Commons Sitting of 17 December 1996

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS

  KING'S COLLEGE LONDON BILL [LORDS]
  Ordered,
  That the Promoters of the King's College London Bill [Lords] may, notwithstanding anything in the Standing Orders or practice of this House, proceed with the Bill in the present Session; and the Petition for the Bill shall be deemed to have been deposited and all Standing Orders applicable thereto shall be deemed to have been complied with;
  That if the Bill is brought from the Lords in the present Session, the Agents for the Bill shall deposit in the Private Bill Office a declaration signed by them stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill which was brought from the Lords in the last Session;
  That, as soon as a certificate by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office, that such a declaration has been so deposited, has been laid upon the Table of the House, the Bill shall be read the first and second time (and shall be recorded in the Journal of this House as having been so read) and shall be ordered to be read the third time;
  That no further Fees shall be charged in respect of any proceedings on the Bill in respect of which Fees have already been incurred during any previous Session.—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Oral Answers to Questions
  ENVIRONMENT

    Traffic Policy (London)
    Mr. Dykes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will commission a study of the effect of pedestrianisation and traffic rerouting schemes on local socio-economic developments in the London boroughs. [7851]
    The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. John Gummer): Circumstances all over London are so different that I do not believe that an overall study would help. Nevertheless, it is up to local highway authorities to ensure that pedestrianisation and traffic rerouting encourage trade in local shops, ensure proper parking provision for shoppers and provide a safe and attractive environment.
    Mr. Dykes: I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for his courtesy in answering the question himself. There is no reason why he should be conversant with the details of the Wealdstone traffic bypass scheme, but will he ask his officials to look into it, bearing in
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    mind the fact that the pedestrianisation and traffic bypass configuration are causing local traders a severe loss of business? Would it be possible for an advisory group of his officials to put right the wrong decisions made by local officials and councillors in the original scheme?
    Mr. Gummer: I am happy to see whether my officials can help Harrow. It is crucial that local businesses should be given the best trading opportunities, particularly in an area such as Wealdstone. I am sorry that the council appears not to have taken that properly into account.
    Mr. MacShane: With London the most clogged-up capital in Europe, is not the best news for pedestrianisation in the capital the fact that Ministers' drivers are threatening to strike, which may make Ministers get out and walk, use the tube or the buses, or get on their bikes? For the first time in a long time, they will see how ordinary people have to live and move in London. Will the Secretary of State give us a clear commitment, before he goes into obscurity, that London will follow Europe and have more pedestrianised zones in the city centre?
    Mr. Gummer: As I understand it, London is in Europe. The hon. Gentleman is kind to favour us with his presence today from Geneva. No doubt he knows a great deal about the various capitals of Europe. I do not believe that his comparison between traffic in London and that in the rest of Europe is remotely accurate. If he spent enough time here to see how much we have been doing to improve traffic and pedestrianisation arrangements in London—not least the plans for Trafalgar square and Parliament square—he would be able to ask a more helpful question.

    Local Government Finance
    Mr. Hoyle: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what representations he has received from the local authority associations on the 1997 revenue support grant settlement. [7852]
    The Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration (Mr. David Curry): None, yet.
    Mr. Hoyle: Does the Minister agree that his Government give with one hand and take with the other? For the penny reduction in income tax, the public will have to pay at least 2p in council tax. Does the Minister realise that, if the Government were a company, they would be prosecuted for fraud?
    Mr. Curry: The hon. Gentleman is clearly subject to some arithmetical confusion. The Government have reduced income tax. Council taxes will rise somewhat because we have always felt that it is sensible to return some financial autonomy to local government. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Just wait. That is what local authorities keep telling me that they want. It is interesting that, when the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), who leads for the Opposition, addressed local government associations last week, he said that a Labour Government would spend much more on direct grants to local authorities to enable them to deliver what

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    the Government wanted. I want to give local government more autonomy and he wants to give it less. If he does not trust his councils, why should anybody else?
    Mr. Atkins: Will my right hon. Friend be sure not to listen to any representations from Lancashire county council, especially if they contradict the representations that he has had from Lancashire Conservative Members? He listened to our representations and deferred the area cost adjustment, which was being pressed by the Labour party and would have cost Lancashire some £20 million. Does he recognise that he will receive the thanks of Lancashire Conservatives and of Lancashire folk as a whole for listening to what we said to him?
    Mr. Curry: My right hon. Friend is right to say that he and other Conservative Members made representations on the area cost adjustment. It is true that I felt that there were problems that had to be resolved before we could address whether that mechanism could be adapted to the standard spending assessment. We have asked local authorities to suggest what work needs to be done to take the matter forward. If Lancashire wants to make representations to me, I must, of course, be willing to listen. However, as he would expect, I always listen to local government representations, with a long list of questions to which I want answers in return.
    Mr. Rendel: Is the Minister aware of the letter writing campaign of Cabinet Ministers, and no doubt other Conservative Members to head teachers and chairs of governors peddling the myth that the Government are providing more money for education this year? Is he further aware that the recipients of the letters treat them with scorn and ridicule because they know that the blame for education cuts lies with the Government, not local education authorities?
    Mr. Curry: It is normal for hon. Members to want to be in regular contact with their teachers and local education authorities; I am, in my constituency. No doubt hon. Members will want to make it clear that local authorities, except those caught by the rule on absolute excess, can increase spending on the passported services, of which education is the most important, over and above what they spend now by the full amount of the standard spending assessment increase, without penalty or cash cuts in the other services. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will convey that message to his head teachers.
    Mr. Congdon: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the local government settlement was far better than many local authorities had expected? Would not their complaints about funding gain more credence if authorities embraced compulsory competitive tendering by encouraging the private sector to bid rather than awarding contracts in-house, and paid more attention to collecting taxes and rents?
    Mr. Curry: My hon. Friend is right to say that local authorities have a prime duty to perform the basic management functions of local government efficiently. The filling of voids in council houses and the collection of rents and council tax, which is proving to be a good tax and one that is easy to collect, are the prerequisites of good local government. He asked whether local
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    authorities thought that the increase was reasonable. I sometimes get the impression that, if the Archangel Gabriel were to fly across the country distributing £10 notes, local authorities would still find a way of saying that the settlement was inadequate.
    Mr. Dobson: Will the Minister confirm that, early next year, he will expect Conservative Members to vote for a local government grant settlement that will mean that the citizens of Westminster will contribute only 4 per cent. towards the cost of their council services, while council tax payers in the average Conservative constituency will contribute 25 per cent., and that some Conservative Members will be voting for a settlement that will require their council tax payers to contribute more than 40 per cent. of the cost of their local services—10 times what will be asked of people in Westminster?
    Mr. Curry: I know that the hon. Gentleman has had a bad week, what with his little local difficulty in Camden and the Sunday newspapers saying that he was about to be demoted, so I understand why he has not asked an especially good question.
    Because Westminster sets a level of expenditure well below its standard spending assessment, it depends a lot less on what has to be raised from local taxpayers than other councils, which set a level well above SSA. If everyone ran as prudent a council as Westminster, less tax would be imposed on people. It is about time that people realised that the hon. Gentleman's only interest is in waging a prolonged war against Westminster. The citizens of Westminster will note that, in the event of a Labour Government, they will be the first to cop it, with the rest of the country shortly behind.

    Citizens Juries
    Dr. Wright: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will take steps to promote the use of citizens juries in local government and planning matters. [7853]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Sir Paul Beresford): We are currently undertaking, with the local government associations, research on issues surrounding public participation in local government, which could include citizens juries.
    Dr. Wright: May I ask the Minister to be slightly more interested in the reply that he has just given me and to give the House a sense that he genuinely wants to know about some of the innovations and experiments that are going on in local authorities throughout the country? For example, there is a scheme in Lewisham, involving young people on drugs; and one in Hertfordshire, involving local people in waste management issues.
    Is the clue to the Government's attitude to be found in the letter from the Deputy Prime Minister that appeared in newspapers recently, describing the Government's approach to public services and saying that they were not attracted by the idea of new democratic bodies, because they attracted the enthusiasts?
    Sir Paul Beresford: We are certainly interested, and I am aware of the cases to which the hon. Gentleman

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    refers; hence the conclusion that we might examine the matter in the research. The difference is that, in court juries, the selection is random and, as critics have pointed out, juries of the kind that he is talking about are not. I am sure that he would not want juries, whether on planning or on personality selection, to be rigged.
    Mr. Wilkinson: It would be an excellent idea to have a jury in the local government area of Hillingdon, where the socialist borough council is seeking to foist on local people plans for social housing in green-belt land, on the St. Vincent's hospital site and on Field End recreation ground. Those plans are bitterly opposed by local people. Is it not the case that, if local people were properly consulted and if the council heeded the objections of the Department of the Environment, such monstrosities would not be foisted on the electorate?
    Sir Paul Beresford: My hon. Friend is aware that there was a spontaneous jury in his area: about 4,000 objections were received at the second stage of the unitary development plan, and that is probably a record.

    Green-belt Land
    Mr. Chris Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on his policy towards providing protection for green-belt land in planning legislation. [7854]
    Mr. Gummer: I have pledged myself to defend the green belt. That attitude extends to metropolitan open land and to the attempt by some local authorities to sell off school playing fields.
    Mr. Davies: Is the Secretary of State aware that the Labour council in Oldham is planning on dumping the best part of 2 million cu m of industrial spoil on green-belt land in Beal valley? It can do that because it claims that the end use will be a golf course. Is he aware that a council of any political complexion could in theory dump on green-belt land for the best part of 100 years by claiming that the end use would be an approved development? Should not the guidelines be toughened to stop such despoliation?
    Mr. Gummer: I am aware that, after extensive consultation by the borough of which the hon. Gentleman is a member, it received only 21 letters, one of which was from himself. It is therefore extremely difficult to believe that the local authority—although it is not an authority that I support—has got it wrong. There are occasions when despoiling of green belt needs to be remedied, and sometimes that is done by the proper use of filling. That may or may not be right in the case to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but it is for the local authority to make its decision, and he had a great opportunity, as a member of that authority, to put his case.
    Sir Kenneth Carlisle: Does my right hon. Friend agree that a good way of protecting the green belt is to enhance the vitality of town centres, and will he therefore develop policy to curtail large out-of-town retail developments?
    Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend is right. Creating such vitality would not only protect the green belt but draw
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    people back into town centres, to live, work, shop and carry out leisure pursuits. That seems to be the right way forward, and I am glad that the Labour party has now begun to agree.
    Mrs. Helen Jackson: Does the Secretary of State think that opencast coal mining on the green belt should ever be justified? Will he make it clear that opencast coal mining applications on green-belt land will not be allowed?
    Mr. Gummer: I remind the hon. Lady that it was I who changed the presumption against opencast coal mining, which her party never did and had never pressed before. I did it without Labour's help—
    Mr. Hardy: That is wrong.
    Mr. William O'Brien: The Minister is wrong.
    Mr. Gummer: Hon. Gentlemen must not say what is untrue. I changed that presumption because I take the view that there should be very specific reasons for allowing opencast coal mining. I have been extremely careful in checking each application.
    Mr. Steen: Is not the threat of 4 million new houses being built on the green belt due to the fact that people have difficulty living together? Every time a marriage breaks up, two houses are needed where one home was needed before. In order to cater for the 4 million new houses that will be needed in Britain by 2011, will my right hon. Friend ban building on green-field sites until the inner cities and land inside city boundaries is full? Many such areas have much vacant land at the moment, which could and should be used first.
    Mr. Gummer: I have made it absolutely clear that I do not intend to allow building on open spaces as a means of satisfying the need for 4.4 million homes. I have said that that building should take place to the maximum possible on areas that have already been used—on the present footprint. I intend to insist on that.

    Beaches
    Mr. Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what proposals he has to amend the criteria for publishing lists of beaches conforming or not conforming to European Union legislation on bathing water cleanliness. [7855]
    The Minister for Construction, Planning and Energy Efficiency (Mr. Robert B. Jones): At present, we have no plans to amend the Department's current practice in that regard.
    Mr. Morgan: As it has now emerged from recent written answers that I have received that 117 out of 346 English beaches and 22 out of 55 Welsh beaches failed the faecal streptococci test in 1996—the key test for determining public health consequences of swimming in dirty sea water—does the Minister agree that the Government need to change their policy and the environmental information that they publish for people about to use our beaches? If he promises to do something

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    about that today, I in turn will promise never again to use the hoary chestnut about the need for real action on clean sea water rather than just going through the motions.
    Mr. Jones: The hon. Gentleman revels in undermining the British tourist industry, and that is a disgrace. I shall give him a clear piece of advice. So long as there is a Conservative Government, we shall conduct affairs based on proper understanding of science and risk. If there were ever to be a Labour Government, their windfall tax would ensure that there was no room for improvement in standards, as well as hitting people's pensions and creating unemployment in the water industry.
    Mr. Mans: Will my hon. Friend congratulate all those in Fylde who have helped to make the beaches around Blackpool and Fleetwood so much cleaner? Will he join the leader of the Labour council in Blackpool and other local Labour politicians in their criticism of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) for his ill-informed criticism and comments on the clean-up of the Fylde coast?
    Mr. Jones: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. He will remember that rainy winter's day when he and I stood on the front at Fleetwood considering possible remedies to the problem. Together, we conducted a campaign to ensure that Blackpool's beaches were improved. I congratulate him on his achievement, which has certainly done a great deal for the tourist industry in his area.
    Mr. Meacher: Further to the Government's emphasis on their record, will the Minister confirm that, in 1990, the Secretary of State for the Environment claimed that all bathing waters in the United Kingdom would be brought up to European standards by 1995? On that basis, will he explain how, in 1996, 47 UK beaches officially failed to reach the European mandatory minimum standard—more than the number that failed it last year—and some of them failed it due to pollution more than 20 times above the maximum permitted limit? Since the Secretary of State likes to use his family to persuade us that things are safe, will he allow them to swim off those beaches?
    Mr. Jones: Perhaps I could remind the hon. Gentleman that the late unlamented Labour Government, of whom he was an especially undistinguished member, had a moratorium on investment in the water and sewerage industries, as a result of which the privatised water industry had to cope with a huge backlog. None the less, we are making rapid progress.

    Anti-social Tenants
    Mr. Patrick Thompson: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to provide assistance to local authorities in respect of anti-social tenants. [7856]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. James Clappison): The Housing Act 1996 contains a package of measures to help local authorities deal with anti-social tenants.
    Mr. Thompson: The Government's recent announcements are good news for many council tenants in
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    my constituency of Norwich, North. They provide another example of the good that the Government have done for my constituents since 1983. Complaints about anti-social tenants feature strongly in my constituency surgeries, so the news is indeed good. Can my hon. Friend ensure that Norwich city council starts the introductory tenancy scheme at the earliest opportunity?
    Mr. Clappison: My hon. Friend is right about the good news for tenants—the vast majority of tenants, who want to be protected from the activities of anti-social tenants. Norwich council would do well to consider the proposals for introductory tenancies, as well as strengthening the grounds for obtaining possession against anti-social tenants and making it easier to give evidence against tenants who behave badly and intimidate law-abiding tenants. All those measures will be important in helping the vast majority of law-abiding tenants.
    Mr. Betts: If the Government are so concerned about the problem of anti-social tenants, and want to take action, why did they reject Opposition amendments tabled to the Housing Bill in Committee, with the support of Labour local authorities and their tenants, especially those designed to extend witness protection schemes to all occupiers irrespective of tenure, and in very serious cases to extend the use of injunctions with mandatory powers of arrest? The Minister, in particular, rejected those amendments, although local authorities and tenants want the powers to be used.
    Mr. Clappison: If the hon. Gentleman read the Act, he would see that it attaches the power of arrest to injunctions. He will remember that, when the Committee examined in detail the Labour party's proposal for a community safety order, it was found to be an unsatisfactory and unworkable mess that was not even pressed to a vote. He may also remember that, when proposals came before the House to impose secure training orders on youngsters who persistently commit serious criminal offences, the Opposition voted against them. Talk is cheap, but the Labour party has no stomach for firm action.

    Out-of-town Shopping Developments
    Mr. William O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on his Department's planning guidance for out-of-town shopping developments. [7857]
    Mr. Robert B. Jones: In June, we published the revised policy planning guidance note 6, "Town Centres and Retail Developments", which is designed to provide stronger support for town centres. We shall report progress on the Government response to the Environment Committee next month.
    Mr. O'Brien: I thank the Minister for that reply, but the Government's belated recognition of the issue of town centre development has caused much damage to many urban centres, including those in my constituency such as Ossett, Rothwell and Normanton, as well as the neighbouring towns of Horbury and Wakefield. Out-of-town shopping developments such as Asda and Meadowhall generate car use and damage the

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    environment. Can the Minister assure communities and local authorities that turn down planning applications for out-of-town shopping developments that the developer must prove beyond any shadow of doubt an overwhelming need for such facilities before the Department will give approval?
    Mr. Jones: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's proposition, because that is Government policy. All applications are dealt with against the background not only of PPG6, with the rigorous tests that he mentioned, but of PPG13, which focuses on the issue with which he started—traffic generation—so I can certainly give him those assurances. I find it disappointing that there are still councils that do not judge such issues against the background of PPG6 and PPG13, with the result that we have to call applications in for examination at a public inquiry. It would be much better if that were not the case.
    Mr. Day: Does my hon. Friend agree that, although the Government's change of policy on out-of-town shopping developments has been most welcome, for some areas—such as my constituency—it has come too late? We now have a large shopping development at Cheadle Royal, with another two miles away at Handforth Dean in the Tatton constituency. Those developments have had a significant impact on the villages of Cheadle, Cheadle Hulme, Heald Green and Bramhall. Given that the Government obviously recognise the damage that has been inflicted by changing the policy, will they not consider going a step further and looking at the possibility of reducing business rates for small retailers in a five-mile radius of new shopping stores?
    Mr. Jones: As my hon. Friend knows, rateable value is based on the going rents in a particular area and any decline in the relative prosperity of a particular village or town will eventually come through in terms of a differential in the rateable value of those out-of-town sites.

    Local Government Finance
    Mr. Cohen: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what assessment he has made of the effect of his public expenditure proposals for local government on the provision of local authority services. [7858]
    Mr. Curry: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the statement my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made to the House on 27 November.
    Mr. Cohen: Is it not the case that central Government funding for local education authorities is increasing by only 0.5 per cent. in cash terms—well below pay and price inflation? Far from there being new money for education, do not one third of local education authorities face a cash cut in central funding next year? Are not the Government to blame for more stress and slash in education and other council services, and for an increase in council taxes of more than 6 per cent. next year?
    Mr. Curry: The hon. Gentleman will know that, if local authorities succeed in attracting parents to their nursery schools, and therefore parents use cash vouchers to educate their children in local authority schools, not a
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    single local authority will suffer a cash cut in its education SSA next year. We have made special provision so that the increase in education SSA can be passported straight through on top of existing levels of spending.
    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in a letter of 9 December, the clerk of Lancashire county council admitted that the council does not have time to make a judgment on the levels set by the Government? Is he further aware that the council spends its entire time criticising those levels without having properly assessed them?
    Mr. Curry: My hon. Friend is closely attuned to the pulse of Lancashire, and she speaks for a great many ordinary people in Lancashire who know what the local authority gets up to. If I had to listen to the advice of Lancashire county council or my hon. Friend, I would take her advice every day of the week.
    Mrs. Mahon: Will the Minister confirm that, if Calderdale council had received as much grant per head as Westminster this year, it would not have had to collect a council tax at all and could have given £290 back to each council tax payer? Is he further aware that, if the council had received the same help for education as Westminster, it could have employed another 831 teachers?
    Mr. Curry: I wonder whether the hon. Lady is aware that, if all local authorities had received the same revenue support grant as Islington—together with that for the precepting authorities—it would have been worth £897.61 a head, and the average band D council tax would have been reduced by more than £1,500, making it a negative? In addition, the cost of the revenue support grant nationally would have increased by £27 billion, adding 15p in the pound to the basic rate of income tax. That shows what a thoroughly silly question was asked by the hon. Lady.

    Estates Renewal Challenge Fund
    Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many local authorities were awarded funding under round 1 of the estates renewal challenge fund. [7859]
    Mr. Clappison: Eleven local authorities have been awarded funding in the region of £174 million. This will secure improvements to 19,000 homes on 29 needy estates.
    Mr. Bellingham: I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent reply. Is he aware that many people in Norfolk are rejoicing at the news of the list of winning bids in the capital challenge pilot scheme? As well as two excellent schemes in Norwich—one of which is worth £2.5 million and the other nearly £4 million—there are two in my constituency. First, there is the North Lynn gateway scheme—where the go-ahead has been given to environmental improvements to the entrance to a school—and secondly, the Hunstanton regeneration scheme. The latter scheme will be most welcome, as it will regenerate the waterfront and many other parts of the town. Are those

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    not examples of the Government listening to local people and going ahead with environmental improvements to their communities?
    Mr. Clappison: It is good news that those environmental improvements are taking place in North Lynn and Hunstanton in my hon. Friend's constituency. I am sure that he, too, will be pleased that there are to be substantial improvements in the 29 needy estates that are in some of the most rundown areas of the country, as well as improvements for tenants in the form of repairs and maintenance.
    Mr. Raynsford: Does the Minister agree that it is gross hypocrisy to talk about improving conditions on a small number of selected estates when the Budget savagely cut housing investment and, as a result, condemned hundreds of thousands of tenants throughout the country to live in substandard housing? If the Government are really serious about improving housing conditions, why do they not release the £5 billion of capital receipts?
    Mr. Clappison: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. He should applaud transfers of housing that bring about repairs and maintenance for tenants, especially when they take place in the most needy areas. He should make it clear whether he is promising more spending on housing, or saying that cuts should fall elsewhere. If he will not, will he explain how he would go about funding housing? We have made it clear that we want there to be transfers, and all the improvements that they bring, and that we want to bring in private capital alongside public expenditure and so get greater value for money. We have heard nothing from the hon. Gentleman, and that failure is becoming increasingly widely recognised.

    Councillors (Allowances)
    Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what powers he has to control the level of allowances which local authority councillors award themselves. [7860]
    Mr. Gummer: To ensure that local people can see what their council is doing, we have required local authorities to publish annually the amount of allowances paid to each of their councillors.
    Mr. Garnier: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the leader of Leicester city Labour group, aided and abetted by his Labour cronies, and without any proper consultation with the taxpayers of that city, has raised his allowance from £4,000 a year to more than £27,000 a year? What price local democracy under Labour?
    Mr. Gummer: My hon. and learned Friend may have noticed that it appears that, earlier this year, there was a 600 per cent. increase in the allowances paid to councillors in Leicester, yet this very morning representatives from Leicester were in the office of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration complaining that they do not have enough money to meet their bills for essential services. It does seem that Leicester ought to look at its priorities.
    Mr. Sheerman: The Secretary of State will know that, fairly recently, in the name of improving democracy,
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    we in this House voted a substantial increase in our pay. Is it not about time that, to ensure the quality of candidates from all parties that come forward for local government, we pay local councillors a decent rate? Is not that good for local democracy? Is it not harmful that the cheapjacks on the Conservative Back Benches ask questions like that? Does it not undermine local democracy and the real effort being made by Labour councillors up and down this land?
    Mr. Gummer: I happen to think that real effort is made by councillors of all sorts, not only Labour councillors up and down this land. [HON. MEMBERS: "He said that."] The hon. Gentleman specified Labour councillors up and down this land, exhibiting the usual bias that he brings to the House. Many of us did not vote for that increase in pay. Furthermore, we are talking about 600 per cent. increases in the allowances paid to councillors who then complain that the taxpayer does not provide them with enough money to carry through services. If councillors ran enabling councils, instead of trying to run everything themselves, they could do the work far more effectively and in a great deal less time.
    Mr. John Marshall: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, apart from publishing the amounts of councillors' allowances, local authorities should publish the amount that they have written off to benefit the political friends of councillors?
    Mr. Gummer: Transparency in these matters is very important, but what is most important is that, when councils insist on increasing the amount paid to their councillors, they should recognise that those sums are supposed to be honoraria for help, not payments. One of the distinguishing features of local councils is supposed to be that they are run by people who do it while also doing another job.

    Minerals Planning Guidance
    Mr. Barnes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to review minerals planning guidance note 3; and if he will make a statement. [7861]
    Mr. Robert B. Jones: Minerals planning guidance note 3 was fully reviewed and revised in July 1994. There are currently no plans to revise it again.
    Mr. Barnes: Is the Minister aware that there are 15 opencast operations or applications in the north-east corner of Derbyshire, which are ripping its guts out, in addition to historic operations in the area? Should not mineral planning guidance notes take into account the cumulative aspects of the matter? They are supposed to take into account current and future operations, but they take no account of historic operations and they should do so. There should also be an investigation in north-east Derbyshire to establish whether the cumulative aspects of the matter are being taken into account.
    Mr. Jones: That is incorrect. We take the strong view that local authorities, in drawing up plans for their areas, should include the criteria by which they will judge planning applications. They should, if appropriate, include

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    the cumulative effect of such applications. It is entirely the responsibility of Derbyshire county council and the hon. Gentleman's local authority to ensure that applications are processed in the right way.
    Mr. Nigel Evans: I accept the need for minerals for construction and road building, but does my hon. Friend accept that the guidelines need to be sufficiently flexible to reflect the changing needs and priorities of certain areas—such as tourism in the Ribble valley—to ensure that the local authority has sufficient protection to be able, in certain circumstances, to turn down certain planning applications from companies in my constituency?
    Mr. Jones: Authorities' local plans should be flexible, so that they can respond to changing circumstances. As my hon. Friend knows, every planning application must be dealt with on its merits, and if the merits—or disbenefits—change, that is a material consideration for the local authority to consider.
    Ms Ruddock: Is the Minister aware that the test of environmental acceptability in the revised guidance of which the Secretary of State today boasted is proving a farce because the Coal Industry Act 1994 requires sites to be sold on the best available terms? Does he agree that environmental criteria should be included in "best available terms" and, if they are, can he explain why the ecologically important site of Shilo north in Broxtowe has been sold to RJB Mining in preference to the conservation bid made by that local authority in the interests of the community?
    Mr. Jones: "Best available terms" must necessarily reflect the obligations that any owner has to make environmental improvements or to accept environmental controls over what it does, and the need to take a risk on the likelihood or otherwise of gaining planning permission for any extensions. As there is no presumption in favour of development in green areas, it would be very difficult for such an applicant to prove a case unless the benefits considerably outweighed the environmental disadvantages.

    Business Rates
    Mr. Fabricant: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the level of business rates charged to small companies, partnerships and sole traders. [7862]
    Sir Paul Beresford: As my hon. Friend is aware, the Government have taken steps to ensure the freezing of the business rate for small businesses for the coming financial year.
    Mr. Fabricant: Is my hon. Friend aware that many villages—such as Pipe Ridware in my constituency—in which small businesses are located will benefit from that? Is it not the case that about £100 million has been made available from the Budget for that purpose? Was my hon. Friend shocked, as I was, that when the hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood (Dr. Wright) asked a question
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    earlier, he did not thank my hon. Friend for the £4.5 million capital challenge grant from his Department which will safeguard 1,100 jobs in Burntwood?
    Sir Paul Beresford: Some people are ungracious in the extreme, but my hon. Friend is right. Small businesses in towns and villages are congratulating the Government on the move.
    Mr. Pike: Recognising that the Government have had to take measures to minimise the effect of next year's revaluation on small businesses, and remembering that the legislation that introduced the national business rate was the second part of the Thatcher legislation that launched the ill-fated poll tax, will the Government now admit that that was the worst flagship ever launched and that they should now scrap all that legislation?
    Sir Paul Beresford: That is a bit rich coming from the hon. Gentleman, who, when we were discussing this matter in Committee yesterday, talked about the business rate returning to the local authority setting. I know that he was trying to goad me, but he should recognise the damage that Labour-controlled local authorities have done in the past. Consider previous rates: Camden set a business rate for small businesses of 229.2p; Westminster set a rate of 171p—a dramatic drop; and one of my better-known favourites, Wandsworth, set a rate of 161.1p. We can see in some parts of central London the damage that business rates set by Labour-controlled local authorities did. Shop after shop in Tottenham Court road is shut because of Camden council.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mrs. Fyfe: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 17 December. [7881]
    The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mrs. Fyfe: Has the Prime Minister seen today that another London hospital has shut its doors to emergency patients? At the Victoria geriatric unit in Glasgow, a notice asks staff to think cost-effectively and limit incontinence wipes to two per person. Does the Prime Minister still maintain that the NHS is safe in Tory hands?
    The Prime Minister: Not only is the NHS safe, it is improving its service day by day. What the hon. Lady missed out of her litany were the 70 or so improvements in primary health care announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health. The hon. Lady knows that not only is the health service improving, but resources for the health service are improving both globally and per patient.
    Mr. Harry Greenway: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 17 December. [7882]
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Greenway: Does my right hon. Friend recall reports from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development some years ago, when inflation was 27 per cent., there was disaster everywhere and the International Monetary Fund had to be called in? Will he contrast those reports with the latest OECD report, which says that this country is set for record economic expansion and more growth than for 30 years, which will benefit the health service and everyone else? Would not all that be put at risk by uncosted Labour promises if the Labour party was ever elected to office—which it will not be?
    The Prime Minister: A few weeks ago, the shadow Chancellor dismissed the economic improvements in this country as propaganda. The OECD report published today shows how inaccurate he is. It says that prospects for achieving sustained output, growth and low inflation are the best for 30 years. The OECD now expects the UK's growth rate next year—and the year after next—to be the highest in the group of industrial nations, easily outstripping Japan, Germany, France and the United States. It also forecasts falling unemployment on the back of that. There is no doubt that it is a glowing report. It is the best OECD report that this country has received for very many years, and it shows the best economic prospects that we have had for very many years.
    Mr. Blair: Will the Prime Minister now tell us specifically by what date the European beef ban will be lifted?
    The Prime Minister: I note, first, that the right hon. Gentleman does not deny the OECD report and does not wish to comment on it.
    The right hon. Gentleman knows that the beef ban will be lifted by our European partners and that I cannot tell him precisely what date that will be. We have taken measures for the ban to be lifted, and I shall seek the lifting of the ban progressively as soon as possible. We are now in the process of discussing a certified herd scheme that would cover the whole of the United Kingdom and from which we hope to see a progressive lifting of the ban.
    Mr. Blair: If the Prime Minister wants to ask me questions, I shall be happy to swap roles whenever he wishes to call the general election.
    The Prime Minister's answer on beef is extraordinary. Does he not recall that, after the Florence summit, he came to the Dispatch Box and said that he had a firm agreement that, if we did certain things, the ban would be lifted, and that the timetable was in our hands, not Europe's? [HON. MEMBERS: "He did not say that."] He certainly did say that. He said that, at the end of November, the ban would be lifted on scientific evidence. Is it not clear that he had no such agreement; that there was no guarantee that the ban would be lifted; that the timetable is in the hands of the veterinary committee; that he cannot give us a date; and that the lifting of the ban
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    was not proceeded with on scientific evidence? Can the Prime Minister tell us the date by which the ban will be lifted, if the Florence agreement holds?
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman is misleading the House.
    Madam Speaker: Order. I am sure that the Prime Minister does not mean the words that he has just said. I must ask him to withdraw them. No hon. Member misleads the House.
    The Prime Minister: No doubt innocently, the right hon. Gentleman has misunderstood the situation on beef—and not for the first time. The conditions that are necessary for the scientific committee to consider lifting the beef ban depend on actions that we take. That is correct. Among those actions is the selective cull. That is correct. As I reminded the right hon. Gentleman yet again yesterday—not for the first time—the selective cull was delayed because of the extra evidence on maternal transmission and because the over-30-months scheme was larger than anybody had supposed. The position now—
    Dr. Strang: Who are you kidding?
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is the Opposition's agriculture spokesman and he is supposed to know. If he does not know, I understand why the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) does not know. We now know who is providing the information that the right hon. Gentleman misunderstands. We are now seeking to obtain progressive lifting by means of the certified herd scheme, as we have set out, on more than one occasion, to the right hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. Blair: So the Prime Minister cannot give us a date for lifting the ban. [Interruption.] The Government gave us a date before, they did not honour it and they cannot give us a new one. I have just checked in Hansard, and the Prime Minister specifically said that the date for lifting the ban was in the hands of the British Government. If that is correct, why can he now not give us a date? The answer is that it is not in his hands. [Interruption.] Conservative Members may shout, but the truth is that BSE is a symbol of the Government—they are incompetent, incapable and can never be trusted.
    The Prime Minister: If the right hon. Gentleman reads what I said a few moments ago, he will understand why his third question is absurd, as was his prepared sound bite. It is no good his trying to fix facts. He cannot fix polls, as we have seen, and he should not try to fix facts.
    Mr. David Atkinson: Does my right hon. Friend recall the question that I put to him almost exactly a year ago about the failure of most computer systems in this country and throughout the world to recognise the year 2000, which will have enormously damaging consequences, not least for British business? Does he accept that, one year on, widespread ignorance of and inaction in response to the problem remain? Will he now give serious consideration to my ten-minute Bill, the Companies (Millennium Computer Compliance) Bill, which would do much to ensure that the computer systems of British businesses will be safe in three years' time?
    The Prime Minister: I shall undertake to ensure that my hon. Friend's ten minute Bill is examined carefully by

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    my right hon. Friends. The underlying problem to which my hon. Friend refers is very serious, and we do not intend to leave it without action.
    Mr. Ashdown: The Prime Minister can huff and puff as much as he likes, but speak to any farmer in this country and they will say that the BSE fiasco tells us all we need to know about this Government: they dither at home, posture abroad, surrender at the end and blame it all on Europe. Does the Prime Minister realise that the anti-European opinion in his Cabinet, on his Back Benches and overwhelmingly among his candidates throughout the country means that, far from fighting for Britain in Europe in 1997, the Conservatives will become Britain's out-of-Europe party in 1997?
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman has a long tradition of being very supportive of the European Union. After all, some time ago he said:
    "We want Ministers to make decisions in public and without single nation vetoes".
    The right hon. Gentleman would surrender that. He has also said that he does
    "not believe in the sovereignty of Parliament"
    as far as the European Union is concerned. The hon. Member for North Devon (Mr. Harvey) has written to my right hon. Friend the Minister Without Portfolio claiming that his party does not want a united states of Europe. I find that very odd, as the same hon. Gentleman said some time ago:
    "our"—
    that is, Liberal—
    "ideas on Europe are totally illiberal … we want to create a bureaucratic and centralist nightmare".
    Not only are the Liberals unable to agree among themselves, they cannot even agree with themselves.
    Sir Roger Sims: Is not today's White Paper, to which my right hon. Friend referred earlier, to be welcomed, as it both extends the facilities available to patients and increases the involvement in primary care of health care professionals such as nurses and pharmacists? Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that additional resources will be given to the national health service to develop the White Paper proposals?
    The Prime Minister: We have set out a commitment for additional resources over and above inflation for the national health service throughout the next Parliament—a commitment that we have honoured during the past 17 years and which other parties seem unable to match. My hon. Friend is right about the importance of primary care services. The proposals announced today by my right
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    hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will lead to better general practitioner premises, a wider range of services available closer to home, better training for GPs and other staff, expansion of nurse prescribing, more funds for research into primary health, and much else besides. It is a very significant advance in the march towards far better primary health care.

