Policing and Crime Bill

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 21, in clause 2, page 3, line 14, at end insert—

‘(8) For the purposes of this Bill, when considering whether a collaboration agreement would improve the effectiveness and efficiency of one or more emergency services that shall include the effectiveness and efficiency with which the emergency service is able to meet its duties under the mental health care concordant.”

This amendment would explicitly enable a collaboration agreement to cover duties placed on emergency services by the mental health care concordant.

Amendment 3, page 6, line 3, leave out clause 6.

This amendment, along with amendment 4, would prevent Police and Crime Commissioners from taking over the functions of Fire and Rescue Authorities.

Amendment 5, page 11, line 1, leave out clause 8.

This amendment would prevent combined authority mayors from combing their fire and rescue service and police force under a single employer.

Amendment 4, page 144, line 2, leave out schedule 1.

This amendment, along with amendment 3, would prevent Police and Crime Commissioners from taking over the functions of Fire and Rescue Authorities.

Amendment 2, in schedule 1, page 145, line 16, at end insert—

“4AA Power to change title of police and crime commissioner

(1) This section applies if the Secretary of State makes an order under section 4A.

(2) The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument change the title of a police and crime commissioner appointed as a fire and rescue authority.”

This would enable the Secretary of State to change the name of police and crime commissioners to reflect their new additional responsibility for the fire service. The Secretary of State would have the power to make such a direction in secondary legislation at some point in the future.

Amendment 20, page 145, line 16, at end insert—

‘(7) No order can be made under this section until the Secretary of State has conducted a review assessing the funding required by the fire and rescue service to secure the minimum level of cover needed to secure public safety and maintain fire resilience.

(8) The review carried out under section (7) must assess the impact of the level of cover on—

(a) fire related fatalities;

(b) non-fatal fire related casualties;

(c) the number of dwelling fires and other fires;

(d) the number of incidents responded to, and

(e) the strength and speed of response to incidents.”

This amendment would require the Home Secretary to conduct a review on the level of funding the FRS requires in order to secure public safety before she may make allows police and crime commissioner to be a fire and rescue authority.

Amendment 6, page 157, line 33, at end insert—

‘(4) An order under section 4A, whether modified or not by the Secretary of State, may only be made with either: consent of all of the relevant local authorities and relevant fire and rescue authority, or a majority vote by local people through referendum.”

This amendment would ensure that a PCC can only take over a Fire and Rescue Service with the approval of local people or their local representatives.

[Lyn Brown]

I am delighted to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker.

We oppose the Government’s proposals to allow police and crime commissioners to take over fire and rescue services, and amendments 3, 4 and 5 would delete the provisions in the Bill that would enable them to do so. We have also tabled amendments to mitigate the risks if the Government’s proposals are enacted.

Amendment 6 would ensure that a PCC could take over a fire and rescue service only with local support expressed either by elected councillors, with the unanimous agreement of all the local authorities affected, or directly through a referendum. Amendment 20 would require the Home Secretary to review the level of funding the fire service needed to secure public safety. New clause 20 would give fire services in England a statutory responsibility to deal with flooding. The Minister said in Committee that he was minded to consider that particular provision. He has not jumped to his feet to say he wants to take it as a Government new clause, but I live in hope.

When the Minister responds, I hope he will set out what benefits he believes PCCs will bring to the fire and rescue service. What skills and expertise do they have that our fire and rescue authorities do not? How will they help the fire service to cope with the new challenges it faces when dealing with major incidents such as flooding and terrorist attacks? What indication is there that the governance of the fire service is broken or substandard and needs replacing? The Government have not even begun to answer these questions or to make a case for the reforms.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the reason that the governance of the fire service needs to be changed is that very few of our constituents would know the name of every person on the local authority fire panel? Given her involvement with the Bill, could she herself name every person on her local authority fire panel?

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[Lyn Brown]

My fire service is provided through the Greater London Authority, and I know that should I want to talk to anybody about London’s fire service, I could talk to those elected GLA Members—and I do know their names—or to the Mayor. When people in my local authority want to have an impact on a local service, they tend to approach their local councillors, which I think is not a bad route, but the reforms would change that. People would not be able to go to their town hall to talk about services that have an impact on them. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) heckles me gently in a low voice and says, “They would be elected.” I know that Newham might be unusual but its councillors are elected too, and certainly the councillors at the GLA are elected.

