The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 6 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Chair
We now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. Before we begin, I repeat that Members may, if they wish, remove their jackets during Committee meetings. Would everyone ensure that all electronic devices are turned off or switched to silent mode?
The selection list for today’s sitting is available in the room and shows how the selected amendments have been grouped. Amendments grouped together are generally on the same or similar issues. The Member who has put their name to the lead amendment in a group is called first. Other Members are free to catch my eye to speak on all or any of the amendments in that group. A Member may speak more than once in a debate. I will work on the assumption that the Minister wishes the Committee to reach a decision on all Government amendments.
Members should note that decisions on amendments take place not in the order in which the amendments are debated but in the order in which they appear on the amendment paper. In other words, debate occurs according to the selection list, and decisions are taken when we come to the clause that the amendment affects. I hope that that explanation is helpful. I will use my discretion to decide whether to allow a separate stand part debate on individual clauses and schedules following debates on the relevant amendments.
The Minister for Policing, Fire, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)
On a point of order, Mr Howarth. I am sure colleagues are aware that there is an ongoing terrorist incident in Brussels, and I would like to put on record that our thoughts and prayers are with not only the victims but the emergency services, which yet again will be going in the opposite direction to everybody else. I am sure that Her Majesty’s Government are giving all assistance possible to the services in Belgium and the rest of Europe. It is important to put that on the record, as we are debating such an important Bill on the emergency services.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Howarth. May I strongly support what the Policing Minister said? We stand united in opposition to terrorists, whether in our country or on the continent of Europe. We are facing a uniquely awful threat, and the last thing we should be is divided. We are not divided; we are united. I am with the Minister in giving 101% support to the emergency services and the police, which are at the sharp end in what must be the most difficult of circumstances.
Lyn Brown
I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. The amendments would place the duty to collaborate on all NHS and public health bodies, not just NHS ambulance trusts. They would increase the scope of collaboration agreements to include local authorities. We have tabled these amendments in recognition of the fact that much of the work undertaken by the fire service and, indeed, the police service has a much broader health and social impact than just the immediate emergency response. That needs to be recognised in the Bill.
I have no doubt that NHS ambulance trusts can and do benefit from collaborating with the police force and the fire service. In many parts of the country, the fire service plays a really important role in the first response to medical incidents. In Cornwall, the fire and rescue service works with the South Western Ambulance Service to respond to medical incidents when it can get to a location first. Firefighters have received medical training and know how to use defibrillators and carry out oxygen therapy. As we are all aware, Cornwall is a rural county with many isolated communities, which is why that sort of work is so important there. In fact, over the past three years, firefighter co-responders have made a total of 1,848 life-saving interventions, which is impressive.
Cornwall is far from alone in that activity. I have been to Lincolnshire and heard about the life-saving work of its co-responding scheme. Lincolnshire is another sprawling county with isolated communities, some of which lie close to fire stations—or rather, they are closer to fire stations than ambulance stations. I was told that the most common shout or call-out was to road traffic accidents in country lanes. Similar collaborative projects are going on up and down the country.
In addition, the fire and rescue service is playing an ever more important role in medical incidents. This support is particularly important in rural and semi-rural areas, where it is difficult to provide a comprehensive and rapid response service. The Somerset fire and rescue service attended 3,525 co- and first-responding incidents in 2012-13, equivalent to 41% of its road traffic collisions and special service calls.
English fire and rescue services attended 14,688 co- and first-responding medical incidents in 2012-13, including cardiac arrests, unconscious casualties, people with breathing difficulties and other serious conditions such as anaphylactic shock. The number of co- and first-responding incidents attended by the fire and rescue services is rising by about 10% or more each year, and is expected to treble to more than 30,000 by 2020. The number of category A ambulance incidents has more than doubled since 2002-03. The fire and rescue services have helped to achieve emergency response targets for an ever-increasing number of critical medical incidents.
It is clear that our two humanitarian services—fire and ambulance—are very effective when they work together, side by side. Without getting too far into the Bill, I have raised concerns before that police and crime commissioner takeovers of fire and rescue services may lead to fewer of these sorts of collaboration. The focus and energy of administrators will instead be devoted to responding to Whitehall’s agenda or the Government’s agenda of combining the police with fire services, and not necessarily working on the area of collaboration that will have the most positive benefits for the community.
