The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Chair:
†Mr
Joe Benton
†
Binley,
Mr Brian (Northampton South)
(Con)
†
Blackman-Woods,
Roberta (City of Durham)
(Lab)
†
Bray,
Angie (Ealing Central and Acton)
(Con)
Coffey,
Ann (Stockport)
(Lab)
†
Crabb,
Stephen (Preseli Pembrokeshire)
(Con)
†
Dobson,
Frank (Holborn and St Pancras)
(Lab)
†
Foster,
Mr Don (Bath) (LD)
†
Hancock,
Matthew (West Suffolk)
(Con)
†
Hurd,
Mr Nick (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet
Office)
McDonnell,
John (Hayes and Harlington)
(Lab)
†
Pugh,
John (Southport)
(LD)
Ruddock,
Joan (Lewisham, Deptford)
(Lab)
Sharma,
Mr Virendra (Ealing, Southall)
(Lab)
Simpson,
David (Upper Bann)
(DUP)
†
Spencer,
Mr Mark (Sherwood)
(Con)
†
White,
Chris (Warwick and Leamington)
(Con)
Wollaston,
Dr Sarah (Totnes)
(Con)
†
Wright,
David (Telford) (Lab)
Alison
Groves, Committee Clerk
†
attended the Committee
First
Delegated Legislation
Committee
Tuesday 26
April
2011
[Mr Joe
Benton
in the
Chair]
Draft Civil
Contingencies Act 2004 (Amendment of List of Responders)
Order
2011
10.30
am
The
Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd):
I
beg to
move,
That
the Committee has considered the draft Civil Contingencies Act 2004
(Amendment of List of Responders) Order
2011.
Thank
you, Mr Benton. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship
again. I hope that you and all members of the Committee had a wonderful
Easter
break.
The
order is about the important issue of emergency planning in London. It
formalises in law a transfer of responsibilities from the old
Government office for London to the Greater London authority and the
Mayor. It also means that the GLA will take on the duties of a category
1 responder, as defined by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. These
changes are necessary because the Government office for London was
closed at the end of 2010. It is widely recognised that the GLA is the
obvious replacement, not least given that the Mayor was already the
deputy chair of the London regional resilience forum and would
effectively be the voice of London in any emergency. In reality, the
GLA has already taken on these responsibilities, effective from 1
December 2010. That was necessary to ensure a seamless process of
emergency planning and responsibility.
It might be
helpful to set out some background to the order. The Civil
Contingencies Act 2004 delivers a single framework for civil protection
in the United Kingdom. The Act assigns responder status to certain
organisations, broken down into categories 1 and 2, and gives those
organisation clear responsibilities. The Act divides England and Wales
into local resilience areas, and each of these areas has a local
resilience forum at which planning and preparation for emergencies is
co-ordinated among emergency
responders.
Outside
London, there are 37 local resilience areas in England and four in
Wales, based on police force boundaries. Arrangements for emergency
planning in London have functioned slightly differently—I
recognise that we have various London Members on the Committee today,
and they will have a sense of this and of the need for a different
approach—mainly due to London’s size and its unique
position as a capital city. In effect, there have been three tiers of
emergency planning in London. One was the borough level. Since the Act
came into force in 2005, there have been six local resilience areas for
London, each with a local resilience forum, based on multi-borough
groupings. There is a pan-London strategic forum as well.
The Act is
being reviewed. On the whole it seems to be working well, but after
consultation it was agreed that there was a case for change in the way
in which it
worked in London to reflect properly how emergency planning was
functioning in the capital.
While the six
multi-borough local resilience forums provided a useful tier of
emergency planning, the strategic role which a local resilience forum
should normally play was actually being performed at the pan-London
level through the London regional resilience forum—a
non-statutory body in which key responders, central government and the
Mayor of London co-operated to give strategic direction to emergency
planning in London. Therefore, to better reflect actual emergency
planning arrangements in London, the local resilience area has been
redefined as a single pan-London local resilience area based on the
Metropolitan and City of London police force areas, rather than the
previous six multi-borough groupings. As a result, the former London
regional resilience forum has been redefined as the London local
resilience forum.
