Fire and Rescue Services Bill
9:25 am
Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich and Woolwich, Labour)
I beg to move,
That—
(1) during proceedings on the Fire and Rescue Services Bill the Standing Committee shall meet when the House is sitting on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9.25 am and 2.30 pm;
(2) 10 sittings shall be allotted to the consideration of the Bill in Committee;
(3) the proceedings shall be taken in the order specified in the Table below;
(4) the proceedings specified in the first column of the Table shall be brought to a conclusion (unless already concluded) at the time specified in the second column of the Table.
TABLE
Proceedings
Time for conclusion of proceedings
Clauses 1 to 20
11.25 am at the 5th sitting
Clauses 21 to 36
5 pm at the 8th sitting
Clauses 37 to 51, Schedule 1, Clause 52, Schedule 2, Clauses 53 to 61, New Clauses, New Schedules, remaining proceedings on the Bill.
5 pm at the 10th sitting
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Sir Nicholas. I have had the pleasure of serving under you twice previously in Standing Committees. The first, which I believe we can look back on with mutual pleasure, debated the Bill that became the Greater London Authority Act 1999, which took many Committee sittings. Towards the end of the proceedings, an official told me that it was turning out to be the longest running consideration of legislation since the passage of the Government of India Act 1935. I am pleased to say that the Bill that we are considering in this Committee is not of those dimensions. Last year, Sir Nicholas, I had the pleasure of serving under you on the Committee that considered what became the Local Government Act 2003, which were extremely agreeable and constructive proceedings. On both Committees, your wise and humorous chairmanship was fundamental to ensuring the effective scrutiny and good spirit that characterises Committees at their best. I look forward to serving under you and your colleague, Mr. O'Hara.
I should stress that the Bill is important and historic. It is the first substantive legislative change to affect the fire and rescue service for over 50 years and is a crucial element in our agenda for modernising
the fire service. The Bill will help to save lives through the new duty to promote fire safety, which underpins our strategy for a more prevention-based approach to fire. It will establish a modern legislative structure to recognise the current role of the fire and rescue service in responding to a range of incidents that were not fully anticipated when the Fire Services Act 1947 was passed. It includes measures to deal with road traffic accidents and emergencies such as flooding, and preparations to guard against and respond to the new terrorist threat.
The Bill will also give statutory force to the fire and rescue national framework and place a duty on the Secretary of State to keep the framework up to date and report on it. That is fundamental to ensuring effective national provision of safety through the fire service. The Bill will also underpin the service's contribution to national resilience through responding to specific emergencies, and it will allow fire and rescue authorities to work with others to deliver and discharge their new functions while recognising that fighting fires should be undertaken only by qualified firefighters. Those are all important measures. We will deal with others as we go through the details of the Bill, but I will not weary the Committee with any further reference now.
As for the programme motion, we have agreed on 10 sittings, which is more than might be expected for a relatively small Bill of 61 clauses. The motion recognises the importance of the Bill and the need for thorough scrutiny. The knives allow more time for debate on the earlier parts of the Bill, on which, we guess, there will be the most detailed debate. That said, we intend to approach the Committee in a flexible way to allow the best use of time and thorough scrutiny of all parts. The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) is especially keen to have time to scrutinise part 3. If we end debate on the first 20 clauses a little earlier than the knives suggest in order to allow more time on part 3, that will be satisfactory from our point of view. Our aim is to be as flexible as possible in these matters.
I have circulated additional information on the secondary legislation to which the Bill will give effect. I hope that that assists the Committee. I will be more than happy to provide further information, if that is helpful, in the course of our work. That said, we have important work in hand, and I should not delay matters by talking further about the programme motion. I hope that we shall have a well structured and constructive debate that ensures that the Bill, as it leaves Committee, is in the best possible shape to achieve the objectives that I have outlined.