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Flood and Water Management Bill

I rise to speak briefly to new clause 20, for which I have a great deal of sympathy, not least because I have a daughter and two sons-in-law in the London fire and rescue service. I am therefore acutely aware of the nature of the job, and the dangers and difficulties it presents. I want to make two main points: the first concerns the absence of a statutory duty to attend flooding incidents, and the second relates to the issue of overall control in an emergency situation. I have been very surprised to learn, both in Committee and from speaking to serving firefighters and chief fire officers, that there is no statutory duty on the service to attend a flood—although I am not aware of it not having attended any such incident. The new clause provides a long list of duties that would pertain to the fire service, but it is not possible for its officers to take on those duties without the proper training, equipment and clothing. That has big funding implications, of course, but there has been no indication of where the funding might come from. The recent Cumbria incident was a very serious emergency flooding situation, and I have seen pictures of firefighters waist-deep in floodwater that is very likely to have been contaminated by sewage, yet they were wearing their normal-issue clothing, which is intended to protect them from fires. It is wholly unsuitable for flooding situations. The moment they get into the water, they are wet right through, and when they remain in the water for a long period they are at risk of hypothermia and of infection and germs from contaminated water. Clearly, this situation cannot continue, and although the list of duties in the new clause raises several significant funding implications, it is a basic essential that if firefighters are going to enter contaminated water to try to carry out duties such as rescuing people from their homes, they must have the right clothing to wear to protect themselves and to enable them to carry out their duties. The question of who has overall control in an emergency flooding situation was raised in Committee. A wide range of statutory bodies and charitable and volunteer organisations will appear on the scene, all of them trying to help and do what they can to address the situation, and rescuing people will be their first priority. These bodies will include the fire and rescue service and the police, of course, as well as statutory undertakers, local government and, perhaps, social services teams, and St. John Ambulance staff. The last thing that is wanted in such a situation is confusion about who is in overall control. I was assured in Committee that the gold command procedure is working very well, but I know that the fire and rescue service would like more clarity, and also that it would like to have overall control in an emergency situation. Everybody who is present needs to know to whom they have to report, so that there is some strategic overall control. These situations are often very dangerous not only for the people being rescued, but for the rescuers themselves, both statutory and voluntary. There is a particular point to make about volunteers: there is no jurisdictional authority over them. They might be individuals or members of local community groups that could have come from anywhere, and they can put themselves in danger when they try to help others in a flood situation. There needs to be clarification on these matters. In serious flooding incidents such as the most recent one in Cumbria, there needs to be absolute clarity about who has overall strategic control on the ground. It is my understanding, however, that the gold command system is not necessarily conducted on the spot; instead, it is conducted from a control room away from the actual emergency. Every time there is an emergency, we need to study the debriefings of the people who were there in order to learn what worked, what did not work and what is missing in procedures, so that we are prepared for any future incident. It is also essential that firefighters have the proper clothing for dealing with flood situations. Their standard equipment is suitable only for firefighting.