|
Column Number: 127
Standing Committee F
Tuesday 3 February 2004
(Morning)
[Mr. Joe Benton in the Chair]
Clause 18
Meaning of ''emergency''
9.30 am
Mr. Richard Allan (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD): I beg to move amendment No. 89, in
clause 18, page 11, line 26, leave out 'serious' and insert 'severe'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 88, in
clause 18, page 11, line 26, after 'serious', insert 'immediate'.
No. 90, in
clause 18, page 11, line 31, after 'threatens', insert 'immediate'.
No. 92, in
clause 18, page 11, line 41, after 'threatens', insert 'immediate'.
No. 94, in
clause 18, page 12, line 6, after 'threaten', insert 'immediate'.
No. 96, in
clause 19, page 12, line 38, after 'serious', insert 'immediate'.
Mr. Allan: We now reach the part of the Bill that causes most concern among Liberal Democrats. Part 2 deals with the circumstances in which the Government may bypass the normal democratic and constitutional arrangements and bring emergency powers into play. We all recognise that they may have to do that in extreme and exceptional catastrophic circumstances, but we would prefer the provisions to be have some statutory force. We do not want things to happen in an entirely ad hoc way, with someone having to take control in catastrophic circumstances, so it is important that we test the Government on what those circumstances should be and that we keep the thresholds as high as possible.
The amendments would raise the threshold in relation to the first part of what the Government call the triple lock, which is set out in three clauses. Clause 18 sets out the first lock, which is that an emergency must be taking place. We seek to define the circumstances in which an emergency is deemed to take place and in which the Government may consider emergency regulations. The first lock involves leaping over that threshold.
We will come to the second lock in clause 20, when we will consider emergency regulations. The third lock is in clause 22, which relates to the question of proportionality. In a sense, however, the first lock is the most important. It defines the circumstances in which an emergency is deemed to have occurred and in which the Government may feel the need to consider emergency regulations.
Column Number: 128
The Joint Committee's recommendations begin with those relating to the first lock. The Committee queried whether the same definition should be used in clause 18 and in clause 1, which sets out the circumstances in which the emergency planning duty kicks in. I seek to make clause 18 more restrictive by changing the definition. Amendment No. 89 would replace the word ''serious'' with the word ''severe'', while amendments Nos. 88, 90, 92, 94 and 96 would introduce the notion of immediacy. That would make the definition more restrictive than that spelled out in clause 1.
When the Joint Committee queried whether the definitions should be the same, the Government's response was interesting. We accepted that part 1 asks local authorities to plan for a wide range of emergencies, down to little local situations, such as the failure of an electricity substation. However, we shall not be triggering national emergency regulations under part 2 if a local electricity substation fails. Yet, the only substantive difference in the definitions is that clause 18 says that an emergency must affect a larger geographical area of the United Kingdom—it must not be localised. Otherwise, the notion of seriousness is the same in both definitions, and we therefore seek to amend it.
As I said, the Government's response was interesting. They said:
''The Government recognises that Part 1 and Part 2 of the Bill serve very different purposes. There is no reason why the duties imposed under Part 1 should apply in the same circumstances where regulations may be made under Part 2. The Bill reflects this in a number of ways. The definition of 'emergency' in each Part is largely the same.''
We found that curious. The Government accept that the parts cover very different circumstances, but have resorted to a definition that is essentially the same for both.
The Joint Committee also specifically considered the meaning of the word ''serious'', which we want to replace with the word ''severe''. Recommendation 11 referred to that in the context of the ''Dealing with Disaster'' definition of a major emergency. The Government responded mostly with reference to part 1, but at the end they said:
''In Part 2, it has proved necessary to incorporate this policy in a different way. While the capacity of local bodies to deal with an event will be an important factor in determining whether it is appropriate to make emergency regulations, it will also be necessary to consider the powers of bodies at the regional level and central government and related agencies . . . The Government considers that clause 20, which provides that it is necessary to make emergency regulations if existing legislation is inadequate or ineffective in some respect reflects the spirit of the Committee's recommendation.''
The Government are effectively saying that, in the context of the triple lock, we have to rely on the clause 20 lock to back up the clause 18 lock. That leaves us feeling that the clause 18 lock is extremely weak. It covers the broad range of circumstances, which was intentional in part 1 and the clause 1 definition, but is too open for part 2. We are left with a dodgy Yale lock as the first lock, into which a credit card could be slipped to make a way through.
Column Number: 129
Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con): We have had a dodgy lock and a dodgy everything else, but I am wondering about a dodgy interpretation of either ''serious'' or ''severe''. We are talking about a matter of degrees, and some people could interpret serious to be severe and vice versa. Will the hon. Gentleman describe the distinction between the two?
