Clause 31 - Negotiating bodies
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
3:45 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
This is an important clause. We have already explored some of the issues relating to it. During the dispute there was a feeling that the Government were the spectre at the feast—I could put that point more aggressively, but I am in a relaxed mood this afternoon. [Interruption.] I will not be emollient as the Minister suggests, but I will not be aggressive. It was felt that the Government were party to the negotiations, but without taking any responsibility for their role. Negotiations progressed and civil servants were hovering in the wings—sometimes not so much in the wings—making known what the Deputy Prime Minister would find acceptable. Every time Ministers were challenged about the progress of the negotiations, they simply retreated behind the mantra that they were the responsibility of the employee representatives and the local authority employers, with Government as mere bystanders.
I understand why the Minister is reluctant to go down the route expressed by Bain and become a full party to the negotiations because it is much more comfortable to stand in the wings with all sorts of reserve powers that can be deployed, while being able to deny any responsibility for the progress—or lack of it—that takes place. We have to look at the structure in the round and envisage how it would work in the context of another dispute where employers and employees are negotiating and the Government are not a party to those negotiations but are able to give guidance that has to be taken into account. Some may say that that merely formalises the situation that occurred during the last dispute, where Government guidance in practice, as we saw in one or two of those famous moments of brinkmanship, turned out to be the determining factor.
I want to touch on the issue that would have been raised had amendment Nos. 109 and 110 been accepted. To some extent, the Minister has already addressed some of the concerns. Amendment No. 109 would have raised the issue of whether the reference to one or more bodies in subsection (1) was appropriate. The Bill refers to one or more bodies being established, and I thought that there must be a distinction between one body and more than one. Therefore, by removing the reference to one or more, I would be probing the Minister as to whether his intention was to create one body or more than one. However, I have subsequently been advised that ''bodies'' incorporates the concept of a single body, which does for my amendment, but also raises an interesting question about the Bill's drafting because it appears to contain redundant words. Since the advice that the phrase ''one or more bodies'' and the phrase ''bodies'' in line 37 mean precisely the same thing came from a reliable source, I am bound to ask why the Bill refers to ''one or more bodies''. Since the phrase does not add anything—we are authoritatively told—it must be there to send a message of some description. I am at a loss to understand precisely the
message that the Minister intends to send by using now officially redundant words. He told us that his inclination, which is set out in the White Paper, is to have three negotiating bodies for different horizontal strata of the service, so why the reference to ''one or more bodies''?
We welcome the late recognition of local negotiation and the belated clarification about the complexities of applying the 1992 Act. We also welcome the mechanics that he is putting in place to ensure that only matters negotiated through a Secretary of State-created body could be legally enforced.
Is the Minister sure that the arrangements ruling out enforceability of contracts freely entered into between consenting adults outside arrangements approved by him do not offend any measures, such as the human rights legislation or our compliance with International Labour Organisation agreements or procedures? As he will remember, they were much referred to during our debates on the Fire Services Act 2003, although not by me.
I addressed the other Minister on subsection (7). The Bill's architecture means that at the end of many of its clauses a subsection states:
''Before making regulations under this section the Secretary of State must consult any persons he considers appropriate.''
The wording is very strange, because to require someone to do something that they consider appropriate does not appear to me to require them to do anything at all. I would prefer a much more objective test of persons to be consulted: any persons who appear to the Secretary of State to be affected by the regulations, or any persons representing affected persons would be sensible. He ''must consult'' is rather meaningless. I have not seen that wording in a Bill before and I wonder why it has been chosen.
In more practical terms, will the Minister tell us whom he expects to consult if he were making regulations under the clause? We might then have a clue about who would be included and excluded. Rather alarmingly, the Under-Secretary told us that the Secretary of State might or might not think it appropriate to consult a trade union actively involved in an industrial dispute when consulting on directions for purposes of public safety during a dispute. I might be quite hostile to the position that the union has taken, but I would hardly think it inappropriate to consult someone engaged in the dispute. I can imagine that the Secretary of State—a protagonist—might take a different view at the time. That is why I seek a more objective requirement for consultation.