Clause 4 - Combined authorities under the
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
9:25 am
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
Clause 4, which has already been referred to during our discussions on clause 2, carries into the new legislative structure the CFAs that have already been created under the 1947 Act. Many were created relatively recently as a result of the creation of unitary authorities, and of the need for new fire authorities to embrace the former counties and those new unitary authorities. The clause will allow the status quo to exist, which is an odd but necessary situation.
During our proceedings on Tuesday, the Minister undertook to try to obtain figures for how many existing CFAs were created at the instigation of the relevant local authorities, and whether any had been imposed by the Secretary of State against the authorities' wishes. I suspect that the overwhelming majority were created as a result of local government reorganisation, and that it was envisaged from the outset of the process that the fire authority would be reconfigured. I also suspect that there have been no examples of the Secretary of State creating a CFA as a stand-alone action, which is one of the reasons for our
concern about the way those powers appear to be underlined in the Bill.
Amendment No. 21 seeks to limit the Secretary of State's power to amend or revoke an existing scheme. The aim of the clause is to carry forward the existing CFAs into the new framework. The amendment would mean that the Secretary of State could vary the scheme only with the agreement of the authority or revoke it only with the agreement of what I refer to as the underlying authorities—the clause 1 authorities—which would be the fire and rescue authorities if the combined authority were to be wound up. That is an important defence of the localist principle. These bodies are rooted in their communities. Although they are CFAs and are not directly accountable to the electorate of an area, they are indirectly accountable through the constituent local authorities that make up the body.
Amendment No. 22 provides that where the Secretary of State intends to make an order to vary or wind up a scheme, there shall be an inquiry. Amendment No. 23 provides that the order shall proceed only if the inquiry concludes that the change that is being proposed, or the revocation, is in the interests of greater efficiency, effectiveness and economy. Notwithstanding our earlier semantic debate, I understand that to be an all-embracing phrase encompassing everything that a fire and rescue authority should appropriately be pursuing. The Minister of State seems to want to have his cake and eat it on this one: having said that public safety is outside the definition, he now says that public safety is embraced by the concept of effectiveness.
These are important amendments. They would allow the existing CFAs to be carried forward, and they would allow any sensible variations to the scheme where everyone agreed that they were necessary. But they would also introduce the safeguard of an inquiry, with an objective test for that inquiry, if changes were to be made or a scheme was to be revoked. I hope that the Under-Secretary will see the constructive intention behind the amendments, and that he can tell us how the Government foresee the powers in the clause being used.
Amendment No. 8 in the name of Liberal Democrat Members requires yet more consultation. We do not disagree with the sentiment, but our experience is that consultation written formally into a Bill is unlikely to be any more effective than the informal consultation that Ministers will be required to carry out anyway. Although the clause is generally innocuous, the unfettered power of the Secretary of State to vary or revoke a scheme is a centralising power. I do not say that it is a new power, but in the spirit of wanting to decentralise power to the fire authorities we suggest that it needs to be curbed. That is the intention of the amendments.