Draft North East Mayoral Combined Authority (Establishment and Functions) Order 2024
(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft North East Mayoral Combined Authority (Establishment and Functions) Order 2024.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. The draft order was laid before the House on 7 February 2024. If approved and made by Parliament, it will provide for the implementation of the devolution deal agreed on 28 December 2022 between the Government and seven councils across the north-east: Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Sunderland City. We have been working closely with those seven authorities, and on 2 February 2024—my birthday—they consented to the making of the order.
The institutions that are to be abolished by this order, which are the two existing combined authorities and the North of Tyne Mayor, consented to its making. The order also provides the foundation for the deeper devolution deal for the north-east, which was announced in the Budget on 6 March. It is a trailblazer deal, deepening and extending the devolution settlement in the north-east, providing new tools for the future Mayor and local leaders to drive regional economic growth. The order provides for the establishment on 7 May 2024 of the north-east mayoral combined authority, comprising as constituent councils the seven north-east councils. It simultaneously abolishes the existing North East and North of Tyne combined authorities, together with the office of the Mayor of the North of Tyne.
The order provides for a new Mayor for the whole of the north-east, to be elected by local government electors across the area of the seven constituent councils, with the first election to take place on 2 May 2024. That elected Mayor will take up office on 7 May with a four-year term, ending after the next mayoral election in May 2028. Thereafter, there will be elections every fourth year, which are to be held on the ordinary election day for that year, which is the first Thursday in May. Following the enactment of the Elections Act 2022, all those mayoral elections will use the first-past-the-post voting system.
The order provides for significant functions, as agreed in the devolution deal, to be conferred on to the new mayoral combined authority. They include functions on housing and regeneration; mayoral development corporations; transport; and skills and adult education. The mayoral combined authority will be the local transport authority for the whole of the north-east, and the Tyne and Wear passenger transport executive—or Nexus, which is currently an executive body of the two current combined authorities—will become an executive body of the new mayoral combined authority. In addition, several powers relating to the adult education budget will be devolved fully to the combined authority from the start of the academic year 2024-25 in August, following the north-east successfully passing a series of readiness conditions. Provision is made in the order for certain functions to be exercised individually by the Mayor, as agreed in the devolution deal. They include certain concurrent powers of Homes England on housing and regeneration, and certain transport powers. Provision is also made to enable the Mayor, if they choose, to issue a precept to fund mayoral functions.
The order also provides for the combined authority’s governance arrangements. Each constituent council is to nominate one of its members to be its constituent council member on the combined authority. In addition, each constituent council is to nominate two other members, each of whom may act as a substitute if its nominated member is unavailable. It is also open to the new mayoral combined authority to appoint associate members and invite nomination for non-constituent members under the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023. The Mayor is to be the chair of the combined authority and is required to appoint one of the constituent council members to be the deputy Mayor. Whenever the deputy Mayor is required to act as the Mayor, one of the substitute members may act in their place for any proceedings.
Under schedule 5A to the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009, the combined authority is required to have at least one overview and scrutiny committee and one audit committee. They are appointed by the combined authority and consist of an equal number of members from each of the constituent councils who are not also members of the combined authority. If approved by Parliament, the order is to be made under the 2009 Act, as amended by the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016. As required by that legislation, we have also laid a section 105B report, which provides details about the public authority functions that we are devolving to the new combined authority.
The statutory origin of this order is in a governance review and scheme that was adopted by the constituent councils and then informed by a public consultation, which they carried out in accordance with the requirements of the 2009 Act. As provided for by that Act, the seven councils of the north-east consulted on the proposals in their scheme. They promoted the consultation in a number of ways, including by producing communications toolkits so that key local partner organisations and other stakeholders could help to encourage local participation.
A total of 24 engagement events took place across the region, comprising 15 separate public consultation events across the north-east, together with nine regional stakeholder events aimed at specific sectors, including the voluntary and community sector and the business, transport and education sectors. Responses could be made online or directly by email or on paper. The public consultation ran from 26 January to 23 March 2023, and 3,235 people or organisations responded through a variety of platforms. As required by statute, the constituent councils provided the Secretary of State with a summary of the consultation responses on 23 June 2023. More than 60% of respondents supported the overall proposals for the establishment of, and governance arrangements for, a new mayoral combined authority and elected Mayor.
In laying the draft order before Parliament, the Secretary of State is satisfied that the statutory tests in the 2009 Act are met, namely: that no further consultation is necessary; that conferring the proposed powers would be likely to improve the exercise of statutory functions in the area and would be appropriate, having regard to the need to reflect the identities and interests of local communities and to secure effective and convenient local Government; and that, where the functions are local authority functions, they can be appropriately exercised by the combined authority.
Most importantly, agreeing this order opens a way to providing the very considerable funding for the area as set out in the devolution deal agreed in December 2022. That includes £48 million a year in investment funding for 30 years. In total, that will provide £1.4 billion to invest in the area to drive growth and take forward local priorities. There are significant funds for investment in transport, infrastructure and services, worth up to some £732 million over the next five years. There is an additional £17.4 million for building new homes on brownfield land, subject to sufficient eligible projects for funding being identified, and a further £20 million of capital funding to drive place-based economic regeneration. In addition, from August 2024, the core adult education budget will be devolved to the new combined authority, and the authority will plan to deliver UK shared prosperity funding from 2025-26, if that funding is continued and the geographies remain the same.
As I have mentioned, the order not only implements the devolution deal agreed in December 2022, but provides the foundation for implementing the deeper devolution deal that we announced in last week’s Budget, which includes £37 million of new funding to support the region’s growth ambitions, a growth zone with retained business rates and a number of innovative collaborations between the mayoral combined authority established by the order and the Government to drive growth in existing and future industrial strengths.
