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Clause 16
Arrangements for discharge of functions by others
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 1—Fire and Rescue Authority: discharge of functions—
'(1) It shall be the duty of a fire and rescue authority to make provision for the discharge of the functions conferred on it by sections 6, 7, 8 and 9 with economy, efficiency and effectiveness.
(2) A fire and rescue authority shall formally review the arrangements it has made under the provisions of sections 13, 15 and 16 at least once every two years and shall satisfy itself that the arrangements it has in place under these sections and the provision it has made for discharging its functions under sections 6, 7, 8 and 9 discharge with its duty under subsection (1).
(3) The Secretary of State may provide such support and assistance as he considers necessary to fire and rescue authorities in discharging their obligations under this section and to assist them in using their powers under sections 13, 15 and 16 to ensure that their functions are discharged with the greatest possible economy, efficiency and effectiveness.'.
Mr. Hammond: Clauses 13, 15 and 16 of the Bill provide a sensible framework for what I shall call ''outsourcing'', and for mutual reinforcement and the procuring of specialist assistance. It must make sense to have a framework that allows not only co-operation between authorities, but the provision by one authority—of its own initiative—of a service to other authorities. Under provisions elsewhere in the Bill, the Secretary of State can require an authority to deliver a service in the area of another authority.
It must make sense to allow fire and rescue authorities to procure services and assistance from third parties—whether they be bodies such as the Ministry of Defence, or commercial third parties—which either operate fire or rescue services incidental to their own operations, or have specialist equipment or manpower available that might be appropriate. Fire
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and rescue services will called to deal with certain types of event so rarely that it is almost inevitable that greater expertise and more suitable equipment will be available elsewhere: for example, someone who routinely handles chemicals as part of their commercial business is likely to have readily available the appropriate equipment to deal with a chemical incident. All of that is entirely sensible. It will be interesting later on to see just how far Ministers envisage that going.
Last year, at the Local Government Association fire conference, which the Minister of State attended, I was approached by a gentleman from Denmark, a representative of the private sector company that runs the Danish fire service. The Minister may also have had such an approach—if he did not keep the gentleman's card, I can lend it to him. It would be interesting to discover whether Ministers have considered the possibility of the functions of fire and rescue authorities being contracted out wholesale to properly qualified third-party contractors. I do not know whether the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has looked at that. It would also be interesting to learn how the system in Denmark works and how effective and economical it is. I know that the Minister is very interested in efficiency and economy, so he will want to explore as deeply as possible all the available options.
New clause 1 creates a framework for requiring fire and rescue authorities to discharge the functions that are conferred on them by clauses 6, 7, 8 and 9 with ''economy, efficiency and effectiveness''—we have heard those words several times. That requirement is specifically stated, and is then used as a building block to require authorities formally and periodically to review the arrangements that they have made under clause 13 for mutual reinforcement schemes, under clause 15 for the procurement of assistance, and under clause 16 for the discharge of functions by others.
Testing will take place all the time to ensure that the arrangements that they have put in place under those clauses comply with their duty to discharge their core functions with ''economy, efficiency and effectiveness.'' That is something like a best value test. The following questions will be asked: ''Is there somebody out there who could deliver any of the functions that we are gearing up to deliver more efficiently or at lower cost, and if there is nobody out there who can do that today, will there be tomorrow?'' There will be constant testing and re-testing of the decisions that an authority has taken.
New clause 1 goes further. Subsection (3) empowers the Secretary of State to
''provide such support and assistance as he considers necessary to fire and rescue authorities in discharging their obligations under this section and to assist them in using their powers under sections 13, 15 and 16''.
I am seeking a commitment from the ODPM to support best practice. Without naming names, we all know that fire authorities differ in their attitude to innovation and modernisation. Some fire authorities will embrace with enthusiasm the possibility of contracting out certain services or entering into collaborative arrangements, but others will take a
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more blinkered view, and it has to be said that, on past form, some will take a dogmatic political stance on how a public authority should discharge its functions.
I do not favour the Secretary of State wading in with steel toe-capped boots to enforce such arrangements on authorities, because the core motivator for locally accountable, democratically answerable authorities should be the interests of their electors. Their search for best value should be driven by a sense of answerability to the payers of their council tax rather than by somebody in Whitehall telling them that there are cheaper ways to do things. None the less, it would be helpful if the ODPM were actively to engage in disseminating best practice—in promoting awareness of what is going on in other authorities and of opportunities to contract out certain peripheral or support functions in a way that would allow fire authorities to increase their efficiency, effectiveness and economy. This is our preferred route to defend the independence and accountability of locally-based fire and rescue authorities and at the same time to encourage collaboration, outsourcing and mutual co-operation so that they deliver services with maximum economy, efficiency and effectiveness—and all with the Government's active support and encouragement. I recognise that subsection (3) as tabled merely provides a power to the Secretary of State and does not oblige him to provide that supportive environment, but I hope that the Under-Secretary will tell us how the ODPM intends to engage actively in this process.
10.45 am
Mr. McCabe: I want to give the hon. Gentleman every opportunity to be absolutely honest with us. I have listened to him with great interest, but there seems to be repetition of words. We are obsessed with outsourcing and with procurement for commercial third parties. Earlier there was an invitation from a private Danish company to tout for business. I do not know what the situation is in Runnymede and Weybridge, but the poor people of Cheshire should be worried that their fire service could be reduced to a mere contract operation. Is the hon. Gentleman telling us the full truth about his intentions, or are we getting a glimpse of new Tory, new privatisation?
Mr. Hammond: I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for providing a classic demonstration of the kind of thinking that might be going on in the darkest recesses of some of our less forward-thinking fire authorities. The purpose of probing the Under-Secretary on these issues is precisely to discover how far the Government's thinking has gone down this route. Are there any lines in the sand? Are there any areas that they would regard as not appropriate for outsourcing—to use the term again? It could be outsourcing to another fire and rescue authority, and not necessarily to a commercial third party. We spent some time in the last debate trying to establish that an outsourcing arrangement could be made between fire authorities on what would effectively be a commercial basis, with one authority providing services for another.
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I make no apology for saying that this is the model that I commend. The unit of democratic accountability needs to be small enough to be meaningful, but we must recognise that for many services, the operational unit will need to be larger. I see no contradiction between having a democratically accountable authority responsible for the discharge of a function and the recognition that that function can be economically discharged only on a larger scale, so the authority should seek to deliver it by contracting it to another provider or by collaborating with adjacent authorities. That is a flexible approach.
There is little risk in allowing fire authorities almost unlimited scope in discharging their functions, provided that they are held to account for their proper discharge and the authorities are based on units that allow proper democratic accountability and transparency. That is why we favour the smaller structure of local fire authorities rather than the mega-regional authorities that the Under-Secretary appears to favour. I hope that he will engage constructively in the issues raised by the new clause.
You said, Mr. O'Hara, that this debate was to incorporate the stand part debate. The term ''firefighter'' is used in clauses 15 and 16, but so far as I can see, it is not defined in the Bill. As a restriction is placed on the type of person who can be engaged in the arrangement under clause 15, will the Under-Secretary point to where we can find the definition of a firefighter? Clearly, if that is simply a person who goes out and fights fires, the definition is tautologous. Any person employed by someone contracted through an arrangement under clause 15 would be by definition a firefighter, so there must be some qualification of the term if the clause is to have any real meaning. I would be grateful if the Under-Secretary could explain where I might find that definition.
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