Has the Minister carried out an assessment of the risk of a reduced collaboration between the ambulance and fire services, if mergers with PCCs go ahead and, if so, what mitigation has he put in place to try to prevent that? There is stark evidence that collaboration between ambulance services and the fire and rescue services saves lives. We cannot afford to see it crowded out by a top-down decision and Government imposition from Whitehall. It makes no sense, and it could take lives.
Having established the importance of collaboration between the blue light services, I will now argue that we are far from the limit of where collaboration can improve public services. In particular, the police force and fire service can and do play a vital role in early intervention and prevention programmes that aid public health, social care and social welfare. One of the many examples I could cite is the Springboard initiative carried out by Cheshire’s fire and rescue service. Firefighters on home visits go well beyond carrying out the traditional home safety assessment, which looks at fire alarms, electrical appliances, and the like. Instead, they use their time to spot the challenges that residents face regarding their health and well-being. Firefighters then report to the relevant parts of social services and other departments in local authorities, the health service, or, indeed, various local charities so that they can meet the needs that have been identified.
This is not insignificant. If hon. Members think about referrals such as those being made in their own area and multiply that by the number of fire and rescue services in the country, one can see the real value of making that first contact with vulnerable people, the preventive actions undertaken and, frankly, the savings for the NHS or social care in catching such issues early.
From May, the Cheshire scheme will focus on smoking cessation and alcohol consumption reduction—it is Lent and I have not had some for a while—as well as reducing hypertension and blood pressure, and informing residents about bowel cancer screening. That public health duty is carried out at the behest of the local authority, and it is innovative and important. The scheme makes a vast difference to the quality of life of many elderly residents in Cheshire, and there are 25,000 of those safe and well visits each year. That really shows what an asset public trust in the fire service can be, and how the subsequent reach in communities can help to improve public health and prevent harm.
In Gloucestershire, the fire and rescue service utilises public trust to aid Public Health England to prevent winter deaths from the cold. The Gloucestershire fire and rescue service is doing its bit to aid public health on its patch by installing thermometers in the homes of over-65s and referring elderly residents to their GP for a winter flu jab. That is just a local pilot at the moment but I look forward to hearing about the results as that type of scheme may become valuable in our quest to aid older constituents to stay healthy during the cold winter.
There are many more such schemes. I could talk about them today, but I am not going to because I hope that hon. Members will mention their own schemes. The schemes lead me to ask the Minister why the Bill limits collaboration agreements to ambulance trusts. Local authorities play a vital role in all the existing schemes and, under this Government, they have been given responsibility for public health, so why are they excluded from the new duty to collaborate? The provision, as written, seems arbitrary in scope. If we are to have a duty to collaborate—although I am rather surprised that the Minister thinks it necessary—why not use the duty as an opportunity to encourage more collaboration with more partners in more ventures such as the projects I described in Cheshire, Cornwall and Lincolnshire?
I say gently to the Minister—he knows that I like him quite a lot—that I fear that the decision to limit collaboration agreements to ambulance trusts speaks to a poverty of ambition for the fire service, which was, I am afraid, a hallmark of the previous Government. The Minister has been a firefighter and I am sure that he knows how much we can use a trusted set of skilled public workers in many different scenarios in the public health arena. Rather than using the Bill as an opportunity to recast and improve our public services to have the best and most resilient services possible, the Government seem driven only by the desire to pair with the police services in the hope that, by doing so, they will be able to find some immediate cuts.
The Government can see that savings can be made by sharing back-office functions in emergency response centres, so they make that their only legislative priority, but I fear that they simply cannot see past it. It is a missed opportunity and I genuinely do not understand why. Perhaps it is because preventive and early intervention work requires the investment of resources today to reap rewards in future. Perhaps it is because it is really difficult to quantify the savings that are made in this public health agenda. For example, we do not know how many older people who did not have the flu jab would have got influenza, found themselves in hospital and been unable to go back home. It is really difficult to quantify a “what if” scenario and offer it to the Treasury as a justification for the work that is done.