Those projects include, for example, creating a green superport, where the mayoral combined authority and the Government will work together to unlock the barriers to growth at the ports of Blyth, Tyne and Wear, at Newcastle international airport and at the International Advanced Manufacturing Park. This will harness the potential of the region’s existing offshore engineering and green manufacturing industries to help drive growth.
Under that further deal, the mayoral combined authority established by this order will also work in close partnership with the Government to support the delivery of quality public services for all the people of the north-east, including through joint work to tackle homelessness, improve homelessness prevention and develop new pilot employment programmes. All of this will help the Mayor and local leaders in the north-east to drive economic growth and development in the area with a more effective, strategic and unified approach than ever before.
Finally, I pay tribute to the local leaders and their councils, for all the work they have done, and continue to do, to address local priorities and to support business, industry and communities across the north-east.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I can confirm that we do not intend to divide the Committee on this statutory instrument today.
The order provides for the establishment of, and the governance arrangements for, the north-east mayoral combined authority, which comprises the seven local authorities across the north-east. I congratulate the leaders of the component councils for the significant groundwork they have done in preparation for today.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend further congratulate those leaders on ensuring that the Government delivered on the trailblazer funding, which the Minister referred to? Will he also wish the best of luck to our candidate, Kim McGuinness, who would be an excellent Mayor for the north-east mayoral combined authority?
Jim McMahon
Absolutely; the trailblazer deals are important because, in the end, not many members of the public are calling for more layers of government or more politicians, but people are calling for more power in their communities, and the trailblazer deal is part of that move towards greater localism. That is to be welcomed. Of course, Kim will be a fantastic champion, if she were to be successful in the election. We wish her well in that.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram in the Liverpool city region has introduced new trains that are fully accessible to wheelchair users and are publicly owned. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is an example of how we can really deliver on the ground for our communities?
Jim McMahon
I am a strong believer in the idea that politics can be won on the buses, and I think we underestimate which mode of transport the vast majority of people take when they use public transport. We talk a lot about aeroplanes and trains, but actually more people’s lives are connected to the bus services in their local community. It is no surprise, then, that Mayors such as Steve Rotheram are using that as a foundation of their success.
Margaret Greenwood
I apologise: I should clarify that he introduced fully accessible trains.
Jim McMahon
Of course, the trains. In Greater Manchester, we are doing bus devolution; I know that Tracy Brabin in West Yorkshire is doing the same; and I know that Steve Rotheram is doing a significant amount on the train service and, like Greater Manchester, is looking for further devolution, particularly around the stations, and the potential development that could be attracted there.
As has been said, the deal creates a new combined authority that will have functions to grow the whole north-east economy, and we are hopeful that our candidate, Kim McGuinness, will soon be the Mayor of the north-east. Kim, like many others, will be keen to grow the local area and the local economy for all the people who live there and who have businesses there. The north-east requires dedication, commitment and focus. We hope that this measure is the start of that, because the area has significant challenges.
Current Government data for 2023 shows that youth homelessness is higher in the north-east than anywhere else in the UK. Almost one in five of the individuals who applied for and were due homelessness support were aged 18 to 24. Last week, at the Convention of the North, the Institute for Public Policy Research revealed that the healthy life expectancy data is stark. It found that the north-east is the worst performing region in England by that measure. In addition, in 2023, there was a record attainment gap between schools in the north-east and those in the south. More than 28% of entries by pupils in London were awarded grade 7 or higher, equivalent to A or A*, compared with just 18% of entries by pupils in the north-east.
There is a great deal to do to make sure that every person in the north-east realises their full potential. Action is required. So far, devolution under the current Government has been fragmented and piecemeal and has not gone far enough or fast enough. The powers and resources do not touch the sides of what is required for communities to have control over their areas and their own futures. Labour will push power out of Westminster with a take back control Act that gives communities a direct say in their future.
Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
As a former Secretary of State, albeit briefly, I owe it to the Committee to point out that the reason we do not have a Mayor of the north-east already is because the Labour councils in the north-east could not agree on establishing one sooner.
The Chair
Jim McMahon
Thank you. In the end, there is frustration and concern from local government leaders that, when we talk about devolution in this place, what we are really talking about is taking powers away from councils and giving them to a Mayor, but then no additional powers coming back down. The challenge was always whether the Government could convince local government leaders that the prize is big enough for them to give something away, because the Government will meet them halfway. That is what we are seeing today. The purpose of the trailblazer deals was to demonstrate to council leaders that there was enough there that was worth working together for. That is why we are where we are.
In a way, what this shows is that, regardless of party politics, whether Labour or Conservative, if national Government work hand in hand with local government, we can make progress. We should see this for the success that it is. On Labour’s offer, we will start by giving all Mayors the powers and flexibility to turbocharge growth in their areas. That will include powers over planning and housing, transport, net zero and adult education. We will offer all places the right to negotiate with the Government for powers that have been devolved elsewhere. That will be the foundation of Labour’s plan to rebuild Britain and give it its future back.
Jacob Young
I am grateful to the hon. Member for his comments. I would point out to him, as I have done in previous debates, that under the last Labour Government the only area with a devolution deal in England was London. Under this Government, now more than 60% of England is covered by a devolution deal, and we are absolutely committed to expanding that further, which is what today’s order does.
Twenty years ago, the people of the north-east rightly rejected John Prescott’s idea for a north-east assembly. Labour’s version of devolution was top-down and even described by advocates as a talking shop with minimal powers. I remember the postcards during that referendum showing Middlesbrough’s town hall draped with the colours of the magpie with the phrase, “Don’t let the Toon run the Boro”. Today, in contrast, we are devolving with the consent of the people. It will not be a talking shop but a region with more powers and funding than ever before.
