• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 29 January 2003

Wholeheartedly?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 29 January 2003

Do you support it?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 29 January 2003

Do you really feel, though, that sort of hard line approach is really going to lead to an effective Fire Service and harmonious working relations with the workforce, or do you believe it's just a negotiating trick; it's just a trick to get them back round the negotiating table, and it's not a serious proposal at all?

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 29 January 2003

There is a lot of talk about modernisation, but do you think it's very modern for the Deputy Prime Minister to be invoking emergency legislation from the 1940s to impose a pay deal on firefighters?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 29 January 2003

So you do see it as a core role of the Fire Service, to go to someone in a trapped lift?

• Question by: Richard Barnes
• Meeting date: 29 January 2003

You don't think yesterday they were actually sabre rattling and that the Government, perhaps within the month, will have to take positive action to resolve the strike unilaterally?

• Question by: Meg Hillier
• Meeting date: 29 January 2003

I wanted to ask about the lifts issue that you raised. You talk about possibly levying a fine on the maintainers of the lifts, or the owners of the lifts. Would you envisage the Fire Service having a role in doing that, but perhaps getting more money, more funding from other sources, to rescue people from lifts that have broken down? Or do you see that as something that should not be a core role for a modern Fire Service?

• Question by: John Biggs
• Meeting date: 29 January 2003

We intend that the impact of the Bain Review, the modernisation agenda, would be very far-reaching in London. It would be about being able to broaden the services we provide to cover a wider variety of dangers and risks in London. It would be about us prioritising prevention work and reduction of fires and fires and deaths and other injuries. It would be about us applying the staff and the other resources we've got much more effectively than we do at the moment. The Fire Service at the moment basically is operating on a 50-year-old resource allocation mechanism, that tell...

• Question by: Darren Johnson
• Meeting date: 29 January 2003

Will you continue to try and push for a negotiated settlement?

• Question by: Elizabeth Howlett
• Meeting date: 29 January 2003

Thank you very much indeed. Can I ask both you, Valerie, and Mr Bishop a question in two parts? First of all, Valerie, have you publicly criticised the fire union for going out on these strikes during this period, when everybody knows the Metropolitan Police is on the highest alert in London that it has ever been? And Mr Bishop, have you had further discussions with the other public services, emergency services, in the event, God forbid, that in fact there should be some kind of terrorist incident on a day when the Fire Service is actually on strike? What...