The Opposition believe in collaboration between the emergency services, but we recognise that services can benefit and improve when there is collaboration in as many areas as possible. The Government’s narrow vision does not seem to recognise vital preventive health work or its potential for public and preventive health improvement. If the Minister wants to convince the Opposition that these reforms are driven by the best interests of public services, and are not merely a fig leaf for hunting for spending cuts, I urge him to look at our amendments and broaden the scope of the collaboration agreements. He is a good man; I am sure that today we will have a good response from him to our very helpful interventions.
Mike Penning
As the shadow Minister said, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth, and that of Mr Nuttall on Thursdays.
I fully understand where the shadow Minister is coming from. However, the Bill is concerned with emergency services. If we were looking at only fire and police and the so-called takeover for savings, which I obviously disagree with substantially, we would not have included the ambulance service. The ambulance service is specifically in the Bill in the duty of collaboration.
The shadow Minister and I could read all day about areas where collaboration has taken place. From my experience, it has not gone far enough in most cases and we need an awful lot more. Someone said to me when I was on a recent visit, “We carry defibrillators on front-line appliances these days, Minister.” That is fantastic news, but so does the cashier at Tesco and Sainsbury’s. We need to go much further than that. In some parts of the country we have done so, particularly in Hampshire, where the collaboration is such that a firefighter could not be distinguished from an ambulance technician, because they have those skills. We need to do an awful lot more of that.
I understand the shadow Minister’s point, but nothing in the Bill will stop the collaboration that is already taking place. As Fire Minister, as well as Police Minister, I am adamant that the fire service measures outcomes, although that is difficult. Where does the finance come from for that? Should that come out of the fire budget or the health and social services budget, and should they be paid? That is one of the big discussions at the moment.
The principle the shadow Minister talks of is right, but the Bill applies to the three emergency services. As a former shipping Minister, I would also like to have seen collaboration with the coastguard service, but that is probably a little step further on. Nothing in the Bill would prevent the sort of thing that the shadow Minister wants to continue to thrive and move on. With that in mind, sadly at the start of the Committee, I have to say I am sorry.
Lyn Brown
I am genuinely glad that the Minister and I seem to be on the same page, and that he is talking about evaluation and who is going to pay for it. I believe that the only way that we are collectively going to learn about how our services work together and the impact they can make is by evaluating them properly. With that in mind, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Duties in relation to collaboration agreements
Lyn Brown
I doubt it.
Frankly, I worry that, under this Government, efficiency is synonymous with spending cuts. That is not good enough when it is targeted at a life-saving, trusted service.
Furthermore, there appear to be important discrepancies in the Bill. Clause 2(4)(a) places a duty on services to collaborate if
“the proposed collaboration would be in the interests of its efficiency or effectiveness”.
However, clause 2(4)(b) states that collaboration is required to be
“in the interests of its efficiency and effectiveness”.
First, will the Minister confirm whether he believes there is a difference in meaning between the two? Secondly, why is there such inconsistency?
Clause 3(1) makes provision that clause 2
“does not require a relevant…service in England to enter into a collaboration agreement if the service is of the view that the proposed collaboration would have an adverse effect on its efficiency or effectiveness.”
Let us follow the logic. Clause 2(4)(a) states that a proposed party must give effect to the proposed collaboration, as set out in subsection (5), if
“a proposed party is of the view that the proposed collaboration would be in the interests of its efficiency or effectiveness”.
Mike Penning
Just to clarify, clause 2(4)(b) is wrong and I will amend it later. It should state “or” not “and”.
Lyn Brown
No, it is not.
Let us imagine that the relevant services deem that collaboration would have a positive impact on efficiency, regardless of the impact on effectiveness. Under clause 2(4)(a), those services would be duty bound to collaborate. However, if the relevant services deemed that collaboration would have an adverse impact on effectiveness, under clause 3(1) they would not be required to collaborate. That gives rise to an absurd situation whereby a service can be both duty bound and not required to collaborate simultaneously. It is, quite simply, nonsensical.