    Official Visits
    Mr. Hinchliffe: To ask the Prime Minister when he intends to pay an official visit to Wakefield. [7883]
    The Prime Minister: I have no plans to do so.
    Mr. Hinchliffe: Has the Prime Minister had the opportunity to study the correspondence that I sent him last week concerning my constituent, Mr. Wayne Hood of Wakefield, who was recently sent to prison for four years for the attempted murder of his former foster parent who seriously sexually abused him over a seven-year period during his childhood and adolescence? Bearing in mind the fact that the foster parent has been gaoled for seven years for those serious offences against Mr. Hood and other children in his care, will the Prime Minister support the call for a review of Mr. Hood's sentence? While I do not condone Mr. Hood's actions, has he not been treated very harshly by the courts in view of his background and circumstances?
    The Prime Minister: I have seen the correspondence that the hon. Gentleman sent to me, and I am grateful to him for giving me notice of his question. I am aware of the hon. Gentleman's deep interest and concern about this case. I made inquiries, and I understand that an application for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal has been lodged. The hon. Gentleman will know that, in those circumstances, it is not appropriate for me to say anything further now. I believe that that is the correct way to pursue the matter. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to discuss it with me privately, I will be happy to see him.
    Mr. Robert G. Hughes: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the people of Wakefield would not want us to leave this year without congratulating Damon Hill on winning the sports personality of the year award? Would not they be amazed to know that he achieved that without an audience participation unit?
    The Prime Minister: I should like to congratulate Damon Hill on his success. The whole country took a great deal of pleasure in his many wins throughout the year. He is a very deserving winner of that poll. In the spirit of amity at Christmas, I shall not respond to the latter part of my hon. Friend's question.

World Trade Organisation Conference
3.30 pm
The President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Ian Lang): I should like to make a statement to the House on the outcome of the first ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation held in Singapore last week, at which I led the United Kingdom's delegation.
The Government are convinced that free trade offers unparalleled opportunities to enhance prosperity, not only in the United Kingdom, but around the world. Accordingly, we had three objectives for the conference. The first was to agree a substantial programme to carry forward trade liberalisation in the WTO, including, in particular, forward-looking work on trade facilitation, standards, Government procurement, tariffs and investment, which is a key priority for British business.
The second objective was the completion, in outline, of an information technology agreement aimed at the progressive elimination of tariffs on information technology products, with the widest possible participation by WTO member countries. The third was to make real progress on negotiations to liberalise basic telecommunications, which are scheduled to conclude by February 1997. I am glad to say that I have positive news to report on all three objectives.
There is now provision in the WTO's new work programme for many of the United Kingdom's priorities for tackling the trade barriers that still remain outwith WTO rules. On trade facilitation—or the simplification of import and export procedures, which was a British-led initiative—the programme agreed opens the way to new co-operative work between the WTO and other relevant international organisations to reduce burdens on trade. Those procedures currently add some 10 per cent. to the costs of goods in international trade.
On Government procurement, all WTO member countries will now engage in work on transparent procedures, which should help to open a much wider range of opportunities for exporters and save taxpayers' money around the world, by encouraging more competition in public tendering procedures. That is an important step forward. Again, it was a British-inspired initiative.
On technical product standards, the way is open under the WTO's work programme to increase co-operation between the WTO and international standards organisations so as to concentrate work on priorities that are of real practical importance to trade, and to reinforce the use of international standards.
The Singapore ministerial declaration contains a renewed commitment to the progressive liberalisation and elimination of tariffs and non-tariff barriers generally. A working group will be established to look at the range of issues that arise in the relationship between trade and investment. That is vital to Britain as the world's second largest overseas investor.
A working group will be established to study the relationship between trade and competition policy. We will want to promote the development of competition regimes in countries that do not have them, and to reduce any barriers to markets created by anti-competitive practices.
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The biggest immediate trade liberalisation achievement of the week was an agreement in principle to phase out tariffs on a wide range of information technology products by the year 2000. Our aim is maximum country participation and maximum product coverage. The deal was instigated by the European Union and the United States, but was joined by 11 other countries. Overall, the participating countries represent about 83 per cent. of world trade. Definitive conclusion of the agreement is scheduled for 1 April 1997, subject to increasing country coverage to the equivalent of 90 per cent. of world trade and reaching satisfactory final arrangements on the staging of tariff reductions in the run-up to the year 2000.
The value of this to Britain will be significant. It will eliminate tariffs facing British exporters in a number of key overseas markets; it will reduce the cost of vital IT products which we import, such as semiconductors; and it will stimulate new growth and enterprise, as there is no British industry that does not rely on IT products in its operations. In money terms, the value to the United Kingdom is estimated at £250 million on tariff cuts alone, setting aside the enormous potential of increased global trade in information technology. As the US trade representative has said, this is
"a huge global tax cut".
An important deal was also agreed between the European Union and the United States on the further elimination of tariffs on spirits. That is very good news indeed for our drinks industry, particularly the Scotch whisky industry. Specifically, the EU and the US have agreed to accelerate the elimination of their tariffs on the import of whisky, brandy and other brown spirits. At the same time, they have also agreed to eliminate their tariffs on the import of gin, vodka and other white spirits over the next five years.
Good progress was also made in the on-going WTO negotiations to open up world telecommunications markets. As the House knows, Britain has benefited greatly from having one of the most liberal telecommunications markets in the world. Nine countries pledged new or better offers, in addition to the 34 commitments already made. That has improved the prospects of an agreement by February 1997, which could be worth $20 billion per annum to Britain by the year 2010.
The United Kingdom was also influential at the conference in helping to keep the WTO focused on trade liberalisation issues. Ministers agreed that economic growth and development, fostered through increased trade and trade liberalisation, offered the best prospect of raising labour standards. The relevant passage in the ministerial declaration also makes it clear that the International Labour Organisation is the competent body to deal with labour standards, while noting that the existing limited collaboration between the WTO and ILO secretariats will continue. In practice, that means that, as has been the case for some time, the two secretariats will send observers to each other's meetings. I am sure that that approach, through trade liberalisation, offers the right way forward, rather than an approach based on sanctions or other restrictions.
In this context, the United Kingdom also pushed hard for specific market access commitments for products from the least developed countries. Those countries account for only about 0.4 per cent. of world trade. I therefore

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welcome the plan of action agreed by Ministers, which aims to provide more favourable and predictable access for the exports from those countries.
I am happy to say that for the United Kingdom and, I believe, for the world as a whole, the conference was a substantial success. It has enhanced the authority of the World Trade Organisation, and the overriding importance of reducing barriers to trade on a multilateral basis. It represents an important step towards the British Government's objectives of launching a new round of trade negotiations before the end of the century and, in the longer term, achieving global free trade.
Mrs. Margaret Beckett: Does the President of the Board of Trade understand that Labour Members find some of the things in his statement very welcome? On some issues that he set out before he went to the conference, there is common ground across the House. We certainly welcome, for example, the simplification of procedures for importers and exporters, the extension of greater transparency in tendering for public purchasing, the work on achieving greater conformity in international standards, where Britain has a great potential competitive advantage, and the potential establishment of the working groups, which will consider a range of issues arising between trade and investment and trade and competition. Labour Members certainly share the Government's view that those are all desirable means of progress.
We would identify one issue of slight concern. We might be anxious if we thought that there had been the convergence of view on core labour standards that the President of the Board of Trade has identified, but as it appears that everyone is claiming victory on that front—I understand that Commissioner Brittan said that the discussions had been a breakthrough in dialogue on these matters—clearly there is a certain amount of common ground there and not necessarily a clear victory for the Government's view, as the President sought to suggest.
The President raised the issue of liberalisation of telecommunications, which we welcome in the context of the WTO talks. We want it to be achieved through completion of the single market, to which my party is committed. Will he confirm a report that companies such as IBM are suggesting that, if liberalisation produces real savings, they may be channelled specifically towards research and development? That would be an interesting and useful breakthrough and I would be grateful if he could cast any light on the matter.
I notice that the President has identified three principal priorities, but he also mentioned a fourth issue: piracy and intellectual copyright, which, in his speech last week, he identified as costing consumers in the European Union about £2 billion. Was anything discussed at the conference that may cast light on progress on that issue?
Finally, the President of the Board of Trade has mentioned his proposals for a new international round of trade negotiations. Again, reports suggest that there was perhaps not as fulsome a welcome for the notion of a full-scale, all-singing, all-dancing new trade round as he might have hoped. Again, will he clarify the Government's position in this respect because, clearly,
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although we are all anxious to have constructive developments along those lines, a whole new trade round is a slightly separate matter?
Mr. Lang: I thank the right hon. Lady for her welcome for various matters that I have reported to the House, in particular the improvement in import and export procedures, trade facilitation, the transparency of Government procurement, progress on standards and the working groups that are to be established on investment and competition. I agree that those are all major steps forward in the existing programme's agenda and that they set up the new work programme that the Government were keen to see.
On core labour standards, the right hon. Lady referred to other countries claiming a breakthrough. The declaration's conclusion agreed to the primacy of the International Labour Organisation as the body responsible for these matters, to support basic standards throughout the world—as all countries that have signed the United Nations convention on human rights do—to recognise that trade liberalisation helps to improve working standards in poor countries, and to confirm that there is no contemplation of any attack on developing countries.
There was no reference to a future work programme or to future continuing activity in the WTO on the matter. There was no mention of sanctions. There was a commitment only to the continuance of existing contacts. That agreement, as enshrined in the declaration, conforms exactly to the Government's position. I warmly welcome that sensible and realistic conclusion, which was widely supported by most countries throughout the world.
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her welcome for progress in the telecommunications sector and I agree about the desirability of further liberalising the single market in this respect. Indeed, considerable progress in working up the EU's offer has taken place in Europe. For example, Spain has brought forward its offer on liberalisation by several years.
On the question of savings and their application specifically to research and development, that is essentially a matter for the market, but I have not the slightest doubt that the extensive investment in R and D that takes place in the telecommunications industry will be enhanced. We are talking about additional telecoms traffic worldwide of $1,000 billion by the year 2010, and the United Kingdom's share of that is likely to exceed $20 billion. Therefore, if an agreement can be achieved by the middle of February next year, it will be a major breakthrough for the extremely well liberalised telecoms industry in the UK.

With regard to intellectual property rights, the conclusion was to reinforce the work already agreed in the Uruguay round. That will continue to be a high priority for the British Government.
Finally, on the right hon. Lady's question about a full trade round, there is—on the contrary—a growing commitment within the WTO membership to recognise the benefits that trade liberalisation brings. Through the agreement of the working programme, we are already moving de facto towards a new trade round, and I anticipate that at the next meeting of the WTO or the one after that, it should be possible to achieve an absolute commitment to make further progress in that respect.
Mr. John Redwood: I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement and excellent progress in this

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crucial area. What impact will that have on EC regulations and directives? As he has made such excellent progress in world liberalisation, do we need fewer EC regulations, because they are subsumed by the global progress?
Mr. Lang: Yes, I am happy to give my right hon. Friend that assurance. I mentioned, for example, the progress on telecommunications liberalisation achieved in working up the EU offer. In the other areas to which I referred—the working groups on investment, competition, Government procurement, standards and trade facilitation, which was one of the British-inspired initiatives—there will in every respect be an opportunity to dispense with unnecessary regulations. The trade facilitation initiative in particular enables us to tackle what the United Nations conference on trade and development—UNCTAD—has identified as about 10 per cent. of the value of trade in goods, so there are major opportunities ahead.
Mr. Nick Harvey: May I too welcome the progress that has been made, particularly in information technology, telecoms and—as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) would want me to say—spirits tariffs. What discussion was there at Singapore about the environment? Does not conventional trade liberalisation often lead to environmental damage? Is it not important that we should cease to cling to the argument that economic growth must come before action to protect the environment? How does the President assess the environmental cost in relation to the benefit of any increase in trade that may result from the conference?
Mr. Lang: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. That is an important topic, on which some progress, albeit limited, was made at Singapore. The WTO committee on the environment and trade had made a useful start, and has now been made a permanent body, so environmental issues are increasingly recognised. My own view is that free trade and environmental protection are mutually supportive. Indeed, environmental protection creates a number of major trading opportunities for countries such as the United Kingdom, which is advanced in the provision of equipment and technology for reducing environmental pollution. This is an important area, on which there is still more work to be done.
Mr. Bill Walker: Has there been any progress with Japan, following the WTO ruling on whisky duty? My right hon. Friend's interest in whisky, and mine, is much deeper than just superficial.
Mr. Lang: As my hon. Friend says, the WTO ruled in favour of the European Union in that dispute. I am glad to say that the Japanese Government have accepted the ruling. They are still in negotiation with the EU and the United States and Canada about the final terms of the resolution of the dispute, but I am optimistic that it will be resolved shortly. Thus, in addition to the EU-US deal on spirits, there is also promise in the negotiations on the
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taxation of whisky in Japan. I hope that that double measure of good cheer will cheer my hon. Friend up as we approach the festive season.
Mr. John Garrett: Did the conference take a position on the trade in armaments with oppressive regimes, such as Burma and Indonesia?
Mr. Lang: No. So far as I am aware, the trade in arms was not discussed at the conference.
Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that more than half our total export earnings come from countries outside the European Union, and that we run a large balance of payments surplus with those non-EU countries in the so-called invisible trade sector—that is, financial services and investment? If that is so, will my right hon. Friend continue his laudable efforts to liberalise that sector of trade, which would have a much more direct and beneficial influence on our future trade and prosperity than any other project, such as handing over our economic sovereignty to a European central bank?
Mr. Lang: I am not sure that all my hon. Friend's figures are correct. Our trade with Europe is about 60 per cent. of the total. However, our trade with countries outwith Europe, particularly the far east, is expanding very rapidly, and there are major long-term opportunities there. Moreover, we have a balance of trade surplus on the current account figures with every continent except Europe. To that extent, therefore, I can give my hon. Friend some encouragement. We have a global surplus in services of £6 billion, which I think applies in every continent in the world. That is extremely encouraging.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: Is the Minister aware that there is another story to be told? All the world trade liberalisation in which the Tory Government have taken part in the past 17 years has resulted in deregulation, in BSE, in longer working hours and in all the other problems that have arisen. Since 1983, it has resulted in a balance of payments deficit; and, in the past six years, under this Government, it has resulted in the doubling of the national debt, to £380 billion. It sounds like a barmy road to me. In the best days of Parliament, in the years after 1945, we had full employment, shorter working hours and regulations. We also had a surplus in our balance of payments. The net result of the Government's proposals is a move towards slave labour economies and towards the lowest common denominators, instead of searching for the highest common factor.
Mr. Lang: Clearly old Labour is still alive and living on the Opposition Benches. I do not recognise the picture painted by the hon. Gentleman. The policies pursued by the Government, including trade liberalisation, have created several years of falling unemployment, which is now more than 3 per cent. below the European average: record-breaking inward investment; rising manufacturing output, creating 150,000 jobs in the past three years; our exports beating records worldwide; and recognition by the OECD that the UK will have the fastest growth rate, not only in the European Union but, next year, among the G7.
Mr. John Wilkinson: May I express my appreciation for my right hon. Friend's good

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work in Singapore and for his encouraging statement? But would not we all be much more encouraged if the objective of total elimination of tariffs and of non-tariff barriers were matched by progress in that sphere by the European Union, most notably in agricultural products? Is not such progress especially desirable as the communiqué set as a further objective special access for less-developed countries, many of which have large agricultural sectors?
Mr. Lang: I agree with my hon. Friend; it is an important subject which must be tackled further. Under the Uruguay round, the situation is due to be reviewed in 1999. Some progress was made in Singapore towards performing work of an analytical and reporting nature, which will be useful in enabling work on further liberalisation of agriculture to occur with more speed in 1999. I hope that the European Union will be a full-hearted participant in that work.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Further to the question of the environment, will the Secretary of State tell us how he now hopes that progress will be made on environmental issues in further negotiations? Specifically, is he confident that such agreements as the Montreal protocol on chlorofluorocarbons, the Basle agreement on hazardous waste, and the London convention on international trade in endangered species will not fall foul of rules on world trade? Does he realise that it is important that we protect the environment, but that we are now putting that goal in conflict with further trade liberalisation?
Mr. Lang: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Those are important issues, and the establishment now of a permanent committee on the environment will enable progress on the issues that he identified and on many others. The United Kingdom Government will be keen a participant in that work.
Mr. Gary Waller: Does my right hon. Friend agree that—in contrast to the remarks particularly of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinners—the United Kingdom has gained tremendously by inward investment in telecommunications by liberalising the market and encouraging competition? The United States telecommunications market remains in many respects relatively protectionist and at best favours reciprocal agreements. Has progress been made on opening up that market to British products and services?
Mr. Lang: I agree with the premise of my hon. Friend's question. Considerable progress has been made. The final date for an agreement is 15 February 1997. No doubt a great deal of intensive negotiation will be needed then. Provided the will exists—I believe that it does—there must be at least a reasonable prospect of the United States being a full-hearted participant in a final deal. The United States also stands to benefit enormously from the liberalisation of that massive industry.
Rev. Martin Smyth: Like others, I appreciate the President of the Board of Trade's upbeat report on the conference, particularly his welcome for the plan of action for more favourable and predictable access for exports from less-developed countries. Was there much discussion about the imbalance between the costs
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of production in such countries and the high price of the same goods in developed countries? For example, it might cost £1 to manufacture trainers that sell for £40, £50 or £60 here or in another developed country. Where is the money going? How much can be poured back to help those developing countries to educate their work force?
Mr. Lang: I have considerable sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's point. In the European Council I pressed for recognition of the desirability of accepting zero tariffs on goods from the 48 least developed countries in the world, which account for 0.4 per cent. of world trade. There was not general agreement in the European Union or elsewhere on that. However, I am glad to say that we were able to make progress on giving technical assistance to the least developed countries, on helping them find access to markets, and on assuring them that there is no question, through trade and labour standards or other such measures, of penalising those areas in which they have a competitive advantage. We are keen to help them to exploit their competitive advantages, gain access to our markets and acquire the technology that will enable them to strengthen their position.
Mr. Nigel Forman: I believe that the United Kingdom is already the most open advanced economy in the world, exporting more per head than the Japanese and more in total than all the Asian tigers put together. If those facts are broadly correct, will my right hon. Friend assure the House that, while he holds his post—which I hope he will do for a long time—he will continue to lean against any tendency towards regional mercantilism among our partners on the continent, and will ensure that the World Trade Organisation has all the necessary powers and competencies to stop those tendencies gaining ground?
Mr. Lang: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I agree with the premise of his question. I also agree with the sentiments that he expressed. The WTO has a committee to deal with regional issues. There has been a substantial increase in the number of regional groupings. There must be a danger that some of those groupings enjoy a distortion of trade and that others are protectionist and inward-looking. It is our purpose to ensure that regional groupings have a multilateral outlook and form building blocks towards the multilateral free trade agenda recognised by the WTO.
Mr. Robert Sheldon: The right hon. Gentleman talked about maximum country co-operation. We all agree with that. Is he aware that China—a country that will play a greatly increasing role in world trade—is not in the World Trade Organisation? What is the right hon. Gentleman's view on the admission of China and encouraging it to enter the WTO?
Mr. Lang: I favour the admission of China, provided that it undertakes to accept the rules and observe them. The WTO already accounts for 90 per cent. of world trade. It has 126 members, but there are also some 30 applicants, of which China is one and Russia is another. I should like those major trading nations, particularly those with massive potential for the next century, to join the WTO, but it is important that they accept the disciplines of the organisation.
Mr. Jacques Arnold: My right hon. Friend and his departmental colleagues deserve

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congratulation on the leading role that Britain, under their leadership, has played in the success of the Uruguay round of the general agreement on tariffs and trade and on their successes at the WTO conference in Singapore. However, he cannot rest on his laurels, because there is far too much foot-dragging in our regional grouping, the European Union, on providing proper free trade access into our market, especially for developing countries. Will he bear it in mind that countries in Latin America and elsewhere look to Britain to continue to give a lead in pressing for that from inside the European Union?
Mr. Lang: Yes, and developing countries—and the least developed countries—were grateful for the lead that the United Kingdom gave on core labour standards, on opening up our markets and on increasing the access to trade of the least developed countries. We shall continue that work.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: By what margin do the Japanese propose to reduce their impositions on whisky? Was there any discussion of the on-going Libyan sanctions? As a former Scottish Secretary and the Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, the right hon. Gentleman, of all people, knows that there are grave doubts about Lockerbie. Given that the decision-makers in Libya were educated at British universities and technical colleges, is not the damage done by those sanctions to British industry enormous, especially as phase 3 of the great man-made river project is now worth some £10 billion? How is it that the Germans, Italians and South Koreans are trading merrily while British industry is disadvantaged by this American-led policy?
Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman referred to the D'Amato legislation, which affects Iran and Libya. That was not discussed at the conference. The question of Japanese whisky is still is under negotiation. Japan has yet to reach a final conclusion, but I have indications that the possibility of a substantial reduction in the duty on imported whisky is being contemplated.
Mr. Michael Fabricant (Mid-Staffordshire): Further to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) on the liberalisation of telecommunications, will my right hon. Friend confirm that he will do everything in his power to ensure that British Telecom's acquisition of MCI goes ahead? Would not a single market among WTO members—which, as he said, already accounts for 90 per cent. of world trade—make trading blocs such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the EU irrelevant?
Mr. Lang: If we achieved global free trade, regional groupings would become irrelevant. That is why it is important to keep the groupings' eyes on the multilateral agenda and not allow them to become Fortress North America or Fortress Europe. I hope that my hon. Friend understands that it is not appropriate for me to comment on the ambitions abroad of British Telecom.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: The Secretary of State was rather reticent in his description of the problems of child labour and working conditions. What
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does he seriously propose to do to eliminate child labour throughout the world by the enforcement of ILO conditions? Is he not concerned about the growing death rate in the economic zones of China and throughout south Asia in the new industries which is caused by appalling working conditions, the lack of trade union rights and health and safety legislation, and the enormous profits that British, North American and European companies make from such exploitation?
Mr. Lang: This country defers to no other in its condemnation of child labour and forced labour. We will continue to support the ILO in its efforts, through its conventions and other work, to rid the world of such activity. The WTO recognised that that was not an issue for it. It accepted the view that was advanced by me and by other countries that the best way to raise living standards in poor countries is to do more trade with them.
Mr. Roy Thomason: Does my right hon. Friend agree that world environmental standards can improve on the back of increased prosperity generated by tariff reduction, which must always remain the primary objective of events such as the Singapore conference, but that such matters should remain on the agenda?
Mr. Lang: Yes, I agree. I believe that at Singapore we made major progress towards reducing those tariffs.
Mr. Max Madden: Does the President recognise that condemnation of child and bonded labour is, in many people's view, wholly insufficient? Why was not the conference prepared to propose specific action to combat that scourge, including measures to assist poor countries to help children from poor families to receive an education rather than working themselves into a premature grave? Bangladesh, for example, is taking such action, and it would be greatly helped by support from the rich western world in its efforts to give its children an education rather than encouraging them into child labour.
Mr. Lang: I am happy to assure the hon. Gentleman that Bangladesh was among the leading countries warmly to welcome the stance of the United Kingdom Government on that issue. Bangladesh and other poor countries receive benefit from the United Kingdom, through our overseas aid programme, and they will receive help through the least-developed countries programme and through the International Labour Organisation, the work of which we support. The WTO is a rules-making body, and if it got involved in trade and labour standards, it would end up making rules that would regulate trade with those countries, impose sanctions and restrict trade. That would be the best way of driving them to even more extreme poverty.
Mr. Harry Barnes: When the World Trade Organisation recognises the International Labour Organisation, is that the equivalent of the social chapter, so that, as world free trade leads to child and slave labour, the ILO will have to take action to combat such arrangements? If that is so, and we are associated with the recognition of the ILO, will the Government stop slagging it off?
Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman has got it the wrong way round. Free trade and trade liberalisation increase

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trade, and increased trade is the best way of raising living standards in poor countries. Living standards have improved dramatically in countless countries in the past 30 or 40 years, not through the imposition of sanctions, regulations, controls, embargoes or moratoriums, but through trade liberalisation. That is the best way forward.
Mr. Neil Gerrard: Is not the evidence of the past few years that trade liberalisation—this is not the first time that it has been suggested—has done absolutely nothing to deal with the problems of child and bonded labour? In fact, the number of child labourers is increasing, not decreasing. If that is the evidence of the past few years, why should we expect further liberalisation to make the situation any better?
Mr. Lang: I do not know what statistics the hon. Gentleman can produce in support of his claim, but in my experience every country that has had liberalised trade and has traded more freely with other countries has raised its living standards at all levels of society. That is the trend, and it is visible in countless countries in the far east which are emerging into modern, highly industrialised economies and providing major markets for British goods into the bargain.
Mr. Alan Simpson: Will the President reflect on the fact that in his opening statement he did not make a single reference to the environment, unless we were to assume that it was covered by anti-competitive practices? In the face of the evidence from development agencies, as well as environmental organisations, that free trade has brought an acceleration in the rate of environmental exploitation, the exploitation of children, child labour and slavery, does he recognise that there will have to be a re-regulation of some markets if ethical standards are to be imposed on the global trading area?
Will the President also comment on the criticism that is emerging from the developing nations about one aspect that is protected in the WTO agreement: intellectual property rights? At the moment, global corporations have the right to patent genetic lines for seeds, crops, animals and trees—and even for whole tribes—in the developing world.
Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman will have heard what I said in answer to an earlier question on intellectual property rights, concerning the reinforcement of the arrangements in the Uruguay round.
I did not mention the environment in my opening statement because there were so many items of positive good news to mention that I did not have time to cover everything. Again, as I said in an earlier answer, some positive progress was made on the environment, and we must build on that.
Mr. Denis MacShane: Can the President confirm that the most authoritative recent study shows that child labour has doubled in the past 10 years, particularly in its most odious form of sexual exploitation for business purposes? That is why the United States, third-world Churches, non-governmental organisations and European countries wanted the WTO to discuss the matter. His opposition to that is a mark of shame for our country. Before he hides behind the ILO, will he confirm
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that it wants the WTO to discuss the matter? Will he also confirm that ILO discussion is meaningless without sanctions and that 18 months ago the Government wanted to withdraw from the organisation? To shelter behind the ILO is pure pre-Christmas hypocrisy.
Mr. Lang: I am not sheltering behind the ILO. The hon. Gentleman makes assertions about figures on child labour without a shred of evidence to support them. Trade liberalisation is raising standards and improving employment conditions in the emerging countries. I am in no doubt about that, and the vast majority of countries that were represented at Singapore shared that view. It is the right way forward, rather than going down the route of imposing sanctions.
Mr. Andrew Miller: Will the Secretary of State confirm that his statement on tariffs on information components applies equally to finished products and partly assembled units? Will such tariffs act consequentially to provide the transparency that he described? Will they result in changes to tax regimes here, and should we therefore expect a statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer? Given the Secretary of State's statement on the amount of data that will flow through our telecoms systems, does he agree that, should the Geneva discussions on intellectual property rights not reach a fruitful conclusion in the near future, the matter must be a subject of the next trade round?
Mr. Lang: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the issue of intellectual property rights must be carried further. There are substantial advantages to be gained by this country—among others—if measures are better implemented to reduce piracy of intellectual property. The information technology agreement covers such products as computer hardware and software, semiconductors, integrated circuits, passive components, multi-media equipment, and so on. It does not cover consumer electronics. The savings that will flow are from the tariffs on imports and exports, which will flow to the European Union. I do not therefore envisage my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor making an announcement. The reduction in the cost of the products will be beneficial to everybody who uses them as well as those who make them.
Mr. Stuart Bell: The President of the Board of Trade touched lightly on the Uruguay round and the fact that there are so many loose ends yet to be tied up—on agriculture, financial services, maritime services, professional services and anti-dumping among others. Will he confirm that it is important to tie up those loose ends before we move to new multilateral trade negotiations in a few years' time?
Mr. Lang: It is indeed important to tie up those loose ends, conclude what has been agreed and, if possible, make further and faster progress. There was good progress on the built-in programme at Singapore, but we should not preoccupy ourselves with looking backwards to Uruguay, important though that was. We should also be able to focus on the forward momentum that I believe we have with the new work programme and the information technology and telecommunications deals, as well as the prospect of building towards a new round, which I hope will be announced before the end of the century.

Forensic Explosives Laboratory
4.12 pm
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Michael Howard): With permission, I should like to make a statement about the inquiry undertaken by Professor Caddy into the circumstances and implications of centrifuge contamination in the Forensic Explosives Laboratory at Fort Halstead.
The House will recall that, on 14 May, I announced that I had invited Professor Caddy, who is director of the forensic science institute at Strathclyde university, to undertake an inquiry into the discovery of RDX, a component of Semtex, in the centrifuge at the Forensic Explosives Laboratory. Professor Caddy was asked to report on the general question whether it was likely that contamination could spread from the centrifuge to samples under examination. He was also asked specifically to examine the laboratory's papers on all past cases in which RDX traces were found and a criminal conviction resulted, and to assess the likelihood that contamination might have occurred in those cases, and he was invited to examine the laboratory's procedures in the trace laboratory, and to make recommendations.
I am today publishing in full Professor Caddy's report as a Command Paper. I have also written to Professor Caddy setting out the Government's response to his report. Copies of the report and the response have been placed in the Library.
Before I turn to the substance of the report, I should like to place on record my thanks to Professor Caddy for undertaking the inquiry. The discovery of explosives contamination in the centrifuge was a grave matter, and one that raised serious questions about the reliability of the forensic evidence that had been submitted by the FEL in some serious criminal cases. I therefore decided to commission without delay an independent inquiry into the circumstances in which the contamination occurred and the implications of the discovery.
I was pleased that Professor Caddy, one of our foremost experts in forensic science and a man of considerable experience in forensic explosives matters, agreed to undertake the inquiry. I am grateful to him for completing that important work so promptly, and for submitting a clear and authoritative report. I should also like to thank Mr. James McQuillan, of the Forensic Science Agency of Northern Ireland, and Dr. Douglas Munro, of the United Kingdom accreditation service, whom Professor Caddy invited to assist him in his inquiry.
The key issue on which Professor Caddy was invited to give an opinion was whether it was likely that the centrifuge had contaminated forensic samples. Professor Caddy looked at all the 124 cases covering the period 1988 to March 1996 in which RDX traces were found and from those identified 14 in which such traces formed part of the evidence before the court, and in which a criminal conviction resulted.
Professor Caddy deals with each of those cases in detail in section 7 of his report. His overall conclusion is set out in section 8, in the following terms:
"From this evidence it can only be concluded that the results obtained from all cases remain a true measure of the presence of the explosive RDX and that no contamination of these casework samples arose from the contaminated centrifuge".
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I accept Professor Caddy's findings on the key question of contamination. My officials have accordingly written today to the representatives of the 14 individuals in whose cases traces of RDX formed part of the evidence before the court and a criminal conviction resulted. In the letters, they state that I do not consider that the findings of the report necessitate the referral of any of the cases to the Court of Appeal. That does not, of course prevent further representations from being made on behalf of any of those individuals; but on the basis of Professor Caddy's conclusions, I find no grounds for initiating further action in respect of any of these cases.
I shall take this opportunity to correct a minor error of fact in my written answer to a question by my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) on 14 May, which was repeated in my statement on the following day. As Professor Caddy has discovered, the centrifuge was brought into service at the FEL in 1988, not in 1989 as was first thought. That does not affect the scope of the inquiry. All cases in which the centrifuge was used were examined by Professor Caddy.
The conclusion that Professor Caddy has reached on the question of contamination does not lead him to minimise the seriousness of the series of omissions that allowed the contamination in the centrifuge in the trace laboratory to remain undetected for so long. He describes that as a
"scientific oversight which is unacceptable and is to be much criticised".
Professor Caddy's terms of reference invited him to examine FEL procedures in the trace laboratory and to make recommendations. Section 11 of his report sets out 18 recommendations which, he believes,
"will both increase the effectiveness of the FEL and provide even greater protection from the possibilities of contamination".
He sets that in the context of the overall high standards that he found at the laboratory, concluding that
"the FEL along with the Forensic Science Agency of Northern Ireland are probably two of the world leaders in terms of the analytical procedures employed but especially the quality assurance programmes used to monitor the containment of trace levels of explosive".
Professor Caddy has made 18 recommendations. The Government accept 17 of them in full, and work on all those is already in hand. Of the 18 recommendations, 16 primarily concern changes to existing practices and equipment at the FEL, designed to improve the work environment still further. The Ministry of Defence, which is responsible for the FEL, is already taking forward work to ensure that the recommendations are implemented without delay. Resources will be made available to implement the changes that Professor Caddy proposes at the laboratory.
Two of Professor Caddy's recommendations are somewhat broader in focus and, with your permission, Madam Speaker, I shall say a few words about each of them. I turn first to the only recommendation that the Government do not accept in full. In recommendation 12, Professor Caddy says:
"The initial examination of all incendiary and explosive devices should be the sole prerogative of the two UK forensic science laboratories, FEL and FSANI, working in this area."
The Government agree that this work should normally be carried out at these laboratories—indeed, the great majority already is. But we believe that it would be wrong

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to remove altogether the discretion on the part of the police to send devices to other laboratories from time to time if there is a sound reason for doing so.
I propose, therefore, to issue guidance to the police recommending that, unless there are sound operational reasons for doing otherwise, they should in future refer all incendiary and explosive devices in Great Britain to the FEL. The Secretary of State for Scotland will issue similar guidance to Scottish forces. In Northern Ireland, the RUC already refers all such work to the FSANI. I have discussed our response to this recommendation with Professor Caddy and he has expressed himself content with it.
Recommendation 18 also deserves special mention. In that recommendation, Professor Caddy states:
"Consideration should be given to the establishment of an Inspectorate of Forensic Sciences as a means of externally and independently monitoring the performance of laboratories in forensic science to the satisfaction of the forensic science community, the legal profession and most importantly the general public."
We accept that recommendation. We shall, indeed, consider whether to establish an inspectorate of the kind that Professor Caddy details in appendix 4 of his report, but I must also have regard to the proposals of the royal commission on criminal justice, which favoured the creation of a forensic science advisory council. Professor Caddy's recommendation implies a system of statutory regulation that is different from and more far-reaching than the approach favoured by the royal commission. I shall now consider both proposals before deciding how to proceed.
In this context, I welcome the proposals that are under consideration to set up a professional body for forensic science. I understand that preliminary meetings have now taken place involving representatives from various forensic science and other organisations. Lord Dainton—the Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee in another place, which reported on forensic science—is leading the initiative as president elect. I believe that this could be a useful initiative, and I shall therefore take a close interest in the progress made.
In summary, Madam Speaker, the Government accept the substance of all Professor Caddy's conclusions and recommendations. We accept in full 17 of his 18 recommendations and have already begun to implement them. We note the professor's conclusion that all the laboratory's analyses, in both case reports and court cases, remain valid. In particular, we note Professor Caddy's key conclusion that the safety of criminal convictions is not in question as a result of the discovery of the contaminated centrifuge. In the light of this, I have decided that the report does not necessitate the referral of any cases to the Court of Appeal.
We are determined to do all we can to ensure that an incident of this kind will never happen again. The FEL has a justifiably high reputation for its experience and for the high standard of its equipment and procedures. Professor Caddy's report does nothing to undermine this position in general, although it is clear that there are lessons which must and will be learned.
I commend Professor Caddy's report, and the Government's response to it, to the House.
Mr. Jack Straw: May I first thank the Secretary of State for his courtesy in allowing me time to read Professor Caddy's report? May I also express the
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thanks of the Opposition to Professor Caddy—described by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) during our exchanges on 15 May as a "distinguished forensic scientist"—for the thoroughness of his work and the independence of mind that he has brought to bear on the report? I also want to place on record our thanks to those who assisted Professor Caddy.
Will the Secretary of State confirm that, although Professor Caddy raised some very important matters of concern—to which I shall refer in a moment—at no point did he question the integrity of our forensic science services or any of their staff? I am sure that the House will be relieved by the central conclusion of the report—that the evidence provided in every case during the period under examination remains valid. The Secretary of State was, however, right to entertain further representations on behalf of the individuals convicted on the evidence once they and their legal advisers have had a chance to consider the report—which, of course, they have not seen at this stage.
However, does the Secretary of State accept that some of the criticism in the report about working practices at the Forensic Explosives Laboratory is very serious? Does he also accept that Professor Caddy's conclusion at section 3.12, that "only serendipity"—a lucky happenstance—brought to light the absence of any testing during and following the installation of the centrifuge, is alarming indeed?
I want to press the Secretary of State on three other points. First, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman acknowledged in his statement, Professor Caddy recommended that all initial examinations of incendiary and explosive devices and other related evidence should be the sole prerogative of the two United Kingdom forensic science laboratories—the Forensic Explosives Laboratory and the Forensic Science Agency of Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State said that he will continue to allow the police to use other laboratories, if there are sound operational advantages in so doing. Does the Secretary of State agree that, given the strength of Professor Caddy's initial recommendations to confine all that work to the FEL and the FSANI, the use of other laboratories should be permitted only if the two main laboratories do not have the capacity at the time to carry out the investigation required by the police?
Secondly, will the Secretary of State accept that Professor Caddy evidently has significant concerns, expressed in section 9.5 of the report, about the way in which the agency status of those two laboratories might "inhibit an open exchange" between the staffs of these laboratories "because of commercial restraints"? Is the Secretary of State satisfied that the commercial restraints of agency status will not get in the way of the need, spelled out in section 9, to increase the intellectual challenge to members of those staffs by their meeting each other and exchanging information?
Thirdly, I want to press the Secretary of State on Professor Caddy's key recommendation to strengthen the independence of the forensic science services generally by establishing an independent inspectorate, which is contained in section 11 of the report and which is his personal recommendation in appendix 4. Does the Secretary of State accept that it is now four years since Professor Dainton called for an independent body to oversee the service and that that was followed by the report of the Royal Commission on criminal justice