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

But they are not elected to a specific responsibility, as PCCs are. People who vote for PCCs know they can hold them to account specifically for policing, and that will now be extended to the fire service.

[Lyn Brown]

I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that the turnout last time for PCC elections was dismal. I hope it will be significantly better this time, but when I was on the doorsteps last year, in parts of the country other than my own little patch in London I did not find that people knew who their PCC was. I say gently to him that our constituents do not know that when they go to the polls next week they will be electing a PCC who might be taking over their fire service. The Bill will not have been enacted by then.

I think that the timing and, as I will explain, the way we have done this has been wrong. The consultation preceding the Bill did not seek the views of experts and specialists on the substance of the proposals. It set out how a PCC could assume control of a fire and rescue service and then asked consultees what they thought of the process. It did not ask them what they thought of the proposals themselves, and it did not ask whether the proposals would increase public safety or lead to better governance.

It is not in the impact assessment—that very thin impact assessment, which I am sure that the Members who sat on the Bill Committee will have read—but the Knight review of the future of the fire service recommended that PCC takeovers be attempted only if a rigorous pilot could identify tangible and “clearly set out benefits”. The Government chose to ignore this key recommendation and are instead proceeding before any evidence has been gathered about the likely benefits, costs and threats to the plan. It is utterly reckless. The impact assessment is threadbare. The only rationale offered for this intervention is the Government’s belief that there needs to be greater collaboration between emergency services. No one thinks otherwise, but the Government have not provided any justification of why it is more likely to occur under PCCs or any analysis of the current barriers to collaboration. It is policy without evidence or clear rationale.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend is saying. She knows—and surely the Government know—how much co-operation already goes on. It does not have to be prescribed in this top-down way; it works organically and it works really well.

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[Lyn Brown]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is really good collaboration now between all parts of our public services—between fire and police, fire and ambulance, and fire, ambulance and police—and I understand the Government’s wanting to move that agenda further and encourage more collaboration, but this bit of the Bill does not do it. As I will explain, I believe it will in fact deter some boundary and border merges, which would be a massive problem.

The Government’s cavalier approach to this public service upheaval is completely indefensible, given the significant risks that the proposals represent to the fire and rescue service. PCCs are still a nascent institution. The Home Affairs Select Committee has said:

“It is too early to say whether the introduction of police and crime commissioners has been a success.”

We do not know whether they have succeeded in their core duties, so why are the Government proposing to expand their portfolios by giving them control of the fire service too? I think the Government want to bolster the powers and budgets of PCCs to help them through their difficult inception and that the proposals are a step towards PCCs becoming mini mayors. A vital public service, such as fire, should not be pawned off to save struggling Whitehall inventions or to overturn a public vote against the creation of a mayor. Unlike mayors in combined authorities, the PCCs will be completely free from the democratic scrutiny provided by local government, and the creation of the extended office will not have been approved by local people.

The most serious risk, however, is that fire, with its much smaller budgets and less media attention than policing, will become an unloved, secondary concern of its new management—a Cinderella service. I have raised this point repeatedly with the Minister in Committee and in other debates, but he has not indicated what he might do to mitigate the risk. I am not the only one who thinks this: Peter Murphy, the director of public policy research at Nottingham Business School, has argued that if the fire service were to slip into the status of a Cinderella service, it would only repeat what happened the last time fire had to share an agenda with policing. I will quote him in full, because it gets to the heart of the matter:

“If the proposals ore implemented, there is a very strong chance that the fire and rescue services would go back to the ‘benign neglect’ that characterised the service from 1974 to 2001 when the Home Office was last responsible for fire services. Police, civil disobedience, immigration and criminal justice dominated the Home Office agenda, as well as its time and resources. If the fire service becomes the lesser partner in a merged service, the long-term implications will include smaller fire crews with fewer appliances and older equipment arriving at incidents. Prevention and protection work, already significantly falling”—

he is so right about that—

“will result in fewer school visits and fire alarm checks for the elderly”.

What a chilling vision for the future of our fire service!

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[Lyn Brown]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that, and I shall return to the point a little later in my speech.

