I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide a statutory framework for full public consultation by local authorities in England whenever major developments are proposed by such authorities.

Those hon. Members who are currently scuttling towards the exit are, perhaps, on their way to talk to constituents, to take advice from their Whips or to listen to their secretaries. They are off to indulge in what everybody describes as "consultation". I wish that they would stay, because consultation is precisely what my little Bill is all about.

To consult is a laudable democratic principle. Every weekend, I consult my constituents: I consult my office, my family, the butcher, the baker and even the candlestick-maker—when he is not up to his wick in wax! I do not have to take a blind bit of notice of any of them, but we like to consult, do we not? We like to go through the motions of seeking opinion; we may not be convinced by all that we hear, but at least we have bothered to ask. As a matter of fact, I am a committed advocate of consultation, but I want it to mean something. I want the people who give us their views to know that we have taken notice and, perhaps, have even adopted some of their ideas. I want consultation that works, which is what this Bill is about.

Consultation has become a ludicrous buzzword. The Government swear by it—205 different consultations on new Government plans are currently under way, to which those of us with strong opinions and ample time are free to contribute our thoughts. There is, however, one small drawback: consultation does not involve any debate at all. The public are invited to pour in their opinion, which may be plagiarised, twisted or ignored.

The scale of the consultation industry reminds me of the old maxim, "divide and rule". There are now so many official consultations that it is well nigh impossible to keep abreast of them, let alone to contribute. In addition to the Government's 205 open consultations, all of which are listed on a website that is expensively devoted to that purpose, there is an even bigger list of the Government's closed consultations. For example, the Health and Safety Executive is consulting on regulations concerning vibration at work. My office in this building is underneath Big Ben, so I consider myself an expert on vibration at work. Under the rules that govern closed consultations, however, I am not expert enough, so, although my entire body shakes uncontrollably whenever the clock strikes the hour, as far as the Health and Safety Executive is concerned, I can get knotted.

Such are the small complications of consultation, but the big complications are much more serious. Consultations are voluntary, are not binding, and sad to say, are sometimes unworthy of the very paper that they end up being printed on. Making sure that consultation takes place at all is left to a toothless instrument of political persuasion—the vague, woolly and completely unenforceable code of conduct. Where would poor old Moses be today if God had handed him a code of conduct rather than 10 proper commandments? "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ass" has more of a ring to it than, "Perhaps it would be better to leave the livestock alone."

If anyone wants to examine the William Shakespeare of codes of conduct, I invite them to scrutinise that devised by those matchless boffins of blether and bureaucracy, the Cabinet Office. This is how it sounds:

"Code 1. Consult widely throughout the process, allowing a minimum of 12 weeks for consultation."

What is meant by "widely"? Is that everybody, almost everybody, a chosen handful, or what?

"Code 2. Be clear about what your proposals are."

Clarity in government—that is a novelty.

"Code 3. Ensure that your consultation is concise and accessible."

How is one to do that?

"Code 4. Give feedback regarding the responses received and how the consultation process influenced the policy."

What sort of feedback?

"Code 5. Monitor your department's effectiveness at consultation, including through the use of a designated consultation co-ordinator."

In other words, hire a few more civil servants.

"Code 6. Ensure your consultation follows better regulation best practice, including carrying out a Regulatory Impact Assessment."

Where would we all be without a regulatory impact assessment?

What the Cabinet Office does today, our local authorities are encouraged, cajoled or pretty well forced to do tomorrow. That is the problem. Codes of conduct are growing like Topsy. Consultations are bursting out everywhere about everything. They generate mountains of paper, they are not legally binding, and there are no set standards whatever.

Before the general election—the only bit of recent genuine national consultation in this country—I argued in my constituency that we could do with some proper consultation whenever controversial schemes are proposed by local authorities. I had in mind the plans of West Somerset district council to shift offices and redevelop land. Months later—years later—discussions about those plans are still going on. I am certain that there would have been far fewer grounds for argument or anger if the council had properly consulted people fully from the start.

First we need a decent definition of the word itself. The "Pocket Oxford Dictionary" suggests the following meanings:

"seeking information or advice . . . taking into consideration the views of people . . . considering feelings".

I am sure that every planner and politician in the land would endorse such sentiments and vow that consultation is a splendid part of the process—it is like motherhood and apple pie; one could not possibly disagree with the general idea—but with such a woolly meaning, consultation can be as good or as bad as planners and politicians prefer. The trouble is that too many planners and politicians are prepared to settle for the barest minimum when it comes to standards of consulting people.

I am sorry to say that the blame lies here in Westminster. This House has always fought shy of spelling out what consultation should be—how local people are canvassed, how local views are assessed, what account is taken of opinion, and how many meetings will be held. The remit to consult is written into all local government legislation, but the dotted i's and crossed t's have always been left to the locals and their codes of conduct. Basically, this House has copped out.

My private Member's Bill is designed effectively to put such procedures in front of Parliament. It will no longer be good enough for the transport authority to insert a tiny notice on page 103 of the classified ads in the local paper telling everybody what road is about to be closed, widened, re-rerouted or subjected to a half-baked new traffic management scheme. Under this Bill, the nature of the proposals would have to be crystal clear and they would have to be advertised so that people can see them. Local authorities would have to go out of their way to let people know what they are doing, and the Bill would specify how far out of their way they had to go. On the coastline in my constituency is a place called Hinkley Point, which is probably more famous for its nuclear power station than its landscape. Rumours abound that there might be a new power plant there—one day, perhaps soon. The need for a new and comprehensive consultation system is therefore urgent.

Critics may say that consultation costs money. In the short term, yes, there will be costs. However, paying for sensible minimum standards—specified high- profile newspaper advertisements, intelligible letters to householders, public meetings and the like—will surely save money in the long term. If planners and politicians listen to local opinion first and take action based on what people really want rather than on what the town hall thinks that they want, it can only lead to better decision making.

The inspiration for the idea was not merely born out of the confusion in West Somerset. I can cite hundreds of examples from up and down the country, where local authorities have paid lip service to the concept of consultation and reaped the consequences of unpopularity thereafter. Let me give one current example. Devon county council—my next-door council—decided, without the merest hint of asking anybody, to sell one of its most valuable assets, Exeter airport. One can picture the scene at Devon county hall: "I say old fruit, wouldn't it be spiffing if we flogged off the airport?" Did the council consult? No. Instead, it called in some expensive City types to offload the airport. No consultation whatever took place.

Guess what—the Government have rightly called in the decision to have it reviewed by the Competition Commission. The council could have avoided that. The tragedy is that local authorities are not doing anything wrong. They are obeying the law as it stands. However, the law as it stands is legless legislation. The law leaves interpretation of the word "consultation" purely to the town halls.

My Bill spells out the problem. It has the support of Members of Parliament from all parties. My Bill makes sense and I commend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Ian Liddell-Grainger, David Heyes, Kelvin Hopkins, Mr. Robert Syms, Mr. Ben Wallace, Stephen Hammond, Mr. Geoffrey Cox and David Mundell.

We now come to the first debate on Opposition motions. I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

I beg to move,

That this House notes the overwhelming rejection of regional government in the referendum held in the North East in November 2004; regrets the ongoing transfer of powers to unelected regional quangos since the result, taking power away from democratically accountable local councils; rejects the proposals for the regionalisation of the fire service and the imposition of distant Regional Fire Control Rooms; expresses concern at the possibility of police forces being structured on a Government Office Region level, making the police less responsive to local people, and voices similar concerns over the restructuring of NHS ambulance trusts; disagrees with the Deputy Prime Minister's proposals for the regionalisation of emergency services as being a desirable, legitimate or necessary tier of governance; and demands that the Government dismantles the unwanted and unaccountable regional administration of emergency services.

