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Coastguard Service

Actually, I will not, as so many people want to speak. Sorry, Angus. The service underwent a major review in the 1990s under Focus for Change. It was heralded at the time as the most detailed and thorough review for decades of the structures, work loads and running of the coastguard service. The coastguard service has experienced continuous technical improvements to advance and upgrade all its information technology and communications systems since then, and such an upgrade is being rolled out even now. Coastguard officers recognise that modernisation is part of the natural development of the type of work that they carry out and are not averse to change. Historically, coastguard officers have been deeply involved in developing and refining a multitude of systems and programmes, and it is probably fair to say that many of those programmes would not work as they do today without that input. Much is made in the document of the requirement for national resilience. The MCA proposal cites a scenario whereby both stations in the current pairing might suffer a failure and there is no further back-up. Has that ever happened? The answer is no. The technicians to whom I have spoken cannot envisage a situation in which such an event could occur. The coastguard station in Falmouth suffered a catastrophic failure when it was hit by lightning and was out of service for a period. However, our flank station at Brixham took over services by diverting all telephone lines, and contingency plans were in place to ensure that all international obligations were diverted to international colleagues to enable a normal service to be maintained. It worked, and it was resilient. The senior coastguard told me that Falmouth suffers from fragile connections. I met with the members of BT senior management who have managed the communication links for the Falmouth coastguard for the past eight years. They said that there was no problem at all and foresaw none in the future. The document also refers to paired stations being overrun with an increase in work load. Again, there is no evidence to support that. It is agreed that some stations can get very busy at peak times, but no station has ever suffered a loss of service as a result of being overrun. It is reasonable to assume that, for a proposal involving such major change, an extensive trial would have been set up to mimic the maritime operation centre and to establish what work load was expected and how—or, more importantly, whether—it could be managed.