The north-east becomes the first region of the UK to be completely covered by mayoral devolution, with the powerful Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen and a new Mayor covering the rest of the north-east. The north-east is home to landmarks recognised around the world, including Hadrian’s Wall, Durham cathedral and the Angel of the North. It bursts with skills and opportunities, with world-leading universities such as Durham University, the centres of educational excellence in Newcastle, and the pioneering education partnership between Sunderland and Northumberland. It is a trading region, with £12 billion of chemical exports each year. It has Nissan in Sunderland and the Port of Tyne, which handles most of the UK’s tea. Those in the north-east have given so much to the world and the UK, and we owe it to them to pass this order today.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Fire and Rescue Services) (England) Regulations 2024
(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 9 / Noes: 7 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Fire and Rescue Services) (England) Regulations 2024.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue, for what I think is the first time but which I certainly hope is not the last. The regulations were laid before Parliament on 8 February following the publication of the Department’s response to its extensive previous consultation on implementing minimum service levels for fire and rescue services. The services provided by fire and rescue authorities are critical to the safety of the public and the protection of property and the environment. It is therefore crucial that the public remain able to access fire and rescue services when they need them, because without that there is a threat to life. The overarching aim of the regulations is to help ensure that happens even on strike days, proportionately balancing the right to strike with the right of the public to be protected, in this case from fire.
Using powers introduced by the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, the regulations will allow fire and rescue authorities to issue work notices to ensure there is sufficient cover to answer all emergency calls and respond to fire-related emergencies as if strike action were not taking place. The minimum service level for fire and rescue services includes three core aspects: control rooms, emergency incident response and fire safety services. Broadly speaking, the responses to the Government’s consultation, including those from the majority of fire and rescue services, were in favour of a nationally set minimum service level but with a degree of local flexibility. That is reflected in the provisions set out in the regulations.
First, for control rooms, the minimum service levels make sure emergency calls are answered and assessed for resources to be dispatched to the emergency incident to the extent necessary to ensure the public are protected as they would be on a non-strike day.
Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I declare that I am the son of a retired firefighter who is in receipt of a fire pension. Is the Minister aware that it has long been custom and practice during a fire strike for firefighters on the picket line who become aware of a threat to life or other such serious incidents to leave the picket to immediately attend and protect life? Does that not, therefore, make all this legislation unnecessary?
Chris Philp
I do not think that is how it happens. If there is a major or critical incident declared, it is possible firefighters might return to work. That might happen quite fast if they are on a picket line, but it might take longer if they are at home. The threshold for that is quite significant, and it may not necessarily be the case that a regular small-scale house fire, which none the less might destroy someone’s home and which might put life at threat—certainly, it might simply destroy someone’s home—would automatically be covered. It might in some circumstances, but there is no guarantee.
I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that even if life is not threatened, the destruction of someone’s property or someone’s home is a serious matter and it would be proper for us to protect that in the regulations. I am sure if it were the hon. Gentleman’s home being burned down, even if there were no threat to life, he would want that to be taken seriously and he would want that fire put out.
Andrew Western
I gently say to the Minister that in his response he suggests that part of the problem with firefighters being on strike and not responding to threat-to-life incidents is that they may be at home. Can he confirm how many fire stations currently operate under the retained model, at least overnight, where firefighters have to travel in from their homes, and the impact that that has on response times already?
Chris Philp
The hon. Gentleman is referring to fire stations typically in sparsely populated rural areas, whereas in urban areas firefighters tend to be on regular salaries. The purpose of the regulations is to make sure we do not have to rely on good-will decisions with quite a high threshold and no guarantee that firefighters on strike, who would normally be at the fire station and particularly in busy urban stations, would necessarily be there. If the house of anyone here or of any of their constituents were on fire and it was a strike day, they would want to know that their house would not burn down. We are trying with the regulations to strike a reasonable balance between the right of firefighters to go on strike and the right of the public not to suffer serious damage and threat to life. By the way, many other European countries, such as Portugal, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands and others, do strike that balance in a variety of different sectors—I am not talking just about fire—and have legislation that is fully compatible with the European convention on human rights and strikes precisely that reasonable, proportionate balance: that is what we are seeking to do here.
Just to return to the points that I was making, I have talked a little bit about control rooms, and I was just explaining, before taking the intervention, that decisions on the number of staff required to fulfil those control room functions will be for individual fire and rescue authorities to take on a bespoke, case by case basis. The reason for that is that the way that different fire and rescue authorities and fire and rescue services organise their control rooms differs, and it is quite difficult to have a single national level that would be appropriate for all of them.
When it comes to the emergency response element, we decided to set the minimum service level on a national basis across England—because these regulations apply to England; we will consider Wales and Scotland subsequently. It will be set at 73% of appliances. Just to be precise, when I say “appliances”, I mean fire engines and other fire and rescue service vehicles, so that is 73% of the level of those that would be available if the strike action were not taking place. Individual fire and rescue authorities will be able to determine the number of staff required to safely crew and oversee those appliances.
The decision to set this aspect of the minimum service level at 73% was based on detailed modelling, which is summarised in our consultation response. The modelling calculates the proportion of days over the past five years on which demand would have exceeded the number of appliances required to meet an MSL. The model identified 73% as the threshold at which every fire and rescue service would have had enough appliances to meet emergency demand—I stress “emergency demand”—on more than 97% of the days in that five-year period. In the interests of public safety, we therefore consider 73% to be the most appropriate point at which to set this aspect of the minimum service level.
Many fire and rescue services also host national resilience assets, which form an important part of any response to major and significant incidents, such as a major building collapse or wildfire. I consider it of the utmost importance that fire and rescue services can maintain those capabilities and keep the public safe. That is why the minimum service level for the national resilience assets is set so that they are also capable of being deployed, as if the strikes were not taking place, in response to emergency demand.
John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
In this very detailed study that the Minister is talking about, how many incidents did they identify where this had actually been a problem?
