Campbell attacks Government over flood lessons failure

3.48.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 22nd Aug 2007

Flooded Road

Liberal Democrats Leader Sir Ming Campbell today launched a withering attack on the government for failing to learn the lessons of the recent floods. Sir Menzies visited a TriService Emergency Centre commended for dealing effectively with the flooding, but now threatened with closure. The same fate is faced by equally valuable fire and rescue services across the country. These closures are part of government plans to move the functions of 46 fire and rescue centres to just 9 regional command centres.

Sir Ming said "The government is compromising safety and could be putting lives at risk by introducing regional fire and rescue control centres. Closing down locally based centres will severely undermine a community's ability to cope with emergency situations such as flooding, while regional centres will lack crucial local knowledge."

He further said "Gordon Brown promised a full review on the floods so that lessons could be learnt, but the government appears to being going full speed ahead on moves which may lead to increased risk of devastation when flooding occurs in the future."