Rescue teams aren't individuals. They are official organisations and therefore have to operate within a legal frame work.
As such they have a legally enforced duty of care to members and others.
This not only requires the OK from the statutory agency (police) to act and their insurance etc, but also equipment meeting the regs.. LOLER etc and appropriate risk assessment
I have to quibble with the logic / wording. I stress this isn't me being an internet smart arse, but it matters when doubtful information on "duty of care", and "we have to do such and such", plus comments about insurance are stated as facts, which then get repeated. We had this some years ago with the hoo ha over BCRA/BCA insurance.
I think you are conflating several things, even if some are at least partly true, and wrongly suggesting a logic argument that one follows the next
First sentence "operating within legal framework" - fine. I'm no expert but that's also my understanding. As stated by others the notion is that the Teams are doing the rescue "for" the police so to speak
Have a "duty of care" to team members and others" also fair enough, almost certainly the case for many purposes. However a "legally enforced" duty of care makes little sense to me in the context of whether or not there's a "duty of care". You either have a duty of care or you don't. My quibble is that it seems to be suggesting that "legally enforced" is a specific thing we should give extra weight to, so more than a quibble on wording. I'm pretty well read on such things and that's not a phrase I recall seeing before
Your third point "requires OK from police to act" etc. This doesn't follow from the duty of care point at all as far as I can see. I could believe it "requires OK from police to
act on their behalf" But it is a big step from that to say they must, essentially stand by doing nothing until the police say it's OK. By the same logic another group shouldn't / couldn't help if they came across a victim underground, or maybe it's OK if they are not members of the team. Of course, I know you're not suggesting any such daft behaviour, but I'm making the point to challenge the statement statement about being unable to act until the police have OK'd it. As Rhys mentioned upthread, in Wales it was common practice to kick off with the rescue whilst informing the police that was what was happening, maybe nominally "asking for an OK" but that was more a conceit than anything.
Of course, it is fair enough of rescue teams choose to have various insurances, and I do understand there's a legal set up whereby they "do rescues on behalf the the police" but let's not get mixed up by saying this somehow follows from any notion of "duty of care" which is a quite specific thing, applying to all sorts of things, often everyday things at that
Sorry of I'm being harsh in my comment but I read up extensively on tort law some years back when the old BCRA scheme was coming adrift and I heard all sorts of claims and factoids that made no sense and turned out had no grounding in law, and yet still got repeated by others as facts which then influenced policy, hence my tendency to quibble when things are stated as facts.
Anyhow, due credit to those running the various teams, as my own contribution has only been to turn out when needed and attend the odd practice, albeit over 40 odd years