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Coastguard Service

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have been to the coastguard station at Crosby and the people there did not hold back when they spoke to me. Everybody was in the room. The staff should feel confident that if they wish to do so, they can express their views robustly. By the way, as he may have noticed, I was robust back. That sort of confidence should be out there. The coastguard community is quite small and some people do not have that confidence. If they want to submit anonymous representations, that is understandable. Those representations will be dealt with in exactly the same way as those to which people have put their name. I shall touch on some of the points raised by hon. Members. In the short time I have, it will not be possible to answer every individual point. However, my officials are here and, if necessary, we will write to hon. Members on individual points. I have a background as a member of the armed forces and, probably more significantly, as a member of the fire service for many years, so saving lives is in my blood. There is no way that this change to the way in which the coastguard operates is going to put lives at risk—far from it. To some extent, I inherited the plans from the previous Administration. Some hon. Members were at the briefing upstairs in, I think, Committee Room 9, when the chief coastguard and chief executive were present. When the chief coastguard was appointed over two years ago, he had the proposals on his desk. At that time, I was not a Minister and this coalition Government were not in place. The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), the shadow Minister, knows that the proposals were on his desk and the desks of others for four and a half years-plus. As I have gone around the country, no one I have met who is in the know has said that there does not need to be dramatic changes to how the MRCC is run. When I was in Crosby, one very senior officer said to me, ““Minister, we know it should be nine. We have been saying it should be nine stations for many years.”” That was said in front of the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson). I asked for the submission that actually said that. I had a wonderful trip to Bangor in Northern Ireland. It was a trip down memory lane for me in many ways. There was a breath of fresh air at that and other meetings, and in some of the early submissions. I have not looked at them in detail because it is not right and proper for me to do so yet. However, if I am sat in a presentation, it is difficult not to listen to what is being said. The presentation at Bangor looked at having 10 stations—one headquarters, and of the remaining nine stations, about half would be full time and half part time. There is an acceptance out there that the present 19 stations are an anomaly left over from previous closures. There were closures in the '80s and in early 2000 and 2001. We are left where we are now. I understand fully the passion of every hon. Member and why communities are coming together and saying, ““Don't close my station. This is very important to us.”” We have had more than 1,200 submissions to the consultation. They fall into three groups. One group of people are questioning my parent's parenthood or my parenthood. Some of those submissions will have to be redacted before we publish, but we will publish every one that has been received. Some submissions are based purely on individual stations—a bit like what we have heard in the debate. People are saying, ““This is our station. We think it should stay and these are the reasons why.”” That is fine. However, we have also had a number of submissions saying, ““Let's not just look at our station; let's look at how we can have a national service.”” That is what I heard in Crosby, in Bangor, in Milford Haven and what I know I am going to hear in Falmouth. I have the honour of looking after the only national emergency service, and I am very proud of its history. However, it is the only national emergency service with no national resilience. There is more resilience in all the other emergency services than the one we are talking about today. That is not acceptable in the 21st century. This is not just about resilience in computers, which we are all a bit sceptical about. I share that scepticism on computers. I was shadow Minister for three and a half years. In the great city we are in now, the ambulance service control centre just across the river looks after 10 million people. People are transferred from a 999 call to that control centre. The operators have hardly asked the caller anything before they know where they are, within reason, and they are looking to see who they can dispatch. We do not have that sort of facility in the coastguard service. That is the sort of thing we need. It is a different sort of service because of the myriad methods of contacting the coastguard emergency service. However, we must have a better, more resilient service.