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recommending the establishment of a forensic science advisory council, which proposal was given further backing by the Lord Chief Justice?
Although I accept that there is some difference in the specific proposals, the Secretary of State will accept that there is overwhelming agreement among all those parties that there has to be an independent overseer of the forensic science services. Lord Taylor said more than two years ago that the need for such a body was urgent, so should not an advisory council now be established immediately, initially on a non-statutory basis because of the time that it would take at this stage of this Parliament to enact into law proposals for a statutory inspectorate, although that might well be what is needed?
Will the Secretary of State also accept that the continuing delay in the Government making up their mind about the need for an oversight body must add to the concerns that Professor Caddy expressed in his report? Was not Professor Caddy right to conclude that such an inspectorate or body is necessary "to restore public confidence" to the forensic science community who, in turn, perform such an essential role in our criminal justice system?
Mr. Howard: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the measured tone of his response and for his tribute to Professor Caddy and the work contained in his report. I entirely agree that some of the criticisms in Professor Caddy's report are serious and we intend to take them seriously, as is evidenced by the extent to which we have accepted his recommendations.
On the three specific points raised by the hon. Gentleman, first, I do not intend to limit the circumstances in which the FEL and the FSANI should be used by the police to the one set identified by the hon. Gentleman. I would expect that that would normally be the exceptional circumstance in which those laboratories would not be used, but I am not confident enough of my ability to identify all exceptional circumstances at this stage and would therefore prefer not to be tied down in that way.
On exchanges of information, we accept the recommendation that there should be regular meetings, and of course it is important that nothing should inhibit the quality of those exchanges in so far as they bear on matters of the type discussed by Professor Caddy in his report.
Finally, I accept the importance of reaching a decision soon on how we can best act on the desire of the royal commission and Professor Caddy for an independent voice in relation to forensic science, but the recommendations that they made are significantly different from one another, so I am not attracted by the hon. Gentleman's suggestion that I should set up a non-statutory advisory council immediately. I certainly do not exclude the possibility of proceeding, in the first instance, on a non-statutory basis, but I prefer to consider more fully Professor Caddy's recommendation and its relationship with the royal commission's recommendation, and the further developments such as those that I identified, which are proceeding, before I reach a final view on the matter.
Mr. Phil Gallie: In commending my right hon. and learned Friend on initiating the report, may I
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suggest that not only the forensic science community but the public at large should take satisfaction from the report? It will restore the public's confidence in the forensic science system.
Mr. Howard: I entirely agree with that important point. It is not surprising that some anxiety was expressed when those events came to light, when I commissioned the inquiry, but I believe that the public can have confidence in the outcome of Professor Caddy's report; I agree with my hon. Friend and am grateful for his question.
Mr. A. J. Beith: Does the Home Secretary agree that it will be a relief for all those involved in protecting the public against the bombing campaign that, despite the errors that were made, Professor Caddy has firmly concluded that convictions are not put in doubt by what happened? Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman recognise the implicit criticism of resourcing in Professor Caddy's report? How much money will be made available for the management and research resource requirements that Professor Caddy identified?
On independent monitoring, is it not a little odd, as for at least three years the Home Secretary has resisted setting up an advisory council, that he should now use that as a reason for not setting up a statutory inspectorate? Will he at least say that he is committed to setting up a form of independent monitoring, whichever form is eventually chosen?
Mr. Howard: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his first question. Indeed it is a matter of relief that Professor Caddy came to the conclusions that he reached. I do not entirely accept the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion that the report contains what he described as "implicit criticism" of resource inadequacy; but, in answer to his question, we estimate that the cost of implementing Professor Caddy's recommendations is about £500,000, and those resources will be made available.
On the last point, the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion is unworthy. There have been several developments in forensic science since the royal commission reported; they should be fully taken into account. I recognise that there is a strong case for an independent role, and I hope to reach a conclusion on that matter as soon as possible.
Mr. Kevin McNamara: The whole House will be indebted to Professor Caddy for his report. He is a distinguished forensic scientist.
The Home Secretary said that he saw no grounds for referring cases to the Court of Appeal, but he appeared to anticipate that, when legal representatives of convicted people obtain copies of the report, they might seek to go to the Court of Appeal again on the basis of what is in the report. First, as many hon. Members have not had an opportunity to examine the report, will the Home Secretary tell the House why he feels that those people may seek to go to the Court of Appeal again?
Secondly, he will recall that, in a recent case, a senior official in the forensic science service was highly criticised for his lack of qualifications by, I believe, the Lord Chief Justice on appeal. Is that person involved in any of those cases?
Mr. Howard: The hon. Gentleman was reading rather too much into my remarks. As I said, I do not believe that

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any grounds arising out of this report would justify any of the cases concerned being referred to the Court of Appeal. However, I have learnt over a long period not to underestimate the ingenuity of lawyers. I said that it was open to representatives of those involved in those cases to make further representations suggesting that the cases should be referred, and that any such representations would be considered.
I do not have available a specific answer to the last part of the hon. Gentleman's question. I have no reason to suppose that the person to whom he referred was involved, but perhaps I can write to the hon. Gentleman on that matter.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: I am not complaining too stridently, but the document to which the Home Secretary referred was not available in the Vote Office shortly before he rose to make his statement; therefore, I do not know what the report says about the crucial Lockerbie evidence, about which there is considerable forensic doubt. I refer to the timing device or, more accurately, the sliver of timing device, which was the subject of considerable controversy both at the Royal Armaments Centre and in the United States, where considerable doubt has been thrown on the findings of Mr. Thurman, not least by Mr. Whitehurst, another expert. Rather than answer off the top of his head, will the Home Secretary write to me in detail about this aspect of crucial forensic evidence in the Lockerbie case? It leads to the involvement of Libyan sanctions, which, as was said in the last statement, are so damaging to British industry.
Mr. Howard: Once the hon. Gentleman has read the report, he may find that the essential point that he raised is covered in it. I am, however, perfectly prepared to write to him to answer his question as best I can. I am not entirely confident whether I shall provide in my reply sufficient detail to satisfy the hon. Gentleman, but I shall do my best.
Mr. Chris Mullin: Having been familiar with Professor Caddy's work over the years, I am happy to accept his conclusion that none of the forensic evidence in any of the cases has been disturbed. However, a number of cases in the not too distant past involved mistakes—or worse—by forensic scientists. Two problems have arisen: one is that an unhealthily close relationship developed between the police and some forensic scientists—in the Guildford case, for example, they were not above rewriting their evidence at the police's suggestion; and the second is that forensic facilities have often not been available to the same extent to defence lawyers, so they have been unable to test the prosecution's propositions. Is the Home Secretary satisfied that both those problems have now been resolved?
Mr. Howard: That matter is, of course, quite beside the matters that gave rise to Professor Caddy's report, and quite beside his report. I have no reason to suppose that defence lawyers do not have adequate facilities to enable them to benefit from forensic science, but that matter is not directly raised as a result of the report.
Mr. Paul Flynn: Those of us who have spent years working in laboratories will have
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listened to the statement with astonishment. It is basic to any analytical procedure that a test is run first on possible contamination of all the instruments involved. We have heard today of incompetence on a mountainous scale. It is hard to believe that a centrifuge was left in that condition for a prolonged time. Is the contaminant to which the Home Secretary referred the only indicator of the presence of Semtex or are there other indicators? Although it is impossible to argue with the conclusion made by a report that few of us have read so far, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman tell us for how long that centrifuge was contaminated, and whether RDX is the only indicator of the presence of Semtex?
Mr. Howard: I shall resist the temptation to accept the hon. Gentleman's invitation to go into areas of technical expertise that I do not possess. I am satisfied that, when the hon. Gentleman has had the opportunity to read the report, he will find his concerns fully and more than adequately dealt with. There were serious shortcomings, as Professor Caddy reveals in his report, although I am not sure that they add up to the kind of criticism contained in the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question.
Mr. Alan Simpson: I thank the Home Secretary for his statement and Professor Caddy for his report. Will the Home Secretary comment specifically on the case of John Kinsella, whose name was included in the review even though he was not convicted on the basis of any forensic evidence that suggested that he had been in touch with Semtex? I know that the Home Secretary has been reviewing that case in detail and, I believe, has now received the statements from Pairic MacFhloinn in prison, who has accepted responsibility for the Warrington bombings and who has said, on record and specifically, that my constituent, John Kinsella, had no knowledge of the contents of the holdall with which he was left. Can the Home Secretary add any further comments on the review that he has undertaken, specifically in relation to John Kinsella's case?
Mr. Howard: No, I am afraid that I cannot add anything this afternoon. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the basis on which representations have been made in that case is not connected with the presence of explosives. He is also right to say that representations have been made in that case; they are currently receiving careful attention in the Home Office.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: Like many Members, I have not read the report and therefore cannot quarrel with any of its conclusions. In his statement, the Home Secretary accepted the view that there should be some degree of independent examination of the work done by the Forensic Explosives Laboratory, but specifically excluded the sending of samples to any other laboratory for testing. Those two points seem to contradict each other. When does the Home Secretary propose that an independent testing regime will be set up? After all, we have had a shocking exposé from Professor Caddy of serious shortcomings in the laboratory.
Mr. Howard: I think, with respect, that the hon. Gentleman slightly misunderstood what I said. Far from saying that I would not agree to have samples sent to other laboratories, I rejected, in part, one of Professor Caddy's

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recommendations that samples should be sent only to the FEL and FSANI. The Government's view is that, although that should normally be the case, there are circumstances in which it would reasonable for the police to use other laboratories. I cannot give a specific timetable for my decision on an independent role, but I recognise the need to come to a view on that matter as soon as possible.

BILLS PRESENTED
  SALE OF MEDICINES (YOUNG PEOPLE)
  Mr. Paul Flynn presented a Bill to make it unlawful to sell medicinal products to people under the age of sixteen: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 28 February 1997, and to be printed [Bill 63].
  DISABLED PERSONS AND CARERS (SHORT-TERM BREAKS)
  Mr. Alfred Morris, supported by Ms Liz Lynne, Sir Richard Body, Mr. Dafydd Wigley, Mrs. Margaret Ewing, Rev. Martin Smyth, Mr. Roger Berry, Mr. Peter Thurnham, Mr. John Heppell, Mr. Ken Eastham, Mr. Harry Barnes and Mr. Tom Cox, presented a Bill to provide for assessments of health and social needs of disabled persons to include assessments of the needs for short-term breaks for the disabled person and any carer: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 24 January 1997, and to be printed [Bill 62].

  <2> Pairing Arrangements
  4.43 pm
  Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Has information about the Division last night been a subject of concern for you, in view of the fact that it seems that the Tory Government paired some of the absent Tory Members of Parliament with people on the Labour Benches and doubled them up with people on the Liberal Benches? In other words, they rigged the ballot. In all my 27 years here, I have never heard of anything like that before. It needs a serious investigation, because the Government are in trouble with their lack of a majority and they might do it again and again.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): I have to inform the hon. Gentleman that that subject has nothing to do with the Chair.

Abortion (Amendment)
4.43 pm
Mr. David Amess: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend section 1(1) of the Abortion Act 1967 in relation to the grounds on which a pregnancy may be terminated.
It is Christmas and the whole country seems to be immersed in preparations to celebrate that day. It is not a matter for conjecture—Christmas will be celebrated on 25 December and that is the day that the infant Jesus was born. There was an interesting editorial in the Sunday Express this weekend that posed the question of how many people actually think about the real purpose behind the celebration of Christmas. In the same newspaper, there was another excellent article by Mr. Enoch Powell about the issues that are debated in Parliament these days and the nature of our debates. I had the privilege to be present in the Chamber when Enoch Powell moved a similar Bill and I can only lament that, for various reasons, we no longer have such profound debates on fundamental issues. This is the perfect time for the House to spend a little while considering the plight of babies who are never allowed to develop and be born. I refer to abortion.
The House is familiar with the arguments deployed in support of the Abortion Act 1967 when it was originally introduced. The intentions of the Act were clear at the time. My Bill would support that Act in spirit and in practice. Those who support abortion per se explain their views by saying that a woman has a right to choose and they ask what the state does with unwanted babies. Last year, 163,621 abortions were carried out in England and Wales. Did every one of those women choose not to conceive a child? Is it really possible that so many women had abortions because the risk of injury to the physical or mental health of the mother or existing children was greater than if the pregnancies were terminated? To me, that seems beyond comprehension.
The current clinical interpretation of the Abortion Act 1967, in effect, means that any woman can have a termination if she wishes as long as gestation is under 24 weeks. That fact was highlighted in the summer when a healthy twin was aborted for purely social reasons and a senior gynaecologist admitted on BBC Radio 4:
"There is abortion on demand … if a woman wants an abortion, she gets one".
Aborting any foetus is contrary to the original intentions of the Abortion Act of some 30 years ago, which was passed to allow abortions only in a restricted number of cases. Furthermore, with increasing evidence of the humanity of the foetus, those abortions raise serious moral and ethical issues.
Section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 provides no yardstick, thus allowing abortion on demand, sometimes quite late in a pregnancy as we saw with the twin who was killed after 16 weeks. In 1979, Sir Ian Percival, then the Solicitor-General, told a Standing Committee that was considering tightening the grounds for abortion that there was bound to be some risk in every continuing pregnancy, which makes nonsense of the law as it stands at present. He was discussing the inclusion of the word "substantially" before the phrase
"greater than if the pregnancy were terminated"
in order to make the test more stringent and more than merely a statistical evaluation.

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While the Bill would be only a small improvement, we are still left with the words "risk" and "injury", neither of which are quantified. Having a stitch or two in the cervix could be regarded by some doctors as an injury, but it would hardly justify the killing of the child in the womb. We therefore need to make it clear that both the risk and the injury must be serious.
Evidence is emerging of the long-term damage caused by abortion, not the least of which is the possibility of breast cancer following abortion. Current figures show a 30 per cent. increase in the incidence of breast cancer among women who have had abortions. There is also evidence from all over the world of women suffering years of trauma as a result of abortions that they imagined would be simple procedures and the answer to an immediate problem. Only this month, the British Medical Journal carried a paper on suicide after pregnancy in Finland from 1987 to 1994. The general suicide rate in Finland for that period was 11.3 per 100,000 and the rate associated with birth was significantly lower at 5.9. However, the suicide rate associated with miscarriage was 18.1 and it soared to 34.7 for induced abortion—significantly higher than in the population at large.
Some years ago, Westminster hospital published a research paper about attempted suicides among teenagers in its catchment area. The only significant statistic to emerge was that the suicide rate was seven times greater among girls who had had abortions compared with the control group. That figure increased to nine times greater when compared with teenage girls in the population at large. The research was decried on the ground that it was statistically too small, but I have heard of no follow-up investigation. In 1992, a short-term study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that 10 per cent. of women undergoing abortions suffered from psychological damage or trauma.
My Bill would not alter those sections of the Act that allow abortions in order to save the mother's life. It would not alter the sections dealing with grave and permanent injury to the mother or with the handicapped. It would tighten that part of the Act, section 1(1)(a), under which 97 per cent. of abortions are carried out. It would state quite simply that an abortion would be granted only if there was a significant risk to the mother of serious injury and if that risk was substantially greater than the risks inherent in every pregnancy. It would see an end to abortion on demand—which was never the intention of the 1967 Act. It would do what the present laws are meant to do but what they singularly fail to do: protect the woman and the child. I commend the Bill to the House.
4.52 pm
Mrs. Anne Campbell: I rise to oppose the Bill. Abortion is an issue about which many people feel strongly—and it is not difficult to understand why. Some hon. Members hold particularly strong views on the subject and have declared their intention to use every opportunity to raise the issue on the Floor of the House. It is their right to do so, but they should appreciate—and we should remember—that, although they are very vocal, they represent a view that is held by a very small minority.
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When a Sunday newspaper commissioned a MORI opinion poll following the controversy about abortions that occurred this summer, it found that 81 per cent. of respondents agreed or tended to agree with the statement:
"It is important for pregnant women to have the right to choose whether or not to continue their pregnancy".
Only 10 per cent. disagreed or tended to disagree and 9 per cent. neither agreed nor disagreed or had no opinion on the matter. The great majority of people in this country accept that abortion is regrettable but sometimes necessary.
Perhaps most people feel that way because they are sympathetic to the plight of women with problem pregnancies and they have some sense of what it might mean to force a woman to bear a child when she believes, and her doctors agree, that she could not cope. It is all very well for Members of Parliament to hold the strong view that abortion should not be allowed when a foetal abnormality is detected. They have the right to propose legislation that would prohibit such abortions. However, when we discuss such measures we should remember that we, personally, would not have to live with the consequences if the law were so amended.
It is the women denied abortion and their families who would suffer the consequences of such a restriction. Their lives—not ours—would be profoundly changed by the need to care for a child with a serious disability. In many cases, the other children in the family would suffer most. Organisations such as Support Around Termination for Foetal Abnormality, which provides counselling and assistance for those whose pregnancies are affected, know how important the option of abortion is. They know that the choice of abortion is valued even by those who choose not to take it.
Most abortions in this country are performed because the pregnancy is unwanted in circumstances where two doctors agree that it would be damaging to the mental wellbeing of the woman if she were forced to continue it. They are the abortions that some hon. Members are particularly keen to prohibit. But have they thought about what it would mean in practice? Have they thought about what it would really mean for a woman to bear a child that she desperately does not want?
Contraception is not fail-safe. Organisations such as the Birth Control Trust remind us frequently that about a third of pregnancies are conceived by women who say that they were using contraception when they became pregnant. About 50 per cent. of pregnancies are unplanned. Not all unplanned pregnancies will be unwanted, but many will be and we must think carefully about the consequences for individual women and for the whole of society if such women are forced to have those children against their will.
Motherhood is a great responsibility—it is difficult even for those who embrace it willingly. It is worth stating that no woman ever wants to have an abortion. However, many believe that it is the best solution to a dire problem. We have only to look to Northern Ireland to see what happens when legal abortion is severely restricted. Every year, more than 2,000 desperate women travel to England for the procedure. More than 4,000 women travel to England from Eire, where abortion is illegal in all circumstances. Those who

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cannot afford to travel here sometimes try to abort themselves—that is what happened in Britain before the Abortion Act 1967 allowed safe, legal abortion.
Women have consciences and so do their doctors. Abortion is not a casual choice by women who cannot be bothered to use contraception: it is the last resort of those who are pregnant and who are convinced that it would be better if the potential child were not born. It would be a tragedy for the women if the abortion law were restricted.
The Abortion Act 1967 has served women and their doctors well. Those who oppose abortion in principle like to remind us that there have been almost 4 million legal abortions since the Act became law. They sometimes claim that that is an abhorrence. It is possible to interpret that figure differently and see it as a measure of the benefit that the Act has conferred on women and their existing families: that number of abortions took place because that number was necessary for the well-being of women and their families.
The debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 allowed the opportunity for considerable debate about amendments to the abortion law. The issues were discussed in great detail and some changes were made to the law. The Bill that the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) seeks to put before the House is not motivated by new developments or discoveries that require the Act to be amended. Public opinion is not pressing for a change in the law. The need for abortion on the grounds that it is currently provided in this country remains as pressing today as in 1967.
It is the responsibility of those who sit in the House to draft and pass legislation that affects the everyday lives of the millions of people who live in this country. It is right that we take into account issues that are perceived to be morally difficult or troublesome, but we would be doing the women of this country a great disservice if we allowed access to safe, clinical procedure to be more restricted than it is at present. I ask the House to oppose the Bill.
Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 19 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business), and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. David Amess, Mr. David Alton, Mr. Joe Benton, Sir Graham Bright, Mr. Edward Leigh, Mr. Thomas McAvoy, Mr. John
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McFall, Mr. Robert Parry, Mrs. Elizabeth Peacock, Rev. Martin Smyth, Dr. Robert Spink and Mrs. Ann Winterton.

Abortion (Amendment)

  ABORTION (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. David Amess accordingly presented a Bill to amend section 1(1) of the Abortion Act 1967 in relation to the grounds on which a pregnancy may be terminated: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 24 January 1997, and to be printed [Bill 64].
  Mr. Edward Leigh: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not the convention of the House that, if an hon. Member speaks against a ten-minute Bill, he normally votes against it? This is the second time in two weeks that those who oppose us on abortion issues have not had the nerve or the courage to force a Division. The country wants a decision on this matter, but those hon. Members have not had the nerve to force a Division.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): It is a convention that hon. Members can oppose but are not obliged to vote.
  Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I sat through the debate on the ten-minute Bill. Am I not right in thinking that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell) asked the House to oppose the excellent Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess)? She made a positive statement to that effect at the end of her speech. It is surely a waste of the House's time to make such a statement and then not carry it through to a vote.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a matter on which I can rule.
  Mr. David Harris: Further to the original point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. For a long time it was a convention of the House—I have heard occupants of the Chair say this—that, if hon. Members opposed a ten-minute Bill, they had to follow their opposition through to a vote. Is that correct?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not correct. [Interruption.] I call the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) to order. In my time in the House and in the Chair, hon. Members on both sides of the House have opposed such Bills, but have not forced a vote.

Orders of the Day

  Protection from Harassment Bill
  Order for Second Reading read.
  5.4 pm
  The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Michael Howard): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The Bill has one simple aim: to protect the victims of harassment.—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order. Will hon. Members who are leaving the Chamber please do so quietly?
  Mr. Howard: In the past year, a number of highly publicised stalking cases have come to public attention. They have highlighted the need to give the courts more effective powers to deal with stalkers. The Bill covers not only stalkers, but disruptive neighbours and those who target people because of the colour of their skin.
  The hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Ms Anderson) raised the issue of stalking in the summer, with her private Member's Bill. The hon. Lady deserves to be congratulated on her initiative in raising the matter, and I do so, but there had been no opportunity to consult on her proposals, and her Bill had significant deficiencies.
  The hon. Lady's Bill attempted to specify the behaviour that amounted to stalking. The conduct known as stalking can take many forms. Even though the list set out in the hon. Lady's Bill was not intended to be exhaustive, it would have served to focus the attention of the courts on the behaviour represented in it. Other types of behaviour, which might be just as distressing for the victim, might, in effect, have been excluded because of the way in which her Bill was drafted. Those points were made in response to the consultation exercise the Government carried out on our proposals. It is therefore particularly mystifying that Opposition Front Benchers have tabled amendments to this Bill that would reproduce those defects.
  Furthermore, the hon. Lady's Bill created strict offences: people would have had to prove their innocence if they had carried out any of the actions described in her Bill. There were no safeguards for journalists or others whose legitimate activities were similar to the actions that amounted to stalking. Those are serious deficiencies when we are dealing with behaviour that, in many instances, is ordinary and does not merit criminalisation. It is necessary to distinguish between instances when such behaviour is acceptable and when it is not.
  That was not just the Government's view. As Dr. Evonne von Heussen-Countryman, the director of the national anti-stalking and harassment campaign, said:
  "A bad Bill is worse than no Bill … and her proposals"—
  referring to the hon. Lady's Bill—
  "were not precise enough. You have to be able to defend legitimate activities such as debt collecting against the stalking charge".
  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Why is the Secretary of State so confident that he has now got the Bill right, given that people outside have had only 10 days to examine it and to comment on it?
  Mr. Howard: If the hon. Gentleman had waited, he would have discovered that I propose to explain precisely why the Bill remedies those deficiencies. His point about the length of time that the Bill has been available is absurd, given the extent and detail of the consultation on the proposals before they were enshrined in it.
  I believe that the proposals in the Bill will be effective, and will provide the protection for victims of harassment that I am sure—I think I am sure—all hon. Members want to achieve.
  Mr. Elfyn Llwyd: The Home Secretary said that the Bill covers racially motivated harassment. Where exactly in the Bill does that appear?
  Mr. Howard: It is not necessary to refer to racial harassment for the Bill to cover activities that constitute harassment on grounds of race as well as on other grounds.
  The Bill overcomes the difficulty of defining stalking by focusing on the harmful effect that this activity has on its victims. At one level, stalkers cause their victims harassment. The Bill therefore creates civil and—in England and Wales—criminal measures to deal with situations where harassment is caused. That approach is not new—action against harassment was taken in the Public Order Act 1986—but the present Bill goes much further. It also creates a new civil tort, and provides both the civil and criminal courts with powers to make orders to protect the victims of harassment from future actions by their tormentors.
  Dr. John Reid: In the light of what he has just said, can the Home Secretary explain why more than 1,000 days have passed since the first proposals were tabled in the form of amendments to the Bill that became the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 during its Committee stage? In fact, I think that some 1,016 days have passed. Why has it taken two and a half years to present these proposals to the House?
  Mr. Howard: Because, as has been apparent from previous attempts to deal with it, this is a difficult matter. We were, for example, keen to learn as much as possible from experience of how such matters were dealt with overseas, to see whether we could benefit from such knowledge. We were anxious to get the proposals right.
  It is no good one Opposition Member saying that the measures have been rushed through, and another saying minutes later that the process has taken far too long. We have been very careful to get our proposals right and to consult fully on them, and we are now confident that the Bill represents an effective way forward.
  Dame Angela Rumbold: As it stands, the Bill refers to harassment or stalking that causes upset and distress. A constituent of mine is being harassed by a group of people. Will the Bill, as it were, tie up the various criminal acts to which I believe that group is subjecting my constituent? Not just one person, but a group of people, is causing considerable harassment to a single woman with a family, and I should like to be reassured that the Bill will help.
  Mr. Howard: As my right hon. Friend will appreciate, it is difficult for me to give a categorical answer without

  783
  knowing the details of the case. I can certainly confirm, however, that the Bill will cover groups of people who perpetrate such offences, as well as individuals. I hope that that gives my right hon. Friend the reassurance that she and her constituent want.
  Mr. Paddy Tipping: Will the Home Secretary give way?
  Mr. Howard: I will, but then I must make progress.
  Mr. Tipping: The Home Secretary said earlier that the Bill would apply to nuisance neighbours, and then described harassment and its definition. The Bill's definition is clear: harassment is described as what a reasonable person would consider to be harassment. Many hon. Members know about nuisance neighbours, and a good many people consult them about the problem. Those people have ceased to be reasonable. I fear that the Bill is too widely drafted, and will not help in such circumstances.
  Mr. Howard: I think that the hon. Gentleman is confused. Of course it is true that some people are driven by the activities of others, sometimes neighbours, to a state in which they may not have all the attitudes of a reasonable person; but that is not what the Bill refers to. The Bill lays down that the test of guilt in regard to harassment should be whether an offender is committing actions that a reasonable person in the position of the offender would expect to give rise to harassment.
  The greatest difficulty that the police find in using existing legislation against stalkers is the need to prove the intention of the stalker. These provisions dispense with that requirement, so that a person who pursues a course of conduct that he ought to have known would cause harassment will commit an offence. A person ought to know that his course of conduct would amount to harassment in circumstances in which a reasonable person, in possession of the same information, would think that that course of conduct would cause the person at whom it was directed the effects of harassment, such as alarm or distress. The maximum sentence for the criminal offence of harassment will be six months' imprisonment and/or a level 5 fine.
  We believe that that test gets the balance right between the need to protect victims from the destructive behaviour of stalkers and the need to prevent the courts from being used for the pursuit of frivolous claims. A victim would have to show that harassment had been caused, and that the stalker ought to have known that that would be the effect of his actions—and stalkers will no longer be able to claim as a defence that they did not intend to harass their victims.
  By defining the offence in terms of the effect that the actions have on the victim, the proposals in the Bill will catch activity that causes harassment, irrespective of whether it might be termed stalking or something else. I have in mind, in particular, conduct that causes racial harassment. The Bill will catch that conduct if the conduct occurs on more than one occasion, and in circumstances in which the perpetrator ought to have
  784
  known that his words or behaviour would cause harassment, alarm or distress. Similarly, those who harass their neighbours through a course of conduct would fall within the ambit of this offence, as harassment may be caused in or from a private house. The Bill therefore builds on the provisions of section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986.
  The Bill also provides some specific defences. It will be a defence to show that the conduct was pursued for the prevention and detection of crime, or under an enactment or rule of law. Because of the nature of the activities pursued by stalkers, unless special provision is made, some police activities could be caught by the Bill. That, of course, is not our intention. I am also aware that the activities of journalists, salesmen, religious activists, debt collectors, private investigators and even political canvassers might fall within the scope of the Bill. We have therefore provided a defence of acting reasonably in the particular circumstances of the case in order to safeguard these legitimate activities.
  We have not defined harassment itself. Harassment as a concept has been interpreted regularly by the courts since 1986. Some 100 cases were dealt with by the courts in 1995 under section 4A of the 1986 Act, 40 leading to a conviction. However, to avoid doubt, the Bill makes it clear that harassment includes causing someone alarm or distress, and that a course of conduct includes speech.
  As well as the summary offence of causing harassment, the Bill creates a second, more serious, criminal offence in England and Wales—that of causing someone to fear violence. Where the level of harassment caused places someone in fear of violence being used against them, more severe penalties are required to reflect the gravity of the conduct. The maximum penalty for that offence will be five years' imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.
  As I have said, the Bill creates civil and criminal measures in England and Wales. Criminal proceedings can deal only with offences that have already been committed; the criminal law cannot provide protection for someone who might reasonably expect that he or she might be subject to harassment in the future. Nor does it provide adequate protection where the evidence does not satisfy the criminal standard of proof. A conviction in criminal proceedings requires the jury or magistrates to be satisfied, beyond reasonable doubt, that the defendant committed the offence. In civil proceedings, the court needs to be satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that the defendant harassed the victim.
  Civil proceedings also enable victims to be compensated for the distress and disturbance to their lives that harassment causes, just as they are when any other tort is committed. Civil proceedings would be taken by a victim, or a potential victim, where the need is to prevent the stalker from pursuing, or beginning a course of conduct. Action in the civil courts would be appropriate, for example, if just one act of harassment had taken place but there was fear that further acts would be committed, which would constitute a course of conduct. The civil courts could—if persuaded on the balance of probabilities that it was necessary to do so—grant an injunction, preventing the stalker from carrying out any specified activity which would amount to harassment. Breach of an order made under the tort

  785
  created in the Bill would, if proved beyond reasonable doubt, be a criminal offence punishable by up to five years' imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.
  When dealing with criminal offences that cause harassment, or cause someone to fear violence, we need not only to punish offenders for their actions but to reassure the victim that it will not happen again. As I have just said, the civil law provides a remedy in such circumstances.
  We have, however, listened carefully to people who have argued that it cannot be right in circumstances such as these to require a victim to go through a second hearing in a civil court, following a conviction in a criminal court, to gain an order preventing future harassment. We therefore think it right that criminal courts should have the power, when sentencing a person for an offence committed under the Bill, to make an order restraining a person from pursuing further conduct against the victim—or any other person named in the order—which amounts to harassment, or will cause fear of violence.
  A breach of an order made under the Bill, if proved to the criminal standard—beyond reasonable doubt—will itself be a criminal offence. The offence will carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and/or an unlimited fine. That will enable breaches to be dealt with quickly, with the involvement of the police. Where the risk to the victim is sufficiently serious, the offender can be held in custody. The breach of a civil order under the Bill may be dealt with as contempt of court rather than as a criminal matter.
  Mr. Kevin McNamara: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is talking about offences committed under the Bill and the fact that a person who breaches it may then be subject to another criminal offence. What if a person is convicted under another statute, but harassment takes place afterwards? Would it be possible for the judge to inform the convicted person that, if he indulged in harassment, he would automatically be subject to another criminal offence?
  Mr. Howard: I am not sure that it would be open to the judge to say anything precisely along those lines. It would of course be open to the judge, as it is at the moment, to draw the attention of someone who has been convicted and who is before him of the perils that he will face if he continues with a particular course of conduct. As I have sought to explain, there will be particular new and additional remedies available to the victim in such circumstances, but I am not sure that the precise warning that the hon. Gentleman has in mind would be the sort of language that would be likely to emanate from the judicial bench.
  I have set out the aims of the Bill as it applies to England and Wales. In Scotland, the aims are identical. The existing common law in Scotland already adequately covers acts that cause harassment, so no new criminal offences are proposed. A new delict—the Scottish equivalent of a tort—is, however, provided for in the Bill.
  The Government have tabled an amendment that would allow the Bill's provisions to be extended to Northern Ireland by negative resolution. It is important that the people of Northern Ireland are offered the same protection from harassment as people in the rest of the United Kingdom.
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  I have set out the principles that lie behind the Bill and why we believe that it will offer an effective remedy against harassment. It may help the House if I briefly explain the Bill's structure.
  Clause 1 describes the course of conduct that amounts to harassment in England and Wales and sets out the defences available. Clause 2 makes it a criminal offence for a person to pursue a course of conduct in breach of clause 1. Clause 3 creates a civil tort in relation to the course of conduct described in clause 1. Clause 4 creates the more serious offence of pursuing a course of conduct that puts someone in fear of violence. Clause 5 gives criminal courts the power, when sentencing a person for an offence under clause 2 or 4, to make a restraining order.
  Clause 6 provides that actions for damages under clause 3 are subject to a six-year limitation period rather than the three-year period applicable to personal injury cases. Clause 7 defines certain terms used in the earlier clauses, notably that a course of conduct is conduct that occurs on at least two occasions, and includes speech.
  Clauses 8 to 11 apply to Scotland. Clause 8 creates a delict. Clause 9 provides that breach of an order made under clause 8 is a criminal offence, similar to the provisions for England and Wales. Clause 10 allows for the award of damages. Clause 11 creates the concept of a restraining order in the Scottish criminal courts.
  To ensure that the work of the intelligence and security services is not compromised, clause 12 provides that the Secretary of State for the Home Department may certify, retrospectively, that a course of conduct carried out by a specified person on a specified occasion related to national security, the economic well-being of the United Kingdom, or the prevention or detection of serious crimes, and was done on behalf of the Crown.
  The Bill does not bind the Crown or, therefore, agents of the Crown, so the intelligence and security services—and other investigative agencies such as customs and benefit fraud investigators pursuing their responsibilities—are exempt from its provisions. The certification procedure is intended to ensure that that exemption can be proved in the situations described, quickly and effectively.

