Search and Rescue

House of Commons Transport Committee Search and Rescue Eighth Report of Session 2004–05 Volume I Report, together with formal minutes Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 23 March 2005 HC 322-I Published on 2 April 2005 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £10.00 The Transport Committee The Transport Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Department for Transport and its associated public bodies. Current membership Mrs Gwyneth Dunwoody MP (Labour, Crewe) (Chairman) Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson MP (Democratic Unionist, Lagan Valley) Mr Brian H. Donohoe MP (Labour, Cunninghame South) Clive Efford MP (Labour, Eltham) Mrs Louise Ellman MP (Labour/Co-operative, Liverpool Riverside) Ian Lucas MP (Labour, Wrexham) Miss Anne McIntosh MP (Conservative, Vale of York) Mr Paul Marsden MP (Liberal Democrat, Shrewsbury and Atcham) Mr John Randall MP (Conservative, Uxbridge) Mr George Stevenson MP (Labour, Stoke-on-Trent South) Mr Graham Stringer MP (Labour, Manchester Blackley) Powers The Committee is one of the departmental select committees, the powers of which are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 152. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk. Publications The Reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the Internet at www.parliament.uk/transcom. A list of Reports of the Committee in the present Parliament is at the back of this volume. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee are Eve Samson (Clerk), David Bates (Second Clerk), Clare Maltby (Committee Specialist), Philippa Carling (Inquiry Manager), Miss Frances Allingham (Committee Assistant), Miss Michelle Edney (Secretary), Henry Ayi-Hyde (Senior Office Clerk) and James O’Sullivan (Sandwich Student). All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Transport Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 6263; the Committee’s email address is [email protected] 1 Contents Report Page Summary 3 1 Introduction 5 2 Organisation of SAR services 6 The international context 6 The UK Search and Rescue Organisation 6 Demand for SAR services 8 Beach lifeguards 10 3 The voluntary ethos 11 Volunteers 12 A volunteer shortage? 12 Availability of volunteers 15 Charities 18 VAT 20 4 HM Coastguard 24 Conflicting evidence 24 National Coastwatch Institution 27 Conclusions and recommendations 29 Annex: Visit notes 32 Formal minutes 34 Witnesses 35 List of written evidence 36 Reports from the Transport Committee since 2002 37 3 Summary The UK’s Search and Rescue arrangements are generally effective, and better than those which existed previously. The current arrangements are a patchwork which involves at least six Government Departments, one Government Agency, the devolved administrations, the statutory emergency services and numerous voluntary organisations. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but the number of organisations involved means extra effort is needed to ensure they all work together. Demand for Search and Rescue seems likely to increase as more people engage in boating and high–risk leisure pursuits on land and at sea. More systematic ways need to be found of forecasting demand, so that we can be sure the UK’s Search and Rescue resources are adequate. The UK’s Search and Rescue effort relies heavily on volunteers and voluntary organisations. Unless further support is given to volunteering, we fear more employed staff will be required in the future, at greater cost to the taxpayer. The Government needs to support volunteering and voluntary organisations now to save money in the future. This includes reducing some of the administrative and financial burdens on voluntary organisations, volunteers and their primary employers. We are also concerned at the apparently poor relationship between the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the Public and Commercial Services union, which represents Coastguard watch staff. Conflicting information from the MCA and PCS has prevented us from assessing fully the performance of HM Coastguard. Put simply, this is not good enough, and we suggest in Chapter 4 that the MCA and PCS should co–operate to provide us with better information when the Government produces its response to this Report.. 5 1 Introduction 1. We pay tribute all those who work in Search and Rescue. They often take much greater risks than most of the rest of us, and they do so to save lives and help people in distress. We admire their dedication and commitment. This Committee is charged by Parliament with examining the expenditure, administration and policy of the Department for Transport and its associated public bodies, and this report is part of that task. 2. The Department for Transport (DfT) is responsible for civil maritime and aeronautical Search and Rescue policy. