Clause 42 - Notice of works affecting water supply and fire hydrants
Fire and Rescue Services Bill
11:00 am
Mr John Pugh (Education Spokesperson, Education & Skills; Southport, Liberal Democrat)
The clause certainly requires clarification. It is clearly important that hydrants are not tampered with, so that when disasters occur, they are not found to be deficient. At first I was slightly unsympathetic towards amendment No. 127, because the hon. Gentleman seemed to want to replace the fairly precise term of ''seven days'' with the fairly debatable term ''as soon as practicable'', and I could see problems ahead. If, for example, it were suggested that there had been a breach of the regulations, there would have to be a process to enable us to decide how the term ''as soon as practicable'' could be applied. It seemed to me that a possible reason for a minimum of seven days' notice was to rule out abuse. One can imagine people on a building site, for instance, simply phoning up the fire and rescue authority and saying ''That's as soon as practicable.''
I may be misunderstanding subsection (3), but it seems to undo the precision of subsections (1) and (2), so I do not know where the clause is going. If the Minister of State can assist us, I shall be in his debt.