It would be very efficient to close half the fire stations in the country and halve the number of fire engines. It would certainly save money, but it would not be effective in saving lives and buildings. It would undoubtedly increase response times. Should not collaboration be both efficient and effective, saving money if possible, while providing equal if not superior effectiveness in the service? I am sure that the Minister understands my logic. I hope that he will go away and have a conversation with his team and then come back to this provision, because the Bill risks prioritising spending cuts over an effective emergency service. It is inconsistent, confusing and ambiguous.
I know that the Minister cares deeply about the emergency services that keep us all safe. I know he believes that collaboration should always be done in the name of service improvement. I therefore hope that when he leaves here and has a cup of tea for his lunch, he will consider the amendment properly. I do not mind whether he accepts it today or uses it as a drafting amendment later in the progress of the Bill.
Amendment 169 would require emergency services to consider whether collaboration would improve their capacity to respond to major incidents, such as flooding. The Bill fails to create a specific statutory duty to collaborate on major incidents. We believe that collaboration can be at its most effective when militating against major risks and responding to the worst disasters. Our amendment would direct collaboration agreements towards such major incidents, particularly floods and—as is sadly pertinent—terrorist incidents.
Unfortunately, major incidents are on the rise. As the climate has changed, flooding has become increasingly common across the country. Although we have not suffered a major terrorist attack since 2005, I think we would all agree that the threat of terrorism still looms. MI5 has set the current threat from international terrorism in the UK at “severe”.
In December, we saw much of the north of England devastated by flooding. I know that this is not news to the Government. On 5 January, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs informed the House that 16,000 properties had been flooded during the wettest December for 100 years. Many homes were flooded, bridges connecting communities were washed away, major roads were blocked and, in Lancaster, a substation was flooded, leaving tens of thousands of homes without power. In December alone, firefighters responded to more than 1,400 flood incidents across the north-west. On Boxing day, 1,000 people were rescued in Greater Manchester alone.
This winter’s example is not an isolated incident, nor is this a regional problem. In the winter of 2013-14, the south of England experienced devastating flooding. The Environment Agency reported that at least 6,000 properties were flooded, and damage to the rail network meant that a key transport link to the south-west was severed for many weeks.
Major incidents are not limited to flooding. We all remember 7/7 and the devastation caused on our streets in London. I am thankful that we have not seen another major terrorist incident of that nature. However, the recent atrocities in Paris and what is going on in Brussels today are clear reminders that we must remain prepared to deal with terrorist attacks in our major cities.
The Minister is well aware of the disaster training exercise that was carried out in a mocked-up Waterloo station two weeks ago. I really wish that I could have seen it. Firefighters and other emergency service workers carried out the UK’s largest ever simulated rescue to improve co-ordination and planning during a major incident. It was a practical demonstration of the range of demands on modern firefighters, paramedics and police officers.
Fire and rescue services’ responsibility to provide national resilience is set out in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and the national framework of 2013. Fire and rescue services are required to respond to several national and international risks, including extreme weather, terrorist threats and industrial incidents, as well as prolonged energy shortages or outages. The chief fire officers would welcome a statutory duty on resilience and the funding to support it, as the only thing for which they currently receive stand-alone funding is aerial search and rescue. That is simply not good enough.
Weather incidents are on the rise and emergency services must remain vigilant and prepared for the threat of terror, yet the mantra to justify cuts to fire and rescue services is that demand for the fire service is falling. The explanatory notes to the Bill argue that the relevant policy background is a “fall in incidents” to which the fire service responds, but we cannot even begin to measure demand on the basis of the number of times it is called out to deal with situations. We need our fire service to militate against the most severe risks and prepare the best response to those risks.
Equating demand for the fire service with call-outs, as this Government persistently do, not only overlooks the important work that our emergency services carry out in fire prevention, but fundamentally misunderstands the evolving role of the emergency services in the 21st century. There has indeed been a reduction in the number of fires in the home and in the number of fire deaths and injuries, and there has been a rise in the proportion of homes with smoke alarms from 74% to 88%, as was reported by the English housing survey. We must all welcome that important change. It is the result of fire and rescue services undertaking millions of home fire safety checks and installing fire safety products in homes, which began in earnest in 2004 with the installation of long-life smoke alarms.
