Clause 3 - Section 2: supplemental
Civil Contingencies Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley, Conservative)
I have certainly never done that.
The clause requires the Minister of the Crown and Scottish Ministers to issue guidance, so many people will receive orders and guidance well before the Bill comes into force. There may be issues in the preparation of the plans that the bodies will want to make sure are up to date. They will need equipment that they may not currently have to deal with chemical outbreaks, dirty bombs or a plane crashing into a building in some part of the United Kingdom—all the awful eventualities that we can possibly think of, including terrorist bombs. Local authorities may then have to say, ''Actually, we do need this extra bit of kit''. It will cost money; some of it may be expensive. The Minister may be au fait with the sort of equipment that I am talking about, but there will certainly be resource implications.
Some things that I have read in the newspapers recently about the lack of kit with which our soldiers went to war in Iraq worry me. We were told that they would get kit, but it is clear from the stories direct from the front that kit was not getting through, for whatever reason. I hope that the Minister can assure me that it will not be because of a shortage of money that the responders do not get information and that they will not be kept short of the resources necessary to obtain equipment.
The Minister of the Crown will also be able under subsections (1) and (2), through guidance no doubt, to direct bodies as to what they need to do. As we have said, a number of bodies will be involved, not only organisations such as BT. The Minister said, ''It should cost only a minimal amount of money. What are they worried about?'' However, if the mobile telephone network is down, the Government may direct companies to put landlines into parts of the country where they have been destroyed, get the network up and running or hire another satellite. I can only imagine that the costs of hiring a satellite at emergency rates are astronomic. At some time, the company will have to make the money back. Has that been taken on board? If BT had to spend hundreds, thousands or millions of pounds on hiring satellites—[Interruption.] We had the same fire alarm announcement this morning, Mr. Benton. It is just testing the Committee to see how we will react in the event of an emergency. As we can see, the members of the public know what to do.