Chris Philp
Well, it is set out in the consultation response. But, if the right hon. Gentleman is asking about how many strikes there have been—[Hon. Members: “No.”] Well, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman should restate his question; I was not quite following it.
John Spellar
In the course of industrial action, how many incidents have there been where there had been a serious impact as a result of the strike?
Chris Philp
The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that, in the past—about 10 years ago and, again, about 10 years before that—very considerable military assets were deployed in order to provide cover when there was a large-scale fire strike.
Chris Philp
I will in just a moment. It is worth saying that the assets that are possessed by the military today are not the same; their number of firefighting appliances is lower than it was 10 or 20 years ago. So, whereas—
Chris Philp
I will happily give way again in a minute, if the right hon. Gentleman wants, after I have given way to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover, but the point is that the military assets available 10 or 20 years ago, such as the green goddess fire engines, for example, are not available today.
Mrs Elphicke
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way on this important point. I would like to put on record my thanks, which I feel we all share, for the tremendous work done by the fire and rescue services. In relation to the specific point raised, it may be helpful to the Minister to note that actually three elderly people were reported to have died in the first national firefighters strike—the one that the Minister is referring to—and indeed, more recently, the failure to respond to a call-out in the middle of a strike led to a serious incident that very nearly led to loss of life in Essex. That might be helpful to the Minister, to expand on why it is so important that these measures are put in place to save lives, as well as to protect property, and how we have seen such instances.
Chris Philp
I thank my hon. Friend for a characteristically excellent intervention. First, I do, of course, echo and share the tribute that she paid to the brave firefighters up and down the country, who put themselves in the line of danger every day to keep the rest of us safe. I think the whole Committee, on both sides, would echo that sentiment.
The examples that my hon. Friend gave about loss of life during previous fire strikes eloquently and powerfully answer the intervention made by the right hon. Member for Warley. They illustrate that, even when we had far more extensive military firefighting assets available—which we do not any more—none the less, life was still lost. What we are talking about here is ensuring that life and property—because both are important—are protected, even when a strike takes place.
The Committee knows this, but, just for clarity, we are not proposing, of course, to ban strikes. That is not what is being proposed here. We are simply setting out, in this area, as in others, a minimum level of cover that must be provided, even during a strike, to make sure that the public are kept safe and to avoid the tragic fatalities that my hon. Friend the Member for Dover just set out to the Committee a moment ago.
John Spellar
Can I just point out that there is a great difference between “during” and “as a consequence of”? In other words, there is a difference between a death during a strike and as a consequence of that action.
Chris Philp
Well, it may be that my hon. Friend the Member for Dover can set out further particulars of the incidents that she referred to, but it would seem to me to be deeply concerning when a reduction in strike cover occurs and fatalities follow; that is something that should properly concern all of us. When it comes to something as serious as fire, where life and property are at risk, I think it is proper that Parliament ensures that we have done everything we can to make sure that the public are kept safe, even during strike action. Indeed, it would be a dereliction of duty were we not to do so.
Just to complete the point that I was making a moment ago about the 73% level and the assets relating to national resilience, as with other provisions in the regulations, fire and rescue authorities will consult with trade unions and determine the number of staff required to meet the minimum service level should strike action occur. Of course, I hope that the Fire Brigades Union and other unions engage constructively with that process when the time comes.
The third and final element of the minimum service level is to provide cover for urgent fire safety issues. The regulations set out that fire and rescue services will be expected to have staff available to rectify any emerging issues that pose an imminent risk to life and would normally require a same-day response. That might be, for example, where a significant fire safety issue is uncovered in a block of residential flats that necessitates same-day attention.
Individual fire and rescue authorities will be able to determine individually how much cover will be required for that purpose. We think that that is likely to be minimal because we accept that it is reasonable that routine fire safety work, routine inspections and routine visits do not happen if there is a strike. Those are not essential activities; they are not essential for public safety—apart from in the emergency situation that I just described—so we accept and understand that those activities would not happen on the day of a strike.
Andrew Western
Could I just ask the Minister to clarify then why, under regulation 6(3), it states that,
“(a) giving of advice about fire safety, including in particular—
(i) how to prevent fires”
would be considered as something in scope? If we are talking about fire prevention, in that case, we are certainly not talking about a building currently in an emergency.
Chris Philp
Just to be clear, when it comes to fire safety advice, it is in scope, but only to the extent that there is a concern that there is an imminent or potentially imminent risk to life. If, for example, there was a serious fire safety issue that was suddenly uncovered in a block of flats, as I mentioned in the example, and it was considered that that risk needed to be addressed immediately—no fire but a risk that needed to be quickly addressed—that should be covered even on a strike day. However, we accept that routine fire inspections would not occur on a strike day, because they are not urgent or essential on that day, but can wait for another time, after the strike is over.
As I have set out, the minimum service level in the regulations is designed to balance the right of workers to take strike action with the right of the public to have life and property protected. We believe that this is a proportionate step to ensure the protection of public safety on strike days. It follows the practice in other European countries, not just in the fire sector but in a number of other sectors. On that basis, I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue. I am proud to declare at the outset that I am a lifelong trade unionist and a member of a number of unions, including the GMB and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers.
Let me start by offering our thanks to our brave firefighters up and down the country. They do dangerous work, they do crucial work, and they help us in our darkest moments, tackling fires, but also the impact of climate change—now more than ever, flooding—as well as doing rescue work, when people are stuck in their cars, and much, much more. There are so many of life’s challenges to which the answer is to call our brave fire and rescue services.
As with any legislation, it is important to contrast the comfort and security in which we sit and do our important work today with, in this case, the dangerous situations that firefighters will be facing right now, whether they are on a motorway or tackling a blaze. We are talking about their terms and conditions and the nature of their work while we sit here, so we ought to have due regard for the different dangers we face at work.
