottish fire service, when the global budget would suggest that a cut of nearer 10 per cent would have been applied. That is before anybody takes account of the priority that should be attached to the fire service and what it does for us.
The fire service has also taken on additional work. It has responsibility for responding to cardiac arrests; it has a greater involvement in the response to the terrorist threat; it is involved in training in relation to climate change; it engages in the junior firefighter schemes that are so important in tackling youth reoffending; and it is involved in a great deal of fire inspections and enforcement.
Rather than looking to blame someone—and we do not blame the current minister—we need some realism from the entire Scottish establishment. If we are to have emergency services that act on our behalf to save life, protect property and provide a safer environment, we ask, as David Stewart eloquently does in his motion, that the Government should review the current situation and realise the impact that it is having on front-line services.
Instead of adhering to political one-liners, the Government should adopt a realistic approach in acknowledging that we have gone too far, and begin to support the fire service, and the men and women who work in that service, to ensure that they achieve what they want to do on our behalf—deliver a world-class service for Scotland and its communities.
17:21
I did not sign the motion and I am not repenting. I do not consider myself a sinner, for several reasons. The first reason is that David Stewart said that there are 350 fewer firefighters, his motion said 300 and now we have Graeme Pearson who has said 400. We have to be factual: what is it?
One thing I know is that the fire chief, when he came in front of the Justice Committee, said that we are losing £10 million that the Treasury is keeping in London. That would fund 350 firefighters.
Would the member give way?
Yes, if the member will wait one second. The Labour motion of Mr Stewart refers to 300 fewer firefighters. The fire chief said that we could have 350 firefighters. To my mind, the maths is very easy: 50 extra firefighters could be funded. We are a lot better off than Labour members think we are.
The shortfall in the number of firefighters that we are talking about here depends on the date that one measures the various establishments. Would the member accept that the key issue is that it was always known in the business plan, for what it was worth, that £10 million would have to be paid in VAT because of the precedent that would have been set if the rule had been changed?
Now I am going to come to David Stewart. He tells us to repent because we are sinners. Then he tells us that one of the reasons is the VAT issue. I have the motion in front of me but nowhere does it refer to the VAT. How come? Is the VAT issue not important enough?
When, again, the fire chief was asked by the Justice Committee how big the issue of VAT was, he said that it was “massive”. That is the word that he used—“massive”—but it is so massive that Labour and Mr Stewart do not include it in the motion. Fair enough, he did speak about it, but he knew about the issue at the time that he wrote the motion—we all knew, right from the start, that there was a possibility that the UK Conservative Government would withdraw some money from Police Scotland and from the Fire and Rescue Service.
We knew that that could happen, and not only the Scottish Government but the Scottish Parliament and the Justice Committee have asked very strongly for that money back. What are we actually talking about when we talk about detrimental effects and when we ask about the Scottish Government’s response?
Let us talk instead about the numbers of firefighters. There is a new model for the fire and rescue services in Scotland, and a number for whole-time firefighters has been set out in it. That figure is 3,709, and as far as I know we are still exceeding that. How come that has not been mentioned in the motion?
Going back to the VAT issue, I note that the two Labour members who have just spoken forgot to mention all the exemptions that the Conservative Government and the Westminster Parliament are giving other organisations. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is the only one in the whole of the UK that has to pay VAT. The situation is ridiculous. The organisations that are exempted include not only the BBC and the Metropolitan Police, but the Olympic legacy organisation and the transport agency Highways England, both of which were granted VAT exemption after 2013.
When Pat Watters, chair of the SFRS board, wrote to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and every Scottish MP, the reply that he received was that there were regulations and exempt organisations but the SFRS was not one of them. Why? No reason was given. As I have said, VAT is a massive issue.
Perhaps I can finish on what I was going to say, which is how much the chamber supports our firefighters, particularly after the flooding in Ballater. Our firefighters, both retained and whole time, are doing a fantastic job in Ballater, Inverurie and across Aberdeenshire, and they have my thanks.
17:27
First of all, Presiding Officer, I must apologise to you and the minister, because I am due at a meeting of the cross-party group on violence against women at 5.30.