Despite the focus on prevention, more than 2.5 million English homes remain without a smoke alarm, and the alarms installed in 2004 are, sadly, coming to the end of their life. Understandably, the fire and rescue services are revisiting homes and continuing to seek to reach the remaining 2.5 million-plus homes. The English fire and rescue service completed 747,990 home fire safety checks in 2012-13. I am sorry, but that is the latest year for which I have figures. The number of home safety checks peaked at 811,132 in 2008-09.
Fire and rescue services undertake other forms of community fire safety work, with 164,064 school visits, arson prevention work and youth diversion events, and 75,543 statutory fire safety inspections taking place in 2012-13. Fire safety education has become a standard feature in primary schools, with the support of fire and rescue services. All forms of community fire safety work have increased in quantity and sophistication.
Fire and rescue services are responsible for far more than responding to fires. They attend a wide range of emergencies, including road traffic collisions, floods and medical incidents. A Department for Communities and Local Government report in 2012 noted that there were 51,982 rescues and extrications of casualties by the fire and rescue service between April 2009 and September 2011 at road traffic collisions, other transport incidents, suicide attempts and other special service incidents. There are more than 20,000 rescues and extrications each year. The decline in the number of fires should not distract us from the continued important and valued life-saving role of fire and rescue services at such incidents.
Additionally, as we discussed earlier, the fire and rescue service is playing an ever more important role in attending medical incidents—termed first and co-responding incidents—at the behest of the ambulance service. That support is particularly important in rural and semi-rural areas, where it is difficult to provide a comprehensive and rapid ambulance service.
Mr Kevan Jones
I do. The example to which my hon. Friend refers is replicated in other parts of the country where the police have in many cases taken the lead, working jointly with the NHS to set up those facilities. They make the experience better for those individuals who are in crisis. As he rightly says, they provide a more efficient way to deal with police time. Without a provision to enable this, I fear we will do all the work in the Bill on changes to the Mental Health Act 1983, which I welcome, but end up saying, “This is what we want to happen but will it happen in practice?” The example in his constituency shows that where there is a will and local drive, this can happen. My fear is that we will get a patchwork quilt of provision across the country. It would be helpful if we could make co-operation to deal with these issues statutory. I will come to another point later when we talk to amendments relating to the Mental Health Act.
I commend the Government’s aim to prevent people in mental health crisis from going to police cells. However, unless there is alternative provision in place, that will not happen. The need to monitor what happens to individuals should be recognised. If we reach the point, which we all want, of having no one in police cells, but without the people concerned getting adequate care elsewhere, we will have failed them. I will address that point later. I am now interested to hear what the Minister has to say.
Mike Penning
I say at the outset that I understand the intention and good will behind the amendments. I put my hand up to a typo where “and” appears instead of “or”, which will be corrected later.
I say to the shadow Minister that the duty in clause 2 would be subject to the restriction in clause 3. Clause 3(1) sets aside the duty to enter into a particular collaboration agreement if that agreement would negatively impact on efficiency or effectiveness. Therefore, the Bill specifically addresses the point she raised. I will not dwell on that because it is not a matter of semantics. She is quite right, but clause 3 addresses that.
Mike Penning
On that narrow point. I have no idea why the shadow Minister was not invited to the brilliant exercise, which was the largest we have ever seen. I was not there either, although I had been invited, because I was at Didcot, for reasons colleagues will understand.
Mr Kevan Jones
I welcome the Minister’s point. Our amendments are the grit in the oyster, in the sense that they are going to force others to improve facilities. Having seen different Departments when in government, I know that without some direction from the Bill, it will not happen. The Minister and his colleagues have great intentions and I pay tribute to him and to the Home Secretary for addressing this issue, but without something on the face of the Bill or some movement during the passage of the Bill, it will not happen.
Mike Penning
Nothing would happen if we were not doing this. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments. We are starting to drive this. An inter-ministerial group on that specific issue was formed during the last Government. It still sits and it will push on with this. I do not think that the amendment is necessarily the right vehicle, but I agree that we must push it forward. Otherwise, the health and social services will be knocking at the door, saying, “We’ve got nowhere else to go,” as we often hear.