[The Minister for Policing, Fire, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)]

I listened carefully to the quotations, and I would be chilled if any part of what was said were factually true. If there were an attempt to combine the emergency services, fire and police, we would have moved to one funding stream. I categorically ruled that out, so this sort of scaremongering—not from the shadow Minister but from others—is flawed. There is a separate funding stream in the precept for the police. The only bit that is going to be amalgamated, should the PCCs be like the Metro Mayors in this respect, would relate to the back office and the administrative side.

[Lyn Brown]

But should a PCC take over the fire service, we would have a person in charge whose main attention was on policing and all that policing involved. The media focus much more on policing than they do on the fire service. The fire service will be secondary. Although the Minister rightly says—I do not doubt him—that the two funding streams will be different, I do not know how long that will last, and in truth, neither does he, because things move on. We had police and crime commissioners under the last Government; this Government are now proposing police, crime and fire commissioners. What will happen in a couple of years’ time? I do not know. There might be accounting efficiencies in order to save costs, and the budgets might well be merged. I do not think that these proposals make any sense.

A further risk is that these proposals will make mergers of fire services more difficult, which would be a real setback, as inter-fire mergers increase resilience and achieve significant savings. The 2007 merger of the Devon and Somerset fire services was supposed to deliver £3 million of savings in the first five years. It actually bettered that target by £600,000.

The Minister will know that Martyn Underhill, the Independent PCC for Dorset—I am trying to keep this politically neutral—has said that he has no interest in running the fire service. Why? It is because Dorset and Wiltshire fire service has undergone a merger that proposes to bring significant savings and increase the resilience in that area. He does not want to interfere with the process, and he is really wary about his office having responsibility for Wiltshire. I admire this decision, made by Commissioner Underhill, but how many potential mergers of fire services will not even be considered as a result of PCC takeovers and the need for coterminosity? I remind the Minister that until a few months ago, this Government trumpeted mergers as a key to the future of the fire service; yet they are now, sadly, going to slip off the agenda.

I know that the Minister has little sympathy with the particular argument I am about to make, but I am a brave soul. A large proportion of the work carried out by the fire service is preventive. There is a danger that these proposals will make this preventive work a little more difficult. It is a humanitarian service. We need to be honest: the police service is not a humanitarian service. The two services are seen differently by some communities, and these proposals could make the fire service’s preventive work more difficult.

There are some people who would not welcome a policeman into their home without a warrant. Police officers turning up at the door can be a scary experience. Firefighters go into people’s homes and work spaces, and check that smoke alarms and electrical appliances are safe. They fit sprinklers and even look for worrying signs that might concern other services, such as the NHS and council care services. This preventive work is not an add-on to the fire service’s work; it is at the core of what it does—keeping people safe, so that they do not have to be rescued further down the line.

[Mike Penning]

I do not quite understand—perhaps I do, but I do not think it is fair—why the shadow Minister is conflating operational work that the police do with operational work that the fire service does. Of course, a lot of work is done together, particularly at road traffic collisions, but there is nothing in the Bill that would conflate the two in the way that the shadow Minister suggests.

[Lyn Brown]

First, they will not be equal partners, because we are talking about a big service and a small service. Secondly, in the minds of some of our communities, the police and the fire service will become one and the same. They will have one boss, and there will be an anxiety that someone coming through the door to fix a smoke alarm might have a different agenda.

[Mike Penning]

The hon. Lady’s constituency is in London, where there is a Mayor, and the mayoral system will take over fire. Is there the same concern in London and in Manchester? Actually, the Labour candidate in Manchester wants the powers as a Metro Mayor.

[Lyn Brown]

In London, the service is run by a Mayor and elected councillors. It is not run by an individual whose other job is to be the police commissioner. I think there is a difference, and I believe that our communities will think there is a difference. We cannot prescribe how people think and what they worry about, but this concern has been raised with me.

[James Berry]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that her comments could be interpreted by the police as quite insulting? They do a lot of preventive and humanitarian work. As she knows, the hon. Lady’s submission comes right out of the Fire Brigades Union’s consultation document, which I also thought was quite insulting to the great work that our police officers do in the very areas that she highlighted.

