DEWSBURY MP Shahid Malik has been forced to defend a decision to mothball fire appliances –because they don’t work.
Mr Malik, the Communities and Local Government Minister, said “technicalities” meant the nine specialist vehicles could not be fully used at the moment.
The Fire Brigades Union claimed the high-tech communications vehicles supplied to the fire service under a £1.5m scheme to help deal with major incidents are being kept in storage.
Nine of the so-called enhanced command support vehicles were supposed to be in use by now at nine English regions including Yorkshire after they were launched by ministers in September 2008.
Equipment on the vehicles includes satellite phones, secure digital radio systems and mobile phone networks and was described by the Government as “ET phone home communications.”
But the union said technology on the vehicles didn’t work and they would now not be in service before spring 2010.
Mr Malik said: “Although the vehicles are not yet fully operational or permanently located with individual services, they have been used to good effect in three incidents and exercises, most recently during last month’s floods in Cumbria.
“Minor technical issues have been encountered with the satellite communications capability which provides a basic level of communications in the event of an unlikely, but serious and protracted, disruption of other communications systems.
“We are reasonably confident that these can be resolved and hope to be in a position to deploy the full capability by March 2010.”
