Clause 19 - Charging
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
The clause deals with the ability of a fire and rescue authority to charge for services. I will confine my remarks as narrowly as I can on all the groups of amendments in the hope that we might have an opportunity to discuss the broader issues and the compare-and-contrast exercise between clause 19 and the provisions of the Fire Services Act 1947 in a clause stand part debate.
We are broadly sympathetic to the Liberal Democrat amendment No. 70, which largely reflects the intentions of our amendments Nos. 46 and 47, to which we will come in due course. I do not, however, believe that the hon. Gentleman's amendment goes quite far enough, and I think our amendment No. 48 will underline the requirement to go a little bit further than he is suggesting. We have no argument with the principle of limiting the power to charge to discretionary services only, except for one issue—that of medical co-response—that we need to address. We also strongly support the removal of the process of order making by the Secretary of State. However, the
local freedom to charge can only work if it is strictly limited to the non-statutory, non-core functions of a fire and rescue service.