THE House of Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee report on the government’s plan, to replace 46 Fire Control centres with nine new regional centres, condemns the project, saying that it has been ‘poorly executed and badly managed’.
The committee added that the project had put the future of an efficient fire service system at ‘substantial risk’.
In reality the committee is talking about a risk to the lives of local residents that a system of remote and distant and inefficient regional fire control centres will bring.
The policy is all about cuts and cutting government expenditure, regardless of the risks to the safety of local residents.
In fact, the fire service is being cut to pieces. Large numbers of fire stations are being closed nationally, with redundancies all over the country. In the case of the London region, the actual ownership of the fire appliances has been taken over by a private company.
This has been done, and is to be done, no doubt, all over the country, because the Labour government and the fire authorities know that their programme of savage cuts will provoke disputes and strikes.
The problem that they have is that the army is now otherwise engaged in Afghanistan, and is no longer on hand for strike breaking.
So the private company that now owns the appliances is also training a strike breaking force, for use when the savagery of the government action forces FBU members to take strike action.
However, the parliamentary committee concluded that so much money had been spent already on the intrinsically unsafe and inefficient regional control system, that it should continue regardless of the risk.
The response of the FBU has been to state that this would mean ‘throwing good money after bad’, and that the plan must be binned.
The FBU leader Matt Wrack said yesterday that ‘public money is being wasted and public safety compromised.
‘The Select Committee sets out six conditions for the continuance of the project, and in our view these conditions cannot be met, so the project must be abandoned. We recognise that this will mean that public money has been wasted, but to continue with the project means throwing good money after bad.’
He added: ‘Firefighters, who are surely the key stakeholders, have not been consulted, and when they have nonetheless offered their opinion, it has routinely been ignored.
‘Politicians with no knowledge or experience have taken technical decisions which they were not competent to take, and have not bothered to ask those who know.’
Wrack continued: ‘It is shocking, but not surprising, that the Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) did not allow the Select Committee to see the independent reviews of its management of the project – even in confidence. We agree with the Select Committee that “this lack of openness… implies a certain insecurity about its handling of the FiReControl project to date”.’
He concluded: ‘The Select Committee sets out, sensibly and soberly, six conditions for continuing with the project. At least three of them cannot be met.’
The Fire Service is being cut to pieces by a government desperate to slash budgets regardless of risk.
The same is true of the civil service, the NHS and the public services as a whole.
There is no doubt that the privatisation of the public sector is the government’s aim and that it will carry on regardless of the dangers to the public.
All the more reason for the FBU to take the lead in forming a public sector alliance that will take strike action as one to fight the cuts. It must also take up the struggle within the TUC general council for a general strike to be called to bring down the Brown government and bring in a workers government that will carry out socialist policies. This is the way forward.
