I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) on securing this debate. We are all probably going to agree; this is fairly uncontroversial. However, I will highlight a number of points.
In Northern Ireland, every bit of politics is local. We have the largest inland waterway in the United Kingdom, Lough Neagh, and Lough Neagh Rescue, an independent lifeboat service, which does a fantastic job. We also have Foyle Search and Rescue and Lagan Search and Rescue, both of which are independent. We really do rely heavily upon them. My hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) would usually be here, so it would be remiss of me not to mention something relating to Strangford on his behalf: we also have Portaferry lifeboat station, an RNLI service that does a fantastic job.
This year has been extremely difficult. Many of the events that would have been organised to raise funds for these services, including on-street collections, could not take place. Their finances are critical at the present time. Some of them really are finding it difficult to respond. I put on the record my thanks to those who have donated and have made a sacrifice for them. Mention has been made of a 20% reduction within the RNLI, but some of the independents are seeing an even greater reduction in the funding that they have been able to get. These men and women put their lives at risk to respond; when everybody else wants to get inside the house, they go
out to sea. The Northern Ireland fishing industry regularly requires the use of the lifeboat service and puts on the record its thanks to those who put their lives on the line to save fishermen.
We deal with what I call our 999 response in very different ways. People lift the phone whenever they have a fire and they know that the fire service will respond with no thought about what is happening—they know that the fire service will be there. We should put the RNLI and those independents on the same platform as the fire service. Let us be truthful: they respond to the need to save life. An island nation surrounded by sea, this summer has been probably very typical of what is happening. Many people did not go away but bought pieces of equipment, whether a bodyboard or surfboard, jet skis or whatever, and used our own local resources rather than going abroad. Unfortunately, many of those people came into difficulties, and the coastguard, the RNLI and our independent life services were the people they called upon to help. On many occasions, they have not been able to recover somebody and have had to go back the next day, giving of their time voluntarily to do so.
I support totally what has been put forward here this afternoon, and I hope that we can achieve some sustainable future funding for our emergency services at sea.
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