The regulations are the end product of the Government’s failed approach to industrial relations. Under this Government, we have seen a wave of strike action—the most significant in decades. Yet at every stage, rather than seeking to work with our hard-working public sector staff, the Government have refused to get round the negotiating table, thrown in last-minute distractions or failed to show the leadership required to settle these disputes. The Government have failed on the economy and failed on public services, and they are failing on industrial relations.
The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 was billed as a silver bullet to solve all these problems; but there lies the rub. The regulations are not about solving the issues faced by millions of British workers, whether it is those who go into burning buildings, those who keep us safe at night or those who keep the health service functioning, as they did during the pandemic. The regulations are about solving the Government’s problem, such that they do not have to negotiate, because this is a Government more interested in dealing with their own issues than in the daily struggle of the British people. What image does that send to the public? The Government have gone, in a very short period, from clapping public sector workers to threatening to sack them.
The powers in the 2023 Act that allow the Government to bring forward these regulations are a sticking-plaster solution and a distraction from the real issue. The impact of these regulations will be a significant winnowing of the basic rights of tens of thousands of people who work in the most dangerous of environments; and today we are upstairs, out of plain sight. This is a poor set of affairs, designed not to tackle the problem but to solve the Government’s problem.
But the Government cannot legislate their way out of 14 years of failure. That is why Labour opposes attacks on working people’s freedoms. It is why we would repeal the 2023 Act and why we oppose the regulations before us today. No one wants to see the public disrupted by industrial action, least of all the staff themselves—I did not hear that mentioned in the Minister’s contribution. Those staff do not wish to be on strike; they want to be at work, protecting the public.
Also, we all want minimum service standards in our public services, but it is the Government, not our hard-working staff, who have failed us in that regard. That is clear in every aspect of British life. I know that the Minister seeks constructive solutions, but I say that because the failure here is not in the intricacies of trade union legislation: it is in 14 years of failure on the economy, which have left working people facing an economic emergency. It is in a Government who have ground down the resilience of household finances over a decade so that millions are now struggling to make ends meet, and it is the Government who have stretched public services to breaking point with a recruitment and retention crisis across the public sector. We know that is blindingly obvious to the public, but it seems the Government cannot see it. Instead, they choose today to attack the rights of working people, undermine their terms and conditions and devalue their contribution to the country. The regulations will have a practical impact, but they will not achieve what the Government seek.
Chris Philp
The hon. Gentleman says that there is a recruitment and retention crisis, yet we have record numbers of police officers—149,566 last March, as I may have mentioned previously. We also have record numbers of doctors and nurses; indeed, today the NHS has about 60,000 more staff than it did a year ago. We have record police, doctors and nurses. That is hardly a recruitment and retention crisis, is it?
Alex Norris
I am grateful for that intervention, because therein lies the difference between the Government’s position and our position. We think that public sector services are distressed and morale is really poor in the police; I would be staggered if the Minister did not really know that. He knows the attrition rate, particularly among young officers. He knows the pressures in the health service. He knows the struggle that we have to hire social care staff.
Chris Philp
We are getting a bit off topic, so I do not want to stretch your patience, Ms Fovargue, but the hon. Gentleman mentioned the attrition rate, which is about 6% overall for the police. Half of that is to do with when people reach the 30-year retirement level. Only 3%, roughly, is early exit prior to the retirement date, which, in comparison with most sectors, is extremely low.
Alex Norris
The Minister and I are bound basically in one long-running, important conversation. The Minister’s proposition is that the public have never had it so good on policing and community safety. My position is that—
Alex Norris
I apologise, Ms Fovargue. I will get back to my argument.
The practical impact of this statutory instrument will be to poison relations between management and staff at a time when we need constructive working relationships. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston said, constructive working relationships have existed between fire and rescue services and trade unions for many years.
The FBU has always negotiated major incident agreements with employers before national strikes. That relationship works. The Strikes (Minimum Services Levels) Act 2023 was a response to an unprecedented—certainly in my adult memory—wave of industrial action. However, that has not happened in fire, because the collective bargaining process has worked. At a time when strikes are commonplace, that has been the one place where there have not been strikes. There has not been a strike on pay in fire and rescue services for 20 years. Why are the Government meddling with a set of arrangements that work well?
I will return to the regulations themselves. I appreciate the Minister’s detail on how the requirement for 73% of appliances to be deployable on a non-strike day, as formulated by the Government, was reached. He must understand, though, that there is deep concern about that proportion. Is there a commitment that it will be kept under review? The calculations as he explained them are one way of doing it, but they are in no way the definitive one.
Similarly, the Minister said that we are in a weaker position than before. I must say, I thought it was brave of him to say that the Government have so ridden down our armed forces that now they can no longer help us in contingency and emergency. That is a significant point, because we know that there have been times, particularly in the summer and around wildfires, where in parts of the country our fire and rescue services were right on the brink. In that situation, normally we would expect to fall back on support from the armed forces. Is the Minister now saying that, due to a lack of investment, that will not be available to us? That is a significant point indeed.
The Minister discussed the appliances in scope with regard to the 73%, but I did not hear whether that is a raw calculation per unit, such that any vehicle is considered the same and 73% of them must be on the road, or whether that is weighted in any way with regard to what the different vehicles and units can do. I suspect that the answer to that will be, “That is to be decided locally.” That is part of the problem for the Minister. He said at the outset that the consultation found that the majority of fire and rescue services wanted clarity. That does not surprise me—that is not an uncommon consultation response—but the problem is that the Government have failed on their own terms in that regard, because we have heard the Minister say on multiple occasions that this statutory instrument sets the environment, but what that means must be agreed locally.
