Clause 19 - Power to make emergency regulations
Civil Contingencies Bill
4:15 pm
Mr Patrick Mercer (Newark, Conservative)
We have had an extremely interesting discussion of the two amendments. On amendment No. 95, Whips clearly should not be involved in such decision making. We have had a clear case outlined as to how that amendment might be useful and might tighten the legislation.
I shall direct most of my remarks to amendment No. 37. The Under-Secretary gave the lie to her statements when she said that we have already been tested. I would be fascinated to know when we were tested. Certainly, we have been tested by the Irish Republican Army for 30-odd years and we have been tested while our intelligence services demonstrated excellence in interdicting, in the main, Islamist fundamentalist terrorists, but we have not been tested in the traumatic way in which the Americans were tested. Is that not the point of the Bill? Is it not the point of the powers that, for once, the Government are trying to be proactive, do something before the worst happens and put powers in place before we have the emergency visited on us? It is simply wrong for the Under-Secretary to say that we have already been tested; we have not.
When previous Governments thought that we might be tested along such lines, their response was wholly different. Before the second world war, it became clear that weapons of mass destruction might be used against these isles. Therefore, a Department with responsibility for civil defence sprang into being, with a single Minister in charge of it. Interestingly, the American response to traumatic incident was to create something similar—a Department of Homeland Security, with a single figure in charge of it.
The fact that the Under-Secretary had to illuminate the matter by telling us the number of people who might be required to give us an answer in the event of such an emergency is extremely worrying. One of the
Ministers to whom she referred is the Minister in charge of counter-terrorism, yet interestingly, when we had a problem with terrorism on the airlines during the Christmas period, the Secretary of State for Transport, not that Minister, spoke about sky marshals.
Does not that make the point—I firmly and honestly believe this—that the Government are happy to jog along complacently with these impractical measures, despite the fact that we have before us an extremely practical Bill? I believe, hope and pray that the Bill will be extremely practical, but my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire has mentioned the Government's disjointed approach in respect of the Phillis report, and, as we have said before, Project Unicorn points to the lack of cohesion between central Government and the private sector. The Government are happy to sit in complacency and try to cope with those problems, hoping and praying that a traumatic incident of the sort that forced America to go down this line will not happen here.
I fully recognise from the Under-Secretary's comments that it is most unlikely that we will make any progress on the matter. I hope that it will not take an incident of the style and shape of 11 September to create a difference in the Government's approach to the problem. I hope also that it will not take 2,000 people being killed for the Government to realise that this part of the Bill is wrong. Despite those comments, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.