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Mr. Hammond: I suspect that I have a little more chance of becoming Secretary of State than the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), but we will leave that matter for another day. I am seeking to discover, as the hon. Member for Islington, North sought to do, how this Bill will perform its function as effective emergency legislation that addresses a real and present danger that needs to be addressed. We have told the Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister that we can and would support properly designed and constructed legislation with proper teeth that enables the Deputy Prime Minister to impose a settlement and make it stick. We will not support the Government in a propaganda exercise that is not designed to produce effective legislation. If there is no provision to enforce a settlement, as well as to impose it, this legislation will not be effective.

The preservation of public safety requires that strikes in this vital emergency service do not take place while we are in the current situation of great overstretch of military capacity and an absence of adequate military resources to deal with any fire strike, should it occur.

Jeremy Corbyn rose—

Mr. Hammond: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman one more time; my only disappointment is that the hon. Member for Manchester, Central has missed the meaty part of the debate.

Jeremy Corbyn: The hon. Gentleman wants, in effect, to have a no-strike clause for the fire service because of what he calls the current national emergency, but what about the ambulance service, accident and emergency units in hospitals, and so on? Once we go down this particular route it does not stop; we end up with a very oppressive state that controls its work force in order to cope with a perceived emergency.

Mr. Hammond: We are dealing with a very specific case. We are dealing not with a theoretical problem but with an actual problem. The dispute has been running for a year, strikes have occurred and Ministers and the Deputy Prime Minister have confirmed that further strikes will put public safety and lives at risk. We do not face a similar situation in relation to any other services—there is no issue to be addressed. They ain't broke, so we don't need to fix them, but the fire service presents a real problem that needs to be addressed today. This is not intended to be the slippery slope. The fire service is right in the front line, and we are addressing the problem that we face today.

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When the Deputy Prime Minister introduced this Bill, he said:

"Legislation is therefore necessary in the public interest and to protect . . . safety."

But safety is protected by requiring the fire service to be there when it is needed, and the Bill as it stands gives the Secretary of State absolutely no power to ensure that that is so. The Deputy Prime Minister continued:

"My main point about anti-strike legislation . . . is that it would take many months for it to go through the House and be achieved."

That is hardly a principled objection to anti-strike legislation, and it is also palpably not true. If the Government accepted this amendment tonight, they could include in the Bill provisions that would give it teeth and ensure that any settlement that the Deputy Prime Minister imposed could be effectively implemented.

Indeed, the Deputy Prime Minister spelled out the risks on Second Reading. He listed the reduction in troop numbers available, and he told the House that only 250 green goddesses and 9,000 troops would be available in a future dispute to cover the entire United Kingdom 24 hours a day, seven days a week. He concluded:

"If the FBU calls for further strikes, lives will be endangered and property put at risk."—[Official Report, 8 May 2003; Vol. 404, c. 856-59.]

In those circumstances, when the Government themselves have identified that further strikes will endanger life and put property at risk, surely the duty of a responsible Government is to ensure that strikes do not occur. Of course, a strike ban unilaterally imposed by the Secretary of State represents an erosion of rights—I would be the first to acknowledge that—but so does the rest of this Bill, through the imposition of pay settlements and terms and conditions of work. That is why we have argued—successfully—for a time limit on this measure. But with no power to impose a strike ban, the entire Bill becomes an unenforceable nonsense.

Back-Bench Labour Members know very well that although a settlement that the Secretary of State purported to impose against the will of the body of fire brigade employees might stick in Shropshire and Surrey, it stands not a chance of sticking in Essex, Merseyside and Clydeside. The Secretary of State needs to have a way of making the powers that he has under this Bill stick. We believe that in the longer term, just as firefighters are entitled to fair pay that reflects the indispensable and much enhanced role that they play in our society, so the public are entitled to be free of the threat to their safety, and the military are entitled to be free of the intolerable burden that fire strikes impose on them.

We expect that the White Paper that the Government are promising to publish will consider the mechanisms for setting pay and conditions for the fire service independently. The point was made earlier that if people's rights to take industrial action are restricted, a fair and independent mechanism for setting pay must be in place. I acknowledge that that is not available under the Bill, because the Secretary of State will set pay unilaterally. In the longer term, when consideration of the Bill comes to an end and we are left with permanent legislation arising from the White Paper, two key

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principles must go hand in hand: the unique contribution of firefighters must be recognised, likewise the unacceptability of using public safety as a pawn in industrial disputes. Strikes therefore cannot be permitted as part of such a dispute.

For now, the focus is on the Bill. If it is to work as an effective, short-term, time-limited measure that will resolve the current dispute, relieve the unacceptable impact on our military preparedness and ensure public safety, it must include a power to make anti-strike provisions: otherwise, it will not succeed. It does not mean that the Deputy Prime Minister has to use the power, but it must be available to him. A settlement imposed by the Deputy Prime Minister will simply be ignored if it does not have any teeth.

8.30 pm

The Government have consistently refused to tell us how they will deal with such a situation where a settlement is imposed and ignored, but have made it clear that they will not provide and finance military cover to fire authorities that face industrial action. The Minister for Local Government and the Regions said on Second Reading:

"The public has every right to a fully functioning fire service. We are therefore seeking the powers in the Bill so that we can draw a line under the dispute".—[Official Report, 8 May 2003; Vol. 404, c. 918.]

The first sentence is right, but the second sentence is simply a non-sequitur. Drawing a line under the dispute will not, without no-strike powers, ensure that the public secure a fully functioning fire service. The Minister has failed to deal with the question of enforcing a settlement, which, to be blunt, is likely to inflame the mood in the more militant areas. He acknowledged that further strike action would inevitably create a greater risk to public safety.

I noticed that the Minister carefully avoided—[Interruption.] That must be the Deputy Prime Minister on the phone now, telling the Minister what to say. The Minister carefully avoided endorsing the Deputy Prime Minister's position against no-strike provisions and promised that the White Paper would set out the Government's intentions in that respect. However, the Minister also referred to the Attorney-General's continuing involvement in the process. The Attorney-General already has powers, but Ministers have insisted throughout the dispute that he cannot be prevailed upon to use them.

If I were a conspiracy theorist—other Members in the Chamber are more likely candidates—I might just wonder whether the collective judgment of Ministers is that dramatically reducing the number of troops and the number of appliances available for future disputes, and drawing attention—as both the Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have done—to the increased risks that a strike would entail, are a means of forcing the Attorney-General to apply for an injunction because of the commensurate risks to public safety. The Government could then secure the no-strike position without having to go through the internal Labour party conflict that supporting such a provision in the Bill might produce. If that is their game, surely it is better to be up-front about it and build the power into the Bill as part of a package to impose a settlement and make it

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stick. A responsible Government with the safety of the public at the forefront of their mind should take the opportunity to make such a power available and ensure that the Bill is workable.

We can support the Bill only if it is a time-limited, effective measure that will genuinely bring the dispute to a conclusion and enforce a settlement that the Secretary of State imposes. If the Government will not assume powers to enable them to enforce such an imposed settlement, the Bill will have been a waste of Parliament's time. It will not achieve the Government's stated objectives. I urge the Minister to put the needs of public safety ahead of considerations about internal Labour party or labour movement politics and accept amendment No. 1. At the very least, the Government should give a commitment to produce something similar to that amendment, so that the Bill has real teeth and to ensure that the powers assumed by the Secretary of State can be deployed as part of a negotiating process and made to work to bring the dispute to an end and restore public safety to its former level.

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