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Flood and Water Management Bill

I wish to return to the statutory duty for flood rescue, which I raised when I intervened on the Secretary of State. I apologise if he addressed it—I was hanging on his every eloquent word, but I may have nodded off or been distracted. It is important when we frame legislation such as this Bill that we take into account the views of those who will be at the front line of implementing it. I am one of the founding members of the Fire Brigades Union parliamentary group. I have therefore tried to consult the FBU on its concerns about the legislation. It is important to take on board its views following the 2007 floods. The FBU met those of its members who had been on the front line dealing with the floods and undertook a detailed consultation on their experiences on the ground. The report that the FBU published as a result said:""The health, safety and welfare of fire crews were put at risk during the floods through insufficient planning, equipment and training. Firefighters should not have had to wade through contaminated water wearing unsuitable protective equipment and exposing themselves to health hazards."" Another aspect that came up in the discussions with fire crews was confirmation that they""have not been trained consistently to the standards necessary to deal with the range of water-related incidents they have to tackle."" After the consultation the FBU undertook with its members on the 2007 floods, it concluded that the Government should introduce a statutory duty on fire and rescue authorities to respond to significant water-related events such as flooding, and make the necessary resources available to meet these obligations. That was confirmed by the Pitt review which made the recommendation that I quoted earlier—that there should be a statutory duty placed on fire and rescue authorities for flood rescue in particular. Pitt went on to reject non-statutory alternatives. It said:""The Review strongly believes that a statutory duty is the best means to achieve these outcomes."" It said that other non-statutory, voluntary approaches""do not provide the certainty the public expect and the Review believes is needed."" Interestingly enough, the Government seemed to concur with those views, and have done so for some time. In the regulatory impact assessment in 2007, the Government backed a statutory duty. The RIA stated that""relying on FRAs' discretionary powers, even where they receive central funding, means that they could still decline to use the specialist resources to aid other authorities"—" in major incidents—""or in future decide to stop maintaining the capabilities provided by Government."" So the Government were concerned at that time that without a statutory duty they could not rely on the fire and rescue authorities to respond effectively or to maintain the capability of that response. The RIA also said that""authorities have an incentive due to immediate local pressures to make provision for likely local needs, rather than ensuring that ""collectively there is provision for very unlikely large-scale incidents. This could, over time, reduce national resilience to such disruptive incidents"." Many, particularly in the FBU, would concur with the Government's view at the time, especially in a financial climate of budgetary pressures on fire and rescue authorities to focus on local needs rather than the strategic investment needed to confront major incidents. It is also interesting that in 2007 the Secretary of State proposed a statutory duty for flooding as a core duty in section 9 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004, but it was not eventually included in the order when it was published in March. The response of the Secretary of State today suggested that the Government have failed to include it in this Bill for three reasons. First, there are existing powers on which the Government can rely to place a duty on fire and rescue authorities. There is a slight difference between awarding a power and placing a duty on an authority, but from the point of view of the practitioners—the front-line workers and fire fighters who were called out time and again in 2007 and again this year—the existing powers are not satisfactory and do not place an adequate duty on fire and rescue authorities. As a result, they worry that once attention is turned away from the issue of flooding, local pressures will prevent the long-term consistent investment required by fire and rescue authorities.