Commons Sitting of 11 December 2001

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
  HEALTH
  The Secretary of State was asked—
  HEALTH

    Hospital Star Ratings
    Dr. Brian Iddon: If he will make a statement about the hospital star ratings. [19655]
    The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Alan Milburn): Performance ratings for acute hospital national health service trusts were published on 25 September. This is the first time that hospital trusts have been publicly classified according to their performance, with more freedom and rewards for the best performers and more help for the poorest.
    Dr. Iddon: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer, but will the same performance rating criteria, especially the nine key criteria, be used to assess hospitals in the current year as were used in the first exercise? Will they be modified in view of the lessons that we have learned from it?
    Mr. Milburn: I expect some modification in the criteria. As my hon. Friend knows, it is the first year that they were used and that each hospital's performance was assessed. As we have said, the criteria and the star ratings are far from perfect. However, it is important for patients to know how well their hospitals are performing. After all, they belong to the patients and no one else.
    As my hon. Friend knows, the House is considering a measure that proposes that the Commission for Health Improvement rather than the Department should publish the star ratings and, I hope, provide proper, objective and independent assessments of performance in all parts of the NHS.
    Mr. David Amess: How can the Secretary of State justify a crackpot scheme under which one hospital received a zero rating but came top in clinical services? Will he explain to my constituents how giving Southend hospital a one-star rating helps the recruitment and retention crisis? This rotten Government are to blame for the state of the health service.
    Mr. Milburn: Sometimes I wish that the hon. Gentleman was more straightforward in expressing his views.
    696
    The sense that no one in authority—in government or elsewhere—cared about hospitals that received a lower star rating or was prepared to do anything about it would be the most demoralising thing for staff at Southend hospital or any other hospital that got such a rating. The point of assessing performance and taking action on it is to try to get incentives right so that the good performers have more freedom and the poor performers receive help, support and, when necessary, intervention to enable them to improve.
    Hugh Bayley: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if we want to improve clinical practice, it is as important to have information on the clinical outcomes of individual doctors as on individual hospitals? Will he consider the feasibility of publishing information so that the public know which doctors achieve the best outcomes?
    Mr. Milburn: It is important for the public to have as much information as possible about the performance of organisations and clinical teams in the NHS. As my hon. Friend knows, the medical profession has moved a great deal on that in recent years. For example, I met the Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland before the Bristol statement. It has done impeccable work in considering the performance of individual clinical teams. I hope that, in time, and provided that it has clinical credibility, we can publish more and more information about not only organisational performance but clinical outcomes. In the end, we must all answer a simple question: does the patient have a right to know how well the clinical team, doctor and hospital are performing? The answer must be yes.
    Dr. Richard Taylor: Does the Secretary of State agree with one of the conclusions of the Whipps Cross inquiry report, that, to comply with hospital ratings,
    "The imperative to avoid a 12-hour wait for a bed is an over-riding driver behind bed management to the detriment of good clinical care"?
    Mr. Milburn: No, I do not agree. The hon. Gentleman knows from his constituency experience that one of the greatest anxieties about the NHS is not so much the quality of treatment when patients get to hospital, or even to the general practitioner's surgery, but the wait to get there. Waiting is detrimental to patient and public confidence. It is right to continue to decrease waiting times as we improve quality. If the hon. Gentleman considers the star ratings, he will find a variety of measures that consider matters from the patient's perspective and assess the standards of care. It is important that we always get the balance right.
    Tim Loughton: Is the Secretary of State happy with a ratings system under which one hospital bumped up its star rating for waiting times by keeping patients waiting in ambulances outside rather than on trolleys inside, and another earned zero stars but received a glowing report from the Commission for Health Improvement? Is this not merely another gimmick to allow the Secretary of State to shift the finger of blame away from the Department? In any case, what real choice does the scheme create for patients whose

    697
    local hospitals have received zero stars? What does it give them besides the knowledge that they are now officially forced to attend a failing hospital?
    Mr. Milburn: If I may say so, the Opposition always urge on us greater devolution to front-line services. That is where the responsibility should lie. Quite rightly, it should be for local managers, doctors and nurses to make the decisions. For the first time, the star ratings show that the national health service is a less monolithic organisation than it used to be. As every patient and member of staff knows, the NHS—an enormous and complex organisation—is characterised by some outstandingly good performance and, sadly, by some rather poorer performance. It is about time that we came clean to patients about where the performance is good, poor or indifferent. I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would be persuaded of the case for more openness and devolution.

    Smoking Cessation Services
    Mr. Gwyn Prosser: What recent progress has been made on improving smoking cessation services. [19656]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ms Hazel Blears): I am pleased to announce today that we will allocate £20 million in 2002–03 to NHS smoking cessation services in England. That reflects our commitment to the future of the services, which have proved to be highly successful. In 2000–01, they helped 64,600 smokers to succeed in quitting smoking after four weeks. In the first quarter of this year, they helped nearly 29,000 more smokers to succeed in quitting at the four-week stage.
    Mr. Prosser: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer, and for her encouraging remarks. Is she aware of the excellent work of the smoking cessation unit in my area of east Kent, and especially in Dover and Deal? Will she assure me that the units do not represent the end of the programme to help people to quit smoking, and that other and better means to do so will be introduced? In particular, does she agree that it is vital that young people should be prevented from taking up smoking in the first place?
    Ms Blears: I am aware of the excellent work being done in my hon. Friend's constituency. I think that £175,000 is being spent on smoking cessation services there. Their success means that we are providing funding to allow them to continue. I am pleased to say that nicotine replacement therapies are available on prescription, as is Zyban. Clinics are available for people, offering real help in giving up smoking, especially to young people. However, as my hon. Friend says, the best advice is that people should not take up smoking in the first place.
    Mr. David Tredinnick: What percentage of the £20 million has been earmarked for hypnotherapists and homeopaths, who make such a valuable contribution to helping people stop smoking? Will the Minister accept that 80 per cent. of the costs of conventional medicine
    698
    could be saved by using homeopathic medicine? Does she agree that homeopathy should be available in many more than just five hospitals in this country?
    Ms Blears: The hon. Gentleman raises yet again the matter of alternative therapies. He displays remarkable persistence and resilience, on which I congratulate him.
    Acupuncture and hypnosis can help in smoking cessation. As I have said previously, we are interested in whatever works and helps people to give up smoking. Therapies that are proved to have an effect should be supported by local health authorities. I am pleased to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman that his own health authority has received a cash increase of £46 million as a result of the health allocations. I am sure that he will want that money to be spent wisely and well.
    Mrs. Joan Humble: My hon. Friend will no doubt be aware of a recent report from the North West Lancashire health authority that welcomed the smoking cessation services. However, it expressed concern about their future, given the restructuring of the health service. Will she reassure me and my constituents about the role of the primary care trusts and the strategic health authority in developing further these much needed services?
    Ms Blears: I am happy to give my hon. Friend that reassurance. We want the services to continue, and that is why we are announcing today that £20 million has been made available for next year. However, it will be crucial for PCTs to commission services that will benefit their local communities. We are especially keen that the services should be targeted on people in manual-worker occupations who need extra help to quit smoking. Something like 36 per cent. of the free prescriptions for Zyban and nicotine replacement therapy are being taken up by people in those especially hard-to-reach groups. We must make sure, as a key issue in tackling health inequality, that many more people from poorer communities can access smoking cessation services.

    Agency Nurses
    Tom Brake: If he will make a statement on the use of agency nurses within the NHS. [19657]
    The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr. John Hutton): We are taking action to ensure that the use of agency nurses represents good value for money and the highest possible standards of patient care. NHS Professionals will, by April 2003, provide a comprehensive and cost-effective service for all NHS trusts. The London agency project will also offer a better value for money service for the NHS in London.
    Tom Brake: The Minister will be aware that, in 2000–01, 574 per cent. more was spent on agency nurses than had been budgeted for, which works out at £6 million per trust. Will he explain how many more permanent nursing staff he expects to be recruited and retained as a result of his initiative? Permanent staff are needed for continuity, and that is what patients want.
    Mr. Hutton: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's point. London has historically had a very high dependency on agency nursing, and we need to tackle that problem. We can do so in two ways. First, we can increase the number of whole-time equivalent nurses working in the NHS in London. We are making good progress on that. In fact, there are more whole-time equivalent nurses working in the Croydon health authority and in the Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth health authority this year than there were in September 1996. That is progress, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman welcomes it.
    Secondly, we can tackle the problem in the way that I have outlined through the development of NHS Professionals. Three trusts in London use the NHS Professionals service now, but by April 2003, it will cover them all. The London agency project will also ensure better value for money and offer the possibility of significant savings. We now have 29 commercial agencies contracting with the NHS in areas of shortage such as accident and emergency, operating theatres and critical care. The hon. Gentleman is right that we need to tackle this problem, and this is the right way to go about it. I think that the means that I have described will provide the solution.
    Andrew Mackinlay: What measures are in hand to ensure the tracking and recording of agency staff, bearing it in mind that recent police investigations have been hampered by the fact that some trusts have been unable to demonstrate who they employed, when and in what circumstances? Is this not indicative of the nonsense of using agency staff? What is being done to contain, control and record them, and to provide a historical record to enable us to see who has been hired in the past?
    Mr. Hutton: I strongly agree with my hon. Friend on that point. Again, there are two ways for us to make progress on the problem. From next April, for the first time, the National Care Standards Commission will set new national minimum standards for nursing agencies, which will cover precisely the issue that he raised. There is also the possibility of dealing with these issues through NHS Professionals, which will be the in-house agency that deals with temporary staffing solutions, and which will tackle precisely this issue. Many concerns have been raised about inappropriately trained staff working in environments in which they clearly should not be working, and we will not tolerate that.
    Mrs. Marion Roe: Does the Minister accept that until the Labour Government make working in the national health service an attractive proposition, there will continue to be a shortage of nurses? Will he kindly tell the House how many nurses are expected to retire in the next five years, and how many are expected to be recruited from United Kingdom training courses?
    Mr. Hutton: The hon. Lady is perfectly right that we need to make the NHS a more attractive place for people to work in, and that is precisely what we are doing. That is why 17,000 more nurses are working in the NHS this year than in the last year of the Conservative Government. We are making progress in all those areas. Clearly, nurses will retire from the service, but our commitment to recruit an extra 20,000 nurses will compensate for those who are leaving. We are talking about increasing the number of
    700
    nurses available to people in the NHS, not cutting it. The hon. Lady would benefit from reflecting on the record of her party. One of its parting bequests was to cut the number of nurses in training for the NHS.

    HIV
    Lynne Jones: If he will make a statement on how specialist HIV work will be protected and monitored under primary care trust commissioning. [19658]
    The Minister of State, Department of Health (Jacqui Smith): For the year ahead primary care trusts must honour existing agreements, financial and otherwise, negotiated by regional specialised commissioning groups and current specialised service commissioners. Implementation of the sexual health and HIV strategy will include effective performance management through the use of, for example, information collected under the AIDS (Control) Act 1987.
    Lynne Jones: As my hon. Friend will know, last year saw the greatest number of AIDS cases—or HIV infection cases—ever recorded. Many organisations, including the Birmingham-based charity Freshwinds, have said that the mainstreaming of HIV prevention work is premature. I know that health authorities will be commissioning the work for next year, but is there not a case for postponing the new arrangements at least until a review of the AIDS (Control) Act reports has been conducted, and robust measures are in place to identify instances in which primary care trusts are not taking their responsibilities seriously enough and are not catering for the needs of vulnerable groups such as gay men and asylum seekers?
    Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend is right to mention the large number of new HIV infections identified in the past year. One reason may well be the increase in antenatal testing, which I am sure we all agree is very important. The reflection of that in higher figures for infection enables us subsequently to treat the women involved to make it less likely that the infection is passed to their children.
    My hon. Friend underlined the need to monitor what is produced in the system. We should aim for a system in which more services are commissioned at PCT level, because that will allow more flexibility and responsiveness in decisions about the delivery of local treatment and care. We need to ensure that the targets identified in, for example, the sexual health and HIV strategy—which include a 25 per cent. reduction in new HIV infections by 2007—are monitored. As we move to a locally responsive system, it must be ensured that we deliver on those targets.
    Mr. Peter Viggers: Can it really be true that, as stated in a parliamentary answer to me, the national health service is recruiting HIV-positive nurses from sub-Saharan Africa, and that that poses no health hazard?
    Jacqui Smith: I do not know of the specific case to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but if he writes to me I will certainly respond. It is important for us to recruit

    701
    people, from this country or from overseas, who both meet the necessary health requirements and can contribute to the national health service.
    Careful controls apply to those employed in our health service who may be HIV-positive. I do not think that raising particular cases is helpful in ensuring that we recruit the numbers that we require, or in avoiding stigmatising people with HIV while making certain that NHS patients have the necessary protection.
    Mr. Neil Gerrard: As the Minister knows, the AIDS (Control) Act requires health authorities to report on the use of the ring-fenced budget. Does she accept that, given that health authorities in their present form will disappear—along with that ring-fenced budget—we need to get on with reviewing the Act, so that when the budgets go to primary care trusts there will be a mechanism to track what they are doing and establish whether they are spending effectively?
    Jacqui Smith: It is true that the Act currently requires health authorities to report annually not just on the spending of their money but on the number of new infections, treatment provided and investment in HIV prevention work. In April 2002, the requirement will pass from health authorities to PCTs, so we can go on monitoring that activity.
    My hon. Friend is also right that we should review the operation of the Act to ensure that we have information, not just locally but nationally, to enable us to measure the outcomes of investment in the tackling of HIV, and our success in lowering levels of infection.
    Sandra Gidley: Traditionally, health authorities have been allocated money for prevention and money for treatment and cure. Everybody must get the prevention message across when the budget effectively goes into the primary care trust pot, but the incidence of HIV varies around the country. It is low in my area, but extremely high in parts of London. Will areas with a high incidence be vired more money to cope with the larger problem or will they be expected to manage on the existing budget?
    Jacqui Smith: No, a revised allocation formula was developed to ensure that PCTs receive a share of funds in line with the number of residents with HIV receiving treatment in their boundaries. That will be incorporated as a component of the unified formula to ensure that money is distributed to the areas that need it for treatment.

    Flu Immunisation
    Mr. Bill O'Brien: If he will make statement on progress with this year's flu immunisation campaign. [19659]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ms Hazel Blears): The most recent monitoring figures from health authorities across England indicate that at 31 October, the average uptake was 52 per cent. among people aged 65 and over. That compares with 46 per cent. for the same time last year—a 6 per cent.
    702
    improvement, which indicates good progress towards achieving the minimum 65 per cent. uptake figure set at the start of the campaign.
    Mr. O'Brien: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, but it shows that there is still a long way to go in ensuring that the majority of vulnerable people receive immunisation. Will she consider the fact that some doctors' practices are rigid in making arrangements for flu immunisation? We require more flexibility from them, so that people can attend when they are available, which would ensure that that percentage increases. Will she take action to ensure that practices consider the matter and develop more flexibility in offering immunisation?
    Ms Blears: My hon. Friend is right that it is important that as many people as possible take up the offer of immunisation. I understand that about 12,000 people die of flu each winter and that the excess deaths every winter closely follow flu patterns, so people should take their vaccination opportunities. Many doctors now undertake more flexible and imaginative schemes that provide immunisation as and when people want it. They also provide immunisation not only to over-65s, but to those with chronic heart disease, asthma, chronic renal disease and diabetes and to people in long-stay residential care. Flu immunisations can reduce hospital admissions by up to 60 per cent., so we want to promote them as much as we can.
    Sir Sydney Chapman: I declare an interest in the issue and welcome the comparative increase in flu vaccination, but will the 53 per cent. turn out to be 65 per cent., as this is relatively late in the year? In any case, is not 65 per cent. a rather low minimum standard to accept? I congratulate the Minister on the progress that the Government have made, but will she bear those points in mind, because the issue is vital? If all over-65s in particular could have a flu jab, the problems that our hospitals face in winter could be overcome.
    Ms Blears: I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman wants us not only to set targets, but to make them higher every year. Last year, we were 6 per cent. behind where we are this year, although we still reached our 60 per cent. target, so we are more than likely to reach 65 per cent. over the winter. We have provided an extra 1.3 million doses of vaccine this year, so there is no question of any shortage.
    We want staff who work in social care and local authority residential homes to have access to vaccine. That is also the case for NHS staff, because if we can ensure that they are immunised, they will be less likely to take time off work, making them available to care for people in areas of peak pressure during the winter months. I am confident that we shall reach and exceed our target, and I am delighted to have the hon. Gentleman's support.
    Liz Blackman: Staff are key players in tackling winter pressures, for the reasons that my hon. Friend outlined. Does the Department hold current figures for the take-up of flu vaccination by health professionals?
    Ms Blears: This is the first year that we are properly monitoring the take-up among staff. In October, when the campaign was in its early stages, the figure was about

    703
    9 per cent. I anticipate that the figure will increase during the coming months, but immunisation of staff is relatively new, so we need to ensure that immunisation is available at times that suit staff rather than expecting them to take time off from the wards to go to be immunised. Making sure that we bring immunisation to the wards so that staff can be immunised at a convenient time—so that times are flexible—is important to the success of the campaign.

    Hospital Patients (Discharges)
    Mr. Laurence Robertson: If he will make a statement about the discharge of patients from hospital into nursing home care in Gloucestershire. [19660]
    The Minister of State, Department of Health (Jacqui Smith): The Gloucestershire health community has been working closely with Gloucestershire county council social services to reduce the number of patients who, although fit to be discharged from hospital, are still occupying an acute bed. Between July and November the average number of patients waiting for discharge has declined from 109 to 57. The NHS regional office and social care region are closely monitoring the action being taken in Gloucestershire to reduce delayed discharges.
    Mr. Robertson: I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, but a recent report for the East Gloucestershire NHS trust contradicts those figures. It suggests that in October there were 180 delayed discharges, which resulted in 23 people being left on trolleys for up to 12 hours. Will she investigate the discrepancy between those figures and the ones that she cited?
    Jacqui Smith: I shall certainly look at the figures that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. However, perhaps more important, we shall also continue the investment that we started with the £300 million announced in October, from which Gloucestershire county council benefited to the tune of £1.46 million. That money is now being used to reduce delays, prevent admissions to hospital and improve community support. That is why the council believes that it will be able to reduce delayed discharges by a further 40 per cent. by March 2002.
    Dr. Stephen Ladyman: When my hon. Friend investigates those matters in Gloucestershire, will she ensure that the council learns from best and worst practice elsewhere? In particular, will she make sure that Gloucestershire social services department does not do what was done in my constituency? There, the Conservative-controlled county council block-booked 12 nursing home beds in a local nursing home, yet at the height of the crisis last year six of those paid-for beds were empty. Will my hon. Friend also ensure that Gloucestershire county council does not fire 16 care home managers—the people responsible for the transition from hospital to nursing home beds—while finding enough money to keep on 16 press officers?
    Jacqui Smith: I know that my hon. Friend and Labour Members who represent Kent constituencies have been active in ensuring that the extra amount of more than £2.5 million that has been made available to Kent to tackle bed blocking has been used effectively. I am sure that the £1.46 million allocated to Gloucestershire will
    704
    also be used effectively. My hon. Friend makes an important point, whether about Gloucestershire or anywhere else. We have evidence of authorities that have successfully reduced bed blocking and we shall ensure that those messages are consistently spread throughout the country and that all councils—even recalcitrant ones—are made to put the interests of their older people at the head of their policies.
    Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: The Minister's reply is somewhat complacent. My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) has given me the figures for Gloucestershire: 180 people are in hospital who have no clinical need to be there. That is bad for the patients and bad for the taxpayer. When the Minister investigates the circumstances in Gloucestershire, will she undertake to consider how health and social services can work more seamlessly together so that people can leave hospital when they are clinically able to do so? It is cheaper to find a home care package or a residential or nursing home package than it is to keep people in hospital when they do not need to be there.
    Jacqui Smith: That is precisely why the Government have announced the extra £300 million, of which Gloucestershire has £1.46 million. In challenging the Government on the issue, the hon. Gentleman has a responsibility to explain to his constituents whether a Conservative Government, were there to be another one, would match that type of sum. He is right, however, that a seamless join between health and social services is very important. The provision that the Government have made available for closer partnership working between health and social services, which has been taken up in many parts of the country, may well be an opportunity that Gloucestershire needs to consider. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman—whose concern about delayed discharges I share—will be ensuring that the extra money being provided to the social services department and the health authority in Gloucestershire is spent in the most effective manner.
    Mr. Simon Burns: Is the Minister aware that, according to her own figures in a written answer, 9 per cent. of acute beds in Gloucestershire are occupied by delayed discharge patients? Does she accept that, on average, there are currently 680,000 bed blockers per annum? Given that the average cost of a week in hospital is £1,630, but only £319 in a residential home, is that not a gross waste of money? Is it not also halting patient care and preventing operations? Is the Minister proud of the fact that, after four and a half years, this Labour Government have created not only a waiting list to get into hospital, but a waiting list to get out of hospital?
    Jacqui Smith: This Government are concerned to ensure that people receive the right treatment at the right time and in the right place. This Government have therefore invested extra money to ensure that we cut delayed discharge. I doubt, as we have heard, that that money would be matched by the Opposition. Because of that investment, between July and November 2001, there has already been a 47.7 per cent. decrease in the number of delayed discharges in Gloucestershire. Because of that investment, Gloucestershire now feels able to set itself a tough target to reduce delayed discharges even further. We shall continue to ensure that we invest and reorganize

    705
    and promote joint working between health and social services, to ensure that the extra investment we are providing translates into better treatment and faster access to community and residential care for older people.

    Doctor Recruitment
    Mr. Jim Cunningham: What recent progress has been made in the recruitment of doctors in the NHS. [19661]
    The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr. John Hutton): The Government are committed to delivering an additional 10,000 doctors by September 2005, over a September 2000 baseline. Good progress is being made towards meeting that target. Almost 7,000 more doctors are working in the NHS now than in 1997.
    Mr. Cunningham: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. However, has he read recent reports in the Coventry Evening Telegraph that the Walsgrave university hospital trust has had difficulties in recruiting doctors and trainee doctors? Will he look into the matter and report back to the House on the outcome?
    Mr. Hutton: I shall certainly look into the matter on behalf of my hon. Friend. I am sure that he will welcome the fact that the Coventry and Walsgrave trust was very recently able to announce the go-ahead for the new medical school to be built on the site of the Coventry and Walsgrave hospital. I hope that, like me, he will regard that as a very positive investment in the future, to ensure that the NHS has the doctors and surgeons that it needs for the new century.
    Dr. Evan Harris: As the previous question indicated, it is no good just recruiting doctors if we cannot retain them. In addition to the demoralisation that is caused by the naming and shaming of doctors as a result of star ratings that are based on no meaningful outcomes, will the Minister look into the issue of female junior doctors who, because of the new pay deal, when seeking to train flexibly, are paid less than those who are in full-time work? Will he also look into the issue of black and Asian doctors who are still not allowed to become consultants although they have the skills to do so? The majority of them are to be found languishing in non-regular trust-grade posts, the terms and conditions of which are often poorer than those for the mainly white junior doctors whose posts they are mirroring.
    Mr. Hutton: I agree strongly with the hon. Gentleman that we need to improve the recruitment and retention of doctors, which is what we are doing. We recently announced measures that will add appreciably to our endeavours, such as the new flexible career scheme for hospital doctors, and we have a similar package in place for general practice. Golden hellos are being introduced for people entering general practice. We are making good progress in all those areas.
    The hon. Gentleman raised a number of very fair points. He will be aware of some of the measures that we have proposed that will help move those issues forward. I simply ask him to reflect on this fact. We are committed to the growth of the national health service and to recruiting more doctors, and we have the resources in
    706
    place to do so properly and effectively. The choice, as always in these matters, is between a Labour Government committed to the growth of the NHS and a Tory Government that would cut the national health service.
    Mr. David Hinchliffe: What progress are the Government making in persuading NHS consultants who work part time in the private sector to work full time in the NHS instead? We were given figures last week-indicating that under the concordat with the private sector, some 70,000 patients have been treated in the private sector by these doctors. How many more patients would have been treated instead in the NHS if those doctors had been working full time in the health service?
    Mr. Hutton: It makes no sense to have spare capacity in the private sector which can be used by NHS patients if it is being denied to them. If, as a result, NHS patients have to wait longer for their care and treatment under the NHS, that needs a solution, and the Government have provided a way forward. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health made an announcement last week about expanded choice and a greater use of the private sector, and we will be treating NHS patients in that context. The money will ensure that that happens. That is a sensible result, and a good result for the NHS.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I am sure that the Minister accepts that all hon. Members want to see more doctors in the national health service, whether in hospital or in general practice. Does he agree that if he can achieve the Government's target, it will mean that doctors will be able to spend more time with their patients, that those in general practice will be able to make more home visits—which I believe to be essential—and that, as a result of more time being spent by doctors with their patients in hospital and in general practice, there could be better outcomes which could produce a better health service and better health?
    Mr. Hutton: I am able to agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman says. I do not want to embarrass him, but that is usually the case in Health questions. He is absolutely right. We will secure those results by recruiting more doctors in general practice, and more nurses and therapists as well. In that way, primary care—which is, after all, where 90 per cent. of all patient journeys begin and end—can provide a more flexible service and the health care professionals who work in primary care can spend more time with their patients. That is what the doctors and nurses want, and it is what the Government want.
    Mr. Jon Owen Jones: Does the Minister recognise that a significant number of refugees in the United Kingdom are fully qualified and experienced doctors, but are unable to practice because they lack sufficient skills in English? Will he undertake to look at the possibility of setting up a cost-effective scheme to help these doctors improve their language skills so that they can contribute to the work of the national health service?
    Mr. Hutton: I agree strongly with my hon. Friend. That is precisely what we are doing: we have asked the Royal College of General Practitioners to lead a specific project dealing with the recruitment into the NHS of more

    707
    refugee and asylum-seeking doctors. That makes sense for the NHS and will help towards meeting the wider targets that we set for improving the service.
    Mr. Oliver Heald: Today's Royal College of Surgeons report highlights the current alarming shortage of hundreds of key surgeons and the future shortage of thousands. A few days ago, Sir Peter Morris, president of the college, described surgeons as depressed and frustrated. The British Medical Association is today calling for swift action to unblock the training bottlenecks, and highlights the need to recruit overseas consultants. Does the Minister think that he has any chance of meeting his target for 2004, contrary to what the report says? If so, where will these surgeons come from?
    Mr. Hutton: I am confident that we shall meet those targets. The hon. Gentleman referred to Sir Peter Morris's comments, and I am sure that he will be aware of what Sir Peter Morris had to say about the Conservatives; he is certainly talking about shortages. We are trying to address the shortages. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the NHS has been historically under-doctored for decades, and I am afraid that his party failed to address that. Sir Peter said:
    "Whether the Conservatives would come up with any alternatives, I doubt."
    That is absolutely right, because we should not lose sight of—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The Minister should not concern himself with the Conservatives. That is something for the Opposition to worry about.

    Health Inequalities
    Mr. Michael Clapham: What progress has been made on tackling health inequalities. [19662]
    The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Alan Milburn): Good progress has been made, not least by targeting resources on the areas of greatest health need.
    Mr. Clapham: I thank the Secretary of State for his reply, but may I draw his attention to the Government's chief medical officer's report this year, which states that, although progress has been made in health overall, there are growing gaps in health between socially disadvantaged groups and more affluent groups. When does he expect the primary care trusts to have completed their equity reports in relation to targeting inequalities? As he well knows, we in Barnsley have just one PCT, which has now been put together and is continuing its work. When the equity audit is complete, will we have more resources to deal with some of our inequalities?
    Mr. Milburn: My hon. Friend raises an extremely important issue. For many decades, health inequalities in this country have been widening, rather than narrowing. Indeed, the chief medical officer's report, which was published yesterday, makes that glaringly obvious. There is a big commitment to deal with those problems. Obviously, they are not straightforward because we are
    708
    dealing with some of the wider economic and social determinants of ill health, as well as ill health itself, but it is important to get the resources into the right place, as I said in an earlier answer. My hon. Friend will be aware from the announcement that I made last Thursday that, in the next financial year, we will invest about £150 million-worth of extra resources, specifically to recognise the greater demands that are made on health services in poorer parts of the country, such as his constituency, where we will invest, I think, an extra £2 million.
    The primary care trusts will have an important role to play in that regard, and the fact that the resources and responsibilities are being devolved down to very local communities, with the PCTs in charge, will help to foster better partnerships between local government, the voluntary sector, the private sector and the NHS, not just to provide better health and social care services, but to deal with some of the root causes of ill health, of which my hon. Friend and other hon. Members are painfully aware.
    Mr. John Redwood: Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the big inequalities is the fact that people in constituencies such as mine have to wait far too long for the routine operations that they need to get out of pain, unlike in some other parts of the country? What would he say to my constituent Mr. Levy, who read in the paper that the Government had lost a court case and that he could now go abroad and get his operation charged to the health service? He then read a couple of statements, purporting to come from the Secretary of State, saying that he is launching a policy to allow people to go abroad to get their operations done more quickly to get out of pain, only for me to receive from two junior Ministers in the Department of Health a strong no to my constituent, saying that there was no way that he was allowed to have his operation done elsewhere to get out of pain and that this was all a tissue of lies. What has the Secretary of State got to say about that?
    Mr. Milburn: A tissue of lies it is not, but the right hon. Gentleman, or indeed any other right hon. or hon. Member, would not forgive us if we got the policy wrong with regard to offering patients the choice of being treated abroad. That has not been the case under Conservative or Labour Governments, but it is what we are advancing towards, and we will ensure that we get it right. There are obvious concerns about travel arrangements, clinical standards and ensuring that patients are fit to travel, but that is precisely what we are trying to do in three parts of the country, including the south-east—precisely the area about which the right hon. Gentleman expresses concern—and I hope that we can make progress before too long.
    As the right hon. Gentleman rightly says, it is also important that, as we expand the NHS, we also extend choice to more patients. He will be aware that I was able to say last week that that is precisely what we want to do, starting with those patients who have the most severe clinical conditions. I cannot think of anyone who faces a greater dilemma than the heart patient who has the choice between paying for treatment or waiting for treatment. We want to solve that dilemma not by forcing people out of the NHS, as the Conservative party increasingly seeks to do, but by offering them choice in the NHS.

