Clause 19 - Charging
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Richard Younger-Ross (Shadow Minister, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Local Government & the Regions; Teignbridge, Liberal Democrat)
The table that the Minister provided entrances me. I am sure that we will come back to it. I might have spotted an error, and I will look at it in a minute.
We were dealing with charging and seeking to establish a more liberal regime. Perhaps the Minister and his staff have to work until the early hours of the morning dealing with orders to authorise local authorities to charge for this, that or the other. Instead of the Minister burning the midnight oil, it sounds far more reasonable to ask that the fire authority should have the right to charge for something if it decides that it wishes to do so. Our amendment would not affect the exemptions that are clearly stated and with which we do not disagree—that is, an authority could not charge for extinguishing fires or for protecting life and property in the event of fire. Likewise, the other conditions of the clause would still apply—we have not sought to amend those. We are simply trying to free the process and give the power to the authority rather than to the Secretary of State.
To give an example, a fire authority may have particular difficulty with false alarms—burglar alarms going off in industrial estates and repeat offenders—and it therefore wishes to charge for the second or third call-out. The amendment would allow that to happen and give the authority the flexibility to charge.