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

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Grand Committee

[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.

[Lord Smith of Leigh (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest not merely as a member of the combined authority and leader of Wigan Council; I am in a position to answer the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, on ambulance services because I chair the Greater Manchester health partnership board. The orders are very interesting. I have yet to see in the manifestos of either of the two main mayoral candidates what their policies are on the docking of working dogs’ tails. That obviously is an important consideration.

I not only thank the Minister for introducing the orders, but welcome the fact that the Government have put them together. To add to the points she raised, it is not just about bringing together the blue light services, which is important. We need to see police and fire as part of general public service reform. Many of the issues the services face are related to the fact that people have problems across their lives. We need to get the police and fire services engaged in the work we are doing in Greater Manchester across a wider range of public services, not just in blue light services.

The answer to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, is that the arrangements are currently handled through Blackpool but they are coming back to Greater Manchester. We asked for ambulance service commissioning to come back to Greater Manchester because, as we are now a devolved health area, we need to do this rather than working through CCGs in Blackpool, for example.

There are actually two panels that look after the PCC in Greater Manchester: the scrutiny panel, made up of members of the authorities, and the combined authority itself. We will need to find a mechanism to continue that work, because it is important that the work of the police and crime commissioner, whether exercised by the mayor or anybody else, has consent across the whole of Greater Manchester on major issues.

It may be my ignorance, but the documentation does not make clear the deputy’s role. I would hope that the mayor would appoint a deputy. He or she will have a lot to do generally and we need to supervise what is going on in the police service. A day-to-day role in running the police service would be too much for anybody, and the same is true for the fire service. I hope we will set up the committee to run that, but we need to understand the role of the deputy and how answerable they will be to various public bodies.

As the Minister is probably aware, I regret that the PCC can implement the Greater Manchester precept without really consulting the 10 authorities. That needs to be changed. Unfortunately these orders do not do that; they roll it on. It is also not clear in the fire order whether the fire precept will need to go to the combined authority for approval, or the mayor will simply make a recommendation and we will not have any control over it. There has been a little dispute this year about how much the fire precept should go up by. With the representative of Trafford, I was on the losing side of that argument but we need to do that.

As the Minister said, we consulted on this across Greater Manchester. We welcome the changes. It will be an interesting challenge to have a mayor with the combined authority but I am sure we can all make it work to ensure proper devolution across Greater Manchester.