    Homelessness
    Ms Karen Buck: What recent assessment he has made of the health care needs associated with homelessness. [19663]
    The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr. John Hutton): The NHS is fully committed to providing access to health care on the basis of need. The health care requirements of homeless people are being addressed through local health improvement plans, personal medical services pilots focusing specifically on the homeless, and general medical services development schemes. In addition, the Department has provided additional funding to support the needs of homeless people with mental health problems in London.
    Ms Buck: Is my hon. Friend aware of the significant contribution that has been made by Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster health authority to the work of the rough sleepers unit, especially in the provision of much needed mental health services? That has come at a considerable cost to the health authority, which has sustained the bill for mental health services, sometimes at the cost of displacing local people from those services. Will he undertake to give sympathetic consideration to the bid that the health authority is putting together to provide a long-term answer to mental health services, partly to relieve the strain on my local health authority but also to guarantee the long-term sustainability of the action to tackle rough sleeping?
    Mr. Hutton: I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that we will look sympathetically at those proposals. The more work we do on homelessness and mental health, the more we uncover substantial unmet need. It is part and parcel of the work that the Government are doing to ensure that the resources are in place to respond to the need once it has been identified. My understanding is that the regional office is already in discussions with the trust to consider the question of how additional resources might be used to help to deal with the problem. I will take my hon. Friend's comments seriously and get in touch with her in the near future.
    Mr. Henry Bellingham: Is the Minister aware that one of the problems that homeless people face is the time it takes to get a CT scan in hospital? I have had many letters from constituents who complain about how long it has taken to get a scan in the Queen Elizabeth hospital in King's Lynn. What will the right hon. Gentleman do about it?
    Mr. Hutton: It will be a combination of things, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman understands, including more investment, more staff and more training. We are making significant resources available to improve the range of diagnostic equipment that supports the needs of his and all our constituents.

    NHS Appointments Commission
    Mr. Kevan Jones: If he will make a statement on the work of the NHS Appointments Commission in relation to appointments in the north-east. [19664]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ms Hazel Blears): Since it became operational on 2 July 2001, the NHS Appointments Commission has announced 613 appointments, of which 37 were to posts in the north-east. All those appointments were made in accordance with the commission's procedures, which have been endorsed by the Commissioner for Public Appointments, Dame Rennie Fritchie.
    Mr. Jones: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. In the recent appointment of the chair of North Durham NHS trust, a method of selecting candidates was used that was not in the published procedure. I have also raised concerns about the method of consultation of Members of Parliament in the appointment of NHS board members. In her reply to my Adjournment debate last week, my hon. Friend gave assurances that she would look into those matters and ask the NHS Appointments Commission to update its published procedures. What progress has been made in that, so that the people of North Durham can have confidence that the process is open and transparent?
    Ms Blears: I have, indeed, had the pleasure of discussing the issues at some length with my hon. Friend at some late hour last week, and I did undertake to consider whether all the steps in the appointments process would be made transparent on the website and in the written documentation. I have asked Sir William Wells, the NHS Appointments Commissioner, to ensure that that happens. I have also expressed the concern that Members of Parliament should be properly notified when appointments are made that are relevant to their constituencies. That procedure has not been as tight as it might have been, but we are all entitled to have the best up-to-date information on the people who will lead our trusts and authorities and provide leadership for the NHS. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the matter and I am sure that he will go on to support the people who have been appointed in his area to do an excellent job in providing high quality services for local people.

    NHS Private Provision
    Dr. Andrew Murrison: If he will make a statement on his plans for expanding the role played by private health care providers in the NHS. [19665]
    The Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Alan Milburn): Next year, the national health service is expected to double the number of operations carried out in the private sector on NHS patients.
    Dr. Murrison: I thank the Secretary of State for that reply. Last year, NHS Estates and the Community Hospitals Association began work on a joint investigation

    711
    styled "Models of Ownership for Community Hospitals". Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on that work and will he undertake to put it in the public domain?
    Mr. Milburn: I am not aware of the particular report or research that the hon. Gentleman mentions, but I shall be happy to examine it if he would care to send me the details.
    On community hospitals and community ownership, it is important that, as we move towards a more decentralised and more devolved NHS, we strengthen the relationships between local communities and the local hospitals and the local health service that are there to serve.
    Dr. Phyllis Starkey: My patients who have been treated for cataracts on the NHS but in a local private clinic are grateful that that capacity has been used. However, there are concerns about potential conflicts of interest arising when consultants operate in one place on both private sector and NHS patients and when consultants refer patients to one sector or the other. Will the Secretary of State assure me that such conflicts of interest will be investigated and that they will not be allowed to arise?
    Mr. Milburn: If my hon. Friend's constituents have raised specific concerns, I shall be very happy to consider them. It is important that such conflicts of interest do not arise and that the appropriate safeguards are in place. However, if we can use the additional spare capacity available in private sector hospitals for the benefit of NHS patients—whether to provide cataract or cardiac operations—it is sensible to take the position that that is precisely what we should do provided that safeguards are in place, that we have the appropriate clinical standards and and that we obtain good value for money for the taxpayer.
    Dr. Julian Lewis: Given that the BUPA hospital in Redhill is negotiating with the NHS to set up a dedicated surgical centre to provide for an anticipated 5,000 hip and knee replacement operations, will the Secretary of State tell us whether the medical staff carrying out those operations will be employed by BUPA or by the NHS?
    Mr. Milburn: I think that the hon. Gentleman will be aware that negotiations are currently taking place and that they are going extremely well. I hope that we can resolve them satisfactorily from both points of view before too long. The arrangement that we have in mind is for BUPA to continue to employ its own staff. It may have a limited number of medical staff on its books and it will certainly have some nursing staff. The intention is for NHS doctors, nurses and other staff to work in the current private hospital on NHS terms and conditions, but they will be managed by BUPA.
    Today, the hospital almost exclusively treats patients according to their ability to pay. If negotiations go well, in a year's time, it will be exclusively treating patients, not according to the size of their wallets, but according to the scale of their needs.
    Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Will the Secretary of State set in place a monitoring system that will ensure that the patients treated in the
    712
    private sector receive clinical care of a standard that they expect at the time of their operations? Many of them are subsequently readmitted to NHS hospital beds thus costing the service a great deal of money.
    Mr. Milburn: We will continue to monitor all those issues. As I said, it is important that both patients and taxpayers receive a good deal. I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that not only will we seek to drive a good financial bargain for the taxpayer but, even more important, we shall want to ensure that, if people are treated in a private hospital or a NHS hospital, they will be provided with the highest clinical standards possible.
    Dr. Liam Fox: It is only a matter of weeks since the Secretary of State told us at Health questions that, by and large, in our country
    "we thankfully have one monopoly provider and that is the NHS. As a long as a Labour Government are in power that will remain the position."—[Official Report, 26 June 2001; Vol. 370, c. 500.]
    Given that, this week, he does not want a monopoly NHS and that he has been specific about doubling the number of operations carried out for the NHS in the private sector, will he tell us how much that will cost? What will he say to the patients who, for the past five years, have therefore needlessly be denied wider access to care because of his pointless dogma?
    Mr. Milburn: In terms of cost, the hon. Gentleman is well aware that I told the Select Committee on Health about a month ago that we would make about £40 million available precisely to fund more operations, using the spare capacity of private sector hospitals to treat NHS patients. That is double the level provided last year. If local primary care trusts want to contract for more operations from private sector providers, that is a matter for them. The great divide between the Labour party and the Conservative party is not whether the NHS patient is treated in an NHS hospital or a private sector hospital; it is whether we provide them with more choices, which is what we want to do, or impose more charges on them, which is what the hon. Gentleman wants to do.
    Dr. Fox: The great division is not between our parties; it is between members of the Government. The Secretary of State said that he wanted a hypothecated health tax, and the Chancellor said no way. The Prime Minister wanted European Union spending levels, and the Chancellor said forget it. The Secretary of State wanted an NHS monopoly, the Prime Minister wanted no barriers to delivery, but the Chancellor simply wants to get closer to Downing street. When the Secretary of State is not consulted about announcements and called useless and sidelined, who in the Government—if anyone—is making health policy?
    Mr. Milburn: I am not sure how the hon. Gentleman's question is relevant to use of the private sector. If we can take advantage of spare private sector capacity in BUPA hospitals, General Healthcare Group hospitals and BMI Healthcare hospitals for the benefit of NHS patients, that is precisely what we will do. At the same time, we will continue to invest extra resources in NHS hospitals. The great divide is between the Labour Government saying that there should be more investment and the hon. Gentleman's party saying that there should be less.

Local Government White Paper
3.31 pm
The Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (Mr. Stephen Byers): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the local government White Paper that we are publishing today.
The White Paper sets out a new vision for local government at the beginning of the 21st century. It seeks to establish a partnership between central and local government, reflecting the critical importance of local authorities, both as a tier of democratic government and as a body with the responsibility to deliver high-quality public services to local people.
Democratically elected councils should be part of the fabric of our communities. The services that they provide have a vital part to play in sustaining and enhancing social and economic prospects and the environmental quality of our towns, cities and countryside. They can have a profound effect on the opportunities and quality of life of the people who live and work there. They are responsible for educating children, providing care for the vulnerable, making places safer and cleaner to live in and providing reliable local transport.
People therefore expect a great deal from their council, and those expectations are rising. To meet them, councils have constantly to seek new and more effective ways to deliver customer-focused services and to lead their communities. The proposals in the White Paper will provide a framework in which all can do so, through the application of the Government's four principles of public service reform.
The first principle is to establish a national framework for the delivery of high-quality services and effective community leadership. For example, people everywhere want high-quality education for their children. Secondly, within that framework, we intend to free up local councils to meet their communities' particular needs, recognising that those will be different in a London borough and, say, in a shire district council area. The third principle is to ensure that councillors and council staff have the skills and money to do their jobs well. Finally, we intend to provide more choice for people in the services that they want to use.
I want to tackle the trend towards excessive central prescription and interference, which dominated central-local relations in the 1980s and 1990s. The White Paper reverses that approach: it marks a pronounced step away from centralisation. It is about increased freedoms, better incentives and a significant reduction in the number of controls, consent requirements, plans and over-elaborate guidance, which have all too often characterised the top-down approach to local government that we saw in recent years.
The White Paper is truly about local government, and it is a fundamental shift away from local administration. It is based on a belief that we do not need to control everything and on a recognition that local authorities are often in the best position to respond to local needs and aspirations.
I hope that this approach will encourage local political and civic leadership. Today's reports into this summer's disturbances in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford show how
714
important it is to have a leadership with a democratic mandate who are prepared to take the often sensitive and always difficult decisions necessary to ensure social cohesion. The White Paper has at its heart community leadership and the democratic renewal of local government.
We want to reduce the bureaucratic burden for all councils and give them the freedom to innovate and focus on driving up standards. We therefore intend to cut the number of plans and strategies that councils are required to produce, to scale back the number of area-based initiatives and to give greater scope to rationalise partnerships. We shall remove many of the present requirements to obtain Government consent before acting. More than 50 will be abolished, and another 30 are under review. We shall also provide councils with wider powers to provide services to others.
With these new freedoms come responsibilities. For the first time, we will produce a clear performance profile for each and every council. The Audit Commission will compile a scorecard and will identify each council as either high performing, striving, coasting or poorly performing. It is our intention that further freedoms over and above those for all councils will be given to high-performing authorities. We will also intervene decisively where councils are failing their local people. Where councils are not collecting their council tax or providing high-quality public services, for example, that will not be acceptable, and we will take the appropriate action.
The Government agree with the Local Government Association that there should be joint ownership of the service priorities for local government. It is therefore our intention that, through negotiation and dialogue, we will agree with local authorities a single list of priorities for local government.
The White Paper also sets out our specific proposals for the reform of local government finance. Last week, I announced to the House that next year will be the final year in which the grant to local authorities will be based on the present standard spending assessment formula. We will be bringing forward our detailed proposals for a new system of grant distribution next year, but I can inform the House that I have decided to abolish the standard spending assessment mechanism and replace it with a system that is easier to understand and better reflects the real cost of services and the needs of the local area.
We also intend to give local authorities greater flexibility to undertake capital investment. We shall scrap the system of credit approvals; instead, authorities will be free to borrow for capital investment without consent, provided they can afford to service the debt. Where a council sees a need, for example, for a new library or leisure centre, it will no longer need central Government permission to go ahead with such a project.
As a consequence of that approach, we shall abolish the "receipts taken into account" mechanism, which has acted as a disincentive for local authorities to dispose of surplus assets. I know that there has been concern about the growth of ring-fenced funding and the way it limits local discretion. We shall therefore restrict ring-fenced funding to areas that are genuine high priorities for the Government, and where we cannot achieve our policy objectives by specifying outcome targets.
The setting of council tax itself is very much a local decision, but we also recognise that the risk of high council tax increases affects local taxpayers. We have

715
already ended pre-announced universal capping. Our long-term goal is to dispense with the reserve capping powers altogether, but we intend to proceed with caution. However, we feel that we should take the first step towards ending capping, so I can announce today that the power to cap will not be used in respect of high-performing authorities. A large number of authorities and hon. Members have raised with me the difficulties created for councils by the council tax benefit subsidy limitation scheme. The principles underlying the scheme are sensible, but in practice its application has proved complex. Some have proposed that we should simplify the scheme or find ways of reducing its impact. Having considered all the options, I have decided to abolish it altogether.
The proposals in the White Paper form part of the Government's agenda for modernisation and reform. For many, they will be challenging; they are meant to be. We proposed the changes not for their own sake, but because local people will benefit from the requirement that all services should be delivered to an acceptable standard; from the fact that the changes that we all want to see—better schools and social care, improved local environments, better transport and other vital local services—will get the priority that they deserve; and from effective community leadership by councils that are in touch with local people and working to meet their aspirations.
The proposals will put the "local" back into local government, allowing local councillors to make a difference to their communities. That is vital if we are to re-engage people and, as a result, achieve an increased turn-out at local elections. The White Paper outlines a new and lasting basis for effective local government. I want central and local government to work together in a constructive partnership to deliver the high-quality public services that local people have the right to expect. In a practical and tangible way, the White Paper shows how we can achieve that and I commend it to the House.
Mrs. Theresa May: I should like to thank the Secretary State for giving me prior sight of the statement. I was interested to hear on the Radio 4 "Today" programme this morning an item saying that the Prime Minister had agreed that policy should always be announced first to Parliament—which was immediately followed by an item announcing the contents of this White Paper.
Strong, independent and effective local government is essential for our democracy and for people's quality of life. We want councils to be better able to understand and meet local needs, deliver high-quality services, and respond to and stand up for local interests. Local government has traditionally been an engine of change in this country; many policy innovations have come up from local government. Today, Conservative councils throughout the country are responding to local needs, providing the public services that people want and finding new ways to deliver effective local services. To the extent that the White Paper heralds a change in the attitude of central Government and a genuine move to freedom for local councils to respond to the needs of their communities, we welcome it. However, to the extent that it merely pays lip service to the ideas of freedom and deregulation, we challenge it.
716
I must tell the Secretary of State that Members of Parliament now know not to take at face value what he tells the House. Following the fiddled figures of the local government settlement last week and our experience with Railtrack, Members know that with this Secretary of State more than any other, they simply cannot believe what he says. The devil is in the detail, and so it will be with the local government White Paper—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. The language that the hon. Lady is using is sailing a bit close to the wind. Perhaps she should remember that we use temperate language in the House.
Mrs. May: I apologise for any intemperate language that I used, Mr. Speaker, and I trust that the rest of my language will be suitably temperate.
We have been promised by the Secretary of State that the White Paper
"sets out a new vision for local government at the beginning of the 21st century."
We have been promised freedom for councils and deregulation, but, sadly, the statement and the White Paper do not deliver on that promise. In one of the early paragraphs in the statement, the Secretary of State says that he wants to
"tackle the trend towards excessive central prescription".
I do not know whether the House noticed that the Secretary of State was not even able to keep it up for the whole of his statement—[Laughter.] I cannot think what hon. Members are laughing at.
Later in the statement, the Secretary of State goes on to say:
"It is therefore our intention that…we will agree…a single list of priorities for local government."
There will not be any excessive central prescription, but the Government will decide the priorities for local government. Local government will not be able to decide those priorities itself.
The Secretary of State says that the White Paper
"marks a pronounced step away from centralisation"
and that it is about increased freedoms, but it is not about increased freedoms for all councils; it is about freedoms for the chosen few. If councils do what the Government tell them, they will be given a little reward, but not all councils will get the opportunity to respond in the way that they believe is right to meet the needs of their local communities.
We have heard such language before. In the education White Paper published earlier this year, the Government promised that where schools were successful,
"we want to free them from those conditions and regulatory requirements which they tell us stand in the way of higher standards and further innovation."
Yet in the Education Bill introduced in the House last week, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) said, we saw a Bill that
"centralises power"
in the hands of the Secretary of State for Education
"more completely than any previous education measure."—[Official Report, 4 December 2001; Vol. 376, c. 201.]
We are likely to see the same in the case of local government reform.

717
If the right hon. Gentleman is serious about freedom for councils, he will want to ensure that his Cabinet colleagues are serious about it too. Will he therefore give the House an undertaking today that the Government will remove those centralising measures from the Education Bill? Will he commit his Cabinet colleagues in all other Departments affecting local government not to introduce any more net regulation for local government?
What confidence can the House have that the rest of the Government are signed up to a freedom agenda for local councils, if we see them doing something very different? From the way the Secretary of State's Cabinet colleagues have been keeping away from him in recent weeks, we can have no confidence that his agenda will be driven through.
The Secretary of State says that the Government
"want to reduce the bureaucratic burden"
and give councils
"the freedom to innovate and focus on driving up standards."
The aim of reducing the bureaucratic burden is interesting. We are to have a joint study report next year on reducing the regulatory burden; then we are to have
"the piloting of a new policy evaluation tool…which will seek to prevent the imposition of unnecessary burdens."
The right hon. Gentleman might like to explain to the House what that means. If it means that the Government will not introduce further regulation, why does he not say so? The best way of ensuring that local councils have freedom from regulation is abstention by politicians from imposing new regulations on councils. Will the Secretary of State tell us what his target is for reducing the number of new regulations to be introduced for local government each year?
Then we come to the clear performance profile for each council—the scorecard—and more mechanistic targets and league tables that will be set by the Government. Most voters, when they vote in local government elections, assume that they are making decisions about the performance of their local council. They do not expect their council to be told what to do by central Government.
That is what is sad about the statement from the Secretary of State. If he is really interested in local democracy and in increasing voter turnout at local government elections, he will want to restore to local government true democracy and true autonomy for all councils, so that when people vote they know that their vote will make a real difference and that they are not merely electing people to be agents of central Government.
We are told that there should be
"joint ownership of the service priorities for local government."
That will lead to unitarisation by creep. Will the Secretary of State confirm to the House that it is Government policy to abolish county councils or to see county councils removed from local government through the imposition of regional assemblies and regional government? With regard to the league tables, will he set out to the House how the performance of each council will be determined? How will it be determined when a council's performance is high in one area of service but not others?
Then came an amazing statement. The Secretary of State announced with a flourish that he had decided to abolish the standard spending assessment mechanism.
718
[Interruption.] Labour Members seem to think that that is some great new announcement, but I must tell them that their Government announced in 1997 that they were going to reform the standard spending assessment. Obviously, they were not listening to the right hon. Gentleman last week, as he made the announcement then as well. Again, all that we have this week is a promise of details in future. When will those details be published and what opportunity will hon. Members have to question him about them?
One of the main ways in which the Government control local authorities is through ring-fenced funding. They claim that they are going to reduce the amount of such funding. What is the Secretary of State's target for the amount of budget that will be ring-fenced in future? It has increased under this Government from just over 4 per cent. in 1997 to 15 per cent. next year. If the right hon. Gentleman is so interested in reducing the proportion of budget that is ring fenced, why did he not make the announcement last week in respect of the local government settlement, and why did he increase the proportion of ring fencing in that settlement?
The Secretary of State has announced four bands or performance levels for local government. He has gone from being the blue-eyed boy striving to do his master's bidding, through being a coasting Minister, to being a poor performer. He had the opportunity today to take radical measures to restore local government and local democracy and to bring forward a programme of decentralisation and deregulation to all councils. Frankly, he has flunked it. He has run scared from that challenge and local democracy will be the poorer for it.
Mr. Byers: Of course, the Conservatives have one fundamental problem with local government: they do not have any time for it at all. That is not only my view. There are Opposition Members who served in local government while a Conservative Government were in power. Indeed, the hon. Lady did so, as did I and some of my Labour colleagues. We know full well that the Conservative Governments of the 1980s and 1990s destroyed local government because they had no time for it. Local councils that were prepared to stand up for jobs and services were denigrated by Conservative Governments. They were attacked by the Conservatives and funding was cut, and when the local electorate continued to return Labour councils, what did the Tories do? They abolished them. That was their response to local democracy.
The White Paper represents a fundamental shift in the way in which central Government relates to local government. The hon. Lady said that the centralising tendencies are still there. She prayed in aid the fact that there is to be a single list of priorities and suggested that it was somehow being imposed from the centre. When she has time to read the White Paper, she will see that that list of priorities will be agreed between Government and the LGA. This proposal, which she criticises as centralising and as not taking into account the views of local government, was suggested by the LGA itself, including Conservative members as well as Labour ones, and Liberal Democrat members as well as independent ones. We can see where the divisions are. The hon. Lady does not speak for Conservatives in local government, because the proposal was theirs and we were prepared to sign up to it—but there we go.

719
The hon. Lady spoke about the bureaucratic burden on local councils. Plans are to be cut by more than a third and we will abolish 50 consents—changes that will make a real difference. We are reviewing the best value regime because we believe that it has become bureaucratic and can be improved. I remind the House that we created best value so that we could abolish compulsory competitive tendering, which was another Conservative party creation. It had nothing to do with quality of service; the cheapest provider and privatisation drove the policy. We removed it and put best value in its place because we believe that the quality of the services count.
The hon. Lady disapproves of the fact that we will have four categories of council. She would prefer it if local electorates could not compare their council with neighbouring councils. It is time for effective quality assurance. It is important to have a balanced scorecard and to examine a range of performance indicators for local councils. However, the Audit Commission, not politicians, will have that responsibility.
The hon. Lady asked about funding for schools. The White Paper makes it clear that schools are in a special position and that we need to safeguard their funding. There is no Government policy to abolish county councils or to impose regional government on parts of the country. That is for local people to decide.
The hon. Lady did not even provide a hint about Conservative party thinking on local government. That is no surprise, because she knows that her policy does not celebrate local government but denigrates it. Conservative Members have no time for local government. Consequently, thousands of Conservative councillors throughout the country have lost their seats.
The White Paper marks a fundamental shift in direction. It celebrates local councils. When Opposition Members have had a chance to digest the proposals, they will realise that they mean a new beginning—a renaissance—for local government. I hope that when they have the opportunity of discussing it with their local government friends, they will be able to support it.
Andrew Bennett: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement and on starting on the long road back from local administration to proper local government. What is the timetable for the proposals? Will there be a bonfire of regulations in the next few weeks and a pause until legislation can be introduced? How soon does my right hon. Friend believe that we can revert to the position whereby local government has the same sort of powers that he enjoyed when he was first elected to a local authority on Tyneside?
Mr. Byers: My hon. Friend makes an important point in not perceiving the White Paper as the one and only act to change the relationship between central Government and local government. It is the beginning of celebrating all that is good in local government, and much is good. However, we also need to ensure that we are prepared to intervene to help people who live in areas that have poorly performing councils.
We can introduce some of the White Paper proposals immediately. They include the reduction in the numbers of plans and consents. We do not need to delay the abolition of the council tax benefit subsidy limitation, which can be introduced from April next year. Other changes require primary legislation, and we shall make them as soon as parliamentary time is available.
720
My hon. Friend made another important point. When I took up my post in June this year, I realised that the constraints on the powers and responsibilities of local councils are dramatic now compared with 1980, when I was first elected as a local councillor. Local councils do not have the opportunity to respond to the needs and demands of local people. I hope that the White Paper will contribute significantly towards changing that. As my hon. Friend said, we are at the start of the process, not the end.
Mr. Don Foster: Taken at face value, the White Paper represents a sea change in the Government's attitude towards local government. That is welcome, if long overdue. I also welcome the clear commitment to change the obscure, out-of-date and unfair funding system for local government. I especially welcome the announcement on the abolition of the council tax benefit subsidy limitation, which was a backdoor capping scheme.
However, given that this is a Government White Paper, will the Secretary of State assure the House that all Ministers support it? In particular, does the Secretary of State for Education and Skills back it? On 4 December, she announced very clearly that she was tightening the strings on local education authorities. She said that the Government were putting even more pressure on local authorities to delegate more money to schools. In addition, the right hon. Lady recently introduced a new Education Bill that will strip more powers away from LEAs.
I welcome the commitment to reduce the number of ring-fenced grants, but the Secretary of State proposes to do so in part by introducing targeted grants, which the White Paper states may have eligibility conditions attached. Is not that simply another form of ring fencing?
I also welcome the long-overdue proposals to reform the capital funding regime. However, many people will be disappointed that the White Paper contains only one sentence about the abolition of the standard spending assessment. That states:
"We shall announce in due course the principles we are applying in conducting this formula grant review."
When will we hear what those principles will be?
More generally, does not the right hon. Gentleman accept that, unless local councils themselves are able to raise more of the money spent locally, the Government will still control local government purse strings? Has the time not come for local government to be able to put its own money where its mouth is?
The Secretary of State was right to speak in his statement about giving further powers to local councils, but I fail to understand why he continues to say that they must earn their additional freedoms. Should not local councils' autonomy be theirs as of right, and not something that they must earn?
Why does not the White Paper mention proportional representation in local government elections? The Secretary of State would be disappointed if I did not ask that question.
Finally, we all know that crude targets have led to the distortion of clinical priorities in the NHS, and that the Department for Education and Skills has acknowledged serious deficiencies in school league tables. Why, then, does the Secretary of State feel that the time is now right to introduce crude league tables for local government?

721
The White Paper contains some welcome measures. However, actions speak louder than words, and we look forward to the actions.
Mr. Byers: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support for certain parts of the White Paper. I can assure him that it is a Government White Paper, and that it is supported by all Ministers, including my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills. When he has had time to look at both the White Paper and the Education Bill, the hon. Gentleman will see that there is no contradiction between them.
The hon. Gentleman asked about ring fencing. The House will know that the Government have just begun our spending review for 2002, the outcome of which will be announced later next year. In that context, the question of ring-fenced grants to local authorities will be one of the matters for consideration. Our objective, during the process of the review, is to have an outcome that will reduce the amount of ring-fenced grants going to local authorities. It would be a mistake to try to move more quickly, as that would have a detrimental impact on services that are provided at present.
The proposals regarding targeted grants and eligibility are not the same as ring fencing. I shall give an example of what would amount to a targeted grant. Recently, my Department and the Department of Health have provided an extra £100 million to support local government initiatives on bed blocking. That money has been targeted on certain authorities facing particular pressures in the sense that those authorities become eligible for those grants.
I welcome what the hon. Member for Bath said with regard to capital. We want to move as quickly as we can, but the changes are so fundamental that they will require primary legislation, and will have to wait until a suitable slot is available.
It is not true that I announced last week that we would abolish the standard spending assessment. What I said was that we would change the formula, although I did not give an indication of the sort of changes that we would introduce. Today, I am able to say that the new formula will not be based on a standard spending assessment. Relatively early in the new year—I cannot give a precise time yet—I would like to find ways of sharing with hon. Members the various options that we are considering in relation to that new formula.
There is an issue about the balance of funding between central and local government, to which the Government are giving close consideration. All authorities will benefit from the deregulation and the cutting back of bureaucracy proposed in the White Paper, but we felt it appropriate that there should be greater freedoms and flexibility for high-performing authorities. I do not think that people will see the four categories that we are proposing as crude league tables. This is a scorecard for individual authorities, and I think that most people will see it that way.
The hon. Gentleman asked why there was no mention in the White Paper of proportional representation for local government elections. It is not in there because it is a daft idea.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: It was pretty good, that last remark. We, on this Bench, have spent the last
722
few minutes assessing the Secretary of State's performance indicators, and they have come out reasonably high for the last month. I think we have been in a Byers market. He gets pretty high marks for taking Railtrack back into public ownership. The same applies to his abandoning the public-private partnership on the London underground—I think that is what he said last week. He was also pretty good to take power from the quangos and hand it back to democratically elected local authorities. Very good! We will measure him on that later, and if he comes up with more money for Derbyshire and Bolsover than Westminster, his rating will be 10 out of 10.
Mr. Byers: In everything we do, we will be fair in ensuring that finances are allocated on a needs-based approach, which may well benefit Bolsover and Derbyshire. Decisions will be taken over the next few days in relation to the single capital pot that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government will announce later this week, and also in relation to the local transport plans, which will be published, I think, on Thursday or Friday. Many authorities will benefit from those proposals.
I hope that, when the House has had the opportunity to look at the White Paper, it will see that what we are trying to do is to get a settled position with regard to central-local government relations. Local government does not want constant chopping and changing, and it is important to establish a system that all political parties feel is, on balance, right. I happen to believe that the White Paper achieves that. It proposes a shift in direction, and recognises that many issues are best dealt with not in Westminster or Whitehall but locally, by people who are elected locally and who know the demands and priorities of local people. I hope that that is reflected in the White Paper.
Michael Fabricant: Will the Secretary of State expand on the issue of performance profiles that he mentioned in his statement? He said that he would classify councils into the categories of
"high performing, striving, coasting and poor performing".
He then said that he would "intervene decisively". What precisely did he mean by that? How will he intervene? Will he intervene both on coasting councils and on poor-performing councils? Will that involve putting them into administration?
Mr. Byers: When the hon. Gentleman has the chance, he will see that, of the four categories, coasting councils are those that are
"not at the top of the performance spectrum and with limited or no proven capacity to improve",
while poor-performing councils are those
"consistently near the bottom of the performance spectrum and with limited or no proven capacity to improve."
In the latter category, there may well be grounds on which intervention is appropriate. However, that intervention would not be unilaterally decided by Ministers. Such action would be taken in the light of recommendations by the Audit Commission, which is the appropriate way to ensure that there is no question of party political manipulation or of certain types of council being attacked because of some political prejudice. It will be the Audit Commission that makes those recommendations.