  The remaining clauses deal with the extent, commencement and short title of the Bill.
  Those, then, are the Government's proposals to deal with stalking. As I have said, their effects will go beyond what might be termed classic stalking to provide protection for others who are persecuted by anti-social behaviour. The proposals are part of the Government's aim to make the streets and communities of Britain safer.
  I am sorry that, despite all the fine words of the Opposition on this subject, the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) has tabled amendments that would significantly weaken the Bill and reduce the protection that it would afford the public, but perhaps he will in due course be able to dispel that impression, which is certainly the impression that we have formed of the amendments that have been tabled. As always, we look forward to hearing from him and from his colleagues.
  I commend the Bill to the House.
  5.24 pm
  Mr. Jack Straw: Like the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for whom Christmas has come about a week early, I begin with a tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Ms Anderson), who will be winding up for the Opposition on Second Reading. Concern about stalking, the absence of any criminal remedies and the inadequacy of civil remedies has been widely held for many years. There was a debate about that in 1994 during proceedings on the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill, but it took the unusual determination and tenacity of my hon. Friend to translate that concern into a coherent Bill against stalking, which she introduced on 6 March.
  For reasons that I shall come to, Ministers decided to block my hon. Friend's Bill when it was due for its Second Reading on 10 May. Prompted, I believe, by public anger at their refusal to back that Bill, on 9 July, Ministers published a consultative paper, "Stalking—The Solutions" and finally this Bill on 5 December. When it passes through the other place and becomes law early next year, my hon. Friend can feel proud of her achievement in ensuring that, at long last, people who are subject to the pain and trauma of stalking have better protection from the law than they ever did before.
  We support the Bill, although we want it to be improved in Committee, and we have agreed with the Government to secure all its stages in the House today and tomorrow. Given that agreement, I was astonished—although perhaps I should never be surprised by words from the Secretary of State or his political adviser—by an accusation today in The Times and the Daily Mail that Labour was, in the Secretary of State's words, "reneging" on a promise to back the Government's anti-stalking Bill.
  The Secretary of State must know that that allegation is completely untrue. He knows, because he was involved in the discussions, that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department said that the allegation was "nasty", not an adjective that I would use. Where both sides have agreed that there will be a certain amount of time taken to get through an agreed measure, it is unacceptable for one side then to complain when the other side seeks to ensure that those undertakings are carried through. Nothing that we have done in tabling amendments to the Bill in any sense undermines the spirit and letter of our agreement to ensure that the Bill secures all its stages in the House today and in the half day tomorrow.
  I understand from my hon. Friends that there have even been complaints that we have tabled amendments at all. That comes rich from a Government who have tabled five amendments to the Bill.
  Mr. George Howarth: To their own Bill.
  Mr. Straw: Indeed.
  The Secretary of State's complaint about the Bill of hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen was that it was too simplistic a solution I paraphrase to a very complicated matter. Of course we accept his injunction that it is better to have no Bill at all than a bad Bill. Given all the bad Bills that Labour Members have had to deal with week after week, I only wish that he had followed that injunction.
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  When my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen introduced her Bill in March, she gave some chilling case studies of women who had been stalked. In some cases, some sort of legal sanction had finally been imposed on the stalker. In most cases, however, the stalkers had managed to evade or avoid any sanction. My hon. Friend said:
  "Those who describe stalking as merely a nuisance should try speaking to a victim."
  She quoted with approval the view of the Police Federation that
  "it is frightening enough knowing that your every move is being watched, that you are being followed. But what if you are being trailed day after day, bombarded with unwanted letters, flowers and gifts, plagued with telephone calls and even go to collect your child from school to find a stranger has beaten you to it. It can ruin your life and"—
  said the Police Federation—
  "that is what is happening now to ordinary people, mainly women."—[Official Report, 6 March 1996; Vol. 273, c. 370.]
  Given that stalking can and has ruined the lives of many ordinary people for many years, the first question before the House is why existing law has proved so inadequate to counter the crime. One reason, I suggest, is that criminal law in England and Wales has developed to deal mainly with acute incidents of criminal behaviour—a murder, a robbery, a theft and so on—but it is far less developed in dealing adequately with behaviour such as stalking or serious neighbourhood disruption, which is continuous and where the whole is infinitely worse than the sum of the parts or any individual part.
  Individual acts of stalking such as those mentioned by the Police Federation—the odd letter of affection or the occasional bouquet of flowers—may be no more than eccentric, and should not bring down the force of the criminal or civil law. What causes the intense distress and so marks out stalking is the persistence and continuity of the conduct.
  A similar situation exists in relation to anti-social behaviour by neighbours. In a densely populated island like Britain, we must all accept that life in cities and towns will not always be peace and quiet. Most of us are willing to tolerate the occasional noisy disruption from neighbours; but when disruption becomes continuous and when those causing it ignore reasonable requests to desist and intimidate those who dare to complain, the effect, like that of stalking, shifts from being an occasional nuisance to a continuous nightmare
  In the past, such continuous, chronic criminal behaviour has generally been dealt with informally through community pressure, or perhaps by the informal intervention of the police, rather than through the formal involvement of the criminal law.
  When the criminal justice system has tried to deal with stalking or neighbour harassment, on the whole it has failed. That its because it has tended to chop up the continuous film of persistent misbehaviour into individual, discrete snapshots. Furthermore, as the Secretary of State mentioned, it has been required to prove intent. In other words, the criminal justice system has sought to turn a chronic condition into a series of acute ones.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen sought to fill the gap in respect of stalking with the Bill that she introduced in March. Her Bill prohibited

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  individuals from a "course of conduct" likely to cause a person to feel harassed, alarmed or distressed so as to fear for his or her safety, or that of a linked third person, such as a child. In our view, my hon. Friend's Bill got to the heart of the mischief of stalking. With just a modicum of good will from Ministers, drafting amendments could have been made to her Bill and it could have been on the statute book last summer. The necessary protection for victims of stalking could already have been law.
  That was not the first time that the Government had blocked action against stalking. In 1994 and again in 1995, Ministers dead-batted calls for stalking to be tackled, using as their reason the fact that they were conducting a study of anti-stalking laws and definitions in other countries. That was the essence of the answers given to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) on 17 July 1995 and to my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich (Ms Jowell) on 6 February this year.
  That study into other countries seems to have led Ministers to a negative conclusion. Other countries with anti-stalking measures, such as Canada, New Zealand and Australia, have each, I understand, used fairly specific definitions. The Bill, however, provides a much looser, more general definition of harassment, with the intention that over time the courts will gradually fill in the gaps by helping to define the test of reasonable knowledge in clause 1(2) and the defence of reasonableness in subsection (3), and to develop the tort of harassment provided in clause 3.
  I understand the Government's intentions. Having myself, like the Secretary of State, been brought up in the English legal tradition, I have enormous respect for the intellectual ingenuity of the common law and for our courts' capacity to grow great oaks of jurisprudence from the smallest shoots. But a balance must be struck, especially in the criminal law, between an offence general enough to deal effectively with the mischief complained of, and an offence so vague that in practice courts will not convict.
  For that reason, we favour a belt-and-braces approach in the Bill, unless we are persuaded to the contrary by the wisdom of the Minister of State, Home Office, the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean). We do not seek to disturb the general definition in clause 1. However, without prejudice to the generality of that definition, which is important to our amendment, we believe that the Bill should give some detail of the circumstances in which stalking may arise. That is the purpose of our amendment, which can be considered in more detail in Committee on the Floor of the House later today.
  In May this year the Secretary of State wrote to me to explain why the Government would not support the Bill presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen. The Minister of State wrote to my hon. Friend in the same terms. The objection then, which I ask my hon. Friends to note carefully, was that the scope of my hon. Friend's Bill was too wide. Today we hear that the objection to my hon. Friend's Bill was that the scope of her Bill was too narrow. I am confused, as is the Secretary of State, I think.
  The Secretary of State went on the record in The Times today with the churlish and nonsensical allegation that we would seek to block progress on what amounts to my hon. Friend's Bill. He said that our proposals
  790
  "would significantly reduce the public's protection from harassment."
  The Secretary of State owes it to the House to tell us, when he winds up the debate, which of his objections to my hon. Friend's Bill is correct. Was it his objection in May, when he said that her Bill was too wide, or is it his objection today, when he says that it was too narrow? The two statements cannot both be correct.
  Ministers claimed in the Daily Mail today that the Suzy Lamplugh Trust opposed the provisions that we put forward in one of the amendments.
  Mr. Howard: I should not want to put the hon. Gentleman to the inconvenience of waiting for the explanation that he seeks, so I am happy to give it to him now. Both criticisms are valid. The hon. Lady's Bill was too narrow for the reason that I advanced in my remarks earlier this afternoon: because the Bill provided a list, there was a danger that stalking would be interpreted exclusively by reference to that list. As I also explained, the hon. Lady's Bill was too wide because it covered activities of people such as journalists and political canvassers, who were not provided with the defence of acting reasonably in all the circumstances, which the Government's proposals provide. Those criticisms are valid, and I hope that that provides the hon. Gentleman with the explanation that he sought.
  Mr. Straw: Once before, I advised the Secretary of State that, when he is in a hole, he should stop digging. I repeat that advice. I have the letter sent to my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen by the Minister of State, Home Office. It does not mention the concern expressed by the Home Office back in May that the Bill was too narrow. The letter merely alleges that the Bill was too wide. That could have been dealt with satisfactorily if Ministers had tabled amendments to the Bill to provide more adequate defences.
  On the Secretary of State's second point—he made it today through his mouthpiece, the Daily Mail—our amendment, which incorporates the particulars contained in the Bill sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen, does not affect the generality of the Secretary of State's proposals. That fact is stated in our amendment.
  I am sorry to disappoint the Secretary of State with the news that he and the Daily Mail were misinformed about the views of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. Yesterday, the trust seemed to criticise Labour by stating:
  "Mr. Blair had got it wrong."
  I have a message from the Suzy Lamplugh trust, to my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen, which states:
  "I would like to apologise for problems caused as a result of the statement in the Daily Mail today from The Suzy Lamplugh Trust … At the time of speaking to the Daily Mail yesterday, I misunderstood the intention of the amendments within the Bill".
  I am not surprised that the person who wrote that misunderstood the amendments, as the amendments' details were explained to her by someone on the Daily Mail, which is not known as one of the primary organs of truth in our society.
  Mr. Howard: Have you cleared that with Blair?
  Mr. Straw: The one certainty—perhaps the only certainty—about the press at the next general election is

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  that the Daily Mail will not support the Labour party. Support from The Daily Telegraph is questionable, and it is certainly questionable from The Sun, The Times and the Daily Star. But I think that we can say with some certainty that the Daily Mail will support the Conservative party. Indeed, I would be profoundly shocked if that certainty in my life was not the case—[Interruption.] This is rebuttal.
  The message from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust continues:
  "The Trust is very pleased that Labour are still working to improve the Bill",
  and states that it supports the amendments tabled by the Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen.
  All the amendments tabled by the Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen aim to strengthen and improve the Bill. We want civil and criminal courts to be given powers to order offenders to undertake counselling, to make them confront their offending behaviour. That provision would be piloted before being introduced on a nationwide basis. We also believe that, in certain circumstances, better protection is necessary for stalking victims who are used as witnesses, and that civil courts' duties in relation to injunctions should be made clear in the Bill.
  As a common lawyer, I confess no detailed knowledge of Scots law—I profess virtually no knowledge, as it is drawn from a very different legal tradition. However, my hon. Friends representing seats north of the border have told me that reliance in Scotland on its—albeit different—breach of the peace provisions to control stalking is not satisfactory. That is why my hon. Friends desire the inclusion into Scots law of a separate, parallel statutory offence. I should make it clear that, with regret, we do not support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett), because they would require proof of intent and subjective knowledge. As I have told him, we shall vote against his amendments if they are pushed to a Division.
  When the Bill was published, and again today, the Secretary of State claimed that it would also help to deal with the mounting problem of criminal anti-social behaviour by neighbours. Those of us who for years have been calling—although on deaf ears—for Government action against the growing problem of neighbourhood harassment should have uttered hallelujahs at the Government's change of tack, and reminded ourselves of the need to be charitable to sinners, such as the Secretary of State, who have repented. I should also mention the extent to which the Government have for so long denied that the issue presents any problem that makes any amendment to the law worthy, and the fact that, given the scale of the problems, the remedy offered by the Bill is entirely inadequate.
  In June 1995, after months of consultation with local authorities and others, on behalf of the Labour party I published a document entitled "A Quiet Life", which outlined detailed proposals to deal with problem of criminal anti-social neighbours. That document contained some alarming case histories and discussed the serious defects in current law. We proposed a new form of injunction to deal with the problem—a community safety order—which could be obtained by the police or by the local council, acting on behalf of victims. Thus, we proposed to mix the best of civil and of criminal law.
  792
  It would be a civil remedy, in the form of an injunction, which would be enforced by the criminal law if it were breached.
  The Government's reaction to our proposals at that stage was revealing. It revealed their profound complacency and the "not invented here" attitude which has cost them so dear in public support. Instead of the slightest acknowledgement that there was a problem that required a solution, there was contemptuous dismissal. When the draft proposals were published, in June 1995, the Prime Minister sought to dismiss them as
  "merely window dressing".—[Official Report, 22 June 1995; Vol. 262, c. 472.]
  In September 1996, the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration described our proposals as "unnecessary", claiming that
  "measures already exist to deal with problems".
  I do not know of a single victim of serious harassment by bad neighbours in my constituency or in any constituency who believes that current law is adequate to deal with his or her problem. Those dismissals of our proposals were a grave error by Ministers, because they simply revealed one fact: Ministers planned to do nothing to deal with the problem. They planned to do nothing to help people whose lives were being ruined by anti-social behaviour, and nothing to assist local authorities which were struggling to use the wholly inadequate remedies in current law.
  As on the issues of knives, paedophiles and stalking, Ministers eventually woke up to the fact that the Opposition had identified a serious problem that required action. As is often the case, however, their remedies are too little, too late. Considered in conjunction with the provisions of the Housing Act 1996, their proposals fail in many key respects to measure up to the scale of the problem of criminal anti-social behaviour by bad neighbours.
  The powers in the 1996 Act apply only to tenants and not to all tenants in an area, whereas evidence shows that, in many areas, the anti-social behaviour of residents in owner-occupied housing can be just as damaging as the behaviour of those who are council, housing association or private tenants. The defective power to intervene given to local authorities under section 222 of the Local Government Act 1972—which has been highlighted by the problems that Coventry has had in the Finnie case—remains unamended.
  Even more importantly, civil remedies provided by this Bill are available only at the suit of the individual victim—which I think was the gravamen of the intervention by the right hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame A. Rumbold) on the speech of the Secretary of State. The Bill's provisions do not take proper account of the huge pressures that victims experience, and therefore of the need for police and councils to act together to secure community safety for the residents of a specific area. That is why our proposals do not place the duty on individual victims, who are often so intimidated that they are frightened—like many of my hon. Friends, I have witnessed the fear of constituents—that they will not make a complaint, and are even less willing to become the principal prosecution witness in a criminal prosecution.
  The Bill does not contain even the weaker provision—which the parallel provision in section 60 of the Family Law Act 1996 does—for court rules enabling third parties

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  to bring proceedings. I should tell the House that, had there been time—we accept that there is not—for the matter to be properly and fully examined in Standing Committee, we certainly would have moved detailed amendments to remedy the serious defects that we have found in that section of the Bill.
  In August 1996, the right hon. and learned Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor) said that the Government had "lost the plot" on law and order. The Government's indecision and uncertainty on stalking is just one illustration of why his damning conclusion about his Front-Bench colleagues was correct. First, they prevaricated for two years; then they blocked the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen without adequate justification; then, as was no doubt his intention when he blocked the Bill in May, the Home Secretary went to his party conference not to thank my hon. Friend for bringing the matter into the public domain, but to proclaim the Bill on stalking as his invention. He said:
  "We need quick and effective remedies for the less serious cases, and tough sanctions for the most serious."
  He went on:
  "I can announce that we shall have them. Women deserve that protection; they need that protection; and I will make sure they get it."
  The implication was that the Government would sponsor the Bill. Unfortunately, the legislative programme announced in the Loyal Address did not bear the promise out. Instead, two days before the Queen's Speech, we were told—again by a newspaper, not by the Home Secretary—that the Bill would be left to the lottery of the private Member's Bill procedure. I then made the Home Secretary a clear and specific offer of co-operation on getting a Government Bill through the House. That offer was rejected.
  On the day of the Queen's Speech—I am glad to see that the Home Secretary is smiling about this—Ministers spent all day until 3.30 pm in radio and television studios, defending the decision to turn what would have been a Government Bill into a private Member's Bill. As we all remember, during his speech on the Loyal Address, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgemoor—[HON. MEMBERS: "Sedgefield."] My right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) repeated the offer that I had made only two days before—an offer that had been rejected.
  We then witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of an impromptu meeting of the Cabinet's legislation Committee on the Treasury Bench.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Timothy Kirkhope): Decisive leadership.
  Mr. Straw: "Decisive leadership," says one of the devils on the Treasury Bench. The Prime Minister suddenly decided to overrule his Home Secretary again and make the Bill a Government Bill. By the end of the Prime Minister's speech on the Loyal Address, the Home Secretary's demeanour gave every indication that he had been subject to persistent and wanton harassment by his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and wished for legal protection from it.
  My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition told the House on 23 October that we would co-operate to get the measure on the statute book quickly. We are doing
  794
  that. The worst is that, if the Government had shown the House the same co-operation then as we are showing now, a comprehensive Bill against stalking could have been law six months ago. Who knows how many people could have been protected during that interval if the Government had done then what we are doing now?
  5.52 pm
  Mr. Peter Griffiths: I offer ungrudging support for the Bill, following what we have heard from the Opposition. I was under the impression that we were uniting in an effort to put on the statute book a measure that is required by the people of this country. The Government have responded to public opinion, and it would have improved the reputation of the House if all hon. Members had given the Bill the whole-hearted support that it deserves.
  I have some short points to make about the Bill. It is really two measures in one. First, it is a response to a number of highly publicised and serious offences of what has come to be called stalking. Secondly, our fellow citizens have a far wider need for protection from activities that are not necessarily of that type, but are straightforward harassment, when individuals or groups pick on others because of some perceived weakness, putting them in fear. We must stress the fact that the Bill will give an opportunity to deal with many incidents of harassment, as well as its primary aim of dealing with the dreadful cases of women being stalked.
  Men also require protection from harassment. On some occasions, men in the public eye, perhaps in the world of entertainment, need protection from neurotic women, who can be just as much of a nuisance to them and just as disruptive of their lives as some men can be to women.
  Some decades ago, the House took away the protection provided for those faced with harassment during industrial disputes when it abandoned the old concept of a criminal offence of watching and besetting. I recall that being taken from the statute book. I felt at the time that the offence should not have been removed. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary has said, when people are watched, they are afraid, their lives are disrupted and they are unable to function normally in their ordinary family lives. I am pleased that the Bill will restore that concept. I trust that it will be used in the old-fashioned context. Those who do not want to take part in industrial disputes are as entitled to protection from harassment as are those who are the object of sexual admiration from unwanted sources.
  We may well find that the Bill will be particularly significant for younger persons. Violence among young people seems to be increasing. Those in vulnerable minorities are subject to continual, progressive harassment. One minority group—those who are seen as ethnically different from the majority group in the area—has already been mentioned, but those whose other activities may be regarded as different are also affected. Such people may simply attend the wrong school, or join the boy scouts, or they may simply be young people who behave themselves and do not wish to join gangs and other groups. I trust that the Bill will make it possible to deal with those above the age of criminal responsibility who are not yet adults. The Bill refers to "persons". That includes teenagers, who have just as much right to go about their business as do those over the age of 18.

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  While I support the Bill entirely, I have one other point to raise that may create a problem when the measure is enacted; many of those who carry out harassment are mentally disturbed. I have some doubts as to whether those who carry out repeated acts of harassment will be prevented from continuing by the taking out of a court order to desist. They will end up in prison. We already know that the key reason for many people being convicted and sent to prison is mental instability. Very little provision is made for them in prison to ensure that, when they leave the institution, they have been cured of the problem that took them there.
  I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) talk about the need for counselling. We must go beyond that. We need an educative process for those subject to an injunction and, perhaps, for those in prison. The matter will not be solved simply by issuing an order and sending the offender to gaol for a period.
  The Bill deserves the House's whole-hearted support. I trust that we shall achieve unanimity in Committee and that it will quickly reach the statute book to provide protection for our constituents who suffer from harassment.
  5.59 pm
  Mr. Bruce George: The hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Mr. Griffiths) gave his ungrudging support to the Bill, but half his speech was mild criticism. I give my ungrudging support and do not feel guilty about offering some suggestions. There is remarkable unanimity and homogeneity in a parliamentary assembly that is not noted for taking such an approach. Opposition Members do not have to sacrifice their critical faculties to avoid being accused of not favouring the Bill.
  I very much welcome the Bill and the Home Secretary's introductory remarks, which explained not only that it will apply to stalked women and men but that it has a racial dimension and that it can be used to deal with obstreperous neighbours. All hon. Members know from their surgeries of people who have been stalked, if that is the right word, by next-door neighbours who apply exceptional pressure to them. I also welcome the Home Secretary's remarks about the application of the legislation to group harassment; cases need not involve only one person doing the harassing.
  I am delighted that, at long last, this measure is about to reach the statute book. It does not imply hostility to say that we must be careful because experience shows that we are not always brilliant legislators. For various reasons, political and otherwise, there is an element of haste in what we are doing. I hope that the Minister and my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) will say that, if parts of the legislation prove to be inappropriate, there will be opportunities to revisit the matter. If we pass legislation swiftly, it is incumbent on us to remedy, where feasible, any glaring weaknesses that, in legislating speedily, we have overlooked. I suspect that Members of the other place will earn their per diem allowances by using their expertise in scrutinising the Bill to supplement our expertise.
  Stalking has increased in recent years. A growing number of women, and some men, are subject to varying degrees of harassment from individuals who pursue them.
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  That involves not only television and film celebrities but ordinary members of the public. The excellent briefing produced by the Library describes the remedies, but it is obvious from recent well-publicised cases that both the criminal and civil law are inadequate. People rightly expect us to legislate to protect victims of what is, regrettably, a growing menace.
  Last year, I attended a conference in the United States that had a session devoted to stalking. It was organised by the American Society for Industrial Security, the largest professional association of people involved in investigation and security. As one would expect, much research is being done in the United States. It is important not only that we should consider legislation in other countries but that we consider research elsewhere into the phenomenon of stalking.
  Among the papers presented at the conference were useful documents on what is being done in the United States, especially in the Los Angeles police department. The LAPD has not been above criticism of late, but it seems to be a leader in this field. It set up a threat management unit 1990 to investigate in the long term the normal patterns of threat. It has offered considerable advice to officers on how to deal with stalking.
  The research suggests that, unless one appreciates the different sorts of stalking, one will not necessarily use the right methods to tackle it: it goes into detail about erotomanic, love obsessional, and simple obsessional cases. It is important for the police to know how to deal with harassment, not simply from the perspective of dealing with the perpetrator but from that of dealing sensitively with people who are being harassed, or who allege that they are being harassed. Such people require much information and support to help them to deal with what can be a horrifying experience.
  Several strategies have been devised for police and victims to pursue, to try to prevent stalkers from continuing to stalk. With measures such as this, there is a danger that there will be a spate of complaints, many of which will be valid and require the assistance of psychiatrists, the police and the courts. However, there will be some cases where people do not understand the legislation, refuse to understand it, or try to take advantage of it. They could place enormous pressure on the police and the courts to deal with cases that should never have got near the courts, which could become clogged up. There is potential for people to use the new legislation wrongly. That is why it is important that the police should know how to deal with different sorts and levels of complaints or incidents.
  The LAPD's idea is to educate victims about stalking and its wider dimension so that they can be apprised realistically of what the police and the authorities can do. It is right to advise victims of stalking about means of modifying their behaviour and patterns of movement, if necessary, to minimise risk, such as changing telephone numbers or moving, although the latter is a sign of failure. Therapeutic strategies can be devised to help victims deal better with the phenomenon.
  It is also important—some people may think that it is not the purpose of legislation, but I believe that it should be—to consider how the police should deal with alleged perpetrators. There are a variety of ways. Often in the United States, private investigators are involved. Much more must be done than confronting stalkers with a knee

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  in the groin and the threat of further physical retribution. Los Angeles police say that they can write to or telephone alleged stalkers and apply for temporary restraining orders preventing them from making contact with victims. They can use arrest and detention or what they call mental health diversion. Finally, they can seek criminal conviction. Their approach has reduced the number of allegations of stalking to more manageable proportions, to advantage.
  I suspect, and fervently hope, that the Home Secretary and the Minister will be able to tell us about research being conducted by the police and by the excellent research department in the Home Office, and about funding for academic research into the phenomenon of stalking. Unless we can comprehend the phenomenon, legislation will miss the mark and we will not achieve our objectives. It can be dramatically demonstrated that an aggressive intervention posture by the police can be effective, and I hope that the police are pursuing the matter.
  I am not declaring an interest, but the Minister and I have long had an interest in the regulation of the private security industry—that has been a totally abortive venture for the past 17 years, but there is still hope—and one element that requires regulation is the profession of private investigators. The profession is used by a wide variety of individuals and organisations and, at the respectable end, is pursued by many people, mostly ex-CID, with diligence and competence.
  Private investigation may not be the nicest profession but, like politics, it is necessary. At the bad end there are crooks, or men who have become crooked, deploying tactics that are clearly reprehensible and illegal. I have had discussions with the representative organisations and I have had a partial assurance from the Home Secretary. Although there are certain defences open to investigators, if they fail in the task of surveillance and are spotted, either they are poor investigators or the subject has been clever or lucky enough to spot them.
  I seek assurances from the Minister, either in his speech or in response to amendments, that the legislation will not be applied to those at the legitimate end of the private investigation profession. There are, quite rightly, protections for the intelligence services and the police and for reputable investigators who might be employed by a myriad Government Departments.
  In some cases there will be levels of harassment far in excess of the instructions given to investigators. Those who are the subject of scrutiny may not endorse what I say. I am sure that there will be a tiny minority of cases of over-vigilant investigators and I hope that the protection will not provide a defence for someone who is clearly guilty.
  The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Maclean): The hon. Gentleman is in slight danger of misleading himself, and I think that I can help him. The Secretary of State's certificate is available to agents of the Crown; it would not be available to cover private investigators. In addition, there is a defence for people acting in the course of a legitimate trade or profession, provided that they act reasonably; if they act, as the hon. Gentleman said, far in excess of what is necessary, they will be caught by the Bill.
  Mr. George rose—
  Mr. Rupert Allason: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the principle of clandestine surveillance is that it should not be detected by the subject? There is a requirement in the Bill that there have to have been at least two prior incidents. He and I share a concern with the private security industry, but does he accept that it would be an extremely inept investigator who became subject to the Bill or that, alternatively, there would have to have been a deliberate use of obvious surveillance as a form of harassment?
  Mr. George: I am grateful for both those interventions. The Minister reminded me of something of which I was already aware. I am sorry if he gained the impression that I was not. I know full well that the certificate is available to employees of the Crown.
  Not all the work of investigators involves wearing a dirty mac and using binoculars, videos or cameras; they pursue many open activities that do not rely on furtive or clandestine behaviour. I recently read an article dividing the investigation profession into 28 different sectors.
  I know of several cases, also, in which filming has been done with the acquiescence of the person under surveillance. There was a case involving Manchester council two or three years ago, when it hired an investigator to follow a guy who had put in a claim for £100,000 compensation for an injury: the investigator went on a holiday tour with him and filmed him on a daily basis. One could say that that was not clandestine.
  The Bill contains some imprecise references to reasonableness or the pursuit of crime, but perhaps a little more clarity would give greater reassurance to those who are pursuing investigations in a legitimate fashion. It is obvious that some activities of investigators are legal and that occasionally some investigators behave in a way that is absolutely illegal, but the problem is that there is a grey area in the middle that may not be accounted for in the Bill.
  A great deal of investigators' work relates to non-criminal activities. A political party, for example, could employ investigators to check on the validity of prospective parliamentary candidates before endorsement. The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department is looking at me with incredulity. Perhaps we could have a chat afterwards, because I think that he has not quite got it right.
  Investigators can pursue a variety of activities that are not related to criminal behaviour: the eviction of anti-social neighbours, for example. Local authorities are increasingly looking to private investigators to become professional witnesses and gather evidence to secure an eviction. To do that would require the investigator to keep the neighbours under surveillance, take their photograph and film and follow them. The ultimate aim is not a criminal prosecution but an eviction. If neighbours who were being investigated discovered the fact, they might be able to rush to the courts to seek protection.
  I have mentioned the vetting of potential and existing staff. Other investigations that do not lead to criminal prosecutions can involve matrimonial matters, intellectual property, missing persons, debt recovery and many other issues. Sometimes, investigations are part of civil proceedings, but they often do not even lead to that. I therefore ask the Minister at some stage to comment with greater clarity on why he thinks that the Bill as it stands would adequately protect a professionally qualified person in going about his or her professional duties.

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  The Bill is overdue. I am glad that there is not much acrimony over it, apart from some ritualistic criticisms. It is clearly very important that the Bill is passed and that what we pass achieves our objectives. I only hope that, if deficiencies are discovered after Royal Assent, the Government and the Opposition—whoever they may be—will have the good grace to recognise that mistakes have been made and try to remedy them.
  6.20 pm
  Sir Ivan Lawrence: If any justification were needed for the argument that we should think before we leap into making legislation, the Bill supplies it. The Stalking Bill, presented by the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Ms Anderson), which undoubtedly helped to concentrate the Government's minds on the need for a law against stalking—she should be commended for her efforts—was certainly an important step in the right direction. I was happy to encourage her in introducing that Bill, which she has acknowledged and will probably do so again—although whether she does so to embarrass me or not, I do not yet know.
  The hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen would not and certainly should not pretend that her Bill is better than the Protection from Harassment Bill. Although, as has already been said, the words of the director of the National Anti-Stalking and Harassment Campaign, Dr. von Heussen-Countryman, to the effect that a bad Bill is worse than no Bill, might have been a somewhat harsh criticism of the Stalking Bill, there can be no doubt that, taking the two Bills side by side, the Bill before us today is an improvement.
  I do not think that it was reasonable—it may of course have just been party political posturing—for the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) to complain about the Government's Bill in the terms that he did. It is even less reasonable for him to complain and then support the Bill in the Lobby, as I understand he is going to do. One example of the total unreasonableness, indeed, absurdity, of his comments was to say that the Government were confused in their criticism of the Stalking Bill in saying one moment that it was too wide and in another that it was too narrow. If one has a bird brain, one might think that there is some merit in such a comment, yet it is total nonsense.
  As my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary made clear when he helpfully came to the Dispatch Box to stop any more nonsense being perpetrated, when he said that the Stalking Bill was too wide, it was because it would have caught people such as journalists, and when he later said that it was too narrow, he was commenting in a completely different sense. It became obvious as the Bill formulated in the Government's minds that it could be used for wider purposes than dealing just with stalkers. I cannot honestly believe that the hon. Member for Blackburn is so obtuse that he did not realise the distinction. He was just doing what he is now getting used to as we approach the general election: causing mischief.
  The letter that my right hon. Friend the Minister wrote in May, to which the hon. Member for Blackburn referred, was obviously written before the Government issued their
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  consultation paper, received their many responses, thought further about the matter and realised that the Bill could be broadened. What on earth is wrong with that? It is time that the Opposition stopped grubbing around to draw distinctions between Labour and Conservative. Either they support our policy, which would be novel, or they oppose it. They must make up their minds and stop standing on their heads and pretending that there is some great distinction between themselves and the Government if they are to help us to introduce sensible legislation.
  The Bill is better than the Stalking Bill for a number of obvious reasons. It covers a wider number of offences: not only stalking, but bad neighbours and racial harassment. It is better because it is more precise about the offences, separating harassment from violence and the consequences of the two, which are widely different. It is better because it is more precise about the defences—which is very important—including legitimate surveillance, which the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) mentioned. The Bill is better and will therefore lead to less confusion in the courts.
  There is no doubt that the obnoxious activity of stalking needed to be dealt with. More and more terrifying instances were coming to light and being publicised in the newspapers, and it was becoming more and more obvious that the existing law was thoroughly inadequate to deal with them. People have been followed for months and months by harassers, and instances of endless telephone calls at all times of the day and night, causing immense misery, have arisen. Misery was being caused by stalkers with whom the women involved had never had a relationship. The misery of parents worried about paedophiles stalking school playgrounds, and the courts being seemingly incapable of dealing with it, was beginning to emerge, too.
  The Government did not just produce a Bill; they considered the Stalking Bill and earlier debates on stalking, they thought about the problem, produced a consultation paper, listened to the representations made to them, and improved on their first thoughts, which should be welcomed, not scorned, by the Labour party.
  What needed to be done to protect women—as my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, North (Mr. Griffiths) pointed out, the issue does not exclusively affect women—from stalkers? We needed the threat of criminal proceedings in order to deter would-be offenders, and if they were not deterred, we needed to protect the victims by imprisoning stalkers if they were caught and convicted. We clearly needed such a law. We needed a different approach to the different kinds of stalking; we needed to distinguish between those who are just a nuisance, which is bad enough, and those who threaten violence and cause fear. We needed to recognise that some offenders act deliberately, believing that they are causing misery and knowing the effect of it, and some are sick and demented and honestly do not intend to cause misery. If the latter type of offender nevertheless causes misery by their actions, they cannot be caught, convicted and sentenced under the existing legislation.
  There was a need not just to punish offenders but to prevent them offending in the first place. There was a need therefore not just for a criminal offence but a civil wrong, which can offer an injunction. If such an injunction is breached, it can be followed up by criminal sanctions. There was a need for defences to protect journalists. Some of us would wish that all journalists