The House may recall that, almost a year ago, on 4 November 2004, a referendum was held in the north-east on elected regional assemblies. The result was an emphatic no to regionalisation. Twelve months on, I am sure that colleagues are as surprised as me that the people of the north-east are still paying for a regional assembly, which 80 per cent. of them said that they did not want. Then again, everybody is paying for the roll-out of the Government's regional agenda. The difference is that in other parts of the country, people were not given the opportunity to reject assembles.

However, regional assemblies, the unelected and unaccountable quangos that have leeched power from local people, are merely the most obvious manifestation of a tide of regionalism, which is fundamentally changing the way that we are governed. The most recent and disturbing example is the regionalisation of emergency services.

The manner in which the regionalisation of emergency services was slipped out in the press during the summer recess shows just how sheepish the Government are about the announcement. I am sure that colleagues from all parties will, like me, have received many letters from people who are rightly concerned about the implications of the latest experiment in restructuring. From the signatures to early-day motion 229, it appears that at least 219 colleagues agree with those concerns.

It started with the regionalisation of fire control rooms. Now ambulance trusts and police forces are to be morphed into an unwieldy regional structure. Regionalism is such an abstract concept—even the word "regionalisation" smacks of bureaucracy and administrative jargon. The Government's concept of regions pays scant regard to the geography of our country and people's sense of identity. It fails the Simon Jenkins test—the Marbella test. When we bump into someone walking along the beach in, say, Marbella, and we ask them where they are from, it is hard to imagine someone from Banbury saying that they are from what the Government call "the south-east". Similarly, people in Scunthorpe would never say that they came from Yorkshire and the Humber. This just shows how artificial, contrived and arbitrary these Government-defined regions really are.

What people in Banbury will say is that this regionalisation has practical implications. The emergency fire control rooms have to be kept going until 2009. When I went to the control centre the other day and met the staff, they said that over the next four or five years they were going to go and find other jobs. How are these things going to work? That is what people in Banbury are concerned about, not this daft regional experiment. They want to know what is going to happen when they dial 999 over the next few years.

No one is better placed than my hon. Friend to speak on behalf of the people of Banbury, and he entirely anticipates what I was about to say. Making an announcement such as this is bound to result in people looking for other jobs.

It is interesting that the hon. Lady mentioned the great Simon Jenkins just now. I should like to remind her that he wrote a book a few years ago which denounced the record of the previous Conservative Government for their ferocious centralisation and for what he called the "nationalisation of Britain". Is the hon. Lady recanting that part of her party's past along with everything else?

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman might like to read one of Simon Jenkins's more recent publications, "Big Bang Localism", in which he roundly denounces the Government's plans for regionalisation. He is a fierce defender of the traditional structures of our country with which people truly identify.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I should like to make a little more progress.

The mechanics of regionalisation will sideline our counties and shires in favour of governmental units, which are not only culturally alien but undemocratic. In regard to emergency services, the measures will be hugely damaging. As no statement has been made to the House on these changes, I have had to rely on press reports. They seem to suggest that the number of fire control rooms is to be cut from 46 to nine, the number of ambulance trusts from 31 to 11, and the number of police forces from 43 to 23. There is not even any consistency across Whitehall on how to structure the regions. One of the lessons that we have all learned from New Orleans is that overlapping and confusing tiers of administration compromise our ability to respond in an emergency.

My hon. Friend said that there had been no public statement on these matters. Worse than that, there has been precious little, if any, public consultation. The Government who gave us the stealth tax are now introducing the stealth axe. Many of our services are being cut without any consultation whatever. England's biggest county, North Yorkshire, which stretches the same distance as that between London and Bristol, is going to have fire service control rooms out of county, a police force that will probably be run from West Yorkshire, and Lord knows where the ambulance service will come from, but it will also be cut under these plans.

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I could not have put it better myself, but he puts it well on behalf of the people he is elected to represent, and I am sure that they will appreciate his raising these concerns in the House on their behalf.

In practical terms, we learned only yesterday that huge tracts of the country from Banbury to Folkestone were to be served by only one fire control room, in Fareham. When people in Gloucester call the local fire brigade, they will be speaking to an operator in Taunton, and the regional fire control room for the whole of the north-west, stretching right up to the border with Scotland, will be in Warrington.

At Prime Minister's questions, we heard the hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Charlotte Atkins)—one of the Government's own—voicing her concern that one ambulance trust for the whole of the west midlands region would be unlikely to deliver a better service. Such views have been echoed by the chief executive of the Staffordshire ambulance trust, Roger Thayne, who said that there was

"no evidence that larger ambulance services are anything than more expensive and do not improve performance and save more lives . . . Services serving a population of more than 2 million cost more and save less lives."

The Government would do well to listen to one of their Members and to front-line practitioners in those services.

In reference to the fire control centre in Quedgeley, Gloucester, my hon. Friend might be interested to know that there is not

"a better example . . . in the south-west than what we have managed to achieve in our tri-service centre."—[Official Report, 15 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 90.]

Those are not my words but those of the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda), who sits on the Labour Benches, in 2004. My hon. Friend is perceptive in picking up that many Labour Members are concerned about such moves locally, but no doubt they will sit silently, as the hon. Member for Gloucester will, as their Government steamroller through these plans.

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. The fact is that the Gloucester fire control room will be lost. Perhaps one fruit of today might be that the Government listen to concerns from both sides of the House, including from their Back Benchers.

It is amazing how many euphemisms there are for the word "cuts"— restructuring, rationalising, and dare I say, regionalising, all spring to mind. Were the roles reversed, and were we announcing cuts on such a scale, the shrieks from the Labour Benches would be enough to shatter the new glass screen. Local emergency services will be mothballed and local knowledge and expertise will be lost.

The Minister is, like me, a former fireman, and he knows that local knowledge of topography saves lives. Ultimately, I do not think that he believes in the regionalisation but has been told what to do by the Deputy Prime Minister. I believe passionately that firemen want to save lives, like I did. The Minister does not believe that what is going on is right—it will cost lives and he knows that it has done.

My hon. Friend makes a point about those who operate within the service and who put their lives on the line. I hope that he will speak in this debate and give us the benefit of his inside knowledge. I also hope that there is a chink in the Government's armour with a Minister susceptible to such important arguments.

I know that advances in technology can change the way that services are delivered, but anyone who has a car equipped with satellite navigation will know that it is far from infallible and that a little local knowledge counts for a lot. Common sense tells us that when it comes to providing emergency services, local knowledge is a precious commodity—speed of response is everything, and that can so easily be compromised by such practical issues as time lost through not being able to place an address or even a misunderstanding arising from an operator who is unfamiliar with the accent of someone in distress.

It is an issue not just of proximity, however, but of priority. Within a region, which area will get first call on where resources are targeted? It is nearly always the urban areas at the expense of the rural areas.

Before my hon. Friend moves off the point about local knowledge, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) has put eloquently in the case of the fire service, I want to draw to her attention the case of the police service. Recent surveys by Kent police have shown that the single biggest complaint of my constituents and others in Kent was that they were dialling 999 and getting people who clearly had no knowledge of the area in which they lived. That significantly reduced confidence in the police. If we get regional call centres, in which people will not even have heard of the town in which the emergency is taking place, public confidence in our police will be reduced. Along with the many other reasons that she has advanced, that ought to give the Government pause and get them to reverse this wretched policy.

I agree totally with my hon. Friend, and he will have heard from the support for his intervention that the experience of most of us is that the regionalisation of call centres for our police services is simply not working. It is unpopular with those of us who want to use the service and generally increases anxiety when a critical 999 call is being made. It is not working well.

In my constituency, police resources have been diverted into Birmingham, which has left outlying areas very exposed. When I asked my local chief constable why response times were so long in my constituency, he replied, "It's simple, Mrs. Spelman, as a police force we have 98 hot spots to focus on and none of those is in your constituency." With people forking out for way above inflation increases in council tax, they are entitled to ask why the Government can no longer afford to maintain local services.