723
An intervention could take a variety of forms. It could involve a new provider coming in, or it could involve taking a council into administration, then taking it out again, perhaps with a different form of leadership. That is certainly one of the options in the White Paper.
As for coasting authorities, there will be opportunities to try and help them improve their performance—less through intervention than by working with them by means of local agreements. It is a question not of standing aside, but of working co-operatively through local government itself to support authorities with particular difficulties.
Mr. Clive Betts: I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend's commitment to changing the capital control rules. The present rules are nonsense: they are completely out of step with arrangements in the rest of the European Union. Some of us with backgrounds in local government have been fighting for this for many years.
My right hon. Friend did not mention one issue that I regard as a real problem for local government. Until we change the current system whereby 75 per cent. of its funds come from central Government and only 25 per cent. from voters, have we any chance of achieving true local accountability and reinvigorating local democracy—and local government itself? Does my right hon. Friend envisage a solution in the longer term, involving returning more responsibility for raising money to local authorities?
Mr. Byers: My hon. Friend makes an important point about capital controls, which do not fit in with any prudential regime of local authority spending. The present arrangement, in which credit approvals in minute detail are given by central Government is unacceptable: it restricts the innovation that we, certainly, would like to see.
As my hon. Friend says, 75 per cent. of funds currently come from central Government while 25 per cent. is raised locally. It is worth reminding the House how we ended up with that balance. In a rather shoddy, sordid quick fix to escape the difficulties caused by the poll tax, the Conservative Government shifted money into increasing VAT.
The Government are considering the issue seriously. A review of the balance of funding is currently under way to establish whether changes should be made, and what sort of changes would be appropriate. It would be premature to forecast the outcome, but the fact that we have set up a group to look at the matter carefully is an indication of the Government's concern about the balance between central and local contributions.
Sir George Young: If, as the Secretary of State just asserted, his White Paper marks a step away from centralisation and is truly about local government, can he assure us that no services currently provided by county councils will be transferred to more remote regional assemblies?
Mr. Byers: That is not an issue for the White Paper. As the right hon. Gentleman probably knows, a White Paper on the question of regional government will be produced in the new year. No doubt it will consider, among other issues, functions and responsibilities that might apply at regional level. Without giving away too
724
much of its content, let me reassure the right hon. Gentleman by reiterating that there will be no imposition of elected regional government on regions. It will be for local people to vote for it if they want to: this will be a local decision.
Most important, the effectiveness of regional government is not about taking powers from local authorities—county, district or unitary. It must be about Secretaries of State and others in Westminster and Whitehall giving up their powers. It is about devolving down, not taking up powers from any kind of local authority.
Mr. David Clelland: Does my right hon. Friend agree that all that was missing from the comments of the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) was a candid recognition that the need to restore local government is due entirely to the damage done to it by her party during its too many years in office?
I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement, and his commitment to re-empower local authorities. I look forward to further debate on the detail in due course. Does my right hon. Friend accept that there are many examples of good local government throughout the country, not least on Tyneside? The Gateshead and Newcastle authorities have jointly launched a Newcastle-Gateshead initiative, which will work for the revitalisation of the area to the benefit—and with the support—of local people. Following the completion of his duties here, will my right hon. Friend join me downstairs in Terrace Dining Room B, where the two authorities are launching their joint bid to become European capital of culture in 2008?
Mr. Byers: I receive a number of attractive invitations from my hon. Friend, of which that is one, but I cannot say too much about the European capital of culture, as I will be involved in deciding who might be successful. My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have spoken about local councils' limited freedoms, but Members should consider what has been achieved not only on Tyneside, particularly in Gateshead, but by Gateshead and Newcastle working closely together.
The massive improvements along the river have been achieved because we have a good example of local authorities supporting innovation, being adventurous and being ambitious for their communities. What has been achieved on the banks of the Tyne, particularly, if I may say so, in recent times on the south bank and in Gateshead, has made a real difference, and the authorities are to be congratulated on what they have been able to do.
Through the White Paper, I want greater freedoms to be given to good local councils such as Newcastle, Gateshead and many others up and down the country, so that the improvements taking place on Tyneside can be reflected in many other parts of the country.
Mr. Charles Hendry: The Secretary of State is aware that Wealden district council runs the most effective waste recycling scheme in the country, which involves up to 48 per cent. of waste collected in the district. [Interruption.] Labour Members should be aware that the Secretary of State has a personal interest in recycling rubbish, given the way his career is going.

725
Is the Secretary of State aware that that scheme is on hold because of the settlement announced last week? Figures from his Department show that council tax in Wealden will have to rise by 8 per cent. simply to stand still. He says that the burden of a high council tax increase falls on the councils, but is he not aware that his Department's decisions force them to choose between delivering good services and imposing whacking great council tax increases?
Mr. Byers: I do not accept that position, but we are in a consultation period, which will last six weeks or so, and if Wealden council has particular concerns—I know that those exist among some district councils—they can be considered. We shall do precisely that, because the consultation is genuine. This period always throws up difficulties—it was the same under the Conservative Government—but we shall use it genuinely to reflect on the consequences of individual decisions by authorities. There is the possibility of change in the final outcome.
Jim Knight: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement, particularly his long-term commitment to abolish capping. Parish and town councils are not subject to the cap, so I wonder what place they have in his White Paper. On Monday, I was at Swanage town council, which costs the local council tax payer £50 a year, although it has a budget of more than £500,000. It is clearly an important part of local government, yet my right hon. Friend's Department has no jurisdiction over town and parish councils. How do they fit into the statement?
Mr. Byers: When my hon. Friend has the opportunity to study the White Paper, he will see that the role of parish and town councils is genuinely valued, probably for the first time in a Government document. We shall provide about £30,000 for each parish and town council to support democracy and any proposals that they might have to develop best value in their area. That is a good initiative. The document identifies how real improvements and benefits for each tier of authority will flow from the proposals, and no tier, whether it be the county or the parish or town council, has been left out of the proposals.
Angela Watkinson: What assistance can the Secretary of State offer this year to local authorities such as the London borough of Havering, which receive a perversely low settlement under the current system? What help can he offer the council tax payers who suffered the third highest increase in the country last year—12.5 per cent.—and who face a possible increase this year of more than 20 per cent? Why is he not receiving any delegations this year?
Mr. Byers: As for Havering, on any judgment the settlement announced last week is obviously generous. The local council in Havering will have to explain why it is even considering a council tax increase at the suggested level. Given the funding that is being made available and, indeed, the additional funds that may be made available as a result of the abolition of the council tax benefit subsidy limitation scheme—which will benefit a number of local councils—the council needs to consider the level of
726
council tax increase that it should be setting. There is no good reason for that proposed increase, as we have made clear.
On receiving representations, we are adopting the same policies as successive Governments—Conservative as well as Labour.
Mr. Eric Illsley: I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend's statement and the White Paper. My right hon. Friend is aware that, back in 1990 with the introduction of the poll tax, my local authority was one of those that were capped—mainly owing to the standard spending assessments. Can he confirm that a new formula will be in place for next year to do away with the SSAs, which have been the blight of local government since 1990? Can he also give some indication of what will be in the new formula to take into account the needs of local authorities?
Mr. Byers: My hon. Friend has been a powerful advocate for change in the SSA regime. From his experience in his local authority, he knows of the regime's detrimental effect. The mechanism was not designed to reflect the needs of local communities or the degree of service being provided; it had nothing whatever to do with those objectives.
I can confirm that the SSA regime will be abolished—this will be the final year in which it will be used. A new formula will be in place to take effect from April 2003. It will be my intention that the new grant mechanism will reflect service needs and also the level of provision in local authority areas. I hope that, as a result of pressure from authorities such as that of my hon. Friend, there will be real benefits from the changes that might be introduced.
However, I have to give a few words of caution. My worry is that everybody seems to believe that their local authority will be a winner as a result of the formula changes. That will not be the case. The nature of any change of system means that some people will gain while some do not. We shall have to wait to see what the position is for individual authorities, but I am sure that we shall be able to target funds to areas that need them most.
Mr. Andrew Robathan: I doubt that the Secretary of State has yet had an opportunity to read yesterday's Leicester Mercury. If he had done so, he would have read in the political commentary, under the headline "An idea that's best forgotten":
"There may be lots of brilliant reasons for regional government but the public has not heard of any. Perhaps, like that old fondue set from the 1970s, the Government should put regional assemblies back in the cupboard."
Will the Secretary of State clarify the answer that he gave my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir G. Young)? What is the Government's policy on regional assemblies, which were so proudly trumpeted four years ago in a White Paper issued in 1997?
Mr. Byers: I am afraid that I shall have to repeat the comment that I made earlier: there will be a White Paper in the new year on the whole question of elected regional assemblies. I reaffirm the point that there will be no imposition of regional assemblies on any region that does not want them—it will be left for local people to decide.

727
We are giving local people the choice as to whether they want an elected regional assembly. That will be welcomed by many people.
We should not be scared to hold the debate about elected regional assemblies. Certainly, there may be people in the east midlands—including those on the Leicester Mercury—who do not support such assemblies. Good, let us hold the debate. In most parts of the world, there is strong regional government and we should think about whether that is right for England. At least let us hold the debate—we should not be scared of that—and let local people decide. That is how it should be done. There will be a White Paper in the new year, and people can then make up their own minds.
Kali Mountford: I congratulate my hon. Friend on his extraordinary announcement this afternoon. However, it is difficult to engage our constituents in debate about local democracy when they are trying to unpick the funding formula—never a debating point on the doorstep. When my right hon. Friend replaces the SSAs and is looking for areas of genuine need, will he ensure that his assessment is open, transparent and fair, and that it measures poverty according to genuine poverty indicators—unlike some of the nonsense that we experienced during the 18 Tory years? Will he also ensure that it is fluid enough for genuine local democracy to reflect the needs of rural areas where there are isolated pockets of poverty, so that we can really address those needs? Perhaps then people will have some confidence in the outcomes of local government.
Mr. Byers: We all know the way in which the SSA formula was manipulated by Conservative Members when they were in government to reward some of their favourite councils—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] We all know that that is what happened; the figures are there for everyone to see. Conservative Members know that that is the case. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have to ensure that the replacement for the SSA regime is fair, open, just and transparent. We shall do precisely that. Most important, the replacement will need to reflect the demands that are made on a local authority service. If there are high levels of poverty and unemployment, or sparsity issues in rural areas, those matters will have to be taken into account when we consider the new formula that will take effect from April 2003.
I assure the House that we shall consult widely on the replacement formula. Above everything else, we shall ensure that people can understand it, and that they know that the system is not fixed in any way, but responds to the needs of a local authority area and reflects the service level being provided.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: As one of those on the Conservative Benches who spent some time in local government before being elected to this place, I ask the Secretary of State to accept that many Opposition Members appreciate the valuable democratic role played by local government whether it is at the parish, town, district or county level. Local government, to be successful, needs to be local. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that, to meet the criteria that he has rightly set out in his statement today, funding will—as the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) said—have to be fair? Although the Government did not expect
728
It, my own Macclesfield borough council has been disadvantaged because of the formula change. Will the right hon. Gentleman therefore be prepared to meet me and the chief executive of my council to discuss the problem? Funding is clearly critical to local government's success in meeting the Government standards that he has rightly announced today.
Mr. Byers: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that a fair funding regime is the crux of the matter. As I said earlier in relation to Wealden, the settlement raises a particular issue in relation to district councils. We are aware of that issue, and I should be more than happy to receive the information on Macclesfield.
Mr. Winterton: At a meeting?
Mr. Byers: I think that the issue goes wider than just Macclesfield, but—
Mr. Winterton: Indeed, it affects a number of other councils.
Mr. Byers: The point that I am trying to make, if I may do so without being interrupted, is that there is a specific issue to do with Macclesfield. I should of course be more than willing to receive that detailed information. However, there is also a wider issue to do with borough councils which we have to address and we are considering it. I hope that we shall be able to give the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) some reassurance about our intentions on that matter.
David Taylor: Having spent my adult life in local government, I ask the Secretary of State to forgive me for not waving my Order Paper when he finished his statement. Does he acknowledge that, behind the smokescreen of past bonfires of controls, previous Governments were frantically fabricating further controls on local authorities? Is he confident that this is indeed a bright new dawn for local government? Will he consider the position in shire districts—particularly as that position is spelled out in my own early-day motion 351—whose funding regimes, as announced last week, have actually experienced a move backwards? Is he confident that the new scheme will, as the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) questioned, provide more generously? I share the hon. Gentleman's concerns.
Mr. Byers: My hon. Friend makes an important point about the need to be eternally vigilant on controls. We have to do that. Today's announcement will make possible a big improvement by reducing the number of plans by more than a third, reducing the number of consents by more than 50 and reviewing another 30 of the consents. However, there will always be further pressure to add new plans and new regulations. As I said, we have to be vigilant to ensure that we do not give in to those particular pressures.
As I acknowledged, we are aware from the consultation process that an issue has arisen from the settlement. We are considering how we can overcome the difficulties that have been caused to a number of shire districts. I am confident that, as a result of consultation and current discussions, we shall be able to make proposals that will ensure that councils do not go backwards, but benefit from the improvements.
David Taylor: Some have gone backwards.
Mr. Byers: Let us be clear that we are now in consultation. The announcement last week was not the final one but part of the consultation process, and many people are expressing their views. If consultation exposes difficulties, we can reflect on them and have a different outcome if we feel it appropriate to do so. In this case, we are likely to be able to respond positively to the concerns expressed.
Mr. David Heath: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that there will be a warm welcome for the removal of capital controls, but some disappointment that he cannot be more explicit about what he intends to do to replace the standard spending assessment? In that respect, can he give a commitment that the iniquitous area cost adjustment is as dead as the standard spending assessment?
Secondly, will he reduce the gross disparities in funding between areas? For example, the funding per pupil in our schools cannot be based on any sensible assessment at the moment.
Finally, can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the new system, whatever it may be, will reflect the real expenditure within local authorities, and take into account the fact that some, like my own in Somerset, have spent massively above the education and social services SSA year after year because of their belief that those services are important and need adequate funding?
Mr. Byers: It would be foolish to rule out particular aspects of the formula. It is too soon to say whether there will be something like the area cost adjustment. There is a genuine issue about levels of pupil funding. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills is looking carefully at how we can improve the position. There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of funding per pupil that we have put in over recent years, and I have no doubt that she will want to continue that.
In terms of the new formula, it is important to consider the level of service provided by the local authority. I do not like the sort of system that we have at present, under which the standard spending assessment bears no relation to the level of spend on particular services in an individual authority such as Somerset. If we are allocating money, we should do so on the basis of the level of service provided by an individual local authority. I am confident that that will be part of the make-up of the new grant regime.
Mr. David Borrow: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is crucial that the locally raised portion of local government finance is seen to be fair and adequate? Will he look again at whether the business rate should be determined locally rather than nationally? Does he agree that, in the absence of regular revaluations, the council tax will be seen as increasingly unfair and that, because of the multiplier, many people see it as unfair in any case? There are not enough bands to ensure that people in very low-value properties feel that they are paying a fair whack through the council tax. Will my right hon. Friend consider that issue as well?
Mr. Byers: We have no proposals to change the existing business rate arrangements. The White Paper outlines the proposition of business improvement districts,
730
which the House has been informed of before, and goes into some detail about how we want to carry forward that initiative.
We have announced that there will be a revaluation, and the aim is to introduce it with effect from 2007. There is a genuine issue about low-value properties and the extent to which the system is seen as unfair. We indicate in the White Paper that there may be opportunities to look in detail at ways of dealing with that. As my hon. Friend knows, there are a number of properties of lower value in the north-west of England. People believe that it is unfair that there is no distinction between the levels in band A, and we may wish to consider that. I accept my hon. Friend's points; we need to ensure that people regard the council tax as fair, and I know that there are reservations about that.
Miss Julie Kirkbride: May I tell the Secretary of State that today's announcement of the reform of local government financing will be welcome in Worcestershire, so long as he takes into account the statements about fairness, about which we have heard so much this afternoon? He will be aware that last week's local government settlement did not go down well in Worcestershire because, once again, the gap between the funding for children in Worcestershire's schools and the English local authority average increased even further. At the moment, about £250 less is spent on the schooling of children in Worcestershire than the average for all English local authorities, and that gap grew again by £17 in the secondary school sector. The right hon. Gentleman will also be aware that the head teachers forum is proposing to take the Government to the European court on the issue of fairness, so can I take a message back to the forum to the effect that, far from growing wider, the gap will at the very least start to diminish under his new arrangements?
Mr. Byers: The local government settlement announced last week shows that Worcestershire received an increase well above the rate of inflation. Many people would regard that as a reasonable settlement in the circumstances, but, obviously, the head teachers there will need to take whatever steps they feel are appropriate. I hope that, beyond 2003, the new funding formula will be fair, just and transparent and that the head teachers and parents of Worcestershire will be able to see that such a scheme is put in place. I have to tell the hon. Lady that one of the reasons why they have been discriminated against over the years is that the Conservative funding formula in place since 1990 has led to an appalling settlement for Worcestershire. I am pleased that Worcestershire has had an increase well above the rate of inflation this year.
Mr. Neil Turner: I congratulate my right hon. Friend and the whole team on this afternoon's statement, which represents a fundamental shift in the relationship between local and central Government, dismantling the command system that the Conservative party built up, year on year, during its time in office. It does not simply represent a bonfire of regulations; it represents a bonfire of the vanities—the vanity which says that Westminster knows best and that Whitehall can devise one system that fits all. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the White Paper builds on the Local Government Act 2000, under which local authorities are allowed to serve their

731
communities better? I particularly welcome the abolition of the council tax benefit subsidy limitation scheme, which hits poorer communities such as mine disproportionately. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that that scheme will be abolished in 2002–03?
Mr. Byers: The White Paper builds on the steps that were taken in the previous Parliament, during which we considered the constitution of local authorities. In the current White Paper, we consider the level of service and the relationship between local and central Government, and we shall try to put it on a totally new footing which respects the important role that local government can play. I knew that my proposals on the abolition of the council tax benefit subsidy limitation scheme would be welcomed in Wigan, because I attended a meeting there about six weeks ago at which I was told in the clearest possible terms that one of the positive things that we could do in the White Paper was to propose the abolition of the scheme. My hon. Friend strongly supported that proposal. I am delighted that we have been able to deliver on the Wigan recommendations. Yes, I can confirm that that proposal will be introduced with effect from April 2002.
Mr. Mark Francois: The Secretary of State mentioned that there were particular problems and issues relating to shire district councils, and he was certainly correct in that respect. He also prayed the Local Government Association in aid in support of his proposals. Will he therefore explain to the House why the LGA is in serious dispute with his Department about the way in which it expressed the funding increases for shire district councils in his related statement only last week?
Mr. Byers: The position is very clear. I was specifically referring to the joint partnership approach whereby the priorities for local government are identified jointly between central and local government. There is no big dispute about the presentation of the figures in the settlement announced last week. An issue has arisen through the consultation process and, as I have mentioned before, the situation is clear. We are considering the issue
732
in the light of representations that have been made and I hope to be able to respond positively. That is what happens during consultation. There would have been a real issue if we had just announced the final settlement last week, but we did not do that. We said, "Here are the figures, and now we will consult." An issue has arisen in relation to the districts and it is one to which I hope to be able to respond positively.
Roger Casale: I welcome the Secretary of State's statement, especially the reforms that he is introducing to capital funding. Will he confirm that under the changes he has announced local authorities such as the London borough of Merton will be better placed to examine the contribution they can make to the financing of major community projects, such as the search in my constituency for a new home for Wimbledon football club or the need to rebuild the civic hall? That hall had to be sold off when the Tories were in office; Merton had a Tory council and the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), who leads for the Opposition on this issue, was a Tory councillor in Wimbledon Park ward.
Mr. Byers: Most of us know that the approach that the Conservatives took to local councils, as in many other areas, was to sell everything off. I was not aware that the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) was a member of Merton council at the time when it sold off its assets, but that is the nature of Conservatives in local as well as central government. Many of our crucial utilities were similarly sold off. Local councils will now have the scope to support community projects. The new capital freedoms that we intend to give will allow Merton to develop a site, perhaps in partnership with Wimbledon football club, or to make provision for a civic hall. Those flexibilities and freedoms will be available as a result of the changes that we have introduced, which did not exist under the Conservatives in government.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. We must move on.

Points of Order
4.42 pm
Sir Teddy Taylor: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My point of order concerns motion 9 on the Order Paper, which was placed there only this morning. Is it in accordance with the rules of the House for the Government to place on the Order Paper a proposal that we should give them the authority, without debate or discussion, to participate in the drafting of a European arrest warrant that would entitle any other member state to arrest in the UK a citizen of our nation whom it believes to have voiced an opinion contrary to its laws? That is an important and significant undermining of our rights and freedoms, in that it would deprive our Government and courts of the right to object to extradition even if they believed it to be unfair and unreasonable.
Do you consider it is right to place on the Order Paper a proposal of that sort in a way that makes no provision for debate? If by chance it is in order, can you give me an assurance that, if the order is objected to at 10 o'clock tonight, its approval will be delayed until the House has the opportunity to vote on it tomorrow under the deferred voting procedure? I am sorry to take up the time of the House, but it is a very important point.
Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I want to answer the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor), and my answer may assist the right hon. Gentleman. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his point of order. I am satisfied that everything that has been done conforms with the rules relating to the consideration of such documents. I understand that the document was debated in European Standing Committee B yesterday and reported to the House in the usual manner. I can confirm that, if the motion is objected to after 10 o'clock tonight, it could give rise to a deferred Division tomorrow afternoon.
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. In your ruling, you referred to a document that was debated yesterday in European Standing Committee B, which I attended. Unfortunately, that document is not the final text that will be agreed at the European Council meeting to take place shortly. Therefore, the House has not scrutinised the final form of the instrument in question. I believe that that is in breach of Standing Orders and the resolution of the House of 1998 that insists that nothing of a European legislative nature shall be agreed or passed without full scrutiny taking place first. Because we did not have the up-to-date document, such scrutiny did not take place.
Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman raises a new issue. I shall consider it and get back to him and, if necessary, to the House.
Mr. John Wilkinson: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Is it on the same matter?
Mr. Wilkinson: Yes, I serve on the Committee.
734
May I point out that not only was the document that we were discussing out of date—it related to a Council meeting that took place on 31 October—but a French document exists that relates to an interim discussion that took place at the Justice and Home Affairs Council. French is a working language of the Community and, had a translation of that document been produced, it would have been entirely germane to our proceedings. It was not produced, so our proceedings essentially considered a document that was out of date. Will you bear that point in mind?
Mr. Speaker: I will bear that point in mind. I give the same assurance that I gave earlier. I will look into the matter and come back to the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) and, if necessary, to the House.
Norman Baker: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I seek to raise a point of which I have given you prior notice. It relates to the guidance that you helpfully gave the House recently on parliamentary answers. You indicated that Ministers should be as open and as helpful as possible in response to Members' queries.
As an example, I draw your attention to an answer that I received from the Leader of the House yesterday when I asked him if he could list the orders made through the Privy Council under the royal prerogative in each year from 1997 to date. He said that the information could be provided only at disproportionate cost, but an answer to an identical question tabled on 3 March 1993 at column 203 listed all the orders in full detail.
I tabled another question to the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions about flights carrying radioactive material, and that was met with the answer:
"This Department does not hold statistical information of this nature."—[Official Report, 4 December 2001; Vol. 376, c. 286W.]
However, when I tabled an almost identical question in 1997, it elicited facts about how many flights had occurred and about the nature of the radioactive material involved—high, low or intermediate grade.
Sadly, it seems that Ministers are not paying attention to your guidance and are being less helpful. I will, of course, draw the matter to the attention of the Public Administration Committee, but would be grateful if you would issue further advice to Ministers to inform them that they should listen to what you have said and ensure that questions are properly answered.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has answered his question himself. He can go to the Public Administration Committee if he so wishes. He referred to individual questions and replies, but I cannot give a ruling on them. He can pursue the matter and, if he studies my rulings, he will see that I have provided more than one piece of advice on the subject.
Mr. Bernard Jenkin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. There is a great deal of confusion about the possibility of further troop deployments to Afghanistan. This morning's Washington Post reported:
"Britain has agreed to lead an international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan for up to six months".

735
That fact seems to have been confirmed by the Prime Minister who said this afternoon:
"We have indicated in principle a willingness to play a leading role in any UN-mandated force to provide stability in Afghanistan."
Have you, Mr. Speaker, received any indication that the Government are likely to make a statement on that matter in fulfilment of the Prime Minister's assurances that the House would be informed first about changes and developments in Government policy.
Mr. Speaker: I have not received such an indication, but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that news of this nature should come to the House first and I hope that it will.
Michael Fabricant: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. You probably heard about this matter on the "Today" programme this morning. A BBC report says:
"The Government has now"—
I stress now—
"accepted a recommendation from the public administration select committee that ministers should tell Parliament first"
of any policy changes. But you will recall that you have said on numerous occasions that policy should be announced in this place first, and I was in the House when your predecessor Speaker Boothroyd made the same point.
Is it not extraordinary that the Prime Minister is now saying that the Government will carry out that policy, thus implying that that was not previously the case? Even though Ministers frequently said that this place received information first, it did not. Could you, Mr. Speaker, meet the Prime Minister or someone from the Cabinet Office to determine when the policy will be instigated.
Mr. Speaker: If the hon. Gentleman is saying that the Prime Minister failed previously and has now made a statement to say that he has changed his mind, then a sinner has repented. We should all rejoice in that.
Dr. Julian Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will recall that during Health questions, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) asked about the recruitment of HIV-positive people as nurses in the NHS. It was clear from the response of the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Redditch (Jacqui Smith), that she had no idea, which is understandable, that my hon. Friend had received a written answer confirming that that was happening. However, she went on to criticise my hon. Friend for raising what is a serious issue. She suggested that he was stigmatising people with AIDS and that it was unhelpful to raise the issue in the House. If hon. Members are not supposed to raise questions of such a serious nature in the House of Commons with Health Ministers, where are they supposed to raise them.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) was able to raise the matter with the Minister. I allowed him to do so. That will always be the case for hon. Members. The Minister's response is not, however, a matter for me.

Sex Discrimination (Amendment)
4.52 pm
Mr. Robert Walter: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1975; to make provision with respect to discrimination concerning the provision of goods, facilities, services and access to governance by private member clubs; and to continue to permit wholly single-sex clubs and sporting events.
I welcome the opportunity to present another Bill to outlaw discrimination in private members' clubs. When I introduced a similar Bill two years ago, I did not foresee its far-reaching implications. I had personal experience of the injustice of a club that offered membership to both men and women, but which discriminated against women by offering them only inferior membership. They had second-class status with no access to the governance of that club.
My experience was of the Carlton club where I had been part of a campaign to remedy that injustice. On two separate occasions, the club narrowly missed the opportunity to move itself into the modern world. In the summer of 1999, I raised the issue again at the club's annual meeting. I was greeted with derision. After the meeting, otherwise intelligent men told me that I should have been asked to resign on the spot for having the audacity to ask the committee to reconsider its decision. I gave the club six months to re-address the issue, otherwise I could no long remain a member.
As a constituency Member of Parliament, I know that 52 per cent. of my electorate are women. As a Conservative Member of Parliament, whose party has been led by a woman and was home to the first woman MP to sit in the House, I find such discrimination intolerable.
Although others before and since have resigned from the Carlton, on this issue the club would not budge, so in November 1999 I resigned. In December that year, I drew No. 11 in the private Members' ballot. If I could not change the rules of the Carlton club, at least I could try to change the law. I was not in a high enough position to secure a decent Second Reading, but I was close enough to give my Bill an airing, if only for 32 seconds. It was, of course, blocked through the good offices of the Government Whip, but not before the full magnitude of the issue had been revealed.
It was not only the gentlemen's clubs of St. James's that practised this outdated form of discrimination. They were small fry; there were bigger offenders among the working men's clubs of the north, mostly Labour clubs, but some Conservative clubs too. However, their prejudice was generally born out of ignorance. The real villains of the piece were the golf clubs. Here a strict commercial logic prevailed, but one that was based in a bygone age and on a pattern of life that had last existed in the 1950s.
Here the ladies were obliged to play golf on weekdays, before the man of the house was home from the office. The gentlemen could not be expected to give way to the ladies on Saturdays and Sundays: the attitude was, "Goddam it man, any self-respecting gel should be at home cooking lunch or looking after the children on a Saturday morning." Those clubs honestly believed that while men had work to do during the week, women were at leisure or shopping. It was as if no working woman, with a career or business interests, would be the sort of

737
woman they wanted in their club, on their greens or in their bar. Oh, how the world has changed! It appears that when the Sex Discrimination Act was passed in 1975, those arguments could still be justified. A quarter of a century later, they are totally unacceptable.
I am grateful for the support that I received when I last rehearsed these arguments in support of my first Sex Discrimination (Amendment) Bill, and for my wife's sterling work in drafting and in corralling support. I am grateful to the Fawcett Society for its support, and most particularly, to colleagues in all parties and in both Houses for their encouragement. A number of my colleagues have followed me and resigned from the Carlton club, but this issue goes so much further than a parochial spat. It is no longer acceptable that an institution can offer its membership and facilities to men and women and then say that one sex can be admitted only on inferior terms. We would be outraged if they did so on the grounds of race, religion or disability.
I have no argument with single-sex clubs. I see little attraction in them, but they seem to do no one any harm. I acknowledge the physical difference between men and
738
women, and therefore have no problem with sporting events confined to either sex. The purpose of this Bill is to right the omissions of an earlier Act, introduced in another era. It is no longer right nor just for a woman to be offered inferior membership and facilities by any club, merely on the grounds of her gender. It is plainly wrong, offensive and outdated, and I ask the House to permit the Bill to be read a Second time.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Robert Walter, Mr. Anthony Steen, Joan Ruddock, Mr. John Burnett, Mr. David Curry and Mr. Derek Wyatt.

