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Emergency Services

My Lords, I sometimes wonder why I am here—on this occasion mainly because my noble friend Lord Harrison has said just about everything that needs to be said on this subject. There is little that I can add, apart from ““Hurrah!”” or something. I felt inclined to contribute to this brief—and I shall be brief, let me tell you—debate because, as older Members of the House may recall, and there are not too many here, I have spent a lifetime in the construction industry. That industry of course finds fire safety and things of that sort extremely important. I remind my noble friend Lord Brookman that when he was a young man I was involved in the steel industry, too. I worked in a town called Motherwell—not a spa but a big steel concern. I was a structural engineer in the 1940s. The Dalzell steelworks were built on made-up ground, much of which had come from ironworks slag from the nearby Clyde Bridge. Interestingly, it formed a pretty good foundation for a steelworks apart from one flaw: it was given to spontaneous combustion. The foundations under the steelworks would therefore catch fire from time to time. We applied a high-tech solution to this problem: we hurried along and filled up the hole under the foundations, where the fire was burning, with concrete. The fire would go out. We solved the problem; it was not too high-tech, but it seemed to work. I have therefore always had an interest in the relationship between the construction industry and fire. As we all do, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Harrison on raising this subject. I thought that his opening remarks were a little apocalyptic. He drew our attention to Chernobyl. Now, we all know that Chernobyl was not a very good idea. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Taverne—a good personal friend of mine, although he sits on the opposite Benches for some idiosyncratic reason of his own—pointed out, the Chernobyl disaster was never as bad as people and the press continually say. It is like Three Mile Island. Nothing happened there either, but the press go on about it. Leaving the apocalypse aside, all that I have to say is that I endorse everything that my noble friend has said. Were it not for vanity, I would now sit down—but I shall not just yet. I add a remark that has been provided for me by the Federation of British Fire Organisations, to which my noble friend Lord Brookman alluded. It pointed out that last November a new era of European Community solidarity began to emerge. The Commission held a civil protection forum to emphasise the renewed vigour that it feels is needed to address the unprecedented demands of EC citizens facing natural, economic and technological disasters. I am somewhat tepid in my admiration for the European Union. I have swung from opposition to support to tepidity, if that is a word. It is a funny kind of organisation. When it is at its best—and it is by no means always at its best—it means that if we do not pull together, we sink together. Sinking together does not seem to me a very good idea if pulling together will save us from sinking together. So I endorse everything that my noble friend said. I hope that I have not kept noble Lords for too long from their dinner.