Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Fire and Rescue Functions) Order 2017

Baroness Williams of Trafford Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Fire and Rescue Functions) Order 2017.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Transfer of Police and Crime Commissioner Functions to the Mayor) Order 2017. These orders give effect to the policing and fire elements of the devolution agreements between the Government and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

With the Committee’s permission, I will turn first to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Transfer of Police and Crime Commissioner Functions to the Mayor) Order 2017. The purpose of this order is to make detailed provision in relation to the transfer of responsibility for police and crime commissioner functions in Greater Manchester from the Greater Manchester police and crime commissioner to the directly elected mayor of Greater Manchester.

The transfer of these functions to the elected mayor will preserve the democratic accountability already established under the police and crime commissioner model. It will also join up oversight of a range of local services, including fire and rescue, opening up opportunities for broader collaboration. This is a chance to build on the strengths of the PCC model. The order requires that the elected mayor must personally exercise the core strategic functions of setting the police and crime plan, take decisions on chief constable appointments and set the policing component of the combined authority precept.

To provide additional leadership capacity, the order enables the elected mayor to appoint a deputy mayor for policing and crime, to whom certain police and crime commissioner responsibilities may be delegated. The order also requires that a new police and crime panel be set up. This panel will scrutinise the decisions of the mayor in respect of the exercise of their PCC functions in much the same way as the current panel does in relation to the police and crime commissioner. This order has been developed in consultation with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the Greater Manchester police and crime commissioner, and the combined authority and its constituent councils have given their consent.

I will now turn to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Fire and Rescue Functions) Order 2017. The purpose of this order is to transfer the responsibility for oversight of fire and rescue functions from the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Authority to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, with these functions to be exercised by the directly elected mayor. Transferring oversight of fire and rescue functions to the mayor will provide direct electoral accountability for the provision of this key public service. It should also facilitate closer working with other local partners, including the police. This is obviously consistent with our desire to encourage greater collaboration between the emergency services.

The order permits the mayor to delegate certain responsibilities to a fire committee, to be formed of members from the constituent councils of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. The committee is intended to assist the mayor in carrying out their fire and rescue functions. At the same time, the order identifies a number of fire and rescue functions as strategic to the delivery of fire and rescue. These functions must be personally exercised by the mayor and shall not be delegated. These strategic functions include approving the local risk plan and fire and rescue declaration in accordance with the fire and rescue national framework, and approving contingency plans under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. The elected mayor will also remain personally responsible for decisions relating to the appointment of the chief fire officer. Scrutiny of the mayor’s exercise of fire and rescue functions will be undertaken in line with the arrangements for non-PCC functions.

The changes to be made by this order have been endorsed by the people of Greater Manchester in a public consultation conducted by the combined authority. The order was developed in close consultation with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and has been formally consented to by the combined authority and its constituent councils. I commend these orders to the Committee.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

First, I thank the Minister for her introduction to these orders. I agree with her that there has been wide consultation and that it is appropriate for this Committee to bear that in mind when reaching its decision in what I hope will be only a few minutes’ time. I should declare a residency qualification, in that I live in Greater Manchester and for 18 years I was an MP for one of the 27 constituencies. For eight years, I was a member of one of the 10 constituent borough councils—and, to complete the full set, I was a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government when the combined authority order was set up in 2011. I know that the city deal that flowed from that was widely welcomed across Greater Manchester, along with the steps that have been taken since to ensure that additional resources—funding what has traditionally been central government, Whitehall-directed services—will be put into the hands of the combined authority from the start of the new regime in May.

The progress made so far has been much envied and imitated around England, where a steady stream of visitors from other cities and for that matter rural and shire areas have been received by the combined authority, asking it how the model has been developed and how it can be copied. All that is positive and very much a direction of travel that my parliamentary colleagues and I believe is right, with more decision-making and discretion over the delivery of public services in a given area in the hands of those who live there and are elected from there.

I have a concern about the mayoral model, but that particular ship has left port. A loss in cross-authority representation and accountability flows from that, but these orders do something to combat or respond to that. Certainly, to replace the police and crime commissioner —somebody who, for all his qualities, was elected on a 14% turnout across Greater Manchester—with somebody elected to be mayor of the combined authority, and with a much more significant and wider role in the delivery of public services, is almost bound to increase the visibility and accountability of the person carrying out that role. I welcome that, as do the constituent authorities.

