Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 242)
THURSDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2004
COUNCILLOR LES
BYROM, MR
RICHARD BULL,
BARONESS RUTH
HENIG AND
CRISPIAN STRACHAN
Q240 Chairman: As far as the Home
Office is concerned, the best we can say is that it is wavering
and if legislation is going to be effective, it needs to sign
up and make sure that its input into the Bill is much clearer
and much more precise?
Mr Strachan: I would agree with
that one. Again you have summarised the point very well, sir.
The only thing I would say is that if you were to have representatives
here from local health practices dealing with this from a different
aspect, they might well say the same about the Department of Health.
Q241 Chairman: I was just about to
go on to that and point out that, as far as I can see, there is
absolutely nothing about the Ambulance Service, is there?
Mr Strachan: No, there is not.
You have three blue-light services arriving at one incident to
the needs of the citizen in his or her greatest hour of pain and
need controlled by three separate hierarchies and three separate
methodologies that do not meet until people sit around the Cabinet
table in Number 10 Downing Street. Nothing in the regional assemblies
will bring that power down from the Secretaries of State to a
level to make for more integrated local planning because it still
remains too much in separate, frankly, Whitehall silos.
Baroness Henig: Can I just make
an important point here, that at the moment police is part of
the wider criminal justice system and there is reform going on
there. Of course what you have got at the moment is the Probation
Service and the Prison Service aligning themselves with policing
and aligning themselves to a 43-unit structure. That is very important
because the National Criminal Justice Board have agreed that that
will be the structure that the whole criminal justice system aligns
itself to and that actually has some implications for the sort
of structures we are talking about here.
Mr Bull: I think one of the issues
for the emergency services over the years is the issue of coterminosity.
You mentioned the three emergency services of police, ambulance
and fire, and our boundaries and operational divisions now are
very, very different and one of the debates we have had is whether
that would be better realigned or not.
Q242 Chairman: I am looking for solutions
and things that should be in the Bill. I perhaps understand the
problems fairly considerably. Can I just go to one particular
problem now so far as the Fire Service is concerned. As I understand
it, basically the Fire Service is, I will not say "moving",
but drifting to this regional agenda, but with this legislation,
supposing the people in the north-east vote `yes', then some time
about February we could get legislation through the House or starting
to go through the House, and assuming there is not an early General
Election, it could be law by late next year, and there is just
the possibility that we might have elections for a regional assembly
in the north-east for 2006, probably more likely 2007. By the
time those people are elected and arrived the new structure for
the regional fire service will be in place so it will be fixed
up by you and other practitioners rather than by the people who
are elected to run it in the future.
Mr Bull: Yes.
Cllr Byrom: You may well end up
in England and Wales with one regional assembly in the north-east,
perhaps, and nothing anywhere else at that level. I do not see
why fire within this Bill has to be looked at as being drawn up
into the region; it should be something for each region to decide.
Chairman: Yes, I think we understand
that message. Can I thank you very much indeed for your evidence.
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