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Richard Younger-Ross: We all expect some projects to slip. When we were debating the Fire and Rescue Services Bill, we said that we thought the timetables were tight. Part of the problem is that when the Government were told that the schedules were too tight, they ignored us and made promises that they could keep to them, even though they were being told that that was not the case.
Mr. Hammond: The hon. Gentleman is right, but it was not just us who expressed those views. To be
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honest, I do not claim any great skills as a project manager, and I would not expect the Government necessarily to listen to what I have to say. But they ignored what they were told by everybody—experts in IT projects, procurement experts and people in the fire and rescue services, as well as local authorities, which have the statutory responsibility in this matter. The Government simply decided that they knew best and went ahead with the targets that they suggested could be achieved.
While we are on Firelink, I want to ask the Minister another question. Will he confirm that it is the Treasury's intention that once the Firelink project is up and running, the radio spectrum released by the abandonment of the analogue system will be sold? What is the estimated receipt from that sale, and what is his current estimate of the cost of implementing the Firelink project? We hear much talk about the Government paying for the new system. They are doing so, but I strongly suspect that far from making this an act of supreme generosity, the Government will generate a receipt a significant number of times larger than their investment.
The Firelink system and control room project are large, high-tech projects, and we have to consider the Government's record on delivering such projects. I am not making a party political point, so the Minister does not have to shake his head. Government in its general sense does not have a good record on delivering very big projects. Anybody who doubts that need look only at the NHS direct booking project—£4 billion on and it still cannot take a booking. Something tells me that Holiday Inn and Trust House Forte have been running a booking service for years without a £4 billion investment. There is serious concern. Experts have questioned the ability to deliver the project first on time and secondly on budget. For example, a recent article in Public Finance, of which I know the Minister is an avid reader, talked about a leaked report from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on the fire control room initiative stating that the Government's poor record in procuring new projects means that there is
''a risk of unsuccessful delivery . . . which could result in delay or even total project failure''.
The Minister for Local and Regional Government has admitted that such projects are difficult to manage and that their final costs are difficult to predict. It would help us if we knew what the budget was for both the huge IT and communications project and the equally huge scheme to replace the 46 fire control centres in England with just nine, but the Government shelter behind commercial confidentiality. It is the supreme irony that just when freedom of information, a concept apparently so beloved by this Government, has come into being, we find that all the projects about which we need information have been let to private sector partners and are therefore covered by commercial confidentiality, which means that we cannot get any more information about them than we could have done before the Freedom of Information Act 2000 took effect.
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Fire and rescue authorities have no idea how much the projects will cost. Whether the Minister has any idea is something on which we will have to speculate, because the Government have given no inkling of the budgets for either project. They will not be able to be held to account for whether they were able to deliver on budget because there is no budget. That is a thoroughly unacceptable way to proceed. Fire and rescue authorities, which have the statutory responsibility for discharging the obligations under the 2004 Act—ensuring that the control rooms function properly, for example—have been excluded from the process. Only regional management board chairs have been consulted on the full outline business case for the Firelink and regional control rooms project.
Fire and rescue authorities have seen only a filleted business case, with all the so-called commercially sensitive material filtered out of it. The people who are supposed to be running the services and who have the statutory responsibility for delivering them and the democratic accountability to the public for them have been excluded from the process, and that is just another example of the Government's centralising instincts. I have a specific question for the Minister and I should be grateful for a specific answer: how many of the eight regional management boards have supported the outline business case put to them? That would be interesting and useful information for the Committee.
Let me explain my other concern. During debate on the Fire and Rescue Services Bill, the then Minister for Local Government, Regional Governance and Fire, who is now the Minister for Local and Regional Government, said:
''The new Firelink system, which is being fully funded and procured by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, is critical to a framework of new regional control rooms.''—[Official Report, 26 January 2004; Vol. 417, c. 46.]
The impression that I think most of us had at that time was that the ODPM was funding the project and therefore taking all the risks that went with it, and that fire and rescue authorities did not have to worry too much about it, because it was something that would be given to them without cost.
Subsequently, however, the ODPM has changed its tune slightly. The 2004–05 framework document states that the ODPM
''will discuss with Fire and Rescue Authorities the scale of their contribution upon contract award'',
which at that time was scheduled for autumn 2004, but is now scheduled for some time in 2005. Again, the document that we are considering today talks about a discussion with fire and rescue authorities about the scale of their contribution. So not only have they been excluded from the process and had their democratic responsibility usurped by the regional management board structure under the direct control of the ODPM, but they are then told that they will have to contribute after all to the cost of implementing and running the projects. How can fire and rescue authorities properly budget forward in a climate in which their ability to raise council tax is tightly constrained? Why should they ultimately have to bear any cost of a project over
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which they have no control, to which they have given no consent and to which, according to reports, many of them are hostile?
In the meantime, the ODPM has tried to prevent a mass rebellion in the ranks by offering to pick up the tab, as I understand it, across the board—across all fire and rescue authorities in England—for patching up obsolete equipment that will have to be kept running until the new system is implemented. It will be implemented not in 2007 but in 2008, we are now told. I should be grateful if the Minister told the Committee what his departmental budget is for that sticking-plaster initiative for the obsolete communications equipment that some fire and rescue authorities will have to keep going during that period.
The Firelink project is intimately linked to the fire control initiative, which is a plan by the Government to regionalise our fire services through the imposition of regional management boards and then, through them, nine regional control rooms covering the whole of England. To reiterate what I have said a number of times, our objection is not about fire control rooms being amalgamated to work over larger areas. We are perfectly prepared to accept that there is an economic and technical case in that regard. We are also prepared to accept that there is a technical case for common standards so that there is compatibility of technology. What we are not prepared to accept, and what the MacDonald report, which the Minister will pray in aid, does not demonstrate, is that the existing eight English Government office regions are the optimum units for delivering a fire control system. I am not sure that they are the optimum units for delivering anything. They might be the optimum units for something, but certainly not for a fire control system.
In north-east England, 3 million people are covered by one fire control room. In south-east England, in an area that stretches from Dover to Milton Keynes, 8 million people are covered by another fire control room. How on earth does the Minister expect to persuade us that the Government office region model is the operationally optimum model to use? The reason why the Government went down such a route was political. They had an agenda of promoting the regionalisation of England. They claimed that that would ultimately be legitimised by the creation of elected regional assemblies, so that the bodies that were being created would be democratically accountable to an elected regional assembly.
Even if I did not like that argument, I understood its coherence until 4 November last year. Even with the degree of deafness displayed by the Government, they must have got the message. First, Labour MPs in Yorkshire, the Humber and the north-west insisted that referendums in those areas were abandoned and, secondly, electors—real people—in north-east England gave the whole idea a comprehensive bloody nose on 4 November. Surely the Government realised that the game was up on the whole regional dimension.
Phil Hope: Far from it.
Mr. Hammond: The Minister may say that—
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The Chairman: Order. I ask the hon. Gentleman to draw his remarks more closely to the order.
2.57 pm
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
3.10 pm
On resuming—
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