English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Wilson of Sedgefield Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 170 would require a mayor who holds fire and rescue authority functions to delegate those functions to a deputy mayor for fire and rescue, creating governance arrangements that mirror those already in place for policing.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, raises a number of interesting and important points, as we have heard from this short debate. I look forward to the Minister’s response, particularly on the issue of democratic accountability, as raised by my noble friend Lord Trenchard, and on my noble friend Lord Fuller’s point about making sure that public services all work from the same geographic area. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ensure that; it might take a little longer, but I am sure it is worth doing.

During our consideration of the Bill, it has become clear that fire and rescue services are not listed as statutory consultees in the devolution framework. For me, that raises a number of important questions for the Government. As we have heard, fire and rescue services play a central role in public safety, resilience, planning and emergency responses, yet when decisions affecting land use, building standards, transport corridors or climate adaptions are taken without any requirement for fire service input, there is a risk of the safety and resilience considerations being added only after decisions have been made, rather than being embedded right from the outset.

In that context, I would be grateful if the Minister could explain why fire and rescue services are not statutory consultees, whether the Government consider this omission appropriate, and whether steps are being considered to strengthen their formal role in devolution and governance arrangements.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for moving Amendment 170, which would require a mayor with fire and rescue authority functions to delegate those functions to a deputy mayor for fire and rescue.

Mayors are best placed to determine how to use the people and resources at their disposal to deliver for their communities. This amendment would prevent that by mandating the delegation of these functions specifically to a deputy mayor for fire and rescue. It would also, therefore, prevent mayors delegating these functions to a public safety commissioner. The effective delegation of fire and rescue functions to a commissioner can ease capacity constraints, ensuring that there is a dedicated individual with the time and expertise to focus on executing those functions. Fire and rescue functions are already held by deputy mayors for policing and crime in Greater Manchester and York—and in North Yorkshire, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. She seemed to say that she was not quite sure where it sat, so I will definitely write to her to explain how it works.

If they wish, mayors will be able to make an existing deputy mayor for policing and crime the public safety commissioner, meaning that that individual could lead on both policing and fire. However, certain functions should be the sole responsibility of the elected mayor as the head of the fire and rescue authority. Functions with the most significant bearing on the strategic direction of the fire service—such as the budget, the risk plan and the appointment or dismissal of the chief fire officer—are, therefore, retained by the mayor. On statutory requirements, fire and rescue services still have the right to respond to any planning application at the moment, for example, so they play a key role in that area. It is important that decisions in these areas are taken right at the top and that the person taking them is accountable at the ballot box.

To answer the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, every effort is made to make coterminous the public service boundaries when we lay out these plans. The position we have taken provides strong accountability and operational flexibility for the mayors, and I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Have the implications of the strategic defence review been taken into account in all this? Chapter 6 of the defence review talks about the need to mobilise a “whole-of-society approach” in response to the threats we now face, in which there will be more volunteer firemen and police, and civilian rescue will be expanded. That means that volunteers at the local level have to feel confident. If decisions will be taken a long way away at the top, I suspect we have not yet thought through how we will get the sort of volunteers and local resilience we need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

The noble Lord’s point about whole-society resilience in the security review is quite right in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. There are resilience plans in all local authorities for such an incident, so these things are taken into consideration and reviewed constantly.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I have two comments on the noble Lord’s response. First, the fire and rescue service is no longer a statutory consultee. Anybody can respond to a planning application, but that is slightly different from being a statutory consultee. Secondly, commissioners are not accountable at the ballot box. Therefore, why would we allow the role to go down to not deputy mayors—I do not think there are such things—but the commissioners responsible, when they are not accountable at the ballot box?

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

I am not sure whether there were any questions there.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Can I take this opportunity to put the question I asked in my intervention? For what reason are fire and rescue services not statutory consultees? The noble Lord indicated in his reply that they are, but they are not. It is driving people in North Yorkshire wild that all these highly flammable and highly combustible projects are being planted next to schools and people’s homes without the fire service being consulted.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

As I said, it may not be a statutory body, but being involved in a great deal of things on a statutory basis would be a bit of an onerous burden on the fire brigade. The noble Baroness mentioned the fires that could potentially happen. I have said that I will write to her about how the fire and rescue service in North Yorkshire functions and works but, from what I can see and what I understand, there are requirements for the fire and rescue service to be there when required. It has a resilience role in all this, and it does not necessarily need to be a statutory body to do all these things when it can do them anyway.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

The noble Lord said that the budget, the strategy and the planning were passing to the elected mayor, so is the elected mayor undertaking assessments? For example, if, hypothetically, two of these battery storage plants caught fire and at the same time there was a wildfire on the North York Moors, would the mayor assess whether there are sufficient resources—water, manpower and equipment—to deal with those fires? Who will be responsible for planning that?

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

I repeat that the function of the mayor is for the budget and the risk plan, so he or she will take into consideration the potential problems that the noble Baroness mentioned. He or she is also responsible for the appointment or dismissal of the chief officer, and therefore that accountability stays with the mayor, who is the directly elected representative for the area.