Clause 2 - Power to create combined fire and rescue authorities
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich and Woolwich, Labour)
I was not asleep. I was reading a relevant section from a fire and rescue document. I shall come to the point under consideration.
Unlike amendment No. 4, which we debated before lunch, amendment No. 9 would not stop the combination of fire and rescue authorities where it would promote the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the fire authorities concerned. However, it would stop any move to a regional structure for specific public safety reasons—above all, civil resilience. As I said about amendment No. 4, we must deal with the possibility that a regional management board might not succeed, perhaps because of differences between the authorities involved in reaching agreement on a vital matter of public safety, such as the establishment of a regional control room. In such circumstances, we would need to take action to create a region-wide authority to ensure the necessary resilience in the interests of public safety.