However, I wanted to speak in this debate, and I congratulate Dave Stewart on lodging the motion and giving us an opportunity to raise important issues on behalf of firefighters, who, as we all know, put their lives on the line every day not out of heroism but through an absolute commitment to their profession and our communities. I also want to express support and respect for the Fire Brigades Union not only for its great work in this country but for its ethos of international solidarity, as illustrated by its on-going work to support the firefighters of Nablus.
The least firefighters deserve is to feel that their service is supported, valued and prioritised. I agree with Christian Allard that the VAT issue is important, but it cannot be used as an excuse for not addressing the problems that are highlighted in the motion.
In the midst of the recent havoc caused by storm Desmond, the FBU issued a call for cuts to services to be halted, and it said that a significant reduction in firefighter numbers would hamper fire and rescue service responses to major events as well as have an effect on more routine work. Various people have dealt with the numbers; as Graeme Pearson said, the numbers are down 400 since 2010 and 300 since the establishment of the single service. Of course, the result is an increasing reliance on overtime and, as Dave Stewart has reminded us, appliances being taken out of service.
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the FBU, put it this way:
“The Scottish Government told us that shifting to the single fire and rescue service would protect front line services but since then we have seen further cuts and job losses ... Firefighters are proud to serve our communities. They want to be out there saving lives and making life safer for people but cuts on this scale inevitably undermine what we are trying to do.”
We have to address the problems. We can express different views on who is to blame, but that is not really the issue; the issue is highlighting the problems and the Government taking responsibility for an area in which it is clearly the responsible Government when it comes to taking action to address the problems.
In a submission to the Justice Committee, which I think Dave Stewart referred to, the FBU went into some of the problems in more detail. It talked about not only the number of firefighters but the control room closures, which have resulted in fewer staff dealing with more calls, and the increasing incident response times, as a result of which it called for national response standards.
The increasing incident response times are obviously mainly related to reductions in personnel, but a lack of appropriate equipment is also an issue. I was interested to read about some of the problems with equipment in the report entitled “Response & Resilience: Review of Specialist Equipment”, which was presented to a committee of the City of Edinburgh Council in February of last year. Some equipment was said to be
“below an acceptable standard for a national fire and rescue service”,
and reference was made to inconsistencies in the type and standard of equipment across former regional service areas. The single service will offer positive advantages in dealing with some of those inconsistencies, so no one is saying that, in itself, the shift to a single service was a bad move, although it is clear that it has had unfortunate consequences, which have been highlighted in the debate.
The other issue that comes out in that report is the significant training requirements that exist. If personnel numbers are being squeezed, it is difficult to find the necessary time for that.
Those are important issues that needed to be raised, and I congratulate Dave Stewart on doing so. It is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that firefighters are equipped, resourced and valued. I support Dave Stewart’s motion and again apologise for having to leave—although as the speaker at the meeting at 5.30 is the minister’s boss, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, I am sure that he will forgive me for going to it.
17:31
I congratulate David Stewart on securing the debate. I am not going to argue about the figures, which I was not entirely sure about. I supported the motion in order to allow us to have a full discussion of the single fire and rescue service in the chamber, because there are clearly issues with it.
It used to be the case that water was the solution for a fireman; now it seems that water is the problem. On that note, I point out that we should not talk about firefighters, because it is a fire and rescue service. I commend each and every man and woman who came to the rescue in Inverurie and Ballater and elsewhere in Scotland. I would like to correct my colleagues and talk about people who provide a fire and rescue service; they are not just there to put out fires.
Christian Allard discussed the question of who is at fault. Graeme Pearson was right to knock that down.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, I will not.
I suggest to Christian Allard that he read the Audit Scotland report on the issue, the figures in which have been acknowledged by the Scottish Government. If he read that report, he would not need to argue.
Christian Allard rose—
I will give way briefly.
Mary Scanlon is very nice to take an intervention. She said that she signed Mr Stewart’s motion. If the VAT issue had been included in the motion, would she have signed it?
The VAT issue was well known before the police forces merged and before the fire and rescue services merged. I gave my explanation on the number of firefighters, which Mr Allard was arguing about. I have no more to say on that. However, I think that it is appropriate that we are addressing the issue of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service’s budget.
