We have Amendment 81 in this group. Clause 7, to which our amendment refers, inserts a provision into the Local Government Act 1972 to the effect that:
“A relevant police and crime commissioner may attend, speak at and vote at a meeting of a principal council in England which is a fire and rescue authority”.
A sub-paragraph then sets out the circumstances in which that applies, and one of those is,
“only if and to the extent that the business of the meeting relates to the functions of the principal council as a fire and rescue authority”.
Our amendment seeks to address what happens if there is a dispute as to whether or not council business is fire-related, and whether the relevant police and crime commissioner is able to exercise their power to attend, speak at and vote at the meeting. The amendment says that if there is a dispute on this point, the decision of the monitoring officer in that authority should be final—in other words, the monitoring officer will adjudicate if there is a difference of view regarding the
extent to which the business of the meetings relates to the functions of the council as a fire and rescue authority. Naturally, one would hope that such a situation would not be a common occurrence, to say the least; indeed, one might hope that it would never be an occurrence, but clearly there has to be some effective means of resolving the matter if there is a dispute.
I suggest only one particular circumstance in which problems of this kind might arise: if a police and crime commissioner wanted to take over a fire and rescue service against the wishes of the local authority concerned. The local authority concerned might then seek to look very closely at the extent to which the business at the meeting related to its functions as a fire and rescue authority and therefore perhaps seek to preclude the police and crime commissioner from attending, speaking or voting at it.