SEX DISCRIMINATION (AMENDMENT)
Mr. Robert Walter accordingly presented a Bill to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1975; to make provision with respect to discrimination concerning the provision of goods, facilities, services and access to governance by private member clubs; and to continue to permit wholly single-sex clubs and sporting events: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 15 March, and to be printed [Bill 66].
ESTIMATES DAY
[1ST ALLOTTED DAY]
ESTIMATES DAY
  VOTE ON ACCOUNT 2002–03

    World Athletics Championships
    [Relevant documents: First Report from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Session 2001–02, on Unpicking the Lock: the World Athletics Championships in the UK, HC 264; and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport: Annual Report 2001, Cm 5114.]
    Motion made, and Question proposed,
    That resources, not exceeding £1,489,011,000, be authorised, on account, for use during the year ending on 31st March 2003, and that a sum, not exceeding £1,488,290,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, for the year ending on 31st March 2003 for expenditure by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.—[Mr. Caborn]
    5 pm
    Mr. Gerald Kaufman: I thank the House for the opportunity to debate so soon after its presentation to the House the first report produced by the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport in this Parliament. I thank all my hon. Friends on the Select Committee, meaning Members on both sides of the House who are Committee members, for their work on the report and the fact that it was unanimous, as has been the case with almost all our reports. I should like to take the opportunity to pay tribute to a former Select Committee member, David Faber, the former Member for Westbury, whom we miss on the Committee and who contributed remarkable knowledge and expertise, particularly to our consideration of the subject that we are debating this afternoon.
    The report, "Unpicking the Lock: the World Athletics Championships in the UK", is the fourth in a series of reports published by the Select Committee in the past three years. Our first report was published in May 1999; the second in March 2000; the third in March 2001; and the most recent, which we are looking at this afternoon, was published last month. As we said at the start of the report, it threads its way through a "sorry and convoluted" saga and assigns responsibility for what it calls a "mess". I wish to make it clear that both the main parties in the House of Commons have responsibility for that. Under the previous Government, the English Sports Council which, for a reason that escapes me, now calls itself Sport England, launched a competition and assigned £120,000 in lottery money, with which we deal in detail in our report.
    The process and the mistakes began under the previous Government and, to the Committee's regret, continued under the present Government. We assign responsibility for the mistakes to a number of participants in the saga, including the Department for Culture, Media and Sport which, in the Committee's view, involved itself beyond its locus and vires in decisions, first, on the national stadium, then in attempted decisions on an athletics stadium that the Government were never going to finance and for the building of which they had no responsibility. The Department then involved itself in a compensation deal—the repayment of £20 million of the £120 million
    740
    advanced under the lottery funding agreement—which was in no way the Government's business, then championed a new stadium at Picketts Lock, without saying where the funding would come from or how the infrastructure would be provided.
    Our report assigns responsibility to Sport England, which handed out £120 million to the Football Association for a stadium which, purportedly, was to be built at Wembley. However, planning permission for that stadium had not even been sought. Today, I have received a 40-page document from a well known member of the dramatis personae in these events, Mr. Ken Bates. He has provided me with a document entitled "Wembley National Stadium: A Project Overview 1998-July 2001", which was compiled by Mr. Bob Stubbs, the former chief executive of Wembley National Stadium Ltd.
    I shall not quote from the document at length, as I do not believe that it would be fair to do so. Mr. Bates makes a robust case, but it is conceivable, on past experience, that that case might be challenged by others. However, the document is important, and what is clear from it and, I believe, cannot be challenged is what Mr. Bates or Mr. Stubbs states at the beginning, under the heading "Project Genesis":
    "The project arose directly from the establishment of the National Lottery."
    Sport England was therefore the organisation primarily responsible for the initiation of the national stadium project.
    On page 11 of the document, Mr. Bates or Mr. Stubbs states:
    "Up to July 2001 progress had not been in line with the conditions of the lottery funding agreement. Sport England had, on a regular basis, varied the agreed timetable to ensure default did not occur.
    It is entirely at Sport England's discretion whether an extension of time should be granted. Should an extension not be granted, default would occur and if the default was not rectified, the only real remedy available to Sport England would be to seek recovery of the grant, leading to the project aborting."
    Sport England therefore has considerable responsibility in the matter, which I do not believe it would deny, although it might well argue about the nature of its responsibility. Indeed, I received a two-page letter—private and confidential—from Mr. Trevor Brooking which, as might have been expected, absolved Sport England of all culpability in the episode.
    It is indisputable that after the money had been assigned to Wembley stadium, Sport England watched supinely as the then Secretary of State came to a deal with the Football Association for the repayment of £20 million of the lottery money—a deal which violated the lottery funding agreement. The details of the lottery funding agreement are examined in our report and in the new document provided by Mr. Bates. Sport England made no public protest of any kind and no objection to the deal, which invaded its own responsibilities. It watched the FA flout the deal and the lottery funding agreement, and did nothing whatever about it.
    Although the report that we have published is, in general, supportive of the actions of the current Secretary of State, it must be said that with regard to the refunding of the £20 million, Mr. Patrick Carter is apparently involved in negotiations, although he has no legal vires to be involved in the matter, either.
    The Football Association took the £120 million. It made no positive move to build the stadium, which had become its responsibility. It did not tell the Secretary of

    741
    State that building the stadium or cancelling the stadium was its responsibility in consequence of the lottery funding agreement, and was not within the remit of the Secretary of State. However, what the FA has done and shows every sign of continuing to do is to hold on to the £120 million lottery grant, as if it were stuck to it like flypaper.
    Buzzing around the mess like flies was a host of bodies, hardly any of which had any money, power or responsibility, but all of which demanded to be listened to and, heaven help us, were listened to. That added to the complications and contributed to what I do not like to call, but what can only be called, the fiasco that we are examining this afternoon. In addition to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Sport England, the FA and its offshoot, Wembley National Stadium Ltd., we know that the British Olympic Association, UK Athletics, Ellerbe Becket architects, UK Sport, the Lee Valley regional park authority, the council of the London borough of Enfield, the Government Office for London, the Greater London Authority, Transport for London, London 2005 and the Wembley taskforce were involved in this series of bizarre events. Uncle Tom Cobbleigh may have been absent, but Fred Karno was definitely on parade.
    The process of building the stadium—or, as it turns out, the process of not building it—if it can be dignified with the epithet "process", was aimed at providing either one stadium that would house football and athletics, or two stadiums, one for football and the other for athletics. The objective for one or both was to stage the world cup and the world athletics championships of 2005, and potentially the Olympic games if a bid was made. However, we have ended up with no stadium, rather than one or perhaps two, no world cup and no world athletics championships in this country. To date, according to criteria advanced by the British Olympic Association, from which I received a visit only a few days ago, there is no basis for making an Olympic bid. Meanwhile, the city of Paris has a stadium that staged the 1998 world cup final and was the venue for the 1999 rugby union world cup. It will also be the venue for the 2003 world athletics championships and is suitable for staging the Olympic games.
    With regard to our not hosting the world athletics championships, I should mention a statement published today in the Financial Times. It was made by Lamine Diack, president of the International Association of Athletics Federations. The accuracy of the statement may be challenged, but whether it is accurate or not, it displays the view of that association on the miasma with which it was faced in considering the allocation of the games. Mr. Diack said that it was faced with the prospect of hosting the world championships
    "in Wembley in 2001, then Wembley in 2003 and 2005, then Twickenham or Crystal Palace in 2005, then Pickett's Lock in 2005 and finally Sheffield in 2005."
    What unites all those venues is that the world athletics championships are to be held in none of them. Our international reputation cannot have prospered as a result of that confusion.
    Michael Fabricant: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the situation is even worse than that? Wembley stadium was rejected because the
    742
    sightlines were thought inappropriate for Olympic athletics events. Is he aware, however, that the very same platform that was to be provided for Wembley stadium is now being purchased in the United States, and that the International Olympic Committee has said that the sightlines are ideal and that there will be no bar on holding any Olympic event in the American stadiums?
    Mr. Kaufman: I am only too aware of what the hon. Gentleman says. The world-class expert on sightlines is Mr. David Faber, who enlightened the Culture, Media and Sport Committee a great deal during our discussions.
    The Select Committee has the right to hold firm views on these matters. There is no point in being modest about the fact that we have been right on the main issues from the beginning. On the purported athletics stadium at Picketts Lock, the Committee gave detailed reasons against the project on the basis of six challenges, all of which were vindicated by Patrick Carter's report and have been accepted by the current Secretary of State. If we had been heeded, between our two reports, 15 months would not have been wasted on consideration of a venue to which only one person doggedly adheres today. All the reasons that we advanced have since been accepted as valid and accurate. As I said, they have been fully accepted by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.
    On Wembley stadium, as the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) indicated, we recommended a convertible stadium capable of housing both football and athletics. That recommendation in our report was rejected instantly by the then Secretary of State, but is now recognised as an appropriate solution by all knowledgeable authorities.
    Mr. Andrew Love: Given that hosting athletics at Wembley has been rejected not once, but twice, by Wembley National Stadium Ltd., and if we agree with reports published in The Observer and other newspapers at the weekend stating that if the stadium now goes ahead, it is unlikely to include athletics, why do the Committee and its Chairman believe that athletics will occur there in future?
    Mr. Kaufman: To say that I had confidence about anything that is related to this issue would be to exaggerate my strength of character. None the less, it must be accepted that many of the organisations that are now involved in the matter believe that a convertible Wembley is the solution. What must be said—my hon. Friend is certainly right on this point—is that there is no possibility whatever of it being available for the 2005 world athletics championships. Nobody would argue with that. As I said, the Committee recommended a convertible Wembley stadium and the proposal was rejected instantly by the then Secretary of State. It is now accepted by knowledgeable authorities. If we had been heeded and the project had proceeded, London would now be all set to host the 2005 world athletics championships, which have instead been lost to this country.
    It would be easy but futile for the Committee simply to play the game of saying, "I told you so." All of us, in the Committee, the House and sporting organisations, must draw what lessons we can from this debacle. Lesson one is for the FA. It is to say, "Don't be greedy, but be efficient. If you want a stadium, raise the money and get planning permission. Don't hold out the begging bowl for

    743
    public money; get on and build it. If politicians try to interfere, tell them to keep their prying noses out and their meddling hands off." If that sounds phantasmagoric, I advise hon. Members to look at today's newspapers and consider what happened yesterday with regard to the new Arsenal stadium. Arsenal decided that it wanted to build the stadium and found ways of raising money. It did not ask for a penny of public or lottery money. It got planning permission yesterday and will now go ahead with a project that will not only result in a shining new stadium, but be a factor in urban regeneration in the area. That is a model of what can be done and what the FA could have done if it had been so minded.
    The second lesson is for Sport England. I say to that body, "The lottery money that you dispense is not your pocket money to spend on impulse purchases. It is a public trust, which you have violated by being, in the words of our report, 'slack and negligent', and by what we describe in restrained language as a 'cavalier and egregious use of public funds'."
    Last week, in the Select Committee's current inquiry into swimming, Sport England stated that it had devoted £220 million of lottery funding to swimming throughout England in the five years from 1997 to September 2001. Swimming faces a funding crisis. Sport England provided it with an average of £45 million a year, compared with £120 million for a Wembley stadium, which is still on the drawing board according to the most optimistic assessment. I stress that point to my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr. Love).
    Sport England should have acted long ago to prise the money from the rich Football Association's greedy fingers. If the FA makes a new decision to build a Wembley stadium, it should have to undergo the whole process of bidding for lottery money again because the project would not be the same as that for which it received the money.
    Lesson three is for the Government. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is present. However, I tell her that if she wants to build a national stadium, she should draw up the plans, determine its uses, decide on the site, obtain the money and get on with it. If she does not intend to do all that, I tell her with the utmost courtesy to keep out and shut up; it is none of her business. Governments of both parties have poor records as building contractors, from the British Library, which took 30 years to build, to the subject of today's debate. I should be happy if my hon. Friends on the Front Bench got on with work on the national health service, education and law and order and left building to contractors and project managers.
    In the Select Committee's view, my right hon. Friend has made the right hands-off decisions so far. She has disentangled herself from the tar baby that constitutes the project. I hope that it is not true, but I read in the press that she may get involved in a new process and even launch a competition. She knows the regard in which I hold her, and I tell her that she would be crazy to do that. Having got out of one mess, it would be a serious error to get into another.
    Lesson four is for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. This country has come to grief over a series of events. They include the millennium dome, for which both parties bear responsibility; the world cup bid; and the world athletics championships bid. There has never
    744
    been a co-ordinated policy under Governments of either party, and there is no such policy on the Olympics. The only exception is the Commonwealth games because my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister acted on the recommendation of the Select Committee report in May 1999 to appoint a Minister to co-ordinate and progress them. Consequently, a structure exists that can make the Commonwealth games a success.
    The May 1999 report recommended the same approach, including appointing a Minister of events for Wembley. However, we were ignored. We made the recommendation again in the report that we published in March 2000 on Wembley national stadium. Again, we were ignored, and the shambles that we are considering today ensued.
    The new report also recommends that the Prime Minister appoint an events Minister. I hope that, in view of the series of sagas, he will listen and act. Otherwise, it would be sensible to abandon pretensions to staging complex events in this country. If we do not have the structure, we should not make the effort.
    Miss Julie Kirkbride: My right hon. Friend and Chairman of the Select Committee has been a little coy in his remarks so far. I recall that the Select Committee and the report was somewhat more critical of the former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport over the decision to pull the rug from under a Wembley stadium that would have included athletics. If that fundamental decision had not been made, we would not be worried about £120 million and the refund, or the lack of venue for the world athletics championships. Perhaps my right hon. Friend will tell hon. Members a little more of what we said about that.
    Mr. Kaufman: My hon. Friend is well aware of the report's contents because she participated in drafting it and the personal references that it makes. Perhaps if she catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, she can amplify her comments and quote from the report more fully. However, I am conscious that our time is limited and I do not want to take up too much of that of other hon. Members, who I am sure have useful and interesting comments to make.
    Last week, representatives of international swimming, such as Anita Lonsborough, Sharon Davies and Duncan Goodhew, attended the Select Committee meeting. We have also met many other athletes during our inquiries. This country has the talent and our sports people have the commitment to make it an illustrious world centre. If the episode that the report considers means that a salutary lesson has been learned, it may not have been in vain.
    5.26 pm
    Nick Harvey: I welcome the opportunity to debate such important matters this afternoon and to consider the Select Committee's excellent report, which was described in characteristic style by the Chairman.
    The background to the debate is the failure of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to provide a long-term strategy for sport in this country. The Government's withdrawal of Picketts Lock as the venue for the world athletics championships should not have come as a surprise to anyone who has studied the Department's performance in recent years. It merely represents another missed opportunity for British sport.

    745
    The first aspect to note about the handling of the bid for the world athletics championships is the damage that it has done, not only to the Government and their Ministers, past and present, but to this country's sporting future. The United Kingdom's failure to recognise sport and make it an integral part of the country's culture, health and social fabric is laying waste all sorts of opportunities to promote sport and fitness in this country.
    Our failure to provide a venue in London, thereby sacrificing the 2005 championships, was not only embarrassing for Ministers but harmful to many others. It has almost certainly jeopardised any bids that this country makes in the foreseeable future. The world athletics championships are the third biggest sporting event in the world. London would have hosted 3,000 athletes and officials, and the event would have been broadcast across the world to an audience of millions. We should make no mistake: London is more than capable of staging such an event, given the right planning and preparation. Manchester is successfully preparing for the Commonwealth games next year. The relatively small Canadian city of Edmonton held the last world athletics championships, and Kuala Lumpur hosted the last Commonwealth games.
    London is larger and more populous than both Manchester and Edmonton, and more economically successful than Kuala Lumpur when it held the Commonwealth games. It can arguably harness a bigger and more enthusiastic sporting audience than any of those cities. If London's bid had been coherent and well thought through, I have no doubt that it could have been successful.
    However, if we are now an international laughing stock, judged incapable of holding the world athletics championships—the third biggest event—we have surely lost any chance of hosting the Olympics or football's world cup finals. The Department's actions have not only injured the Department itself but flattened any hopes that the British Olympic Association or the Football Association might have had of hosting either tournament.
    The withdrawal of Picketts Lock has also been damaging to the country's athletes. A home venue gives athletes a competitive advantage, and the world athletics championships would have brought significant financial benefits to our sports people. However, those unique sponsorship and training opportunities have been denied to them by inept organisation and, if the report is to be believed, by deals struck in smoky kitchens.
    The most fundamental problem is that the loss of the championships has robbed the country of the chance to witness something spectacular and inspirational, and robbed us too of a generation of sporting heroes. School playing fields continue to be sold off, and the two-hour mandatory minimum for school physical education is missed in three age groups out of four. Our children lead more sedentary lives than ever before, yet the opportunity has been missed to present sport in its best light—as competitive and healthy and as an inspiration.
    The failure to stage an event of such importance is indicative of a greater failure to provide an overarching sports strategy for the country as a whole. On the one hand, Ministers hope that this country will be able to support Olympic and football world cup bids. On the other
    746
    hand, however, they do not believe it to be Government's responsibility to co-ordinate, back or underwrite them. As recently as last week, an answer from the Minister for Sport indicated that the responsibility for such matters resided with the governing bodies of the individual sports.
    The message is therefore divided: we want the events, but it is down to individual cities, regions or sports bodies to take responsibility for organising them. Surely the lesson to be learned from this fiasco is that in the future it must be central Government's responsibility to take matters by the scruff of the neck. They should decide whether serious bids are to be made and, if so, to see them through.
    We have been told that the money saved from the abortive bid—it is not really money saved at all, but money lost and time wasted—will be ploughed back into athletics. Yet we are also told that the demands on Sport England must now be met from an ever-decreasing pot of resources. Our ambitions for the future must be matched with greater resources, and they will probably have to come from Government.
    A decision must also be made about our priorities. Do we want high-profile world events, or should we concentrate on grass roots development? With Sport England's pot declining from £325 million a couple of years ago to a projected £180 million in 2003, we cannot, at the current rate of progress, attempt to do both.
    The Minister for Sport described last week how disappointed he was that the IAAF had rejected the offer to hold the championships in Sheffield, which he said would have provided an outstanding venue for the 2005 championships. However, that invites the following question: if Sheffield was such an ideal location, why did the Department throw its weight behind an expensive but seemingly superfluous facility in London? Either Sheffield was adequate as a venue, or Picketts Lock would have been another expensive white elephant. It would have followed other white elephants such as the millennium dome, which was also the Department's responsibility, so perhaps the Department should consider establishing a zoo.
    The flawed bid to hold the championships at Picketts Lock was, we are told, likely to have cost between £90 million and £120 million. That was before Carter reported on problems with transport, location and accommodation.
    The hastily prepared bid to hold the championships at Sheffield—where many of the facilities already exist, and where the greatest cost would have been increasing seating capacity to 43,000, compared to 60,000 at Edmonton—would have cost about £25 million. In either case, there is no doubt that such events cannot be solely supported or underwritten by Sport England.
    The chairman of Sport England, Trevor Brooking, said last week that he saw no way this country could ever bid for an Olympics or a world cup without the Government being involved directly and financially. I agree that there is no way that the most recent Olympics in Sydney could have passed off so successfully without the backing of Australia's central Government.
    Mr. Derek Wyatt: The stadium company is now bankrupt.
    Nick Harvey: It is neither fair nor sensible that individual cities or regions—or individual sports

    747
    governing bodies—should bear the sole and exclusive financial risks of hosting one of the three big multi-venue events. As the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt) noted from a sedentary position, the high cost of the Olympics has affected the profitability of the stadium company, which is now bankrupt. However, no gains could have been made if the Australian Government had not been willing to accept the risk and the liability throughout the duration of the games. They will have to oversee the legacy, which—for now—is a bankrupt stadium.
    It is true that some of the benefits that such tournaments bring—improved infrastructure and a wider range of facilities—accrue solely to the city that hosts the event, but there are many other aspects of holding big international events that benefit the profile and economy of the entire country. That is why it is right for central Government to adopt a hands-on approach and take responsibility for such ventures. However, what this Government have done is to make the Football Association a gift of £120 million, instead of investing the money in a national home for athletics.
    That sum has gone to the country's richest sport, which reaps huge rewards and profits from television receipts. Moreover, if the report is to be believed, the terms of the deal were altered fundamentally at a private meeting in the house of the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), at which no appropriate civil servant was present.
    Mr. Chris Smith: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, as he has referred directly and inaccurately to me. A meeting did indeed take place between Mr. Ken Bates and me. A civil servant was present and took a full minute of the meeting. The record rests in the Department.
    Nick Harvey: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that clarification. I do not know whether he is specifically contradicting the report's account of where the meeting took place, but I am grateful to him for commenting.
    There seems to have been no viable, credible or coherent business plan in place to support the Wembley project. At the very least, we can say that Sport England should have made that a precondition for agreeing to any grant. We are not yet privy to the Carter report on Wembley, which needs to be placed in the public domain before we can arrive at absolute conclusions about this saga.
    In addition, it is clear that no further money has been invested in athletics, either at its grass roots or its apex; so football has £120 million of lottery players' money gathering interest in its coffers. That money was given on the basis of fulfilling criteria that were initially flawed, later changed and recently removed altogether.
    Mr. Chris Bryant: I wish to clarify one point. The £120 million is not sitting in a bank account somewhere. The scandal is that the money has been used to buy the land, which has just been left unused. That is one of the important points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
    Nick Harvey: The hon. Gentleman is right, and that is shameful.
    748
    The decision to remove athletics from Wembley was, in my view, disastrous and should never have been agreed. That flawed decision set in train the sequence of events that culminated in the sad, embarrassing but probably quite correct decision to pull the plug on Picketts Lock. While Carter's report remains in the hands of his team and the FA, this House has no idea how the £120 million of good causes cash is being accounted for at the moment.
    Michael Fabricant: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has had the chance to read the transcript of the evidence given to the Select Committee, but is he aware of what the Secretary of State—who is in her place at present—told the Committee? She said that although she
    "would not hold the IAAF to this",
    her feeling was that
    "the possibility of a non-London option was not one on which the door was firmly closed."
    In other words, as late as 23 October, the Government still believed that the international athletics games would go to the Don Valley.
    Nick Harvey: Had the Government had some disastrous reason to go to the IAAF in the months preceding a tournament that was supposed to have been held in London and said that, owing to an explosion or some unforeseen circumstance, they had to offer another city in London's stead, they could reasonably have expected a sympathetic hearing. However, it was over-optimistic in the extreme of them to make such an offer four years in advance of the tournament. One of the other lessons worth reflecting on is that the competition to hold the games was never exactly hot. That should have told the Government something.
    As the saga has gone on, however, the goalposts have not only been moved but have been taken away along with the ball and the teams. If the FA is going to keep the £120 million of lottery money, it should also be bound to meet the terms on which the grant was originally based. If, on the other hand, the plans do not include provision for athletics—as seems to be the case—at the very least the £20 million that it seems to have been agreed should be returned must now be returned.
    However, I suspect from the lack of clear answers to written parliamentary questions of late, and from looking at the weekend's press, that we can anticipate a Wembley rebuild being completed—if we are to believe what we read—by the summer of 2005, in time to hold either the FA charity shield, which normally takes place in early August, or even an England friendly game shortly before that. In other words, that would be only a month or so after the world athletics championships would have taken place in London.
    The lesson that we have to draw from that is that if the Government had not spent three years dithering over what to do, who to get to do it, and how to change it all once it had been agreed, we could have had a stadium fit for athletics, football and rugby ready within the required time frame, as well as a lasting legacy for all those sports.
    Andy Burnham: A moment ago, the hon. Gentleman said that the decision to remove athletics from the Wembley proposal was wrong. Is he suggesting,

    749
    therefore, that the FA would have found it easier to raise the money through the City for a stadium combining athletics and football?
    Nick Harvey: It is not possible to build a world-class athletics stadium that would be economically viable in its own right, because it simply would not generate sufficient gate receipts. The perfectly sensible proposal implicit in the original plan was that the FA would raise the bulk of the money for the football stadium, and that public money would be in place to graft athletics on to the project, which would be given its viability principally by having a regular football crowd in, as that is the only way to provide a sustainable revenue at the gate.
    That was a perfectly viable option. Even now, it is estimated that the £14 million cost of putting in place an athletics platform and the £6 million for a warm-up track would not exceed the £20 million that was set aside to bring athletics into the equation. Now, the country has lost the world athletics championships, so we have the chance to draw breath and sort this out once and for all.
    It is ironic that delay upon delay over the past three years has got us into the dreadful situation in which we now find ourselves. We have missed the boat for the 2005 championships, yet everyone suddenly wants to do everything in a great rush, even though there is no longer any time pressure on us.
    Mr. Chris Smith: Will the hon. Gentleman tell us precisely where this £6 million warm-up facility at Wembley was going to be?
    Nick Harvey: The proposition to buy the entire Wembley site would probably, originally, have made such a project feasible, although clearly not as a long-term fixture or fitting. It would, however, have been possible to create such a facility in reasonable proximity to the stadium as a one-off.
    The questions that we must now address are whether the terms of the initial grant to the FA have been met, whether they can be met and, if not, whether that money should be given back and, as has been suggested, the issue of support from Sport England should be revisited from scratch. This country needs an economically viable facility for holding world-class athletics meetings that could be part of a future world athletics championships or Olympic bid. Even with full backing from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and underwriting from central Government, it is proving unlikely that two separate facilities could be built. It will be too late to consider plans for an integrated venue if we go ahead now with the football-only solution. If we do that, we shall miss the opportunity to pursue the possibility of a venue for both sports.
    Since Carter has considered other venues as possibilities for siting a football stadium, he would almost certainly be the best placed person to consider the merits of those venues as sites for multi-purpose stadiums. The FA still has at least a £20 million stake in providing a multi-purpose venue—a not insubstantial sum, which would reduce the cost to itself and any other financiers.
    Without a coherent plan for the provision of all sports, we will simply be talking about stadiums this time next year, at a time when the Government and their agencies should be getting on and building one.
    5.45 pm
    Mr. Chris Smith: Perhaps it is worth starting by reminding ourselves why it is beneficial to the country to host a world athletics championship. In my view, it is beneficial in two ways. One is in relation to the international sporting profile that can come from such a major event. After the Olympic games and the football world cup, the world athletics championship is probably the third most important international sporting event. More than that, hosting a championship is important for the impact that it has on the thousands of young people who see an event taking place in their country and are inspired to take part in sport, and to become sportsmen and sportswomen themselves. That double effect of international sporting importance and of encouragement to grass-roots sport is an extremely important reason why it was right to seek to host the world athletics championship in the first place.
    I regret the decision taken by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport not to proceed with the Picketts Lock scheme. I entirely respect the decision that she took, and I know that two issues in particular weighed in her mind. However, developments subsequent to the general election changed the picture on both those issues to a certain extent.
    One was the transport link, relating to the enhancement of the rail link on the Stansted line from Liverpool Street to Picketts Lock, and to the proposed new station immediately beside the stadium. The second issue related to the Middlesex university campus accommodation that had been intended to form the athletes' accommodation. On both those issues, delays appeared to set in. My view was that those problems could have been solved. None the less, the decision was taken, and I respect that fact.
    Let us remind ourselves what we could have gained if Picketts Lock had gone ahead. It would have been not only a stadium dedicated to athletics for the world championships, but a continuing facility for future athletics use, linked directly to a high-class indoor performance centre and a practice throwing field and track, all side by side and able to provide a long-term legacy for athletics, not only at championship level but for community and school use across the capital and the south-east.
    Michael Fabricant: The right hon. Gentleman will have read this report. Before Picketts Lock was being considered, we were, of course, considering Wembley stadium. Will he tell us honestly, with the benefit of hindsight—although no one can possess that gift—whether he regrets moving the contest from Wembley stadium to Picketts Lock?
    Mr. Smith: That was not the precise nature of my decision at the time. I do not regret the decision that I took, and I shall enlighten the hon. Gentleman as to why in a moment.
    The long-term legacy, particularly for athletics, from the Picketts Lock stadium would have been a permanent facility for the future—something for which athletes such as Denise Lewis have argued passionately.
    The Select Committee report drew attention to a number of issues and difficulties. I have responded to some of its colourful specifics in public on a number of occasions, but it may be worth putting one or two points on the record.

