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Mr. Raynsford: If the hon. Gentleman checks the record, he will see that I made it clear in my speech that any changes to the status quo would be made only after consultation. I gave that clear undertaking and hope that he will accept it.
Mr. Hammond: I am not sure whether "after consultation" satisfies me. The Minister knows that I am a reasonable person and his reassurances usually satisfy me, but not that one.
I ask the Under-Secretary to give a categorical commitment in his winding-up speech that the Government will not allow charging for road accident extraction. There is a fear that as part of the agenda of extracting savings from modernisation—I have read the Bain report and noted Bain's enthusiasm for charging as a source of revenue—the Government have a hidden agenda to transfer on to the motorist through higher insurance premiums the cost of road accident rescue work by charging for it.
The Minister has clearly given himself the power to do that under the Bill. Unless we receive that assurance from the Under-Secretary in his winding-up speech, he will cause alarm to England's 27 million hard-pressed motorists, who have come to expect that they will be treated as nothing more or less than this Government's milch cow.
Mr. Raynsford: I cannot let the hon. Gentleman get away with that. As he knows from reading the Select Committee report, I made it absolutely clear in my evidence—the Committee clearly endorsed this view—that we were being cautious about that whole area. It is one of the few areas of the Bain report that we had not wholeheartedly welcomed, because we could see real risks of the possibility of charging leading in some cases to perverse outcomes. That is why we have adopted an extremely careful, pragmatic approach, and said, "No change to the status quo without careful consideration."
Mr. Hammond: I am grateful to the Minister for that, but I do not think I heard the categorical commitment that I seek, which is that the Government will not allow charging for road accident extraction.
Mr. Mark Field: I thank my hon. Friend for at least trying to extract a commitment from the Minister, and I share with his concerns about charging. However, will he go into detail as to the support that there might be among Conservative Members for certain aspects of charging? I am thinking in particular of the London fire brigade, which, as has rightly been pointed out, would
have an important part to play in relation to civil contingency matters. There may be important training that the fire brigade can carry out for which it is currently prohibited from charging. That would obviously give great benefit, not just to fire brigade funding, but, more importantly, to the community at large.
Mr. Hammond: My hon. Friend raises an interesting point, because the other side of the coin is that fire authorities are allowed to charge—some do so—for consultancy services that they provide, quite properly, to large businesses, designers of commercial premises and so on. They set their charges for that. Under the regime in the Bill, the charges that they can make for such non-emergency work will be limited to cost recovery, taking one year with another. So, there is an issue and I know that the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority in particular considers that it has a marketable brand in fire consultancy, which it would like to be able to exploit. That matter will probably be considered further in Committee.
The Bill provides, as now, for the appointment of fire service inspectors. There has been much debate, during the dispute and since, about the role of the fire service inspectorate. It would be helpful if the Minister fleshed out for the House the Government's current intentions, which are not discernible from the Bill. [Interruption.] I asked the Minister specifically for his current intentions. The White Paper is seven months old.
The Minister has made clear his intentions to use the powers under clause 28 to impose a uniform communications system on all fire authorities. Will he confirm that the Firelink system that he proposes is based on the TETRA—terrestrial trunked radio—technology, which has run into huge public resistance over the siting of masts for the police system? If so, does he have any concerns about the vulnerability that comes from imposing such a controversial system— [Interruption.] The Minister shakes his head, and I am grateful to him for that clarification. Perhaps there will be some elaboration in the winding-up speech.
On pensions, the Bill largely replicates the current provisions while enabling the introduction of a funded scheme. The Minister knows that the pension crisis is probably the single greatest threat to the financial stability of fire and rescue services—at least a quarter of the budget of large fire authorities will be going on pensions within the next couple of years. Will he tell the House what thinking lies behind the pensions provisions, and what plans the Government have to defuse that time bomb, which is ticking under the service?
A significant number of provisions re-enact provisions of the 1947 Act. Is the Minister entirely satisfied that an opportunity is not being missed to update those provisions to deal with 21st century challenges? For example, clause 47 re-enacts the provisions with regard to false alarms of fire, but does not extend them to deal with false alarms in respect of other types of emergency with which the fire and rescue services will now deal as statutory obligations.
Similarly, in relation to powers of entry, I note that the Bill does not give firefighters the power, which they tell me they need, to break into premises to prevent the
outbreak of fire where that is imminent. The provisions in clause 36 prohibiting the employment of police seem—perhaps this is accidental—to exclude the possibility of a fire authority entering into contractual arrangements with a local police force to discharge some or all of its road traffic accident duties, although it would be able to enter into such an arrangement with a private sector provider.All those areas can be further scrutinised and amended, but the regionalised structure, operating within a prescriptive framework dictated by the Secretary of State, which the Government are proposing, cannot. The bureaucratic regional management boards; enforced amalgamation of functions between authorities; the imposition of regional control rooms with huge transitional costs, even where authorities have responded to the Deputy Prime Minister's exhortations and already established joint control rooms; and the Secretary of State's ability effectively to control—through the powers in the Bill and through the mechanism of the comprehensive performance assessment audit procedure requiring conformity with the national framework—every last detail of the operation, management and even the ethos of a fire and rescue service are not susceptible to refinement or amendment. They go to the heart of the Government's approach to the challenge of creating a 21st century fire service.
