Clause 26 - Inquiries
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
9:25 am
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and 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.