Clause 5 - General measures
Civil Contingencies Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Douglas Alexander (Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Cabinet Office; Paisley South, Labour)
First, may I express my pleasant surprise at the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North and the hon. Member for Windsor (Mr. Trend)? It was intriguing and then deeply worrying; so effective were my hon. Friend's comments from the Back Benches that I feared for my position on the Front Bench as his contribution continued.
On a more serious note, I extend my sympathy to the constituents of the hon. Member for Windsor who suffered in the flooding that he described, as I am sure would all hon. Members. My constituency has also suffered from flooding in recent years, and I know how devastating it can be to the lives of families in many communities. He asked me about the Government's
response to the voluntary sector, particularly to the request for a statutory duty to be placed on the category 1 responders. It is worth once again going over the specific point that we addressed in the response to the considerations of the Joint Committee.
The Government place a high value on the role that the voluntary sector plays in the response to emergencies. Voluntary organisations have a great deal of involvement in multi-agency planning and response. However, we anticipate that their contribution will continue on a voluntary rather than a statutory basis, because there is disagreement in the voluntary sector about what its status should be and, in any event, it is doubtful whether voluntary organisations could sustain a statutory obligation consistently in all parts of the country and for the foreseeable future.
Throughout the consultation period, the major national voluntary organisations expressed mixed views on their inclusion, and we do not want to impose an unrealistic and unwanted obligation on them. The status of voluntary organisations do not have the same level of certainty of resources or legal framework that public sector bodies have, so it is unrealistic to place a duty on them. There are often differences between the national and local levels, as some organisations are local or regional in nature. Again, it is important to draw the Committee's attention to the Government's response to the Joint Committee's report, in which we state that
''We fully endorse Category 1 responders seeking advice from organisations they believe could be of assistance to them. Though not specifically detailed, there are no impediments to this type of relationship within the Bill. We consider that details of this policy are best placed in the guidance and not on the face of the Bill.''
In response to the hon. Gentleman's query about the Environment Agency, I am confident that the framework that is established that brings together category 1 responders and that discusses collaboratively the challenges that a local community faces could effect exactly the sort of cultural change that he seeks. However, the Government's case in response to the Joint Committee is compelling. The two voluntary organisations that we have probably heard the most about this afternoon are the St. John Ambulance and the British Red Cross. As I recollect, they had fundamentally divergent views on whether there should be a statutory duty on category 1 responders and whether they should be included in the categories.