My Lords, this is a completely different point which relates to the role of the proposed fire and emergency committee of the London Assembly. I was interested that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, moved Amendment 72 a few minutes ago, which said that police and crime panels should become the “police, fire and crime panel” outside London. In London, the parallel structure for the police and crime panel is called the Police and Crime Committee. Confusingly, London has a PCC, but it is not a commissioner. The
parallel structure which is therefore created is that a committee of the London Assembly meets—unlike police and crime panels elsewhere in the country—on a very regular basis, comprising politicians who know each other from the same authority. That works better than police and crime panels elsewhere.
The parallel structure created in the Bill is that there should be a fire and emergency committee which would be set up by the London Assembly and carry out the functions of scrutiny with regard to the Deputy Mayor for Fire. That is fine—there should be a scrutiny structure. However, the Bill specifically says that the fire and emergency committee cannot carry out any other functions of the authority. It is saying to the assembly: “You have to create two separate committees: one to look at policing and one to look at fire”. I would not suggest merging the two committees, but everywhere else in the country the Government are saying that the same panel must do it, even though it will be much less well resourced and much less able to do an effective job. But in London you have to have two committees.
Why can it not be left, in the spirit of devolution and localism, which the Government so espouse, to the London Assembly to decide how it wants to organise these functions? If it wants to have one, two or even three committees, as long as it carries out the functions set out of scrutiny of the respective deputy mayors, surely it should be allowed to decide how it organises to do that. I beg to move.