The claim

“I welcome the Select Committee’s recognition that the Coastguard Service is in urgent need of modernisation. ”
Transport Secretary Philip Hammond, 23 June, 2011

The background

MPs have called on the Government to scuttle its plans to cut the Coastguard Service, warning that the proposals raise “serious concerns that safety will be jeopardised”.

While Transport Secretary Philip Hammond promised to take account of any concerns, he insisted that the original proposals won’t compromise safety, but will instead haul the Coastguard Service into the 21st Century.

Steaming ahead defiantly, he said the Select Committee recognised that the Coastguard Service is “in urgent need of modernisation”. Did it really? FactCheck senses an iceberg.

The analysis

The Department for Transport originally planned to shut 10 of the UK’s 18 coastguard co-ordination stations. The new network will see three 24-hour stations at Aberdeen, Dover and Southampton, supported by five sub-centres.

Local knowledge will be pooled and there’ll be all the latest GPS gizmos to aid a new, national network.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) workforce – which commands and co-ordinates rescue operations from the coastguard stations – will subsequently see their number drop by 48 per cent – or 250 jobs.

All of this will shave £7.5m a year from the £35m coastguard bill.

But the Transport Select Committee said it could not support the proposals, which it found to be “seriously flawed”.

“Our main concern about safety is the loss of local knowledge, or ‘situational awareness’, amongst coastguard officers that will inevitably occur under the proposals,” it added.

“We are not convinced by the MCA’s assertions that technology can, at present, adequately compensate for the loss of this knowledge.”

Indeed, it isn’t clear to FactCheck how the proposals will maintain the Coastguard Service, let alone better it – as David Cameron has previously promised (see FactCheck: Coastguard cuts threaten thousands of lives, and Prince William’s job ).

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond maintained today that: “The original proposals do not compromise safety and include increased resources for frontline rescue services.”

Frontline rescue services though, are run mainly by volunteer rescuers – not the salaried coastguard professionals who direct operations from the control stations, and who face the job cuts.

With coastguards warning that the cuts will cost lives, Richard Simcox from the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), told FactCheck: “The message is crystal clear, that if you want to play with people’s lives, it is overwhelmingly important to listen to the voice of the people with unique experience if they say you are doing it wrong”.

But it would seem the Government is not listening hard enough.

The Committee’s report did not agree, as Mr Hammond claimed above, that the service is “in urgent need of modernisation”.

In fact, it said: “We do not consider this decision to be sufficiently time-critical to prevent further consultation on what we expect to be substantially revised proposals from those initially put forward”.

The committee advised the Government it should consider a “further short period of consultation”.

“Decisions with such significant implications for maritime safety should not be made in haste,” it said.

The verdict

Granted, the current coastguard organisation dates back some 40 years. We’ve got a wind farm twice the size of the Isle of Man due to be built 43 miles offshore from Liverpool, and a floating Liquid Natural Gas plant sketched out for Morecambe Bay – which will attract vast numbers of hulking great LNG ships.

Meanwhile, both the number of coastguard call-outs and the number of deaths in those incidents, rose by 70 per cent between 2000 and 2009.

Clearly the service is under strain. “We all need to modernise,” Brian George, Chairman of the Liverpool branch of the PCS Union, told the Select Committee hearing.

“But that modernisation must be safe,” he added, “In our business in particular. Our general view of the modernisation proposals is that they are unsafe.”

The Committee talked to coastguards across the country and said: “The MCA’s current proposals to modernise the coastguard, as they stand, do not provide reassurance that the ability of the coastguard to respond to emergencies at sea will be maintained at current levels, let alone improved.”

Perhaps Mr Hammond should stop, listen and learn that the committee does not recognise an “urgent” case for modernisation.  It doesn’t even think the case for modernisation is “sufficiently time-critical” to stop further consultation.

By Emma Thelwell