In our view, the Government's approach is entirely wrong. Instead of reinforcing the existing authorities, as well as encouraging genuine and voluntary collaboration between them in the discharge of their functions so that the existing structures could respond appropriately and flexibly to the new statutory duties and challenges being imposed on them, the Government have chosen to embark on a wholesale reorganisation of the service—exactly the kind of restructuring that Bain explicitly cautioned against. [Interruption.] Yes he did.
At the same time, the Government have downgraded targets for reducing both accidental fire deaths and deliberate fires, and introduced the red herring of English regional politics to the equation. We will be left with a fire service contorted into a shape dictated by the Deputy Prime Minister's agenda for the English regions and convulsed by structural and organisational change when it should be focusing on an operational response to the new challenges of defending public safety that the Bill places squarely on it.
By the Government's own admission, all that change and upheaval will deliver more, not fewer, accidental fire deaths over the next six years as they backtrack on the targets that were already in place. The objective of creating an efficient fire and rescue service that can deal effectively with traditional and new threats, as well as community fire safety and prevention, is sound. In the Bill, however, and in the other parts of the package, it has become distorted to the point of destruction by the centralising instinct of the Whitehall machine and by the Deputy Prime Minister's regionalising instinct.
I therefore urge the House to support the reasoned amendment standing in the name of the Leader of the Opposition and to send the Government back to the drawing board to produce a new Bill that is focused on the needs of our local communities and shorn of the Whitehall control and the regional dogma that pervade this one.
6.8 pm
Andrew Bennett (Denton and Reddish) (Lab): I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate—but having listened to the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) for 51 minutes, I must say that I am rather disappointed that he did not have more to say about what he would do were he in office. In particular, a few remarks about looking at the fire service and trying to achieve a consensus that would last at least a few years would have been far better than all that carping.
I am surprised by the hon. Gentleman's comments on the targets. He seems to assume—this is a mistake that I would often accuse the Government of making—that once a target is set it is achieved. The key thing about cutting the number of deaths in the next few years is not the target but the reality, so I stress to him that if we have a target that cannot be achieved, it is better to be honest about that than to hope that some miracle will occur to allow us to reach it.
I welcome the Bill, which is well designed and will serve the country well. I also welcome the Government's commitment to a modern fire service.
When the Select Committee's inquiry took place, I was impressed by the fact that a great deal of evidence came in that was supportive of what the Government were doing in broad terms, but questioned some of the detail. I believe that the Select Committee's report is a useful document, and I place on record my thanks to our two advisers, Jeremy Beech and Tony Taig, for the help that they gave us. I thank all those who submitted evidence to the Committee and all those who allowed us to subject them to questioning. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Minister, who greatly enlightened our final sittings on the Bill.
We must recognise that the fire service has a good record. It has considerably reduced the number of deaths and injuries as a result of fire. I accept that there are a few blips, including arson, particularly in schools, where we have not done as well as we should. However, we must recognise the dedication of those who work in the service and the fact that they have done extremely well. We have only to make the comparison between the number of lives that are lost because of fires—about 350 to 380 a year—and the 10 times that number that are lost on the roads, to recognise that we have achieved a great deal.
None the less, we cannot be satisfied with the present level of deaths, serious injuries or the loss of property as a result of fires. If we are to go forward, we must move from an emergency service into a service that is involved in prevention. All the emphasis in recent years has been placed on trying to get fire engines to fires a bit more quickly, but it is clear that in almost every incident, that would not make that much difference. With a kitchen fire—a chip pan fire, for example—the key factor is how quickly somebody telephones the fire brigade rather than trying to deal with the incident themselves. On the whole, the problem highlighted to members of the Select Committee was that almost half of those who die as a result of fire are dead before anyone contacts the fire station or the control room. It is the people who would be in that group whom we must try to rescue, and the only way to do that is to move successfully into the introduction of prevention measures.
All the evidence showed that sprinklers can play an important part, especially in schools, although some open-plan designs and other factors must be considered. Sprinklers are particularly important in accommodation for the vulnerable, including the elderly and those with learning difficulties or mental health problems. Another factor is the still significant number of elderly people who smoke in bed. If lighted cigarettes get on to bedding, there is little chance that the fire brigade will be able to do anything—but if there is a smoke alarm that sounds within the building, and a sprinkler system is in place, there is a chance that something can be done. I argue strongly that building regulations should be reviewed quickly so that sprinklers are installed in far more of the buildings that accommodate such people. Those who are responsible for housing associations that provide accommodation for the elderly should examine the idea of putting sprinklers into existing properties.
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