I used to experience that when I was in the fire service, and it still goes on. I have been stationed with the police when it has happened. It is usually at 4 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Social services phone up saying, “We haven’t seen Mary or Johnny. Would you go round and check on them over the weekend?” The answer must be “No, that is your legal responsibility, not ours.” I know that that is a development of what we were talking about, but it is exactly what goes on: “Would you go in and open up for them?”. It is a difficult area, but one that we must touch on.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
All the areas in which we are talking about collaborating with police forces are devolved in Wales. I suggest that somewhere along the line, thought needs to be given to how such collaboration will work in that unique situation.
Mike Penning
We have discussed that with all the devolved Administrations. This proposal refers to the concordat within England, because obviously that is devolved, but I do not think that any devolved Administration would not want to do what we are discussing. They might have a different mechanism for implementing it, but nobody wants somebody with a mental illness episode to be treated any differently from someone with a broken leg or other physical injury; hopefully we have moved on from that. That is what we are trying to do.
The shadow Minister has made a point on a couple of occasions about co-responding. This is not just about rural communities—thank goodness London is now doing co-responding through a pilot. I served in areas that were quite rural areas and in areas, like the M25, that could not be described as rural—it is more like a giant car park at most times. For one reason or another, the other emergency services often did not arrive for some time.
We want to save lives. That is part and parcel of what the emergency services do. Co-responding is critical to that, as is moving on, in training terms, way beyond some of the things that we have discussed today. For instance, in Hampshire, the service was desperate to get the necessary qualifications to give fluids by IV. We know from Afghanistan and Iraq that that saves lives.
I understand the theme, but I do not agree with the amendments, because I think that they are unnecessary. Sadly, yet again, I will oppose them.
Lyn Brown
I thank the Minister for his response. I have not been to see London since my early days, and my early stint as the shadow Fire Minister before the election, so I am grateful to him for letting me know about the pilot. I will get in touch with London so that I can find out more, because I am interested. I have also not been to Hampshire; I do not believe that I have been invited yet. I deliberately did not go to see the flooding. I felt that it was inappropriate for me to be a water tourist, and that I would merely get in the way, so I have not been up or down to flooded areas.
Mike Penning
The hon. Lady is absolutely right: neither of us should be at an incident. Having politicians there is dangerous. Once it is finished and we are starting to learn, the experience that she will get from the frontline is better than any briefing she will ever get.
Lyn Brown
The Minister is absolutely right, which is why I spent my time as shadow Fire Minister during my first stint popping up and down the country, going to many fire and rescue authorities in constituencies represented in this room. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I said to the people affected by flooding that when they had dried out, I would be grateful for the opportunity to come and talk to them, although I have not yet had an invitation. In my second stint as shadow Fire Minister, I look forward to renewing my request to be talked to and to pop up and down the country yet again, as part of this impressive, exciting and enjoyable part of my brief.
I am grateful to the Minister for being open to the idea of a statutory duty on flooding. We both know that professionals in the fire service have called for that duty since the last days of the last Labour Government, and I genuinely think that it would be welcome and useful. If nothing else, the fire service would welcome some kind of acceptance, understanding or acknowledgment of its work on flooding.
I have talked about major incidents, and the Minister tried to reassure me on that, but the chief officers of six metropolitan fire and rescue services recently warned that they feel that the UK’s resilience to major incidents is at threat. They genuinely believe that the reduction in plant and firefighters would make us weaker in our resilience to a terrorist threat. I do not want to ramp that up into a big issue—I am not fearmongering—but we all need to recognise that that is what our professionals are saying to us. Collectively, we do not want to get into a position where our fire services cannot respond to incidents, where they are needed.
I leave it at that. The Minister has been very generous, and very sweet in offering to invite me to the next big event, so long as the gift is in his hand and there is no other reason for me not to go.
Mr Kevan Jones
May I echo the points made by my hon. Friend? This is actually happening on the ground. As a former Minister, I have seen close up the tendency of this Government to think that all the pearls of wisdom are contained within Whitehall, when clearly they are not. As my hon. Friend says, in many cases this is being driven by cost. County Durham and Darlington fire and rescue service, whose budget has been cut by the Government, has had to look at new ways of delivering services. However, the driver has not just been cost; it is also the recognition that, working together, ambulance, police, fire—and, in this case, mountain rescue—services can deliver a better service for the public. That public sector ethos is alive and kicking in my local area, where the public come first in terms of the service they give. If they can do things to improve that, it is all the better.