The Public Audit Committee, of which I am a member, has looked at the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, which is trying to make substantial savings. The key message in Audit Scotland’s report of May last year was that the service did not have a long-term financial strategy—such a strategy is urgently required—and that there was a potential funding gap of £42.7 million. We should forget the VAT issue, be realistic and look at the state that the service is in.
Given that, last year, staff costs amounted to 79 per cent of the service’s budgeted gross expenditure, it is understandable that the FBU, staff and the SFRS are concerned about the fact that the service is having to consider more serious front-line cuts in order to address the significant funding gap. Between 2012 and 2020, there will be a 31 per cent real-terms fall in the budget. Who is responsible for that? Mr Allard should know. Net savings of £328 million are expected by 2027. That is all in the Audit Scotland report.
When the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service’s chair and chief officer came before the Public Audit Committee, I spoke about retained firefighters. David Stewart will understand that we have a higher number of retained and voluntary firefighters in the Highlands than anywhere else in Scotland. In the Inverness area alone, vacancies of more than 30 per cent were highlighted at the time.
Retained firefighters’ wages and conditions of service were set up in the 1950s. Given that people must give a commitment of 90 to 120 hours, Pat Watters and Alasdair Hay promised that they would review the position and come back to the Public Audit Committee by November 2015. We are still waiting. I see the minister indicating that that has been done. I certainly have not heard that and I was the one who asked about the matter, but the review is an opportunity for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to look forward.
Now that I have criticised Pat Watters and Alasdair Hay, I will commend them for taking initiatives such as the one with Highlands and Islands Airports, whereby firefighters at the airports are qualifying to work as retained duty system firefighters. Another success is in Lochinver, where the station had significant problems in maintaining crew numbers. After extensive local consultation, 12 potential new entrants came forward.
It would take too long to look at all the vacancies throughout the Highlands, but if that exercise can be done in Lochinver, it can also be done in places such as Bettyhill, Bonar Bridge, Buchie, Cannich, Forres, Grantown and many others that have between five and 10 vacancies. That is becoming a serious level.
As we approach the single Scottish Fire and Rescue Service’s third anniversary, I put on record my respect and admiration for every person at the front line and every member of staff. They must be commended for their recent wonderful and fabulous work, which was carried out sensitively, throughout areas of Scotland that were affected by flooding.
17:37
I just want to make a couple of points. It is good that Dave Stewart was able to secure the debate. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is facing huge budget cuts at the same time as demand is increasing. One demand is the increasing number of older people. We have seen successful campaigns, such as the sloppy slipper campaign, where older people are able to swap their old slippers for new slippers, to try to minimise falls. Another demand is flooding. Also, at a community planning partnership that I attended in Dundee, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service representative mentioned increasing demand due to welfare reform. Therefore, three different aspects are increasing demand while the service is facing shrinking budgets.
I will echo Mary Scanlon’s point about the Audit Scotland report that was published last year. It revealed a £43 million cut to the SFRS. It spends 80 per cent of its budget on staff.
I congratulate the member on participating in a second debate on the same day as she made her maiden speech. She has just congratulated Mary Scanlon. I am a bit confused. There seems to be an alliance between the Conservatives and Labour on the motion. Is it not a bit strange that the VAT issue was not included in the motion? Was that to get the Conservatives backing?
I was reiterating what Mary Scanlon had said about the Audit Scotland report; I was not even discussing VAT. The main issue is the £43 million-worth of cuts, and the Scottish Government is responsible for those.
The FBU has estimated that there has been a reduction of 449 firefighters, which is a 6 per cent cut. We are looking at increasing demand, with the service being more stretched, so the concern is that fire prevention will go down its list of priorities.
Thank you; well done.
I call on Paul Wheelhouse to wind up the debate. Minister, you have seven minutes or thereby.
17:39
I begin by saying that I whole-heartedly agree with the praise for the men and women of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service that we have heard in this afternoon’s speeches from all members. I know that there will be differences of opinion, which I will cover in the rest of the debate, but I welcome the strong and heartfelt support across the chamber for the hard-working and brave men and women of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.
