Clause 9 - Emergencies
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
3:45 pm
Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich and Woolwich, Labour)
I do not know why the hon. Gentleman shakes his head. That is a fact. The Government are funding substantially the necessary investment to ensure that there is enhanced resilience in our fire and rescue services to cope with such pressures, and I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would welcome that.
The hon. Gentleman will recognise that there is a trade-off between the different services and benefits. The high-volume pumping equipment that has been provided as part of the new dimension programme will be helpful to authorities in their normal function of responding to flooding. That will be a bonus because they will receive the equipment without having to acquire it for themselves. That is one of the spin-offs. The hon. Gentleman should be slightly more realistic and recognise that the Government have been extremely generous in funding that necessary provision. We accept that it is right and proper to do so, but we were a little surprised at the response, which implied that we are being mean-spirited in not giving an absolute guarantee to reimburse authorities for every item of expenditure.
Turning to council tax, it is right to emphasise that we expect all fire and rescue authorities, as well as all other authorities, to budget prudently. The public will not accept continuing large and unreasonable council tax increases or demands, and they expect all authorities to ensure that they deliver value for money. The Government have continued to invest substantially in public services. That is a different picture from the one that we saw when the
Conservatives were in power and, year after year, we saw grants to public authorities—