For example, it is reasonable to say that the Government ought to take a view on the level of control room service they consider to be of the same standard as on a non-strike day, if they are going to legislate for that, but instead we are told that that will be decided locally. That is a failure on the Government’s own terms. To follow that through to its logical conclusion, is the Minister saying that any given fire and rescue service could say that they believe the acceptable level in their control room locally is 100% of what the level would have been on a non-strike day? The Minister says that this is not meant to be a ban on striking, but in that case it would be, and that would be decided not in this place but in local arrangements. That would have catastrophic impacts on relationships locally.
More than three quarters of the staff who work in control rooms are women. The equality impact assessment quickly brushes over that point, saying that that is not a material consideration; I am surprised and would like to hear from the Minister why he believes that.
On local negotiation and agreement, will the Minister confirm not only that there will not be an obligation—certainly not in law, because I do not believe this is on the face of the regulations—for fire and rescue services to issue work notices, but that nor will there be an attempt, certainly while he is in his role, to compel fire and rescue services to issue work notices, and that we would expect them to work locally first, in ways that have already shown to positive, rather than using what is clearly a blunt tool?
To conclude, we have a Government who are incapable of providing even the most minimal level of service to the public. They have wrecked the economy and hammered public services. They now want to compound those woes by taking basic rights at work away from a group of people who do the most dangerous job going—people who have shown time and again that they will negotiate constructively and in good faith. This legislation is their reward for that. It is dismal
It comes back to the basic debate between the Minister and me. The Government are asking the British people to take a side: are they with the Government and their analysis of the world, or do they stand with our firefighters, our doctors and our nurses? I know which side I am on, so I will vote against the regulations and I encourage all colleagues to do the same.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I am a member of the Fire Brigades Union parliamentary group, and have been since its inception. I have been involved in every major fire dispute in the last 20 or 30 years, including the two national strikes that have been emphasised. For the life of me, I cannot understand the justification for the minimum service legislation and for this delegated legislation in particular, because in those disputes we have always established agreements whereby firefighters have come off picket lines—and they have—whenever necessary to save life and yes, actually, to save houses as well in many instances.
I have never previously heard about this issue of the loss of life, because every time that was used in the media, each one of those incidents was contested and proven to be inaccurate, even in coroners’ reports. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley said, it is an issue of mistaking correlation for causation in many instances, which confuses people.
This is the first time I have heard the argument about the lack of military resources used as justification for this particular piece of the legislation. It is the first time that argument has been used. I am amazed: if the Government are saying that the reason why they have brought forward this legislation is because they have not invested in our military, that is a problem for the Government that we may have to solve when we go into government.
Let me pick up a couple of particular points, to follow on from my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North. It is clear from paragraph 6.8 of the explanatory memorandum that there is a strike ban on call staff. It is fairly obvious that if the call staff are to be required to operate as they would if a strike were not taking place, that means, in effect, that they will not be able to strike. If we turn over the page, we see that exactly the same provisions are there with regard to the resilience staff. They will need to operate and provide the service
“as if a strike were not taking place.”
Both those provisions are a ban on the right to strike, despite the assurances that Ministers have consistently given us.
I looked at the assessment of the financial costings and the risks themselves. On page 29 of the impact assessment, on the risks, it says:
“The monetised benefits…assume that strike hours will be prevented as a result of this policy. Any displacement of strike hours (for example, through action short of strike, or an increase in the volume of strikes) will reduce the”
savings from
“this policy, and have not been monetised.”
That is exactly the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North. There need to be wiser heads in Government to approach this issue.
Before they introduce legislation, a Government should consider what they are doing in terms of the industrial relations climate generally. I refer back even to the early 1970s and the Industrial Relations Act 1971 under the Heath Government, because when Conservative Governments have introduced industrial relations legislation that in any way impedes the right of trade unions to exercise their civil liberty to withdraw their labour, it has always resulted in an almost catastrophic demoralisation of the workforce, which has then undermined the industrial relations climate in particular sectors—and in that instance nationally—and just produced more industrial action. What will happen in respect of this legislation is that other forms of action will be taken, short of strike action, and in the long run that will undermine the delivery of professional services, if we are not careful. I therefore caution the Government to be careful what they wish for on things like this.
In respect of the costings, the Government need to take into account the decisions taken at recent TUC congresses and the TUC general council, because it is quite clear that if there is any action against any individual trade union or any individual trade unionists under this legislation, the whole trade union movement will react, and I do not think it will react in a way the Government will want. I believe this legislation will provoke more strikes and more industrial action and, unfortunately, in the long run have the consequence of undermining the services that we are desperately trying to protect.
Chris Philp
I will respond briefly to one or two of the points made. On the question from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North, about the armed services, in the past huge numbers of very old green goddess fire engines were available. Although they reached the end of their life, there are obviously still significant capabilities within the armed services that could be deployed against, for example, wildfires, but the extent to which the armed services have adequate capability to replace an entire national fire service is obviously a different question entirely.
The level at which control room service levels will be set will be determined individually, depending on local need, but if a local fire and rescue authority sought to set a 100% requirement, as somebody hypothesised, without good justification and without good reason, that is not a power that the legislation provides for.
We have heard a little about the recent pay settlements; I do not want to go into this too much because it is not really the topic of this debate, but the shadow Minister mentioned them. Last year, the average public sector pay settlement ran at around about 6.5% to 7%—both police and fire got 7%—and that was in line with, or perhaps even slightly better than, the private sector equivalent, so the suggestion that public sector workers are being unfairly treated by this Government does not bear scrutiny.
One or two Members mentioned voluntary return-to-work agreements. First, I should stress that they are just that—voluntary—so it is difficult to rely firmly on them. In 2022, when voluntary agreements were discussed and put in place in advance of the potential industrial action in early 2023, which thankfully did not materialise, those agreements covered only major incidents, which were defined as incidents affecting large numbers of people or requiring large-scale resource deployment by the fire and rescue service and at least one other emergency service. I stress that they covered major, large-scale incidents. Such incidents are, thankfully, relatively rare, and it is unlikely that that definition would be met if there was a house fire.
