Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Fire and Rescue Functions) (Amendment) Order 2020

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Tuesday 5th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, to the Front Bench and to the House. I congratulate him on making an effective maiden speech in very difficult circumstances. He set out clearly his background and the contribution that he will make. I echo my noble friend Lord Goddard of Stockport in saying that he is joining a strong local government team here, alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. We very much look forward to them defending local government inside the Government—as well as defending the Government in the House, no doubt. I look forward to not a virtual meeting but, in due course, a real meeting.

I thank the Greater Manchester Combined Authority for the briefings that it sent to me—and to other Members, no doubt—which outline some of the circumstances. At first sight, there is no doubt that this is a common-sense, tidying-up operation. It aligns the police and the fire and rescue service across Greater Manchester, which is definitely a good thing. It aims to produce a joined-up senior leadership structure to replace the one that was examined and criticised by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, in his report; it also aims to get a joined-up scrutiny function to go with it. I have no quarrel with that alignment. It will make those forces—the fire and rescue service and the police service—better able to co-ordinate their actions and to respond effectively in the face of major incidents, as they failed to do in the aftermath of the suicide bombing at the Ariana Grande concert.

I want to question the Minister on what might, at first glance, appear to be a minor and trivial part of this not very significant statutory instrument: the silent reduction in the capacity that there will be to scrutinise the fire and rescue service properly as a direct consequence of this statutory instrument. The Explanatory Memorandum tells the truth about the proposed new scrutiny process—of course it does—but it does not tell the whole truth. It says that:

“Provision is also included to give the Police and Crime Panel the authority to scrutinise fire and rescue functions in the Greater Manchester Combined Area.”


It certainly does that. It says what the new scrutiny arrangements will be, but it is silent on what the old scrutiny arrangements have been up to now in the fire and rescue service, and in that silence is the mischief that I want to comment on.

Let me fill in the gap for noble Lords. At present, by law, the fire and rescue scrutiny panel must be chaired by a member in opposition to the mayor’s party. The panel must be balanced in accordance with the pattern of overall elected party representation across the 10 constituent boroughs. As the Minister will know, this is very much in line with local government practice that scrutiny should be led by poachers and not gamekeepers; it avoids state capture of the scrutiny process and the subsequent reduction of scrutiny to token box-ticking. The chair of any scrutiny panel sets the agenda and can choose what to focus on and what to put to one side. In Greater Manchester, there are no directly elected representatives to hold the mayor to account. The scrutiny panels do that job, and they give some assurance to minority parties and dissenting voices that the difficult questions will be raised, and the truth published.

The problem with this statutory instrument is not that, in future, it proposes to combine the two scrutiny bodies; that is sensible. The problem is that the provision sets aside that existing assurance of challenge and inquiry, and substitutes for it the police and crime panel.

In the municipal year 2018-19, that body was made up of 10 Labour members and two co-opted independent members. No opposition members of any party served on that scrutiny body. Of course, those 10 Labour members will always behave with integrity and absolute objectivity in carrying out their scrutiny functions—one would expect nothing less from Labour councillors in Greater Manchester—but I put it to the Minister that compared to the existing situation that this statutory instrument takes away, he is proposing something that is inherently less satisfactory. In place of a multi-party scrutiny panel with an opposition chair, we will have a body made up of members of one party—the mayor’s own party.

How does the Minister see the robust challenge that is needed for major budgets and vital services, such as the police service and the fire and rescue service, being delivered by a model of scrutiny that can—and in 2018-19 did—produce a single-party body in charge of operating it? I will be interested to hear the answer. That is a function that must be exercised on behalf of all residents and all electors across Greater Manchester, which is very diverse. With the best will in the world, a body with such a narrow membership cannot do that as effectively as a more diverse and representative one.

Does the Minister agree that it would have been better to continue to require the joint panel to work on the same procedures and statutory requirements for membership of the existing fire and rescue service panel, rather than the closed membership of the existing police panel? In other words, given the choice of which way to amalgamate the two bodies, the Minister has chosen the one which produces the least accountability.

Unfortunately, as keenly as everyone now shares the Liberal Democrat passion for the devolution of powers and responsibilities from Whitehall down to local communities, the bit about people with power being held accountable for the exercise of that power has a lot less traction. Whenever it has been a 50:50 call, it always comes down in favour of less accountability, not more. The Minister may say that this is not a big step away from better scrutiny, but rather just a very small baby, and that there is no threat to anything here; perhaps he will say that it is an incidental consequence of a necessary reform—a fishing bycatch, or collateral damage. It is not. Somebody made the choice and, intended or not, that choice has consequences that could easily have been avoided if anyone in the decision tree had thought of doing so.

There is something strangely appropriate in this widening of the accountability deficit in Greater Manchester coming into force through a statutory instrument in your Lordships’ House—itself hardly an ideal mechanism for accountability. A Virtual Proceeding on a statutory instrument, where there is at present no opportunity to intervene to seek clarity or explanation from the Minister when he winds up, adds insult to injury. However, I have a feeling that the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, with his local government background and understanding of these matters, will be able to address my questions and give me direct answers. Perhaps he will get his officials to reflect that, the next time that a 50:50 call on accountability lands on his desk, they should advise him to go the other way and enhance accountability at every opportunity—and not, by accident or design, to slim it down.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Sometimes, the price of it is listening to me complaining about something quite small which has big implications. On this occasion, I fear that that vigilance was not exercised at the ministerial desk. Somebody blinked and we have an answer which is not the best that was available.