Firefighters from the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) take part in the Cuts Leave Scars rally outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, calling for an end to cuts imposed on the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service over the last 10 years, October 26, 2023
YEARS of cuts in fire and rescue services in Scotland have left public safety at risk as emergency response times lengthen and fewer fire appliances can be mobilised.
The Fire Brigades Union said (FBU) firefighter numbers are the lowest since eight regional fire brigades merged to form the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) in 2013 — down from 4,159 full-time posts to 3,422, a loss of 737 jobs.
The number of control room staff, who take emergency calls and mobilise crews, fell from 234 to 172.
Part-time retained firefighters, who cover 80 per cent of Scotland, including rural and island communities, saw 344 front-line jobs go.
A recent fire in London serves as a stark reminder of the UK’s ongoing failures in building and fire safety, just days before the final report on the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy is set to be published
More than 200 firefighters were deployed overnight on Monday, August 26, to combat a fire that broke out in an apartment block in Dagenham, London. The building had previously been identified as a high-risk location by fire brigades, yet it had not seen sufficient safety improvements, similar to other localities across the country that represent housing hazards due to slow progress on necessary fire and building security measures.
London Fire Brigade Commissioner Andy Roe confirmed that the tower block had “a number of fire safety issues” known to the service. Matt Wrack, General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), condemned the situation as a “national scandal.”
“Time and time again, these warnings have been ignored by public authorities and by central government. This must change immediately,” Wrack insisted.
The Dagenham fire comes just days before the final report of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry is set to be published. The similarities between the recent fire in Dagenham and the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017, which killed 72 people, are difficult to ignore. Both incidents involve buildings with inadequate cladding, a factor believed to have exacerbated the fires.
“Once again, a fire has erupted in a residential building wrapped in inflammable cladding. There needs to be an urgent and swift investigation into how this has been allowed to happen,” Wrack said.
Fortunately, the Dagenham fire resulted in no casualties, but the incident has reignited calls for improved building safety. Grenfell United, a group formed by survivors and families of the Grenfell fire, criticized the lack of progress since the 2017 disaster. The fact that the best outcome in a fire is a near miss “speaks volumes about the progress made since June 14, 2017,” the group said in a statement.
Recent data from the FBU adds to an already worrying picture. Since 2010, cuts to public service have led to the loss of 12,000 firefighter positions across the UK, with London alone losing over 1,300. The union also highlighted that some firefighters might be counted twice in official statistics because they—some 4,000 of them—hold more than one type of contract, suggesting the actual shortfall may be even worse.
These staffing reductions have contributed to slower emergency response times, increasing risks to public safety. “With flooding, wildfires, and storms on the rise due to the climate emergency, firefighters are being asked to do more with less,” Wrack said.
In light of these issues, trade unions and community activists are calling for immediate and decisive action from the Labour government. They are demanding urgent and substantial investment in fire and rescue services, along with the implementation of building safety measures to prevent future tragedies.
FBU general secretary Matt Wrack, who says the union has ‘a duty to make our voices heard on matters of fire safety’
A FRESH legal challenge against the government’s stalled plan to house asylum-seekers on the “deathtrap” Bibby Stockholm barge has been launched by firefighters, their union revealed today.
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) outlined its concerns over safety aboard the barge in a pre-action protocol letter sent by lawyers to Home Secretary Suella Braverman on Friday.
It had previously written to Ms Braverman asking for a meeting to discuss its concerns that the boat was a “potential deathtrap,” but the request was turned down earlier this month.
A response to the legal challenge is required by 4pm on Thursday.
FBU general secretary Matt Wrack explained that the union had “a duty to make our voices heard on matters of fire safety, especially when politicians let our members and the wider public down.”
He said: “We have been sounding the alarm about the Bibby Stockholm for weeks.
“It is disgraceful that the Home Secretary is not even willing to meet us to discuss these concerns.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has organised an emergency protest on Monday 22nd May for 6.00pm outside Parliament Square, as it fights to protect the right to strike which is under attack from the Tory government.
Mick Lynch from the RMT, Matt Wrack from the FBU and Kevin Courtney will be speaking at the rally, with Unison, USDAW and the PCS union all showing their support.
The government’s strikes bill, which will empower employers to sue unions and sack staff in crucial sectors if minimum service levels aren’t maintained, has been slammed as an attack on the fundamental right to strike and as a draconian piece of legislation. The Bill essentially means that when workers lawfully vote to strike in health, education, fire, transport, border security and nuclear decommissioning, they could be forced to attend work – and sacked if they don’t comply.