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  were not protected under the Bill, but journalists have a job to do, and as long as they do it in the confines of decency and restraint, they should be allowed to do so. If the Bill were too widely drafted, they would fall foul of it.
  What about political canvassers? We call time and again at people's doors. First they are out; the second time they do not want to talk to us; the third time we do not have the answers to their questions; if they still want to talk to us the fourth time that we call, it is probably because we have those answers. We may even return a fifth or a sixth time to get some money from them. That might be considered harassment in some circumstances.
  A harassment Bill must ensure that such nonsense does not take place—that is, not the nonsense of political canvassing, but the nonsense of prosecutions for political canvassing. There are also debt collectors, and the people who have already been mentioned, who are engaged in genuine surveillance. All those needs and approaches have helped to form the Bill, and that is thoroughly to he welcomed.
  An undoubted improvement is the widening of the concept of stalking to cover harassment by neighbours, and racial harassment. Problems concerning bad neighbours are mentioned more often at my weekly surgeries now. In the old days we heard complaints about the inadequacy of social welfare and benefits, but the Government have been generous and such complaints have tailed off. More and more of the complaints that I hear from my constituents are about their bad neighbours.
  We write to the local authority, but the authority says that it has no powers to do anything about bad neighbours. The Government have already passed a law to define some kinds of noise as a nuisance, but that is not always adequate, because the harassment does not always take the form of noise. Now we are introducing a measure that will give local authorities that run council housing estates another series of weapons to threaten those appalling people who make their neighbours' lives impossible.
  Mr. McNamara: The hon. Gentleman talks about all the extra powers for local authorities, but local authorities will not get the extra money that they need to use those powers to enforce the legislation, or to employ the necessary people.
  Sir Ivan Lawrence: That, as the hon. Gentleman must be aware, is totally irrelevant to the point that I am making. Perhaps he can raise it on the Adjournment of the House. He certainly may not raise it further in the middle of my speech.
  I especially welcome the Government's move to deal further with the scourge of racism. The 1994 report by the Select Committee on Home Affairs made 38 recommendations for dealing with that serious problem, and I remember taking action against my own Government for not going far enough in accepting those recommendations, and for not proposing to deal more strongly with racism in response to our report.
  Our recommendation 29 reads as follows:
  "We recommend that the Public Order Act 1986 should be amended so that (a) section 6(4) should no longer require the prosecution to prove that the offender either intended to cause harassment or was aware that harassment may result, but instead should require the prosecution to prove that a reasonable person
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  would have expected harassment, alarm or distress to be caused by his actions, (b) section 5(4) should allow a police officer to arrest on the basis of reasonable suspicion that an offence had been or was about to be committed, and (c) in section 5(6) the penalty should be increased to include a sentence of up to 12 months imprisonment, a more substantial fine, or both. We consider that these amendments will allow the courts to take into consideration and deal more effectively with those expressions of racism accompanying criminal acts to which we refer in paragraph 86."
  I hope that I do my right hon. Friend the Minister of State no injustice, but I seem to remember that at the time he said that it was not possible to go further along the lines of the Committee's recommendations. I now warmly commend him and thank him for moving considerably further along those lines in the Bill, which, by extending the concept of stalking, deals with racial harassment. As a result there will be more weapons in the armoury of the criminal justice system for dealing with something that, when we seek to live together in a decent society, is one of the most insidious and hateful forms of human behaviour.
  It is not only the victims of stalkers who have reason to thank the Government for the Bill. Harassed neighbours, whose numbers must run into thousands, if my constituency is anything to go by, and the racially harassed, of whom there must also be thousands, have reason to thank them too. So do all those who seek to bring order and justice to our society—whether that means the police, the probation service, the magistrates or the judges—and therefore the British public, who yearn for a society in which there is more law and order. I commend the Government for bringing forward a Bill that fulfils those wishes.
  6.35 pm
  Mrs. Diana Maddock: Although the Bill is generally perceived to be about stalking, its tentacles are likely to spread far wider. In some ways it is like four Bills rolled into one—an anti-stalking Bill, a feuding neighbours Bill, a domestic violence Bill and a Bill that extends civil injunction remedies in such cases to the criminal courts.
  It is therefore all the more disappointing and worrying that the timetable means that the Bill will be taken through all its stages in little more than 24 hours, on two consecutive days. My hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) has already made his views clear on that subject. Shortly before coming into the Chamber, I discovered that the Government may even be minded to push the whole thing through in one day.
  During the debate on the Queen's Speech when my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) pledged to the Prime Minister my party's co-operation in the passage of the Bill, we did not envisage such a compacted and rushed debate. In my view, an attempt has been made to take advantage of our good will and concern.
  We have heard that line already this afternoon. People have said that Opposition Members are against the Bill and are not co-operating, but "co-operating" does not mean failing to scrutinise the legislation properly.
  Mr. Maclean: The hon. Lady says that there is a tight timetable for pushing the Bill through, but she should revise her opinion. As I understand it, two days have been allocated for debate, should that be necessary, although

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  I hope that we shall not need the full time. I should have thought that that was ample time in which to scrutinise the legislation properly.
  The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department (Mr. Gary Streeter): We can go through the night if the hon. Lady likes.
  Mrs. Maddock: I hear facetious comments about sitting through the night. That is not what I meant. I believe that dealing with the Bill in such a short time will prevent all but the most rushed consultation. Drafting changes between Second Reading and Committee, and between Committee and Report, are part and parcel of the passage of most Bills through the House, and we all believe that they are the better for it. Clearly that will not happen in this case.
  We would like several improvements to be made to the Bill. I have tabled amendments accordingly, and I hope that the Minister will respond sympathetically to them when the time comes. I am a little disappointed that an amendment that I tabled to allow a breach of a civil undertaking to be treated as an offence has not been selected. I believe that such a provision could save lengthy and complex legal arguments, and could take some of the acrimony out of cases, especially domestic violence cases.
  I am advised that such a use of undertakings with legal force behind them could be extended to the criminal courts, too. In view of what the Minister has already said, I hope that he and his civil servants will consider the scope for the use of undertakings in both civil and criminal courts in the context of the Bill. I hope that we shall hear some response to that suggestion during our proceedings tonight.
  I now move to a second area where we on the Liberal Democrat Benches are looking for some improvement. [HON. MEMBERS: "We?"] There are 26 of us somewhere in the building. As the Bill is drafted, the court cannot give any protection to victims pending the trial—which may be months away—short of remanding someone in custody, which would be expensive, or making it a bail condition, which does not carry the same full protection as the restraining order provisions in clause 5 from the time of sentencing onwards.
  I hope that the Minister will consider whether it is possible to enable the court to make such an order when a trial is pending. One possible use of such an order would be to enable the court to make an order while proceedings are adjourned indefinitely, with the prospect perhaps of the defendant never having to come to court. The victim, therefore, would never have to relive the ordeal in the witness box. That would give the substantial protection of an explicit order, backed up with five years' imprisonment.
  Given the wide scope of the Bill, I was surprised to read that the Government expect approximately 200 additional criminal cases a year to arise from it. Do the Government really believe that only four additional cases a week will arise in the whole of England and Wales as a result of the Bill? I can only imagine that they are considering only stalking cases and ignoring the wider effects of the Bill, which have been described fairly graphically this evening.
  I have been advised by a lawyer active in this field that once the extent of the Bill is known there will be immense pressure on the police to take up the proceedings,
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  particularly in neighbour disputes and domestic violence cases. In addition, the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence) highlighted how important the Bill will be in cases of racial harassment. Only this week, the local beat officer in the centre of Christchurch—who often calls in at my office—said that she knew of two people in the constituency who were suffering a certain amount of harassment and who could be helped if the Bill were on the statute book. That is just one small part of England, so I suggest that the Government have underestimated when they state that there will be only 200 additional cases.
  Stalking is a very serious matter, but it has only recently attracted media attention. It is a shame that, before anything can be deemed to be important, it has to become a media sensation. Many people still have the impression that stalking is little more than a nuisance and affects only celebrities who have in some way forfeited their right to privacy. The truth is much more complex. More than 3,000 people—young and old, men and women, those who are well known and those who are not—have been the victims of stalkers across the country in recent years. The true total figure is almost certainly higher. Stalking is not yet a crime, so the police have no criminal records on the matter.
  Three months ago, there was a particularly appalling stalking case in the newspapers when a 37-year-old man—technically on a charge of causing grievous bodily harm, as that is the route that the police have often tried to use—was controversially acquitted by a court in London. The court had been told that he had harassed his victim for four years. He telephoned her up to 10 times a day, registered his car in her name and lurked outside her house—once with a machete. The man offered no defence, but the judge acquitted him because in his view there was insufficient evidence to prove intent to cause psychological harm, which was what the case turned on.
  To get a criminal conviction at the moment, one must prove psychological distress equivalent to grievous bodily harm. Although this was achieved in one recent case—by Tracey Sant from Portsmouth—it has proved to be very difficult. I suspect that there was success in Portsmouth because of the assiduous work of the police there, and police officers from Portsmouth were the first to lobby me on this issue. They were incredibly frustrated at their inability to deal effectively with bad cases of stalking and harassment in the area.
  Speaking last September at the Liberal Democrat annual conference in Brighton, I advocated a two-track approach to tackling the menace of stalking. This comprised a civil offence, allowing the courts to use restraining orders and award compensation, and a more serious criminal offence of molestation, where the stalker's persistent conduct causes harassment, alarm or distress, or leaves the person in fear of violence. I am pleased that the Bill broadly fits that description.
  The need for legislation of this kind has been highlighted by groups including the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and the National Anti-Stalking and Harassment Campaign, both of which deserve credit for the fact that there is a Bill before us. The hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Ms Anderson) also deserves credit for pushing the matter further, and I was disappointed that the Government stated in the summer that it would have been too complicated to amend her Stalking Bill. I believe that

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  if the political will had been there, a Bill could have been on the statute book by now. The Police Federation has for a long time recognised the need for a Bill of this kind.
  The Bill is long overdue. We support it, but that does not mean that we should not look closely at the legislation that we pass in Parliament. I cannot emphasise that enough. In my view, the Government have taken advantage of the good will of other parties and are rushing the Bill through the House. This could have been a good example of parties working together constructively, but I believe that the Government are yet again using it in a party political way before they look at the wider public interest.
  The challenge for us all has been to achieve a balance between safeguarding civil liberties and producing effective legislation to deal with stalking and harassment. By rushing this Bill through, there is a real danger that we shall not achieve that balance in the best way that we could. I hope that the Government will honestly listen to the concerns raised in what has been a truncated debate.
  6.47 pm
  Mr. Rupert Allason: There is no doubt that there is a gap in the law, and every hon. Member will be aware of complaints from constituents suffering from anti-social neighbours. I know of an individual in my constituency—I will call him Brian—who has made life intolerable for his next-door neighbour, a widow living alone and in a permanent state of terror. My concern is that the Bill is not exactly the answer to a maiden's prayer.
  The widow has been advised that her neighbour cannot be prosecuted until he commits some kind of physical offence against her. That is of little comfort. The gentleman clearly has a mental problem and is well known to the psychiatric services in my constituency. He is unaware of the problems that he is creating, so this, may be unconscious or passive harassment. Indeed, the lady concerned is sympathetic to his plight.
  As I understand it, the Bill will provide both a criminal and a civil sanction in such cases. But what will actually happen? Will it result in the man going to prison? I am not sure that that will be the solution to his difficulties at all. While I welcome the principle of a sanction against harassment, I am concerned that it will not necessarily provide all the remedies needed by people of the kind I have described. I am not sure that the Bill will automatically be a remedy for anti-social neighbours.
  My second point relates to the definition of conduct that is reasonable. Will journalists really be exempt? Was it reasonable for journalists to go to parents of victims of the Dunblane incident and persistently approach them for interviews? Under the Bill, two incidents will be sufficient to spark off a prosecution, or at least police activity, and I am concerned about precisely whose definition of "reasonable" will apply. I suggest that what journalists from the Daily Mirror or the other tabloids consider to be reasonable is not what other people consider to be reasonable. I ask the Minister whether there is any way to narrow the definition.
  With regard to targeting, will the Bill cover a specific victim who is anxious about approaches from or stalking by an identified person, or will it apply to entire communities? What happens in, let us say, a close? No doubt right hon. and hon. Members all know of cases in
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  which a family with social difficulties or other problems have been moved into an otherwise peaceful neighbourhood and their behaviour—passive though it may be—causes enormous offence to other people living in the vicinity. I am not convinced that a criminal sanction will be the solution in such cases, and I should be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister could clarify that point.
  The Bill will be used very widely indeed. I do not often agree with the Liberal Democrats, but when the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mrs. Maddock) said that there was some doubt about whether there would be just 200 cases a year, I was inclined to agree. Many people will look to the Bill to meet their particular anxiety and provide a remedy for it. I suspect that that will go way beyond celebrities or vulnerable women being stalked, and it will certainly go way beyond the problem of anti-social neighbours. A large number of sharp lawyers will see considerable opportunities in the Bill. If the courts are to look to Hansard to discover what definitions and cases are described, it is important that the Minister should try to give clear examples of cases for which a remedy will be available under the Bill.
  Having said all that, I have clear reservations and I am not convinced that a penal sanction will automatically be the solution to anti-social behaviour. Nevertheless, the widow in my constituency to whom I have referred will certainly sleep much more easily when the Bill reaches the statute book and she knows that there is at least an element of protection for her. It is to be hoped that the Bill will also have a deterrent effect—that the mere threat of an injunction, or a visit from the police threatening a legal case, will be sufficient to curtail the misconduct.
  To conclude, I wish the Bill a fair wind, but I hope that the Minister will be as graphic as possible in drawing the courts' attention to the kind of cases that will be covered.
  6.53 pm
  Mr. Kevin McNamara: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Ms Anderson) on having forced the Government to bring the Bill before the House. Having congratulated her on that, I have to say that this Bill is not the Bill that my hon. Friend originally introduced, nor is it the Bill that many of us thought we would support.
  The Bill is widely drawn and I, for one, would have preferred to have it deal with offences of racial harassment, sexual harassment and anti-social behaviour that were specific, direct and defined, rather than have them as they are. Praise is due for their being in Bill, but the terms are extremely nebulous. The powers in the Bill will depend on, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) said, organic growth in the common law. Nothing frightens me more than that, having seen how some judges interpret current law. They might narrowly construe some of the provisions in a manner that might not have been intended by Parliament.
  Furthermore, like the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason), I am concerned that clever lawyers might seek to extend the scope of the Bill so that it involves matters such as trade disputes, as was hinted at by the hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Mr. Griffiths), and the role of investigative journalists. What is reasonable to one judge in the pursuance of a specific case might not be reasonable in respect of journalism. We are not talking only about invasions of the privacy of distinguished

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  ex-members of the royal family or pop stars but about serious journalists carrying out serious research. The defence that is allowed depends on the subjective judgment of the individual judge who is directing the jury in a specific case. That causes me great concern.
  I turn now to the Bill, specifically clause 4, and to why the Bill was originally introduced. I shall refer to a case in my constituency which was known as the "Orchard Park seige". Briefly, the facts of the case are as follows. A woman in my constituency had an affair that she brought to an end. Not satisfied with that, the man involved criminally assaulted her, bound her and left her in a ditch, for which he was sent to prison. He served a short time, got parole and was released; he then started to pester the woman. She complained to the police, who, she believes, did nothing about it, even though the man was out on licence and he was alleged to have boasted in a local pub about what he intended to do to the woman. She also believes that the police knew that he had what turned out to be an imitation firearm. Some of these matters are the subject of a Police Complaints Authority inquiry, but this is what the woman feels happened.
  Eventually, the woman was seized outside her home and bundled into it. Her daughter arrived some time later and was also seized. The man appeared to fire his gun. He viciously assaulted the woman, broke her sternum and raped her about a dozen times. After 14 days, the police successfully ended the seige. I have nothing but praise for the way in which the police handled a difficult situation. They believed that the man was armed and they knew that he had hostages whom he might kill.
  The jury in the subsequent trial acquitted the man of rape. It is hard to imagine how the woman could have acquiesced in sexual intercourse in her physical condition at that time, having, as she did, a broken breastbone. The police in that case regarded the jury's verdict as perverse.
  One of the problems in the case was the fact that some of the rapes took place when the daughter was in the room although she was told to turn her face away. She was petrified about giving evidence; nothing that the police could say would persuade her to change her mind. Throughout the period after the arrest, a policewoman lived with mother and daughter, looking after them, giving them every encouragement. Nevertheless, the daughter refused to give evidence. I believe that to be one reason why the man was acquitted of rape. He was given about 10 years for criminal assault. Had the Bill been law at that time, the police might have been able to halt that tragic series of events. I say only "might", because many aspects of that case remain to be examined.
  What priority will the police give to cases of harassment? What judgment will they exercise? Where will harassment appear in their hierarchy of offences—above or below burglary, above or below actual physical assault? What is their subjective judgment of the complaint made to them? The subjectivity will create a variety of problems.
  Another type of harassment arose in that case. The woman gave evidence for two days, separated by a screen from the accused, but in the public gallery were all the members of the accused's family, looking down at her
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  with hatred in their eyes. What sort of intimidation was that? It is an interesting question. If it went on for several days, would it amount to intimidation—harassment—under the Act, even if it took place in a court of law, where people were entitled to be? The woman certainly felt that their presence, looking at her in that way, hampered her in giving evidence, and her daughter felt that their presence intimidated her and prevented her from giving evidence.
  Although the Crown Prosecution Service brought several charges of rape against the man, it did not bring them all; despite the perverse verdict, the CPS decided not to bring up the other cases. That woman had a horrific experience as a result of stalking and continued to feel deep resentment that she had been so abused, yet the man who did all that to her was not convicted of the violation of her womanhood, as he should have been.
  Questions arise about matters that are not within the ambit of the Bill but arise from it. What should be the role of the social services in such a case? The woman was living in a council house. When the man was released on licence, she visited the local housing authority and asked to be transferred. She gave the reasons but did not go into all the details. Her request was therefore refused.
  By chance, however, the man had been allocated a flat that directly overlooked the house in which the woman lived. She was conscious of him always being there, overlooking where she lived, and she was conscious of his actions. The local housing authority felt that it could not move him, because it was unaware of his record, and it did not feel that the woman had sufficient grounds to be moved, because, rightly or wrongly, she felt that she could not give all the details of what had happened to her. There is a need, therefore, for housing associations, local authorities and the social services to take into account the effects of harassment on people in vulnerable situations, especially women.
  My constituent asked me to make those points in the debate because of her concern, not only about what had happened to her but about what might happen to other women in other circumstances. I welcome the Bill in so far as it fulfils the purpose of the Stalking Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen, but not in so far as it poses enormously extended threats to civil liberties as a result of what the Government have done with it.
  We welcome the aspects of the Bill designed to try to overcome a serious and grievous matter affecting many women in this country—and also, strangely enough, men. As the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mrs. Maddock) said, stalking is a frequent problem. I hope that the knowledge that the Bill exists and that the powers exist under the Bill will encourage women to complain to the police. Let us hope that the police devote sufficient priority to the matter to take action on such cases, because failure to do so affects the well-being not only of the woman but of her family, her extended family and the whole community.
  7.6 pm
  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Legislation that is rushed through the House tends to be bad legislation. On this occasion, there was no need for a rush, but we have a Home Secretary who always seeks party advantage in preference to good government.

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  When my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Ms Anderson) introduced her Stalking Bill, the Government would have had no difficulty in ensuring that it became a good Bill and passed through the House; but no—the Government preferred to block it and claim that they were doing something different.
  That is the Bill's tragedy. By the time my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen had introduced her Bill, it was obvious that stalking had become a problem and needed to be tackled. When a private Member introduces a Bill, it receives a Second Reading and goes into Committee. Then discussions take place between the promoter and the Government. Almost every clause of the original Bill is dropped, a series of new clauses appears and the Bill emerges from Committee, improved yet managing to fulfil the promoter's original intention.
  If such proper scrutiny had taken place, we would now have a useful measure on the statute book. Sadly, the Home Secretary did not want the chance of a Labour Member being responsible for passing legislation on stalking; he wanted to claim the credit. He produced a discussion document. There was a lengthy charade about whether the Government would promote legislation. Finally, we got the Bill. We have 10 days in which to examine it.
  I do not complain that hon. Members have only 10 days in which to examine the Bill, but I do complain that people outside this place have little time in which to do so. It is surprising how difficult it is to get hold of a Bill like this, to study it, to work out whether it will meet one's circumstances and to lobby Members of Parliament to ensure that it does the task.
  Holding Report stage immediately after Committee stage does not provide enough time—not because, in Committee, Members often do a great deal to improve the Bill, but because often the amendments that they table force Ministers into a discussion with civil servants and draftspersons, to make the Bill that crucial bit better. I suspect that, if we rush this legislation through, we shall not produce a good Bill.
  I am disappointed that the Home Secretary's approach is to produce a vague Bill, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen said, will be filled out as a result of case law. But we are told that there is a problem now, and we want to provide some certainty for people who are distressed and upset about being stalked. They should be relieved now, without having to take their case all the way to the Appeal Court. My hon. Friend attempted to make the original Bill clear so that anybody could understand it.
  If a police officer trying to advise somebody picks up this Bill, he cannot say that certain behaviour is all right, because it will have to be tested in the courts. This is not a particularly good document for the police to use; it is certainly not a good document for a lawyer to use when advising somebody. Lawyers always say "on the one hand" and "on the other hand". We want clarity and we do not get it from this Bill.
  My next complaint is that the problem will not be solved simply by changing the law; we need more resources. The Government claim that very few cases will be involved. If that is so, the legislation will not meet the needs that exist out there in the country. If there are more cases than the Government say, from where will the
  810
  resources come? Either the police will not use the legislation, in which case there is no point in us passing it, or they will have to take resources from somewhere else. If the legislation is to work, we need more resources.
  I wish to ask the Home Secretary about the exemption if someone is behaving reasonably. Many people are involved in harassing other people and do it perfectly legitimately. The Leader of the Opposition tries to harass the Prime Minister, and I am sure that no one would complain about that. Most Members of Parliament try to harass Ministers, and it is our job to do so. Most hon. Members will admit to harassing a fair number of civil servants and officials in their constituencies to get justice for their constituents.
  The housing officers in Thameside and Stockport must sometimes feel, when I ring them up and bend their ears, that I am harassing and pressing them. I think that that is perfectly legitimate and that I could defend my behaviour. Most people would say that it is reasonable for a Member of Parliament to act in that way on behalf of his or her constituents to put right an injustice.
  What about a constituent who tries to put right an injustice for himself? Does he has the same defence? This seems to be one of the problems. If someone can say that he is a debt collector and operating as such, his behaviour will be acceptable when he harasses people to pay their debts. But what happens if an individual tries to get people to settle their debts?
  Recently, a constituent had some work done by a local builder whose standard of work was appalling. He went to the small claims court and was awarded money, but then the builder said that he was not Joe Bloggs the builder but John Jones the builder. Everyone knows the trick: builders move easily from one business to the next, leaving their debts behind them. My constituent followed that individual around for a week and every person that the builder talked to was handed a note by my constituent explaining his claim for money. Eventually, he got his money. I think that that was harassment, but justified harassment. I am concerned that my constituent, acting as an individual to try to get that money, could not claim that he was a professional debt collector.
  What about the Child Support Agency? That government body has the right to sue people for money, but what about an individual who feels that the CSA is not doing enough and wants to provide extra evidence to it? Would that be legitimate?
  What about journalists? Moreover, when is a journalist a journalist, and when is he not? If he or she has full-time paid employment, there will be little doubt, but if he or she is freelance there are difficulties. A particular problem for a journalist is that, with hindsight, all sorts of things can be seen to be unreasonable but at the time it may have seemed to the journalist that they were reasonable.
  What about writers? We often read articles in newspapers saying that a certain biography was authorised and they usually say what a nice person the subject was, but how legitimately can someone trying to produce an unauthorised biography go about collecting information under this legislation, and when does it become harassment?
  I could give many more examples, but the Government must deal with the question of the defence of someone pursuing a legitimate occupation.
  Sir Ivan Lawrence: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that he would be on to a better point if he explained that,

  811
  as the word "reasonable" is understood in different ways by different people in different circumstances, the real criticism of this part of the Bill is that it will provide endless work for lawyers, at considerable public cost?
  Mr. Bennett: I fully accept that point. As I said at the beginning, it is important to be clear so that people know what they are entitled to do. They should not have to wait until lawyers have made a lot of money out of this matter and until there have been 20 cases over five or six years to establish what the law is.
  It was claimed that the Bill would cover harassment by groups. I am not sure how that will work, and I hope that the Minister will explain. The last two cases of racial harassment with which I dealt involved not just one individual but a group of people—five or six—living in the same street who all behaved in a racist way towards someone attempting to move into that street. I should have thought that one or two of the people involved might be involved in two or more incidents, but I suspect that encouragement of collective action was the problem.
  More recently, I tried to persuade one of my constituents to give evidence in a particularly nasty case. The intimidation that he suffered as a witness was carried out not by one individual but by a group of people who all believed that they liked the accused person and wanted to make things as difficult as possible for anybody acting as a witness.
  I want a clear statement from the Home Secretary that the Bill will not be used against protesters. This country has always believed in freedom of speech and freedom to demonstrate. There seems to be a narrow line between protesting and demonstrating, and harassment. I hope that the Minister will make that clear.
  I wish to tell the House about two incidents in my constituency where I believe that what is needed are resources rather than legislation. Not long ago, a reasonable couple came to see me at my advice bureau in Reddish and said what terrible neighbours they had. There had been a dispute about a boundary fence and their neighbour had acted utterly unreasonably and outrageously. I must admit that I believed that, from what was described to me, the neighbour had behaved outrageously. I went on to my second advice bureau, which I do in the evening, at Denton, where another reasonable couple came to see me and said that their neighbours were utterly unreasonable and had behaved outrageously. The two couples lived next door to each other and were describing each other. Had I heard only one story, I would have been convinced that someone should take action on that couple's behalf against the neighbours.
  The problem with those situations is that there is a good chance that the police or lawyers will hear only one side of the story. The only advice I could give to the couples once I knew the situation was that they should move, but of course both couples thought that the other couple should move. It will be difficult to resolve the issue satisfactorily, although the four people are all reasonable except when involved in that neighbours' dispute. If we had the resources for a conciliation service, it could bring the four together and explain to them all that they are harassing their neighbours and that, if they cannot come to some accommodation, the only solution is for one pair to move.
  812
  The final example I wish to mention is that of a young lady who came to see me with a worrying case. She described how she was being followed and said that there were people spying on her. I assumed, as she talked, that she was suffering from paranoia and that she did not have a case, but I agreed to take it up with the police and social security. I wrote to both services asking them to confirm that they were not carrying out surveillance and, much to my surprise, someone from the social security fraud squad rang me up and said, "Look, I should not really tell you this, but we have made a terrible mistake in this case. We have been carrying out surveillance because we thought she was claiming benefit while she was working, but we now know the whole history of the case. The police were making inquiries because they thought that she was involved in illegal activities." In that case, because I found out the full story, I was able to tell my constituent that there had been a mistake, people had been following her for what they thought were legitimate reasons and it would all stop.
  The problem with the legislation is that various people are exempt, but how will individuals be told that whoever is following them is exempt? That will be difficult, because people might have legitimate worries that they are being harassed and the only way to tell them that that is not happening would be to say that a government agency had been carrying out surveillance on them and causing them upset unnecessarily. The Government must consider how information will be passed on in those circumstances to reassure people that what they believe to be harassment is not harassment, but the Government legitimately checking up on them. In most cases, either the surveillance will result in a prosecution because the person was committing some offence or that person can be assured that it has stopped.
  It is unfortunate that the measure is being rushed through the House. We should have had much more time for scrutiny. I hope that we can pursue some of the amendments and that, as has happened so often when legislation has been rushed through the House, the real scrutiny will take place in the House of Lords. I hope that the Lords will show more vigour than is likely to be shown in the Commons.
  7.22 pm
  Ms Janet Anderson: I wish to start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), the Home Secretary and everyone who has contributed to the debate for their gracious comments about my attempts earlier this year to try to do something about the important issue of stalking. I also wish to place on record the fact that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn made clear, we support the Bill and are anxious to see it on the statute book as quickly as possible.
  The hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Mr. Griffiths), who is not in his place, referred to men being stalked. He is right; and I have corresponded with a number of men who have been stalked. The problem is predominantly faced by women, but I notice that, in The Independent the other day, there was a letter from a woman who was being stalked by another woman. Clearly the crime is no respecter of gender.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) spoke about the extent of agreement on the Bill, and I endorse his comments. It is welcome when we

  813
  are able to co-operate across the Floor of the House, and I am sure that the public would welcome it if we did it a bit more often. My hon. Friend is well known for his long interest in the private security industry. He has continued to press for regulation of that industry, as recommended by the Home Affairs Select Committee, which is chaired by the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence). We hope that, one day, the Government will introduce such regulation.
  The hon. and learned Member for Burton gave me much encouragement in my efforts, and I am grateful. I learned much from him when I was a member of the Select Committee that he chairs so expertly, but he referred disingenuously to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn as causing mischief. I can assure him that that was not the intention of my hon. Friend. There is still some concern that the Bill will cause problems for journalists. I have a copy of a letter from the Guild of Editors, which states:
  "The Guild remains concerned at the ease with which the Bill's provisions could be used to curb the media rather than protect the victims of stalking."
  May I say to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mrs. Maddock)—who has temporarily left her place—how much I welcome her party's support for action to tackle stalking, which seemed to appear at its recent annual conference. The hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Allason) mentioned the problem of neighbours. He might like to read the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn in our "Quiet Life" document, which would tackle the neighbour problems of which he spoke.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) spoke, rightly, of the need for greater detail and stricter definition. None of us could have failed to be moved by his horrific tale about the case in his constituency. Like him, I hope that women will be encouraged to go to the police and to complain as a result of this and, I hope, future legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) spoke about private Members' Bills and how they have sometimes managed to reach the statute book with the right spirit of cross-party co-operation. I could not agree more with what he said.
  It is unusual, but welcome, that, in a Chamber so dominated by men, we should debate an issue of serious concern to women. The Police Federation estimates that 3,000 people fall victim to stalkers every year and that the overwhelming majority of them are women. As with domestic violence—also largely a crime committed by men against women—there has perhaps been a reluctance for too long to address the menace of stalking.
  I am sure that those witnessing the debate today, especially the victims of stalkers, wonder why it has taken so long to get round to doing anything about a problem that causes such misery to thousands of women. Women have seen their relationships torn apart and their children taken into care because they have suffered such enormous psychological damage that they can no longer cope. Women have been made afraid to venture out alone and too frightened to pick up the telephone. Women's lives have been left in tatters by the torment they have suffered at the hands of stalkers.
  Each year, the women on the Opposition Benches try to mark International Women's Day by highlighting issues of concern to women. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ms Coffey) secured a slot for a ten-minute
  814
  Bill in March. In a spirit that I suspect is more common among Labour Members than Conservative, she asked me to use it to introduce a Bill to combat stalking. That Bill, as we know, was blocked by the Government on 10 May. I recently asked the Home Secretary why the Government felt that any differences between us about the contents of my Bill could not have been resolved in Committee. He replied that
  "there was no time and there would not have been full and proper consultation."—[Official Report, 28 October 1996; Vol. 284, c. 336.]
  However, it has taken the Government a full nine months to come forward with their proposals.
  If a week is a long time in politics, nine months must have seemed like an eternity for the victims of stalkers. As for consultation, the Home Secretary and his colleagues know that we consulted widely on my Bill before it was published. We took advice from the police, from lawyers who had been involved in stalking cases, from the Home Secretary's officials at the Home Office—at the express invitation of the Minister of State—from the Lord Chancellor, from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and from the national anti-stalking and harassment campaign. Most important, we consulted the victims of stalkers. We even consulted Conservative Members, and I have their replies in front of me. The hon. and learned Member for Burton made a number of suggestions that we were careful to include in the final draft.
  The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) wrote to me on 2 May, commenting on the draft Bill that I had sent her. She said:
  "Dear Janet, Thank you for your note re: Stalking. It looks fine to me!"
  In his letter to me of 4 May, the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) said:
  "Thank you for sending me a copy of your draft Bill on stalking. I think this is a very good effort and provides a very good basis for discussion with the Minister at the Home Office."
  What did the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), say about the Bill, for he too was sent a draft of it on 22 April, two weeks before it was published? He declined to comment until the eve of the Second Reading—no doubt he was consulting. He said that he regretted that the scope of my Bill was "too wide". He continued:
  "It could mean that innocent people going about their lawful business would find themselves branded as criminals."
  He also said:
  "I do not think there is a political difference between us."
  Is he not aware that it is widely believed that a political difference prevented the Government from working with us nine months ago to provide relief for the victims of stalking?
  It is also widely believed that the Home Secretary could not stomach the idea of backing a Labour Bill. The hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Bates), the duty Government Whip, was moved to shout, "Object," on 10 May to block our Stalking Bill. He has now received his reward and stepped neatly into the ministerial shoes of the dissembling hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts).
  Mr. Peter Luff: That is not worthy of the hon. Lady.
  Ms Anderson: If the hon. Gentleman listens, he might learn something. The hon. Member for Havant truly learned the lesson: "Never put in writing what you would not wish to see reprinted on the front page of The Sun."