Members will be aware that reform of Scotland’s fire and rescue services was proposed by this Government. Parliament agreed the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill back in June 2012, a position that was supported by the Labour Party. I do not make that point to cause rancour in the chamber, but I think that it is important in the context of the VAT issue. All of us in the chamber knew that VAT would be an issue, and yet other parties—although not necessarily all parties—supported the bill. I mean that just as a factual point.
Will the minister take an intervention?
I will, briefly.
The VAT was an issue long before the Scottish Government proposed the merger of the police service and the fire and rescue service. It should have been sorted out and accommodated for, rather than being complained about three years later.
Indeed. I was making the slightly different point that, collectively, we were all aware of the issue, so it is not a surprise. I accept Mrs Scanlon’s point but, equally, parties supported the bill knowing that VAT would be an issue, and, to be fair, all parties were aware that we were contesting the issue throughout. That is not to criticise Mrs Scanlon but to say that it is the nature of the debate.
One of the key aims of fire reform was to protect and improve local services, despite financial cuts that we faced as a Government. For the record, I point out that, although blame has been apportioned around the chamber, we might not be in the situation that we are in but for the public funding squeeze that we all face at this time, which has necessitated difficult choices being made.
With the reform, we wanted to stop duplication and improve front-line outcomes.
Will the minister take an intervention?
I will.
The point that we have made during this debate is that the fire service has taken a disproportionate amount of cuts. Had there been cuts across the board at a similar level, the service would not face the cutbacks that it currently does.
I understand the point that the member is making, but for a period of over 10 years there have been reductions in the number of firefighters in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the legacy services. It has been a long-running issue.
The objectives of reform included trying to remove duplication, take out costs where they could be taken out and protect front-line firefighters’ jobs.
In connection with that, I would like to say—although I do not want to get into semantics—that the commitment was given to protect front-line services and not front-line jobs, but clearly all of us had in mind trying to protect front-line jobs as best we could in the reforms.
Three years have passed, and, after the creation of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, the Scottish Government continues its commitment to the aims of reform. Despite the UK Government’s continued approach to austerity, the Scottish Government has protected the SFRS revenue budget in cash terms as part of the forthcoming 2016-17 budget—should that be approved by Parliament, of course.
That is an outcome that the service’s chief officer, Alasdair Hay, described as being manageable. It is not necessarily desirable—I accept that—but it is manageable, and it will enable SFRS to continue to play a vital role in protecting our communities.
For its part, the Scottish Government has consistently argued for an alternative to the UK Government’s austerity measures, and I would like to repeat the assurance that we remain committed to investing in Scotland’s infrastructure and public services.
Will the minister take an intervention?
If I can make some progress, I will bring the member back in.
I would also remind the chamber that, as Christian Allard said, the SFRS is the only fire service in the United Kingdom that is unable to recover VAT—I know that we have covered that extensively in the debate—and it is liable for an annual cost of slightly in excess of £10 million per annum. Her Majesty’s Treasury has rejected our repeated requests for the SFRS to be able to recover VAT; indeed the Deputy First Minister raised the issue with the chief secretary again a little over a week ago. It places unnecessary additional financial pressure on the service at a time when our financial resources are already stretched.
Over the period for which Audit Scotland looked at the “funding gap”, as it put it, of £43 million, which Lesley Brennan referred to—by the way I congratulate her on her speech; I am not sure whether it was her maiden speech, but I welcome Lesley Brennan to the chamber and look forward to debating with her over the months ahead—financial resources were stretched. If we took that £10.3 million over a number of years, in aggregate, it would go a substantial way toward plugging the £43 million gap.
I will give way to Mary Scanlon if she wishes to speak.
In relation to the £43 million funding gap, according to Audit Scotland there are “no protected areas”. The Government is not even protecting front-line services, according to Audit Scotland, and ministers have confirmed that. Will the minister tell us whether the long-term financial strategy that the Auditor General for Scotland said last May was urgently needed is now in place?
The long-term financial strategy is under development by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. It is a matter for the service, which responded positively to the Audit Scotland report—
Three years!
