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Mr. Raynsford: Who got rid of Berkshire?
Mr. Gummer: If we vote for a regional assembly we will not have county councils. If we do not vote for regional assemblies, our county councils will lose their powers, so we may as well not have them. [Interruption.] That is the Government's policy. Education will be directed from the centre, as will the fire service and the police—[Interuption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. I cannot have a running commentary from the Government Front-Bench spokesmen. It is extending speeches that are already going on quite a long time. We are averaging more than 26 minutes for Back-Bench speeches, which is severely curtailing the opportunities for other hon. Members to participate.
Mr. Gummer: Lastly, therefore, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I remind the Government that they risk the vengeance of rural communities by their constant refusal to listen to them, to talk to them, to hear what they say, to support their county councils and to give them the opportunity to make their decisions for themselves locally. That is what the Government are doing. That vengeance will be wreaked on them first in the district councils, such as they are, this year, and, secondly, in the county councils, such as they are, next year. When the new Conservative county council in Suffolk comes into power, it will refuse to do what the Minister wants it to do if it is bad for Suffolk. He will then have to use his powers and show what his Government are really about—the regionalisation of the fire service. It is only a pity that the House was not told that at the beginning.
8.5 pm
Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op): I am delighted to participate in the debate and intend to talk about what is actually in the Bill, although I could talk at great length about how loyal I am, on most occasions, to Gloucestershire county council, being a former member of it.
I have four lines of inquiry to pursue, but I shall do so at no great length because many of my points have been already been raised. The first is that I largely welcome what is in the Bill; the second is to question some parts of it; the third is to consider things of possible concern; and the fourth is to qualify some aspects of how the Bill may work in practice.
In welcoming the Bill, I believe it is clear to anyone—hopefully even those who will vote against it—that, unlike the Fire Services Act 2003, which was vested in an immediate dispute, some form of fire legislation is long overdue. We have had a number of White Papers. One did not see the light of day, which saddened some of us because it set the trend for moving the fire service away from being largely a reactive service to one that did
much more preventive or—dare I say it?—proactive work. Firefighters in Gloucestershire are as one in welcoming that move. They want to talk to people in schools and old people's homes. They want to work with other parts of local government, whether that be on crime and safety or an element of criminal justice, and with other forms of the public service. For too long, they have felt excluded and somewhat in a box, which meant that they were restricted in what they could offer.I am not saying that that would be a slightly easier job. It requires different skills of the sort possessed by people who are now attracted into the fire service. I am not talking pejoratively about those people who served in former generations of firefighters, but about a new breed of firefighters that is joining the service. There are more women and more people from the ethnic minorities, and more people are doing shorter periods of service. All those people are affecting the nature of the provision of that service. One way they would like to do that is to go out and talk to people, and to work in a partnership with them. That links directly to the integrated risk management plans. Unless firefighters are able to go out and talk to people, and to put in place something with communal attitude that allows them to pull together, the plans will merely be words on bits of paper rather than meaningful forms of action.
So I very much welcome the Bill. The Government are to be congratulated on introducing the legislation.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: In an intervention, the hon. Gentleman—my parliamentary neighbour—spoke of the great success of the tri-service agreement at Quedgeley. He is thus acknowledging the great popularity and success of our Gloucestershire fire service. Does he think that the people of Stroud would welcome its transformation into a south-western regional fire service?
Mr. Drew: I will pick up exactly that point when I turn to my second line of inquiry. As somebody who is a bit of a regionalist, I have no problem with the setting of regional strategies. It has much to commend it because of all the problems with boundaries. We have a particular problem in Gloucestershire because although we are in the south-west, we are adjacent to the south-east and the west midlands, and we are not a million miles from Wales. We are always in a dilemma about whom we would work with most closely. I do not have a problem as long as there are cross-regional strategic discussions about guidelines on the sort of things that need to happen at a level where it would be impossible for one brigade to operate. There are several sensitive locations in our county. GCHQ is one, and there are a number of nuclear power stations. They all require additional co-operation across brigades. Nobody wants to mention it, but if there were an incident, we would need not only people from different fire brigades but all manner of services from different parts of different regions. I take that as read.
I am concerned that the proposals could be taken as a step on a slippery slope to delivery of service at a regional level. The tri-service model to which the hon. Gentleman referred is a good one. Like him, I have visited the call centre on several occasions, and it seems
to be bedding down well. I hope that we can genuinely consider the advantages that it provides for the locality before we rush to take firefighters to a more distant call centre in Bristol, Exeter or even further west. All that would cause me considerable concern. I therefore hope that there is full monitoring of the tri-service emergency call centre in Gloucestershire—and of the one in Wiltshire—before we do anything dramatic.As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) pointed out, one criticism of the firefighters has been about the lack of piloting before deciding to go towards the centralisation of the call centres. Questions need to be asked about that. Although we have received some assurances that the proposals are not about regionalisation of service delivery, we need further such assurances.
Another possible concern has been alleviated by the good approach taken by my right hon. Friend the Minister. Could the Bill have been seen as revenge for a very long and nasty dispute, which could have resulted in further curtailment of firefighters' ability to take action and a heavy-handed laying down of their role? Nobody in this day and age can be anything but aware of the need for greater co-ordination. We must recognise that individual brigades, let alone individual services, cannot be immune from other pressures—whether that is the threat of terrorism, massive flooding or something like foot and mouth. All such incidents require changes in the way in which the services operate—today, let alone in the future.
The concern was that we could have had a much more centrally directed force, which would tell people who worked for it exactly what their role would be. I did not want that, because I think that there is benefit in engaging the local community. We should particularly bear in mind how firefighters have served this country well. I do not like the idea of rewarding public servants—even when we disagree with them in a dispute—by taking away the means by which they want to represent themselves and their ability to do their jobs effectively. I am pleased that we have not gone down such a route; things could have been a lot worse. We must recognise that there are sensitivities about the fire service. One does not have to be paranoid to realise that it was worried that a big stick would be waved over its head. Let us hope that all that has been cleared and that, as I said at the outset, firefighters—just like all those I have talked to—can get on with what they want to do.
On the issue of qualification, what is missing? The question of sprinkler systems has been well covered by other hon. Members. We need to pull together in a detailed format the demands that we are placing on firefighters when they go out and try to prevent unnecessary fires and accidents. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) mentioned how they could be proactive in work with road traffic accidents, and so on.
There is also the issue of maintaining services in rural areas. We have considered, somewhat sceptically, the decline in the ability to provide an effective service at a rural level. There has been much criticism—certainly from the Opposition—that what has been proposed either ignores the real problems or could make matters worse. It would be helpful if we identified the biggest single problem with retained stations: getting people to serve in them. The main reason for that is the change in
the nature of people's working lives. Allied to the geography, that has resulted in very few people living and working in a place where they can respond to calls in the amount of time necessary to remain in a retained force. We must try to do something about that.We could extend the numbers dramatically so that there were always times at which people were available. We could pay retained firefighters a greater retainer so that they could be available when they would otherwise have to work in order not to lose money. All those things come down to cost and will be difficult to pull together. I therefore welcome the review, which I hope will come up with some genuine suggestions on how we can enhance the role of the retained service.
We must also try to improve relations between retained and full-time services, because they are not good enough. I know that many FBU members serve at retained stations, and that is to be welcomed, but relationships are still very poor. Often, retained and full-time service representatives are not ready to sit on the same negotiating bodies. Their pension arrangements, which I have dealt with, are very different too.
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