My Lords, I rise to support, to some extent, the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. Police and crime commissioners have an extremely complex and wide-ranging job to do as it is. It is not simply overseeing the police service and arranging for its funding, it is also working with other agencies to ensure that crime is reduced in their local area. It is an
extremely large and complex operation. To add to that at this early stage in the evolution of the role of the police and crime commissioner would seem to be potentially throwing the progress that has been made to date off course.
There are of course situations where the police, fire service and ambulance service work together, such as when there are floods or road traffic accidents, but there are very distinct areas where the police operate alone, such as law enforcement. There is a very serious and important role that the police and the police and crime commissioner perform in terms of crime reduction, crime detection and prosecution of offenders that does not involve the fire or ambulance service in any way at all. Indeed, we have seen that when there has been spontaneous public disorder on the streets of the UK, there is a very different approach towards the police and, say, the fire brigade and ambulance service—there is a lot more hostility towards the police. Any merging, or unnecessary merging, of those organisations —creating confusion in the public’s minds—could create more problems than perhaps the Government have hitherto considered.
One has only to look at the provisions in the Bill to see the enormous complexity in terms of changes in legislation that will be required if police and crime commissioners take over fire and rescue services, particularly if the employees of the fire and rescue service become employees of the police and crime commissioner, or even the chief constable.
From my perspective I can see enormous benefit from greater co-operation between emergency services, but an enormous administrative nightmare from going that one further step of allowing police and crime commissioners to take over the running of fire and rescue services. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that the Government, as far as I can see, have not made out a compelling case to show that the advantages of that will overcome the enormous bureaucratic, administrative and legislative problems created by police and crime commissioners taking over fire and rescue services.