Clause 3 - Creation of combined fire and rescue authorities: supplementary
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
3:45 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
The provisions are supplementary and incidental provisions, which, as I have remarked already, the unwary reader might be led to think are of minor consequence. In fact, a careful reading of the clause shows that those supplementary and incidental provisions include fundamental matters that relate to the CFAs that would be established under clause 2.
I suspect that the Minister will not be surprised to learn that the amendment targets the right of the Secretary of State to appoint 50 per cent. of the members of a CFA, minus one, which would give him a huge say in the running of that authority. The Minister has argued that, for reasons of democratic accountability, it would be appropriate for regional fire and rescue authorities to be accountable to elected regional assemblies, should regional assemblies be created. It is slightly disingenuous for the Minister to argue simultaneously that he must be allowed to appoint half the members of any such authority.
If combined fire and rescue authorities were created other than as a result of the establishment of elected regional assemblies, there simply would be a naked transfer of power from local authorities to the Secretary of State; a provision that undermines most, if not all, of the Government's rhetoric about wanting to remove the hand of Whitehall from the affairs of running fire and rescue authorities. The Secretary of State has no such powers of appointment at the moment, and I am curious to know how a Minister who professes the creed of localism can possibly justify seeking to give himself, in effect, the power to appoint half the members of a combined fire and rescue
authority, when the arrangement up to now has been that members of those authorities are secondees from the clause 1 authorities that would underlie the CFA that is created.
The provision, more than any other in the Bill, underlines the Government's centralising tendency, and suggests the hollowness of the apparent commitment to decentralise. Many people who have closely observed what has happened during the past 18 months have detected a sea change in the attitude of the ODPM. At the beginning of the firefighters' dispute in the summer of 2002, Ministers were keen to emphasise that this was an issue between the local authority employers and the Fire Brigades Union and not a matter for central Government. As the dispute dragged on, the Government became more and more involved, both publicly and behind the scenes in negotiations.
It is apparent to many people who are interested in these matters that at some point the Government lost their enthusiasm for the idea that the fire and rescue services were local services to be delivered by local authorities, and decided that they alone could sort out the mess. They decided that they would take for themselves the power to bang heads together to get done the things that Ministers' agendas required were done. The Minister is nodding his head. In some cases, there may be a conflict between the demands of efficiency and the demands of democratic accountability. However, a Minister and a Government who make much of their commitment to decentralisation and localism should think very carefully about how that balance is to be struck.
It is difficult to imagine how anyone seriously can defend the Secretary of State taking completely new powers to appoint the members of a body who up to now have always been appointed locally. That is the essence of the reason for tabling amendment No. 16. Amendments Nos. 17, 19 and 20 are consequential amendments, drafted to the best of our ability to deal with changes to the Bill that would be required if the Secretary of State's right to appoint members of a CFA were deleted, as amendment No. 16 seeks to do.