    751
    The Committee's Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), described the range of organisations involved in any stadium project and, in particular, in the Wembley and Picketts Lock proposals—somewhat unflatteringly, I thought—as "Fred Karno's army". What such a designation ignores is the plain and simple fact that any large project of this kind inevitably involves a large range of organisations. It would have been ridiculous to try to create a stadium in London without involving, for instance, the Government Office for London, the Mayor and the London borough concerned—together with the Lee Valley authority, which happened to own the land and to be in the driving seat. My right hon. Friend's designation was, perhaps, a trifle unfair on organisations that were rightly involved.
    The Select Committee report, and Members who have spoken today, suggest that the decision to recommend the removal of athletics from the original Wembley scheme—the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) raised this point in particular—was made because of the difficulty involving sightlines, and advice from, in particular, the British Olympic Association about the potential unsuitability of Wembley stadium for hosting the Olympic games. That was a consideration, but it was not the main consideration.
    The decision was not made by the Secretary of State; it was urged on Wembley National Stadium Ltd., the Football Association and Sport England. It was made for two principal reasons. The first was based on practicality and value for money. It was proposed that, for the hosting of the world athletics championships, a concrete platform should be constructed in the middle of Wembley stadium. Construction would cost not £14 million but some £20 million, and would take six months. The platform would be used for a 10-day championship, and taking it down again would take another six months. There would be no permanent legacy for athletics, and in the meantime Wembley stadium would be unusable for 12 months. It was on grounds of practicality and value for money that I first had serious doubts about whether this was a sensible way of proceeding.
    The second reason was the absence of warm-up facilities. I challenged the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) on that. The land that had been purchased, with the stadium on it, did not include land for such facilities. Any international athletics event must offer a warm-up facility as near as possible to the main stadium
    Mr. Wyatt: It is scandalous that the land did not include a warm-up track, and we know that an earlier Government were involved; but does not the fact that the chief executive of Sport England made such a decision say a lot about what that organisation knows about international sport?
    Mr. Smith: My hon. Friend makes his own point strongly. I was faced with a decision based on the facts as they confronted me then. The creation of a warm-up facility adjacent to the stadium would have meant the identification of land that was not then owned by Wembley stadium or the Football Association. It would almost certainly have required compulsory purchase procedures involving a number of owners, and it would have been extremely expensive.
    752
    The two major problems that we encountered were the lack of practicality of the concrete-platform solution, and the lack of any easy way of identifying a warm-up facility. In the circumstances, I thought it sensible to look at other possibilities for the hosting of athletics championships.
    Mr. Love: With the benefit of hindsight, and given what he has already said about the reasons for not choosing Wembley, does my right hon. Friend think that any subsequent event would have been likely to change his mind?
    Mr. Smith: Almost certainly not. I was coming on to my third point, which is that at the heart of any major stadium project of this kind lies the difficulty of marrying a stadium for football with a stadium for athletics. A really good football stadium requires seating close to the pitch. It requires the best possible atmosphere, with spectators crowded in on the action. In the best football grounds, that is precisely what happens. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton mentioned last night's decision by my local authority about the Arsenal stadium scheme. That desired atmosphere is precisely what Arsenal's project achieved.
    Michael Fabricant: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Smith: Not for the moment. This is an important point.
    An athletics stadium, however, needs spectators to be further from the ground. A wider "footprint" is also needed, so that there can be a running track and space in the middle for throwing events, and spectators need to be placed in a rather different way so that at all stages they can see not just the athletes' heads but their feet as they go round the tracks.
    It is possible to aim for a compromise. The Stade de France in Paris probably represents the best international attempt to achieve such a compromise: it has retractable seating at the lower levels. It is still not perfect for either sport, because the spectators are still some distance from a football game, while retracting the seating for athletics events produces a cliff around the athletics track before the seating starts. It is none the less a workable compromise. That was not on offer at Wembley: what was on offer there was a stadium that was tight around the pitch and therefore good for football, but with a concrete platform to transfer it to athletics mode.
    Michael Fabricant: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the additional information he has given. Has he read the evidence given by Mr. Rod Sheard, to whom he spoke at the time? That evidence distinctly contradicts the information he has just given about the time it would take to remove the removable platform and restore it. Does he not now think—again with the benefit of hindsight, and given Mr. Sheard's evidence—that that would have been a workable compromise, and would not, in fact, have meant that Wembley could not be used for long periods between athletics and football events?
    Mr. Smith: I understand that claims have been made that technology has moved on since December 1999, when the decision was taken, but that does not change the fundamentals of the picture. It would still take a

    753
    considerable time to construct and deconstruct the platform. It would still cost a substantial sum and there would still be no permanent facility left for athletics.
    I hope that Wembley as a national stadium for football and rugby league can now proceed. The history, tradition and sentiment that surround it are much more powerful than that elsewhere.
    Bob Russell: The right hon. Gentleman's ministerial brief included culture. Is he aware of any other country that has demolished such an important monument to its sporting past as an Olympic stadium? Wembley is also the home of England's greatest sporting triumph, so surely the Wembley towers at least should remain.
    Mr. Smith: The problem with the hon. Gentleman's argument is that the Foster design for the new Wembley, as proposed in 1999, meant that the twin towers would have ended up in the middle of the pitch, which did not necessarily make for the best possible stadium. We wait to see what emerges from the FA in the next few weeks in relation to any redesign it may be considering, but I suspect that the problem persists. The other beneficial aspect of Wembley is that there is a definite need for regeneration across north-west London, so siting the new national stadium there would make a strong and positive contribution to that task.
    If Wembley is to proceed it should not be at the cost of additional sums from the public purse. Shortly before the general election, the FA asked the Government for an additional sum of some £150 million to enable the Wembley project to proceed, but I rejected the proposal. I believe that I was right to do so, and it is worth putting it on record that the £120 million of lottery funding made available to the FA for the Wembley stadium becomes legally repayable if it does not proceed. I hope that Sport England will stand firmly by that.
    I remind the FA that there is an agreement, minuted and followed up in correspondence, to return £20 million to the lottery in recompense for removing athletics from the scheme. That money is outstanding, and the FA should think seriously about starting to pay it back. While we are at it, let us learn the lessons of the Cardiff Millennium stadium, which was built for £126 million, including the purchase of the land. It hosted the FA cup final earlier this year, and everyone who went said what a good game it was and how good the stadium was. The Cardiff stadium is one for which I can claim a little credit as chairman of the Millennium Commission, which made a substantial sum available for it.
    I applaud the Government's continued emphasis on grass-roots sport, because sports policy needs a combination of the encouragement of that and the objective of international excellence. The hon. Member for North Devon failed to acknowledge that this year, next year and the year after, the sport budget from the Exchequer will double. I negotiated that money, and I was proud to put it in place. Also, 1,000 school sports co-ordinator posts will be created to facilitate, encourage and enable sport to take place in our schools and school playing field sales have already declined from an average of 40 a month under the previous Government to about three a month.
    754
    We have put major initiatives in place over the past four years and I am pleased that they are being carried forward by my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department to encourage and facilitate grass-roots sport. Of course, there will be no medal winners tomorrow without mass participation among young people today, and we will not generate enthusiasm for participation among those young people if they have no heroes to emulate or international success to aspire to. The two go hand in hand.
    For all those reasons, let us hope that the Government take the Select Committee's entertaining, but somewhat flawed, report with a small pinch of salt and stick to their determination to promote excellence and foster community spirit.
    6.7 pm
    Mr. Adrian Flook: It may be worth reminding the House of some of the beginnings of the sad and sorry fiasco that leaves our country without a national stadium for football, rugby league and, in particular, athletics. I take hon. Members back to the fact that Wembley stadium was owned by a fairly shaky plc called Wembley plc. Advisers to the deal tell me that, originally, one idea was for the lottery to get the stadium free for 50 years while the plc moved from being an owner to being the operator of a vastly improved stadium.
    The £120 million grant was to be matched by finance raised in the City and a new stadium built for about £250 million. Although it was always touted as a multi-sport venue, there was always a dominant partner—soccer. With respect to this debate, a better way to put it is that there was a much weaker partner—athletics.
    A certain football club in north London, namely Arsenal, has been referred to. I remind the House that, back in 1997, rumours were floating around that the club was interested in buying Wembley, lock, stock and barrel, and was threatening to bid for Wembley plc. The upshot of that would have been the scuppering of the nascent plans to hold the world cup in this country, which appears to have completely spooked the Government, who panicked and exerted pressure on Sport England to abandon the original plan under which it agreed to allocate £120 million of funding.
    To bid for the World cup, the Government needed a national stadium, and it appears that they went out and bought the stadium outright for about £100 million. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps we can say that that is the slippery slope at the bottom of which we now find ourselves. Four years on, with the last game played there over a year ago, the decaying stadium and the surrounding area are worth nowhere near the £100 million paid for them; they are worth closer to £30 million. That is a real shame and a dreadful waste of public money.
    How did that sorry state of affairs come about? It appears to have been because the Government could not keep their interfering paws off. The lure of being associated with the so-called venue of legends was just too much for a spin-obsessed Administration—they could not leave it alone. It seems that all the meddling was at the behest of the Prime Minister himself, who had, it was claimed, "thrown his weight behind it".

    755
    To bring matters up to date, a Football Association insider quoted in the Financial Times said:
    "We want Government to be supportive, but absent from the actual process. We need a pledge that the Government will not interfere!"
    Sadly, the Secretary of State still fails to grasp that salient point. She told the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, on which I have the honour to sit:
    "I do not think it is the role of Government to build and manage big stadia, but to pretend that these big projects can be delivered with the Government holding back is naive".
    Yet we have reached the end of 2001 with no national stadium and no athletics stadium—a litany of meddle, muddle and complete mismanagement. To put it another way: no world athletics championship, so no need for an athletics stadium.
    That sorry state of affairs has arisen because the Government overstepped their own brief four years ago and, worryingly, seem intent on doing so again. In May, in their manifesto, the Government promised that they would host the 2005 world athletics championships with first-class facilities. That is no doubt a laudable aim. However, there was no mention in that document of Picketts Lock, Edmonton or even London—despite the fact that London was the city to which the championships had been given.
    It appears that the Government never, ever asked themselves why we even need big stadiums in a televisual world when millions can watch events without having to stand on cold terraces. At the end of August when Patrick Carter, the Government's sports troubleshooter, issued his report, which sounded the death knell for Picketts Lock, he noted that he
    "remained unaware of any policy or strategy which set out why the United Kingdom ought to stage major sporting events".
    However, the absence of such a strategy has not stopped the Government meddling.
    There are good reasons for having a national stadium that are as true today as ever they were. The first is to secure home advantage for British sportsmen and the second is—as the right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) pointed out—to act as a facilitator for wider sports policy and to achieve greater grass-roots involvement. The final reason is to enhance the way in which Britain is seen internationally.
    None of those factors gives the Government or any Minister a reason to get involved and to abuse public money in the way that has happened. The problem appears to have started with the concept that there should be a national stadium for three sports—football, rugby league and athletics. That was downsized by the football-loving hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks). Suddenly, the "right type" of stadium for a world cup bid, rather than the previously agreed multi-use stadium, was all the rage.
    Having undermined the three-sports stadium concept, the DCMS had to turn its attention to finding a home for its displaced athletics idea.
    Mr. Tony Banks: May I correct the hon. Gentleman? The new Wembley stadium was in no way conditional on our winning the 2006 world cup bid. In fact, there was some surprise that the FA and Sport England, with the support of the Government, were actually going to demolish the old Wembley stadium in order to construct a new national stadium. Unlike
    756
    Germany and other countries which were bidding and which planned to build a new national stadium if their bid was successful, we were already going to build one. There was no link of the kind suggested by the hon. Gentleman with the 2006 world cup bid.
    Mr. Flook: Obviously, I did not have the benefit of being at the discussions. I could only read recent reports.
    Of the original £120 million, it has been agreed that £20 million is to be repaid if the athletics track is never built at Wembley. Judging by the last few years, who knows whether that will ever happen? In short, the Government appear to have given £100 million to the richest sport in the kingdom for a ground that it could easily have afforded itself.
    Mr. Bryant: The Government have not given a penny to anybody—Sport England gave the money.
    Mr. Flook: I stand corrected. None the less, although it is not taxpayers' money, public money has been given to the richest sport in the kingdom.
    In December 1999, athletics was eventually pulled from the venue of legends following a report written by some consultants who spent all of three weeks looking into the proposed design that kiboshed the suggested set-up. However, I remind the House that the Select Committee report, published on 30 March last year, disagreed and found the proposed solution of a three-sport stadium "commendable and innovative" and concluded that
    "the Government should go ahead with it".
    Indeed, since then—to contradict the right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury—major stadiums throughout the world have proposed the use of the same sort of construction for athletics. We noted in our report that New York is planning to adopt such a system. Yet, as the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) pointed out, the then Secretary of State rubbished the report within half an hour of its publication—hardly a considered opinion.
    The report highlighted a number of challenges for Picketts Lock. There was no underwriter for the event. The stadium was not of the highest quality. There were transport and infrastructure issues. Time was short—that was in March 2000. What would happen to the stadium in the long term? There was a capital shortfall.
    There was always a funding shortfall with the Picketts Lock proposal. The outline cost in March 2000 was for a stadium that was going to cost up to £120 million, when only £60 million had been earmarked as available from the lottery and £20 million of that was unlikely ever to be released. So, there were shortfalls for funding for the building as well for long-term revenue. In short, what does one do with an expensive building stuck in north-east London that has little use other than as an athletics stadium?
    To quote another report from the Select Committee, the Government were following a "perverse and bizarre" course of action in promoting an economically unsustainable athletics stadium—having rejected their own earlier proposals, after taking into account a hastily written report that took all of three weeks to put together. After their meddling, the Government have lost this country the right to stage the world athletics championships in 2005. They have probably cost us much

    757
    more embarrassment than that, in that we are unlikely to be in a position to bid for any major sporting event for many years.
    The Government's alternative proposal of Sheffield, charming city though it probably is, was not even discussed by the International Amateur Athletics Federation. That shows what the federation thought of the proposal.
    The Government continue to meddle. They seem desperate to be munificent in this season of good will, and now appear to be offering £40 million of Sport England's money—public money, albeit not taxpayers' money—all over the place. When will they learn that the £40 million is lottery money, and not Government money to throw around?
    The Select Committee's report may well have "castigated" the right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury, but several issues remain pertinent for the current crop of Ministers. We need assurances from the Government that they will heed the insider at the FA and leave the association to get on with it and build Wembley. What about the £20 million that seems to have gone missing? We are constantly given assurances, but where is the second annual instalment?
    According to the Evening Standard, the FA is
    "now ready to build a National Stadium with £100 million of their own money and they only need tacit support from the Government to help them get funding from the City."
    That seems to be rather a kick in the face for all those earlier but perhaps rather unhelpful efforts.
    As the Secretary of State suggested when she appeared before the Committee, with a little luck, if a review of major events policy is undertaken and the subject is kicked into the long grass of the performance and innovation unit of No. 10, there is perhaps an outside chance that something might be able to happen at Wembley without Government interference.
    There is no denying, however, that Britain's reputation abroad has been damaged. It is also likely that we will not have a mega-event for quite some time. More importantly, there is still no lasting legacy of athletics to help us do better in track and field events. Bearing in mind the fact that the original £120 million has been turned into an investment that now consists of a dilapidated building in north-west London that is worth about £30 million, and that the Government are scrabbling round to spend £48 million of public money, it worth asking once again what will become of the £20 million.
    Last week, in an attempt to break the power and control of the so-called blazer brigade—although his statement more pertinently exposes the Government's handling of the national stadium—the Minister for Sport told The Guardian that
    "In this day and age, you need to have people with skills to run sport. Public money is given out and we do not even know what we get back."
    That is absolutely correct. I could not have put it better myself.
    6.20 pm
    Kate Hoey: I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) and the Select Committee on two or three years of very
    758
    hard, detailed work on what they themselves have rightly called a saga of events. Their detailed scrutiny has been very helpful indeed. I think that anyone who reads the report—even those who, like me, do not agree with all its recommendations—cannot fail to see the truth of its overall conclusion that the way we run sports and major sporting events and build national stadiums is a shambles. Without saying so, the report also expresses my view that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is a dysfunctional Department. That is what it has been from the beginning and that is what it continues to be. It is perhaps fortunate that we have a Select Committee that is not dysfunctional; if it were dysfunctional we would not have received this type of report.
    Although I realise that the Select Committee is very busy doing a wide variety of reports, it might be a very useful exercise if it were to use its considerable background knowledge and expertise to consider the overall issue of the way in which we handle sport in this country. We have to examine issues such as the increasing number of quangos, the fact that no one can take decisions, and the fact that the Government immediately handed over all our money for sport to Sport England, which is a huge quango employing 500 people; whereas I think that, when I was Minister for Sport, I had 26 people working on sport.
    It is clearly nonsensical when the Minister for Sport and even the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport do not truly have the power to take decisions. So many matters are handled by various quangos that drop the ball whenever difficulties arise.
    Michael Fabricant: The hon. Lady has made a very interesting and powerful point by saying that the Department is dysfunctional and inviting the Select Committee to investigate the Department's sports operation. I ask her, a former Minister, to tell us the point of a Select Committee's making recommendations to a Department when, in at least one example, the Secretary of State rejected the report within 30 minutes of its publication. There are many other examples in which Secretaries of State have rejected Select Committee recommendations that, as hindsight has shown, were subsequently proved correct.
    Kate Hoey: The Government make their decisions on individual Select Committee reports. Although I do not want to go over old ground, I should make it clear now that I fundamentally disagree with the Select Committee recommendation to which the hon. Gentleman refers—to oppose removing athletics from Wembley. I believe that the original lottery money was provided for a national sports stadium. There is absolutely no doubt that, at some point in the early months of 1999, the national sports stadium project was hijacked by football. The FA and Wembley National Stadium Ltd. hijacked the project and ignored both athletics and the British Olympic Association.
    Those bodies were able to do that because at that time we were making a world cup bid. As the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Flook) said, for the first six months to a year in which I was the Minister for Sport, and in the final year of the previous Minister's tenure, the world cup bid hung over everything that was happening in the Department. Absolutely nothing could stop, prevent or

    759
    attack anything to do with our world cup bid. That was the most important sports issue as far as the Government were concerned.
    One of my disappointments with the report is that the Select Committee never analysed what went wrong with Wembley. I agree with the Committee that the £120 million should not have been provided so quickly without planning permission. Like all hon. Members, I have sports clubs that have received no lottery grants or only small grants because they have not had planning permission. Nevertheless, Sport England gave £120 million for a plan that had not yet received planning permission. The request succeeded because the plan was about the world cup bid, making it crucial that it succeeded. I would therefore have liked it if the Select Committee had examined the issue.
    I know that pressure was put on Sport England to deliver that £120 million, which had to be delivered in time to prepare and submit the bid. It is all very well blaming Sport England and its officials, but it is difficult for anyone when permanent secretaries are ringing up and asking when a lottery bid will go through.
    Mr. Banks: May I remind my hon. Friend, who seems occasionally to forget it, that the 2000 World cup bid was dealt with in the Government's 1997 general election manifesto? Carrying out manifesto commitments is a worthwhile objective.
    Kate Hoey: I absolutely agree that that was in our manifesto. However, our manifesto also contained many other things. I agree, too, that we want to fulfil our manifesto commitments so far as possible. However, I do not think that we should fulfil one manifesto commitment at the expense of other commitments. We should not override other commitments, take shortcuts or fail to monitor properly. We should not seek to do something very quickly indeed when it is not necessary.
    The £120 million was provided for a multi-sports stadium such as the Stade de France, and that is what we should have been building. It then became a football-only stadium, designed to include a platform. We need not go through all the costs of the platform proposal, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) has made it clear that it was nonsense to propose a platform that was a one-off arrangement that would leave no legacy for athletics. It was a sop to athletics and an attempt to get round the fact that WNSL had received £120 million.
    We could not go back on that decision because Downing Street did not want it to happen. At that time, no one wanted to go back and say to Sport England, "You have mucked up. This scheme should be returned and you should be redesigning it as a proper national stadium, which is what the lottery grant was for." That could not happen because we could not sacrifice our world cup bid.
    Mr. Bryant: I agree with my hon. Friend on her point about athletics being removed from Wembley stadium. However, does she think that the whole £120 million should be returned, or merely the £20 million?
    Kate Hoey: I was coming to that. We do not know what the decision on Wembley will be, but the football authorities clearly know that if a national stadium is not built at Wembley they will definitely be legally bound to
    760
    return the £120 million. My view, which I shall continue to proclaim, is that if Wembley ends up being a national football stadium—with some rugby league involvement, although rugby league is enjoying having its games at different places—the whole £120 million must be returned.
    Great demands are already being placed on the sports lottery fund. Just recently, Sport England gave £30 million from the sports community lottery fund to ensure the success of the Commonwealth games. We want those games to be a success, but that was an extra £30 million which had not been budgeted for. The decision to give £30 million was split—it was not unanimous. However, £30 million of community funding has now gone to the Commonwealth games. I do not want there to be a football-only stadium without the need to pay back the £120 million. Twickenham was built without public lottery money. Cricket does not get £120 million, so why does football, which is the richest sport? If the stadium is football-only, the entire £120 million must be repaid.
    Michael Fabricant: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way to me a second time. I take her point about the £120 million. However, what about the £20 million, which also needs to be repaid? She may be aware from the evidence given to the Select Committee that, on 19 January this year, the former Secretary of State said in a letter that the £20 million might be repaid if Wembley stadium went ahead, and that if the project did not proceed, it would not be repaid. Later, on 5 April, he said that the final payment of the £20 million would be made in December 2004. Later on, the present Secretary of State said that this was being discussed in camera. Can the hon. Lady shed any light on any timetable that might exist for the repayment of the £20 million?
    Kate Hoey: I can shed no light on that, other than what is in the formal public documents. I was not involved in any meeting with Ken Bates over the £20 million, thank goodness. That sum should definitely be repaid because that was agreed by the then Secretary of State and Ken Bates, who was supposedly speaking on behalf of football. I am after the rest of the money because I do not see why football should get it.
    Our reputation in international sport has been badly damaged by this decision. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury that Picketts Lock had problems, but it could have been made to happen. We gave a commitment, as a country, to host the world athletics championships. We gave that commitment not just at ministerial, Secretary of State or UK athletics level, but as a country, with a letter from the Prime Minister saying that we would provide a wonderful stadium in London for the world athletics championship in 2005. We reneged on that commitment and broke our promise. It has damaged us, because members of the International Amateur Athletics Federation are also involved with the International Olympic Committee.
    I sat next to Istvan Gyulai, chief executive of the IAAF, just a few weeks ago at the athletics writers' dinner. I will not repeat the conversation, because it was private, but he told me exactly what had gone on in the meeting with the Minister for Sport and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. I would not repeat in the Chamber the words he used about what happened at that meeting.

    761
    We have let ourselves down badly, although there were problems. We must congratulate the Lee Valley and Enfield council, the local Member of Parliament and all who worked so hard on the basis of commitments and promises. The very least we can do is make sure that the Government reimburse the council for its costs. Despite all their good will, the Government reneged on the commitment.
    Our reputation abroad has been badly damaged. It was made even worse by telling this international body that we would be hosting the event in London one minute and then saying the next minute, "No, we would like it to be Sheffield." I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Sport would not have dreamt of being patronising, but that is how it was taken. There was no understanding of how international sport worked. That has damaged us even more than if we had told the IAAF that we were really sorry but we had messed up and could not do Picketts Lock. In the event, we said that we could not do Picketts Lock, but offered Sheffield instead. Wonderful though Sheffield is, that was nonsense. We have a lot of hard work to do to mend our reputation. I will not go into detail about our bid for the world cup, because that would provoke the wrath of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks).
    I have a suggestion for my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton about future Select Committee reports. I am sure that he understands the difficulties regarding the way in which Sport England works. It might be useful to take a strategic look at how the Sports Council works and the lottery spend, taking into account value for money. Even with someone in the Cabinet who is responsible for events, unless we completely change how we run sport in this country, by restructuring and streamlining it, we will never punch at our true weight.
    Mr. Menzies Campbell: The debate that the hon. Lady mentioned in her opening remarks and to which she has now returned is hardly new. It began in 1964 when Denis Howell was appointed the first Minister responsible for Sport. The question arose—it has never properly been resolved—as to whether the Minister for Sport should exercise executive responsibilities. If the hon. Lady is saying that, she will find a great deal of support for that view, not just in the House of Commons but throughout the sporting world in the United Kingdom.
    Kate Hoey: I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. The people involved in sport will say that there is no real understanding of how sport works. There is no strategic authority and nobody to carry things through from the top. Sue Mott in The Daily Telegraph wrote eloquently about it recently. She talked about everyone holding a package, passing it to someone who takes a little out of it and passes it on to someone else who does the same; and when the going gets tough, everyone wants to drop it. That is how we run sport. We can never aspire to be an international power in sport or be in touch with the grass roots if we do not look at what we are doing.
    This Mr. Carter seems to be running sport in this country. He was brought in just before I finished as Minister for Sport to look at the Commonwealth games.
    762
    I did not meet him, although I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury might have. The reports show that he has met some people and not others—he seems to have chosen whom to meet. Whenever anyone in authority in the Government talks about Wembley or Picketts Lock and is asked a difficult question, they refer to the Carter report. I wonder whether Patrick Carter actually exists, because I have not seen him anywhere.
    Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order. I remind the hon. Lady that we are discussing the Select Committee report, not the Carter report.
    Kate Hoey: I know, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the Select Committee report refers to Patrick Carter a number of times. I know that he exists, because he gave evidence.
    In conclusion, the Select Committee has done sport a service by producing this detailed report, although it does not make very appetising reading. Indeed, it makes very sad reading, and we have many lessons to learn.
    6.39 pm
    Mr. Tony Banks: I have not met Mr. Carter either, so perhaps he does not exist. Who knows? Perhaps the Minister for Sport can enlighten us.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) said something that a number of people have mentioned in the debate. She referred to the rich sport of football. Well, that is true of one part of football—essentially, the premier league, where a lot of money is sloshing around, as we know. However, when we are talking about the development of the national football stadium, we are talking about the Football Association. Although richer than probably any other national sporting body, the FA should not be confused with the premier league. Let us not forget that the FA is responsible for something like 42,000 affiliated clubs, so there is not a vast amount of money sloshing around in the new building at Soho square. We need to differentiate between the FA and the premier league, even though it has a significant say in the FA.
    I have just been told that I have five minutes, and I always want to try to obey the Whips. If they try to beat me up, I will definitely join the Liberal Democrats.
    Mr. Bryant: Is that a manifesto promise?
    Mr. Banks: No. Nothing that I say in the next few minutes is said with the benefit of hindsight. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) on the Select Committee report. He is right to say that the Select Committee has been consistently right. I have given evidence to the Select Committee on several occasions, and it has been consistently right. We all want to put our own spin or interpretation on those events. When the national stadium was proposed for football, rugby league and athletics, it was clear that the British Olympics Association and UK Athletics would very much have liked a permanent running track there, visible all the time, but that simply was not on.
    When I was Minister for Sport, I was not prepared to support that proposal. I tried to get funding for the proposal on retractible seating, as at the Stade de France.

    763
    I tell my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall that I was told that there would be no money for that from the Treasury, nor any additional money from the lottery. So in the end the deck solution was proposed. I thought that solution appropriate, given the money available. Let us be clear that when I was a Minister there was a lot of Government interference, but no Government money.
    I sympathise with those who say, "Unless the Government put money in, the Government should stay out of it." That goes as much for Ministers now as when others were sitting in their places. I have enormous regard for my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), and I was always totally loyal to him when he was Secretary of State, but when the deck solution for the national stadium was launched in July 1999, he described it as a stunning design.
    Mr. Chris Smith: In fact, at the time of the press conference at which I described the overall scheme as a stunning design, the deck solution was in no sense part of that scheme. The details of the deck solution became evident only subsequently, and I began to have serious doubts about it.
    Mr. Banks: My right hon. Friend mentions the detail, but the overall proposal was there. There was no retractible seating or permanent running track, so what did he think we were talking about? What does he think the rest of the world thought when he called it a stunning design?
    Kate Hoey: Will my hon. Friend give way?
    Mr. Banks: No, hang on a second. I happen to think that the proposal was acceptable, simply because rugby was contributing nothing and athletics, which was also contributing nothing, would want to use the stadium only for the world athletics championships or for the Olympic games, and there was no guarantee that we could get either. So it seemed to me to be perfectly appropriate to bring in something on a temporary basis. There is an argument about how long that proposal would disable the stadium, but it was perfectly acceptable to football. I thought that it was acceptable to my right hon. Friend, and it seemed that that was the way forward, given that we would not have a permanent track or retractible seating there. I shall not keep going over why things have now changed, but we got into all sort of problems as soon as it was decided that the July 1999 design was not acceptable.
    There is some confusion about the world athletics championships. I remember when the late Primo Nebiolo—one of the great barons of world sport—was offered the championships to London. When we were sitting in the Cabinet room in Downing Street, we described the construction of the new Wembley stadium, and he said, "Well, the first event that you can have in it will be the 2003 world athletics championships." I said, "Well, Mr. President, we'll discuss that later." When I discussed it with him later, I found out that he had made exactly the same offer to the French Minister for Sport, Madame Buffet, with the result that she and I had to reach a conclusion, and we decided that London would bid for 2005, rather than 2003 because two cities were going for the 2003 championships.
    I wanted to make a few more points, but other hon. Members want to speak. The solution proposed would have fitted everyone. I feel that the role of the BOA needs
    764
    to be criticised because it was clearly not happy with the deck proposal, but I warned Simon Clegg, the BOA' s general secretary, that it was the best thing that it was likely to get. If the BOA did not go for that, it would end up with nothing. Well, nothing is precisely what it has ended up with, so it should have listened to that advice.
    Michael Fabricant: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Banks: No, I have got to sit down—I am very sorry. All I would say is that, if we are to learn something from what has happened, we need Governments to be involved, but Government involvement does not just mean interfering to tell sport what it should be doing. It means getting in there, paying for it and doing it ourselves, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall. As a Minister, the thing that frustrated me—clearly, it frustrated her, too—was the way that we were continually handing over decisions to fractured bodies all over the place, using the so-called arm's-length principle.
    I stood at the Dispatch Box and said that I did not agree with the arm's-length principle. If we are to get involved in organising events or in reorganising sport, we have got to do it ourselves, in an executive fashion. In that way, I am more of a Stalinist than a socialist, and stand firmly by that view. If the Government are going to get involved, which they should, and the Select Committee has made several recommendations, the Government must pay. If the Government are not prepared to pay, as the Australian, French, Spanish, Japanese and South Korean Governments have done, they should stay out of it, because all they do is confuse sports.
    6.46 pm
    Mr. Andy Reed: It appears to be my role to have three minutes at the end of every debate in which to try to summarise the 20 minutes-worth of notes that I have prepared, but I should like to endorse everything that my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks) has said so passionately at the end of his contribution. I have lots of notes and wanted to talk about the decisions and some of the things in the Select Committee report, but we have heard lots of that rehearsed in this debate, and in the couple of minutes that I have available, I want to return to what my hon. Friend has just said—we as a nation have to decide how serious we are about sport.
    I have been very lucky since being elected; not only have I been able to spectate at some of the world's great stadiums, but I have been able to play in some of them because of the parliamentary football and rugby teams that we run. Those of us who have been in the changing rooms at Wembley know that they are a disaster and that the stadium is a disgrace and needs replacing as quickly as possible. I have also seen stadiums in places such as Japan and Australia, and great finance has gone into them.
    However, we always return to the point that my hon. Friend was just making—people are serious about sports. We have to make a decision in the next year or so, and if we are serious about sport we need to get it right at every level. We need to ensure that there are school sports for children to take part in for at least two hours. I would prefer that to be part of the curriculum, but I would be happy if children played sport for two hours. That would make a real start.