  815
  We cannot know how many victims could have been helped sooner. In the absence of a specific anti-stalking law, it has been difficult for victims to seek redress other than through charges such as grievous bodily harm. That has inevitably taken up hours of the courts' time while lawyers argued that the charge covered psychological harm. It worked in the case of Peri Southall, who was stalked by Clarence Morris; he was found guilty. It worked also for Tracy Sant, who had endured three years of mental torture during a campaign of harassment and intimidation by Anthony Burstow, but it took five days of tortuous legal wrangling to get a conviction.
  It did not work for Margaret Bent, who was allegedly stalked by Dennis Chambers during an unrelenting four-year campaign that began simply after he saw her in the street. Dennis Chambers, who offered no defence to the charge of causing Miss Bent grievous bodily harm, walked free and Margaret Bent faced the added ordeal of being cross-examined by Chambers, who chose to defend himself. It is no wonder that Margaret's mother was moved to say:
  "I hope the judge and the jury some day experience what I have experienced with my daughter. He made her life a hell for four years, not only hers but everyone in her family and her friends".
  Margaret Bent is one woman who might have been sleeping easier in her bed tonight if something had been done sooner to help the victims of stalking. However, the stalking menace was ideal for the kind of action that the Home Secretary likes to unveil at Conservative party conferences—and that is what he did.
  Mr. Maclean: This is unnecessary and stupid.
  Ms Anderson: If the Minister will be more patient, he will understand my reasons for repeating the Home Secretary's words. At the party conference, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said:
  "There is one group of offenders from whom the public needs special protection. Stalkers. They can make a woman's life a misery … Terrified prisoners of someone else's obsession. We need quick and effective remedies for the less serious cases. And tough sanctions for the most serious. And today I can announce that we shall have them. Women deserve that protection … And I will make sure they get it."
  The explanatory note for editors, appended to the Home Secretary's speech, clearly stated:
  "The Government proposes to deal with the menace of stalking through a combination of civil and criminal remedies".
  We could have been forgiven for believing that the much-trumpeted commitment would be included in the Queen's Speech—that the Government might keep their promise and bring forward their own legislation—but no, the measure was consigned to a private Member's Bill.
  How strange it is that what could not be achieved by a private Member's Bill many months before would now be tackled in precisely that manner. Only when my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition showed his readiness to put party politics aside, was the Prime Minister forced to concede that the Government would introduce their own legislation. I suspect that that was as much a surprise for the Home Secretary as it was for us.
  At last we have the Bill before us today. In May, the Home Secretary said:
  816
  "the Government had been preparing its own legislation to counter the menace of stalking for some time".
  He described my Bill as, "rushed, botched and unworkable" but, in the end, he has brought forward a Bill that is remarkably similar. In May, the Home Secretary said:
  "as soon as we are satisfied that we have a workable definition of the crime, we will legislate".
  Surprisingly, he has now introduced a Bill with practically no definition at all. Seemingly any activity that a court "reasonably" decides is harassment is just that, and if a court thinks that certain activities were causing fear of violence, they were. Ministers claimed that our definition was unworkable, but theirs is virtually non-existent.
  There can be no clearer example of the Opposition leading where the Government have failed to act. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition famously said, he leads his party—in contrast to the Prime Minister, who follows his. On guns, knives, paedophiles, criminally anti-social neighbours and stalking, Labour has led the way. I am sure that the lesson is not lost on a country that looks increasingly to the Opposition for constructive law and order solutions.
  7.36 pm
  Mr. Howard: With the leave of the House, I should like to reply to the debate.
  We have just heard a ludicrous speech that was unworthy of the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Ms Anderson). She claimed credit a moment ago for the Leader of the Opposition, who she said had put party politics aside in his speech on the Loyal Address. That accusation could never be levelled at the hon. Lady in light of her contribution.
  The truth about the matter that we are debating this evening is that stalking is a serious menace from which countless women, in particular, suffer greatly. Nothing could do more harm to those women than to cobble together an unprepared Bill, rush it on to the statute book, and pretend that it offered them relief. Earlier today, I paid tribute to the hon. Lady and congratulated her on raising the matter last year in her private Member's Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) said in his letter—which the hon. Lady quoted in her speech—the Bill provided a useful basis for discussion with Ministers.
  We discussed the issue with her, but her Bill would not have provided an adequate statutory remedy to the mischief with which we all want to deal. It was deficient in a number of respects, which I identified with some precision earlier this afternoon. It does no one any justice to gather an absolute farrago of inaccuracies in an attempt to demonstrate that the Government's reaction to the hon. Lady's Bill last year was based on a desire—the hon. Lady made this specific accusation—not to support an Opposition private Member's Bill. What utter nonsense.
  Ms Janet Anderson: It is not.
  Mr. Howard: Let me give the hon. Lady an example from this Session. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Wray) introduced a private Member's Bill on knives. He and the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) said, "We should like to introduce a Bill on knives, and this is the Bill we want." They showed us the Bill and we said,

  817
  "We don't think much of your Bill, because we don't think it would work. We are keen to help you if you want to put a sensible measure to deal with knives on the statute book, and we will provide you with a Bill." That is exactly what we did.
  With the Government's full support, the hon. Gentleman, who came first in the private Members' ballot—a Labour Member—introduced a Bill on knives, which was drafted and proposed by the Government. We do not have the slightest difficulty supporting a Bill proposed by a Labour Member. To suggest the contrary is completely untrue from start to finish. The hon. Lady should know that, and she should know better than to make disgraceful accusations, as she did during her appalling speech.
  The hon. Lady is giggling away on the Front Bench. She had the temerity to claim that she had consulted the National Anti-stalking and Harassment Campaign. I have the specific authority of its director to say that she rejects very strongly the idea that the hon. Lady consulted that body about her stalking proposals. That was simply not the case, and that fact should be placed on the record.
  I remind the hon. Lady exactly why her Bill was defective. In the first place, it would not have provided a defence for people who are engaged in legitimate activities, such as journalists and others who have been mentioned by Opposition Members, including the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George). In that respect, it was too wide. We had to give the matter a great deal of thought, and to consult carefully before we were able to propose a solution to that problem.
  In another respect, the hon. Lady's Bill was too narrow, because it proceeded by way of a list of examples of conduct that would constitute stalking. The trouble with such a list is that, although the Bill may say—as hers did—that the list is without prejudice to the generality of the scope of the clause, such matters are subject to principles of statutory construction and interpretation.
  One of those principles—if the hon. Lady is interested—is called the ejusdem generis rule, which requires such a list to be construed as though it could be extended to cover things of the same nature as those in the list. As the list in the hon. Lady's Bill concentrated entirely on activities characteristic of classic stalking, it would not have covered activities that constitute racial harassment or that come under the heading of harassment of one neighbour by another. That is the truth of the matter.
  Ms Anderson: That was never intended.
  Mr. Howard: In that case, the world at large will welcome the fact that our Bill does intend to cover such activities.
  Ms Anderson: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Howard: No, not until I have finished making this point.
  Many people will welcome the fact that our Bill gives protection to victims of racial harassment and to the victims of the activities of noisy neighbours. They will not have counted it an advantage of the hon. Lady's Bill that it excluded such activities.
  Ms Anderson: May I reaffirm what the right hon. and learned Gentleman clearly understands? I want to put on
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  record the fact that my Bill was never intended to deal with the problems of criminally anti-social neighbours and racial harassment. As I am sure he knows, the Opposition have for some time had proposals on those matters. We are pleased that the Government have at last addressed those problems and have copied many of our proposals.
  Mr. Howard: Let me explain the deficiencies of the hon. Lady's approach in words that are more pointed and eloquent than any I could devise. At the Suzy Lamplugh Trust conference in October, a victim of a stalker told my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, "If you have a list of activities which you ban, my stalker will simply sit down and work out another activity with which to torment me." That was the deficiency of the hon. Lady's Bill, and the present Bill seeks to remedy that.
  Ms Anderson rose—
  Mr. Howard: I believe that the Bill does remedy that deficiency, which is why it was worth waiting—
  Ms Anderson rose—
  Mr. Howard: I shall give way in a moment.
  It was worth waiting a few months—not many months—to prepare proper and effective legislation, which I believe we have achieved with our Bill.
  Ms Anderson: I refer the Home Secretary to the definition in my Bill. Indeed it had a list—it drew on the experience of other countries that have anti-stalking laws—but it was not exhaustive. We were careful to include a catch-all phrase, which was presumably why he said at the time that the Bill was drawn too widely. It referred to a person who
  "does any other act or acts in connection with another person so as to be reasonably likely to cause that other person to feel harassed, alarmed, distressed"
  and so on.
  I emphasise the fact that the list was not exhaustive. Perhaps the victim who spoke to the Minister of State at the conference did not understand that.
  Mr. Howard: I fear that it is the hon. Lady who does not understand. I shall explain it to her yet again. We said that her Bill was too wide—not because of the clause to which she has just referred, but because it did not provide a defence to people engaged in legitimate activities. I have already said that twice, and this is the third time. I shall say it a fourth time if necessary, but that is the truth of the matter.
  The clause to which the hon. Lady referred would not have provided a solution to the problem that I identified earlier. Lists are construed according to the nature of the activities that are put in them. That is the deficiency of the list approach, which is why we said, correctly, that the hon. Lady's Bill was too narrow in that respect.
  Mr. McNamara: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is jumping from place to place. He referred to the ejusdem generis rule in relation to racial harassment. My hon. Friend's Bill stated specifically that all other matters that reflect stalking would be included. The ejusdem generis rule would have covered that.
  Mr. Howard: It would not have covered that, because the ejusdem generis rule means that the list is interpreted

  819
  and constructed in accordance with the nature of the activities that are identified. It is the hon. Gentleman who is rushing about all over the place. He is trying to contend that his hon. Friend's Bill would have covered racial harassment. The hon. Lady herself has just argued that she never intended that her Bill should cover racial harassment. The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways.
  Mr. McNamara: I did not say that. I specifically said to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that he was jumping the ground by saying that my hon. Friend's Bill was not covered by the rule because it included racial harassment. We said specifically that it did not include racial harassment, so the rule applied.
  Mr. Howard: That is precisely why the Bill was too narrow. I do not know why the hon. Gentleman is getting so excited about that. It was too narrow because it did not cover those other activities from which people suffer a great deal of harm, which give rise to a great deal of mischief and for which Parliament should provide a remedy. That is why our Bill deals with those aspects of the mischief, and specifically provides remedies for those problems.
  Mr. George Howarth rose—
  Mr. Howard: The hon. Gentleman wants to intervene to help his hon. Friend.
  Mr. Howarth: My hon. Friend needs no help at all. Indeed, given that she was making, as it were, her maiden speech from the Dispatch Box, I think that she has done very well. Certainly she does not need my help; my purpose is to help the Home Secretary.
  Will the Home Secretary make it clear once and for all whether he thinks that the scope of my hon. Friend's Bill was too wide, or whether he thinks that it was too narrow? He has made both allegations in the space of two minutes. [Interruption.] Conservative Members do not like to hear this, but the Home Secretary said that my hon. Friend's Bill was defective in that it would not allow people going about their legitimate business to do so. What does he think was the purpose of clause 4 of that Bill? The clause stated:
  "No person acting under statutory or other lawful authority insofar as he acts within that authority shall be guilty of an offence under this Act."
  Does that not constitute an exception and a defence? Precisely the problem that the Home Secretary said existed in my hon. Friend's Bill was covered in it.
  Mr. Howard: I will explain—for, I think, the fifth time. The hon. Lady's Bill was too wide in one respect, and too narrow in another. It was too narrow because of the list, as I have just said, and it was too wide because it did not provide a defence for those who were engaged in legitimate activities but not under any statutory authority. A journalist who may be pursuing an investigation is certainly not acting under any such authority. This Bill, however, deals specifically with the matter by setting a standard: whether it is reasonable for someone to act in such a way in the circumstances. That
  820
  is entirely different from the misconceived approach adopted in the hon. Lady's Bill, which would not have worked. [Interruption.] The approach to which the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) keeps referring would not have achieved that objective, for reasons that I have explained very clearly.
  I owe the hon. Lady an apology: I had not appreciated that this was her maiden speech from the Front Bench. I welcome her to the Front Bench, and trust that the other speeches that she will make from it in due course will be a substantial improvement on her effort tonight.
  Sir Ivan Lawrence: I fear that my right hon. and learned Friend is, characteristically, being too kind to the hon. Lady. Did her Bill not contain two serious deficiencies that he has not mentioned? It would have made the same penalty available for both stalking causing harassment and the other offence of stalking causing fear for safety, which would obviously not have been very sensible. Moreover, the hon. Lady's Bill was intended to reverse the burden of proof: the defence would have had to prove that the defendant did not know that his actions would have the alleged effect. That would have delayed the Bill considerably, because if anything causes controversy in this place, it is the reversal of the burden of proof.
  Mr. Howard: My hon. and learned Friend is right, but it would take me a long time to list all the many imperfections in the hon. Lady's Bill. I was concentrating on the main structural weaknesses—the weaknesses of principle—and trying to explain why we needed to take some time to consider these matters carefully and to consult widely. That is the basis on which we have been able to present proposals that will not disappoint the many women who suffer as a result of the activities that the legislation is designed to remedy. Our proposals will not dash their hopes, or give rise to false hopes by enacting legislation that would be imperfect and would not work; they will lead to the enactment of effective legislation that will give those women—and not only women, as we have heard—the remedy to which they are entitled.
  On that basis, I commend the Bill to the House. I believe that it will significantly help victims of the kind of activity that gives concern to hon. Members in all parties.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Coe.]
  Bill immediately considered in Committee.
  [DAME JANET FOOKES in the Chair]

  Protection from Harassment Bill
    Clause 1

      PROHIBITION OF HARASSMENT
      7.55 pm
      Mr. Bennett: I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "or ought to know".
      The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Janet Fookes): With this, it will be convenient to discuss also the following amendments: No. 22, in page 1, line 10, leave out subsection (2).

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      No. 12, in page 1, line 13, at end insert—
      '(2A) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection 2 above, a person pursues a course of conduct amounting to harassment if he:

      (a) follows, loiters near, watches or approaches another person;

      (b) telephones (which for the avoidance of doubt shall include telephoning a person but remaining silent during the call), contacts by other electronic means, or otherwise contacts another person;

      (c) loiters near, watches, approaches or enters a place where another person lives works or repeatedly visits;

      (d) interferes with property which does not belong to him and is in the possession of another person;

      (e) leaves offensive, unwarranted or unsolicited material at a place where another person lives, works or regularly visits; or

      (f) gives offensive, unwarranted or unsolicited material to another person

      so as to be reasonably likely to cause that other person to feel harassed, alarmed, distressed or to fear for his safety or for that of one or more third persons to whom he has a duty of protection or with whom he is associated.'.
      No. 5, in clause 4, clause 4, page 2, line 27, leave out 'or ought to know'.
      No. 23, in clause 4, page 2, line 29, leave out subsection (2).
      No. 18, in clause 4, page 2, line 33, at end insert—
      `(2A) Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (2) above, a person pursues a course of conduct for the purposes of this section when he persistently behaves in any of the ways mentioned in section 1 (2) or (2A) above'.
      No. 9, in clause 7, clause 7, page 3, leave out lines 39 and 40.
      No. 10, in clause 7, page 3, line 41, leave out 'two' and insert 'three'.
      Mr. Bennett: This brings us straight back to one of the central issues that featured on Second Reading—the question whether the Government's approach is the best, or whether something clearer and more specific is needed.
      Clause 1(1)(b) states that a person must not pursue a course of conduct "which he knows" amounts to harassment. There is clearly no problem with that except when someone wishes to prosecute, when it will be extremely difficult to prove intent. The Government therefore added the catch-all "or ought to know"—which poses the difficult question of what someone "ought to know". That is made conditional on subsection (2), which deals with the word "harassment", and on subsection (3), which deals with the question of reversing proof and proving that what was done was reasonable. That was the basis of the castigation that we heard from the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence).
      I do not think that the Government's approach is the best. I think that it would be far better for us to try to provide certainty in legislation, rather than leaving it to be provided in case law resulting from a series of cases based on what constitutes harassment, what is reasonable and what someone ought to know.
      Obviously, there are alternative approaches. Amendment No. 12 puts back the list that was in the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Ms Anderson). If the Government really want to deal with the problem, they should consider a compromise between their approach and that of my hon. Friend,
      822
      making it easy for a person to understand that, if he pursues a certain course of conduct, he can be accused of harassment, that he will have committed an offence and that he can be punished for it.
      The Home Secretary has argued that, if a list is included, the court must take notice of it, and will take less notice of any catch-all at the end of the list. If he really feels that he cannot put such a list in the Bill, he should look to the various devices that Parliament comes up with—codes of practice, regulations and guidance—so that, if he insists on a catch-all phrase, there is a simple way for a police officer to explain to someone that, if he continues to behave in such a way, he will be involved in harassment, and a lawyer giving advice will have a document allowing him to say, "This looks as though it would fall foul of the law."
      Therefore, in practice, the Government have not really solved the problems by going for a wide definition using the phrases "ought to know", "harassment" and "reasonable". That will be a marvellous area for lawyers to work over for many years. Instead of solving the problems of someone being stalked, it may mean that persons face much more upset and worry because their court case will become long running.
      I therefore hope that, in responding to this group of amendments, the Government will recognise that there is a problem with the clause and will clarify it.
      8 pm
      Mr. Maclean: Amendment No. 1 would fundamentally damage the Bill's effectiveness. The great difficulty in using existing law to prevent harassing conduct is that the stalker will not always intend to cause harassment. That is why we ensured in clause 1 that a person is prohibited from pursuing a course of conduct, not only where he knows that it causes harassment, but where he ought to know that harassment would be caused. A person ought to know that that course of conduct would amount to harassment in circumstances where a reasonable person, in possession of the same information, would think that the course of conduct amounted to harassment of the other person.
      The amendment serves to ensure merely that the offence of causing harassment will apply only where intent could be proved. That would go no further than existing laws, which both victims' organisations and the police agree are inadequate to deal with stalkers who claim that they do not intend to cause harassment to their victim. Victims of stalking need protection against such stalkers. Clause 1 provides it. We cannot accept any amendment that weakens that position.
      The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) commented that the Home Secretary had said that the list system would mean that the courts would take less notice of the catch-all at the end of the list. That is not exactly the correct interpretation. It is not that the courts would take less notice of the so-called catch-all at the end of the list, but that, under the courts' rules of construction and interpretation, they would interpret that catch-all as being in the same generic list as the actual list. It would cease, therefore, to be a general catch-all and be regarded as a narrowly defined catch-all of exactly the activities specified in the list.

      823
      I cannot accept the hon. Gentleman's amendment, which would fundamentally weaken the Bill, and I hope that he will see fit to withdraw it.
      Mr. Bennett: On a point of order, Dame Janet. From the list that I have, I thought that a whole series of other amendments were grouped with amendment No. 1. Is that correct?
      The Second Deputy Chairman: Yes it is. Indeed the hon. Gentleman will recall that, when I first called amendment No. 1 out, I mentioned that it was grouped with others. It is not a matter for the occupant of the Chair to decide how much a Member or a Minister shall say about the other amendments in the group.
      Mr. Bennett: Further to that point of order, Dame Janet. The point was that I had thought that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench might have wanted to speak to their amendments that are grouped with amendment No. 1. I was not sure that they were aware that they were.
      Ms Janet Anderson: We do not intend to press this to a vote, but we would like to explore the thinking behind the Bill's definition and how the Government think that it might work in practice.
      Given some of the comments by Conservative Members about our amendments, may I specifically refer them to a letter from the Association of County Councils, which says that its
      "worry about the Bill as drafted is that it is drawn in very wide terms. For example, 'harassment' is not specifically defined, and it appears that the Bill covers harassment whether in the home, the workplace, on the streets, etc. I am not saying that this is wrong, merely that it does not seem clear."
      I have already mentioned that the Guild of British Newspaper Editors is concerned about the effect on the media.
      May I also reiterate the views of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which, as we all know, has long taken an interest in this issue. A letter from Anne Strahan, the trust's projects and research manager, apologises to me for her comments to the Daily Mail.
      Mr. Maclean: We have had this before.
      Ms Anderson: Yes, but, believe me, it is worth repeating, if the Minister will just be patient.
      The letter states:
      "At the time of speaking to the Daily Mail yesterday, I misunderstood the intention of the amendments within the Bill, assuming these amendments to override the more general nature of the Bill. As an extra provision to the Bill, these amendments would in fact strengthen rather than weaken the Bill.
      The Trust is very pleased that Labour are still working to improve the Bill".
      I hope therefore that Minister will understand that that is the spirit in which I have tabled the amendments.
      The amendments seek to add to the definitions laid out for the lower offence of harassment and the higher offence of causing fear of violence. I know that the Home
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      Secretary recognises the need to get the definition right when legislating to combat the menace of stalking. On 10 May, in an interview on "The World at One", he said:
      "Stalking is a particularly difficult thing to define, which is why we are taking some care to make sure that we get it right. As soon as we have a workable definition of the crime we will legislate";
      so, as I say, we would like to explore with the Minister whether the Bill's definition is workable, which, presumably, he considers it to be. That is why we have tabled the amendments.
      Basically, the Government definitions, as laid out in clause 1(2) and clause 4(2), say that, if a court reasonably believes that someone's actions constitute harassment or are causing fear of violence, then they are. As the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence) said, it is not inconceivable—I know that this might be welcomed by Conservative Members and indeed by some Labour Members—that that could generate much additional work for lawyers.
      As the Bill stands, theoretically, people engaging in innocent activities, of which a judge happens to disapprove, could be caught. They may include shouting at a referee from the terraces at a football match on more than one occasion. I hope that the Minister will reassure us about that.
      It is some two and a half years since the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) first moved an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to seek to establish a criminal offence of stalking. As, I am sure, the Minister knows, that amendment had been drafted for her by the Police Federation, which had long called for such a criminal offence.
      The definition that we are seeking to add to the Government's Bill is not exhaustive. It would strengthen the Bill. I admit I am not a lawyer but, whatever Conservative Members say, they have not yet answered whether they think that our Bill—essentially we are seeking to put the majority of my definition into the Government's Bill—is too wide or too narrow. Perhaps the Minister will deal with that again when he responds.
      The purpose of amendments Nos. 12 and 18 is to give guidance to the courts. If judges are to apply this Bill, they will need clearer terms of reference than the Government have provided. Otherwise, we estimate a possible rash of costly and time-consuming appeals, which is presumably why the hon. and learned Member for Burton said that it would provide work for lawyers.
      Other countries, such as the United States, Canada and Australia, have all introduced laws to combat stalking and we know that the Government have been considering those laws closely in their efforts to find the workable definition that the Home Secretary was after. We also considered the experience of those countries when drawing up our stalking Bill. The relevant law in those countries often gives greater guidance to the courts as to what might constitute stalking. Activities such as pursuing or following a person, unwarranted surveillance, lying in wait for someone, non-consensual communication and trespass all feature in the definitions used in those countries.
      The Minister said in written answers to me that the Government did not feel the need to have such a list system. One of their reasons was that many of those activities were already offences in Britain. I should be

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      grateful if the Minister would go through the activities that are specified in other countries' legislation and tell us precisely where they are offences in Britain.
      We based amendments Nos. 12 and 18 on the definition employed in Queensland, Australia, and elements of the best practice of the US and Canada. It is virtually the same as the definition in the Stalking Bill and lays out the most common examples of stalking activity.
      It is not our intention to detract in any way from the proposals in the Government's Bill. We merely seek to give greater guidance to the courts when they implement the Bill's provisions.
      Mr. Maclean: It may not be the Opposition's intention to detract in any way from the Bill's provisions, but the unintended effect of their amendment is that it diminishes the protections in the Bill. It is not just a matter of my opinion. It is a matter of the technicalities of construction of statute law. The danger with the list system is that the court will have to construe the provision according to the items on the list. If a phrase such as "and any other activity" is inserted, the court, under the ejusdem generis rule, must construe those other activities narrowly, according to the general characteristics that have already been given in the long list that the hon. Lady provided.
      There is another practical difficulty. I do not know how anyone present in the Chamber could face a victim in a couple of years. After the Bill has had its Third Reading and comes back from another place, we will all be making speeches and saying that we have now given victims protection and that never again will poor, innocent victims be subject to stalkers. In a couple of years we will find that some weirdo is stalking women and abusing some activity that has not been caught in the list. That is the danger.
      The hon. Lady said that her list was not exhaustive. Of course it is not exhaustive, nor is it complete. I would be more relaxed about a list system if I thought that it could be complete. Unfortunately, we are dealing with people who have some very weird ideas, and there are potentially hundreds of such people, or thousands if the Bill does not deter them. They can get up to pretty weird activities. It is impossible to define all the stalking activities that people could get up to. That is why it is best to stick to the harassment definition and concentrate on the effect of the weird activity on the victim.
      Mrs. Maria Fyfe: The opening phrase of amendment No. 2 states:
      "Without prejudice to the generality of subsection 2".
      Surely that covers the Minister's objection. The Labour amendment simply expands on that point.
      Mr. Maclean: For the umpteenth time: no, it does not. Adding a catch-all at the end does not achieve what it seems to achieve. Judges must interpret catch-ails at the end of lists in statute according to certain rules that the courts have developed for the way in which they go about interpretation. The ejusdem generis rule assumes that, if Parliament added a catch-all, Parliament intended it to be interpreted according to the other characteristics in the list. It is not a wide-ranging catch-all. The best catch-all is to stick to the word "harassment".
      That is not just my opinion; it is the opinion that we got after consultation. The Government did not pluck out of thin air the idea of plain, bald harassment, without
      826
      considering any other ideas or suggestions. That is the suggestion that we put in our consultation paper. Following that wide-ranging consultation, there was widespread support for the proposal to use the concept of harassment and to concentrate on the effect of the activity on the victim, making that the criminal offence, rather than trying to define a list of activities that Parliament thought bad at one particular time, knowing full well that stalkers and those who harass victims are, by their very nature, dashed clever at finding other weird activities.
      I shall quote what my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary said when he quoted a victim at the Suzy Lamplugh Trust conference. Those words should be burned on our brains before we come to a view on this part of the Bill. That victim—not a politician or a lawyer—said:
      "If you have a list of activities which you ban, my stalker will simply sit down and work out another activity with which to torment me."
      I do not want to stand in the House in two years or write letters to my constituents or those of other hon. Members, explaining how the law was inadequate because we went for a list and some weirdo got round the list and made life hell for another victim. We do not have to do that, because the proposals in the Bill represent the best way of tackling the problem.
      8.15 pm
      Let us not worry about what any one of a thousand activities might be. Let us worry about the effect on the victim. If the effect is to cause harassment to the victim, we can trigger the offence and the provisions in the Bill for civil remedy and criminal defences.
      I could say more on the clause. I have not discussed some of the other amendments, which I do not think have been moved. I give way to the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett), then I shall conclude.
      Mr. Bennett: Does the Minister realise that, as a result of fairly recent judgments, what Ministers say in the House can be taken into account by the courts? Will he go through the list in amendment No. 12 and tell us which activities he would expect not to be covered, so that it is on the record in the House that he thinks that proposed subsections (a) to (f) are covered by his definition?
      Mr. Maclean: The hon. Gentleman misunderstands the ruling in Pepper v. Hart, which suggested that the comments of Ministers may be taken into account if there is ambiguity. However, when a Bill states that something is black, it is no good a Minister saying that it is white. The court will still interpret the word as "black". We cannot use our words, however nimbly we put them across, to change the meaning of the Bill, if the meaning is crystal clear; nor can I make any comment at the Dispatch Box that would influence the way in which judges use the long-established rules of interpretation to interpret a list.
      The hon. Gentleman is trying to make bricks without straw. I understand his reasons. He has tabled all the Liberty amendments. It may be legitimate for him to take that position, but his amendments would pull the teeth of the Bill. There would be nothing left to give protection to victims. I do not go so far as to say that the amendment tabled by the official Opposition would fundamentally

      827
      destroy the Bill, as the hon. Gentleman's amendments would—there would be no Bill left. The Opposition amendment would narrow the scope of this part of the Bill to a narrowly defined list.
      Stalkers do not stick to the activities on a list. Stalkers and other weirdos who pursue women, cause racial harassment and annoy their neighbours have a wide range of activity which it is impossible to define. The result of our consultation exercise suggested overwhelmingly that the approach in the Bill is the best one. Therefore, I am not persuaded to fly in the face of the consultation exercise, the expert advice that we received and the views of victims of stalking, especially a victim who told us clearly:
      "If you have a list of activities which you ban, my stalker will simply sit down and work out another activity with which to torment me."
      For those reasons, and that one in particular, I cannot accept the amendment.
      Mrs. Fyfe: I have lost of count of the Government Bills that I have seen which began with the preamble that,
      "without prejudice to the generality"
      of a particular section, the following detailed provisions would apply. After his remarks to the Committee, will the Minister and his colleagues revise all the legislation that has been passed in the past umpteen years to remove such particulars? That is the logic of what he has said.
      If the Minster's objective is to avoid rendering judges obtuse or stupid in their interpretation of the legislation, I suggest that amendment No. 12 would help. A judge would not be able to say that following someone, loitering near them, telephoning them and making flattering remarks, or sending them presents, was not harassment. Even the thickest of those on judicial benches would regard such behaviour as harassment.
      Mr. Maclean: Looking down the list, I was immediately struck by its deficiency. For example—off the top of my head—it omits such activities as driving past a victim's house. That is not contained in the amendment, although loitering and watching are. What about the person who continually drives past someone's house, or harassment by direct speech, letters to the press, acts committed against a third party—such as the victim's spouse or children—or acts committed by a third party? Those examples are not covered. I have already provided half a dozen examples, and there may be others.
      I do not consider myself to be a weirdo—although others may disagree—so I have not thought of all the weird permutations of behaviour that could be used to get round a list. However, if hon. Members have already found deficiencies in the list, within hours of reading the amendments, we can bet our bottom dollar that stalkers out there somewhere would change and refine their activities to get round it.
      We should not be in any doubt that some activities, such as driving past a victim's house, is not caught by the amendment. Other activities may be caught, or they may not be. We should bear in mind that deterrence will be one of the best effects of the legislation. Police officers have said that their current difficulty is that they cannot tell a stalker, "Stop it, sonny, because you're breaking the
      828
      law." Stalkers know that certain actions do not necessarily break the law. The Bill's provisions will enable police to advise many people that, if they persist with their conduct, they will be breaking the law.
      "Harassment" catches a wide range of conduct and potentially allows such behaviour to be considered as breaking the law. A narrow list will enable police to tick off, reprimand and deter only those whose activities exactly match those on the list. It is not good enough to have grey areas or to say, "Driving past a victim's house may or may not be caught." A list system creates such ambiguity. Some conduct will be excluded directly, but other conduct will have an ambiguous status. That is my answer to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe).
      Mr. Bennett: I am disappointed by the Minister's response, because I thought that the purpose of the Bill's Committee stage was to try to achieve constructive results. I understand the difficulty that an offence will be extremely difficult to prove if, as my amendments propose, we say "knowingly" and remove "ought to know" because of the issue of intent. Equally, it is a pretty good principle in law that, so far as possible, we should make it clear to people that they are in danger of breaking the law. Therefore, we should be trying to achieve clarity. I understand that difficulty, and I appreciate the way in which the Minister has made the point that, as soon as we make a list, there will be a problem with people who deliberately try to get round it. I accept that.
      When I moved my amendment, I suggested to the Minister the development of a code of practice or regulations that would provide the necessary interpretation. I can also understand the difficulties with that approach, but I should have thought that he could at least provide the Committee with a firm list of such behaviour. As he said, a judge would not have to take specific notice of a list, but such a list would at least clearly express the Government's views.
      In the course of proceedings on the Bill, I hope that Ministers will make it clear that they accept the list in amendment No. 12. If the Minister or his advisers can think of other examples of such behaviour, they should be included—so that people are at least provided with some clarification of the law on which to base their conduct.
      I understand the Minister's argument that a police officer should be able to say, "Because of this general rule on harassment, that behaviour is covered." But, as the Minister has already pointed out, some of those people are extremely awkward, persistent and cussed, and they will not be deterred merely because a police officer says that a course of conduct is covered. They will be very tempted to pursue the matter through the courts. Such uncertainty will continue until there is a series of court judgments clarifying what is meant in the clause by "harassment" and what is meant by "reasonable".
      I appeal to the Minister to look again for some way in which to provide general guidance stating that the conduct listed in amendment No. 12 and the conduct that he mentioned are clearly examples of harassment. The guidance should make it clear that, if one persists with such activities, they will be caught by the clause, and it should not close the door on including those activities. I should have thought that the Minister could come up with guidance that is sufficiently inventive to meet the

      829
      need of clarifying the legislation, so that people are clear that certain activities will be treated as harassment and that others may also be so treated.
      I do not want to press my amendment to a vote, but I should have thought that—tomorrow, during the Bill's Report stage—many Opposition Members will want to return to the subject. Therefore, I ask the Minister to think whether guidance can be given, without, as he suggested might happen, narrowing the definition of the offence. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw amendment No. 1.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      The Second Deputy Chairman: Is amendment No. 12 to be moved formally?
      Ms Janet Anderson: Dame Janet, may I reply to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett)?
      The Second Deputy Chairman: Unfortunately, it is not possible to have further debate on that group of amendments as amendment No. 1 has been withdrawn. If the hon. Lady wishes to move amendment No. 12 formally, she may do so.
      Ms Anderson: No.
      Mrs. Maddock: I beg to move amendment No. 30, in page 1, line 15, leave out from 'shows' to 'under' in line 17 and insert,
      `that in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of conduct was reasonable—
      (a) for the purpose of preventing and detecting crime, or'.
      The Second Deputy Chairman: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 31, in page 1, line 19, leave out from 'enactment' to end of line 21.
      No. 28, in page 1, line 21, at end insert 'or
      (d) that it was pursued for the purpose of investigating a tort, suspected civil wrong or other matter, where a bona fide investigation is required in the interests of justice.'.
      No. 6, in clause 4, clause 4, page 2, line 41, leave out from 'reasonable' to end of line 43.
      Mrs. Maddock: Before the Minister replies to my speech and points out the flaws in my amendments, I should like to mention again the speed with which we had to draft them. I regret that, because of my speed in doing so, the amendments do not achieve what they were intended to do. They were intended to deal with the issue of "reasonableness", which has already been mentioned in the debate.
      In clauses 1 and 4, immunity from prosecution is provided to people if they can demonstrate that they were acting for purposes of preventing or detecting crime—as all hon. Members would think sensible. Obviously, in many circumstances, tailing a suspected criminal is justified, and my intention was not to interfere with that provision. However, the Bill's wording caused me to be concerned about whether it would allow people acting to prevent or detect crime to harass other people to an unacceptable or unreasonable degree. The Bill seems to contain no such qualification.
      830
      That issue has already been mentioned by the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), who spoke about private detectives engaging in such behaviour. Another example which has already been mentioned in the debate is bailiffs, who may find that they are able to harass people on the basis of subsections (a) and (b). I hope that the Minister will reassure us on that matter. He has already briefly spoken about the issue of "reasonableness". The amendments' purpose was to probe that issue and to seek reassurances from the Government that people are not able to claim that they are carrying out some other, legitimate purpose when they are, in fact, harassing other people.
      Mr. George: I shall speak to amendment No. 28, which is another probing amendment. I should like assurances from the Minister about the position of various people who conduct a range of legitimate investigations—they may be called private investigators, but other, more disparaging expressions, have also been used regularly. Their names do not always appear in the Yellow Pages as private investigators, but they frequently pursue investigations on behalf of the Crown—directly or indirectly—or on behalf of other organisations or individuals. I am not yet convinced—I hope to be convinced by the Minister—that sufficient thought has been given to provide the necessary defences for anyone pursuing a legitimate investigation.
      8.30 pm
      I tabled the amendment to allow the Minister to discuss with his civil servants the point that many private eyes undertake investigations with no criminal connotations. I mentioned earlier a list—I know that putting down a list is not conducive to gaining the Minister's support—of activities that are not directed to criminal investigations. The list includes investigating industrial accidents, matrimonial inquiries, the taking of statements, interviewing for witness statements, tracing missing persons and process serving.
      I have looked at a text book on private investigation written by a gentleman named Ackroyd. On page 104 of his book, "The Investigator", he says, on the subject of process serving:
      "To make what is termed a 'good service' it is only necessary to touch some part of the individual's body with the actual document."
      I wonder whether touching an individual with a document, even though it may be a copy of a document provided by a court, might be considered harassment, resulting in the bailiff, the process server or the investigator being called to the attention of the police.
      The list of activities that may not have criminal connotations also includes providing evidence for a local authority on anti-social neighbours, the vetting of potential and existing staff, and debt recovery. I hope to convince the Minister of the necessity of a stronger defence than that provided by the clause. The defence of an action in subsection (3)(a)—
      "that it was pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime"—
      might appear fine, but the argument of what is reasonable is problematic.
      The Minister speaks with some knowledge on the private security industry, although his views may not always correspond to mine. He knows that some people

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      might say that certain activities of the private security industry were reasonable and others might consider the same activities definitely unreasonable. Whether many of the manifold duties of a private investigator were reasonable may have to be tested in court. A judge's definition of what was reasonable might be a matter of considerable controversy. It would be easier—I shall not go into detail on this—for professional private investigators to argue their case if their profession was regulated and they conformed to standards laid down by law. Being a licensed investigator would provide a greater defence for certain activities.
      Many, if not the majority, of the activities of private investigators are not related to criminal proceedings. The Bill is imprecise—indeed, confusing. Subsection (3)(c) might exempt investigators whose investigations were proved reasonable, but that is too vague and could lead to some legitimate investigators being subject to civil and perhaps even criminal action.
      I do not believe that that was the objective of the Home Office in drawing up the legislation. The consultation paper issued in July said:
      "There is a risk that if the scope of any new legislation to deal with stalking is not carefully defined"—
      I do not think that it has been—
      "it will criminalise the everyday behaviour of innocent people".
      I do not want to argue about whether the definition is too wide or too narrow. I shall say only that when I was in the academic profession I often set the same examination question, asking students to consider a statement such as, "Legislation is more the function of the Executive than of the legislature." If I were pitched once again—against my will—into the profession that I willingly left, I might have to revise that statement to, "Legislation is as much the function of the judiciary as of the legislature." The broad definition bestows an enormous responsibility on the courts to do what we are unwilling or unable to do.
      I have said that we need clarification on what is reasonable for private investigators. Obviously, investigators want to know whether it would be reasonable to pursue a party suspected of making a fraudulent personal injury insurance claim. They would want to know at the outset whether the suspicion was justified. The only way to establish the truth would be to keep the individual under surveillance.
      In a second example, investigators might also justifiably want to know whether it would be considered reasonable to keep surveillance on an individual suspected by his employer of working for a third party or on a freelance basis. The investigator would not know the truth until the observations had been completed.
      In a third example, investigators might also want to know whether it would be reasonable to keep observations on an estranged spouse who was claiming maintenance on the premise that she was not cohabiting with a third party or was not in gainful employment. The investigator would not know whether the maintenance claim was justified without establishing whether the estranged spouse was cohabiting or was employed.
      A fourth problem is whether it would be considered reasonable to keep observations on a person to be able to serve that individual with some form of legal process such
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      as a High Court writ or an injunction. Occasionally, it would be necessary to stake out a person's residence to effect service of legal documents when the subject was evasive.
      Many other examples that occur daily in the lives of investigators have arisen from my consultations. Without the ability to keep people and their homes under surveillance, it will not be possible to establish the truth in a case.
      Investigators frequently act in legal aid cases when the Legal Aid Board is seeking the recovery of money from litigants. Unless investigators have exemptions from the Bill, they will be unable to fulfil effectively the assignments given to them by the courts, inevitably inhibiting the ability of the Legal Aid Board to recover outstanding costs.
      Virtually all surveillance activities by private investigators are of a covert nature. As long as the surveillance is legitimate, one hopes that the target does not know that it has taken place until it has been concluded and a report appears before them or the person who hired the investigator.
      However, that cannot always happen. Sometimes the subject becomes aware of the surveillance. In such cases, the surveillance is discontinued or postponed until the target's fears have been allayed. It is important to clarify how the Bill will affect private investigators conducting legitimate investigations on behalf of their clients.

