Civil Contingencies Bill
3:00 pm
Mr Douglas Alexander (Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Cabinet Office; Paisley South, Labour)
I hope that our debate on the clause can be brief in light of the fact that, as the hon. Gentleman observed, we have covered a number of points in detail this morning and so far this afternoon.
In response to the hon. Gentleman's point, I return to this morning's parallel discussion about British Telecom and the need to be clear about the responsibilities on local responders other than local authorities, which may include blue-light services. We must put in place the means to ensure the appropriate ground-level working relationships among those local responders—energy providers in the present case, and BT in the case discussed this morning. Rather than focus on who is facing the customer, it is important to have clarity about who is responsible for participating. We can assure customers that a number of the organisations that the hon. Gentleman mentioned operate under regulatory regimes for the energy sector that will endure. In this part of the Bill, our aim is to ensure that there is an appropriate working relationship between other responders in recognition of the fact that energy providers will have a key role in getting utilities back in place after the contingencies that the Bill anticipates.
I am aware that a significant amount of work was undertaken by Government, led by the Department of Trade and Industry, following the power outage that London suffered in August last year. Both ministerial and departmental work has been undertaken to ensure that we have the correct relationships with the energy sector and, in that case, with the electricity utilities. The challenge is not so much providing information to the public—a matter on which we shall touch this afternoon—as making sure that the sector is represented in discussions at local level, and that the companies' relationships with local authorities emergency services and others are appropriate.
The starting point of the Bill is the framework for planning and for responding to emergencies. That has been clearly and logically set out for the Committee. The purpose of clause 1 is to establish a clear definition for the purposes of part 1. Thanks to a number of probing amendments, we have managed to offer some useful clarification to members of the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.