That issue of resource allocation is part and parcel of accountability. Once the regional framework for such services has been established, they will no longer be answerable to the communities that they serve. By determining targets and priorities at a regional level, accountability is being eroded, and in the long term that can only make life more difficult for front-line staff. Historically, the strength of our emergency services has been partly derived from the support of the society that they serve, but by adopting a regional structure that crucial relationship is broken. How can a single body serving a region of up to 8 million people possibly be more responsive than a locally-based, locally-accountable service?

Over and above the advantages that we know we will lose by moving to a regional structure, what about all the risks that go with such a radical upheaval? I am not a natural pessimist, but the track record of this Government on delivering grand IT projects is not great. The tax credits and the Passport Agency fiasco bear witness to how badly things can go wrong, and the consequences of such a breakdown when it comes to providing rescue services is unimaginable. Obviously, the worst case scenario is loss of life arising from an IT breakdown, but even risks such as project over-run in terms of both time and budget will end up impacting on council tax bills. Yet again people will be forced to dip into their pockets and pay for the costs of regionalisation, which they never even wanted—costs that some estimate could run as high as £988 million for the restructuring of fire services alone.

What is the driver behind this headlong rush into regionalisation? Certainly, it is not that local people want it. As a project, it seems fraught with risks that are simply not outweighed by the benefits. I am no military tactician, but it would seem elementary that in the current climate of heightened security, consolidating multiple emergency services into just one location makes the overall structure even more vulnerable to attack. If a regional centre is knocked out, I presume that the fallback would be another regional centre even further away. That smacks of putting all our eggs in one basket.

No one is going to be fooled by the packaging of these proposals. People can see that reorganisation is a cost-cutting exercise, not least because of the 1,300 or so jobs that will be lost in local fire control rooms. Although these changes will not be complete until 2009, as the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) pointed out, the reality is that jobs will start leaching away from now, undermining the quality of the service in the interim. That will happen with all emergency services as regionalisation gathers pace. Attractive headlines such as "A New Era for NHS Ambulance Services", cannot mask the inevitable decline that will follow. Certainly, that will not satisfy an efficient ambulance trust such as Warwickshire, which makes half the number of patient journeys as London with just one tenth of the funding. Ambulance trust managers suspect that it is much more about the Government delivering their manifesto pledge to provide £250 million worth of savings in NHS administration. Surely it is the Chancellor who should be subject to efficiency savings and performance delivery targets rather than our front-line emergency services.

In whose interest is regionalisation really taking place? The ambulance service review said that trusts needed to be

"of a size to provide better financial, operational and resource management."

But there is no mention of the patients. Everyone knows that rural ambulances have to carry more kit because of the greater distances over which they have to travel, but will that get overlooked under regional procurement? I am not even convinced that regionalisation delivers cost benefits. It is rare for reorganisation to save money. It is not that we believe that no scope exists for amalgamating services; scope does exist, if doing so is practical and people want it. That is why we have set out an alternative "clustering" of local authorities, as and when they see fit. Such an arrangement will be more responsive to local demands and will better reflect considerations such as population, geography and infrastructure. It is a far more practical solution than a one-size-fits-all jacket of regionalisation. Above all, it ensures proper accountability.

May I provide some evidence to support my hon. Friend's assertion? Only last night, the now Conservative-controlled Isle of Wight council agreed to co-operate with Conservative-controlled Hampshire council on the provision of fire services. They did not need to amalgamate to provide an improved service.

indicated assent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) demonstrates the benefit of an entirely voluntary, clustered approach in which both parties see the benefit of the merger.

People at the front line know where and when to coalesce far better than a bureaucrat in Whitehall, so why do the Government not trust them and give them that freedom? This Government will not embrace clustering because to do so is to grant local authorities and service providers a degree of autonomy: in other words, it is decentralisation. No matter how hard the Government try to speak the language of localism, they still behave as if central Government know best. That is why regionalisation, in whatever form, is not a way of delivering localism; it is just a way of enforcing centralism. The evidence is there. The Government have created a plethora of unelected regional bodies in what amounts to a "quangocracy". The A to Z of this quangocracy covers art, biodiversity, climate change, fire, housing, industry, public health, rural affairs, social inclusion, tobacco, transport and waste.

Local people are finding that decisions directly affecting their lives are being taken by regional assemblies that they cannot hold to account. Who are these assemblies answerable to? They are answerable to nobody—except the Deputy Prime Minister. If that is localism, the mind boggles as to what form a dictatorship would take. If people are paying for them, do they not have a right to know what these unelected regional bodies are up to? Why are the regional assemblies exempt from the Freedom of Information Act 2000? The Lord Chancellor still has not replied to that question, which I put to him a week ago, so perhaps the Minister could do so when he responds.

Something tells me that that the Government are all too aware of the folly of this regionalisation programme. There are few—except the Deputy Prime Minister himself—who would rush to defend it, but in fact regionalisation has gone beyond being his personal plaything: it has become a proxy for sweeping cuts to our public services. Taxpayers have a right to know what has happened to their money. Has a risk assessment or a cost-benefit analysis of regionalisation been carried out? [Interruption.] The Minister says yes, so perhaps he we would like to publish it and make it available to Members.

When local police stations, fire control rooms and ambulance trusts are boarded up and the land used for the Deputy Prime Minister's so-called £60,000 houses, people will see how he and the Chancellor have conspired to scrap their local emergency services, and they will not thank them for it. There is no demand for regionalisation; the quality of our services will suffer and it comes at a high price. Surely now is the time to abort this disastrous regionalisation programme and to accede to the wishes of the electorate. The Deputy Prime Minister is playing politics with people's lives, putting his empire building before the public interest. The rest of us in politics understand that the public interest must come first.

I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to end and add:

"supports local, regional and national collaboration to improve public safety and health; welcomes the continuing reduction in fire deaths which Fire and Rescue Authorities have achieved in partnership with the Government and other stakeholders; welcomes the positive role played by local authorities in Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships and the fall in crime as a result; welcomes the public consultation under way to ensure police force structures protect the public from terrorism and organised crime, while continuing to provide responsive neighbourhood policing that meets the needs of local communities; welcomes the proposed managerial changes in ambulance trusts which will cut overheads and bureaucracy, while boosting investment in front-line staff and services for patients; and congratulates the Government on increasing expenditure on all the emergency services since its election in 1997.".

I speak on behalf of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister as the Minister responsible for the fire and rescue service—one of the emergency services whose future has, we have just been told, prompted today's debate. Anyone reading the Opposition motion would be led to believe that our emergency services are either in difficulty or about to be so. With respect, that argument does not stand up to inspection.

I shall try to respond to the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) by outlining exactly how much progress has been made in recent years, especially in the fire and rescue services. The Government's role in trying to deliver this progress has been clear. On the back of the 2002–03 fire dispute, we had the Bain inquiry—an independent review that recommended what Professor Bain called "supra-brigade co-ordination". He argued that local fire services could improve their effectiveness in saving lives by working together at regional level in key areas such as command and control. The June 2003 White Paper and the subsequent national framework documents set the strategic direction for the 21st century fire and rescue service—one in which prevention has joined emergency response as a core function.

Although the Bain review recommended co-operation, it also specifically ruled out the merging of services.

The hon. Lady makes a fair point; I was simply trying to explain that the Bain inquiry pointed in a particular direction. We are not trying to force amalgamations or mergers, but we do support co-operation and collaboration between county brigades where appropriate. As the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) mentioned earlier, such a decision was taken by the Isle of Wight and Hampshire fire authorities. We have discussed it and we know that it is a sensible move forward, and I will further discuss Professor Bain's recommendations in due course.

As my hon. Friend knows and as has been mentioned, we have the tri-service centre in Quedgeley, in Gloucester, which has been subjected to an initial evaluation. Will he now agree to a full evaluation, and will he talk to the various parts of that service—not just the management, but the workers—to see whether that model has some merit and could be applied in other parts of the country?