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) provides the co-ordination service for maritime Search and Rescue. The Committee’s report into the work of the MCA highlighted the increase in incidents, accidents and deaths around the coast,1 and the Government’s response emphasised the role of the Auxiliary Coastguard Service.2 The Committee therefore decided to examine the UK’s Search and Rescue arrangements in more detail in order to gain a broad view of their effectiveness, resources and capabilities. 3. On 3 February 2005, Members and staff of the Committee visited the MCA’s Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre at Dover. On 9 February and 2 March, the Committee took oral evidence from the Chief Fire Officers Association (CFOA), Mountain Rescue— England and Wales, the Association of Lowland Search and Rescue (ALSAR), the UK Lowland Institute, the National Coastwatch Institution (NCI), the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), NUMAST (the National Union of Marine, Aviation and Shipping Transport Officers), the MCA Chief Executive and the Chief Coastguard, and the Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State at the Home Office, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and the Department for Transport, Fiona Mactaggart MP, Phil Hope MP and David Jamieson MP respectively. We also received written evidence from a number of organisations and individuals. We are grateful to everyone who helped us with our inquiry, and to our Specialist Adviser, Professor James McConville. 1 Transport Committee, The Work of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Fourteenth Report of Session 2003–04, HC 500 [2003–04] 2 The Government’s Response to the Transport Committee’s Report on the Work of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Cm 6343 6 2 Organisation of SAR services The international context 4. Search and Rescue (SAR) is generally understood to mean the location and recovery of people who are in distress, in potential distress or missing, and their delivery to a place of safety. The United Kingdom is a signatory to various international conventions, notably the Convention on the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS 1974), the Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR 1979) and the Convention on International Civil Aviation (“the Chicago Convention” 1974). These oblige the UK to provide certain Search and Rescue services in the UK Search and Rescue Region for civil maritime and civil aeronautical traffic, and require some of these to be organised in certain ways.3 5. Although the international obligations impose a common framework for each State Party’s Search and Rescue organisation, for example by requiring Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centres (MRCCs), there are many models worldwide for the organisation of the services which are an essential part of the SAR effort. For example, many lifeboat and lifesaving services are non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like our own RNLI, but some also provide other services, and others are government bodies, like the Canadian Coast Guard.4 Some choices about the provision of the UK’s civil maritime and aeronautical SAR services therefore remain matters for the UK, but our international obligations require that the services themselves must be provided and placed within a defined organisational framework. Inland Search and Rescue—such as mountain rescue and lowland search—is not governed by international obligations in the same way. We nevertheless consider inland SAR to be an essential service. The UK Search and Rescue Organisation 6. The UK Search and Rescue Organisation is “an amalgam of civil, military, maritime, aeronautical and land–based assets involving separate Government Departments, the emergency services and other organisations. These include a number of charities and voluntary organisations which play a significant role in providing a national SAR capability.”5 Although, as previously noted, the Department for Transport has responsibility for civil aeronautical and maritime SAR policy, the police service is responsible for the co-ordination of land–based and inland waters SAR. By inter– departmental agreement, the Ministry of Defence, which provides SAR facilities for military purposes, also exercises the Department for Transport’s responsibility for civil aeronautical SAR. 7. The UK SAR Organisation exists primarily through its committee structure. The current structures were established in 2000 and replaced the previous “UK Search and Rescue Committee”, which many of our witnesses agreed had been unwieldy, and which did not 3 see map of UK Search and Rescue Region attached to SAR 13 4 See Evans, C. (2003) Rescue at Sea: An International History of Lifesaving, Coastal Rescue Craft and Organisations, London, Conway Maritime Press 5 SAR 13, paragraph 2 7 bring together air, land and sea interests in the same way.6 Mr Michael Vlasto, Operations Director of the RNLI and a member of the current UK SAR Operators Group, described the current arrangement as “not perfect but it is a lot better than it was.”7 8.

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