Clause 13 - Reinforcement schemes
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
4:45 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I am grateful to you, Mr. O'Hara, and even more grateful to the Minister. Mutual reinforcement has taken place. We have shown that it can work very well.
The purpose of amendment No. 56 is specific. Subsection (3) is narrowly worded. It allows cost recovery, not for actions taken to operate the scheme, but only for
''expenses incurred in taking measures to secure the efficient operation of the scheme''—
a reinforcement scheme. That may seem a subtle distinction, but I take it to mean that there can be recovery of the expenses of setting up control and forward-planning arrangements, but not of the marginal costs of carrying out the reinforcement—going into another fire authority's territory.
Amendment No. 56 proposes that the authority providing the assistance can recover the costs incurred in providing that assistance. It could be full costs or marginal costs; I have an open mind on that. However, an issue here needs to be addressed. This is a probing amendment, because it is not clear what the provision means, but the amendment would allow the scheme to define—because there will be a reinforcement scheme—what costs arising from the operation of the scheme could be recovered.
Amendment No. 67 touches on something slightly different. It provides for the apportionment of liability arising from the operation of the scheme. That also seems to be an issue in what are, as the Minister of State said, increasingly litigious times. When a fire authority in pursuit of a reinforcement scheme moves into and operates in the area of another fire authority, is it operating as an agent of the host fire authority, and does the host fire authority retain liability for the actions of that authority, or is the liability somehow apportioned between the two authorities?
This is another probing amendment to give the Under-Secretary the opportunity to explain how the provision will work in practice. I know that reinforcement schemes have been around for a long
time and work very well in practice, but I should be grateful for the Under-Secretary's clarification.