Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

My Lords, government Amendments 172 and 173 make essential amendments to Schedule 23, ensuring that the law operates as intended with evolving governance arrangements. Amendment 172 aligns the inspection framework for mayoral combined authorities and mayoral county combined authorities with existing exclusions for other fire and rescue authority governance models, ensuring fairness and consistency across England. Amendment 173 makes technical alignments with existing legislation. It ensures that, where a mayoral combined authority or a mayoral combined county authority takes on fire and rescue functions, it is treated in the same way as existing fire and rescue authorities. The amendment will also bring mayoral fire and rescue authorities within Part V of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, covering companies in which local authorities have interests. It will also bring it within Section 155 of the same Act for the purpose of emergency financial assistance. It also clarifies the handling of Section 114 reports in the case of mayoral fire and rescue authorities, and the fire and rescue authority’s response under Section 115 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988. When a chief finance officer issues a report, the report must be sent to the relevant scrutiny committee, and the authority’s response must be sent to the chief finance officer, the external auditor and the relevant scrutiny committee. I commend these government amendments to the Committee.