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He has written to me about this issue and we have discussed it, and I will in due course explain in detail why we are not convinced that that model is the best one for 21st century fire brigades, and why the proposal on which we will deliver is the best way forward for England's fire and rescue services.

The fire and rescue national framework sets out the Government's priorities and objectives for the fire and rescue service. What both the authorities and the Government need to do is to achieve them. The framework provides clear direction from central Government, while ensuring that locally, authorities are free to continue to make their own strategic decisions about fire cover.

We have set overall public service agreement targets. By 2010, we want to cut accidental fire deaths in the home by 20 per cent. and deliberate fires by 10 per cent.

You say that local authorities can choose whether to amalgamate. Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire fire authorities have chosen to do so and that is good practice, but such choice does not apply to fire control centres. They have no choice—you are imposing regional control centres on them.

Order. I would never impose anything on anyone.

If the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) can be patient, I shall discuss the specific arrangements and our proposals for fire controls in greater detail later.

As I was saying a few moments ago, we have set firm public service agreement targets to cut accidental deaths, injuries and fires in the home—targets that were attacked by some and criticised by many who said that the 20 per cent. cut in deaths was not ambitious enough and that we should have zero tolerance of fire deaths. However, it is our belief that setting this target is achievable, practicable and provides a good way forward for the immediate future.

The Minister's ideas and targets for reducing deaths are laudable. To a degree, fire deaths are at a plateau in respect of the next series to be reduced, but surely the most logical approach is to tackle the problem of houses in multiple occupation. In particular, we should be thinking about using sprinkler schemes. The Minister is going to spend considerable amounts of money on reorganisation, but would it not be better spent on sprinklers and tackling the problem of houses in multiple occupation?

The hon. Gentleman demonstrates his familiarity with his subject. There is no disagreement between us that sprinkler systems are an effective way of protecting people, particularly the most vulnerable. I commend to him this morning's Westminster Hall debate with the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) on the very subject of smoke detectors. What I said there demonstrates exactly what the Government are trying to achieve through the development of domestic sprinkler systems, which we believe will protect the most vulnerable in our communities. I do not disagree with the idea of moving in that direction, but I am also saying that any savings made from the new regional control centres will be available for fire and rescue services to deploy for the better protection of their local communities. I shall say more about that in due course.

The former Minister, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), who now sits on the Back Benches, was clear in Committee that the Government were looking towards taking action on sprinkler systems and that new legislation would be introduced in the form of building regulations. Can the Minister tell us when that is likely to happen?

The building regulations document is out for consultation at the moment and we expect the outcome of that consultation to be known shortly. I shall endeavour to supply the hon. Gentleman with the exact date in due course.

The Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 put prevention at the heart of the Government's agenda for improving the fire and rescue service and created a new duty to promote fire safety. The Government are also reforming general fire safety legislation, ensuring that the responsibility for safety in non-domestic premises will rest with the person responsible for those premises. From 1 April next year, the Regulatory Reform Order 2001 will simplify the law, remove a bureaucratic regime of fire certification, and replace it with a modern risk assessment approach.

We are investing substantially in the service, including in new personal protective equipment for firefighters' own safety and new training facilities and opportunities. In particular, the training facilities for urban search and rescue at the Fire Service college are now regarded as the best in the world. Grant support is also targeted for local action to reduce arson and other fire risks. Under the home fire risk check programme, for example, we are funding to the total of £25 million a programme of visits to the 1,250,000 houses that are judged to be most at risk from fire to offer advice and practical help such as the free installation of smoke alarms. In the first six months of this year alone, 87,000 such visits took place and 91,000 new smoke alarms were fitted. I have already mentioned this morning's Westminster Hall debate on the subject, sponsored by the hon. Member for Rochdale.

In 2005–06, fire and rescue authorities received an average 3.7 per cent. grant increase and no authority received less than 2.5 per cent. In addition to that investment in fire prevention and mainstream emergency response, the Government are investing heavily in a new resilience framework—approaching £1 billion to create a national network of regional fire control centres, called FiReControl—a new radio system called Firelink and a new dimensions programme, which has seen us commit £180 million for mass decontamination, urban search and rescue, and high-volume pumping equipment to improve the capability of the fire and rescue service to respond to major disasters, including terrorist incidents.

The Minister knows from our discussion yesterday that I was lobbied by the fire control staffs of the five component counties of the east midlands, which will see their centres closed and relocated to the northern part of north-west Leicestershire. If he is so convinced of the strength of his case on regional centres, will he now announce that there will be an independent assessment of the business case that underpins a very expensive and quite risky project?

My hon. Friend raised that matter with me yesterday and he will recall that I suggested that if he listened to my full explanation, he might be persuaded that a full independent assessment was unnecessary. The Government certainly do not believe that such an assessment is needed. We believe that all the protocols of assessment within the Government have been observed and that the business case, as well as the professional and organisational case, clearly stand up to scrutiny.

rose—

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I have already spent 10 minutes, but I am only a third of the way through my speech. I will give way later, but we have only limited time and many colleagues wish to participate in the debate. If he insists, however, I will give way.

I am grateful. Will the Minister respond to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) about the Government's lamentable performance on new information technology projects, which are absolutely key to success?

Yes, I shall deal with the issue later in my speech, but to anticipate, nothing that we are going to deploy in the new regional control centres has to be invented. Everything is already in existence and already deployed in fire control centres in different parts of the country. The problem is that only a minority of fire services have and enjoy the benefits, which we are going to roll out to all 46 English fire brigades so that the latest technology will be available to all.

I have said many times before that existing control staff do a good job, but that does not mean that we have a control system suited to the demands of the 21st century. To respond more fully to the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon), with FiReControl, we will enhance the role of control staff with the latest technology, which has a proven track record with emergency services across the country. The new national network will make it possible to respond effectively to all incidents, however big, whether natural disasters or terrorist attack, and allow the service to deal with surges in demand that can currently overwhelm local resources. Should one centre be out of action because of loss of power or telecommunications, it will allow immediate fallback arrangements. It will underpin dynamic mobilising of appliances to help cut incident response times, resulting in saving lives and reducing property damage, as well as allowing data transfer from control rooms to the cab or fire appliances on the way to incidents.

Will the Minister also explain whether the new system will be interactive in respect of information and control with police control systems?

The gold command structure has worked effectively from 7 July and the Firelink radio communication system will have interoperability, which is part of the modernisation process in communications.

In carrying all that out, we estimate savings of more than £20 million a year and a 30 per cent. reduction in annual running costs, with the money saved to be reinvested in the service. There is an overwhelming case on resilience and efficiency grounds for FiReControl, which will help deliver individual fire and rescue authorities' integrated risk management plans and be fully accountable to those authorities.

All that makes the Opposition motion particularly baffling, as we have freed the fire and rescue services from centralised state control. We have repealed section 19 of the Fire Services Act 1947, which meant that almost any change in local operational delivery required ministerial approval, and removed the outdated national standards for fire cover that forced local professional chief fire officers into a Whitehall-imposed straitjacket. We have thus moved the emphasis of protection for the fire and rescue service from buildings to people, and put the service under local control.

The Oxfordshire fire service does not want a regional fire and control centre. The Minister has talked a lot about resilience, but how will he protect the integrity of control centres between now and 2009? There are 22 jobs at Kidlington. Those people owe their families a duty of care, and they will drift away and find employment elsewhere. How will he ensure that the Oxfordshire fire and control centre will still operate between now and 2009?

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which is being addressed by local fire authorities, chief fire officers and human resources managers. My Department is also looking at its ability to assist in the transfer arrangements between now and 2009. We know that the majority of posts will be maintained, and we are confident that most control room staff will want to avail themselves of the new opportunities for better career paths in the new control rooms. There will be better facilities, and greater demands will be placed on the professionalism of staff, many of whom are under-utilised at present. However, not everyone will adopt the same approach, and it is clear that management will have to deal with that.