That brings me to my final point. The shadow Minister asked the Committee rhetorically whose side it is on. We are on the side of balance—of balancing the right to strike on the one hand with, on the other hand, the right of our constituents not to have their house burned down and have no one turn up. I challenge anyone on the Committee: what would they say to a constituent if, on a strike day, their house was on fire—it is not a major incident as defined; I just read out the definition—and no one came? I say there is no good answer to that question. The responsible thing for us to do as legislators is to legislate to strike that balance, and to allow strike action—there is of course a right to strike, as the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington said—as far as is possible without jeopardising public safety or allowing threats to life or to property. That is the balance that we seek to strike in the regulations, which is why I urge the Committee to vote for them.
Question put.
Draft Sea Fisheries (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas) (Amendment) Regulations 2024
(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Sea Fisheries (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas) (Amendment) Regulations 2024.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. The regulations were laid in draft before the House on 12 December 2023. The purpose of the instrument is to make provision to ensure that the United Kingdom, as a member of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, which I will refer to as ICCAT from now on, can continue to meet the full range of its international obligations in relation to the convention that governs ICCAT.
The UK has an obligation under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea to co-operate on the management of shared fish stocks, including through appropriate regional and sub-regional organisations. ICCAT is one example of such an organisation and is responsible for ensuring that fisheries for tuna and tuna-like species, such as swordfish, in the Atlantic ocean are managed sustainably. The UK became an independent contracting party to the convention—in other words, a member of ICCAT—on 1 January 2021 after depositing an instrument of accession following EU exit.
As a member of ICCAT, the UK must ensure that we are able to implement and enforce binding measures, known as recommendations, which are agreed by contracting parties under the convention. The UK must ensure that our domestic laws fulfil those international obligations and this instrument updates and amends various regulations of retained EU law to implement recommendations adopted by the commission immediately prior to and since the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Where appropriate, the instrument also makes amendments to reflect the UK’s status as an independent coastal state. I will now go through each element of the regulation in turn to briefly explain the amendments being made to retained EU law.
Regulation 2 of the instrument removes provisions from Council Regulation 1936/2001, which laid down controlled measures applicable to fishing for certain stocks of highly migratory fish. It also included provisions that regulated the farming of bluefin tuna. The UK, however, does not farm bluefin tuna and the provisions have therefore been removed as they are not relevant to the UK.
Regulation 3 of the instrument amends Council Regulation 1984/2003. It now correctly reflects the convention’s requirement for a statistical document to accompany imports of swordfish and bigeye tuna into the UK. Other amendments are made for clarity to ensure the amended provisions are enforceable. For example, amendments to the description of fish captured no longer references the 1984 version of the EU’s combined nomenclature. They are instead replaced with references to the UK’s commodity codes, used in the UK’s customs tariff.
Regulation 4 of the instrument updates Regulation (EU) 640/2010 to mandate the use of an electronic catch documentation system for bluefin tuna, replacing the use of clerical documents. Further amendments are made to ensure that the new requirements are clear and enforceable, as well as outlining the limited circumstances in which a paper catch document may be used instead of the electronic system. Regulation 4 also amends the descriptions of fish captured within Regulation (EU) 640/2010. The descriptions have been updated with reference to the commodity codes found in the UK’s customs tariff. The amendment makes the description of the fish clear and ensures that the regulation is enforceable.
Regulation 5 of the instrument removes provisions in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2015/98 that established derogations from landing obligations in order to fulfil ICCAT requirements. Instead, the provisions are covered in Regulation (EU) 2016/162. Removing those provisions from the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2015/98 avoids duplication and provides clarity.
Regulation 6 of the instrument amends Regulation (EU) 2016/1627, which implemented ICCAT’s multiannual recovery plan for bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Since the recovery plan was introduced, I am pleased to say that stocks of bluefin tuna have improved significantly. The recovery plan has now been replaced with a multiannual management plan. Regulation 6 therefore comprehensively amends Regulation (EU) 2016/1627 to ensure that it correctly reflects the UK’s obligations under ICCAT in relation to the management plan of the UK’s catch quota. A multiannual recovery plan was also developed for the management of swordfish in the Mediterranean. The EU gave effect to the recovery plan in Regulation (EU) 2019/1154, which was retained in our domestic legislation at the point of EU exit. As these provisions relate to swordfish in the Mediterranean, however, regulation 7 of the instrument revokes the substantive provisions of Regulation (EU) 2019/1154, as they are not relevant to the UK.
Regulation (EU) 2019/1241 sets technical measures for the conservation of fisheries resources and the protection of marine ecosystems. Regulation 8 of the instrument amends that Regulation (EU) 2019/1241 to insert minimum conservation reference sizes of bluefin tuna specified under the convention. By making that amendment, all minimum conservation reference sizes will be specified within one regulation, rather than contained in different pieces of retained EU law, ensuring clarity within our domestic regulation.
In addition to amending retained EU law, regulation 9 of this instrument amends the common fisheries policy and aquaculture regulations 2019, to remove references to obsolete legislation. Specifically, amendments have been made to remove provisions relating to retained EU law, which have been removed and replaced with Regulation (EU) 2017/2107, which lays down management conservation and control measures within the convention of ICCAT.
Devolved Administrations are supportive of the amendments made by this instrument, ensuring the UK can continue to meet its full obligations as an independent contracting party to ICCAT. If the instrument is not passed the UK will not only fail to meet its international obligations under that convention, but, by not implementing enforceable management and traceability systems, risk undermining efforts made over the past 17 years to ensure sustainable management of Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks.
