Civil Contingencies Bill

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Mr. Alexander: I am yet again in the rather worrying position of having some sympathy with the points raised by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan), although I am reassured by the fact that I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) on deferring to the hon. Gentleman's expertise on who is crackers and who is not, given his long experience in the Liberal Democrats.

In respect of the substantive points, we are discussing two amendments. Clause 1(4) sets out a clear and exhaustive list of the type of events that may constitute a threat of serious damage to security. It is clearly important that we strike the balance that has been either implicit or explicit in the contributions that we have heard. I welcome the probing amendments to that effect, but the approach that the Government have taken holds good, for reasons that I shall come on to.

Amendment No. 15 would mean that

''a direct threat of terrorism''

was treated as a threat to security, in addition to terrorism as it is generally defined. However, the definition of terrorism in the Terrorism Act 2000 includes a threat of action as well as the act itself. It may assist hon. Members if I remind them that that Act defines terrorism as

''the use or threat of action''

that

''involves serious violence against a person . . . involves serious damage to property . . . . endangers a person's life . . . creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public . . . or . . . is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.''

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In addition, the use or threat of action must be designed

''to influence the government or to intimidate the public''

and be

''for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.''

The points that have been made about whether threat is implicit are captured by the Terrorism Act 2000. I trust that the amendment will be judged unnecessary on that basis.

Amendment No. 16 would make certain serious crimes a threat to security. Crime is obviously an important threat, but the threats of crime to human life and property are already included in the definition of emergency as threats to human welfare. For illustrative purposes, I remind hon. Members again that the Bill is not intended to deal specifically with crime. Many other arrangements already exist to deal with the consequences of crime, although that is not to say that crime cannot lead to emergencies. However, the Bill already covers crimes that are relevant, such as terrorism. To trigger the duties under the Bill, an incident would need to be on a sufficient scale to stretch the capability of local responders to deal with it collectively, as set out in clause 2(2). An arson attack affecting one person or a fraud affecting only a small number of people could clearly be dealt with within existing arrangements. On that basis I hope that the hon. Member for Ribble Valley will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Evans: I thought that it was worth while probing in those areas to get the Minister to elucidate the points that he described in his response. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

3 pm

Mr. Allan: We have covered most of the detail of the clause, and I shall not go over that ground again. However, subsection (2)(e) deals with disruption and, although we discussed money, we did not discuss energy or fuel, nor did any amendments touch on those issues. I have some points about energy suppliers and the utilities—category 2 responders—that echo the points made about telecommunications providers this morning. Given the complexity of the market, how does the Minister envisage the gas and electricity suppliers responding to their duties as set out in the clause? Some distribution companies are quite separate from the retail companies that are in contact with customers, and in the electricity market the situation is sometimes confused.

My understanding from the regulatory impact assessment is that, in the context of the clause, Transco is relevant for gas, and the regional distribution companies for electricity. However, that may not be obvious to the customer. During the recent Eastern Electricity disaster, for example, a lot of power was lost in the region that that company covered; Eastern Electricity was clearly responsible for the infrastructure, so the local authority had to deal with

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the company, but the public may now perceive themselves to be customers of British Gas, London Energy, Scottish Hydro-Electric or other companies in the market. Can the Minister assure us that the ways in which public now interact with electricity and gas markets can be properly factored into local authority action to deal both with the public and with those who are responsible for infrastructure?

Mr. Alexander: I hope that our debate on the clause can be brief in light of the fact that, as the hon. Gentleman observed, we have covered a number of points in detail this morning and so far this afternoon.

In response to the hon. Gentleman's point, I return to this morning's parallel discussion about British Telecom and the need to be clear about the responsibilities on local responders other than local authorities, which may include blue-light services. We must put in place the means to ensure the appropriate ground-level working relationships among those local responders—energy providers in the present case, and BT in the case discussed this morning. Rather than focus on who is facing the customer, it is important to have clarity about who is responsible for participating. We can assure customers that a number of the organisations that the hon. Gentleman mentioned operate under regulatory regimes for the energy sector that will endure. In this part of the Bill, our aim is to ensure that there is an appropriate working relationship between other responders in recognition of the fact that energy providers will have a key role in getting utilities back in place after the contingencies that the Bill anticipates.

I am aware that a significant amount of work was undertaken by Government, led by the Department of Trade and Industry, following the power outage that London suffered in August last year. Both ministerial and departmental work has been undertaken to ensure that we have the correct relationships with the energy sector and, in that case, with the electricity utilities. The challenge is not so much providing information to the public—a matter on which we shall touch this afternoon—as making sure that the sector is represented in discussions at local level, and that the companies' relationships with local authorities emergency services and others are appropriate.

The starting point of the Bill is the framework for planning and for responding to emergencies. That has been clearly and logically set out for the Committee. The purpose of clause 1 is to establish a clear definition for the purposes of part 1. Thanks to a number of probing amendments, we have managed to offer some useful clarification to members of the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2

Duty to assess, plan and advise

Mr. Evans: I beg to move amendment No. 17, in

clause 2, page 2, line 26, leave out 'from time to time' and insert 'every three months'.

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The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 18, in

clause 2, page 2, line 27, leave out 'from time to time' and insert 'every three months'.

Mr. Evans: The amendments are similar. Contingency planning is about preparation, and it is vital that we get everything right. Clause 2 focuses on the duty to assess, plan and advise: if we do not get those things right, planning is a pointless exercise. I have reservations about the lack of audit to ensure that all the responsible bodies are doing exactly what is required of them, and I do not want to leave subsection (1) as weak as it is. It states that

''A person or body listed in Part 1 or 2 of Schedule 1 shall—

(a) from time to time assess the risk of an emergency occurring,

(b) from time to time assess the risk of an emergency making it necessary or expedient for the person or body to perform any of his or its functions''.

What does ''from time to time'' mean? If one asks a child to clean his bedroom from time to time, it simply will not happen.

The sort of contingencies for which we are planning include the 11 September plane attack, which has been mentioned time and time again, and the prior attack on the twin towers; the Tokyo subway gas attack, which I am sure is still in people's minds; and bombings of ships. Those are all well-known international incidents. We are lucky that, although we have tremors now and then in the midlands and thereabouts—we had one in Wales once—we experience nothing on the scale of the earthquakes that occur in other countries. In Iran recently, thousands of people were killed in an earthquake, and there was criticism that the authorities were not prepared, even though the region is prone to earthquakes. I am not certain we prepare we can prepare for a disaster on that scale. Turkey and Greece have been hit several times by earthquakes, and there have been problems in a number of other countries.

We do experience severe weather. We may be hitting some now, and in future an unforeseen severe weather incident may arise that cuts people off for days on end. Advice is given about staying in the car, or carrying in the car a blanket that we can wrap around us to ensure that we stay a bit warmer than we otherwise might.

Mr. Horam: Many category 1 responders are mentioned in schedule 1, and different responders have different attitudes to the regularity with which they check their procedures. We talk about local authorities stocking salt, for example. Other organisations have an inspection routine for emergencies that may occur once a year, or once every 10 years. Who will decide when and how consistently the various utilities should examine their emergency procedures? The traditions of different utilities may differ, and the problem lies in achieving a concerted approach that will satisfy the Government and the local authorities.

 

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Prepared 27 January 2004