• Question by: Sally Hamwee
• Meeting date: 29 January 2003

Pursuing the same subject if I may - the Bain Review in a paragraph headed, "Local Leadership" said that it was disappointing to have been told that the leadership and general input from local politicians to the fire authorities is poor. I am not suggesting that this necessarily relates particularly, or indeed perhaps at all, to LFEPA, but there is a point, I think, which arises, for LFEPA in it. It goes on to recommend that the Local Government Association, "takes steps to develop the contribution of elected members on fire authorities and to ensure that they give stronger leadership...

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

And when do you think London will begin to see a tangible benefit from this step forward yesterday?

• 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...