    765
    We then need to make the link between schools and clubs. I play for a very junior rugby club. I have mistakenly called it on radio the worst club in the country—I actually meant that it was in one of the lowest leagues. It is not the worst club, but we have not had many wins this season. We struggle because there are no links between ourselves and the school. We are an old school club, yet rugby has not been played at that school for 15 years. Unfortunately, because we do not have the people to help to coach at the school to develop players, I am now one of the youngest players that we have, at 37. At 35, we technically become a veterans' side, but we still play in other leagues. That is an anecdote, but the Minister will know that that is a serious problem right across the country. If those links do not exist, people do not have places to play.
    The next thing that we need to ensure is that, when we have achieved that mass participation, there are routes for people to find their way through. That includes not only coaching, but the UK Sports Institute, and I am proud that Loughborough is playing a key role in it. The swimming pool is coming along fine, as are the hockey pitches. We can provide the best sports science. In fact, with the UK Sports Institute up and running in the next couple of years, we will be able to find our elite athletes. However, if we do not get the mass participation right in schools, we will have no one to pick. That is why such decisions are crucial.
    If I had a £100 million to spend on athletics, would I spend it on a national stadium, or would I spend it trying to give Charnwood athletic club some better facilities and allowing more people in my constituency to participate in sport? Ideally, I would like £200 million so that we could do both, but sport has not had the political kudos that it should have had. I am sure that all the hon. Members present believe that sport should have that priority, but we only have to look at the sparse attendance in the Chamber to realise that we need to convince many more hon. Members and the general public that sport has an important role to play. If I had to make the choice, I would prefer to see the £100 million spent on the grass roots and future athletes.
    I have read the section of the report on the question of home advantage. Yes, we probably would win more gold medals, but in this television age it is even more important to ensure that the events are on terrestrial television. Children need sporting heroes, but the success that we had in Sydney is just as important as seeing those heroes perform in Lee Valley or Picketts Lock. These days, it is easy to develop sporting heroes and ensure that people want to watch them.
    The debate has been a long-running sore and difficult decisions have had to be made. Twenty:twenty vision hindsight is a wonderful thing and it is great to see that the Select Committee has highlighted a few suggestions. It was slightly contradictory when it suggested that the Government needed to keep their hands off but at the same time to appoint a Minister responsible for events. We must decide which one of those suggestions we will follow.
    Now is the time, following this debacle, to decide whether we are interested in running international events. If the Olympics would cost us £3 billion or £4 billion, do
    766
    we really want those games or could we spend the money on developing first class sporting facilities? Hon. Members will have seen in their constituencies the crumbling tennis courts and sports halls. There is much more that could be done in our constituencies with the money rather than its being spent on the glory of a 10-day or two-week event.
    6.52 pm
    Mr. Derek Wyatt: I have several sporting interests registered in the book, including being a trustee of Oxford University rugby club. It is 20 years to the day since I got my blue and I have just been paged to tell me that we have won three times in a row for the first time, and that my 1981 team is waiting to have dinner with me outside, so I am a happy man. I share the warmth expressed towards David Faber by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) and it would be nice if we could see him in the other place as Lord Sightlines.
    I remind the House yet again that there are more nations in the IOC and the IAAF than in the United Nations. We do not understand how important sport is. I say that each time I rise to my feet in the Chamber, but it is true. We just do not get it. The way sport is run in this country is a shambles. The Wembley and Picketts Lock affairs are indicative of that shambles. We are the people who can change that, and it is time that we did so.
    We got the Wembley issue back to front. The infrastructure is terrible, so why did we not buy the thing first before we put the infrastructure in? It does not take a brain surgeon to work that out. It was a shocking decision to buy only that site. It took the Select Committee only 20 minutes to work out that we needed to buy the whole site if we were to hold world events there. If it took us that long, why did it take the chief executive of Sport England and the former sports Minister so long? The Picketts Lock affair took us even less time, but I shall not go into that.
    I have several conclusions to offer. First, if we are serious about sport we have to have a Secretary of State for sport. I suggest that sport and health education are combined. We have to get school sports sorted out and it should not be separated from other sports matters. We now have a myriad more initiatives in schools and another set of administrators in the new opportunities fund for sport. That is crackers. We must bang some heads together to achieve a return to sanity. Secondly, and as important, we need to appoint an ambassador for sport at our French embassy. We need to be represented in IOC, FIFA and IAAF meetings by a permanent diplomat who will let us know what is going on. With our reputation in tatters, that is even more important. I know the man for the job, and he lives in Paris.
    Thirdly, the Minister for Sport must chair UK Sport. We have heard from two former Ministers for Sport who say that that cannot be done, but we love sport and it is time that we took charge. Then we would be responsible and have the executive authority. We would go to the Treasury for more money, not some quango. Until we achieve that representation, sport will not grow up politically. Fourthly, we must evaluate the senior team at Sport England—I hope that the new chief executive has that on his agenda—especially those who made the original decision on Wembley. It was shocking that they made that decision without investigating the requirements for a world class event.

    767
    Fifthly, we need an audit of the international needs of our best sports, whether they are Olympic sports such as rowing, our best sport, and judo, which is outstanding, or international sports such as rugby, which is coming to the Olympics. Lastly, to pick up the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed), we need a public service sports television channel, including coach education, philosophy and sports medicine, and the BBC should be made to pay for it.
    6.56 pm
    Mr. Parmjit Dhanda: I shall luxuriate in the four minutes left to me. It is fascinating that the Tories initially wanted a whole day's debate on this issue, because they have hardly bothered to take part in it at all. I am grateful to them for the time that I have. It gives me great pleasure to take part in the debate, not just as a Member of Parliament but as a big sports fan. Since entering the House, I have been lucky enough to be able to raise sporting issues on several occasions. Sport is a matter of great pride and importance to our constituents, and we certainly saw that during Euro 96 and a few weeks ago when Owen hit that great hat-trick in Munich—except for our Scottish colleagues, perhaps.
    The situation is not all doom and gloom. We have a proud record of hosting sporting events in recent history, not least the reconstituted rugby league world cup, the FINA swimming world cup and the cycling world track championships, as well as the stuff that we do every year with great quality, such as Wimbledon, the six nations rugby and the British grand prix. It is only when events do not happen, such as when the Cheltenham gold cup was cancelled in my county last year, that we realise how important sport is. The effect of foot and mouth on sport and the local economy made us realise the contribution that sport makes.
    To hold world-class events we need viable stadiums. In answer to a question tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), the Minister for Sport replied:
    "I have made no specific assessment of the viability of dual use stadiums."—[Official Report, 5 November 2001; Vol. 374, c. 65W.]
    Well, I was lucky enough to bump into that sporting institution, John Motson, at the weekend, and we talked about the dual-use stadium in Saint-Denis in Paris, which several hon. Members have mentioned. Much has been made of that stadium, its quality and the fact that it can host athletics and football. I asked Mr. Motson how good it is for football—he should know because he has commentated on a world cup final there. He said that it was poor for events such as rugby and football. However, in the technological age we live in, it should not be impossible to bring athletics and football into the same stadium.
    The key is public perceptions. The public want gold medal performances from the likes of Denise Lewis and great free kicks from the likes of David Beckham, but they want to see those right here in this country. We have a choice of whether we wish to continue to invest in the grass roots or to invest in the grass roots and find the money for adequate sporting facilities. We must try to do both.
    7 pm
    Mr. Tim Yeo: I am delighted that the House is debating this timely and comprehensive report. It has been a high-quality debate. There is much expertise about sporting matters in the House and much of it has been on display. I pay particular tribute to the speeches of the two former Ministers for Sport, the hon. Members for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) and for West Ham (Mr. Banks). Even though they were not always in harmony, they made powerful contributions. The hon. Lady was also very frank.
    I enjoyed the contribution of the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt) although I much regret the news that he brought to the House about the third consecutive Oxford victory this afternoon. Looking at him, I find it difficult to believe that it was only 20 years since he represented the university. However, I consulted "Dod's Parliamentary Companion" and I discovered that he was a postgraduate student and already in his 30s at that time.
    I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Flook), who is one of the newer members of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. He made a thoughtful speech. In particular, however, I congratulate the Committee's Chairman, the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), who has led the Committee for four and a half years. It has produced a series of remarkable high-quality reports. Although I have had a long-term lay interest in the subject, I come fairly new to the issues and I have read the reports with great interest and found real insights into the sporting and broadcasting worlds.
    I welcome the Minister for Sport to the debate. I am sorry that the Secretary of State did not stay for the remainder of the debate, but that is a creeping case of Byers syndrome in which a Secretary of State responsible for a Government policy attends part of the debate but does not wait for its conclusion. After all, the Secretary of State's decision 10 weeks ago put the final nail in the coffin of London's bid for the world athletics championships, the latest in a series of Government-sponsored sporting disasters. Labour's attempts to bring a major sporting event to Britain have been wrecked by a total lack of vision, an abject failure of leadership, grossly incompetent management and a pattern of broken promises.
    In the past four years, Ministers have made Britain a laughing stock in international sporting circles. They have denied sports fans here the chance to see top athletes perform on British soil and they have effectively thrown away Britain's chances of hosting a major international event in the foreseeable future.
    London's bid to host the world athletics championships degenerated steadily from the start in January 1999, although all appeared to go well to begin with. Launching the new Wembley stadium concept in July 1999, the right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), who has apologised for his absence from the Chamber for the winding-up speeches, said that the new stadium
    "will be a magnificent venue for athletics as well as for football".
    I listened in vain to his speech today for any explanation of why only four months later he changed his mind about

    769
    something that he had thought so splendid in July 1999. His views had changed to such an extent that he said:
    "the stadium as designed—or in any similar configuration—cannot readily provide the central venue for an Olympic games bid for London. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that it could provide an appropriate venue for the world athletics championships."
    That decision was rightly condemned in an earlier report of the Select Committee.
    Andy Burnham rose—
    Mr. Yeo: I have little time, so I regret that I cannot give way.
    The Secretary of State has suddenly left London without a venue for the championships, but the Government's commitment had been confirmed at the very highest level. In a letter of January 2000, the Prime Minister said:
    "The Government is pleased to give its full support to this bid by UK Athletics to bring the World Athletics Championships to Britain … World Class facilities will be ready, our athletes will be ready and our people will be ready."
    I draw the attention of the Minister for Sport to the particularly significant final sentence which reads:
    "We look forward to welcoming the world athletics family to London in 2005."
    Perhaps the Minister will do his homework before he intervenes again.
    By the time the IAAF council accepted London's bid, Picketts Lock had been identified as the venue for the championships. The bid was accepted on the condition that UK Athletics could demonstrate that clear progress had been made on the stadium by October this year. No Minister, then or subsequently, can have been in any doubt about what was needed if the Prime Minister's promises were to be honoured. Alas, no Minister, then or subsequently, did what was needed to honour those promises.
    Despite Ministers' failure to act, however, they did not lose confidence. On 21 March 2001, the former Secretary of State said:
    "I am absolutely confident that we are properly on track."
    The Prime Minister himself acknowledged that the Government had a responsibility for sporting decisions. When questioned in the House about the Wembley project, he said:
    "I regret the fact that it has fallen through, and we must now sit down and work out a way through it so that we have a proper national stadium."—[Official Report, 2 May 2001; Vol. 367, c. 841.]
    It is worth noting that seven months later the current Secretary of State still seems to be dithering about the national stadium. The Government originally decided that there should be a national stadium at Wembley with athletics; then they decided that there should be a national stadium at Wembley without athletics; now they simply do not know whether there should be a national stadium at all, whether it should be at Wembley or whether athletics should be part of it. I hope that the Minister for Sport will shed a little light on the matter, because the only decision that the present set of Ministers has taken is not to publish the advice that they have received from
    770
    Patrick Carter, who the hon. Member for Vauxhall has established actually exists. However, like her, I have not met him.
    On the world athletics championships, this year's Labour party election manifesto stated:
    "We will maintain the elite funding we put in place for individual athletics with a first-class athletics stadium for the World Athletics Championships in 2005."
    Despite that, doubts about Picketts Lock grew, and after the general election the Prime Minister sacked all the Ministers who had been trying to carry out his policy and to do his bidding. The new team faced a situation which, if it called for anything, required prompt and decisive action. However, the Secretary of State dithered. Instead of making a decision, she appointed a consultant—the ubiquitous Mr. Carter.
    At this point, Sheffield suddenly appeared on the scene. The city has featured prominently in the Government's sporting policies before. In December 1997, the Government announced that a UK Sports Institute would be built there and, in the Government's mind, that project came to fruition splendidly. Their annual report for 2000 stated:
    "this year saw the opening of the UK Sports Institute, providing world-class facilities, coaching and support in Sheffield"
    Kate Hoey: I wish to place on record the fact that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, of which I was a member, and the former Secretary of State asked for a formal change to be made to that document. When the draft came round, they saw that it was wrong. The fact that it was not corrected was not down to what I described as the dysfunctional DCMS but to someone, somewhere who produces these wonderful Government reports.
    Mr. Yeo: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making that clear. The fact that the spanking new facilities did not actually exist and were a figment of the imagination of the report's authors represents one of the most remarkable examples of unjoined-up government. The authors were not even aware that an announcement was made in 1999 to say that the Sports Institute would be situated in London. The only explanation for how the report turned from fact to fiction on sporting matters must be that the Prime Minister wrote the introduction.
    The Prime Minister is known for his flights of fancy when it comes to sport. He claimed that, as a youngster, he sat watching Jackie Milburn at St James' park. The seats turned out not to exist and he was watching a player who had long ceased to play for Newcastle by the time the Prime Minister was a school boy.
    While the Government waited for the consultant's report, the Minister for Sport went to Edmonton and to this year's world athletics championships. According to The Standard, he was still quite keen on London as a venue for 2005. On 8 August, it reported that he reaffirmed the Government's commitment to staging the world athletics championships in London in 2005. The article reported him as saying:
    "This is a commitment from the Prime Minister down and is not considered negotiable. We will meet all the deadlines set by the IAAF."
    Four weeks after that report, Patrick Carter's recommendations were delivered to Ministers. Five more damaging weeks of dither followed before the Secretary

    771
    of State finally bit the bullet and told UK Athletics that Picketts Lock was not viable, reneging on every promise given by the Government, from the Prime Minister down.
    However, the curtain on this ministerial farce had still not come down. One act remained to be played. Ignoring the fact that the IAAF had awarded the world athletics championships to London, a city, and not to Britain, a country, Ministers took up the cause of Sheffield. A good case could have been made for that city had it been submitted at the proper time, two and a half years ago. Sheffield has a fine sporting tradition. The Don Valley stadium could have been helped to stage the championships, but the last-ditch attempt to divert attention away from the disastrous handling by Ministers of the London bid merely dragged Sheffield humiliatingly into the fiasco.
    Among those who were not impressed was the president of the IAAF. The Select Committee Chairman, the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton, quoted the Financial Times. The president of the IAAF wrote to his council members after he met the Secretary of State and the Minister for Sport on 5 October. He said:
    "the IAAF had received numerous guarantees that London would host these championships and that the IAAF Council granted the event to the city—even though there was no actual stadium—in good faith. Since the first news that the rebuilt Wembley Stadium would become Britain's 'new' National Stadium capable of hosting major events in 1996, the IAAF had been approached to host its World Championships in Wembley in 2001, then Wembley in 2003 and 2005, then Twickenham or Crystal Palace in 2005, then Pickett's Lock in 2005 and, finally, Sheffield in 2005.
    I declared that this was not acceptable and explained that if London formally withdrew before the deadline of 26 November, the IAAF had no alternative but to open the bidding process again."
    That letter was circulated to the IAAF council on 12 October, a week after the president's meeting with Ministers.
    The extent to which Ministers were living in a fantasy world is demonstrated in the Secretary of State's press release, issued on 4 October. At the time of her meeting, she said that Labour had
    "acted decisively to put in place a first class alternative in Sheffield, which will deliver the Games … as a long term legacy for athletics in the UK."
    The Minister for Sport told the Select Committee on 23 October:
    "Can I say that what was said by the Secretary General"
    of the IAAF
    "when we came out was very important, bearing in mind I was with my officials. He said, he wanted the best for the Games and he wanted the best for London. We believe we have actually delivered that for the IAAF."
    The effects of the U-turn by Ministers are far-reaching. The International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge, said:
    "Of course the Picketts Lock situation was a very serious one. A country not being able to fulfil its pledge to host a major competition is not a trivial matter."
    Simon Clegg, the chief executive of the British Olympic Association, said:
    "we will have deprived British athletes of competing in the world's third largest sporting event on home soil with all the competitive advantages that this entails … we will have lost the opportunity of demonstrating to the world that we have the ability to stage major sporting events. Coming so soon after the Wembley fiasco it further damages our … sporting reputation".
    772
    No new facts emerged to justify the U-turn. Every problem that arose from London's bid was well known to Ministers for many months before they made their decision. Their actions in relation to London and their absurd last-minute attempt to switch the championships to Sheffield—an attempt abandoned ignominiously less than two months after it was unveiled—could hardly have done more damage to Britain's reputation than if they had been designed to do so.
    The report contains many recommendations that the Opposition strongly support and others that deserve further discussion, but it contains nothing to alter the basic conclusion that Labour has let down British sports fans and British sportsmen and women. No matter what excuses Ministers concoct to explain their actions, it will take years for our reputation to recover.
    I recognise the Minister's predicament. He is the man entrusted by the Prime Minister with the task of persuading this country and the world that the Government are interested in sport and that they bring some passion to the pitch. Alas, he is also the Minister for Sport who went to Wimbledon to announce that he did not like tennis. If the Government accept the Select Committee's recommendation for a dedicated Minister for events, I invite him, in the interests of the country, not to apply for the job. I urge him to abandon his usual bluster and admit that the blame for the series of disasters lies fairly and squarely with the Government.
    7.15 pm
    The Minister for Sport (Mr. Richard Caborn): My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is in her place listening to the end of the debate. I do not know where the shadow Minister for Sport is, but I thought that he would be here to listen to this important debate.
    I welcome the opportunity to debate the Select Committee's timely report. Our discussion went slightly wide of the report's contents and considered some serious flaws in the structures for sport. I acknowledge those, and they give much food for thought on which the Government will reflect.
    I was disappointed that the IAAF did not accept the offer of Sheffield. Whatever has been said to my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), the offer was made in good faith, and I know that Sheffield would have put on a first-class championship, as good as, if not better than Edmonton. In 1991, the previous president of the IAAF, Primo Nebiolo, then president of the world student games, opened those games at Sheffield and commended it as a fine facility which would leave a lasting legacy for sport.
    When we decided that there needed to be a review of Picketts Lock, my right hon. Friend Secretary of State informed the IAAF of the terms of reference before we released any information to the outside world. My officials and I followed that up with a one-hour meeting in Edmonton with UK Athletics officials, at which we discussed the difficulties with Picketts Lock.
    We told the IAAF before we made the information available to the public that we were revisiting the whole idea of Picketts Lock and that we would have to find an alternative. That was a long time before the meeting at Heathrow airport, at which we explained in great detail why we had withdrawn from the project. We made it clear that we were very sorry and that what we were doing was

    773
    in the best interests of the IAAF and, indeed, of this country. Had the project gone ahead, knowing the situation with transport and accommodation, we could have been left with a disaster much closer to 2005, and that would have been a real embarrassment for the UK and the IAAF. That is reflected in the report. Our action was correct at the time, even though it created consternation.
    Mr. Bryant: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
    Mr. Caborn: No, I must continue.
    Given the IAAF's position, UK Athletics, Sport England, UK Sport, Sheffield city council and the BOA concluded that there was little prospect of a successful bid by the UK if we made one after the IAAF had made its decision. The Government agreed with them on that basis. I must tell the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) that it is not the Government who make the bid, but the governing bodies. It is then up to the Government whether they support it.
    When I became Minister for Sport in June, it was my intention to ensure that the Government's priorities for sport placed proper emphasis on the need to invest in grass-roots sport, on which there seems to be universal agreement among hon. Members, to increase participation in sport in schools for young people and to ensure that there is lifelong participation among adults. I also wanted to place emphasis on the need to improve coaching and talent identification, to refurbish community facilities, to ensure that there is adequate maintenance of existing facilities, and to provide better support for our top athletes. I believe that we are making good progress in delivering those objectives by investing £130 million in primary schools for the space for sport and arts programme. Through the new opportunities fund, just under £600 million is now being invested in PE and sport facilities through schools and local education authorities.
    The Exchequer has doubled its contribution to sport in this country. That means that, along with the lottery, there is now in excess of a third of a billion pounds being invested year on year. As hon. Members have said, there is also investment in people in sport through the school sports co-ordinators. We now have some 400 of those up and running, and working with 1,700 primary schools, and we aim to have 1,000 of them by 2003–04. We are also investing heavily in the volunteer programme.
    We believe that major events have a role to play in our strategy. However, a fundamental flaw, not only under this Government but under previous Governments, is that we have been event led, not strategy led. We need to conduct a review of how we proceed, with governing bodies, to act on major events. The Select Committee report makes recommendations about that. The Committee, and its predecessor in the previous Parliament, has been focused on major sports events, and I make no criticism of that, but I genuinely welcome its recent work on the state of swimming facilities. We need to focus on those issues and make sure that we invest in existing, as well as new, facilities.
    I suspect that some of the blame must be placed on the way in which the introduction of the lottery raised tremendous expectations about national stadiums, the
    774
    World cup and the Commonwealth games, but those matters were discussed in a strategic vacuum. There was no discussion of their long-term delivery or of how they could add value to the sporting infrastructure.
    It is interesting that nearly five years ago, on 17 December 1996, the then Sports Minister, lain Sproat, said in a press release:
    "The decision to back Wembley as the venue for the English National Stadium and to invest heavily in facilities for the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester should be seen as an exciting prospect for sports fans all over the country. Both cities are winners".
    He went on to say:
    "Never before have we seen so much progress in such a short space of time. These really are exciting times for sport."
    The then Conservative Government were deeply involved in plans for the facilities which we are now bringing to fruition. With hindsight, the wrong focus was placed on a number of the developments of major facilities, and we want to revisit that. We indicated to the Select Committee that we will do that in the coming months through the performance and innovation unit.
    As I said, sports governing bodies take the lead in these matters, and if they want a national showcase stadium to stage events, the Government can and should play a part in that, provided that the proposals are sound and have been demonstrated to be affordable, deliverable and capable of adding to the nation's sporting infrastructure. However, many mistakes have been made, and the world is littered with white elephants that stand as testimony to false expectations. Many are familiar with the stories of Montreal and Barcelona.
    The Stade de France has been cited as an example that we ought to consider following, but I point out to the House the investment necessary for such a stadium. Some £580 million was invested, and the stadium now has a revenue cost of £7 million a year to keep it in operation. We must decide whether that is the right investment to come out of sport's budget. Stadium Australia has rightly been cited as the great feature of the Olympics, but even the president of the IOC said, on 7 August, that it is a white elephant and too big for any legacy use. He said that cities have to be protected from themselves when it comes to such ventures.
    We need to define the roles of the Government, UK Sport, Sport England and governing bodies if we are to go ahead with the construction of stadiums. The governing bodies must lead the development plans for their sport, not only for stadiums, but for participation, talent development, elite sport and the facilities that they require. The Government's role is to facilitate the governing bodies' plans for sport. We are doing that in a positive way by engaging with the governing bodies.
    I pay tribute to colleagues who are former Ministers for Sport and Secretaries of State, because we are now building up a significant infrastructure to deliver what many of the governing bodies want. That includes capacity building for sport at all levels, including within the governing body itself. The Government have invested some £7 million of Exchequer funding in UK Sport so that it can lead a modernisation programme for the governing bodies, which they welcome. We have invested the largest amount for many years in helping to modernise and develop sports facilities for the community and for elite athletes. Lottery-funded programmes are investing

    775
    over £40 million a year in the development of elite sport through the world class performance programmes. We are demonstrating a real commitment, through governing bodies, to investment in sport.
    Where a sport identifies a need for national facilities, whether for training or competing, the Government stand ready to play our part. We are creating the UK Sports Institute, which already has centres in Scotland and Wales. Despite the derision of the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo), Sport England has committed £120 million from lottery funding to develop more than 80 built facilities, and to date almost £80 million of that has been allocated to specific projects. Over £60 million is being awarded to projects in Sheffield and at Loughborough university and the university of Bath.
    I therefore welcome very much the Select Committee's suggestion that a more co-ordinated approach to major events is needed. That fits broadly with our approach, which will put a strategy first, rather than being event led. The PIU will put flesh on the bones of that approach, and we hope that we will be able to return to the House with proposals that respond positively to the points made in the Select Committee report. Whether that will include a Minister for events remains to be seen.
    Turning quickly to other issues arising from the Select Committee's report, my right hon. Friend will make an announcement on a national stadium before the end of next week, bringing the position up to date. We are making it clear that the FA is in the lead, and there is no more public money for a stadium. We shall place Patrick Carter's report in the public domain before the House goes into recess. I hope that we will be able to have a thorough debate, as we did with Picketts Lock, because we put that information into the public domain and neither the Conservative nor the Liberal Democrat Opposition said that we should have proceeded with Picketts Lock in light of Patrick Carter's evidence. I promised to leave the last two minutes of debate for the Chairman of the Select Committee, so I conclude on that point.
    7.28 pm
    Mr. Kaufman: With the leave of the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, I should like to thank the House for an excellent debate. I hope that we can now leave behind both self-justification and recrimination, and concentrate on getting these things right for the future. I am encouraged by what the Minister for Sport said twice in his winding-up speech about the need for a structure for events. Our Select Committee has a full programme, and we hope that we will not have to return to these issues in the near future, but if we have to, we will. In that case, this show will run and run, even if, sadly, our athletes will not on home ground.
    Debate concluded, pursuant to Resolution [26 November].
    Question deferred, pursuant to Standing Order No. 54 (4) and (5) (Consideration of estimates).

    Waste Management
    [Relevant documents: Fifth Report from the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee, Session 2000–01, on Delivering Sustainable Waste Management, HC 36–1; and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, Office of the Rail Regulator, the Office of Water Services and Ordnance Survey: Annual Report 2001, Cm 5105.]
    Motion made and Question proposed,
    That resources, not exceeding £955,500,000, be authorised, on account, for use during the year ending on 31st March 2003, and that a sum, not exceeding £993,621,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, for the year ending on 31st March 2003 for expenditure by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.—[Mr. Meacher]
    7.29 pm
    Andrew Bennett: I am grateful for this opportunity to debate the fifth report of what was, in the last Parliament, the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Committee, on delivering sustainable waste management. Before I refer to the report itself, I should declare an interest: this autumn I have been chairing a Select Committee-style inquiry in Newcastle, organised by BAN Waste and supported by Newcastle city council, for which I am to receive a fee. That has been an interesting experience as I have had an opportunity to hear a lot of evidence on applying waste management to the locality of Newcastle. I have also had a chance to see how a local inquiry into such issues is conducted.
    A lot of people have talked about how local authorities can organise Select Committee-style scrutiny and how people's panels and similar things can be established. I certainly learned a lot from trying to participate as the chair of an inquiry outside the parliamentary framework. One cannot, of course, compel witnesses, and one is dependent on the effort of individuals. I have been impressed with the effort that people from BAN Waste have put in and the support that Newcastle city council has provided. I look forward to the publication of the inquiry's report on 7 January.
    As for the Select Committee report, I shall begin by placing on record our thanks to our two advisers, Dominic Hogg and David Mansell, and to all the Committee staff who as always worked hard to help us prepare the questions and the report. I also thank my colleagues on the Committee for their hard work during the course of the inquiry. I have a slight whinge about the Government. At the end of the process of producing a Select Committee report, we usually get a response from the Government. Sadly, on this occasion, we did not. The rules are supposed to be that we get a response within two months of the Select Committee reporting. I accept that the election intervened and it was perfectly reasonable for the response to be a bit late. However, we still have not had a response and it is getting very late. I suppose that the Government have the excuse that Select Committees in this Parliament are different from those in the last Parliament, but I still think that we should have had one. I hope that the new Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will pursue these issues, because a sustainable waste management policy is important for this country.
    The world's present use of resources is not sustainable. The developed world—the richest 20 per cent. —uses 80 per cent. of the world's resources and creates a vast

    777
    amount of pollution. The least developed parts of the world use 20 per cent. of those resources. That injustice cannot go on; I do not see how, if the less developed world raises its standards and spends as much on resources and creates as much pollution as the developed world, there can be sustainability for the whole world. We must look at other ways of dealing with the problem. A small number of people suggest that people in the developed world could accept lower standards of living so that there would be more resources for the less developed parts of the world. I do not accept that most of my constituents would volunteer for such a reduction in their standard of living. The developed world must try to find ways in which it can do the same things that it is doing now, but using far fewer resources.
    People talk about factor 4 or factor 10—the idea that we should do what we are doing now, but using only 25 per cent. or 10 per cent. of resources. That would be a substantial challenge, but it is necessary if we are to manage waste in a sustainable world. People often say that it is impossible to achieve that sort of reduction in resources; I do not believe that that is true. There are cases in which, in a relatively short period, the developed world has suddenly started to use far fewer resources to achieve something. The best example of that is computers. When I was first elected to the House, I used to go on visits in my constituency and elsewhere and see people who were delighted to show me a big room of steel cabinets in which computers were operating. Someone would try to explain what was going on, but I half sensed that they did not have a clue. I certainly did not have a clue, but everyone made polite noises. Those computers used a huge amount of metal and other resources, but the same thing can now be contained in a machine on a desktop; in some cases, portable computers can operate with equivalent power.
    It is therefore possible to achieve factor 10. When talking about a sustainable waste management policy, it is important to look at the use of resources to begin with. There is a moral imperative to make better use of our resources, but there is also a strong economic argument for doing so. If we can do something with fewer resources, we will have a considerable competitive edge in the world. The first thing that we should do in the waste hierarchy is minimise the resources that we use and the pollution that is created. We must then consider re-use, recycling and composting, recovering energy from waste and, finally, disposal. It is disappointing that the Government are not doing more on minimisation and are not giving a stronger lead to organisations like the regional development agencies in looking at ways in which we can minimise the waste that is created and the resources that are being used.
    In their waste strategy for 2000, the Government set recycling targets. On the one hand, those targets were pretty feeble and were not at all challenging but, on the other, I must give credit to the Government because setting those targets has proved a substantial spur to an awful lot of local authorities that were not taking recycling seriously, encouraging them to start things like kerbside collections. The targets are minimal, but I credit the Government with encouraging some local authorities to get started. When the Minister for the Environment responds, will he explain how he is working on the
    778
    question of markets for waste paper, glass and plastics? Now that the collection process has been kick-started, the price that local authorities can get for waste materials or, if you like, resources, is crucial. I understand that the Government are looking at giving a grant to encourage another waste paper mill to begin operating; I hope that the Minister will tell us exactly what is happening. Having kick-started many local authorities into getting on with recycling, I hope that the Minister will tell us that the Government will look hard at the question of markets, and that they are doing much more to buy recycled materials.
    I hope that the Minister can give us a progress report on the waste and resource action programme or WRAP. When he appeared before the Select Committee, he placed great emphasis on the fact that WRAP would be one of the organisations that would start to make the Government's waste management programme sustainable. So far, it seems to have got some nice note paper and had one or two meetings, but few members of the general public have heard of it and I am not sure what it has achieved so far. I look forward to the Minister explaining what progress has been made.
    Further down the hierarchy, the question of incineration arises. I am not someone who thinks that it is impossible to create an incinerator without emissions; I think that it is possible to create such an incinerator that will work, but poor management in recent years and the mixing of bottom ash and fly ash mean that few people can have confidence in incinerators.
    My argument against incinerators—or combined heat and power, as the people who are in favour of it like to call it—is that to build an incinerator, one has to borrow the money over 15 to 20 years. That means ensuring the security of supply—committing the country or a locality to produce sufficient waste over the next 20 years to justify building the incinerator. That is a damning indictment of a CHP programme. If we are to have incinerators, the case must be made for a steadily diminishing supply of calorific material to burn in them. As a result, the economics become very doubtful.
    Whatever one says about emissions, my impression is that no one wants an incinerator or a combined heat and power plant near their home. If the Government intend to encourage them, we need a demonstration combined heat and power plant located somewhere central—perhaps within half a mile of the Palace of Westminster. Such plants should be in town centres, where the hot water generated can be used. It is wrong to think that a CHP plant can be sited at the back of some depressed housing area where no one will make a fuss.
    If we adopt a policy of building CHP plants, we should look for town centre locations and demonstrate that the plants need not be out of the way. However, the main question is the security of supply of rubbish. It will be an indictment of us as a nation if we are producing as much rubbish in 20 years' time as we are now.
    Mr. David Drew: The biggest danger is that the location of incinerators is determined by the line of least resistance. That is both unfair and inefficient. We must make it clear to the Government that incinerators should not end up being built in areas where people are least likely to complain. I am sure that that point is made in the Select Committee report.
    Andrew Bennett: My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government could issue a challenge to all