[Lyn Brown]

The police I meet on my doorsteps and streets are dead pragmatic souls. They understand the sensitivities that some communities have: they treat some of my refugee communities with extraordinary sensitivity to overcome the natural barrier that is there. What I am saying to the hon. Gentleman is that there is a natural barrier. That is no slur on our police force; our police force are an enforcement agency, and not really a humanitarian service. The police are there to implement the law. Let us move on.

The Minister is not passing over a service that does not have some difficulties. The fire and rescue service has been subject to a cumulative cash cut of £236 million or 12.5% since 2010—and, of course, there is more to come. [Interruption.] Is the Government Whip trying to engage me? Does he want to intervene? It seems not. I just thought I would give him a chance.

[Mike Penning]

I believe that what one of my colleagues was trying to say from a sedentary position is that we should not wash over the debacle and the huge costs of the regional fire control centres that the previous Labour Administration forced on the fire service. [Interruption.]

[Lyn Brown]

Is that right? When I was a Whip, I was taught that I should be seen and not heard. I am sure that the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) did not want to intervene on me at all. The issue of regional fire control centres has been well thrashed out in this Chamber. There were a myriad reasons why they did not work, and I accept that they did not.

Let us return to what the Government have been doing. Here we are in 2016, and it feels as though they have been here forever. The fire and rescue service has been subject to a cumulative cash cut of £236 million, or 12.5%, since 2010, and, of course, there is more to come. We know from the local government funding settlement that fire and rescue services are expected to cut spending by a further £135 million by the end of the Parliament. A stretched service will be squeezed even further.

As a result of these cuts, 7,600 firefighters have already been lost, and the Government have repeatedly ignored warnings that the cuts may be putting services at risk. Their proposals will not protect a single firefighter’s job, or put a single firefighter back in service. I have been told by fire chiefs that their services will “not be viable” under the Government’s proposed spending plans, and I am sure that they have told the Minister exactly the same thing.

The National Audit Office has calculated that there was a 30% reduction in the amount of time spent on home fire checks and audits over the last Parliament. That is a huge reduction. The NAO has said that the Government have “no idea” of the impact of that on public safety. It has also said that, as the Government refuse to model the risk of cuts, they may only know that a service has been cut too long after the fact—that is, after public safety and the lives of the public have been put at risk.

I was not surprised, although I was dismayed, by the latest English fire statistics, which cover the period between April and September 2015. They show that there were 139 fire-related fatalities during that time, 31 more than occurred during the same period in 2014. There were 1,685 non-fatal fire casualties that resulted in hospital treatment, a 10% increase on 2014. Fire and rescue services attended about 93,200 fires, 7% more than in 2014.

The Government have cut the fire service, cut firefighters, and overseen a massive reduction in the amount of preventive work undertaken. I know that we are talking about a spike over just a couple of quarters, but there are statistical signs that the service may be feeling the awful effects of the cuts that have been made. So what do the Government do? Do they stop the cuts while they undertake a proper risk assessment? Do they begin to develop minimum standards for the number of stations and firefighters, and for preventive work? No. The Government want to pass on the responsibility to police and crime commissioners, who have had to deal with similar cuts in police budgets, and who have lost 12,000 front-line police officers. They are not even assessing the level of funding that PCCs would need to maintain resilience and keep the public safe.

This is a good line. By passing the buck without the bucks, the Government could be asking PCCs, who will be new to the fire service and its complexity, to undertake further potentially dangerous cuts. The PCCs will not know what the risks are, because the Government refuse to model them. That is why we tabled amendment 20, which would require the Home Secretary to carry out an assessment of the level of funding that fire services need to keep the public safe.

Our fire and rescue authorities are trusted experts on the fire service. The councillors who serve on them often have years of experience, and have gained a genuinely deep knowledge and judgment from overseeing the strategic direction of fire services in their areas. Given the trust and respect that local fire authorities have, allowing PCCs to take over a fire and rescue service without their support poses the clear risk that employees, and the public, will perceive newly empowered PCCs as an unwelcome central imposition. Our amendment 6 would ensure that a PCC who does take over a fire and rescue service can do so only with the approval of the locally elected representatives on the relevant councils, or, alternatively, of local people through a referendum.