What would the Minister judge as collaboration? I accept that he might want to give examples of where that is not happening and the reasons why. In Durham, we have tri-responders: the police, fire and ambulance services. In a large rural county such as Durham it is not possible to have a physical presence from all three services in all areas, and they have worked together very closely. That has been driven not just by the police and crime commissioner but by other services working together.
What would be an example of failure? The Bill talks about co-operation, but to what level? Is this about the response to incidents? There are good examples of the co-location of services. In County Durham, it is not just about ensuring that we get more efficient use of estates. Things such as open days and the provision of public information, including to schools, are now being done on a joint basis by the police and fire. As my hon. Friend rightly says, the incidents that affect many of our constituents are not just pigeonholed as requiring a police response, a fire response or an ambulance response. Those things are working very well, so I would like to know what will be achieved with this measure. Can the Minister point to examples of where that is not happening and, if it is not happening, has he examined why? I have outlined the great work being done in County Durham. What would the Minister see as failure or as not meeting the co-operation target? Is he laying down from Whitehall, as seems to be the tendency of this Government, a framework that local PCCs and fire authorities have to meet if they are to meet this test? I think that, without that, what happens in different areas will be pretty arbitrary.
I represent quite a rural constituency in County Durham, although the Government have not recognised Durham as a rural county in their local government funding settlements, possibly because it votes Labour rather than Conservative. Responses that work in London may not work in rural areas such as County Durham. Providing the flexibility to allow local fire chiefs, local fire authorities, PCCs and the NHS to collaborate on what works best locally would be the right approach. If the Minister tries to direct from Whitehall a template that each area has to adopt, it will not work.
Mike Penning
I will not detain the Committee long. I think that there were three main questions.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend the Minister give way?
Jake Berry
May I encourage the Minister not to listen to the representations from the Labour party? The whole point of the Bill is that it does not seek to put PCCs and fire services in the straitjacket of a definition driven from Whitehall. I hope that he will, in the spirit of the Bill, ensure that it is a localist, devolution Bill, rather than one seeking straitjackets directed by the Minister in Committee.
Mike Penning
My hon. Friend may well be sitting in this chair in a couple of years’ time if he makes contributions like that, or in even less time than that. In a perfect world, this legislation would not be required. It would not be required if all the wonderful work that we hear is going on around the country was universally going on. One size does not fit all, but London probably is an example. The responsibility will not be with a PCC; it will be with the Mayor. We are passing the responsibility for fire services to the Mayor. How many fire stations in London are police stations?
Mike Penning
I will give way to my hon. Friend, who is much more experienced in this.
James Cleverly
The hon. Member for North Durham asked for examples. May I provide one from my London Assembly constituency rather than my parliamentary constituency? In Bexleyheath, the Bexleyheath fire station shares a party wall with a London ambulance station, which shares a party wall with a Transport for London bus depot, which is only a few yards from the Metropolitan Police headquarters. They all have separate cleaning contracts. They all have separate catering contracts. That is in an area where we have made a concerted effort to have more collaborative working, so I think that it is fair to say that this needs extra impetus. That is just one ultra-local example.
The Chair
Order. I have been very generous with interventions, I remind Members that interventions need to be short and to the point, and should contain a question. So far, I do not think that any of the interventions have fulfilled any of those requirements, and I expect interventions to do so in future.
Mike Penning
Finally, I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree that I will listen to Opposition Members and I will particularly listen to the shadow policing Minister, the hon. Member for West Ham. The duty of collaboration is welcome; there is no doubt about that. I agree with my hon. Friend completely; that is why the duty is in the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 3 to 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6
Provision for police and crime commissioner to be fire and rescue authority
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Lyn Brown
The Opposition do not believe that the Government have even begun to make the case for the fundamental governance reforms to the fire and rescue service that would be introduced by clause 6, so we will vote to remove it, and consequential schedule 1, from the Bill.