    779
    communities that an incinerator will be built close by if they do not make serious efforts at waste minimisation and recycling. Perhaps the threat of a CHP plant will be enough and it will not be necessary to build any at all.
    I shall deal now with composting, a subject on which I hoped for a lengthy reply from the Minister. There has been much talk of commercial composting. but because of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs waste meat regulations, many proposals for composting have been put on hold. That is unfortunate. When we undertook the inquiry, I was appalled at the amount of waste in the food chain. For a start, waste often occurs in agricultural areas, because crops do not quite meet the supermarkets' specifications. The crops are not even picked; they are destroyed where they were grown.
    It has been suggested to me that at least 25 per cent. of the food that goes into supermarkets, especially vegetables and bread products, goes to waste. That is a huge amount. Most of the big supermarkets were considering composting as a means of dealing with some of that waste, but have had to put their plans on hold because of the meat regulations.
    Even more worrying is the suggestion that most households buy 25 per cent. more food than they need and that the surplus goes to waste. To a certain extent, the supermarkets are again to blame. The one that I use repeatedly has offers of two items for the price of one. That is not economic for me if I am purchasing for the family, and for pensioners, two for the price of one is no good at all. One item is probably more than they want at a particular time, but most people take home the two items, one of which may well end up in the waste stream.
    If we are considering ways of making society more sustainable, we must find ways of cutting down food waste. Food that is not saleable or eatable should be properly composted. I hope that the Minister will tell us that ways will be found to prevent meat getting into compost material, so that it can be made safe, with no possibility of foot and mouth or other problems occurring.
    We in the UK still do very little about reprocessing batteries. They are usually small and end up in the waste stream, where they produce a high level of contamination. It would not be all that difficult for the Government to insist that shops that sell batteries take back used batteries. When people change a battery, it would be easy to take the new one and hand back the old one. If batteries are collected in large numbers, they can be reprocessed.
    I have tweaked the Minister on one or two occasions on the subject of fluorescent tubes. Once, opening a plant in Manchester, he rashly promised that the Government could find more than 1 million fluorescent tubes a year for recycling to remove the mercury. I do not think that he has got anywhere near that target, but it is a small point.
    The European Union has been a significant driver of reform—for example, the landfill directive. We welcome the EU end-use directive for cars. That has led people to start thinking about manufacturing cars whose parts can be re-used or reprocessed. I am a little puzzled about why the EU should start with an end-use directive applying to cars, when there was a well-developed scrap industry in this country.
    The EU has not turned its attention to other products that are much harder to recycle. One of my pet hates is tetrapaks. They are a mixture of foil, plastic film and paper, and are extremely difficult to recycle. They can
    780
    just about be burned, but they have little else going for them. Why not make the manufacturers of such cartons responsible for taking them back and looking after the end-use?
    What about disposable nappies, which are said to constitute 4 per cent. of the waste stream in the UK? Why not make the manufacturers come up with some system to take them back for recycling? Looking in dustbins or wheelie bins, you notice that products such as pizza boxes bulk up the refuse. Why not have an end-use directive for those items? Perhaps the Minister can throw some light on what will happen with regard to fridges, in relation to which it appears that we are in a bit of a mess. The establishment of some proper end-use directives for such issues would demonstrate that the country has a sustainable waste policy. Can the Minister also tell us what encouragement is being given in relation to anaerobic digesters?
    The Select Committee discussed this matter in 1996, 1998 and last year. It has been fairly disappointing that this country has not made much more progress on sustainable waste management. I hope that the Government will seriously consider signing the nation up to the concept of zero waste. That may be a fairly idealistic aim, but unless we can get the message across that resources are being used unsustainably in this country, that we are living in a throwaway society and that that cannot continue, we will find it very difficult to change people's habits.
    7.49 pm
    Malcolm Bruce: I congratulate what was the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs and the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) on their excellent report, which considers in detail many aspects of the problem of waste management in this country. The hon. Gentleman dealt closely with many of those matters his speech, although the language of the report is rather more colourful and hard hitting than that which he chose to use.
    The Government have a great deal to do if they are to convince anybody that we are anywhere near the frontiers of progress on waste management. Overall, the reality is that the UK is dragging its feet behind most of our continental competitors. On almost any indicator, we are neither achieving nor aiming to achieve the sort of recycling and waste reduction that our major continental competitors are and have been achieving. Indeed, they are the innovators. In truth, we are mostly implementing EU directives at the last possible moment, and sometimes not even then. The report states:
    "It is not good enough to shuffle along in a laggardly fashion behind European Union directives."
    That is essentially what the Government have been doing. The Minister made a speech some time ago in which he catalogued a list of great environmental initiatives that the Government had introduced. However, one of my colleagues in the European Parliament analysed the speech and found that 70 per cent. of those great initiatives related simply to the legal requirements that had to be fulfilled if Britain was to meet directives passed by the European Parliament and the European Commission two to three years before. That is how we tend to proceed.
    I should like to mention a concern that relates not only to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but to the way in which this Government operate.

    781
    I thought that they had the problem only when they were in opposition. Understandably, they did not want to set out too much of their stall as an opposition party, but they have carried the problem through into government. I am all in favour of consultation, but my concern is that we have reached a point where the Government seem to be on an endless cycle of summits, taskforces, agencies, initiatives, challenge funds and bids, all of which are designed to try to implement policy, but the result is that everybody who is engaged in trying to deliver that policy becomes increasingly confused and mystified about exactly where the centre of decision making and leadership lie, and what will be done to achieve the aims.
    Let me give an example. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish said that we needed a national recycling programme and a real objective, as did the Select Committee report. He referred to an ideal of zero waste, along with real and specific targets that can be achieved. The first proposed commitment—it was contained in the Liberal Democrat manifesto—was to a doorstep recycling service for every household in the country. We have estimated that such a service would cost about £200 million. As the rubbish and waste industry is worth about £5 billion, that does not seem an enormous amount. The money in WRAP, the waste and resources action programme, and Entrust, the environmental trust scheme regulatory body, adds up to about £200 million, but it is not being allocated in a way that enables local authorities, which must be the front line in providing a recycling service for households, to get on and deliver such a service. They simply need the money to enable them to do that. The Government should give incentives for the good performers, impose penalties for the bad performers and provide funding to ensure delivery.
    I plead with the Minister to try to make the process more simple than it has been to date, as we have not reached a situation in which we have anything like a national plan or strategy. We have some very good local authorities that can be the model, while others are doing very little. I am saying not that the Government should deliver, but that they must take a lead and ensure that we get that delivery. We are currently talking about achieving a target of 30 per cent. recycling by 2010, but today Austria already has 60 per cent. recycling today. Indeed, even some local authorities in Britain have achieved better than 30 per cent. The 30 per cent. target therefore seems very unambitious, but on current strategies it is difficult to envisage that we will meet it, not least because the amount of waste that is being produced is increasing by several per cent. a year—and faster than we are introducing any recycling initiatives. We take the view not only that 60 per cent. is an achievable target, but that it would force the creation of more radical and imaginative policies.
    We have encouraged the use of landfill, and there is a European Union landfill directive. The targets are distant, but they could become a problem for this country if we do not begin to take the necessary steps now. It is logical for local government to promote recycling household waste, but Governments must be responsible for recycling industrial waste. We need clear targets for that.
    It has rightly been said that considering waste disposal quickly leads to examining how to reduce waste. Many of us have been debating the issue for years now, and it is
    782
    extraordinary that most products appear to have as much packaging as ever. We have not created the climate or the culture of responsibility for reducing packaging and taking back any that is created by marketing and merchandising. The Government could tackle that.
    There was a displacement factor in this country when Germany reduced its packaging legislation. However, that did much to ensure that Germany was prepared to recycle and that its marketing organisations tackled their responsibilities for the amount of packaging that they produced. We have not engaged seriously in that debate, either.
    What we do with our waste lies at the heart of the problem. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish commented on that. I am sure that there is a campaigning issue connected to waste in every hon. Member's constituency. All of us have tips, landfill sites or other methods of disposal such as incinerators on or close to our boundaries. All are controversial. There must be engagement between the responsibility of Government and local authorities and that of individuals for the waste that society produces.
    No one wants a landfill tip or an incinerator on the doorstep. It is reasonable to confront people with their responsibility for helping with waste management. It is not good enough simply to say that we tax landfill. That creates a revenue, but the idea is surely to reduce landfill and encourage waste reduction so that the pressure on landfill decreases. It would be better to use all the money to that end.
    The Select Committee has expressed clear views on incineration—views that my party wholly supports. Indeed, the Committee has inadvertently supported Liberal Democrat policy. A Committee that approaches the facts objectively is likely to come up with Liberal Democrat policy, because it is common sense. As the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish said, encouraging the provision of new incinerators is becoming a soft option. If we transfer from landfill to incineration, we simply reduce the pressure for waste reduction in general.
    A quote on waste strategy from the Select Committee report should go on record:
    "One example of the problem with the strategy is provided by incineration. We believe that incineration will never play a major role in truly sustainable waste management and cannot, and should not, be classified as producing renewable energy. Yet the strategy fails to set out what role the Government believes waste incineration should play whilst also leaving the door open to a big expansion of large-scale incineration of household waste."
    The final phrase is crucial. If we go down that road, we destroy our waste reduction strategy.
    If the Government need any proof of the potency of incineration as a political issue, it is provided by my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Sue Doughty). Guildford has a Liberal Democrat Member mainly because of the strength of feeling against the incinerator that is being proposed for the area. My hon. Friend can make her own speech on that subject, and I am sure that she will.
    This is a potent issue. In my part of Scotland, more objections have been received to the planning application to replace an incinerator than to any other planning application in the city's history. That is how strongly people feel. The Government would be well advised to accept that, although incineration may have a role to play, that role is neither urgent, nor major. In reality, the danger

    783
    is that even accommodating incineration will destroy the beginnings of a real waste reduction strategy. A moratorium on new incinerators would thus be constructive for that reason.
    My suggestion to the Government is that they need to adopt a more focused and less complicated approach. To put it simply, present policies will not allow us to meet our obligations under European directives, or Government targets derived from them. If we do not act soon, it will be too late to introduce policies that will turn the matter around. We need simple targets—such as ensuring that 60 per cent. of household uplift is recycled—and we must ensure that local authorities have the responsibility to deliver that within an agreed timetable. To do that, they will need funding, and the ability to impose penalties.
    I suggest that the simpler the mechanism involved, the more likely we are to get results. At present, the mechanism is too complicated. Authorities have too much discretion to adopt differing approaches.
    Finally, will the Minister clarify how we are to sort out the problem posed by cast-off refrigerators? In addition, how are we to avoid the similar problem with the recycling of electrical goods that will arise with the next directive coming down the track?
    As I understand it, the Government started discussing the regulation on fridges three years ago. The final terms of the regulation were published in October last year. The regulation's wording made it clear that, by 1 January 2002, the removal of CFCs and related materials in fridge insulation would be a mandatory requirement. That is a specialist process for which we have no capacity in the UK.
    My understanding is that someone in the Department misread the regulation and believed that it contained some degree of flexibility. I was told that the person involved believed that the regulation used the phrase "where practicable", and that that was considered an obvious excuse—that the UK does not have the necessary capacity, so the regulations' requirement with regard to fridges cannot be achieved and are therefore not practicable. As a result, it was believed that the European Commission would have to give us enough time to get the capacity in place.
    In fact, the regulation does not contain those words. It does not allow any flexibility or discretion, yet this country has no relevant capacity.
    I am told that it could be a year before the capacity is in place, which means that 2.5 million fridges—the number thrown out every year—will have to be transported to licensed premises, and stored there. Thereafter, when the capacity is in place, they will have to be transported again and disposed of in the required manner.
    All that will cost a significant amount of money. The Department disputed the figures advanced by the Liberal Democrat party, and I have no quarrel with that. Our estimate was based on the information that we had gathered from various sources about what the average cost of moving the fridges would be. Even so, it is clear that a substantial amount of money will have to be spent, in part because a regulation was misread, and in part because we did not take steps to provide the necessary capacity in time.
    Local authorities and retailers need to know what will be done to cover the shortfall in capacity until such time as we can dispose of the fridges. The Department has said
    784
    that it recognises that a problem exists, and that it will do something about it, but no one knows exactly what will be done.
    I have been asking local authorities for estimates of the cost. I received the latest figure, from Cumbria, today. That authority said that it estimated the extra cost of handling these fridges at £900,000. My local authority, Aberdeenshire, put the figure at £350,000. The figure varies according to the size of the authority, but the numbers that I have given are typical of what local authorities have told me. In addition, local authorities are not the only ones who will have to deal with the fridges, as retailers will also face certain costs.
    I hope that the Minister will accept that we need to know what is going to be done—as well as how it is going to be done, and how soon—to avoid the problem of fridges being dumped by the roadside, in fields or in other places where we would not wish to see them.
    The Select Committee that has now been replaced by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has done an extremely worthwhile job. It has set out clearly its aspirations for Government policy, most of which I endorse. I urge the Government to accept the Committee's recommendations as far as possible, and to act on them. My final plea to them is to simplify the process so that people know what is required and what the mechanisms are, so they can deliver. At the moment, the targets are unrealistic and the mechanisms are not in place.
    8.5 pm
    Mr. Bill O'Brien: It is always interesting to follow the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) in a debate. He mentioned kerbside collection, and the fact that the Liberal Democrats estimated that it would cost, I think, £200,000 to implement such a scheme. Obviously, if that was the right figure, there would be no hesitation in doing so. However, I received today a report from the UK waste management industry entitled "Facing the Facts", which is published by Onyx. It states:
    "Local authorities will need to invest up to £7bn if they are to meet the EU directive of reducing the amount of waste going to landfill."
    So, there is a vast difference between the figures quoted by the Liberal Democrats and those quoted by the people involved in the industry. The report goes on to say:
    "UK inhabitants produce 550 kg of municipal waste per person per year—among the highest volume in Europe … UK inhabitants recycle an average 60 kg of municipal waste per person every year—this compares to 250 kg from the average American."
    Those figures have an impact on what we are discussing tonight.
    I want to express my appreciation to my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett), who chaired our Committee and worked very hard to ensure that the work of the Committee was constructive and directed so that we could publish the report that we are discussing tonight. Members of the Committee appreciate the work that our colleague has done as Chairman.
    As a member of the Transport, Local Government and the Regions Committee, I want to raise certain issues that I consider important to the Committee and to the industry involved with waste and packaging. I also wish to declare that I am the co-chair of the all-party sustainable waste

    785
    group, which came together in 1995 to raise issues in Parliament involving waste and sustainable waste management.
    Let us consider the terms of reference of the Committee, as outlined in paragraph 6 of the fifth report, which states:
    "Our terms of reference were to examine whether the policies set out in the Waste Strategy 2000"—
    a publication from the Government—
    "are sufficient to deliver sustainable waste management, and whether the necessary measures, including provision of financial resources, were in place for those policies to be implemented."
    Our terms of reference were to consider whether the strategy would result in
    "more efficient use of resources and a consequent reduction in the amount of material entering the waste stream"
    If we can achieve that result, we can reduce energy costs. We can reduce the amount of material that is needed to sustain the waste and packaging industries.
    Our terms of reference referred to
    "an increase in recycling of waste, particularly by greater development of markets for recycled material (including compost) and the use of producer responsibility measures".
    Producer responsibilities are certainly an important factor. I know that the glass, aluminium, steel and paper and board industries are making approaches in a bid to recover all possible waste consisting of those materials from the waste stream for recycling.
    I live near a Rockware Glass factory. I am told that within a 10-mile radius of that factory, 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes of glass go into landfills every week because there are no procedures to extract it from the waste stream. Every ounce could be recycled, turned into cullet and returned to the system. Similarly, the aluminium industry will take all the aluminium waste that it can recover. The steel, paper and board and plastics industries are crying out for material to be recovered. Most of this is municipal or household waste. I agree with the hon. Member for Gordon that we should press the issue. I am sure that my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Minister for the Environment are familiar with such demands, and that their recent initiatives will help.
    The terms of reference also referred to
    "sufficient action to educate the public about the importance of sustainable waste management".
    I know of a number of manufacturing firms that have set up their own education units. Rockware Glass and Re-use, a recycling company, have such a unit, to which children are brought from all over the country so that they can understand the importance of recycling. Coca-Cola and Schweppes in my constituency also has a unit to educate people in the importance of returning not just glass but plastic bottles so that they can be recycled, and libraries have similar units. A great deal of time and money is being spent on programmes to make people understand the importance of extracting materials from the waste stream. I have already mentioned the 30,000 tonnes of glass, plastic, steel, aluminium, cardboard and paper.
    When we took evidence on sustainable waste, we were referred to the role of civic amenity sites and their importance to recovery and recycling.
    786
    There are threats that civic amenity sites could be taken from my own authority of Wakefield and offered to the private sector. They are purpose built and they operate efficiently, so I would consider removing them from local authority operation a sin. We have recycling targets and the main one for recycling or composting household waste is at least 25 per cent. by 2005, increasing to 30 per cent. by 2010 and 33 per cent. by 2015. The civic amenity sites can play a major part in meeting those targets, so I plead with the Minister to ensure that their development is encouraged, as outlined and recommended by the Committee.
    I sat on the Standing Committee that considered the establishment of the Environment Agency under the Environment Act 1995—there was a Division over that legislation—and the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997 followed. Under the regulations, material manufacture was to bear 6 per cent. of the responsibility for the finished product; converting materials to packaging, 11 per cent.; packing and filling, 36 per cent.; and the retailers—supermarkets and others–47 per cent.
    There was a tremendous imbalance there, because the retailers collected all the waste and sat on it, as they had much more than their 47 per cent. The packaging recovery note system was the currency through which people could purchase waste from those with a surplus to enable them to meet their targets as outlined in the packaging waste regulations. We were told that they would apply for five years, but after the 1997 election my colleague the Minister for the Environment listened to the industry's pleas and agreed to review the producer responsibilities and the obligations under the regulations.
    A consultation document was published in 1997 and slight adjustments were made to those percentages, which benefited the industry, but they did not go far enough to redress the advantages that the retail people—the supermarkets—enjoyed under the regulations. The document says:
    "The purpose of the consultation document is to present options and proposals for the modification of the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997".
    The industry appreciated my right hon. Friend's intervention in reviewing the percentages, and the glass, aluminium, steel, paper, plastics and wood industries responded to the document by offering him advice. I am sure that he valued the interest that came from the industry.
    Recently, however, there has been anger among people in the packaging industry because of a statement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry—there are problems when departmental boundaries cross. She announced that the new code, as recommended by the Competition Commission and involving the supermarkets,
    "effectively formalises the relationship between retailers and suppliers"
    and that was obviously welcomed by the supermarkets. The code has had an impact on the packaging industry and on farmers. However, that made waves: it creates problems for the waste packaging industry. We need to consider decisions that have an effect on people in that industry and on those involved in recycling.
    May I make a plea on behalf of the packaging industry? In many instances, owing to cheap imports, our industry is at a disadvantage compared with competitors in Europe

    787
    and the far east. The massive increase in gas prices, the climate change levy and the proposed mineral extraction levy will all have an impact on the competitiveness of our packaging industries. Will my right hon. Friend the Minister try to find an opportunity to discuss with his colleagues in the Department of Trade and Industry and the Treasury the impact of those levies on the waste packaging industry?
    We should use the recycling process. We need to undertake more recycling, so if we can obtain more material through the waste system, it will help to offset some of the industry's problems and the extra costs—including those from increased administration—that it has to bear. My plea to my right hon. Friend is that we implement kerbside collection as quickly as possible. We must extract between 30,000 and 40,000 tonnes a week of glass and other materials for recycling. That will help to make our packaging industries more efficient and accountable, and environmentally friendly.
    I am sure that my right hon. Friend is fully aware of the situation and of the plea in the report, which I support, that that recycling should continue.
    Several hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. Before I call the next hon. Member, I point out to the House that there is a time limitation, so it would be helpful if everyone who seeks to catch my eye bears their colleagues in mind and tries to keep their remarks reasonably concise.
    8.23 pm
    Sue Doughty: I very much congratulate the Select Committee on its work in producing the report. During the run-up to the election and subsequently, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) pointed out, many of its recommendations were extremely helpful to people who were considering the development of alternative strategies for sustainable waste management.
    Last week, a planning meeting was held in Surrey to examine proposals for three incinerators—one of which was for Guildford—and the Select Committee report was cited most constructively. We all found it helpful.
    We are looking for a sustainable waste management strategy—indeed, at present, we are looking for any waste management strategy at all. During the past few years, report after report has been issued, after which the Select Committee report was a breath of fresh air. There was even a waste summit, but we are getting no further. We want firm guidance from the Government and a deliverable waste plan, rather than words over which people argue. There was discussion earlier about whether we should refer to incinerators as energy from waste. Those little words that creep in when we try to justify what is happening are important to people.
    Our approach in Guildford to incinerator proposals is not a case of nimbyism; in fact, I am very pleased to say that when I was approached by a neighbouring Surrey Member asking whether we would agree to send our waste to an incinerator just outside the area, I had to say, "No; Guildford does not want to incinerate waste. We want instead to develop a sustainable waste strategy in which all the feasible options are considered, after which
    788
    we shall decide what to do with the final waste element." Whatever happens, the people in Guildford are absolutely determined that the solution has to be sustainable and pose minimal health risks, about which there has been much concern.
    I know that I speak for other hon. Members when I say that constituents who would have to work near incinerators, or send their children to school near them, are very deeply worried about proposals to build incinerators. Those worries are shared by those who own houses near incinerators. Although the Guildford housing market is desperately overheated, parts of it have declined because of the issue. It has happened in a part of Guildford that is not affluent, where a large percentage of household income is used to buy a house. It has been heartbreaking to see people in the area unable to move because they cannot sell their property for anything like the amount they paid for it. We have to resolve that issue and make clear our intentions.
    When we talk about recycling, we are really talking about materials recovery, which is a term that I much prefer. Industry wants more materials recovery, as should we all, because that is the sustainable way of approaching the issue. I hope that, in their planning, the Government will help local authorities to agree a standard measurement for recycling. Does local recycling include deposits at local supermarket facilities, or only at local authority facilities? The waste is all produced in one local authority, and we have to address the various measurement issues. I know that councils will be very pleased to see a consistent method of measurement.
    There are difficulties also in distinguishing between doorstep recycling and recycling in materials reclamation facilities, and in dealing with contaminated recyclables as opposed to clean ones. We want to set ourselves recyclables targets, but to do that we have to be able to measure them. We want not only high-quality doorstep recycling but much greater investment in alternative sustainable ways of handling waste, such as composting. Much more needs to be done on municipal recycling.
    We have to determine how local government can best use the available funding to develop materials recovery and composting streams and facilities. I realise that we have been bandying about figures, and that earlier in the debate one figure was misheard, thereby producing another one. However, research commissioned jointly by Friends of the Earth, Waste Watch and Biffa estimates that £17 per household would cover the initial transition and implementation costs of an effective recycling and composting service. However, we have to find the money for the initial investment.
    One deep disappointment is that only very modest annual increases to the landfill tax, which seems to be a good thing, are being proposed. Indeed, the Environmental Services Association is one of the few industry groups ever to have said, "Please increase tax and help us to invest in materials recovery. We believe that the impact of an increase on local government and on commerce will be minimal." Liberal Democrat Members would also like the rate of those tax increases to be accelerated in the next few years. If we are taxing waste management technologies that we do not like, should we not be thinking about an incinerator tax? The Select Committee report mentions such a tax.

    789
    In the meantime, we should develop a third approach that involves composting and materials recovery so that we are not presuming in favour of incineration at the cost of landfill. Local authorities are still doing that. Those fighting the proposals are still working with people who want proven technologies. No local authority will take risks when it is making recommendations about this or that new technology. Local authorities have a legal responsibility and they want reliable solutions. However, we need investment to help bring those solutions to the point at which they will be right for local authorities.
    Local residents should not be writing their own handbooks about how to achieve zero waste because local government does not have the solutions, and the structure within which they are working is not sufficiently good. Yet so many of the good recycling activities in London, which have high levels of recyclables, are community led. Although we are all pleased about that, we should be delivering solutions, through local government, possibly in partnership with other providers. Local government need these tools; it should not be left to private individuals and protest groups to solve these problems for the Government.
    We need to look at waste management in the farming sector. Farmers have to bear the cost of disposing of materials on their land, which is why we must do all we can to discourage fly tipping. Where fly tipping occurs on the county's land, the council is at least obliged to take the waste away even if the farmer picks up the cost. I do not condone the amount of money that local authorities have to pay for this service. Farmers often have to pay for the removal of several tonnes of tyres and builders' rubble. More than a quarter of farmers have seen a significant increase in fly tipping this year. We need to ensure that solving urban problems does not lead to rural difficulties. That is most important when we look at what can be done to help the rural community. The days when farmers had a lot of money to spare are long gone, and the problem is on our doorstep.
    David Taylor: I put it to the hon. Lady that fly tipping in rural areas is not, as she suggests, predominantly the responsibility of the urban population. My constituency is very rural in parts, and in some cases the villages surrounding the agricultural areas contribute to the increase in fly tipping, possibly as a response to the increase in landfill tax without adequate recycling opportunities.
    Sue Doughty: I thank the hon. Gentleman—that was a useful piece of information. There is a mixture of urban and rural in my constituency, with fields close to the edge of town, but circumstances may vary in different constituencies.
    Two years ago, a Tidy Britain survey on the impact of the landfill tax found that most fly-tipped material was of local origin and that 57 per cent. was household or garden waste. People drove their cars to tip that waste on to somebody else's property. Building trade waste amounted to 21 per cent., with cars or tyres at 9 per cent. We all know that that figure will rise rapidly. Waste on verges amounted to 28 per cent.; 28 per cent. was on private land; and, sadly, 12 per cent. went into rivers. We need to consider the needs of the rural economy in managing waste.
    790
    We are looking for a sustainable waste strategy. The Select Committee report goes a long way to pointing the way forward. However, we need a context in which that can be delivered by local government, the best companies and community groups, and we are looking to the Government to take the lead.
    8.34 pm
    Paddy Tipping: We cannot ignore waste management because the issue simply will not go away; it is increasing in magnitude. It is unfortunate that municipal waste in the United Kingdom is increasing by between 4 and 5 per cent. a year. Across the country, there are closed historical landfill sites that remain ticking timebombs. It is no longer like that because we now have good and improving waste management practice, but the United Kingdom is far too dependent on landfill, with 81 per cent. of waste going to landfill sites, and it is important to view that in a European context. In Denmark and Holland, just 12 per cent. of waste goes to landfill sites, and the figure is 50 per cent. in France.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) stressed very strongly the importance of waste minimisation, recycling and composting, but the time has now come to convert the rhetoric into reality. We in the United Kingdom do very badly on recycling and composting, with the figure at just 11 per cent., compared with Denmark on 30 per cent. and Holland on 40 per cent. It is important to note that, while waste is increasing in the United Kingdom, firm political leadership has led to a reduction in waste in Germany, Denmark and Sweden.
    We must move away from landfill as quickly as possible. Of course, the new EU waste directive will enable us to do that, backed by the local authority targets, but there are other pressures. All over the country, as the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) said, complaints are made about landfill sites. There are problems with local authorities gaining new consents for landfill sites. For example, Nottinghamshire county council has been striving to open the Bentink void for five years, but the planning process is still not complete and engineering work remains to be done. I suspect that another five years will pass before that sites opens.
    It is important to note that any planning application connected with waste meets opposition—whether we are talking about commercial composting sites, such as that mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish, or waste recycling centres. To establish a proper infrastructure in Nottinghamshire, two waste recycling centres will be needed by 2005. Even today, there is no clear idea where those sites should be and the planning process has not even started.
    Mass incineration is universally abhorred, and quite rightly so. Within the next day or two, the Government will produce a Green Paper on a new planning process. It is important that that process enables local people to raise objections, and their objections are paramount. We must have a new planning system that is swifter at delivery than the one we have at present.
    David Taylor: My hon. Friend refers to a swifter system, but is it not equally the case that communities pitted against a very powerful applicant, as with the New Albion site in North-West Leicestershire, face a very