These changes
came into force from 1 April and mean that emergency planning in London
now runs in much the same way as in the rest of the country. The change
that we now bring before the Committee and the House is necessary
following last year’s closure of the Government office for
London, which played an important role in emergency planning, led by
the London resilience team. Their duties, which included providing
secretariat support for the former London regional resilience forum,
taking the lead in non-police led emergencies, and ensuring that
resilience plans were in place for the Olympic games, now need to be
delivered elsewhere by other parties. It is a function we cannot afford
to lose; a function that is a cornerstone of the structure of
resilience in
London.
The
office of the Mayor of London has long been engaged in emergency
planning: the Mayor was the deputy chair of the London regional
resilience forum. He is a figurehead in the event of a major emergency
in the capital. We have agreed with the Mayor that those local planning
and response functions previously undertaken by the Government office
for London should pass to the Greater London authority, as the
strategic non-political authority that supports both the Mayor and the
Assembly, and that this should be properly reflected in legislation.
Their new role involves working closely with London’s emergency
responders and being involved at the heart of strategic emergency
planning for the capital. The GLA should therefore take on the same
legal status and duties as other responders in London, including the
duties to co-operate and to share information, helping to build a
strong relationship through which the GLA can best carry out its new
role. The GLA assumed many of its new responsibilities following the
closure of the Government office for London in December last year. We
now have an opportunity to formalise its role in legislation. It is on
that basis that I commend this order to the
Committee.
10.36
am
Roberta
Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab):
May I, too, say
what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr
Benton. I hope that all Committee members had a really good Easter
break.
I
can see that the order has to be made, following the closure of the
Government offices for the regions, in this case the Government office
for London. Whether that was entirely a wise decision is a separate
issue that will no doubt be discussed elsewhere, but it is not the
matter that concerns us today. We are discussing what is
happening to emergency planning in London as a consequence of closing
the Government offices. Obviously, it is now necessary to have the
regional resilience forum located in the Greater London authority. I
note that that has been done following an agreement with the interested
parties—the Mayor’s office and the London Assembly. I
understand that the GLA will also provide the secretariat for the
forum. As the Minister says, that probably makes sense as other
responsibilities relating to emergency planning have already been
transferred to the GLA as a result of the closure of the Government
office for London. So adding category 1 responder status is no doubt
necessary to operationalise the new arrangements.
A number of
questions for the Minister flow from the decision. What has been done
to ensure that the change in arrangements does not negatively impact on
emergency planning for the London Olympics and Paralympics? How will
giving category 1 responder status improve co-operation arrangements
between the various London responders and help the London arrangements
interact more smoothly with those operating elsewhere in the country?
What measures are in place to ensure that accountability is
strengthened for emergency planning? Is he certain that a conflict of
interest will not emerge between providers of services and the
assessment of the effectiveness of emergency
planning?
We
are told that most of the costs of transfer relate to staffing costs.
Is the Minister assured that enough capacity is in place to ensure that
the new arrangements will work
effectively?
10.38
am
Mr
Hurd:
I thank the hon. Lady for her constructive approach
to the order. I should like to reassure her on the Olympics point. I am
sure that many hon. Members, not least London Members, will be
concerned that the games run smoothly. It is obviously a top priority
for everyone involved in civil contingency planning. I come back to my
previous point. With the closure of the
Government office for London there was a need for a seamless transition,
and that is why the responsibilities were effectively transferred at
the end of the year. I hope I can reassure the hon. Lady that the
changes will not have any negative effect or disruptive element to
them.
Frank
Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab):
When the function
was transferred, were any of the staff transferred? Some of them
presumably had some expertise and corporate memory of arrangements, and
it would be unfortunate if that had been
lost.
Mr
Hurd:
The short answer is yes, and secondments were made
as well. The point that the right hon. Gentleman makes is an obvious
one—expertise is based on people, and people were
transferred.
The
hon. Member for City of Durham asked how the order would improve
functionality. I think that it will do so, in the sense that until now
the GLA and the Mayor had no formal role, although they are clearly a
massively important organisation and figure in the event of an
emergency. What we are discussing today is a mechanism that will bind
the GLA and the Mayor into a process, with explicit duties of
co-operation. That, as the hon. Lady helpfully notes, is with the
agreement of the interested parties. It is something that the Mayor has
said that he wants and he is supported in that by the GLA. So I think
that it will improve the architecture of co-operation in this vital
area and will enhance accountability, because the GLA scrutiny process
will be brought into
play.
As
for capacity, I believe that adequate funding and human resource has
been dedicated to this area. We all know how important this
is.
Question
put and agreed
to.
10.41
am
Committee
rose.