The Blue Light Fight: making a stand for independent ambulance providers

One member called us gung-ho, demanded to know what legal mind had cast an eye over the proposed legislation, threatened to leave the Association, but we knew we were right.

We had taken legal advice and had also put the issue before numerous MPs who all agreed that we were right to fear the Government's Deregulation Bill. Essentially it was planned as a catch-all device to tweak all sorts of tricky bits of law—from apprenticeships to rules governing sellers of knitting yarn, from exempting Sikhs from wearing crash helmets to the erection of statues in London—that were not working as intended.

But the unintended consequences of what was proposed in Section 36 of the Bill had alarm bells ringing in our heads—if not, in future, on our members' vehicles. ‘Road traffic legislation: use of vehicles in emergency response by NHS.’ It was the last two words in that sentence that threatened what our members have been doing every day for more than 30 years: saving lives.