Mary Scanlon is intervening from a sedentary position. It is worth reminding her that the SFRS has delivered the expected savings and continues to respond effectively to everything that is asked of it. I remind her that, as I said, the chief officer described the 2016-17 budget as a manageable settlement. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is delivering the long-term financial strategy that has been asked of it, and we will see the strategy in the course of the year, alongside a revised framework for the service.
Despite all the pressures that I described, the creation of a single Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has been a success—we are losing sight of that in the debate. I am not aware of a single occasion since the inception of the service when it has not responded to an incident with the required resources. That will continue.
We need only consider the recent extreme weather events to find examples of the SFRS being able strategically to position and mobilise its resources across the entire country according to rapidly changing risk and demand, without wrangling over whose resources are used and how money is recovered from different legacy areas.
That is extremely important. The service was able to pre-deploy water rescue teams from Inverness, Elgin, Perth, Dundee, Stirling and Motherwell to where they were most needed in the north—for example in Ballater, which Christian Allard mentioned—and it assisted with hundreds of evacuations and rescues. I welcome members’ warm words today in that regard. I am grateful for the deployment in my region, South Scotland, in Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders. I saw for myself crews from Edinburgh and, I think, West Lothian, who came to help in Hawick and in other communities in the Borders.
The speed and efficiency of the service’s response under the most challenging conditions are an excellent demonstration of how the single service has delivered real and meaningful benefits to communities across Scotland. The newly refurbished control room at Tollcross worked highly effectively during storm Desmond and storm Frank, and we can be confident that the team there is highly experienced.
I reiterate that teams have been redeployed and that there have been no compulsory redundancies to date as a result of control room closures. Staff from Fife have been redeployed to the control room in Tollcross, where they bring to the new arrangements the front-line experience to which members referred.
A testament to SFRS’s hard work to protect and indeed enhance its front-line resources in the face of continuing financial pressure is that the service has invested significantly across the country in new equipment, including state-of-the-art appliances. Rural communities in Fife, the Highlands and Dumfries and Galloway have all significantly benefited from such investment.
I recognise the point that Mary Scanlon made about the retained duty system. We share an interest in the matter and have discussed it. The review is on-going in the SFRS and will conclude in the near future, albeit after the Scottish parliamentary elections. It will give us some clear messages about the future shape of RDS, and we will respond as positively as we can do to its recommendations. The system will also be enhanced if we can work collectively to persuade employers to make their staff available for retained duty positions, because although the funding is in place it is often difficult to get recruits to fill vacancies. That is a key issue that we can all try to address.
The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the Fire Brigades Union have agreed an operating model for the service, as members said. Christian Allard was right: I understand that the number of firefighters in November was 3,748, which is slightly above the figure in the model. The service not only has more firefighters than the model proposes but has undertaken targeted recruitment campaigns and agreed an interim mobility policy with the Fire Brigades Union, to enable firefighters to be moved to locations should that be required. In particular, it is targeting recruitment problems in the north and Aberdeen and trying to fill gaps in that regard.
The benefits of reform are apparent. Last May, in its report, “The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service”, Audit Scotland confirmed that the fire reform process
“was managed effectively”,
that
“The SFRS has maintained effective local engagement”
with communities during the reform process, that the creation of the SFRS had
“no impact on the public”,
and that the service’s
“performance is improving.”
Furthermore, it would be difficult to argue that the creation of a single service has resulted in a reduction in front-line services at a time when SFRS firefighters are involved in a national trial that aims to increase survival rates of patients who suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
That is just one of several ways in which the service is evolving. I welcome members’ comments on that evolving role. Our colleagues in the service deserve our fulsome praise. I accept that there are political differences in the debate, but I welcome the united front that we have shown in praising our firefighters.
I am conscious of the time, so I will finish by quoting the recently retired HM chief inspector of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, who told the Justice Committee in April:
“If eight fire and rescue services and a college had been trying to find nearly £50 million of savings over the past two years, what would the situation have been? My judgment is that we would have been in a far worse position than we are in. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has done a pretty remarkable job of bringing in the reform, maintaining business as usual and making progress.”—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 28 April 2015; c 32.]
For that, I thank the service.
I thank members for taking part in this surprisingly inflammatory debate.
Meeting closed at 17:50.Previous
Decision Time