I was saying that I hoped that all hon. Members would welcome the integrated risk management plans, which respond to many of the needs of our constituents and communities. As has been noted in the past few minutes, people do not want to be told by Whitehall what to do and how to deploy resources. Throughout, we have sought to work with the elected members of fire and rescue authorities to modernise and improve the service so that we can achieve our common goal of saving lives, reducing injuries and preventing fires.

My question may be hypothetical, but it is all too possible. A person who reports a fire in my area might not know the locality and so may not be able to describe the address. An operator in a regional fire control centre is far less likely to be able to fill in the gaps in that report than would be the case with a local fire control operator. Therefore, would not a regional fire control centre be less likely to save lives than a local one?

I shall draw two analogies for the hon. Gentleman. First, London has a single control centre that covers several hundred square miles, and a population of 7 million people who speak 300 languages. However, that centre's staff are among the most efficient in the country. By contrast, the Strathclyde centre deals with most of the west coast of Scotland, which includes both rural and metropolitan communities. The latest technology and the professionalism of our control staff mean that reports are being dealt with more efficiently than ever before. I strongly advise the hon. Gentleman to look at the modern control rooms that a minority of this country's fire brigades have. I accept that not every brigade has a modern control room, but we want to make the technology available to everyone. His question is a fair one, but the problem will be resolved by the use of modern technology.

Naturally, there is a regional dimension to this matter. The Government offices for the regions exist because, more than a decade ago, the Conservative Government of the time decided that it made sound organisational sense for different Departments to operate within the same geographical boundaries. The same logic—

The Government offices for the regions were set up originally to act as a one-stop-shop interface between Whitehall Departments, especially for people a long way from London. They were never conceived as an accountable body to which emergency services should be responsible. Does the Minister accept that the Government's policy of establishing elected regional assemblies has failed, and that the proposed regionalisation of the emergency services is not democratically accountable?

The world has moved on, and indirectly elected regional assemblies now exist. In the fire service, for example, there are regional resilience forums, through which the fire and rescue service can co-ordinate with other organisations how best to respond to natural disasters and emergencies. The London resilience forum has been working since September 2001. I respectfully suggest to the hon. Lady that its existence was what helped London respond so effectively to the bombings in July. It served as a clearing house for all the major organisations in business, emergency services, the voluntary sector and local authorities. It allowed those bodies to plan for such an incident, and we all know how well London responded when the time came. We need to establish the same structures at regional level in all parts of England, to ensure that the country is protected. That is a question not of ideology, but of basic common sense.

I turn now to the restructuring of the police force. At present there are 43 police forces in England and Wales, and for some time people have questioned whether that is the right structure. Police forces need to be able to tackle crime at all levels. They need to be able to deliver neighbourhood policing, and have the capacity and ability to meet the threats posed by terrorism, domestic extremism, serious organised crime and civil emergencies.

Concern has been expressed—not least within the police service itself—that the existing force structure is not fit to undertake both those critical roles. For that reason, in June 2004 my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary commissioned Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary to examine whether the service was sufficiently robust to handle the whole spectrum of its responsibilities. The HMIC's findings were published last month in a report entitled "Closing the Gap". It concluded that the existing structure was no longer fit for its purpose and that, below a certain size, there is not a sufficient critical mass to provide the necessary sustainable level of protective services that the 21st century increasingly demands.

Will the Minister give way?

I am sorry, but I must make progress. The inspectorate looked at a number of options for restructuring the police service. It concluded that the creation of strategic forces offered the best solution, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary agreed. He has made it clear that he has no blueprint for restructuring, and that the process should be led by the police. He has therefore invited chief constables and police authorities to submit proposals for restructuring by 23 December.

Will the Minister give way?

I will in a moment. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is confident that the proposals for strategic forces will improve our capacity to tackle the most serious crimes, and therefore strengthen local policing. The bedrock for the delivery of neighbourhood policing is the basic command unit. That will not change. Local policing will continue to be delivered from local police stations, by locally based police officers, special constables and community support responding to locally determined policies.

In fact, far from putting local policing at risk, the creation of strategic forces will help safeguard neighbourhood policing. If a police force has the capacity and resilience to staff major crime teams or respond to public order incidents, it will not need to call on neighbourhood policing teams. If such capacity is not in place, local policing will suffer from abstractions to meet other demands. As I have said, police authorities and chief constables have been asked to submit firm proposals for restructuring by Christmas, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will report to the House on those submissions in the new year.

The Minister is very generous in giving way. If his thesis is that big, by definition, is beautiful, will he explain why the City of London police force is being left alone? That force has national strength in the prevention of white-collar fraud, but it is the smallest force in England. Why is it not to be touched?

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is making progress on the basis of the HMIC report, and further information will be available in due course. However, it is to the HMIC that he will listen and the hon. Gentleman will be able to continue this dialogue when the various police authorities have made their submissions and my right hon. Friend has presented his report to the House in the new year.

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I turn now to the ambulance service. A full 12-week public consultation led by the strategic health authorities will be held on the future organisation of ambulance trusts. The Department of Health will propose that there should be 11 such trusts, but no final decision will be taken until local interests, patients and the public have been properly consulted. The proposed change is part of a wider review of ambulance services that sets out a compelling vision for the future. It will provide an extended range of service, take health care to the patient and offer fast, effective and convenient care at the first point of contact.

My hon. Friend made a powerful case about the fire control centres, but he has a less powerful case in relation to some other services. In Staffordshire, we have a high-performing police force. I have an outstandingly successful local primary care trust and the Staffordshire ambulance service is the best performing ambulance service in the country with the best response times. Our approach to public services used to be based around the slogan, "What matters is what works." That was sensible. What is not sensible is to exchange that for a slogan of, "If it's working well, abolish it."

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point in defence of the Staffordshire ambulance trust, and I am sure note will be taken of his comments in the consultation, which is under way. We are not trying to replace what works best. We are trying to make sure that what works best works across the country.

In relation to the police service, the Minister has just said that he is going to have a police service-led review. In relation to the ambulance service, he has been told by the Department of Health that the Department will propose 11 trusts. Why cannot he accept that the review led by Peter Bradley did not point towards 11 trusts but to maybe 20-plus? Also, if the review were ambulance service-led, there would be a different solution. Why will he not have open consultation on the basis of an ambulance service-led solution?

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman; the consultation is open. I have indicated that, at the conclusion of the submissions, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will report to the House in due course. Clearly that will provide opportunities to colleagues to make their feelings known.

It is our belief that ambulance trusts need to be of a size that enables appropriate investment in people and resources to underpin current and future services. These proposals will ensure that resources are targeted where they are most needed in improving patient care and supporting the front line. It is not about reducing frontline service provision. Local innovations and successes will not only be preserved, but will be shared to the benefit of all patients.

We have an opportunity to lift the quality of the lowest and to set a new high benchmark where world-class services are provided for patients wherever they live. Nor is it about one trust taking over another; it is about new trusts that provide efficient and effective locally responsive ambulance trusts that meet patient needs. We believe that these proposals will put the NHS in the best position to provide convenient, consistently high-quality and appropriately mobile health care for the people of England. I am sure that the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton) will be saying more about this in due course.

I thank the Minister for his courtesy in giving way. May I take him back to policing? The Government seem convinced that big is beautiful. They are trying to press chief constables to have fewer and fewer divisions and are now threatening to get rid of well established county forces such as Essex. How will having fewer and fewer divisions and getting rid of the Essex police force make that force more accountable to the local people whom they are supposed to serve?

I remind the hon. Gentleman that one of the big successes in recent years, certainly in London, has been neighbourhood policing; dedicated teams in the locality that are connecting with local people and local representatives, whether these are democratically elected or community groups. As I said, the measure will give capacity to allow forces to deal with the big incidents and challenges of the 21st century, while being able to be responsive to local needs and to deal with local problems, which is what people want most. That is a success story that we are rolling out across the country.

