Flood Defence Allocations Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
John McDonnell
Main Page: John McDonnell (Independent - Hayes and Harlington)Department Debates - View all John McDonnell's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(13 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Richard Benyon
I am all for innovation. The carpet in my office is wearing thin from colleagues on both sides of the House coming to see me, but I will certainly meet my hon. Friend. I am keen to hear about new plans and I am happy to involve the Environment Agency, which perhaps has greater technical understanding than I do.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
The Minister mentioned the Pitt review and that the Government have protected incident response. One of the review’s recommendations was to place a statutory duty on fire and rescue authorities. The Government supported that in opposition and the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs supports it now. Can he give us a time scale for the implementation of that statutory duty?
Richard Benyon
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise this issue, which is the one area of the Pitt review about which we have qualms. I am happy to discuss it because I know that he has a lot of contact with members of the fire service. I am not sure that placing a statutory duty on fire and rescue services will make any difference to the services I have seen. We are really going to be testing them through Exercise Watermark. Some of them tell me that they would like a duty, but quite a lot tell me that it would not make a blind bit of difference to how they operate and how they integrate with other emergency services. However, I have an open mind and I will listen to him.