I am pleased to inform the House that today we will be establishing a new executive non-departmental public body in England—FiReBuy Limited.In November 2005 the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister published the National Procurement Strategy for the Fire and Rescue Service as part of the wider modernisation agenda. This gave effect to recommendations by the Audit Commission in their reports "In the Line of Fire" 1995 and "A Uniform Approach" 2000, as well as the 2002 report independent review of the FRS by Professor Sir George Bain, "The Future of the Fire Service: reducing risk, saving lives" and the 2003 White Paper "Our Fire and Rescue Service".National procurement will contribute savings to the wider efficiency agenda, and savings made by Fire and Rescue Authorities (FRAs) will be retained locally for reinvestment in front-line services. FiReBuy Ltd. has been established as the national procurement body for the Fire and Rescue Service. In addition to being a non- departmental public body, FiReBuy Ltd. has been established as a company limited by guarantee.FiReBuy Ltd. will enable savings to be made by negotiating better deals for buying in bulk and will eliminate the duplication of procurement of fire-specific equipment by individual FRAs. Rather than all 47 FRAs negotiating separately for service-specific items such as vehicles, protective clothing and respiratory equipment, FiReBuy Ltd. will negotiate contracts on their behalf and take the lead in subsequent contract monitoring and service level monitoring. It will be a Contracting Authority for the purposes of the EU procurement rules but ultimately it will remain the FRAs who acquire the assets and matching liabilities.FiReBuy Ltd. will take the lead role in testing and acceptance activities for the lines of spend within its remit, thus avoiding the duplication of this work in each FRA.A Chair, Mrs. Liz Barron, and a Board of five non-executive directors have been appointed after an open public competition held in accordance with the Code of Practice of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. Three ex-officio Directors have been appointed to represent the Local Government Association, the Chief Fire Officers' Association and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority.Copies of the new organisation's management statement and financial statement, once approved by the FiReBuy board and the Deputy Prime Minister, will be placed in the House Libraries later in the spring.

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