Finally, over the summer recess, I have had the opportunity to visit a number of fire and rescue services across the country. These visits have given me the opportunity to see at first hand the excellent work going on locally, especially new work on community safety, including youth intervention schemes and the growing use of co-responder schemes in which, again, the emergency services work together.

Fire and rescue authorities have in general responded well to the challenge presented by their new responsibilities. The combination of national strategy and investment with local delivery led by elected fire and rescue authority members is working. Nowhere is this clearer than in the voluntary regional management boards, where Conservative and Liberal Democrat members work alongside their Labour colleagues to provide the best service for their communities. They know how important it is to support the fire and rescue service, and the improvements can be clearly seen on the ground.

Our approach—I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), but I do firmly believe in our approach—has the full backing of the Chief Fire Officers Association, who lead a practitioners' forum that gives us expert professional advice, the Local Government Association, who are key partners in modernisation, and the stakeholders represented in our business and community safety forum.

I pay tribute to our whole-time, day crewing and retained firefighters as well as to other fire service staff who serve our communities well. We know that, regardless of debates about geographic boundaries and management structures, the Fire and Rescue Service will continue to work with local people, elected representatives from all parties and other emergency services to give the public the protection and the help they expect and deserve.

We should begin by scotching the first myth of this debate: that Labour started the process of quangocratisation. [Interruption.] It is a long word, is it not? It is a good way to start. In 1994, the Conservatives invented a system whereby the Home Office appointed independent members to police authorities, thereby separating the relationship with county councils and, in effect, quangocratising it.

Let us not pretend that the Conservatives oppose regional quangos. In London, they abolished elected regional government and replaced it with a host of regional quangos, such as the London planning advisory committee, the London research centre and the London ecology unit. They did not oppose that then and they do not oppose it now. They are going through a phase of claiming to champion local government—probably because they have lost faith in their ability to get into government nationally.

In office, the Conservatives were responsible for some of the worst crimes of centralised tyranny and affronts to local democracy—for example, universal and arbitrary rate capping and the nationalisation of business rates. Despite their high moral tone today—it sticks in my throat even more than my October cold, which, forgive me, has made me cough throughout the debate so far—there is little substantive detail in their policies on localising power.

The Conservatives' polices to abolish quangos leave a lot to be desired. Before the election they promised to abolish 168 quangos—a swathe of quangos, particularly in the Department of Health, that the Government were already abolishing. Another group of quangos on the list had not met for 15 or 20 years. Of the others, the majority had been proposed for privatisation or renationalisation. I do not call that an expansion of local democracy. The only quangos whose powers would be returned to local government were regional assemblies, regional observatories and regional housing boards.

If the Conservatives want to defend local accountability, why on earth are they so opposed to regions? The main reasons are some kind of strange conspiracy theory about Europe, concern about the committee of regions and a perceived threat to county councils, when instead they should be making proposals to devolve power from central Government.

Let us have a look at Labour. Regions were already a fait accompli when it came to power because the Conservatives had developed the regional offices. Labour, however, did have a good idea that we supported, although we disagreed on some of the details, which was to make regional government accountable. We supported the proposals to establish elected regional assemblies across the country because they would deal with the democratic deficit of regional government, which at present is unaccountable. We did not think that the proposed devolution went far enough and we disagreed with the compulsory link with local government reorganisation. That is history: the question now is how we move beyond the north-east referendum.

Does the hon. Lady agree that more important than what the Liberal Democrats think is what the people think? In the north-east of England, 78 per cent. of the people said that they hated the idea of elected regional assemblies. Does she want to go against the will of the people?

That is precisely the point. The people in the north-east rejected the proposals, yet, regardless of their views, Labour is ploughing ahead with the regional agenda. Our view is that governance without accountability would be a massive step backwards.

Perhaps Labour has achieved what it wanted all along, because the regional quangos are still in place. Unelected bodies with a membership largely appointed by ministerial fiat tend to do what they are told. If they do not, they can be overruled with impunity. However, if the Labour Government were true to the democratic traditions of this country, they would seek to reform those bodies to make them more accountable, not less accountable, and more in touch with their local communities, not less. Instead, vital services will become even more remote from the people they serve.

What of the pragmatic details of regionalising emergency services? Hon. Members would expect me not to subscribe to the view that big is beautiful, but the existing 43 police authorities vary considerably in size and capacity. I accept the scope for reviewing relationships across forces, but why will the process be so top-down? The Minister suggested that it would be led by police from the bottom up, but will he give us an assurance today that if police authorities oppose the proposals to merge, they will be allowed to retain the forces that they believe to be best for local people? Perhaps that question could be answered in the wind-up. At a time when everybody says that they want more community policing, the priority should be to make the police more local, not more distant.

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and the Minister failed to respond to hon. Members who made similar points earlier. If a police force is organised to be more efficient for a small number of rare but serious crimes, police authorities will focus on those crimes to the detriment of local community policing. I do not see how that can fit with the Department's emphasis on communities and neighbourhoods.

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point about the danger of skewing police operations towards rare incidents. I understand that responding to such incidents eats up the resources of small forces, but there must be other ways of addressing that problem. For example, we could have a national resources unit, with senior officers and experts who could provide back-up in complex cases. That would be better than proposing to run rural policing in Cornwall from Exeter or, even worse, Bristol, which would feel a long way from people who live in rural Cornwall.

The Government have proposed much structural reform but have failed to account for the existing fundamental flaw in police authority structures—that they are tax-raising bodies but are not elected. Police authorities have put up their council tax precepts by 150 per cent. since 1997—double the figure for councils—but there has been no outcry. It is the councils who bill people, collect the money and take the blame. No one begrudges the police the extra money that we know they need, but what happened to the principle of no taxation without representation? The Government should consider ways of making the police more accountable. The Liberal Democrats are consulting on our policies following the result of the north-east referendum, and we will look for ways of making police and other services more democratically accountable.

One of the options—of many—that my colleagues have raised is the provision of policing contracts with local authorities. Each council would negotiate a local policing contract with the police authority, based on an agreed local policing plan and a minimum service agreement. The contract would specify the level of funding for the police authority and set out the minimum deployment of police and community support officers in each district or borough.

We must also abolish the byzantine system of appointment for independent members of police authorities. We would remove the role of the Home Secretary and have a more transparent, locally controlled process that would be far more in the hands of local people. The Government are quiet on such issues, but why are they not thinking more boldly about how to make police authorities and other structures more accountable?

I invite the hon. Lady to visit the west midlands, which has the largest police force outside London. We have neighbourhood policing, with operational command units—as we call them, although other forces call them basic command units—that work well and provide the local focus. She might need more information about the work of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, because the police are intimately involved in local area network arrangements—which we have pioneered in Wolverhampton—and I think that ultimately there will be more accountability in policing budgets. The devolving of power is already working well in our large police force, so amalgamations in the greater west midlands are driven by the needs of forces such as Warwickshire for the specialist services to which she refers.

My point was that such issues should be locally determined. In some areas, it is right and proper that forces work together, but the west midlands is geographically different from the area that would be created by linking Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge, with far greater numbers of people involved.

Fire services have been the predominant issue in the debate. Ironically, the Conservatives have supported the Fire Brigades Union's line. The hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) has not yet revealed whom she intends to support in the Conservative leadership contest, but perhaps she has given us a little clue today.

As a Conservative MP and former member of the FBU, I can say that I am proud of my links to the FBU, which does a fantastic job for its members.

That is an interesting observation and perhaps evidence of a lurch to the left by the Conservatives.

As the Minister said, the impetus for fire service reform came from the Bain review, but it focused on the need for more fire prevention, rather than just firefighting, and that can be achieved only by a community-based force. Bain specifically advised against regional reorganisation and instead proposed regional co-operation. He suggested that co-operation could achieve all the benefits without major organisational structure change. However, the Government's response ignored Bain's advice and set out to establish regional fire authorities as part of regional assemblies. Once the wheels came off the plan for elected regional assemblies, the Government ploughed ahead regardless. Had fire services been accountable to elected regional assemblies, that would have dealt with the democratic deficit created by an unelected tax-levying body, but without the democratisation of regional government the major structural reorganisation has little genuine benefit for local people.