The police and crime panel, to which the Minister referred, is seen as a way of maintaining or improving the police service’s accountability. There is a way to go in that regard; it is to be hoped that a more visible mayor’s being in charge of the police service may lead to the panel having more visibility and capacity to keep control, or a proper oversight of that service. Nevertheless, it is a good thing to see that incorporated in the proposals.

As for the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Authority, there is no equivalent commissioner but rather control by representatives of the 10 local authorities, and there is no doubt that the new arrangements will give more visibility to the leadership of that service. In the longer term, bringing the police and fire services under common management must be a better way to provide a coherent and integrated service. Indeed, my one question to the Minister relates to that. Today, the Care Quality Commission has produced a report on independent ambulance services. The ambulance service in Greater Manchester is provided by an independent body based in Blackpool. Bearing in mind that these orders bring together two of the blue light services in Greater Manchester—and particularly in view of the critical nature of that report, but more generally in any case—have the Government looked at ways the blue light services in Greater Manchester could be brought together? Again, I remind the Minister that the combined authority in Greater Manchester will be taking over a significant amount of NHS commissioning for future years—a step that I very much favour.

With that sole question to the Minister—I dare say she is not equipped to answer it off the top of her head; perhaps she would like to write to us about bringing together the three blue light services—I am certainly happy to support these orders.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I have overcome my senior moment. I wanted to ask whether any consideration had been given to ambulance trusts, which are fairly unaccountable bodies but are, of course, part of the emergency services. Has there been any discussion with either trusts or local authorities about a different relationship—keeping that phrase fairly neutral—as regards the future of that service?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I too must declare an interest as a former councillor and resident of Greater Manchester. I pay tribute to Tony Lloyd who has held the fort very well over the last couple of years in his role as interim mayor, and in all the roles he has held previously in government and local government. We have here three people who will be voting in the mayoral elections in May, so that is very good. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, mentioned turnout. I recall an experience I had in Greater Manchester of probably the worst turnout in history: the Benchill by-election back in November or December 2001, where turnout was 8%. That was a depressing low. Looking forward to the mayoral elections, I was quite sceptical about the Mayor of London, but that is not a position for which any political party is scraping round for candidates. It is very sought-after and has gained a profile over the years, and I fully expect that will happen in Greater Manchester and elsewhere. As it does, visibility will grow and accountability will become a lot more obvious.

The noble Lord, Lord Smith—I was going to call him my noble friend, but he is really—talked about blue light services being brought back down to GM. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked about ambulance trusts. It is within the gift of whichever combined authority to request collaboration in that regard, or that those matters be part of the devolved model. There are no limits to what the model may look at. That brings in the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy: that the different devolution deals are a bit of a patchwork. This is necessarily a patchwork because every area is different. For example, rural areas look very different from urban areas; they have different needs and different proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, is smiling at me slightly but I said that on the then devolution Bill, and I firmly believe it. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that the Liberal Democrats grilled me on accountability and scrutiny during the passage of that Bill. We have very rigorous structures in place, certainly in Greater Manchester and, I hope, elsewhere.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked about the compulsion to combine police and fire authority areas, particularly where they are not contiguous. There is absolutely no compulsion to do that. If they are not contiguous, such a move would require structural change anyway.

I think I have answered all the questions, but if not I will certainly come back to noble Lords.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I accept entirely that different areas have different needs and may want to tackle this issue in different ways. The point I was making is that the Government have not made it clear where we are going. That is not to say that different areas cannot tackle this issue in different ways; of course they can; they have different needs. However, the Government have never set out clearly in a document where they are going with this, which is why the situation is confusing. The West Midlands is a similar conurbation to others, with similar problems and similar areas, but the deal that was arrived at and the powers that were transferred are vastly different from those in other similar areas. Why? That information is missing. There is no difficulty with having different arrangements, but we need to know how the Government have arrived at the present position.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

As the noble Lord, Lord Smith, mentioned, we left it up to local areas to say what their version of public service reform looked like—what did public service efficiency look like going forward and what was their plan for growth? Therefore, that might look slightly different in different areas, which is why I explained it in the way I did. However, there will be similarities: transport is a huge issue in Greater Manchester and the solution to that will be huge in terms of growth, as it will be for other areas.

Motion agreed.