I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future design of the helicopter search and rescue service.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I welcome the Minister to his new position. I know that this topic is not within his brief, but sits with his colleague in the other place, but I also know that he is a diligent Minister and will no doubt have full command of the facts for us today.
Dr Huq, if you were to stop anyone in Shetland and ask them what they thought of Oscar Charlie, you would get an almost universally positive response. If you were to test that in an opinion poll, Oscar Charlie would get the sort of approval ratings that I, you, the Minister and even the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) would bite a hand off for. It is our good fortune, then, that Oscar Charlie is not a politician, but the search and rescue helicopter based at Sumburgh airport in Shetland.
Oscar Charlie was the call sign originally, but then became the name by which the helicopter service is known. The original Oscar Charlie was actually taken out of service in 2007, but in 2013 the operator of the service, Bristow, bowing to the inevitable, renamed the current helicopter Oscar Charlie—I know that because I officiated at the naming ceremony.
I say all that to illustrate that, for people in the northern isles, the helicopter search and rescue service is not somehow detached from us; it is not an anonymous service. It is a service that we value massively, and it is every bit as much of a blue light service for us as the police, fire or ambulance services are for other communities.
When Shetland has needed the service, Oscar Charlie has been there. In 1993, at the grounding of the Braer, Oscar Charlie was in the thick of it. In 1997, at the loss of the Green Lily, which led to the tragic loss of Bill Deacon, the winchman on Oscar Charlie, it was absolutely central to the rescue effort. Just a few weeks ago, when the Stena Spey drilling rig in the North sea broke free during Storm Babet, it was Oscar Charlie that came to the rescue. It is also an invaluable support for air ambulance services in the northern isles. When the air ambulance proper is not able to serve us, Oscar Charlie and the search and rescue service step in.
News of a proposed change to the way in which the service is delivered has caused enormous concern in the local community. The change came to light on 5 October this year when a whistleblower delivered two pages of a document prepared by Bristow, headed “UKSAR2G”. It is from a memorandum issued to all UK SAR personnel dated 20 September 2023. I only have pages 1 and 2, but according to the document itself, it runs to seven pages. I have asked Bristow for a copy of the memo, but it says, no, it cannot give it to us and that it has to come from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. I asked the MCA, and it said, “No, no, it is Bristow’s document, so it has to come from them.” So my first ask of the Minister is, can we please have this document put into the public domain? I know it is not his to control either, but I suspect he has a bit more influence than I do.
It is worth reading into the record what the document says about the new generation of the search and rescue service. Page 1 says:
“The UKSAR2G system is designed to deliver greater capability at a lower price”—
it is the “lower price” thing that concerns many people—
“than today’s Aerial Surveillance and Verification (ASv) and UKSAR contracts. The Rotary element will consist of: 12 bases, two more than the existing service provision...Create two new seasonal bases (Nevis and Lakes) to cover areas of high-density SAR activity”—
I am guessing that that would be for mountain rescue—and have
“18 aircraft: 9 AW189, 3 S-92, 6 AW139.”
It is on page 2 of the memorandum that we see the news that most concerns people in my constituency: it is anticipated that, under the new service, the readiness state for the helicopter based at Sumburgh, which is currently 15 minutes, is to be increased at the end of 2026 to 60 minutes. That is a significant increase in the readiness state.
Those who work in the sector and who know what they are talking about, including some who have worked in it and retired, tell me without any overstatement that this change could put lives at risk. That is why this issue must be dealt with properly; we cannot just rely on people making decisions about which the community has no prior knowledge and on which there is no meaningful consultation, and then find ourselves left without the service when we most need it.