I commiserate with the hon. Lady on her present ill health. I have listened carefully to her argument about the breakdown in the logic behind reorganisation. Did she say that her party is consulting on whether it should still be committed to elected regional assemblies, or is it still committed to them? I would be grateful for clarification.

We are consulting on what we should do following the north-east referendum. We accept that the proposals on offer were rejected, but many other options are possible. Some form of regional government is necessary to democratise the present systems. That could be achieved in many different ways and I do not wish to prejudge our review by discussing it in detail now. I would be happy to discus the issue in detail with the hon. Lady at some other point.

The Minister mentioned national resilience, but serious emergencies require serious contingency planning that would, by its very nature, require co-operation between services. Where would the process stop? Does the Minister suggest that it would be worth consolidating all functions into one giant structure, just in case it needs to be run from Downing street? That cannot be the way forward, although I recognise the Government's tendency towards it. Is it necessarily any more resilient to have nine large control centres instead of 46 smaller ones? The impact of taking one centre off-line would be huge.

There is no perfect solution, but compulsory regional fire control rules out the possibility of co-operation between emergency services. The hon. Members for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper) and for Stroud (Mr. Drew) have spoken already about the successful tri-service control centre in Gloucestershire. Would that have to be broken up under the current proposals? It looks as though it would.

The regionalisation of fire services would break the links with local communities, and the same would be true of policing. We need a fire service that is much more integrated in communities, especially if we want it to deal more with prevention. What about the Divali prevention of fire campaigns that are almost certainly going on up and down the country at present? Should the one in Bradford be run by a city somewhere on the other side of the country? I do not think so. That is not the way to deal with local considerations.

Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister's example of the way in which regional planning works was drawn from London? London is one place, unlike the south-east, as the Department of Health recognises. The Department has offered the Isle of Wight the opportunity to continue to have its own ambulance service, because it realises that the south-east is not simply one place.

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. There is a tendency to view structures that work in one area as easily transplantable elsewhere. We see that with many of the Government's ideas about city regions in the north. Their ideas might work perfectly well in some areas of the north of England, but they will not transfer well to the south-east or east of the country where the relationship between cities and rural areas is not the same. We have to accept that the one-size-fits-all approach will not deliver the improvements in service delivery that we want. It will certainly not improve democratic accountability.

There seems to be no obvious logic to the structural reorganisation proposed for ambulance services. The Government seem to have picked a random size for new ambulance trusts that ties in with none of the other tiers of administration in the national health service. Instead of reforming ambulance services into arbitrarily sized organisations, the Government should consider integrating services with hospitals and emergency care. How will it be possible to do anything sensible if trusts are not coterminous with anything already in the system? A modern ambulance service is not just about driving injured people to hospital; it is staffed by highly trained paramedics who increasingly treat casualties at the scene.

The proposed move will tear a hole in any attempt to connect the ambulance service to the rest of the NHS. Why move to larger authorities? There is no evidence to suggest that it would be more efficient or would save more lives. We have already heard quotes from the chief executive of the Staffordshire ambulance trust, who is extremely concerned. We should listen carefully to people on the ground with experience of running such services who say that a move to larger structures will not help to improve the service to patients.

I can give the hon. Lady an excellent example from the north-east, where the North East ambulance service has been in existence for nearly 10 years. It cuts across two strategic health authorities and numerous trusts. In the summer, I had the honour of spending a night shift with the paramedics, who found none of the problems that the hon. Lady is outlining. Furthermore, more money was coming in for new technology, which helped them to do their job.

I am sure that the North East ambulance service does an extremely good job, but I return to my earlier point: the fact that something works well in the north-east does not mean that the same structure will work well if it is applied somewhere else.

The Government are reorganising all our public services, but that makes a mockery of the claim that the new terms of reference for Sir Michael Lyons will deal with all the possible things that might come under local government. By the time he gets around to considering them, there will not be much left for local government to do.

We are holding the wrong debate; we are talking about structures when we should be talking about accountability. The debate should be about how we can fit structures into our elected organisations and then put them under the control of elected representatives. Our party is conducting a major review of how local services should be delivered and by whom, but at the heart of our thinking will be the principle of accountability. We have learned that when 77.9 per cent. of people vote against something that we want to do, we do not plough ahead and do it regardless. Taking note of those views is accountability. That is what we should do when we are elected and it is something that the Government need to learn.

I declare an interest, as I have recently been invited to take on the chairmanship of the Fire Protection Association—

Did my right hon. Friend accept?

I have accepted and the position has been approved by the advisory committee on appointments for former Ministers, with the caveat that I should not indulge in the lobbying of Ministers for a year from the time that I ceased to be one. I hope that nothing I say now will be seen as lobbying Ministers.

I am astonished that the Opposition should table a motion about the emergency services with no reference, let alone a tribute, to the performance of our emergency services who responded so magnificently to the problems that occurred on 7 and 21 July—[Interruption.] I make that comment only about the motion on the Order Paper. I was about to offer an apology to the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) because I was unable to be in the Chamber for the first few minutes of her speech as I was at another meeting. She may have corrected that—[Interruption.] I was making the point that the motion setting out the Opposition position made no reference whatever to the performance of the emergency services, and I stand by that.

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The hon. Lady should listen to this. Even more astonishing is the fact that the Opposition have drawn a veil of silence over the proposals for reorganisation that they touted over the previous three years. How many times can we recall hearing the Opposition criticise our arrangements for enhancing and improving the capacity of our emergency services to cope with whatever might be thrown at them with the continued refrain, "You aren't doing as well as the Americans. You ought to have a department of homeland security."? How many times did Opposition spokesmen tell us to set up a department of homeland security? Why are they now so silent about that? I give way to the hon. Lady and invite her to comment on why the Opposition have forgotten, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the performance of the American department of homeland security, their espousal of such a structure in the UK?

I want to address the accusation that we had not paid tribute to the work of our emergency services. The right hon. Gentleman acknowledged that he had not been in the Chamber for the whole of my speech but, before he came in, I made the point that at least two Members present had been directly involved and served with the emergency services and I said how much I respected those who put their lives on the line. It is dangerous for the right hon. Gentleman to call into question our sincerity on that point when he was not present. As for the rest of his diatribe, I think he was trying to change the subject. He is a respected specialist on the whole subject of local government and its remit, but I wish that he would save his ire and frustration about what is happening and direct it at his own Front Bench.

The hon. Lady's intervention entirely ignored my point, which was that the Opposition motion made no reference to the performance of the emergency services and paid no tribute to them. That is an interesting comment. Secondly, her feeble attempt to skate over her party's commitment to an expensive and unproven reorganisation of the structure for oversight of the emergency services is also interesting—

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I am delighted to give way to the hon. Gentleman, who put that proposition for reorganisation to me many times over the past two years. I look forward to hearing his justification.

I was not an MP until May this year, so I do not think that I did.

To refer to the right hon. Gentleman's earlier point, I notice that the Government amendment to our motion pays no particular tribute to our emergency services, so perhaps his criticism of my hon. Friend should be directed at the Treasury Bench.

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. My eyesight is not good and I mistook him for another hon. Member.