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[Jake Berry]

The hon. Lady has raised the interesting issue of a local referendum. I wonder whether she can tell the House—so that we can consider her amendment properly—what the cost of such a referendum would be for each fire and rescue authority, and also who would pay. She has expressed concern about the removal of budgets from fire and rescue authorities. Perhaps if they were the ones who paid, more firefighters would be removed from the front line.

[Lyn Brown]

The referendum would take place on the same day as any local council election. We would not want an election to be prohibited by costs. As for where the costs should lie, I think that they should lie with the Government, because, after all, it is they who have proposed these changes. If the hon. Gentleman wants someone else to pay, perhaps it should be the Government’s arm, the PCCs. As he has rightly pointed out, their budgets are larger than those of any fire authority.

[Jake Berry]

First, will the hon. Lady tell us what her amendment would do, and who would pay for it? Secondly, will she tell us what estimate she has made of the cost?

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[Lyn Brown]

One of the joys of being in opposition is that we have to do our own work ourselves; we do not have a phalanx of willing employees to do it for us. Once the House had passed the amendment, I would need to rely on the Government and their civil servants to help us to work out the cost. If the cost became prohibitive, I could suggest that the Government drop this silly idea altogether, and save loads of money.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

I have sat patiently while, on a number of occasions, the hon. Lady has referred to elected councillors being elected to fire authorities. Can she clarify, for the edification of the House and the public, that no elected councillors are elected to the fire authority in London—which covers her constituency—or, indeed, to the vast majority of fire authorities in the country?

[Lyn Brown]

I wonder what kind of interaction Conservative Members have with their local councillors, but I can only imagine that it ain’t good, because every time I raise this issue, anxiety is expressed about the genuine nature of locally elected members.

I can only say that I have a much better relationship not only with Newham councillors, but with GLA councillors. They are elected. They face the electorate. They are elected to a body which then places them on another body that is responsible for fire, just as they are given responsibilities for social services, education, leisure services, and so forth. It is the same process. I support democracy and I support my democratically elected councillors, who are doing a jolly good job in very difficult times to keep services going. Conservative Members should not denigrate their local councillors quite so much.

[James Cleverly]

I assume that this is entirely my mistake; I probably did not make my question clear enough, and I take full responsibility for that. I will have another crack at this. Can the hon. Lady name any local councillor or London Assembly member who has been elected by the people of Newham to sit on the fire authority?

[Lyn Brown]

In London, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the people of Newham elect a GLA councillor and the GLA councillors then determine which parts of the work they will undertake for the GLA. I do not see that that is a problem. The same thing happens in Newham. When we elect 60 Labour councillors—and zero councillors from any other party—we then give them jobs looking after social services, education, recreation and so on. I can tell the hon. Gentleman the name of the councillor who has the fire remit in my council. He is Councillor Bryan Collier and he is a wonderful bloke. He has been doing the job for decades and he has lots of knowledge.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Speaking as someone who was a councillor until this time last month, I bow to no one in my appreciation of the importance of local government. However, the shadow Minister demonstrates a strange understanding of democracy given that she seems to prefer the patronage of local council group leaders to the direct mandate involved in being elected on to a body by voters.

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[Lyn Brown]

I am bemused by the contempt that Conservative Members are showing for local councils. I hope for the hon. Gentleman’s own sake that he does not have a Tory-led local authority waiting for him when he goes back home on Thursday. Frankly, if I were a member of his council, I would be sitting on his doorstep waiting to have a word, because that is really not on. [Interruption.] Oh, really? That is such a shock! The chuntering from the Government Back Benches is outrageous. I don’t even know where I got to in my speech.

If the Government do not trust local authorities—and it seems clear that they do not—perhaps they will be pleased to accept our amendment, which would allow the decision on whether to place PCCs in control of fire services to go directly to the electorate. The Government’s reforms are fundamentally about the transfer of power from the collective democratic representation of local councils to a single individual, and the creation of mini mayors across England. The Minister knows this to be true, and he knows there is no democratic mandate for it—none at all. If he accepted our amendments, he could right that wrong and ensure that each local community could decide for itself what was in the best interests of its fire and rescue service. That would be a real localism agenda.

