Clause 32 - Guidance
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
4:15 pm
Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich and Woolwich, Labour)
I am afraid that the Opposition have again wholly distorted the purpose of the clause. The preposterous claim that they are somehow defending the independence of the fire and rescue authorities against an over-mighty Government does not accord with reality in any way. If Opposition Members had any experience of the pay negotiating arrangements for comparative public sector bodies, they would realise that the role of the Secretary of State that we envisage in the Bill is far less than in the police negotiations, in which the Home Secretary plays a full part in the negotiating machinery, in the teachers' negotiations, in which the Secretary of State for Education and Skills decides the final outcome for teachers, and in many others. It is preposterous of the Conservative party to claim that this is a centralising measure. It responds to the sensible conclusions of the Bain report to which the Conservative party signed up when they were published 15 or 16 months ago. Conservative Members were full of praise for Bain then, but now, conveniently, they have forgotten.
I shall remind Conservative Members of what Professor Sir George Bain and his team concluded. They were pretty trenchant in their views and stated:
''The current strike seems to demonstrate that the negotiating machinery is ineffective. And during the course of this Review, the evidence we have seen and the discussions we have had have confirmed this view.
Its ineffectiveness can be attributed to a number of factors, including its unwieldy size and its lack of any clear relationship with central government and the policy-making process.
We recommend that the NJC should be replaced by a smaller body, with executive authority to negotiate and the experience and skills to do so. It should include working parties to pursue individual issues, reporting back to the main body, or even standing sub-committees. There should be clear links with Ministers and the policy-making process so that pay and conditions of service fit into context of wider modernisation.''
When they suggested how the negotiating process should proceed in paragraph 10.28, their very first point was:
''Government lays down the policy framework for the Fire Service. This could include annual evidence on pay policy (just like evidence to the Pay Review Bodies).''