1. Introduction
1. In our inquiry into Defence and Security in the
UK[1],
which we began in January 2002, we examined, among other things,
the Government's progress towards reforming the national emergency
planning system. At that stage the Government had confirmed that
it intended to legislate to replace the Civil Defence Act 1948.
It had conducted a public consultation on its proposals (the Emergency
Planning Review) which had straddled 11 September 2001. During
the course of our inquiry it became clear that the Government
had concluded, not least because of lessons learnt from the terrorist
attacks in New York and Washington, that "whilst the questions
and the scope of the Emergency Planning Review were wide,…there
are some fairly fundamental deep-seated questions about how we
embed resilience concepts into all our government structures much
more."[2]
2. We would not dispute the need to examine these
broader issues. Indeed many of them were the subject of our report.
But we believed then and we still believe that that examination
should have been conducted with greater urgency. We concluded
in July 2002:
Ten months have now passed since the terrible attacks
of 11 September and nearly a year since the publication of the
emergency planning review document. We believe that the Government
has had time enough to address the issues raised by the review.
It should now as a matter of urgency publish its proposals for
civil contingencies legislation, with the explicit aim of introducing
that legislation in the 2002-03 parliamentary session.[3]
While we regret that that has not happened, we
welcome the publication of the draft Civil Contingencies Bill.
We believe that the public consultation on and pre-legislative
scrutiny of the draft bill should be followed by prompt introduction
of a bill in the new parliamentary session.
3. We had intended to examine any civil contingencies
bill ourselves (whether it was published in draft or not). The
Government, however, has proposed that the pre-legislative scrutiny
of the draft bill should be conducted by a joint committee. The
House of Lords has agreed to the establishment of a joint committee
and that it should report by the end of October. As of 2 July,
the necessary motions had not been tabled in the House of Commons.
There are just seven sitting weeks between now and the end of
October. Whether this timetable is reasonable will be a matter
for the Joint Committee to decide, but it seems to us to be scant
time for proper pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft bill which,
as we shall see, is far from straightforward.
1 HC (2001-02) 518 Back
2
Ibid, Q 1477 Back
3
Ibid, paragraph 158 Back
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