New clause 20 would give fire services in England a statutory responsibility to deal with flooding, as is already the case for their Scottish and Northern Irish counterparts. In December, much of the north of England was devastated by flooding. Many homes were flooded, bridges connecting communities were washed away, major roads were blocked and, in Lancaster, a sub-station was flooded leaving tens of thousands of homes without power. In December alone, firefighters responded to more than 1,400 flood incidents across the north-west, and on Boxing day, 1,000 people were rescued in Greater Manchester. The work of our firefighters was brilliant during those difficult days. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House would agree on that, if on nothing else.

However, fire services have expressed concern that they were not properly equipped to deal with that situation and that they lacked basic kit such as boats and dry suits. Frankly, that is not good enough. I believe that this stems from the fact that it is unclear who holds the primary responsibility for responding to floods.

When flooding is not formally the responsibility of any service, it will not be given the priority it deserves in budgeting and planning. If we are going to continue to ask fire services to deal with major incidents such as flooding, we should say so in this place so that proper provision can be made and they can prepare comprehensively for incidents. Stories of volunteers and the Army mucking in might be heart-warming, but that is simply no substitute for a properly organised and funded rescue service.

Before I finish, I would like to touch on the issue of privatisation. The Minister gave us categorical assurances that there would be no changes or movement in that regard, and that is why we have tabled no amendments on privatisation. I am going to hold the Minister to his word, but I am sure that those in the other place will want to do a bit of digging to ensure that I am right and he is right, and that there can be no privatisation of our fire services under this legislation.

[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

I would like to speak to amendment 2, which is in my name and those of several right hon. and hon. Members across the House. Part 1 of the Bill sets out the measures to encourage greater collaboration between emergency services, a topic that I have spoken about several times in the House. Clauses 6 and 7 will give police and crime commissioners the opportunity to extend their responsibilities to include fire and rescue services. I have been calling for that extension for some time now, and I secured a Westminster Hall debate on the topic last year. As I said on Second Reading, I welcome the inclusion of those clauses in the Bill.

The introduction of police and crime commissioners in 2012 created greater transparency and democratic accountability in policing, with PCCs replacing unelected and unaccountable police authorities. Extending the responsibilities of PCCs to include fire and rescue authorities will mirror those benefits. As we have been hearing, fire and rescue authorities are made up of elected councillors, but they are not directly accountable to the public for those specific roles, as they are appointed to those positions. As I have said before, that is very different from, and should not be confused with, democratic accountability.

The introduction of directly elected PCCs means that the public can scrutinise their performance, precept and priorities, and exercise their approval—or, indeed, disapproval—at the ballot box. The public will get their chance to decide on the performance of the first tranche of PCCs in a couple of weeks’ time, on 5 May. It is absolutely right that the guardianship of the fire and rescue services should also be directly accountable to the public, and given the synergies between the two services, it is logical that PCCs should take on that responsibility, too.

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[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my incredulity at the Labour party’s talk about cuts, given that, if I am not mistaken, it was the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who went on the record calling for 10% cuts in the police budget? Perhaps my hon. Friend will reflect on that for a moment—

[Lyn Brown]

Rubbish!

[Julian Knight]

It is on the record.

[James Cleverly]

My view is that we judge people by what they say. I know that there will be indignation from Labour Members, but as we have seen when the Labour party was in government the quality of the delivery of public services is not always totally interwoven with the budgets allocated to them. Indeed, there are massive opportunities to get more for less, and surely that should be the acme of performance.

[Lyn Brown]

May I say to the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), who has just taken his place in this Chamber, that, frankly, this has been a better debate than that? His unreasonable slur on the Opposition is about our stance on the police services rather than on the fire services. It would be really good if he read the Whips’ report more carefully before he intervenes next time.

May I say to the hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly), to whom I have been listening, that his points are interesting and have some validity, but London is rather different from areas outside London? Over decades, London has got used to having a single seat of government—even though there was an interregnum when the Greater London Council was disbanded. The reality is that when our constituents do not know where to go to complain about a service or to bring up an issue, they end up at the door of our town halls. It does not matter whether we are talking about Newham or Newcastle, that is where they go.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Just before we proceed, may I say with great respect to the hon. Lady that, although she has many points to make which the House should hear, interventions must be short.