Mr. Allan: The hon. Gentleman may be helped by a later Conservative amendment, which would include a definition of serious in the Bill. At this stage, our intention was to highlight the issues. I am not sufficiently legally qualified to cite precedents for either word, and we contemplated different options such as ''catastrophic''. However, our point is about the commonality of the definitions and whether they include the same circumstances in parts 1 and 2, except for the expanded geographic element. We thought that the best way to test that was to propose a different definition.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that rationale, as it is no more learned than that. We are trying to make the point that if the lock is to be effective, it should be more restrictive—a Chubb lock rather than a Yale, as we may not reach the three and five-bar mortice locks until later clauses.
The other amendments—Nos. 88, 90, 92, 94 and 96—concern the notion of immediacy, which came up earlier, and are important. It might help to cite some examples of the circumstances in which the Government might consider introducing emergency powers and in which the notion of immediacy is relevant. The foot and mouth crisis has been mentioned. Foot and mouth would have passed the clause 18 lock because it was on a large geographical area and could be deemed to be serious. I do not know whether it would pass the other locks on whether other powers are in place, but we need to consider such real-life circumstances in trying to find definitions.
I would question whether emergency regulations were needed based on the immediacy of foot and mouth. If foot and mouth occurred, we would have an administrative problem of getting people out to deal with it rather than a legislative problem. Considering how foot and mouth progresses, Parliament would probably have time to make the necessary regulations, for health reasons, concerning the treatment and disposal of animals that would not normally be allowed.
Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire) (Con): Was not one of the great problems with foot and mouth that there were so many movements of animals in a short time that the disease spread far wider than anyone had expected? Is there not an element of immediacy needed in trying to stop the movement of animals quickly?
Mr. Allan: That is helpful; those are the tests that we are trying to work through. The point remains for me that if we ever invoked powers under this part of the legislation, that would represent a failure of Government and the normal constitutional process. We should never have to put the powers in place in normal circumstances, excepting the most extreme
Column Number: 130
catastrophes. One would hope that, given our animal welfare and farming legislation generally, we are prepared for eventualities such as foot and mouth, which are, in a sense, predictable. Large-scale animal disease of one sort or another is entirely predictable. My concern is that we are introducing a regime under which we wait until something happens before bringing in legislation to deal with animal movements. If we need such legislation, it should be in place the whole time. We should not wait for a disaster before putting it in place.
Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con): Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), surely one aspect of foot and mouth was the immediacy of the need to slaughter animals under any suspicion. The Government had to deal with several cases in which flocks were being slaughtered in unexpected parts of the country, as he said, and farmers were objecting and complaining afterwards only to find that the flock had been infected. Does not that point add to the strength of the point about immediacy?
Mr. Allan: Trying to work out whether the problem was one of administration or legislation is the problem. Did the Government need particular powers in those circumstances or did they need more people on the ground to do things that could be done anyway under existing powers? It is worth exploring some of the examples that we have discussed. If we have a future foot and mouth crisis, will emergency regulations be introduced? My concern is that the focus in such a crisis, as so often when there are problems in society, will be on legislation, not administration, and that people will believe that we can solve all the problems by passing an emergency regulation, when in fact what is needed is better people out there, doing things correctly. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman suggests an emergency volunteer reserve. Whoever is legally tasked with carrying out the duty should be out there doing it.
It is worth trying to define the extent to which a regulation is necessary. If a regulation is necessary because it relates to something that we have not planned for at all—a major catastrophe—no one will have a problem with that. We accept that, in such circumstances, emergency regulations must be brought into play. However, to cite an example from the Second Reading debate again, we have managed to survive since the early 1970s without having to put in place any emergency regulations. I return to my original point: the introduction of an emergency regulation is a failure of the democratic process, in that we have not put regulations or legislation in place in the normal way to deal with the circumstances.
The other example that is cited and which may be relevant is an incident such as that which occurred on 11 September. That catastrophic incident occurred in another country but clearly, in a sense, represented a threat to the United Kingdom. It was quite obvious at the time that places in the UK could become targets in a similar way. Again, the question was about the immediacy of the threat. In the end, we responded in
Column Number: 131
the correct, normal and democratic fashion: what became the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 went through both Houses of Parliament, and we had normal democratic debates. We were not all entirely comfortable with the outcome, but the point is that we responded to the 11 September incident and dealt with the security threat here through the normal democratic process. We were able to do so because there was not that immediacy; it was not the UK mainland that had been catastrophically attacked, although we could see a clearly defined threat.
|
