Clause 29 - Directions for public safety purposes
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
11:00 am
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 107, in
clause 29, page 12, line 37, at end insert—
'(1A) An order under subsection (1) may only be made where one or more fire and rescue authorities is or is considered by the Secretary of State to be likely to become, unable to discharge its functions under sections 7, 8 or 9.'.
Clause 29 re-enacts in slightly different wording a major chunk of the Fire Services Act 2003, not including the most controversial section 1(1)(a)—the sunset clause. The clause gives power to direct
''the use or disposal of property or facilities''
of a fire and rescue authority.
In general, we agree, as we did during passage of 2003 Act, that it is sensible to have such a power for use in an extreme situation—for example, in a strike or industrial dispute situation—so that we never again see troops struggling to manage with grossly inadequate and, as some would say, even dangerous 50-year-old civil defence fire tenders when perfectly good, ''state of the art'' red fire engines are locked up, apparently under the control of the people who are on strike. It raised the gall of many during the dispute—I believe from comments that I heard that the Deputy Prime Minister was among them—to see red fire engines behind locked doors and firefighters warming themselves on fire authority premises while troops had to make do with draughty Territorial Army drill halls and the like as a base for their operations. It has to be acknowledged that during the dispute some authorities clearly lacked either the political will or the backbone to confront the union over access to equipment and premises.
I debated the subject with my own chief fire officer during the dispute to find out what was going on on my patch. As the Under-Secretary will know, the situation is a little more complicated than the knee-jerk reaction of passing motorists to seeing firefighters in possession of publicly owned fire stations while on strike. During the strike, the practical consideration in many areas—in fact, I think, in all areas without exception—was that firefighters turned out for real emergencies. The judgment of the chief fire office in my area was that if firefighters were not allowed to congregate on fire authority premises and, effectively, to keep possession of their equipment, they would not be in a position to turn out.
Such matters are easier to discuss in the cool light of day than they were in the heat of the dispute. Then, there was a feeling that the unions were being allowed to gain a propaganda victory by retaining possession of their equipment—I have slipped into the terminology myself; I should have said retaining possession of the fire authority's equipment—and then turning out as heroes if required to effect a rescue or put out a particularly serious fire.
Ministers' first duty must be to secure the safety of the public. However galling it is, the Minister must consider carefully whether public safety would be
better protected by allowing striking firefighters to retain control of equipment on the basis that they will turn out when it is absolutely necessary. I am slightly nervous that, in the hothouse atmosphere of a dispute, the powers under the clause might be used as a knee-jerk reaction in a way that could damage public safety.
One issue that inevitably comes up is that, as the draft framework makes clear, the 19,000 military personnel who were available during the last dispute would almost certainly not be available again, owing to military overstretch, cuts in numbers and even—possibly—privatisation of parts of the defence fire services, denuding it of the specialist skills required. So, the issue in another industrial dispute might not so much be access to red fire engines but who the heck will drive them.
I think that the 2003 Act was sabre rattling with a purpose; the dispute had still not been resolved. The outcome of the strike vote was, to some extent, secured by the expression of determination to draw a line under the issue in the form of the 2003 Bill. The Minister of State, however, went to great lengths during debates on that Bill to emphasise the temporary nature of the powers that he was taking. Time considerations mean that I will not reach into my pile of papers and quote the numerous times when he referred to the time limit that the Government accepted on the powers in the 2003 Act.
It is technically true that nothing that the Minister of State said during the 2003 debate precluded a re-enactment of precisely the same powers in a new Bill. It is not often that I would spend much of my time defending the position of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), but when the Minister sought to reassure him and other Labour Members who rebelled against the Government in the vote on that Bill, he conveyed the impression that the matters subject to the 2003 Act would be reviewed and that new, permanent proposals would be made in the White Paper and this Bill. Nothing that the Minister said would have prepared the reasonable, independent observer for the wholesale re-enactment of those time-limited powers—except for very minor changes in the wording. A question of openness arises about the intention that the Government had. The clause will be accepted by the Committee with only a little probing now, but I suspect that the Government will find that their back Benchers will want to express their sense of betrayal that measures that were said to be time-limited in 2003 have been brought back as permanent legislation.
Amendment No. 107 would limit the use of the powers to the circumstances in which Ministers say that they are needed. It provides for the use by the Secretary of State of the powers in the clause when either a fire authority cannot, or he reasonably expects that it will not be able to, discharge its functions under clauses 7, 8 and 9 covering fire, road traffic accidents and other emergencies—typically, a situation such as an industrial dispute or some other paralysis that affects the fire and rescue authority.
Including such a provision would allay the fears of those who spoke during the 2003 debate about the possible use of the powers to privatise fire service facilities and to require the disposal of property and the passing of equipment and facilities to other service providers. As the Secretary of State intends to use the clause only in the case of an industrial dispute or similar emergency when a fire authority cannot discharge its functions, I urge the Under-Secretary, regardless of whether he accepts my amendment, to tighten the wording to reassure a sceptical micro-public on his Back Benches that that is the intention—making the wording fit the stated intention. If the Under-Secretary will not accept such a restriction, he will need to tell us when a fire and rescue authority would be discharging, and would be expected to be able to continue to discharge, its statutory functions but it would be considered legitimate to use the powers in the clause.
Once again, I emphasise the Opposition's belief that fire and rescue authorities must have the primary responsibility for the discharge of their functions. It is right and proper that the Secretary of State should have the power to intervene when they fail to discharge those functions either because they are incompetent-—that is dealt with elsewhere in the Bill—or because something such as a strike prevents them from doing so. It is also proper that he should be constrained not to interfere in that way if they are discharging their functions fully and effectively. The Bill, with the clause but without the amendment, gives too wide a power of intervention. I look forward to hearing how the Under-Secretary will respond to those concerns.