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Standing Committee G
Thursday 26 February 2004
(Morning)
[Sir Nicholas Winterton in the Chair]
9.25 am
The Chairman: I welcome all members of the Committee to our seventh sitting. I am aware that a knife fell at the end of the previous sitting, so we commence afresh this morning. Looking at the faces of hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, I am confident that good and constructive progress will again be made. Clause 25
Information
Mr. Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con): I beg to move amendment No. 100, in
clause 25, page 11, line 30, after 'returns', insert 'reasonably'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 101, in
clause 25, page 11, line 32, leave out sub-paragraph (b).
Mr. Hammond: It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair again, Sir Nicholas.
The clause deals with the information that a fire and rescue authority might be required to supply to the Secretary of State. My instinctive concern, when we are dealing with a local service that is accountable locally, is that the Bill will create the wrong relationship between that body and the Secretary of State. Clauses 25 to 27 are grouped under the heading ''Supervision'', and this clause puts the fire and rescue service under an obligation to submit various reports and returns to the Secretary of State.
I do not like provisions that suggest that the relationship should be that of the schoolboy sending in his prep for marking by the headmaster. I accept that some information must be available centrally, not least so that Ministers cannot hide behind the time-honoured convention of rebuffing questions from Members by saying that information is not collected centrally. I hope that only sensible data will be collected under the clause. The explanatory notes give examples of sensible, unexceptional and acceptable information that the Secretary of State can collect, such as the numbers of fire deaths and casualties, information that it is useful to have centrally.
The Bill, however, gives the Secretary of State a wide power, so amendment No. 100 would require a fire and rescue authority to submit only those reports and returns that he ''reasonably'' requires. I have learned over the years that the Secretary of State always acts reasonably. That is not in any sense a comment on the behaviour or inclinations of the current incumbent of that office—
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The Minister for Local Government, Regional Governance and Fire (Mr. Nick Raynsford): Oh yes, it is.
Mr. Hammond: I am not sure that, if the Minister casts his mind back to the some of the Secretary of State's more publicised actions, he would want to be tarred with the view that the Secretary of State always acts reasonably. However, I understand that, in the discharge of his official duties, by definition the Secretary of State always acts reasonably.
The point of the amendment is to try to establish what reports the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister expects to require. If the Under-Secretary can reassure the Committee that it will simply be the reports that are made on a regular basis to the ODPM, nobody will have a problem with that.
Following on from our debates on Tuesday, perhaps the Under-Secretary will tell the Committee whether one of the reports that he might ask for is an annual report on revenues raised through charging under different categories. Then, the next time I am facing him and want to ask him about how much revenue is raised through charging for different activities, he will have the information available instead of having to bluff his way out four or five times by talking about the percentages of fire authorities that may make charges under certain categories, rather than telling the Committee how much revenue is being raised. There is a thought for the Minister on a useful area in which reporting and returns of information could be extended.
Amendment No. 101 would delete paragraph (b), and it, too, is a probing amendment. On first reading the clause, the paragraph appears entirely redundant. Any information that the Secretary of State requires could be obtained through the requirement to make a report or a return to him. On reflection, however, I wondered whether the Under-Secretary has it in mind that the reports to be made under paragraph (a) will be recurring annual, monthly or quarterly reports, and that the power under paragraph (b) is intended to allow him to demand additional information that is not provided on a routine basis. Exploring that a little further, is it the Government's intention that the reports and returns under paragraph (a) will be provided by all authorities? Does the Under-Secretary see paragraph (b) as more of an enabling provision to let the Secretary of State fish for specific information from individual authorities?
I do not want to feed the Minister of State's inclination to see paranoia in my every question, but I must say to the Committee that the paragraph (b) could—if I am interpreting what Ministers have in mind correctly—be used to mount fishing expeditions to harass a fire and rescue authority. I would like to hear an assurance from the Under-Secretary that there is no intention to seek lots of new information on an ad hoc basis from individual authorities. It would be helpful if the Committee could understand how the two different paragraphs are intended to work and why paragraph (b) is not redundant.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Phil Hope): The clause is
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a restatement of section 230 of the Local Government Act 1972, which covers local authority reports, returns and information. The purpose of the clause is to extend that requirement to all fire and rescue authorities. Combined fire and rescue authorities, as we discussed earlier, are not covered by the 1972 Act.
Reports and returns are required from fire and rescue authorities to enable us to evaluate fire and rescue service performance and to monitor progress against national and local targets. The importance of such information has been recognised, not least in the Select Committee's recent report on the service. The hon. Gentleman accepted that it is entirely right that we should be collecting such information. We always work closely with fire and rescue authorities when we are designing reports and returns to be completed by them.
We have established a new institutional framework in which the concerns of the service can be resolved. The clause follows the wording in section 230 of the 1972 Act, and to introduce the concept of ''reasonableness'', as is being suggested, would put the collection of information about fire and rescue on a different basis from the collection of other information by the Government. As the hon. Gentleman says, it is implicit that the Secretary of State must act reasonably and his requests must be reasonable. The current set of reports and returns is reasonable, and there has never been any complaint that we have asked for excessive or unreasonable information from brigades. We have no intention of making unreasonable demands for information of fire and rescue authorities.
Mr. Hammond: The Under-Secretary will recognise the concept of proportionality and cost. All Members of Parliament are familiar with departmental answers stating that parliamentary questions would be disproportionately expensive to answer. I hope that he will confirm that the Government will take into account the cost of providing information. That will not arise when the authority is already collecting information, but if the Department were to ask for information that the authority was not already collecting, significant costs might be involved.
Phil Hope: Of course, that is an integral part of the system, which is embodied in the 1972 Act. It is interesting to note that although the hon. Gentleman is concerned about collecting too much information and placing too much of a burden on local authorities—at least I understand that to be the gist of his contribution—he is suggesting further areas from which we should collect information on fire and rescue authorities. We have heard his comments; I will convey his thoughts, contributions and ideas to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and in due course the hon. Gentleman will see whether they have been accepted.
As these are probing amendments, the hon. Gentleman asked for information and clarification. Statistics and information already collected from several fire and rescue authorities to meet various central Government requirements include best value
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performance indicators and national statistics on fires. The Committee will realise that that is important information. The clause formalises the requirement for all authorities to supply such information because in that regard they are not covered by existing legislation. We need paragraph (b) because some information that we require may not be included in the reports covered by paragraph (a).
The Secretary of State requires some flexibility as and when circumstances arise, so paragraph (b) would not be used to harass authorities by throwing increasingly demanding requests for information at them—that is a little touch of the paranoia that we have seen in previous sittings. The purpose is to reflect and repeat the wording in section 230 of the 1972 Act, which allows us to collect information in order to provide assurances to the community and to plan for the future. The existing wording has worked well and we see no reason to change it. With those assurances I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendments.
Mr. Hammond: I am interested in what the Under-Secretary says, but his comments on my suggestion that it would be helpful to have available information about revenues collected by authorities cause us to focus on an interesting point. Time and again, we find that Ministers do not have available information on areas that MPs often find relevant to the discharge of their responsibilities. I fear that with the Bill we will see Ministers collecting information that it suits them to publish and not information that it would be embarrassing to have to present.
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