Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede & Weybridge, Conservative)

I have a quick question. Clause 48 authorises payments in respect of advisory bodies. The Minister of State kindly wrote to me—I assume that he copied that letter to Committee members—giving an explanation and putting some flesh on what was said during Committee about the scaling back or otherwise of the fire service inspectorate. In a sense, the functions of advisory bodies will complement some of the functions of the fire service inspectorate, so it seems appropriate to ask the Under-Secretary for some sort of estimate or indicative budget of the Secretary of State's expected expenditure on advisory bodies as part of his overall structure with the newly restructured fire service inspectorate at the heart of it.

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

The clause enables the Secretary of State to make payments to advisory bodies in respect of their expenses incurred in providing advice on matters connected with the Bill. As signalled in the White Paper, various new advisory bodies have been set up to advise Ministers and they will have to be serviced. For example, the practitioners forum is chaired and serviced by the Chief and Assistant Chief Fire Officers Association—CACFOA—which may also be asked to carry out basic research work as part of collating evidence for providing advice. The clause would allow payments to be made to CACFOA as well as to other advisory bodies should the need arise.

On the anticipated budget, these are new bodies which are just beginning their work and they have already started to carry out various studies. The practitioners forum, for example, is now doing a study on responses to automatic fire alarms that go off. There will be such activities but I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman at this point exactly what the budget will be. However, I will be happy to write to him with that information. He did not get a letter on the last debate, but he can getter a letter on this one. We can give him some indication of the costs and the budget. I hope that he understands how important it is to be able to service these new advisory bodies because of the work that they do and the expenses that they may occur in doing it.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 48 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 49 and 50 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 51Amendments