Clause 6 and schedule 1 contain provisions that allow for a police and crime commissioner to become a fire and rescue authority and, in so doing, effectively assume control of a fire and rescue service. I will have plenty to say in later debates about the lopsided process by which the Government are proposing that these takeovers should happen, and what the governance and scrutiny of the fire and rescue service would look like once the takeovers have gone ahead, but I will take this opportunity to discuss the merits of the proposal in the first place.
I know that that is not the way the Government think things should be done. They have been quite happy to go through a consultation exercise that does not ask stakeholders what they think of the merits of the proposals, and they have completely ignored the recommendation of Sir Ken Knight that these proposals need to be put through a rigorous pilot programme so that we can know whether they are likely to bring about any benefits.
It was not really a consultation, was it? It was stuffed full of leading questions that were not about whether the plans were right or about what should be done, but about how to implement them. The Government have ignored the evidence-based strategy suggested by Sir Ken. Why did the Government not undertake a pilot, as recommended by the Knight review? Why not undertake a proper risk assessment and outline the implications of the plans, alongside those of the budget cuts that are now starting to take effect and affect response times? The Government have acted on the assumption that it is a given that police and crime commissioners will get powers to take over the fire and rescue services. Why is that reasonable? They need to present arguments as to why that is a good idea. In whose interest is it? It is not right simply to propose reforms to a vital public service without producing a detailed set of arguments as to why those reforms are in the best interests of that service and the public.
Government impact assessments always start with the same two questions: “What is the problem under consideration?” and “Why is Government intervention necessary?” Those are two very conservative questions: if there is no evidence that something is not working as well as it should or that there is a problem that needs to be solved, the Government simply do not have reason to act. They should certainly not be legislating for its own sake. If the problem is London, legislate on London.
There is absolutely nothing in the impact assessment identifying tangible problems with the governance of the fire service, nor is there any attempt to explain why the legislation is necessary. The only relevant reason in the impact assessment is the fact that the Conservative manifesto pledged to “develop the role” of police and crime commissioners. Why is that? What did the fire service do to deserve this? It is an extraordinary way to go about the business of government. I am not surprised that civil servants at the Home Office could not come up with any tangible reasons why PCCs need to play a role in the governance of the fire and rescue service; there are plenty of reasons to think it is a bad idea.
Mike Penning
I often agree with the shadow Minister, but on this one she has taken her feed from the FBU too far.
Mike Penning
That is my view. I have listened to the shadow Minister’s view, and that is my view.
I quite like some of Sir Ken Knight’s comments, which the shadow Minister quoted extensively. Sir Ken is probably the biggest reason why the measure is in the Bill. I do not know whether the Committee noticed, but the shadow Minister’s argument is almost identical to the one against PCCs taking over the police. It was a Labour party manifesto commitment to abolish PCCs. Labour lost and changed its mind. This measure is a Conservative manifesto commitment, and we will take it through Parliament.
Sir Ken Knight was specific. He said that collaboration between the emergency services across the whole country is patchy and will not begin to change consistently without more joined-up and accountable leadership. The police and crime commissioners are uniquely placed to provide that leadership, which is why we support clause 6.
Mike Penning
The rest of it was rubbish, so I am not going to bother responding to it.
Lyn Brown
That is poor from the Minister, really poor indeed. There are serious issues here. If he wants to quote Ken Knight, let us quote Ken Knight. I ask the Minister yet again why he has not conducted the pilot that Ken suggested in his report. Why not do the pilots? My second question is: why now? We have PCC elections in a couple of months’ time, and this is not even in the manifestos of the candidates who are standing in those elections. The public will not be given an opportunity to decide whether they want X running their fire services, as well as their police services. In fact, the PCC candidates have not really been given an opportunity to debate fire services and what they would actually do with them, such as whether they would choose to take the option of putting them under the control of—
Lyn Brown
It is not an FBU line, and I really, really resent that suggestion. In previous discussions, the Minister and I have managed to be courteous to each other. I urge him not to diminish my political concerns by telling me that they come from someone else. They do not; they come from my being a local councillor for 18 years and my belief that local councillors and local democracy matter. The Minister has done the Committee no favours at all with his very short answers in response to the comments and concerns that my hon. Friends and I have expressed. Perhaps he would like to take some time and do it again.