Fire Services (Hertfordshire)

I hope that the Liberal Democrats have more clarity by the time we reach the general election, because people will want to know. They will want to know the point of voting Liberal Democrat anyway, given that it will be a clear choice between two competing visions, but I assure the hon. Lady that we have a clear and well-argued policy, which we will articulate in our general election manifesto. The issue of regional control centres is integral to this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans has mentioned the Pitt review. The Pitt review specifically does not advocate regional control centres in the conclusions that it reached after examining the widespread national floods in the summer of 2007, despite being ““invited”” to do so. That is an important point. My hon. Friends asked what might happen in a new regional control centre set-up if there were a catastrophic outage—for instance, if a hacker were to place a computer bug throughout the IT system. Can anyone imagine the ramifications of all nine regional control centres, including the one for the London fire brigade in Docklands, crashing at the same time? Of course, that is something that none of us wants to happen, but it is something that we need to think hard about in terms of a risk assessment. At the moment, there would be 45 other potential fire control centres to pick up the slack in the event of a serious terrorist incident, a pandemic or major floods. That would not be the case if we had nine or 10 centres interlinked by a common IT network, which is a very serious concern. The New Dimensions programme has been mentioned. I know that the Minister will want to have some time to put his views forward and to answer the questions that my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans has put. In the spirit of consensus, I want to give the Minister an opportunity to use two specific avenues to try to address the particular issues that my hon. Friends the Members for St. Albans, for Hertsmere and for North-East Hertfordshire, as well as the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne, have raised today. One avenue is the report into the very sad circumstances of the firefighter deaths at Atherstone on Stour, which the Minister will know about. That report is due by the end of this month or early December and it will obviously raise the profile of firefighter safety. It will be a golden opportunity for the Minister to examine the key issues that have been raised today. The other avenue, of course, is the Minister’s official response to the National Audit Office report on the New Dimensions programme, which is also concerned with issues of resilience. Those two avenues will perhaps give the Minister the opportunity to look at resilience, training, achieving a level of consistency and the policy vacuum that the FBU have alluded to, and also the potential disaster of regional control centres. Let us trust local professionals and respect their expertise, and let us see some flexibility from the Government in assuaging the concerns that my hon. Friends have articulated so well today.