Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede & Weybridge, Conservative)

I have a brief question for the Under-Secretary. When I first read the Bill I was puzzled that the clause did not give a hint of the nature of the inquiries or any detail about the way in which they were to be conducted. As I read through the Bill, I discovered that the information is contained in clause 54. I am interested to know why it was felt appropriate to put the specification for the conduct of inquiries under clause 26 into clause 54, the supplementary provision on inquiries in a separate part of the Bill, so making it harder for a person trying to understand the Bill. If I have misunderstood, the Under-Secretary will correct me, but it seems that, having read clause 26, one has to go to clause 54 to find out what sort of inquiry is involved—whether it would be public, whether it would publish a report and so on.

I know that the Under-Secretary's instinct, in explaining this tortuous architecture, will be to hide behind the parliamentary draftsmen, but surely one of the Ministers here is in charge of the Bill. It is not good enough for them to keep hiding behind officials and parliamentary draftsmen. I would hope that the Under-Secretary had asked at some stage, ''Why can't we have plain English? Why can't we say in clause 26 under what provisions and in accordance with what procedures the inquiries will be conducted?'' He would then have been able to give the Committee a proper explanation for putting the information in a separate clause.

Mr Phil Hope (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Corby, Labour/Co-operative)

The clause replaces the existing provisions for the holding of inquiries under section 33 of the Fire Services Act 1947. The Secretary of State

will be able to establish an inquiry into the performance of a fire and rescue authority in respect of any of its functions, or in respect of the circumstances leading to, or the handling of, a particular incident in relation to which it has functions under the Bill. I am sure that hon. Members will recognise that that is right.

A technical point was made about the position of clause 54 in relation to clause 26—of course, inquiries are mentioned elsewhere in the Bill. The structure was chosen because parliamentary counsel suggested that we do not want to make this a clumsy Bill. If we were to accept the hon. Gentleman's suggestion, we would have to repeat the text every time an inquiry was mentioned. Placing the reference in one place and referring to it as we have makes the Bill more robust, clearer and more transparent. That was parliamentary counsel's intention when drafting the Bill. I hope that, with that explanation, the Committee will be happy to support the clause.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 26 ordered to stand part of the Bill.