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Coastguard Service

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point about what the service consists of and the problems that it encounters. That suggests to me that the idea that the consultation document is about modernising the coastguard service is only partially correct. Again, that was underlined by the evidence recently given to the Transport Committee by Sir Alan Massey, who made this curious statement:"““For my agency, I am required to find a 22% budget reduction in my programme between now and 31 March 2015. In seeking to find those savings, we have had to put forward a number of savings options. One of them does affect the coastguard modernisation programme.””" As I read it, that means that there was a coastguard modernisation programme and that the proposals for making savings have affected it. That may have been a misstatement, and it may deserve further analysis, but if the proposals are about savings that could affect a modernisation programme as opposed to being about the modernisation programme itself, that should be the basis for discussing the consequential examination of the proposals, and not otherwise.