This government cock-up could cost Tory MP Oliver Letwin his West Dorset seat at the next election!
More than half of the voters in his constituency have signed a petition protesting against the scrapping of the Portland rescue helicopter as part of government plans to cut coastguard and rescue services. See here for more info.
A government ‘mix-up’ over dates means the UK coast will be left inadequately guarded. For up to 2 years.
We know the coalition government has made some huge mistakes in its mad rush to sacrifice public services at the altar of austerity, but this one might just beat them all.
It’s not being very well reported but as part of its austerity measures, the government has just started closing half of all the local Coastguard Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centres around the country.
The coastguard is important. It’s one of the four emergency services along with fire ambulance and police. Coastguard stations protect our coast – they coordinate large-scale and small-scale search and rescue operations, control shipping, deal with maritime and coastal emergencies, protect the environment from oil spills etc and generally stand guard over the 19,491 miles of Britain’s coast.
According to government plans, the 50% of our local coastguard stations which are being closed are to be replaced by a single Coastguard National Maritime Operations Centre based in Fareham, which is supposed to coordinate coastguard operations from a central location.
However, the centre in Fareham isn’t fully functional yet. And it won’t be ready until …..2014.
So for the next 2 years vast parts of our coast will be left virtually unguarded.
That’s like allowing our fire, ambulance or police services to be left without adequate cover for 2 years.
But even more worrying. Could this scandalous state of affairs be all down to a simple mix-up by the government over dates?
It seems some senior members of the cabinet – one David Cameron for example – were under the impression the local coastguard stations were going to be closednot in 2012 butin 2015 – a year after the Fareham national centre is to be fully operational.
Look at this letter from Cameron, sent just last July. In the third paragraph from the end, Cameron states confidently that the closures will be taking place in ….. 2015:
Some mistake surely? Why were the local stations closed in 2012 – two years too early – when according to the PM they should be closing in 2015?
When he was tackled about the letter, Cameron claimed he had made a ‘clerical error’ by typing 2015 instead of 2012.
But read the paragraph again.It doesn’t look like a ‘clerical error’ to me.Cameron clearly says the centres would remain open until 2015 to ensure the planned transitions would maximise ‘the retention of local knowledge’. The sentence would no longer make any sense if 2015 were replaced with 2012.
It looks very much to me as if senior members of the government didn’t realise there would be a 2 year gap in coastguard coverage and are now hoping they’ll get away with it because no-one will notice what a complete cock-up they’ve made of the whole thing.
Maybe we should make sure it is noticed and they don’t get away with it?
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For more information about the Coastguard closures farce – see here:
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