This is an Opposition day debate. It is the Opposition's motion and I stand exactly by what I said. Not only did the motion pay no tribute to the work of the emergency services, or even mention it, but the Opposition have entirely glossed over their misconceived commitment to a major, expensive reorganisation to create a department of homeland security which, as we have seen in the American example, did not perform as well as its advocates on the Conservative Benches might have liked to think it would by comparison with the performance of our emergency services on 7 July, to which my hon. Friend the Minister—

Order. Before the debate gets—dare I say?—a little heated, I remind all hon. Members that we should be discussing the Opposition motion and the Government amendment.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I want to say a little about the fire service. As the Government amendment rightly highlights, the fire service has been making important progress in achieving reductions in fire deaths and improving safety. That is the overriding objective. The new legislation, which I had the privilege of taking through the House during my time as a Minister, established a new priority of saving lives, as one of the service's key objectives, as my hon. Friend the Minister rightly said. Fire prevention is now absolutely on the agenda as a prime responsibility, something that had not been conceived of when the 1947 legislation was introduced.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the West Midlands fire service has been doing preventive work for many years, has one of the best records in that respect and is one of the largest fire services in the area? Large fire services can do very good preventive work and I pay tribute to the brothers and sisters in the West Midlands fire service for what they have done.

I wholeheartedly concur with my hon. Friend, who rightly highlights the good work that is being done in a number of fire authorities. Such work is being accelerated as a result of the White Paper, the legislation and the additional funds, to which my hon. Friend the Minister rightly alluded, that are being used to promote fire safety and ensure the greater installation of smoke alarms, particularly in vulnerable people's homes. It is astonishing that the hon. Member for Meriden referred to cuts in expenditure on emergency services. When the Conservative party was in government, the fire service did not have the equipment that it now has to deal with the new dimension of terrorist incidents.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

I will give way in a moment, but I remind the hon. Gentleman about the underfunding of the fire service in the past. He will know about that only too well, but he will also know that the new dimension programme has been fully funded by the Government.

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I will give way to the hon. Gentleman; I ask him to restrain himself.

As a result, fire authorities are now far better equipped to cope with a range of disasters, including flooding, with high-volume water pumps, and rescuing people from collapsed buildings, with urban search and rescue equipment. They are also getting additional funds to ensure that fire prevention and fire safety work can be given the priority that it deserves. That was not the pattern when the Conservative party was in power, and it is outrageous for the hon. Member for Meriden to suggest that the funding has been cut by a Government who have been fully funding the response to the new pressures on the fire service.

Perhaps we could talk about cuts today in Hertfordshire. Given the lack of funding, two brand-new appliances will not be required any more because the Government are closing two retained fire stations. Those are cuts today, not cuts eight years ago.

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman makes a great mistake if he goes from the particular to the general. Obviously, there will be changes and it is right that there should be. The old arrangements were inflexible and made it difficult for fire brigades to change the deployment of crews and equipment to meet today's threats. Those arrangements, based on 1940s legislation—he will be familiar with that—emphasised the protection of buildings. Although that is important, we believe that the saving of lives is more important. The new legislation rightly puts the focus on saving lives and fire authorities throughout the country are reviewing their arrangements to put a greater emphasis on that.

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I have given way to the hon. Gentleman, and I want to make progress.

Yes, the result is that there are changes. I have accepted the removal of one appliance from a station in my constituency, having looked carefully at the figures, which show, as the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority demonstrated, that there would be a better prospect of saving lives by moving an appliance from one of the Greenwich stations to Sidcup because today's threats are different from those that existed in the 1940s, when a lot of the provisions were initially put in place. Any good service must seriously consider the need for change to take account of today's pressures and threats. We cannot ossify arrangements based on past patterns. Some change is necessary, but to talk about cuts is nonsense when the Government are increasing funding, as my hon. Friend the Minister has stressed.

I want to talk about a little more about fire control, because some hon. Members made some misleading comments in their contributions on the issue. The fire control arrangements are designed to ensure that every fire authority in the country has the use of the best modern equipment to ensure that it can deploy resources as effectively as possible to meet whatever risks are faced. The new technology is not a leap into the unknown, as some people have suggested when referring to IT.

Those who have any doubt about the technology should visit fire brigades such as Norfolk or Merseyside, where it is already used successfully. It allows a lot more than is possible in most other areas. It allows automatic identification of where the call is coming from. In Merseyside, that has now been extended to cover calls from mobile phones, which present an increasing pressure on the service. It also allows the automatic mobilisation of the appliances that are closest placed to respond and ensures that the crew in the cab will automatically receive a printout that identifies the hazards that they might encounter at the site that they are going to. Every fire authority in the country should benefit from those state-of-the-art arrangements. Fire control will ensure that they do.

It has been suggested that local knowledge will be lost. Such knowledge has not been a major factor for fire control operations for many years since computerised gazetteering was introduced. Even in the existing authorities, it is unrealistic to expect a fire control operator to know the location of every village and town in a county, or every street in London, which already has a region-wide fire control operation. That is not possible. The new technology obviates that need because it presents the operator with a screen showing exactly where the call is coming from and where the appliance best placed to respond is. The red herring about local knowledge should be set aside.

The other factor, which cannot be set aside, is the huge savings that are possible by introducing the new system across the country, with a smaller number of much more efficient control centres, thus allowing the savings to be ploughed back into fire prevention—exactly the thing that we know will save lives.

The hon. Member for Meriden looks doubtful, but one of the statistics that I remember best from my period as the Minister responsible for the fire service is that half the people who die in domestic fires are dead before the fire brigade is alerted to the incident. However good they are—they are very good at responding to incidents—and however quickly they get to the site, they cannot save those lives. Prevention is critical if those lives are to be saved. If, as a result of making savings on fire control, some of those resources can be used to put more smoke alarms into vulnerable people's homes and to carry out more fire prevention work in the first place, more lives will saved. This is a sensible policy that is designed to give the best results.

I looked doubtful because I do not see the logic in the right hon. Gentleman's argument. If Norfolk, which he cited, is so successful with new technology, it does not automatically follow that things need to be restructured regionally. We could simply share best practice. He may be happy to lose one of the two appliances that he mentioned, but fire stations have gone from two to one appliance overnight throughout the west midlands. That is a cut.

I am afraid that the hon. Lady is exaggerating and not giving an accurate picture. I considered that argument very carefully, as any hon. Member would when presented with a proposal to remove an appliance, and I was convinced, when I had scrutinised and questioned the authority, that that was the right decision. Hon. Members should do that and not have a knee-jerk reaction and exaggerate, as the hon. Lady has done in implying that appliances are being taken out all over the west midlands. That is simply not the case.

The Norfolk technology is good, but it did not extend to mobile phones when I saw it. Merseyside has moved on and its technology covers them. Clearly, we need the best modern technology, with the greatest capacity, installed throughout the country, but it would simply not be economic to do so on the basis of the existing 46 control centres. In many cases, they are not organised well to respond. They may have sufficient staff to respond to any possible incident, but many of them will not have much work to do for a lot of the time because of the relatively small volume of calls.

For example, I looked at the figures for the Isle of Wight and I could see that, on average, a control room operator would expect to deal with probably no more than one incident in the entire shift on which they were on duty, because it is necessary to have sufficient staff on duty at any one time to cope with potential surges. That is simply not economic, and that is why the Isle of Wight has recognised that it cannot go on as an independent fire control centre.

By contrast, London is already organised on a regional basis and the fire control centre covers a much larger number of calls, so it is operating on a far more cost-effective basis. It gives as good a service, if not a better one, and does so with significant savings that then allow more focus on fire safety. I talk to the chief of the London fire brigade from time to time and he strongly emphasises his service's real commitment to driving down the number of lives lost unnecessarily in fires. That commitment is the result of the Government's policy and of the potential for making savings through an intelligent approach towards facing today's risks.

I thought that the speech of the hon. Member for Meriden and the Opposition motion were among the feeblest that I have come across in the House for a very long time. They indicate thinking that is stuck in the past and that shows no recognition of the failure of their abortive approach to reorganisation and to a department of homeland security. They show no willingness to engage in the serious debate—not the token debate with Opposition motions that are not worth the paper they are written on—about how to improve the fire service, save lives and ensure that we have the best and most effective service.

I hope that the House will reject the opportunistic Opposition motion and treat it with the contempt that it deserves.