The TUC said in a press statement: “We can’t afford to lose the right to strike. But multi-millionaire Tory politicians are attacking our right to strike for better pay and fair treatment at work.
Former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has once more refused to apologise for his disastrous mini-budget which caused financial turmoil and which eventually led to him being sacked and Liz Truss being forced out of office.
Kwarteng, whose mini-budget resulted in chaos on the financial markets, the pound hitting an all-time low against the dollar and mortgage rates soaring, said he was ‘not in the business of forgiveness’.
“I’m not going to apologise,” he told Channel 4 News.
Former Tory MP and now Reform UK party member Ann Widdecombe has been widely condemned for her ‘out of touch’ and appalling comments on families struggling to make ends meet during the cost of living crisis.
Widdecombe was asked on BBC 2’s Politics Live programme about the cost of living crisis and what advice she would give to viewers who could not even afford the basics.
Jo Coburn asked the former Tory MP: “What do you say to those viewers who literally can’t afford to pay even for some of the basics – if they’ve gone up the way that cheese sandwich has, with all its ingredients?”
“Well, then you don’t do the cheese sandwich,” Widdecombe replied.
Her comments were immediately condemned by fellow panellist Rachel Cunliffe who said: “We’re talking about absolute basics and staples. We’re talking about own-brand pasta, we’re talking about bread, we’re talking about families who can’t afford to feed their children.
‘The First Past the Post system hands more power to the establishment than MPs or people.’
The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has set out the reasons for why the Labour Party should back a change to the voting system in favour of proportional representation (PR), despite party leader Keir Starmer saying that voting reform will not be a priority should Labour win power.
Although the Labour Party conference last year overwhelmingly backed a motion calling on the party to embrace a proportional electoral system, the leadership has made clear that it would not do as the motion says.
Since then, at the Progressive Britain conference last week, Starmer made clear that voting reform would not be among the priorities should Labour win power.
Burnham however has urged the party to adopt PR, saying that the current first-past-the-post voting system hands more power to the establishment than MPs or people and changing the system to proportional representation would mean “every vote would matter”.
Carla Denyer claims Greens are the strongest party on democratic reform
Carla Denyer, Cost of Living Crisis, Bristol, 2 April 2022
The Green Party has slammed the Tories for dragging democracy in the UK in a dangerous direction.
Speaking at an event last night, co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, Carla Denyer, laid out how the Tory’s have assaulted our democracy – and how the Greens would solve it.
Denyer discussed how to restore public faith in politics and argued that the Greens were the strongest party on democratic reform.
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The Greens have said they would apply proportional representation for all elections to all levels of government, along with bringing the voting age down to 16.
They would introduce devolution, mirroring systems in Europe by giving more power to local and regional government and Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Parliament. They would also introduce an elected upper house to replace hereditary power in the House of Lord and set up a Citizen’s Convention.
Introducing a fairer system of state funding for political parties, which would hope to eliminate the dependence of large private donations and strengthen transparency on political lobbying and donations. One in four people believe that party donors have the most influence on government decisions, according to Unlock Democracy.
Denyer also accused the media of preventing democratic conversations through its bias towards certain political parties.
George Osborne has made it clear that he plans to introduce in welfare cuts if the Tories win the next election, including a possible reduction in the £26,000 household benefit cap and new limits on child benefit, but where does Nick Clegg stand? At the Deputy PM’s final monthly press conference of the year, I asked him whether he was prepared to consider a reduction in the benefit cap in the next parliament. He told me:
It’s not something that I’m advocating at the moment because we’ve only just set this new level and it’s £26,000, which is equivalent to earning £35,000 before tax…I think we need to keep that approach, look and see how it works, see what the effects are, but not rush to start changing the goalposts before the policy has properly settled down.
The key words here are “at the moment”. While Clegg again declared that he believed the priority should be to remove universal pensioner benefits from the well-off (“you start from the top and you work down”), he was careful not rule out a cut in the level of the cap.
Home Secretary Theresa May fails to provide any evidence that the Guardian’s publishing the Edward Snowden leaks have damaged national security as claimed by boss of MI5, Andrew Parker. Keith Vaz, chair of the home affairs committee told May “What you have given us today, and what we have heard so far, is only second-hand information. Mr Parker and Sir John are making statements in open session and nobody knows what the follow-up is.” and “Everyone is appointed by the prime minister … They are asking questions of each other, and giving answers to each other … That is exactly why we need to see them [the agency heads]. But you don’t want us to see them at all.”