      It is principally the legitimate investigator who has a problem with the measure, not the criminal element in the profession, which will not be deterred by new laws. I am assured that legitimate investigators are anxious to work within the law. However, if the Bill is passed without clarification of clause 1(3)(c) or adequate assurances from the Minister, it will be regarded as confusing and damaging by legitimate investigators who do a good job within the law.
      Good, legal investigators, hon. Members and the overwhelming majority of public opinion support the principle of the Bill and applaud any measure that deters stalkers and protects the innocent from harassment. However, in the interests of justice, there must be some provision to protect legitimate investigators conducting bona fide inquiries from prosecution and civil action. I am not trying to destroy the Bill's intention and I hope that I can get assurances. In those circumstances, I would freely withdraw my amendment.
      Mr. Bennett: My amendment No. 6 is in this group. As the Minister is keen to keep the Bill as general as possible to catch all forms of possible harassment, why cannot he keep the possible defence equally general under clause 4(3)(c)? It seems much better to have
      "the pursuit of his course of conduct was reasonable"
      than to qualify it as he has done.
      Mr. Maclean: Amendments Nos. 30 and 31 are unacceptable. They would prevent any activity that is not carried on reasonably for the prevention or detection of crime or under any enactment. Many activities, such as journalism, doorstep selling and political canvassing, may cause harassment but are legitimate if undertaken reasonably. We proposed in our consultation paper, which was published in the summer, that such activities should

      833
      be protected, and the response was overwhelming agreement. The Bill recognises that and safeguards those activities by providing a defence for any activities that, in the particular circumstances, were reasonable. The amendments would do away with that safeguard and make illegal all sorts of legitimate activities, which would make the scope of the Bill far too wide. That is why we cannot accept the amendments.
      8.45 pm
      I listened closely to the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), and I have considered amendment No. 28 carefully. The civil law relates to disputes between two parties; there is no question of public policy being involved. When investigators are examining a matter of tort, it would be wrong to give either party to a dispute special privileges under the criminal law. The amendment does not wreck the Bill but it is unnecessary. If the action of a party to a dispute is reasonable, it will be covered by the general defence provided in clause 1(3)(c):
      "that in the particular circumstances the pursuit of the course of conduct was reasonable."
      That would apply to whole categories of people, such as journalists, politicians, doorstep sellers and people who canvass on religious matters. It would certainly cover, in the legitimate course of conduct, the activities of private investigators and security guards. It comes down to whether someone's activity is reasonable.
      Furthermore, someone must claim that they have been harassed. Many of the activities of private investigators mentioned by the hon. Member for Walsall, South involved the person under investigation being unaware of the presence of the private investigator. That person could not fear alarm or distress; there is no harassment and no need for a defence. Only if a person under investigation became aware of being followed, or claimed that he was being stalked, and it happened a second time and the person tried to take action, would it be for a court to decide whether the activities of the private investigator were reasonable.
      I cannot give precise examples—the hon. Gentleman quoted many—but it would always depend on the facts of the case: how the private investigator went about the activity that is challenged in court. As so many activities could be undertaken and challenged, I cannot give examples of whether one activity was reasonable and another not; it would depend on the actions of the person concerned and the effect that they had on the victim.
      Clause 1(3)(c) is adequate for all those involved in legitimate crime prevention activity, such as private investigators or private security personnel; that would also apply to all other people. On Second Reading, we discussed whether it would be legitimate conduct for a Member of Parliament to badger an organisation to get an answer for a constituent. If constituents tried to solve problems, could they badger someone? Of course they could. If someone tried to claim that such a constituent's activity was unreasonable, it would be for a court, if it ever came to it, to decide whether the behaviour involved in an attempt to badger an organisation for an answer—or get something fixed, or goods delivered on time or services provided—was reasonable.
      Amendment No. 6 would provide a general defence to the offence of pursuing a course of conduct that causes another to fear violence. The Bill already provides
      834
      defences to that offence where the conduct of the person was: for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime; under any enactment or rule of law; or reasonable for the protection of himself or another or for the protection of his or another's property. The amendment would extend the defences to any circumstances in which the conduct was reasonable. That cannot be accepted.
      The similar general defence of acting reasonably in the case of the lower-level offence of causing harassment has been provided in recognition of activities such as journalism and political proselytising, which may cause harassment but are legitimate and should be protected. That consideration does not apply to the higher-level offence of causing fear of violence. It is clearly not reasonable to put someone in fear of violence through doorstep selling or religious or political proselytising. We should keep that defence for exceptional circumstances, and those circumstances are clearly set out in the Bill. For the reasons that I have given, I hope that hon. Members will withdraw their amendments.
      Mrs. Maddock: I accept from the way in which the Minister gently rejected my amendments, given the vigour with which he has rejected others, that he understood my points. I listened carefully to his remarks about what constitutes reasonable conduct. I hope that his reassurances are right. I suspect that questions about what is reasonable conduct will be raised again in another place. In view of his comments, and of the time, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
      Mr. Bennett: I have some doubt about the words "A person" at the very beginning of the clause. On Second Reading, the Government were keen to suggest that the Bill covered harassment not only by individuals but by groups. Opposition Members were especially concerned about racial harassment, in which a group of people could be either actively or passively involved. Can the Minister explain how the phrase "A person" covers activities, such as racial harassment or families warring with their neighbours, for which groups are responsible? Should not we perhaps use a phrase such as "a group of persons acting with common intent"?
      Mr. Maclean: We believe that the wording is adequate to deal with those cases in which individuals may be harassing someone, perhaps for racial motives. It is best to leave the wording "A person", bearing in mind that the majority of the classic stalking problems that we are dealing with involve individuals. Even in neighbour disputes, with families involved, and in racial harassment, it should be possible to identify the one individual, or the various individuals in the group, who are causing the problems.
      I do not know of any instances in which courts convict people in groups. Even if half a dozen people are engaged in a robbery, murder or other crime, they must be served with a summons, charged and sentenced individually; and often they get different sentences. In those circumstances, the language in the Bill is adequate to catch the bulk of

      835
      individual, targeted, classic stalking activity, and should also catch those who may be involved in neighbour disruption or racial harassment.
      Mr. Bennett: That answer is helpful, but does not fulfil the promise that was made on Second Reading. As I understand it, if a family is causing trouble to the next-door neighbours, it is not sufficient to serve the head of the household with an order; each individual has to be named.
      Mr. Maclean: I can see no difficulty in that whatever. It would be justice, because if a family generally is causing trouble, one member of that family may not be involved. It would not be acceptable in British law—and certainly not in the European Court of Human Rights—to tarnish or convict a whole family, when individuals in it are innocent of the charge. If one did that, why stop at this law? To take the idea to extremes, why not convict whole families of murder, robbery or drug dealing when one member or a few members of it are involved?
      Mr. Streeter: We could put that in the manifesto.
      Mr. Maclean: My hon. Friend is tempting me into a commitment. If I had the prison places, I might consider it.
      Seriously, though, what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting is not necessary; the provisions in the Bill catch the activity to which he refers. If we want to deal with half a dozen people in a family who are causing trouble, we have to get the individuals by name; we have to do that in any case to get any conviction under any rule of law of which I am aware.
      Question put and agreed to.
      Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 2

      OFFENCE OF HARASSMENT
      Mr. Bennett: I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 1, line 24, leave out 'summary'.
      The Chairman: With this, it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 3, in page 1, line 25, after `conviction', insert 'on indictment'.
      Mr. Bennett: I realise that the Government want to differentiate between clauses l and 2 and clauses 3 and 4, but would not the decision on what is harassment and what is reasonable be far better taken by a jury than merely by magistrates?
      Mr. Kirkhope: I am somewhat puzzled by the amendments. The effect would be to require the person charged with the offence of harassment to be tried in the Crown court rather than the magistrates court. I am puzzled because the amendment does not propose any corresponding increase in penalty. The penalty set out in the Bill—a six-month sentence of imprisonment or a level 5 fine, or both—is the maximum penalty available for any offence tried in the magistrates court. It would be an
      836
      unjustifiable waste of resources to deal in the Crown court with an offence that attracted those penalties. It would also create unnecessary delays.
      The amendments also run contrary to the general thrust of the past 20 years or so to find ways of ensuring that cases which can be dealt with in the magistrates court are retained there. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not trying to attack the excellent justice meted out by our magistrates courts. The pressure of time and the delays in the Crown court, as well as the much higher costs attendant on trials there, also militate against what he suggests. I can find no other reason for his suggesting the changes.
      As the royal commission specifically recognised, if more business is retained in the magistrates court, more resources can be devoted to ensuring that the more serious cases going to the Crown court are better prepared and more quickly heard. It is in no one's interest to increase unnecessarily the number of cases sent for trial to the Crown court. In those circumstances, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
      Mr. Bennett: If someone's reputation is at stake and rests on the question of what is harassment and what is reasonable, there is a much greater safeguard in being able to put a case for the defence to a jury rather than to magistrates, many of whom, perhaps as a result of their jobs, become somewhat case-hardened. However, I realise that the Committee wants to make progress, and on that basis I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      Mr. Kirkhope: I beg to move amendment No. 42, in page 2, leave out lines 1 and 2 and insert—
      '(3) In section 24(2) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (arrestable offences), after paragraph (m) there is inserted—
      "(n) an offence under section 2 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 (harassment)."'.
      The amendment replaces the power of arrest provision in the Bill with somewhat stronger provisions which accrue to offences that are arrestable under the provisions of section 24 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.
      I am persuaded that the additional powers are needed for the police to deal effectively with stalkers. The power under section 18 of the 1984 Act for the police to search for evidence is particularly relevant and necessary if the menace of stalking is to be tackled effectively.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Clause 2, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 3

      CIVIL REMEDY
      Mrs. Maddock: I beg to move amendment No. 33, in page 2, line 6, after 'claim', insert 'for an actual breach.'
      The purpose of the amendment is to make explicit what we believe is the Government's intention anyway—that damages are not awardable where there has been only an apprehended breach but no actual breach of section 1. I seek reassurance from the Government.
      Mr. Streeter: I am afraid that I am unable to give the hon. Lady the assurance she seeks, because, if the

      837
      amendment were accepted, it might be thought that damages claims should be limited to cases in which harassment had actually occurred. On the face of it, it is not easy to see how it could be claimed that damages should be awarded for something that has not—or at least not yet—happened. Part of our problem is that we are trying to legislate for a wide range of behaviour. It is conceivable, for example, that even the anticipation of harassment could, in particularly vulnerable people, cause anxiety or loss. A situation may build up over a period of time and be about to reach boiling point.
      The Government would prefer to leave it to the courts to decide in the individual case whether the award of damages was appropriate. The courts are very good at considering specific circumstances and tailoring the order to meet a particular set of facts. The courts' existing powers enable that to happen effectively. Before the court awards damages, it must first be persuaded that the victim has—under this legislation—suffered anxiety or loss. The court will not award damages unless it is persuaded on the evidence that that has happened. A defendant who feels that the court's judgment in that regard is wrong may, of course, appeal against the judgment.
      Although the Government recognise the point that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mrs. Maddock) is trying to make in the amendment, we think that the courts' existing powers cover the point adequately and that the amendment is therefore unnecessary.
      Mrs. Maddock: In view of the Minister's comments, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      9 pm
      Mr. George Howarth: I beg to move amendment No. 13, in page 2, line 8, at end insert—
      '(2A) In proceedings under this section a court may, if it appears just and appropriate to do so, order that the person who has been found to have pursued the course of conduct amounting to harassment, to attend a course of counselling with a named person or organisation for the purpose of persuading him not to harass the victim or any other person in the future.'.
      The Chairman: With this, it will be convenient to discuss also the following amendments: No. 15, in clause 5, page 3, line 21, at end insert—
      '(2A) The order may, for the purpose of persuading the defendant not to pursue a course of conduct likely to cause harassment to the victim of the offence or any other person in the future, provide that the defendant attend a course of counselling with a named person or organisation.'.
      No. 16, in clause 5, page 3, line 26, after 'defendant', insert
      'fails to do anything which he has been ordered to do or'.
      No. 24, in clause 8, clause 8, page 4, line 36, at end insert—
      `(c) grant an order, if it appears just and appropriate to do so, requiring the defender to attend a course of counselling with a named person or organisation for the purpose of persuading him not to harass the pursuer or any other person in the future'.
      No. 26, in clause 11, clause 11, page 6, line 41, at end insert—
      '(6A) A non-harassment order may, for the purpose of persuading the defendant not to pursue a course of conduct likely to cause harassment to the victim of the offence or any other person in the future, provide that the offender attend a course of counselling with a named person or organisation'.
      838
      No. 19, in clause 14, clause 14, page 7, line 13, at beginning insert
      'Subject to subsection (2A) below,'.
      No. 20, in clause 14, page 7, line 15, at beginning insert
      `Subject to subsection (2A) below,'.
      No. 21, in clause 14, page 7, line 16, at end insert—
      '(2A) The Secretary of State or, as the case may be, the Lord Chancellor, may provide that section 3(2A) or section 5(2A) shall come into force in different areas of England and Wales in different ways.'.
      Mr. Howarth: Amendment No. 13 and those associated with it cover the issue of counselling for those who are convicted of stalking or harassment in one form or another.
      I should make it clear what the Opposition mean by counselling. We mean not some pleasant chat over a cup of tea between the perpetrator and some qualified counsellor, but the sort of counselling that forces offenders to face up to their offending behaviour, the effects that it has had and what its consequences can be. I will cite some examples of what I mean by that later.
      The amendments are basically permissive; they give the courts the option to rule as part of an order or sentence that some form of counselling will take place. At present, the civil courts have no such power and the amendments provide a constructive remedy, especially in "sad cases" where a criminal conviction may be inappropriate.
      The Government's definition of harassment, as set out in clause 1, says that what the defendant
      "knows or ought to know amounts to harassment".
      It is therefore clear that the defendant, even once convicted, may genuinely believe that his or her behaviour was quite reasonable.
      Amazing though that may seem to reasonable people such as hon. Members, there are circumstances in which people simply do not realise that what they have done is wrong. That attitude is typical of those who commit offences that are directed toward another person—a good example being a rapist, who will cite the fact that the victim was "provocatively dressed" or that the victim said no, but really meant yes. Even more bizarre to many of us, but which happens, is the child abuser who argues that they were led on by the child.
      All of us know, because we are reasonable and coherent people, that such statements are neither sufficient excuses nor reasonable explanations for such behaviour. The truth, with which the Prison Service has had to come to terms, is that people often delude themselves into believing that an incident was not their fault. The point of programmes which are already very successful in some prisons is that they remove any reason for people to continue with the self-delusion that they were in some way not responsible for the actions that they perpetrated. By introducing the concept of counselling into the Bill, we hope that those who have committed an offence will have to address the root causes of the problems that they have created by the nature of their behaviour. That, simply, is what we seek to do.
      Of course, there will also be stalkers who are well aware of the impact of their behaviour on victims. They, too, should be forced to confront their offending behaviour. Merely placing restrictive orders on them may or may not be sufficient to remedy the problem.

      839
      If the Minister can give me assurances that our concerns can be taken into account, and that remedies along the lines that I have described will be available, we may reconsider our position. None the less, at this stage I want to register the fact that we regard this matter as vital, and that I shall probably wish to press it to a Division.
      There are many examples of stalkers convicted of offences such as breaches of the peace, or making nuisance telephone calls, who learn to restrict their behaviour and keep just within the law. That is a worrying phenomenon, and the Bill as presently constructed may allow such people to slip through the net.
      The most effective way to stop harassment is to remove the root cause. A stalker who has been forced to address his own offending behaviour and no longer wishes to harass the victim is far less of a threat than one whose only motive in not committing further offences is the fear of legal retribution, important though that is. We owe it to the victims of harassment to ensure that stalkers are forced to confront their behaviour, and that an order imposed by the court can make them undertake such activity.
      There are many examples. I shall not labour them, because all the cases have been mentioned in earlier debates, but they all help to make the case. Vanessa Kennedy, a resident of Lewisham, was subjected to an eight-year ordeal that she describes as psychological torture. She lives in fear of a man who has forced her to change her identity, has destroyed her family and driven her to move house. Vanessa Kennedy has attempted suicide four times, and claims that the perpetrator, Laurence Hammond, threatened to cut her into pieces and make her pay for rejecting him. He would describe in detail how he would torture her and other women, and the images still live in her nightmares. That man has never been forced to address the impact of his offending. Clearly, if the Bill allowed such things to continue without redress, it would not be adequate.
      Secondly, I cite the case of Dennis Chambers, which has already been mentioned. The case came to trial earlier this year, and the defendant was acquitted when a jury was not convinced that he had caused "serious or really serious" psychological harm to Margaret Bent. The court was told that he had waited outside her home with a machete on two occasions, and had barricaded her into her office. Chambers admitted to the police that he had registered his car in Miss Bent's name and ensured that she received a string of parking tickets, followed by summonses and visits by bailiffs threatening to seize her property if fines went unpaid. He also admitted kicking her office door open, but denied that that amounted to affray. He said that it was
      "a mere act of instinctive criminal damage".
      The drip, drip, drip effect of those incidents was not sufficient to achieve a criminal conviction, so there have been no consequences for that man. He has not been forced to face up to his offending behaviour.
      The Government may say that proposals to force stalkers to confront their offending behaviour are uncosted
      840
      and may prove expensive. However, the section of the explanatory and financial memorandum headed "Financial Effects of the Bill", says:
      "It is anticipated that approximately 200 extra criminal cases a year will arise".
      We do not propose that every one, even of that small number of people, would be compelled to have counselling, so very few cases would be involved.
      Amendment No. 21 would provide for counselling to be piloted, so any cost implications could be closely monitored, and would be extremely limited in scope. Moreover, the purpose of counselling would be to prevent further offending, and could therefore reduce future legal costs.
      Amendment No. 15 provides the criminal court with the power to order offenders to undergo counselling on conviction. Although magistrates courts can theoretically issue similar orders already, it does us no harm to reiterate the point. The clause also reflects the wording of amendment No. 13. There are examples of cases that highlight the benefit of making stalkers address their offending behaviour, such as the case of Anthony Burstow, who, in March 1996, was jailed for three years for inflicting psychological grievous bodily harm following a three-year hate campaign against a former colleague, Tracey Sant.
      The harassment began when Miss Sant decided to end their friendship, but Mr. Burstow refused to accept that. His activities included sending her a soiled sanitary towel, stealing her underwear from a washing line, pouring solvent over her car and writing her sinister notes. This was the first case in which a stalker was convicted of grievous bodily harm, but it took five days of tortuous legal wrangling before the court was able to reach a decision.
      A similar example is Perry Southall of east London, who was subjected to an eight-month campaign—involving more than 200 separate incidents—by convicted rapist Clarence Morris, until his conviction in September of this year. Morris was finally convicted of two assault charges after a case in which his barrister, David Stanton, said:
      "Is it fair that a young lady who dresses to attract, the queen bee attracting the drones, the queen bee that dresses to kill … cries foul because somebody finds her attractive?"
      I think that we would all take issue with that statement. In response to that case, the Home Secretary promised that the proposed Bill
      "would have the effect of providing proper safeguards against stalking."
      It is difficult to envisage how those proper safeguards against further stalking can be provided without making some effort to prevent the root causes of the offence.
      I will not detain the Committee with a description of the remaining amendments, which are consequential and follow the same line of argument. Although the Bill starts to provide some remedies, unless and until the unacceptable attitudes that people use to justify some appalling behaviour—mainly towards women—are confronted, and until the offenders are counselled and

      841
      forced to confront their offending behaviour and the faults in their approach to other people, the root causes of some of the problems will not be adequately dealt with. This is an important issue and an important principle, and it is one that I hope the Committee will accept if it conies to a vote. We must make sure that the root causes of offensive behaviour are tackled properly by making provision within the Bill for counselling to take place on a statutory basis.
      Mr. Streeter: I am afraid that the Government cannot accept the amendment. There is an element of confusion in the mind of the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth), although I recognise that he has tabled the amendment for the best possible motives. He is seeking to give a civil court the ability to grant an order for counselling, but all the examples that he provided would almost certainly be dealt with by the criminal courts when the Bill becomes an Act. The Bill has been introduced to deal with cases such as the Kennedy case, the Chambers case, the Burstow case and the Perry Southall case. They would be criminal cases, and the criminal courts have a full panoply of powers available to them to deal with the very points that the hon. Gentleman has raised.
      Amendments Nos. 13 and 24—which seek to empower the civil courts, when making an order under either clause 3 or clause 8, to order that a defendant receives counselling—are not acceptable for the following three clear reasons.
      First, the purpose of the civil remedy is to enable a victim to obtain protection from harassment or anticipated harassment, not to provide a forum for determining appropriate treatment for the defendant. A civil court is not normally expected to make what amounts to a treatment order. Such an order is analogous to a punishment order and is not really appropriate for a civil court.
      Mr. Bennett: Does the Minister not recognise that he is pushing the Bill that bit further to deal with neighbour disputes where harassment is involved? Surely there is a role for counselling when two neighbours are at war with each other and each is probably harassing the other? In such cases, can the Minister not see the advantages of the court being able to tell the parties involved to sit down and talk sensibly to someone who can persuade them that continuing that line of behaviour will not only be illegal, but damaging to themselves and to their neighbours?
      9.15 pm
      Mr. Streeter: The hon. Gentleman knows that a panoply of provision, including counselling, is already available in the multi-agency approach that tends to be taken in respect of such matters these days. Social services might well already be involved in disputes such as he describes, and therefore counselling would be available. Under the existing arrangements, if a court dealing with such a case was persuaded that an undertaking from a defendant to attend a course of counselling was sufficient protection for the victim, either in itself or in addition to other forms of protection, the court could consider that undertaking in deciding what order to make.
      We must recognise that it would be a major departure to empower civil courts in the way that is suggested in the amendment. Even if we were minded to accept that
      842
      civil courts should have the ability to make a treatment order, that order should not be limited to counselling, but should include the full range of provision currently available under the criminal jurisdiction. Singling out counselling, which is only one of a wide range of matters which might feature in a civil court's order, is unhelpful.
      Amendment No. 15 and its Scottish equivalent, amendment No. 26, are also unnecessary. Whereas the previous amendments are intended to confer powers on civil courts to direct that a person receives counselling, these amendments would give such powers to criminal courts. However, that adds nothing to the powers of the courts—either under existing law or as provided in the Crime (Sentences) Bill—to order medical treatment that is likely to be effective in addressing offending behaviour. Courts already have extensive powers under the Mental Health Act 1984 and the Criminal Justice Acts to make hospital orders or to attach conditions of treatment, including therapy by a psychologist, to probation orders. Again, isolating counselling among the wide range of matters which might feature in a restraining order is unhelpful.
      With regard to amendment No. 16, the purpose of a restraining order is to set out clearly those activities which are prohibited, and that is the extent to which we consider that restraining orders should go. In addition, to require a person to do certain things is out of keeping with an order which carries a strict liability offence, carrying a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment. I presume that amendment No. 16 is consequential on amendment No. 15 and that it is intended to ensure that a convicted stalker abides by the terms of any order requiring counselling to take place. As I have said, I consider amendment No. 15 to be misguided, and it follows that amendment No. 16 should fall with it.
      Amendments Nos. 19 to 21 are consequential on amendments Nos. 13 and 15. I ask that Opposition Members should not press them, or the amendments to which I have just spoken.
      Mr. George Howarth: I listened carefully to the Minister's remarks. In the conclusion to my opening speech, I said that we considered this to be an issue of principle. Through the availability of counselling, we seek to nip in the bud, in many instances, a sequence of events which might lead to a serious court case and possibly a prison sentence. We want to be able to move in swiftly and deal with the problem at an early stage so that it does not go too far.
      The second part of our argument is that there is strong evidence that in cases such as those that we are discussing today people who somehow delude themselves into believing that their behaviour is acceptable and not beyond the bounds of reason should be forced to confront their offending behaviour.
      The Committee needs to send out a powerful message which builds on the Bill's provisions. That message should be that, at the earliest possible stage, and on all subsequent occasions, offending behaviour will be confronted, and, if necessary, that that will be done on a statutory basis. I would feel more comfortable if that were a statutory provision in the Bill. I therefore urge my hon. Friends and others to join us in the Lobby to put it there.
      Question put, That the amendment be made:—
      The Committee divided: Ayes 179, Noes 172.

      Division No. 32]

      [9.19 pm

      AYES

      Adams, Mrs Irene

      Hill, Keith (Streatham)

      Ainger, Nick

      Hodge, Ms Margaret

      Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

      Hoey, Kate

      Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)

      Home Robertson, John

      Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)

      Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)

      Armstrong, Ms Hilary

      Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

      Austin-Walker, John

      Howells, Dr Kim

      Barnes, Harry

      Hoyle, Doug

      Battle, John

      Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

      Beith, A J

      Hutton, John

      Bennett, Andrew F

      Illsley, Eric

      Benton, Joe

      Jackson, Ms Glenda (Hampst'd)

      Bermingham, Gerald

      Jamieson, David

      Berry, Roger

      Jenkins, Brian D (SE Staffs)

      Betts, Clive

      Jones, Barry (Alyn & D'side)

      Boateng, Paul

      Jones, Ieuan Wyn (Ynys Môn)

      Bradley, Keith

      Jones, Martyn (Clwyd SW)

      Bray, Dr Jeremy

      Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)

      Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

      Jowell, Ms Tessa

      Burden, Richard

      Keen, Alan

      Byers, Stephen

      Kennedy, Charles (Ross C & S)

      Callaghan, Jim

      Kennedy, Mrs Jane (Broadgreen)

      Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

      Khabra, Piara S

      Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

      Kilfoyle, Peter

      Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

      Kirkwood, Archy

      Campbell-Savours, D N

      Liddell, Mrs Helen

      Cann, Jamie

      Litherland, Robert

      Chidgey, David

      Livingstone, Ken

      Chisholm, Malcolm

      Lloyd, Tony (Stretf'd)

      Clapham, Michael

      Loyden, Eddie

      Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

      Lynne, Ms Liz

      Clwyd, Mrs Ann

      McAllion, John

      Coffey, Ms Ann

      McAvoy, Thomas

      Cohen, Harry

      Macdonald, Calum

      Connarty, Michael

      McFall, John

      Cox, Tom

      McKelvey, William

      Cummings, John

      McLeish, Henry

      Cunliffe, Lawrence

      McMaster, Gordon

      Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try SE)

      McNamara, Kevin

      Dafis, Cynog

      MacShane, Denis

      Dalyell, Tam

      McWilliam, John

      Darling, Alistair

      Madden, Max

      Davidson, Ian

      Maddock, Mrs Diana

      Davies, Bryan (Oldham C)

      Mahon, Mrs Alice

      Davies, Chris (Littleborough)

      Mandelson, Peter

      Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H)

      Marshall, David (Shettleston)

      Denham, John

      Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

      Dixon, Don

      Martin, Michael J (Springburn)

      Dobson, Frank

      Maxton, John

      Donohoe, Brian H

      Michael, Alun

      Eastham, Ken

      Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll Bute)

      Ennis, Jeffrey

      Milburn, Alan

      Etherington, Bill

      Miller, Andrew

      Evans, John (St Helens N)

      Moonie, Dr Lewis

      Faulds, Andrew

      Morley, Elliot

      Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

      Morris, Ms Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

      Fisher, Mark

      Morris, John (Aberavon)

      Flynn, Paul

      Mudie, George

      Foster, Derek

      Mullin, Chris

      Foster, Don (Bath)

      Nicholson, Miss Emma (W Devon)

      Foulkes, George

      O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)

      Fyfe, Mrs Maria

      O'Brien, William (Normanton)

      Galbraith, Sam

      O'Hara, Edward

      Gapes, Mike

      Olner, Bill

      George, Bruce

      O'Neill, Martin

      Gerrard, Neil

      Pearson, Ian

      Golding, Mrs Llin

      Pickthall, Colin

      Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

      Pike, Peter L

      Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

      Prentice, Mrs B (Lewisham E)

      Grocott, Bruce

      Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

      Gunnell, John

      Primarolo, Ms Dawn

      Hall, Mike

      Purchase, Ken

      Harvey, Nick

      Quin, Ms Joyce

      844

      Raynsford, Nick

      Timms, Stephen

      Rendel, David

      Tipping, Paddy

      Robertson, George (Hamilton)

      Turner, Dennis

      Rooker, Jeff

      Tyler, Paul

      Rooney, Terry

      Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

      Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

      Watson, Mike

      Ruddock, Ms Joan

      Welsh, Andrew

      Simpson, Alan

      Wicks, Malcolm

      Skinner, Dennis

      Williams, Alan W (Carmarthen)

      Smith Andrew (Oxford E)

      Wilson, Brian

      Winnick, David

      Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

      Wise, Mrs Audrey

      Soley, Clive

      Worthington, Tony

      Spearing, Nigel

      Wray, Jimmy

      Squire, Ms R (Dunfermline W)

      Wright, Dr Tony

      Steinberg, Gerry

      Sutcliffe, Gerry

      Tellers for the Ayes:

      Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

      Ms Angela Eagle and

      Thurnham, Peter

      Mr. Greg Pope.

      NOES

      Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey)

      Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)

      Alison, Michael (Selby)

      Freeman, Roger

      Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

      French, Douglas

      Ashby, David

      Fry, Sir Peter

      Atkins, Robert

      Gallie, Phil

      Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

      Garel-Jones, Tristan

      Baldry, Tony

      Garnier, Edward

      Banks, Matthew (Southport)

      Gillan, Mrs Cheryl

      Bates, Michael

      Goodlad, Alastair

      Beggs, Roy

      Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

      Bellingham, Henry

      Greenway, John (Ryedale)

      Bendall, Vivian

      Grylls, Sir Michael

      Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

      Gummer, John

      Booth, Hartley

      Hague, William

      Boswell, Tim

      Hamilton, Sir Archibald

      Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

      Harris, David

      Bowis, John

      Hawkins, Nick

      Brandreth, Gyles

      Hawksley, Warren

      Brazier, Julian

      Heald, Oliver

      Bright, Sir Graham

      Heathcoat-Amory, David

      Browning, Mrs Angela

      Hendry, Charles

      Burt, Alistair

      Hill, Sir James (Southampton Test)

      Butcher, John

      Horam, John

      Carlisle, Sir Kenneth (Linc'n)

      Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)

      Carrington, Matthew

      Hughes, Robert G (Harrow W)

      Carttiss, Michael

      Hunt, David (Wirral W)

      Chapman, Sir Sydney

      Jack, Michael

      Coe, Sebastian

      Jenkin, Bernard (Colchester N)

      Congdon, David

      Jessel, Toby

      Conway, Derek

      Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

      Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F)

      Jones, Robert B (W Herts)

      Cope, Sir John

      Kirkhope, Timothy

      Cran, James

      Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)

      Davies, Quentin (Stamf'd)

      Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

      Davis, David (Boothferry)

      Knox, Sir David

      Deva, Nirj Joseph

      Kynoch, George

      Dorrell, Stephen

      Lait, Mrs Jacqui

      Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

      Lawrence, Sir Ivan

      Dover, Den

      Leigh, Edward

      Duncan, Alan

      Lennox-Boyd, Sir Mark

      Duncan Smith, Iain

      Lidington, David

      Durant, Sir Anthony

      Lloyd, Sir Peter (Fareham)

      Dykes, Hugh

      Luff, Peter

      Eggar, Tim

      Lyell, Sir Nicholas

      Elletson, Harold

      MacKay, Andrew

      Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

      Maclean, David

      Evans, Nigel (Ribble V)

      McLoughlin, Patrick

      Evennett, David

      Maitland, Lady Olga

      Fabricant, Michael

      Malone, Gerald

      Fenner, Dame Peggy

      Mans, Keith

      Fishburn, Dudley

      Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

      Forman, Nigel

      Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

      Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

      Mawhinney, Dr Brian

      Forsythe, Clifford (S Antrim)

      Merchant, Piers

      Forth, Eric

      Mills, Iain

      845

      Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

      Spink, Dr Robert

      Montgomery, Sir Fergus

      Sproat, Iain

      Nelson, Anthony

      Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)

      Neubert, Sir Michael

      Stanley, Sir John

      Newton, Tony

      Stephen, Michael

      Nicholls, Patrick

      Streeter, Gary

      Norris, Steve

      Sumberg, David

      Onslow, Sir Cranley

      Sweeney, Walter

      Oppenheim, Phillip

      Taylor, Ian (Esher)

      Ottaway, Richard

      Taylor, Sir Teddy

      Page, Richard

      Temple-Morris, Peter

      Paice, James

      Thomason, Roy

      Patnick, Sir Irvine

      Thompson, Sir Donald (Calder V)

      Pawsey, James

      Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

      Pickles, Eric

      Townsend, Cyril D (Bexl'yh'th)

      Porter, David

      Trotter, Neville

      Powell, William (Corby)

      Twinn, Dr Ian

      Redwood, John

      Walker, Bill (N Tayside)

      Renton, Tim

      Waller, Gary

      Richards, Rod

      Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

      Roberts, Sir Wyn

      Waterson, Nigel

      Robertson, Raymond S (Ab'd'n S)

      Watts, John

      Robinson, Mark (Somerton)

      Wheeler, Sir John

      Ross, William (E Lond'y)

      Whitney, Ray

      Rumbold, Dame Angela

      Whittingdale, John

      Shaw, David (Dover)

      Willetts, David

      Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

      Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

      Shepherd, Sir Colin (Heref'd)

      Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesf'ld)

      Shersby, Sir Michael

      Wood, Timothy

      Sims, Sir Roger

      Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

      Tellers for the Noes:

      Spicer, Sir Jim (W Dorset)

      Mr. Roger Knapman and

      Spicer, Sir Michael (S Worcs)

      Mr. Bowen Wells.

