COASTGUARD campaigners aim to keep up the pressure as MPs heard how control room cuts would put lives at risk.
The Portland Coastguard Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre on Weymouth harbourside is among those facing the axe.
Ministers appeared to have a change of heart earlier this month when they announced they would not sign off the reforms until an inquiry is completed into the service’s effectiveness.
Now that inquiry has heard from unions, who lined up to attack the closures.
Steve Quinn, president of the Coastguard section of the Public and Commercial Services Union, told the House of Commons Transport Committee: “Cuts of this magnitude can only lead to putting people’s lives at risk.”
Allan Graveson, senior national secretary of the seafarers’ union Nautilus, told the MPs: “Change to the system should not mean wholesale, or what appears to be random, cuts.
“New technology is no substitute for personnel.”
Steve Todd, national secretary of the RMT transport union, said the cuts were ‘far too much’.
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