[Mr. Edward O'Hara in the Chair] — Buncefield

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 9:30 am on 9 January 2008.

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Photo of Mike Penning Mike Penning Shadow Minister (Health) 9:30, 9 January 2008

May I say, Mr. O'Hara, what a pleasure it is to open the debate this morning under your chairmanship?

It is with some sadness that I stand before the House after securing Mr. Speaker's permission to hold a debate on the Buncefield disaster that took place in my constituency on 11 December 2005. I shall start with a quotation:

"Speaking to you all, it quickly becomes apparent that there are really strong local partnerships in place... Obviously it is these relationships which will undoubtedly bring about sustainable and lasting solutions to all the challenges to rebuild community life."

The quotation is from His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who visited my constituency following the Buncefield explosion. It is sad that I should stand here, more than two years after the explosion and more than two years since the last statement on the Floor of the House by the then Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Prescott, saying to the Government that we have some real problems in my constituency following the explosion. The problems are no fault of my constituency or my constituents, or the businesses or the local authority that has done so well to handle the situation.

On 11 December 2005, three explosions rocked my constituency. The first, from tank 912, measured 2.7 on the Richter scale. Those of us who can think back to that terrible day will have seen the television footage. The depot is not in the middle of nowhere or on the coast; it is smack, bang in the middle of the country, and right in the middle of the Maylands industrial area. The explosion and the subsequent fires in 20 tanks caused huge problems for the country, my community and the emergency services.

I wish to put on record again—I have done it many times, but it will not hurt to do so again—my admiration for chief fire officer Roy Wilsher, for the Hertfordshire fire and rescue service, and for the many county fire services that came to our rescue and helped us. I must declare an interest: I was a fireman for eight years, and I trained on refinery fires at the Coryton refinery, which supplied the fuel that caused the initial explosion. I am unashamed in my huge admiration for the firefighters of this country.

I also wish to thank the other emergency services, and in particular the chief constable and the constabularies that came to our assistance. Sadly, as is often true of such situations, many thousands of people had to leave their homes and many businesses had to be excluded from their premises. I wish also to place on record my admiration for Dacorum borough council, led by the excellent chief executive, Daniel Zammit, whose staff were magnificent. They put themselves into dangerous situations to protect others. There were no questions about whether a building was a local authority property, private property or anything else; everybody—the whole community—pulled together. I received literally hundreds of letters from people in private dwellings whose homes were boarded up and made safe by the chief executive's officers. I have nothing but admiration for Dacorum borough council, which is a very small authority—I do not say that in a derisory way—that responded fantastically.

Being a local resident who was at Buncefield within half an hour of the first explosion, a former fireman and very nosy, I managed to get very close to the incident. I was lucky enough to be at the forward control point when senior firefighters were making decisions about how to put out the fire. My initial concern, like everybody's, was the safety of my community: the residents and the people working on the site as well as—and this was very much the case—the firefighters and other emergency services.

It was apparent that serious injuries had been sustained by some of the people working at the depot in the early hours of that Sunday morning, and it has been put on record many times that it is an absolute miracle that no one died. At least one engineer who was working at the site received serious lung injuries, and all the injured were taken to the excellent accident and emergency department at Hemel Hempstead general hospital. I wonder what on earth would happen if such an incident took place in December this year, because there will be no accident and emergency department open to look after those injuries. Sadly, the Government have decided to close Hemel Hempstead general hospital. I shall not go on about that today, because I am going to request an Adjournment debate on the hospital's future, and another Minister can take the flak for it.

The Buncefield incident, which took place in the early hours of a Sunday morning, left thousands of people with damaged homes, and thousands not knowing whether their businesses or jobs would survive. I wish to emphasise how lucky our community was. I have met many residents, including some very young people, who were lying in bed that morning, as one does on a Sunday morning, probably not even awake. Indeed, if one is thinking about waking up at 6.10 am, perhaps one should turn over and go back to sleep. They were woken initially by the explosion, but they suddenly realised that they were covered in glass; or that the front of their house had disappeared; or in some cases, that the whole house was falling down around them as they lay in bed. We are talking not about a war zone, or an area where, sadly, earthquakes or tsunamis happen, but about an urban area in eastern England, which was blown apart by an incident at an industrial complex.

Many of my constituents still suffer trauma from the explosion, and many children still receive counselling. I shall provide some quotations from children who have received counselling to try to recover. They are not grown-ups who have experienced many things in their lives. One boy of seven who needed counselling said:

"Counselling has been good 'cos it's made me stronger."

He is a seven-year-old boy whose life has been tragically changed because of an industrial incident. Another child said:

"You have really helped me find out what I want and how I feel."

That young lady was 12. That is how young people in my constituency have been affected, and hundreds of people of all ages have received counselling.

One former constituent, who moved out of my constituency because he can never return to his home, is a gentleman called Ian Silverstein. Ian's home was blown to smithereens. It looked like someone had dropped a 1,000 lb bomb next to his house. I have visited the site. The house is gone—it does not exist—and he worked all his life for it. I am sure that we would all struggle to realise what that feels like. There was no explosion in his home, and he had not done anything wrong. Something happened through no fault of his own.