      Question accordingly agreed to.
      Ms Janet Anderson: I beg to move amendment No. 14, in page 2, line 8, at end insert—
      '(2B) In considering whether to order an injunction in proceedings under this section, a court shall have primary regard to whether such an order is necessary for the protection of what the court considers are the victim's legitimate interests.'.
      The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Michael Morris): With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 29, in page 2, line 8, at end insert—
      '(2A) Civil proceedings which include a claim under this section for an injunction shall not be referred to arbitration (whether under section 64 of the County Courts Act 1984, or otherwise) without the consent of all the parties to the action.'.
      No. 4, in page 2, leave out lines 9 to 24.
      No. 25, in clause 8, page 4, line 36, at end insert—
      '(5B) In considering whether to order an interdict or interim interdict in proceedings under this section, a court shall have primary regard to whether such an order is necessary for the protection of what the court considers are the pursuer's legitimate interests'.
      Ms Anderson: Amendment No. 14 would make the test for whether to issue an injunction under civil proceedings as favourable as realistically possible to the victim. It would make it more likely that county court judges would issue civil injunctions in strong prima facie cases of harassment. The Bill seeks to provide a remedy against behaviour that would often otherwise be considered lawful—for example, using the postal system, the public highway, or the telephone would be rendered a civil or criminal offence under the Bill by the effect on the victim. [Interruption.] At present, when deciding whether to issue injunctions, the
      846
      courts are naturally inclined to attach too much weight to potential interference with a harasser's civil liberties. [Interruption.]
      The Chairman: Order. I apologise for interrupting the hon. Lady. I ask those hon. Members who wish to take part in the Committee to listen to the proceedings, and those hon. Members who wish to talk about other matters to do so outside the Chamber.
      Ms Anderson: The amendment would guide a court to consider primarily the victim's point of view during its deliberations. We believe that that is particularly appropriate under this legislation, because a typical injunction would involve only a small interference with the harasser's civil liberties but would serve to set a victim's mind at rest as well as protect the victim from potential future harassment.
      The amendment would mean that, for example, when a person goes to court seeking an injunction and the court thinks that, on the balance of probability, the case is pretty 50:50 as to whether an order should be granted, the court should find in favour of the alleged victim and grant the injunction. The amendment's test of considering a victim's legitimate interest was approved by the Court of Appeal, which included the Master of the Rolls, in the judgment handed down in the Burris v. Azadani stalking case in July 1995. If the amendment were passed, we believe that the judgment in that case would provide excellent guidance for judges hearing similar applications for injunctions under the Act.
      Mr. A. J. Beith: On a point of order, Mr. Morris. I seek your help. In view of the way in which the Bill is being proceeded with, there may not be an interval between the Committee and Report stages. I am slightly concerned that, following their recent defeat, the Government might decide to introduce an amendment on Report to reverse our decision this evening. Can you afford some facility to Ministers, who appear to be consulting busily with each other and with civil servants, so that they may give notice to the Committee if they intend to move on Report an amendment—which will probably have to be a manuscript amendment—that will affect our decision?
      The Chairman: As far as I am concerned, I am dealing with the Committee stage at the moment. We have a little way to go yet.
      Mr. Bennett: Further to that point of order, Mr. Morris. I seek your assistance. It is difficult to table amendments on Report when we do not have a copy of the amended Bill. The order of the Bill will change, because Government and Opposition amendments have been carried. How do we table amendments on Report? Do we make them to the Bill before us or to the Bill as amended? I am sure that you appreciate that it is rare for amendments to be carried in Committee on the Floor of the House. We need some certainty, as the debate could end fairly suddenly and we would be on Report. We need to know how to proceed.
      The Chairman: Committee stages on the Floor of the House are often interesting. As far as the Chair is concerned, when the time comes, the order will be intelligible to the House.
      Mr. Bennett: My amendment No. 4 is in this group of amendments. It is difficult to bring the Committee back to considering the amendments, as it is fairly unprecedented for the Government to be defeated in this manner. The sooner a Minister comes to the Dispatch Box to tell us how we shall proceed, the better.
      I turn to the construction of clause 3, which begins with a civil remedy and builds a criminal offence on to that civil remedy. It is fairly unusual in this country for legislation to muddle criminal and civil court procedures, and I think that there are good reasons for keeping the two separate. The civil courts must balance the differing and conflicting interests of the two parties to the case. They have to decide between the two parties on the question of fairness. That is often extremely difficult, because the difference between the measure of proof on one side and the other may be fairly slim. The alternative approach of the criminal courts is that someone must be found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.
      I am worried about the fact that the issue will first be dealt with by civil proceedings, and if someone is in breach of those proceedings, instead of ensuring that the matter is taken up by the courts as a contempt of court, we are creating a criminal offence. If we make a breach of an action in a civil court a criminal offence, we must make it clear that the same tests should be applied to the civil proceedings as would be applied in the criminal court. The standard of proof in the civil court should not be weaker than that applied in the criminal court.
      I suggest that the Government think seriously about the way in which subsections (3), (4), (5) and (6) of clause 3 fit in with the civil remedy. I shall listen with interest to the Minister.
      Mrs. Maddock: The amendment would ensure that civil proceedings on a claim for an injunction under the clause would not be referred to arbitration without the consent of all the parties. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that people can afford to deal with the situation in which they find themselves.
      Most civil proceedings take place in the county court. A system of arbitration without lawyers' fees was created 20 years ago. As we all know, that system is the small claims court, and its original jurisdiction was claims of £100. That was subsequently increased to £500 and then to £1,000, and recently to £3,000. Claims under that limit, with some exceptions, are compulsorily referred to arbitration.
      Until recently, it had been thought that the rules on exceptions meant that claims for injunctions would not be referred, but a court decision has now ruled otherwise. That is already causing problems in disrepair cases. A minor, but inadequate, alleviation to the rules has been made, so that it is a little easier for a case to come back from arbitration, and for a fixed sum of £270 for legal costs to be allowed in an injunction. That is well below the costs of preparing papers and appearing at a hearing—and, possibly, at a return date.
      That has had a knock-on effect on legal aid. It may be that the lack of costs recovery in such a case would not prevent legal aid. The purpose of the amendment is to
      848
      ensure that practical access to the courts remains available, and I hope that the Government will look favourably on it.
      Mr. Robert G. Hughes: One of the problems of debating amendments in this atmosphere is that we end up with legislation with holes in it. That does not seem to matter to Opposition parties. The amendment that has just been passed undoubtedly weakens the Bill and seeks to drive a coach and horses through it.
      The Chairman: Order. We have already discussed the previous amendment—I do not think that the hon. Member was present at the time. We are now on amendment No. 14, which he should be addressing.
      Mr. Hughes: You are quite right, Sir Michael.
      The Chairman: No, just Chairman or Mr. Morris.
      Mr. Alan Duncan: For 10 more days.
      Mr. Hughes: That is disgraceful. You should call my hon. Friend to order, Mr. Morris. I was obviously dazzled by your bow tie.
      I was making a point in parenthesis, and alluding to the fact that the Opposition are trying to soften the Bill. Here they go again—this is a good example of that. The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) makes long, tough speeches about how Labour will be tough on law and order and will crack down on this and that. He says that, if only the Government would do something, we could get rid of this crime. Then we come to the Committee stage of the Bill, and what happens? The Opposition are concerned not about the victims of these crimes but about what they regard as civil rights. By that, they mean the civil rights of the people who are perpetrating these crimes. That runs through the four amendments that are grouped.
      Mr. Michael Fabricant (Mid-Staffordshire): Does my hon. Friend agree that at least one charge that cannot be made against the Labour party is that of inconsistency? Have not Labour Members been consistent in opposing all measures in which we have tried to crack down on crime, and, indeed, on terrorism? They either vote against such measures—
      The Chairman: Order. The Bill has absolutely nothing to do with terrorism.
      9.45 pm
      Mr. Hughes: That was indeed a disgraceful intervention, but my hon. Friend is right. Bills that are currently being delayed in Committee—I shall not list them—could be rushed through the House if we could take the Labour party at its word.
      Amendment No. 4 proposes that we leave out a whole lump of the Bill. Why are those exclusions in the Bill in the first place? I think that it comes down to something that we see time and again. In this place, it is easy to be critical of judges and magistrates and the arguments advanced by lawyers, and to say, "Surely they must have

      849
      understood what we were trying to do; surely they understand what sort of criminals we are trying to catch. Why have they interpreted the law in that way?"
      We all know that it is sometimes difficult to understand the exact intent of a Bill. That does not imply that Ministers do not mean to introduce clauses whose intent is clear, or that the lawyers—the parliamentary draftsmen—do not sweat blood to try to ensure that clauses are comprehensible and will have the desired effect. In the lines that the Labour party wants to leave out, exclusions have been made with the aim of clarifying the legislation, so that matters will be clear when a case comes to court—so that we know why and how people will be convicted, and there will be no let-out in the small print of the Bill.
      The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) wants to leave out those lines, and, for all I know, he is supported by Opposition Front Benchers. If he is not, Opposition Front Benchers will no doubt explain why. The hon. Gentleman seeks to make a muddle of what is currently a very clear Bill.
      Amendment No. 25 would insert in clause 8, at line 36, the words:
      "In considering whether to order an interdict or interim interdict in proceedings under this section, a court shall have primary regard to whether such an order is necessary for the protection of what the court considers are the pursuer's legitimate interests".
      We all see what those who tabled the amendment are trying to protect. We all know that people who could come into that category might well have a legitimate interest, although some of us would find it rather hard to believe that certain journalists have a legitimate interest, given the pursuing that they do.
      Because of the form in which those who tabled the amendment are seeking to insert it in the Bill, however, it would have a wrecking effect—although, in procedural terms, it is not a wrecking amendment. I hope that the Committee will resist it, and that the Labour party will not seek to press it. Labour Members found themselves in a numerical majority earlier tonight, and no doubt they are now seeking to make hay with that; but seeking to add amendments such as this to the Bill, and to delete important parts of it, is highly irresponsible.
      Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I have been following my hon. Friend's interesting argument. Does he not accept that the Bill has widespread support, not only in the House but outside, and that hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber—indeed, members of all parties—seek to enact it as early as possible, establishing clear, firm law? Why does he think that the amendments were tabled? They certainly do not add to the strength or reason of the Bill.
      Mr. Hughes: Characteristically, my hon. Friend makes his points clearly. He is a clear-spoken man. He knows what he wants, sets out to achieve those things and is much admired in the House of Commons for that.
      Mr. Duncan: On a point of order, Mr. Morris. I am confused by the drafting of the amendments, which is self-contradictory. Amendment No. 14 talks about
      "the protection of what the court considers are the victim's legitimate interests."
      Amendment No. 25 talks about
      850
      "the protection of what the court considers are the pursuer's legitimate interests".
      I fully understand that that may refer to someone pursuing something in a court of law, but it is highly ambiguous in the context of someone referring to stalking, as it is called, because the pursuer may be seen in the court as a person who is persistently harassing someone. Are we not therefore deliberately and wilfully drawing up ambiguous legislation that may be misinterpreted in a court of law?
      The Chairman: In relation to my selection, the guiding factor is whether the amendments are sufficiently cognate to be discussed together, and they are.
      Mr. Straw: On a point of order, Mr. Morris. I wish to raise an important point of order for the whole Committee.
      As you know, a few minutes ago, the Government were defeated on amendment No. 13, the effect of which is to require county courts to be able to order, where they so wish, counselling with a view to requiring the offenders to confront their offending behaviour. The aim is for the provision to be piloted by courts before coming fully into force throughout Britain. It is unusual, first, for the Government to be defeated by seven votes, as they have been, and, secondly, for progress without agreement to be made so swiftly on a Bill.

      As we know, the Report stage will take place tomorrow. In view of that, Mr. Morris, do you agree that, before the 10 o'clock motion, we need a statement from Ministers explaining what their provisional attitude is to the amendment—after all, they have had many days to consider the amendment since it was tabled—and what their intentions are tomorrow when they come before the House? Do they intend to accept the amendment which, properly drafted, can be incorporated into the Bill or to try to remove it?
      The Chairman: This is not a matter for the occupant of the Chair, but those on the Treasury Bench will have heard the hon. Gentleman and will seek to respond as they believe appropriate.
      Mr. Straw: Further to that point of order, Mr. Morris. The Minister of State has now come into the Chamber. He is in charge of the Committee proceedings on the Bill. That part of the proceedings is due to finish at 10 o'clock. May we hear from him whether he intends to make a statement tonight, bearing it in mind that, for the convenience of the House, amendments for the Report stage will need to be tabled tonight or, at the latest, tomorrow morning? May I have your clarification on that as well?
      The Chairman: Hon. Members will have heard my ruling, and it remains unchanged.
      Mr. Bennett: On a point of order, Mr. Morris.
      The Chairman: Is this another point of order?
      Mr. Bennett: Yes, it is. It is on the proceedings of the House.
      I understand that amendments for Report stage cannot be tabled until the Committee has reported. That means, therefore, that Members have to have, in manuscript form,

      851
      the amendments that they would like to table, to hand in as soon as you move from one Chair to another. At that point, it is necessary for the House to have some idea of what is going to happen. I should have thought that it would be helpful, in making the selection, for the occupant of the Chair to have some idea of what is going to happen. It would appear to be difficult for the occupant of the Chair, in moving from one Chair to the other to start the Report stage, to make the selection, as it were, on the hoof. Would you give us some guidance on how we can make sensible progress on this issue?
      The Chairman: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for showing such concern for the Chair. I confirm that what he said on procedure is entirely correct, but I learned long ago to cross bridges when they are in front of me, not in anticipation of them.
      Sir Ivan Lawrence: On a point of order, Mr. Morris. To those of us sitting here, it rather looks as though the Opposition do not want to carry on with the Bill. I do not know whether they are inviting you to do something to stop the proceedings, but if they are, the country ought to know that the Opposition are opposing an extremely important Bill.
      The Chairman: I wish to make it absolutely clear that the Chair is here to serve the House until such hour as the House chooses to cease its debate.
      Several hon. Members rose—
      The Chairman: Order all round. I have given some helpful rulings, I think, and fair points of order have been raised. I would rather get on with the Bill, but if there are new dimensions to discuss, I will accept further points of order. They had better be new ones.
      Mr. Fabricant: On a point of order, Mr. Morris. I have scanned the Bill and I can see no definition of the word "pursuer". Could you enlighten the House whether pursuer—
      The Chairman: Order. That is nothing to do with the Chair.
      Mr. Straw: I crave your indulgence, Mr. Morris, on one more occasion. Further to that point of order, and in response to the point raised by the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence), may I make it clear that we have agreed, and we stick by the agreement, to co-operate with the Government in getting the Bill through? However, it is also for the Government to co-operate with the House in ensuring that the Bill gets through. The Committee has expressed its will this evening by 179 votes to 172 in respect of amendment No. 13. It is incumbent on Ministers on the Treasury Bench to facilitate progress on the Bill tomorrow.
      Mr. Maclean: I have heard all the points of order. The Government will ensure that the Bill is dealt with as expeditiously as possible on the Floor of the House, but I will not be bounced by the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) into making a pronouncement from the
      852
      Dispatch Box now on the result of the vote that we just heard. I assure hon. Members that we shall make the Government's view plain to the House at the earliest opportunity, in accordance with the rules of the House and our customs and conventions, to give hon. Members the maximum time within our rules to consider the announcement that we shall make in due course.
      The Chairman: Mr. Robert G. Hughes had the floor.
      Mr. Hughes: Thank you, Mr. Morris. My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), to whose intervention I was responding, had his points answered by the hon. Member for Blackburn. It is clear that this group of amendments, like others, is designed to delay the Bill or to weaken it. The message must go out clearly from the Committee that the Labour party, aided and abetted by the Liberals, wants to weaken the Bill and delay it for as long as possible. That is what they voted for tonight. They cannot escape from their actions.
      Mr. George Howarth: On a point of order, Mr. Morris. Is it in order for an hon. Member, who was not even present during the events that he is describing, to accuse the Opposition of trying to delay the Bill? My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) has made it clear that the Opposition remain willing to co-operate with the Government, as they have throughout, to bring the Bill on to the statute book. The Government's incompetence, not the Opposition, has got them into their present position.
      Mr. Beith: On a point of order, Mr. Morris. The views expressed from the Government Benches suggest that we might not continue to make progress on the Bill tonight. Will you confirm that, in order to do so, it will be necessary for the Government to move the 10 o'clock motion in two minutes? Will you be careful to ensure that, if a Whip moves the 10 o'clock motion, you notice him? Otherwise, we will not be able to make further progress.
      The Chairman: I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I will try to do my duty to the best of my ability. Not much gets by.
      Mr. Hughes: Given the dual evidence of the amendments on the amendment paper and the outrageous protestations of Opposition Members, it is clear that they want to delay and weaken the Bill. I do not want to delay it any further, so I shall sit down.
      Sir Ivan Lawrence: Mr. Morris, I left the Chamber for a moment to go to have something to eat. When I returned, I found the place in complete disorder—
      The Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman clearly had a very good dinner.
      Sir Ivan Lawrence: I do, of course, apologise, Mr. Morris. I did not mean that this place—over which you preside—was in disorder, but that the Opposition's entire approach to the Bill was in disorder. My attention has been drawn to a list of amendments, which seems to be absolutely preposterous. On the basis that they are

      853
      trying to improve the Bill, why on earth have the Opposition tabled an amendment to consider the victim's legitimate interests—
      The Chairman: Order.
      It being Ten o'clock, THE CHAIRMAN left the Chair to report progress and ask leave to sit again.
      Committee report progress; to sit again tomorrow.

      DELEGATED LEGISLATION
      Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),
      DELEGATED LEGISLATION

        INSURANCE PREMIUM TAX
        That the Insurance Premium Tax (Taxable Insurance Contracts) Order 1996 (S.I., 1996, No. 2955), dated 26th November 1996, a copy of which was laid before this House on 26th November, be approved.—[Mr. Brandreth.]
        Question agreed to.
        Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): With permission, I shall put together the Questions on motions Nos. 3 to 5.
        Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

        FAMILY LAW
        That the draft Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 2) Regulations 1996, which were laid before this House on 25th November, be approved.
        SOCIAL SECURITY
        That the draft Social Security (Child Maintenance Bonus) Regulations 1996, which were laid before this House on 25th November, be approved.

        MAGISTRATES' COURTS
        That the draft Magistrates' Courts (Remands in Custody) (Amendment) Order 1997, which was laid before this House on 20th November, be approved.—[Mr. Brandreth.]
        Question agreed to.
        Mr. Deputy Speaker: With permission, I shall put together the motions relating to the European Communities orders.
        Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated legislation),

        EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES
        That the draft European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (Europe Agreement establishing an Association between the European Communities and their Member States and the Republic of Lithuania) Order 1996, which was laid before this House on 26th November, be approved.
        That the draft European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (Europe Agreement establishing an Association between the European Communities and their Member States and the Republic of Latvia) Order 1996, which was laid before this House on 26th November, be approved.
        That the draft European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (Europe Agreement establishing an Association between the European Communities and their Member States and the Republic of Estonia) Order 1996, which was laid before this House on 26th November, be approved—[Mr. Brandreth.]
        Question agreed to.

      SELECT COMMITTEES
      Ordered,
      That Standing Order No. 121A (Committee on Standards and Privileges) be amended by inserting at the end of line 50 the words:
      '(6A) The committee, or any sub-committee, shall have power to refer to unreported evidence of former Committees of Privileges or of former Select Committees on Members' Interests and to any documents circulated to any such committee.'.—[Mr. Brandreth.]

    Hillsborough Tragedy
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Brandreth.]
    10.1 pm
    Mr. Peter Kilfoyle: It is with a very heavy heart that I speak in this Adjournment debate. I am grateful, however, that my hon. Friends and Conservative Members are in the Chamber. Families of the bereaved of Hillsborough have travelled down to London and are in the Strangers Gallery to provide their support during the debate. I particularly note that the Home Secretary has chosen to reply to this debate, because I think that he realises the significance and sensitivity of the issue.
    On 15 April 1989, on a glorious spring afternoon, 96 people went to a football match never to return again to their families. They were men and women of all ages—from 10 to 67—and 28 of them were 18 years old or less. They came from all parts of the country, although mainly from Merseyside, and all of them had one thing in common—a love of football, particularly of Liverpool football club.
    It would serve no useful purpose to repeat all the events of that day, or to attempt to rehearse the many legal arguments that have been made in the intervening seven and a half years, but it is important to establish, in general terms, what happened on that fateful day.
    Although the Liverpool supporters outnumbered the opposing team's supporters, they were allocated tickets for the smaller Leppings lane end. The allocation was made on the direction of the police, to facilitate their plans for incoming traffic carrying rival supporters. Roadworks on the trans-Pennine route slowed down the traffic carrying Liverpool fans. As they approached the ground, it was noted that match day arrangements had been changed from those for a similar game in the previous season.
    It has been pointed out that the standard practice at Sheffield and elsewhere was for police to channel supporters to the appropriate turnstiles by using crash barriers. Tragically, such action was not taken on that day, and it set in motion a train of events that led to the tragedy.
    The crowd built up outside the turnstiles in such a way that the police officer in charge there, Superintendent Murray, was concerned that fans were in grave danger of being crushed. He sought, and was given, permission from the officer in overall charge, Chief Superintendent Duckenfield, to open gate C to alleviate the crush outside. That resolved the immediate crisis, but gave rise to a much greater danger because the natural path for the fans to follow, unless directed otherwise, was through the tunnel facing them. There were no stewards or police to funnel fans into comparatively empty pens. Pressure built up in pens 3 and 4 and in the tunnel. These were the killing fields for 96 innocent men, women and children.
    In the immediate aftermath of the horror, there was a breakdown in official reaction to the tragedy, which unfolded live on television around the country. It was the fans who pleaded for the gates in the perimeter fence to be opened; it was the fans who requisitioned hoardings as makeshift stretchers; it was the fans who
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    began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Individual police officers and first aiders did what they could, but there was paralysis at the top of the command.
    As the Attorney-General observed in the House on 26 October 1994:
    "It was a painstaking and thorough inquiry. … The Taylor report placed the blame for the tragedy fairly and squarely on police handling of crowd control at the event."—[Official Report, 24 October 1994; Vol. 248, c. 981.]
    Lord Justice Taylor noted in paragraphs 311 and 278 of his interim report that
    "the real cause of the Hillsborough disaster was overcrowding"
    and that
    "the main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control."
    There was an agreed understanding in the Taylor report and beyond on what happened and who, in general, was responsible, but the inquiry did not take place in a vacuum. As the tragedy unfolded, misinformation was being spread. We were told that fans had broken down gate C, that hordes of drunken fans charged the rear of the Leppings lane entrance, and that the Liverpool fans had been the authors of the terrible misfortune of the day. Those who uttered such charges and wrote such lies should still hang their heads in shame, given the eventual findings of the Taylor inquiry.
    The low point must have been the infamous report of that terrible day in The Sun. Even by its Grub street standards it reached an abysmal low, but it was not alone. Newspaper after newspaper, tabloid and broadsheet, fed the line that fans were responsible for the deaths. The world is full of gullible people. Perhaps that is why, as late as 1993, the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans) was still peddling the line that it was all the fault of Liverpool fans. As late as 1995, Mr. Brian Clough continued to point the finger at the fans in his autobiography. There is no fool like an old fool, in politics or in football.
    At the same time, a steady stream of wholly partial versions of events emanated from police sources, blaming the fans and fuelling a climate of cynical disregard for the facts, dwelling instead on the exoneration of those who some might argue were culpable for the events of that day.
    We are here tonight because of a recent docudrama on Hillsborough which demythologised the Hillsborough tragedy and provided catharsis for the survivors and the families of the dead. It was plain to anyone who saw that harrowing account—I note that the Home Secretary has commented that it was a harrowing account—that there was a presumption by the authorities that drunken loutish behaviour was responsible for the deaths. That was illustrated by the tone and content of the police questioning in the docudrama. I do not accuse individual junior police officers of acting unprofessionally; they were following a line set out for them by senior officers and the press.
    If showing that a wholly erroneous version of events had been portrayed by the press had been the only achievement of the docudrama, it would have been worth while, but it also raised the issue of the allegedly faulty video camera and the missing video tape. In my research, I noticed that, in questions to the Home Secretary in the House following his statement of

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    17 April 1989, my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Bermingham) urged that all film of the tragedy be made available to the proposed inquiry. He presciently said:
    "Unless we move quickly, that footage may be lost and it contains evidence that may be of great value to the inquiry."—[Official Report, 17 April 1989; Vol. 151, c. 38.]
    How right he was.
    We now have the testimony of Mr. Roger Houldsworth—a video technician on duty at Hillsborough on that fateful day—who apparently contradicts the police version of the state of the video cameras. He had the same view as the police of the build-up of fans in the pens. His analysis of the impending disaster is as at odds with the view of the police.
    Of course, the police take contradictory positions on Mr. Houldsworth's testimony. First, they say that there is no new evidence in it, yet it was not put before the inquiry or the inquest. Only the police version of the video evidence was put to the inquest jury. Apparently, the South Yorkshire police, the coroner, and the investigating force—the West Midlands police—have hitherto declined to co-operate in determining how much of Mr. Houldsworth's evidence was known and to whom. Nor has there been, as far as I am aware, any attempt to clarify how, and by whom, it was decided not to call him. Some would describe that as a conspiracy of silence.
    However, the Yorkshire Post has ascribed to the police the view that Mr. Houldsworth has changed what he said at the time, which contradicts the "nothing new" argument. The police cannot have it both ways. Without doubt there are serious grounds either way for reviewing that vital evidence. That must be added to the other outstanding questions that have never yet been answered.
    The South Yorkshire police, in particular, must still answer the following questions. Why was Chief Superintendent Duckenfield put in charge of a major semi-final only 21 days before the game, when he was relatively inexperienced at policing football matches? Why, unlike in 1988, were there no barriers or cordons to filter the crowd outside the Leppings lane end? As the danger unfolded, why was the kick-off not delayed? Why did police not recognise the build-up in pens 3 and 4 when television commentator John Motson and the video technician, Roger Houldsworth, clearly saw what was happening?
    Why was the lethal tunnel not sealed off as it had been in 1988? Why did Chief Superintendent Duckenfield tell the Football Association that fans had forced gate C when he had ordered it to be opened? Why did it take until 3.30 pm to make an announcement on the public address system to inform or instruct fans or to seek medical personnel to help the dying and the injured? Given that 42 ambulances reached the ground, why did not more of them get on to the pitch to provide expert medical help? Why did only 14 of those who died get to hospital? Why was the city's major medical disaster plan never put into effect?
    Those and many more questions need to be answered. The House cannot raise the dead, but I hope that we can raise the burden on the survivors and on the families of the victims, who wish only to see that justice is done. The dead, their families and survivors cry out in the name of
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    natural justice to be answered. It is incumbent on us to seek a reopening of the inquiry into the events of that dreadful day.
    10.12 pm
    The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Michael Howard): I would like to join the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle) in expressing my deepest sympathy to the families involved in the tragic event which took place at Hillsborough. I know that I speak for the whole House when I say that our thoughts will remain with them this Christmas, which I know that they must find a particularly difficult time of year.
    Anybody who saw the news reports on that dreadful Saturday, 15 April 1989, will have been overwhelmed by the terrible, distressing pictures. I know that the loss of the families that suffered that appalling tragedy was made all the worse by the fact that it arose from an event that should have been a normal family outing.
    I have watched the programme "Hillsborough" and I indeed found it harrowing, but the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that any decisions that I am called upon to make have to be made on the basis of a consideration of all the relevant facts, not simply on the basis of one television programme, however powerful and moving. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there have been four independent investigations and reviews of the Hillsborough tragedy: Lord Taylor's inquiry; the inquest into each of the deaths; the investigation into police behaviour supervised by the Police Complaints Authority; and the judicial review of the inquest. Each of those inquiries served a different purpose, and it might be helpful if I said a little about each of them and their outcomes.
    First, the formal inquiry by Lord Taylor was commissioned by the then Home Secretary on the second day after the disaster. Its terms of reference were not only to inquire into the events but to make recommendations about crowd control and safety at sports events. Over 31 days, between 15 May and 29 June 1989, Lord Taylor heard oral evidence from 174 witnesses at a public hearing in Sheffield. He also received evidence in the form of submissions and letters. The inquiry considered video film from three separate sources, providing in all about 71 hours of further evidence.
    Lord Taylor published an interim report in August 1989, setting out the causes of the disaster and making immediate recommendations. He found that there were a number of causes of that disaster. The immediate cause of the gross overcrowding was the failure to cut off access to the central pens, which were already over-full. They were already over-full because no safe maximum capacities had been laid down, because no attempt was made to control entry to individual pens numerically, and because there was no effective visual monitoring of crowd density.
    Lord Taylor found that, when the influx from gate C entered pen 3, the layout of the barriers afforded less protection than it should have done, and the barrier collapsed. He found that the need to open gate C was due to dangerous congestion at the turnstiles. That congestion occurred because, as both the club and the police should have realised, the turnstile area could not easily cope with the large numbers unless they arrived steadily over a

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    lengthy period. The police had failed to draw up plans on how to control large numbers should they arrive in a short period. Unfortunately, that event, which Lord Taylor considered to be foreseeable, was what took place.
    Finally, Lord Taylor found that the presence of an unruly minority, who had drunk too much, aggravated the problem, as did the club's confused and inadequate signs and ticketing. There were a number of reasons for that dreadful disaster, and no single person or organisation was held to blame, but Lord Taylor did clearly put a significant portion of the blame at the door of the police. Indeed, he was particularly critical of the attitude of South Yorkshire police to the disaster.
    Lord Taylor said:
    "It is a matter of regret that at the hearing and in their submissions the South Yorkshire Police were not prepared to concede that they were in any respect at fault in what occurred. Mr. Duckenfield, under pressure of cross-examination, apologised for blaming the Liverpool fans for causing the deaths. But that apart, the police case was to blame the fans for being late and drunk and to blame the club for failing to monitor the pens. It was argued that the fatal crush was not caused by the influx through gate C but was due to barrier 124a being defective. Such an unrealistic approach gives cause for anxiety as to whether lessons have been learnt. It would have been more seemly and encouraging for the future if responsibility had been faced."
    Lord Taylor also considered the reports that had been published in the press about the behaviour of Liverpool fans. Again I quote from his report:
    "Before this Inquiry began there were stories reported in the press, and said to have emanated from police officers present at the match, of 'mass drunkenness'. It was said that drunken fans urinated on police whilst they were pulling the dead and injured out, that others had even urinated on the bodies of the dead and stolen their belongings. Not a single witness was called before the inquiry to support any of those allegations, although every opportunity was afforded for any of the represented parties to have any witness called whom they wished. As soon as the allegations I have mentioned were made in the press, Mr. Peter Wright, Chief Constable of South Yorkshire, made a dignified statement dissociating himself from such grave and emotive calumnies. Those who made them and those who disseminated them would have done better to hold their peace."
    That is strong criticism. I think that those quotations demonstrate that many of the points made by the programme, "Hillsborough", were considered by Lord Taylor at the time.
    I should stress that, since the report, the police have accepted responsibility for the part that they played in the disaster. The present chief constable of South Yorkshire, Richard Wells, has on several occasions publicly expressed his deep sorrow at the deaths. More recently, on the "Today" programme, he said that the police saw their responsibility in three particular areas. He admitted that, once the gates were open, the police should have foreseen where the fans would go; he accepted that they might have reduced some of the pressure by changing the kick-off time; and he also accepted that officers did not recognise soon enough the distinction between disorder and distress. The South Yorkshire police have accepted that they were at fault in those respects and the South Yorkshire police authority has paid compensation to the families of those who died.
    The second investigation into events was an inquest conducted by Her Majesty's coroner for the western district of South Yorkshire. That was a difficult task,
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    partly because of the number of deaths and partly because the Taylor inquiry was still in progress. The coroner conducted an inquiry into the deaths and sat for a total of 96 days. It is important that I remind the House of the purpose of an inquest.
    An inquest is a fact-finding inquiry conducted to establish reliable answers to four important but limited factual questions. They are the identity of the deceased, the place of death, the time—if known—and the date of death, and how the deceased came by his or her death. That is all an inquest can consider. Rule 36 of the coroners' rules of 1984 requires that proceedings and evidence are directed solely at finding answers to those questions and forbids any expression of opinion on other matters.
    The jury examining the evidence found that the cause of death was accidental death, but the findings of an inquest do not bind any person affected by them. The inquest's conclusion, indeed, must not be framed in such a way as to determine any question of criminal responsibility on the part of any named person or any question of civil liability. A finding of accidental death does not prevent further proceedings.
    The third investigation into the disaster was conducted by West Midlands police, supervised by the independent Police Complaints Authority, with a view to establishing whether the tragedy resulted from, or was made worse by, criminal activity on the part of any individual. It also considered whether any officer should be subject to disciplinary proceedings.
    The investigation involved the taking of 5,341 statements, as well as scrutiny of all the material that had previously been examined. The evidence was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who concluded that the result did not indicate that anyone should be made the subject of criminal proceedings. That has meant that neither Chief Superintendent Duckenfield nor Superintendent Murray, who were both criticised by the Taylor inquiry—nor for that matter any other person—has been charged with any crime. For any other person apart from a police officer, that would have been the end of the proceedings, but for a police officer there remained the question of whether they had failed in their duty.
    The Police Complaints Authority decided that Chief Superintendent Duckenfield and Superintendent Murray should face disciplinary charges. Police disciplinary hearings are held in private. They are concerned only with whether an officer may have failed to conform to police discipline; they do not consider wider issues.
    In the event, Mr. Duckenfield retired due to ill health in advance of a disciplinary tribunal's ruling on whether he was guilty. It is sometimes forgotten that, although a number of punishments can be imposed for bad discipline, the most serious that a disciplinary tribunal can impose is that of dismissal or of a requirement to resign. In the event, Mr. Duckenfield stopped being a police officer and the disciplinary hearing could not continue, because such hearings can be held only on police officers.
    The Police Complaints Authority announced subsequently that disciplinary proceedings against Superintendent Murray would be withdrawn. When explaining its decision, the authority stated that the retirement of the chief superintendent, Mr. Duckenfield, on medical grounds, meant that what in effect was a joint

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    allegation of neglect of duty could not be fairly heard in the absence of the more senior officer. However, some time later, Superintendent Murray decided that he did not wish to remain as a police officer either.
    It is of course well known that there was dissatisfaction with the verdict of the inquest. The law provides a remedy for that by way of judicial review. The fourth examination, therefore, was the judicial review of the coroner's proceedings.
    Relatives of a number of the victims applied for judicial review. In those proceedings, the conduct of the South Yorkshire coroner's inquest was subjected to a close and detailed examination. In giving the judgment of the divisional court, Lord Justice McCowan ruled very clearly that none of the points raised justified the intervention of that court. In particular, the court found that the decision of the coroner to exclude evidence of what happened after 3.15 pm on that afternoon was not an unreasonable decision. It also made no criticism of the coroner's directions to the jury.
    Clearly, it is not possible for me to know the truth of what happened on that terrible Saturday. What is important is that we should be satisfied that those dreadful events seven years ago have been fully investigated and examined. The hon. Member for Walton calls for a reopening of the public inquiry. I have had a number of letters making a similar request from those who were bereaved, and I have met at least two of them.
    I have said that I will consider those representations. I must emphasise the fact that I would not take a decision to reopen the inquiry lightly: I must be convinced that it would be in the public interest to do so.
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    The charge has been made—it is one that I will consider carefully—that there has been a cover-up, an attempt to pervert the course of justice. I shall also consider whether there is any new evidence, and if so, whether that evidence is of such significance that had it been put before Lord Taylor or before the coroner, either the outcome of the Taylor inquiry or the verdict of the jury would have been different.
    As I consider those questions, I shall be searching for the truth about what happened. It has been said that there was a video camera trained on the central enclosure, and that the Taylor inquiry was told that it was not working, although that was not the case. But I have been informed by the chief constable of South Yorkshire that both the videotape and a transcript of that tape were made available to the Taylor inquiry. Clearly, that is a matter that I will need to look into.
    I fully sympathise with the families who feel that in some way they have not learnt the whole truth about the deaths of their loved ones. Certainly in an appalling tragedy such as Hillsborough it is perhaps inevitable, though deeply distressing for the families, that there will be confusion about some details.
    I shall reach a decision on any further action to be taken as soon as I have been able to consider all those issues. I shall certainly take into account everything that the hon. Gentleman has said tonight. Whatever my decision, I shall always be deeply moved by the memory of that awful event at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes past Ten o'clock.