Clause 9 - Emergencies
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
4:00 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
The point is that the document appears to give the fire and rescue authority the lead obligation. It states:
''A fire and rescue authority must make provision for the purpose of rescuing people and protecting them from serious harm in the event of''
an ''accident at sea'', but not for the purpose of assisting the other rescue bodies in a really major incident.
As the Minister will know, the danger of creep of statutory services into areas where voluntary services have been active is that people become lazy; they start to rely on the fact that the statutory services have an obligation to provide something, and feel that they no longer need to dip into their pockets to support its provision voluntarily.