I hope that is clear to everybody, and that I have reassured Members about the aims of the regulations.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Graham. The return of bluefin tuna in their thousands to British waters in the past few years, after such a long period of absence, has been widely welcomed. These iconic fish are no longer listed as an endangered species and are now often spotted hunting close to shore.
Although it is not entirely clear why stocks have been replenished so remarkably, experts have suggested that environmental factors, particularly the warming of the waters around the UK, have played a role, as has the increase in the supply of sardines and other pelagic fish prey that they feed on. Credit should also go to international interventions to ensure careful management of numbers. Those efforts must be joined up and international because the fish are highly migratory and mobile. We must learn the lessons of the absence of these important fish for so long from our waters and take every appropriate measure to prevent a reversal, through overfishing, of those successful interventions. We must ensure that the revival of the species continues.
We recognise that it is important for the UK to comply with rules and obligations relating to our membership of ICCAT. We recognise that this statutory instrument is necessary to amend retained EU law, as it is now out of date, and to ensure the clarity and enforceability of the provisions in relation to bluefin tuna. We will not oppose it. I also appreciate that current ambiguities surrounding offence, penalty and enforcement provisions require clarification, and this statutory instrument presents the opportunity to do so. It is also right to prohibit farming and the use of traps in UK waters, or by UK vessels in the convention area for bluefin tuna.
I understand that traders in bluefin tuna already use the catch documentation system, as it is considerably less cumbersome that the alternative paper-based system. More importantly, it is much less vulnerable to inaccuracies and fraud. Ensuring that the relevant authorities have the appropriate powers to enforce the eBCD should not necessitate any procedural change for the traders or incur additional cost. We are moving effectively from a voluntary to a mandatory use.
I see no substantive objections to this legislation, but I have some questions for the Minister, of course. I cannot resist commenting on paragraph 8 of the impact assessment. I do so because in the discussions that we often have about public money for public goods, I often fall back on the economists’ definition: non-rivalrous and non-excludable. That generally draws blank looks from any audience, so I really enjoyed this paragraph:
“Government intervention is required as fish stocks are a common pool resource. That is…they are non-excludable, yet rivalrous. Rivalrous here means anyone can catch a fish but once a fish is caught and retained it cannot be caught again. They are non-excludable because it is not possible for one actor to exclude another from catching fish. Market agents would only consider the benefits of catching and not weigh it against the impact it will have on the stock health, overall, leading to overexploitation of the stock. As such, only government intervention would be able to effectively manage fish stocks as incentives of market agents do not align appropriately.”
Daniel Zeichner
Quite—the Minister nods. It is an excellent account, marred only slightly because my understanding from the discussion in the House of Lords is that the recreational part of the quota will be put back. The Minister there said:
“The current plan is that all the recreational fishery will be catch and release.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 February 2024; Vol. 836, c. GC17-18.]
Therefore the fish can actually be caught more than once—non-excludable and non-rivalrous. The Minister may care to explain paragraph 8, but I do not think that it alters the rationale for intervention.
Paragraph 7.7 of the explanatory memorandum refers to the tuna catch quota. The UK now has a quota for bluefin tuna, which is in line with the UK-EU trade and co-operation agreement. Can the Minister explain the process by which we were allocated 65 tonnes? Perhaps he can give an outline of the negotiations that took place. Can he also explain how he and colleagues arrived at the distribution of the UK’s quota between commercial and recreational fishing? What is the rationale underpinning the allocation of 39 tonnes of our quota to trial a new, small-scale commercial fishery and 26 tonnes of bluefin tuna to be distributed between a possible 10 available licensed authorisations? It is good that stocks are sufficiently replenished that we are permitted a quota, but can the Minister give a bit more detail about the ways in which this whole process is scrutinised to ensure that the numbers of bluefin tuna continue to grow and do not diminish?
I understand that many responses to the consultation exercise mentioned in paragraph 10 of the explanatory memorandum requested training in catch-and-release techniques. I am not surprised by that, as tuna is a large fish and clearly it is sometimes extremely challenging to perform a catch-and-release operation properly. It is important that we do not damage fish in the process of releasing them, and I am told that without clear instructions and possibly training, that could happen. Can the Minister reassure me on this point? Are there any plans to issue clearer guidance and/or training on catch and release?
Having asked those questions, I am very happy for us to proceed.
Mark Spencer
I am grateful to the shadow Minister for asking those questions. They are quite closely linked, of course.
The shadow Minister is right to identify the quota that we have been allocated. It is actually 66 tonnes: 63 that we have negotiated with our colleagues under ICCAT and 3 tonnes that we have been able to roll forward from the previous iteration. As he said, we have divided that up.
There are 39 tonnes for commercial fishing—for people to go out, catch fish and process tuna caught in UK waters, to be sold in little tins—and 16 tonnes for the recreational fishing sector, which is new and is a developing market. As he has identified, there is 1 tonne of quota that we have used for science, as in tagging. That is to develop the recreational tuna market, where people will pay to go and catch a tuna fish. We have been documenting that and doing scientific studies, and it is quite commercially advantageous to the fishermen, who can have, often, foreign nationals, or UK nationals, pay quite a lot of money to go and catch one of these fish and then release it back into the water.
Of course, occasionally, there is an accident and one of the fish does not survive that process, which is why the 1 tonne of quota is available, to ensure that the fish is not wasted but goes into the food chain. And 10 tonnes are available for by-catch, so if someone is trying to catch another species of fish but accidentally catches a tuna in the net, they can land that fish and it goes into the food chain rather than being wasted. We have tried to pitch those figures where we think right, but of course we are always open to further conversations with the sector to tweak those numbers, if we are minded to do that following its direct feedback.
I hope that that answers the shadow Minister’s questions about how we got there and how the process works. I am tempted to go back through the various amendments and regulations, for the interest of members of the Committee—but on this occasion I will refrain and accept that they were listening intently the first time.
Question put and agreed to.