Clause 5 - General measures
Civil Contingencies Bill
3:00 pm
Mr Richard Allan (Shadow Spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, Cabinet Office; Sheffield, Hallam, Liberal Democrat)
I am interested in the amendment, introduced by the hon. Member for Newark in such a chivalrous fashion, but I am not sure that we can
support it. There is scope for a lot of people to engage in an activity under subsection (1)(b) of clause 5 for the purpose of
''reducing, controlling or mitigating the effects of an emergency''.
I agree with him wholeheartedly that volunteers will play a significant part in that. In our discussions in the Special Standing Committee, we had representations from volunteer organisations, and the British Red Cross made very effective points about the way in which it had been engaged in mitigating the effects of emergencies over many years in the United Kingdom. Its members are often the unsung heroes. I am not entirely convinced of the merits of introducing a new structure to deal with that. We have structures in place already.
The British Red Cross is functioning well and there are bodies such as the St. John Ambulance. The hon. Gentleman correctly referred to the position of volunteer medical staff; I am aware of that because a lot of medics living in Sheffield already volunteer for the Territorial Army. When the TA needs medical staff, they will be called up from within my constituency and, I know, many other constituencies up and down the land. However, I am not convinced that there is any spare capacity; in other words, my instinct is that everybody who wishes to volunteer already volunteers. I am not sure that we would get any new resources by setting up an extra force that would appear to be in competition with what already exists. We must co-ordinate the existing bodies, and I hope that there will be a clear duty on category 1 responders. We recommended to the Special Standing Committee that we should like to see the duty on the category 1 responders to the existing bodies more explicitly spelled out. The Government responded in the negative because they felt that there were different views among the voluntary sector organisations. However, there was probably consensus about the leading voluntary organisations, especially the TA. The TA is an extra resource that can be, and is, called up for military activity abroad. I assume that it would be used as a major port of call for any emergency activity that took place in the UK. All those bodies should be enmeshed in the emergency planning process, and I am not persuaded that an additional body would be the way to achieve that aim.