Matt Vickers

I could not agree more. More than ever, we are seeing fire services that are lean and efficient, having undergone all sorts of savings. We have now got to the point at which there is no fat and we are hitting the bone. We cannot go on like this without real consequences for public safety. These funding decisions have real consequences for Cleveland, including a likely reduction in frontline firefighters and cuts to the number of fire appliances. Demand on our firefighters is rising. It is not acceptable to ask them to do even more with even less. It is not just our fire brigades that are under pressure. I have also heard from Cleveland Mountain Rescue, a hugely valued voluntary mountain rescue team that provides vital cover at fell races and mountain bike events. Are the Government thanking it for their incredible service and commitment? No, they are hitting it with Care Quality Commission registration and inspection regimes: more bureaucracy, more red tape and more costs. If the mountain rescue team is forced to reduce its services as a result, that will put yet more pressure on our local fire brigades. Has the Minister considered the consequences of these changes and the impact that they could have on fire services? There is a broader point here: whether it is Cleveland Fire Brigade facing funding pressures or Cleveland Mountain Rescue facing new bureaucracy, the Government must support the people who protect the public, not make their job harder. By incident per head of population, Cleveland Fire Brigade is one of the busiest non-metropolitan fire services in the country. It attends six times as many deliberate fires as the national average. Last year alone, it saw a 25% increase in arson and deliberate fire incidents, which cause huge concern within our communities. The Government’s “fair funding” approach is neither fair nor reflective of need. It systematically disadvantages places such as Stockton-on-Tees and the wider Cleveland area. It creates unacceptable risks for emergency response and public safety, because it fails to recognise local need. Factors such as individual risk, level of deprivation and geographic complexity must be given a proper weighting.