    791
    uneven struggle when the public inquiry takes place? Surely there have to be improved opportunities for communities to express their concerns.
    Paddy Tipping: My hon. Friend will have to contain himself, but I suspect that the Green Paper on planning will address that point. It is important that community groups are supported in such David and Goliath situations, so that their voices can be heard in a contest that is not always equal.
    It is important to note that waste is viewed as cost-free to the householder. In the United Kingdom, waste disposal costs the householder £47 a year–90p a week. That is typically 25 per cent. of the sewerage and water costs. The comparable figure is £100 a year in France and £150 a year in Germany.
    It is important that we consider other ways of raising money to build an infrastructure for waste disposal. I agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Guildford (Sue Doughty) that there is a strong case for increasing the landfill tax substantially from the current £12. I would not advocate a move to the £46 charged in the Netherlands, but there is a case for a big gear change in charging policy. Providing kerbside collection across the country will cost a great deal of money. The hon. Member for Gordon said that it would cost £200 million and my own estimate would be around £500,000 for a small district council.
    There is a compelling case for charging householders for the waste that they produce. It must not be seen as cost-free, or as free of cost to the environment. Those households that recycle could receive a reduction in council tax bills. I hope that the performance and innovation unit will also consider charging households directly for the waste that they produce.
    Andrew Bennett: Does my hon. Friend accept that the great danger of what he suggests is that it would increase fly tipping? Another issue is how we could stop people putting their rubbish in next-door's wheelie bin or dustbin.
    Paddy Tipping: Such a move would cause problems, but we cannot continue with a situation whereby the amount of waste going into rubbish bins is still increasing and people have a perception that they pay nothing towards the disposal of waste. We must establish a link between charging and waste disposal.
    Malcolm Bruce: The hon. Gentleman's idea is interesting, but would it not just introduce another complication? Most people regard the local authority as the body that removes their waste. Would the simplest answer not be for the local authority to say that people had to put their waste in certain boxes and that it would be taken away only if they did so—and for penalties to be charged for non-compliance? That is what people pay their taxes for. It would not be cost-free, but it would be the simplest answer.
    Paddy Tipping: Yes, but we must establish a link. Householders must know that the disposal of waste costs both the environment and real cash. We lack the attitude to tackle the problem, and that is reflected in the amount that we spend on waste disposal. In the UK, local authorities spend £1.5 billion on waste disposal. In France, they spend £3 billion.
    792
    If we are to build an infrastructure, we must find ways to deliver the money to do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) mentioned the Ernst and Young report that suggested that it would cost £7 billion over 10 years. There is big money in waste and if we develop a national plan for waste disposal, the private and public sector should both contribute.
    Waste planning should be localised, too. It is a local problem and local solutions should be found. I was especially struck by developments in the Isle of Wight, where a partnership between the local authority, Biffa and the ENER.G Group has reduced landfill by 45 per cent. through recycling and energy recovery. Some 65,000 households are served by the scheme, but it costs. The average cost in the UK is 90p, but that service costs £1.50. However, it is more sustainable and it is a local solution to a local problem.
    The Isle of Wight scheme has its problems. The waste recovery heat and power plant is losing money hand over fist and there is a real danger that it will go out of business or relocate overseas. The Minister will be aware of a possible solution using the draft UK renewables obligation order, which is in its second draft form at the moment. That perceives that support for "Advanced (Energy from Waste) Technologies" might be available. However, the order specifies that it is for gasification and pyrolysis, but we should not be backing technologies but examining good quality heat and power schemes. What is significant is not the technology but the inputs and, more important, the outputs of a plant. There is a strong case for extending the order to high quality, more conventional means of disposal and incineration. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will comment on that.
    Last month, the decision to call a waste summit was announced and the PIU has been charged with the task of producing solutions. I hope that those solutions will be sustainable. Waste is a cost to us all. It is a cost in real terms and to the environment, so we must use the waste summit and the PIU report as a spur to finding a long overdue solution. We must change the rhetoric of sustainability so that reality lies behind it.
    8.46 pm
    Mr. Gregory Barker: I am extremely pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this important debate. Conservation and sustainable development are causes very close to my heart, so I was glad recently to join the Environmental Audit Committee.
    As a constituency Member of Parliament, I have a duty to fight for the interests of an area of which more than 70 per cent. is designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty. As a Conservative, I care passionately about the environmental future of the country and indeed the planet. However, I wish to start by praising those local councils that have bucked the national trend and have managed to put in place a progressive recycling regime.
    One such authority is Wealden council, part of which I am proud to represent in the House. It has one of the best recycling records in the country and I hope that Rother—which I am also proud to represent and which is now firmly Conservative after years of Liberal control—will start to blaze a trail in that regard too.
    Getting a grip of the problem of waste in Britain is not just a lofty aspiration; it is a political imperative. After five years of Labour Government, any semblance of a

    793
    progressive and effective waste strategy has ground to a halt. The recent waste summit called by the Secretary of State was not about taking a record of achievement to its next logical step or shifting up a gear. It was a vain effort to breathe life into what was clearly a political corpse.
    So soon after winning a fresh mandate from the electorate, one would have hoped that the Secretary of State would have her own ideas or even manifesto commitments to which she could refer to deal with the mess and intractable muddle that is the Government's waste management strategy. However, as with so many moribund areas of Government policy, she has contracted a nasty outbreak of "reviewititis" in the vain hope that a problem deferred is a problem halved.
    After five years of Labour Government, there is no effective waste strategy; after five years of Labour Government, the Secretary of State was unable to tell my Committee where she stood on incineration; after five years of Labour Government, there is no effective national recycling policy; after five years, the amount of waste we generate is increasing not diminishing; and after five years, the Secretary of State has gone back to the political drawing board and passed the buck to the PIU.
    It is not sufficient expert advice that the Government lack—far from it, because there have been numerous reports and reviews in recent years—but political will. They lack the political will to go beyond the soundbite and the political cliché to tackle the problems head on. That is not the only problem. Rather than face up to the environmental challenge, the Government have neutered the issue of environmental protection and sustainable development by salami-slicing policy responsibility between the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. While we wait for the Government to rearrange the office furniture in Whitehall, the environmental future of the country is going up in smoke.
    As the problem of incineration has been offloaded into the political long grass of the PIU, beleaguered county councils up and down the country are being left to make critical decisions on incineration in a political vacuum. While the Government procrastinate yet further, councils are being asked to take decisions that could have consequences for countless communities for up to 25 or 30 years to come. Councils such as East Sussex in which my constituency sits, face the prospect of having to give the green light to the building of incinerators while important issues of public health remain unanswered.
    I have pledged to fight the siting of incinerators in my constituency at Mountfield or Pebsham. That is why I wholeheartedly backed the Conservative party's commitment at the recent election to obtain a national moratorium on the building of new large-scale municipal incinerators until independent British scientific evidence proves that they are safe.
    Too much incorrect information is flying around on both sides of the argument for proper conclusions to be drawn. Too many unanswered questions swirl around the incineration debate, and the Labour Government deliberately choose to ignore them. Without an effective national waste strategy, councils such as East Sussex may find themselves driven into the business of incineration
    794
    and licensing commercial incinerators that will ultimately rely on importing rubbish into the county to keep those costly facilities commercially viable. I vigorously support free enterprise and I have seen in my lifetime the value of throwing off the shackles of the state, but the clean air of Bexhill and Battle is not for sale.
    As the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) said, the United States of America, the home of free enterprise, manages to recycle an average of 250 kg of municipal waste per person every year compared with a lousy 60 kg in the UK. After five years of a Labour Government, the UK now produces 550 kg of municipal waste per person per year, which is among the highest in Europe
    David Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Barker: No, I am limited on time. The hon. Gentleman will get his chance.
    I am amazed that Ministers have the sheer brass neck to come to the House and tell hon. Members that they face the threat of up to 100 new large-scale incinerators pumping out emissions when the Government's record on recycling is so risible. They are failing across the spectrum of waste policy.
    As other hon. Members said, the latest comprehensive Ernst and Young local authority waste management survey reveals a startling £6 billion to £7 billion shortfall in the investment required to meet EU landfill targets. Perhaps the Minister should tell that to the Chancellor. The same survey reveals that only 10 per cent. of local authorities have finalised plans to deliver an integrated waste management structure. Some 14 per cent. have not started their plans and the remaining plans are languishing in various states of early drafting. I hope that the Minister will address that point.
    The lag is due not only to the shortfall in funding, but to the uncertainties in the procurement of contracts in the waste disposal sector. With so many areas labouring under a regime in which one authority has responsibility for collection and another for disposal, the Government's total lack of an enforceable coherent national strategy is acting as a serious brake to the development of a sensible and ambitious recycling strategy that could be delivered on the ground. That failure is driving Britain into the arms of the incineration industry.
    There will be a high price to pay for this Government's poor record, not least fines of up to £500,000 per day if the terms of the EU landfill directive are not met, but that will be a small cost compared with the prospect of a whole generation of children growing up in the shadow of Labour's massive incinerator-building programme.
    8.55 pm
    Mrs. Louise Ellman: The Select Committee's report calls for vision, ambition and action to implement an integrated waste management strategy that minimises waste, reduces landfill and increases recycling and re-use. The evidence is that this Government have made great strides towards achieving that, but can still make more improvements and indeed need encouragement to ensure that that happens.
    The waste strategy 2000 is a step in the right direction, and its initial target to almost treble recycling rates by 2005 is admirable. The concern lies in the absence of

    795
    specific measures to ensure that those rates are attained. There is concern that the Government do not appear to be paying sufficient attention to waste minimisation. They seem to be accepting that household waste will continue to grow by 3 per cent. per annum. I hope that, in replying to the debate, the Minister for the Environment will assure us that the Government are concerned with waste minimisation, as well as with better methods of waste disposal.
    The Government's waste disposal initiatives should be recognised and applauded. WRAP, the waste and resources action programme, set up to overcome market barriers to re-use and recycling, is to be welcomed, but it would be helpful if we could have a progress report on its targets and on how much is being achieved.
    The Government's decision to call a waste summit only a month ago is a sign of their commitment. Their action in bringing together business, green groups and representatives from the voluntary sector and local authorities indicates the importance that they attach to partnership work. The Government's commitment that the performance and innovation unit will report in summer 2002 on its review of the waste disposal strategy is another important step. It is equally important that the Department of Trade and Industry is the lead Department in this matter, because that emphasises the importance of business in efficient waste disposal policies.
    I draw the attention of the House to the role of key players in improving our policy and taking forward the recommendations of the Select Committee. The Government must continue to show leadership, to set targets and to introduce legislation where necessary. I hope that they will do more to recognise the importance of producer responsibility, because they have not acted on that as strongly as they might have done.
    Fiscal measures are important in improving efficiency and reducing landfill. The landfill tax was perhaps the first environmental tax, and it has been greatly welcomed by those who are concerned about better means of waste management. I would hope that the Government could identify further fiscal measures and financial incentives to support better waste disposal practices and a more integrated approach to the subject. The climate change levy led to the identification of a number of energy-intensive sectors of industry in which supportive financial incentives have been introduced and are now being acted on. I hope that that thinking can be extended to the whole issue of integrated waste management. perhaps through the green technology challenge. I look forward to hearing further details about that. The regions should be used more positively to promote better practices. Regional chambers should develop better strategies on integrated waste policies and should work with regional development agencies to publicise proposals and work out better means of disposal, perhaps using regional investment funds.
    Local authorities should continue to be seen as an essential part of a sensible policy. They are due to receive £140 million from the special fund that the Government established for local authority recycling. I hope that the local government White Paper, which was announced today, will provide more opportunities and flexibility for local authorities to take more action and become involved in more joint ventures. I hope that the Government will heed the Select Committee recommendation that their assessment of best value in local government should
    796
    include recycling targets. They should also consider the specific recommendation that beacon councils should have achieved at least a 50 per cent. kerbside collection of recyclable items before they are given that status.
    I want to pay particular attention to the importance of community involvement. We are all aware of the importance of community involvement in assessing and often in reacting to proposals on waste management and disposal. I wish to draw attention to the important contribution made by social enterprise in Liverpool, particularly the work of Create, an entrepreneurial and environmentally beneficial social enterprise that creates jobs and provides training that leads to jobs and, at the same time, recycles and re-uses household goods. Create was founded in Liverpool in October 1995 and is a company limited by guarantee. It began as a partnership between the Furniture Resource centre, which is a charity, and Thorn EMI. Last year, its turnover was about £650,000; it employed 15 permanent staff and trained 28 people. Indeed, since its inception, it has trained 98 people, most of whom have since found permanent employment.
    Most important, perhaps, Create's work involves the recycling and refurbishment of used household goods such as fridges, washing machines and cookers. Those goods are resold in the community at affordable prices for people on low incomes. During the time in which it has been operating, 70,000 appliances have been collected, 12,000 of which have been sold following refurbishment; 3,700 tonnes of scrap have been sent for recycling and 4,000 fridges and freezers have had ozone-depleting CFCs removed.
    The project is recognised for using initiative and flair, improving the environment, showing the way forward and, at the same time, creating employment. It has been involved in the new deal's environmental taskforce, has worked in Liverpool's employment zone and is seen as an excellent example of an intermediate labour market project. I hope that the Government will recognise the importance of that initiative and enterprise in Liverpool and will ensure that, through various means of allocating funding and support, such projects can be expanded and developed. Indeed, I understand that Create is already expanding and working in a London borough, but I hope that that example of local enterprise will be seen as a national leader and something that should be followed up across the country.
    During the past four years, my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) has chaired the Environment Sub-Committee with flair, expertise and commitment. It is a matter of great regret that the environment has been removed from the remit of what is now the Select Committee on Transport, Local Government and the Regions. I bring it to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment that the members of that Sub-Committee and its Chairman will be following the consequences of the Select Committee's report and will retain a keen interest in the way in which its recommendations are pursued.
    I hope that the importance of the current Select Committee's work is recognised. It has identified the importance of going ahead with a sound, environmentally beneficial policy for waste minimisation and disposal. I hope that in my right hon. Friend's reply, he will give us an assurance that the Government will follow the Select

    797
    Committee's recommendations. I can assure him that its members, past and present, will listen carefully to his remarks.
    9.6 pm
    Jane Griffiths: I am not a member of the Select Committee, but I have read its report with great interest and listened to the debate with even greater interest. It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) who as always made a thoughtful contribution.
    It is interesting to follow at one remove the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Mr. Barker). I do not know his constituency, but I did not recognise the picture that he painted of the good citizens of his part of Sussex cowering in the shadow of huge toxic incinerators. That is not a picture that any of us would recognise.
    Mr. Barker: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I can tell her that there is genuine concern in my constituency at the prospect of an incinerator being built at Pebsham in Bexhill or at Mountfield near Battle. There is a huge public outcry and huge public concern about the potential environmental impact. There is also huge concern from parents and families who live in the communities around the areas that stand to be blighted. The hon. Lady makes light of the matter at her own cost.
    Jane Griffiths: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his most helpful intervention. I was not, of course, seeking to make light of his or his constituents' concerns. I was simply pointing out that to paint such an overblown picture does no service to this important issue.
    The targets in the Select Committee's report have been described from all parts of the House this evening as unchallenging and not strict enough. In an ideal world, those targets might not seem greatly challenging, but in the country in which we live, they do present a challenge to those seeking to recover value from 40 per cent. of municipal waste by 2005, and from 45 per cent. of municipal waste by 2010, under the terms of the Government's waste strategy. Those are not unchallenging targets.
    The Government's waste strategy, recognising that different local authorities are at different points in increasing the amount that they recycle, called for those recycling less than 5 per cent. of waste in 1998–99 to achieve at least 10 per cent. by 2003; for those recycling between 5 per cent. and 15 per cent. in 1998–99 to double their rate by 2003; and for the remainder to achieve at least one third by 2003. It is estimated that that will achieve 17 per cent. nationally by 2003.
    I suspect that those targets will be difficult to achieve. That is why I found the Select Committee report so useful, as it takes a hard look at the issues associated with recycling and the difficulties in its way.
    Some remarks have been made from various points of view about incineration. The Select Committee report states that energy from waste incineration should be excluded from energy renewables targets. I am not sure whether I agree with that view. The choice is not between incineration and wonderful, completely clean waste
    798
    management, but between incineration, landfill and other measures, so I do not believe that we can try to exclude incineration all together.
    Little mention was made of clinical waste, which forms a small but important proportion of our total waste. The Royal Berkshire hospital, which is situated in my constituency, is very large and is surrounded on all sides by a densely populated residential area. No complaint has ever been made to me about the clinical waste that is incinerated there. I believe that the process is carried out in a very clean fashion. I am not aware of any way of disposing of most sorts of clinical waste without using a form of incineration to prevent infection.
    There are a great many pressures. The various EU directives put pressure on our Government. The end-of-life directives on vehicles, batteries and waste electrical and electronic equipment all extend producer responsibilities. The EU landfill directive of 1999 requires the amount of biodegradable municipal waste that is sent to landfill to be reduced to 75 per cent. of 1995 levels by 2010. That is a very challenging target.
    In representing Reading, East, I represent part of the local authority area of Reading and part of that of Wokingham, which has a doorstep recycling scheme and some bring sites, and forecasts the achievement of 16.87 per cent. recycling. In national terms, that is a very high level. Reading has only bring sites and no doorstep recycling, although it has begun a doorstep recycling trial. That is welcomed by constituents who live in the borough, which achieved a recycling rate of 7.7 per cent. in 1998–99. Both those local authorities are working with the neighbouring area of Bracknell Forest borough council, none of which is situated in my constituency. They are working together on a long-term recycling waste treatment and disposal contract to find the most sustainable and cost-effective way of dealing with household wastes for between 10 and 25 years. The project aims to reduce the growth in waste by 2007 and then reduce the amount of waste arising by a further 5 per cent. It also aims to ensure recycling levels of 30 per cent. by 2005, 35 per cent. by 2010 and 52 per cent. by 2028. I believe that the project should be successful and that those targets are achievable.
    Once minimisation, recycling and composting have made the maximum possible contribution, the proposals go on to deal with generating energy from waste, especially in the form of combined heat and power. The aim is that, by 2020, 13 per cent. of total waste arising, and no more, should go to landfill. There is also an intention to cap the ratio of waste to energy, with the aim that any waste that arises as a result of the forecast population growth in the three authority areas is dealt with higher up the waste chain. In the Thames valley, that growth is considerable and appears likely to continue. The point about landfill is important, because it is predicted that, if there is no change in the current extent to which it is used—this information comes from several sources—the available landfill in Berkshire will run out by 2006–07
    I know that there is another school of thought which says that landfill is not such a problem as most of those who are involved in waste and environmental issues hold it to be. Many who work in earth sciences believe that we should not won-y too much about landfill. I am not convinced by that, but it is useful to discuss matters with people who take a different view.

    799
    It is planned that the project in Berkshire should be undertaken by a joint contract with an organisation through a public-private partnership. The plans are subject to discussion between my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment and the relevant local authorities. We shall meet next week to discuss taking those important proposals forward.
    The report contained several recommendations that merit serious consideration. They all involve considerable resources. An environmental crime unit that could tackle fly tipping has been proposed. That would be immensely welcome in every constituency, but it would not be cheap to run; it would require a lot of resources.
    The planning system does not always favour sustainable waste management. I am not simply referring to incinerators and proposals for them, although I do not believe that we should exclude incineration from our waste management plans. Problems can arise when land that has been used for landfill is subsequently proposed for housing development. For example, in Woodley in my constituency, problems arose when only part of an elderly landfill site was subsequently built on. Planning applications for more dwellings ran into serious difficulty.
    The planning process must change. Like other hon. Members, I look forward to the Green Paper, which will be published soon and will highlight proposed changes in the planning process. If it does not include proposals that help us to manage waste more sustainably and minimise actual and perceived health risks to local populations, we will all fail in our endeavours. I am optimistic that we can achieve much more in sustainable waste management. We must do that for future generations.
    9.17 pm
    Bob Russell: I appreciate the opportunity to make a brief contribution. I hope that the Minister for the Environment can clarify the Government's position on incinerators. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Mr. Barker) drew attention to possible contradictions, and the Minister knows from parliamentary questions that other hon. Members and I tabled that we have tried to ascertain the Government's precise view.
    The Minister told me in a written answer that there is no legal requirement for county councils to include incinerators in their waste plans. However, Conservative-controlled Essex county council is proceeding with incinerators in its plan because it claims that that is a legal requirement. We need clarification.
    The Minister knows from when he was a resident in Colchester that two of the six proposed sites for incinerators in Essex are in Colchester: one in Stanway and one in Old Heath. That is causing considerable anxiety and alarm. There is a belief that incinerators will undermine the thrust of waste recycling, including doorstep collections. I say that from a strong position because Colchester, through policies that the Liberal Democrats introduced and developed, has produced the best recycling record of any council in Essex.
    We need a firm but clear statement from the Government. What is their position on incinerators? Will they give a clear commitment tonight that incineration is not their preferred policy?
    9.19 pm
    Mr. Jonathan Sayeed: I feel sorry for the Minister for the Environment. Apart from one nodding donkey on the Labour Benches, no one has had a good word to say about the Government's environmental policy. The Minister's heart is in the right place, but the trouble is that no one in Government seems to listen to him.
    The former Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Select Committee published the report that we have been discussing on 14 March this year. It is an excellent report, and I congratulate the Committee and its Chairman at the time, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett).
    The report makes many good points clearly and succinctly, and much of it has considerable validity. There is no doubt that the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish has demonstrated over many years a commitment to protecting and enhancing the environment. That showed in his speech today.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Mr. Barker) made a battling speech. He made many a good point, to the evident discomfort of Labour Members.
    Conservatism and conservation go together. My party is passionate about preserving the United Kingdom's natural heritage and the future of our planet. The most obvious starting point for that is to implement an effective strategy for dealing with the waste that we produce.
    No waste strategy will be effective until we all understand that caring for the environment must be approached by educating people and instilling a collective responsibility. I am sure that we can all agree that Governments must work with people, and have faith in them—in the farmers who manage our countryside, in those who run the businesses that produce our wealth, and in every householder whom we are here to serve. We should align the people's best interests with their self-interest.
    No one would deny that we produce too much waste, and I shall show that things are getting worse. I shall also seek to demonstrate that landfill is not the answer, and that incineration is no easy substitute. The only real answer is far less waste, far more recycling and re-use, and a Government who spend their time acting effectively rather than talking loudly.
    England and Wales produce about 400 million tonnes of waste each year. In 1999–2000, average municipal waste was 26 kg per household per week, an increase of 1 kg from 1998–99. Nationally, the municipal waste management survey for 1999–2000 showed that there was a total of 29.3 million tonnes of municipal waste in England and Wales in that period, up from 27.9 million tonnes in the previous year.
    To our discredit, we are a "throw-away" society that produces too much waste, and the waste that we are producing is growing by 3 per cent. a year. That might not sound too much, but in practice it means that, if nothing is done, we will need to double our waste disposal capacity by 2020.
    Historically, landfill has been seen as the answer, but the space for landfill is rapidly running out. Landfill sites are deservedly unpopular: as any Bedfordshire MP knows, they scar the landscape, they smell, and they produce methane, which is a highly damaging greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

    801
    It is true that landfill tax has been increased, and that we were told that it was a tax designed to discourage landfill and protect the environment. Well, it certainly is a tax, but for the amount collected it has had modest environmental impact, and there is little evidence that the proceeds have been spent on recycling incentives or measures.
    What we do know is that EU directives dictate that the level of biodegradable material sent to landfill must be reduced to two thirds of the 1995 level by 2020. We also know that, with their current policies, the Government will not achieve that.
    We should not ignore one of the consequences of landfill tax—fly tipping. Despite the Government's protestations to the contrary, higher levels of landfill tax have increased the incentive for many to fly tip to avoid paying tax. Farmland, especially, is often prone to abuse in this way. The National Farmers Union conducted a telephone survey of 300 farmers and growers last year, and more than 50 per cent. of the respondents identified fly tipping as a major ongoing problem; more than a quarter said that they had noticed a significant increase in fly tipping over the past year. Landowners or authorities then have to pay the costs of removing the material from the land and, often, the costs of proper disposal at a licensed landfill site. The Select Committee has urged far higher penalties for such "environmental crimes"—the Committee's own words—to combat the increase in fly tipping, and I agree.
    I urge the Government to impose tougher penalties. Higher average fines should be introduced to discourage fly tipping, and local authorities should be able to keep the revenue from such fines to encourage them to catch the fly tippers. Dumped cars, discarded fridges, leaking drums of chemicals and old sofas line too many verges. The unintended, unfortunate consequence of one Department's decision on the policy of another Department shows that joined-up government is a wish yet to be realised.
    As a result of new EU directives and the Government's failure to boost recycling, Labour is attempting to divert rubbish from landfill towards incineration. According to the Government's waste strategy, "A Way with Waste"— a snappy title, I admit—up to 165 large incinerators may have to be built across the country. But the waste and resources action programme, an initiative funded by the Government, has stated that
    "the Government has failed to convince the public that waste incineration is not a threat to public health. Well publicised instances of high dioxin levels in bottom ash, and questions as to whether emission scrubbers have been updated or even switched on have given the public genuine cause for concern."
    The Conservative position on incinerators is clear. We wish to see a moratorium introduced on new large-scale municipal incinerators until independent British scientific evidence proves that they are safe. Tighter controls should be introduced on emissions from existing incinerators.
    Andrew Bennett: I am pleased to hear this statement from the Conservatives. Will the hon. Gentleman convince his local councillors that that should be the policy in places such as Surrey and Essex?
    Mr. Sayeed: I will certainly endeavour to do so. As I shall illustrate, I am endeavouring to do so on other issues,
    802
    such as recycling. The problem is that, because recycling has been so poorly conducted in this country, councils have considerable difficulty in getting rid of domestic waste.
    Incinerators should be used to generate energy from waste. Local residents should receive benefits from being located near an incinerator and the Government should consider ways of discouraging recyclable materials from going up in smoke.
    The Conservative party has called for a review of regulations to cut down on wasteful packaging and tackle waste at its source. We want to see a simplification of regulations, to improve their effectiveness and to reduce their burden. As a general principle, we believe that regulations should discourage excessive packaging in products. Clear incentives are needed to minimise waste at the point of origin, and packaging regulations should require a higher recycled content.
    There should be tougher enforcement by trading standards officers of existing regulations on over-packaging, and the regulatory burden should be streamlined so that processes are tough but straightforward and easy to understand. Under the packaging recovery note system, established in 1997, manufacturing companies are required to buy PRNs for every tonne of packaging waste that they produce and are required to send for recycling. The PRNs are used to show compliance with regulations. The notes are bought from agents who arrange waste recovery and recycling, or directly from waste producers.
    Since 1998, about £250 million for PRNs and packaging export recovery notes has been channelled to reprocessors in this way; but there is little evidence that money has been invested in increasing the collection of material for recycling. The operation of PRNs is deficient in that regard, and should be reconsidered so that it works to everyone's benefit.
    The words "sustainable development" do not, I regret to say, appeal to many members of the public, and some do not even understand their meaning. It is when they are put in the context of everyone's everyday experience—when people can see that what they are doing is of value to them, close to home—that our efforts to achieve sustainability will succeed. That is why the Conservative party's recycling policy is significantly greener and more radical than that of any other party. [Laughter.] It is clear from Labour Members' guffaws that they have not bothered to read any manifestos apart from their own party's.
    We have proposed for some time that 50 per cent. of household waste should be recycled or made into compost by 2020. That target is significantly higher than the Government's, and it is the reason for our saying that we would introduce doorstep recycling for all households. The question is, what are the Government going to do?
    The United Kingdom must improve its record on recycling, which will in turn allow less dependency on landfill as a means of disposal. Britain has just nine years in which to triple the amount of waste that it recycles, or it will face harsh financial punishment from the European Union. The Government's own officials have warned that the UK faces fines of £500,000 a day if EU rules on landfill sites are not observed by 2010.
    The Government could help themselves to reach that target if they followed the Conservative lead. We want every home in the country to have recyclables collected

    803
    separately from other waste. Perhaps the Government should learn from an organisation called Wastepack and its "pink bag" system, or perhaps they should learn from Berlin; but they must learn from someone.
    Mrs. Ellman: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what recycling percentage had been achieved by the Conservative Government after 18 years?
    Mr. Sayeed: First, I am happy to have been promoted to the status of a Privy Councillor, which I am not.
    Mrs. Ellman: I apologise.
    Mr. Sayeed: The hon. Lady should not apologise. I ask her please to go on doing it! Secondly, I was about to deal with her question in any case.
    Labour claimed that it would be "the cleanest Government ever", but Britain still recycles just 11 per cent. of household waste, as opposed to more than 50 per cent. in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. At the recent waste summit, the Secretary of State announced the production of a consultation paper dealing with how to spend the £140 million that the Government had allocated to local authorities to promote recycling. I welcome that move. This country's recycling performance is lagging far behind where it should be—and just as we lag behind as a country, many local authorities lag behind comparable authorities in the recycling of domestic waste.
    That brings me to the point made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. El!man). Why did 42 per cent. of Labour local authorities have no provision for separating recyclable material from household waste, according to independent Audit Commission figures for 1998–99? The figure for Liberal Democrat authorities was 29 per cent., and of the three parties, the Conservatives showed the lowest figure—19 per cent. I have recently contacted that 19 per cent. to ensure that many more Conservative councils are taking appropriate steps, but what is the Minister doing about the 42 per cent. of Labour councils and 29 per cent. of Liberal councils whose performance is lamentable? Why is Scotland's record on waste such a disgrace? Waste management may be a devolved responsibility, but this Labour Government are the Government for all the United Kingdom, so it is unacceptable that they should do nothing to persuade the Labour and Liberal Administration in Scotland to clean up their act.
    British households produce enough waste to fill the Albert hall every hour. Unless the Government rethink their approach to waste, we face the shame and expense of being branded the dirty man of Europe. We produce too much waste and the situation is getting worse. Landfill is no answer, nor is incineration a proven safe substitute. The only answer is far less waste, much more recycling, much more re-use, and a Government who talk less and begin to act with vigour.
    9.36 pm
    The Minister for the Environment(Mr. Michael Meacher): I begin by paying genuine tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) for his Committee's report, which is a good one. Also, I pay him a personal tribute for his distinguished record as Chairman of the Environment Sub-Committee.
    804
    He leads a Committee that has produced a series of most telling and effective reports that have had a not insubstantial impact on Government policy, and that reflects his dedication and commitment to the environment. Indeed, as he suggested, it also shows why he, as a person who is seen as independent, respected and a champion of the environment, was chosen for the investigation being undertaken in Byker, Newcastle.
    I am sorry that the report was delayed, but I can assure the House that the response is in its final stages and it will be submitted to the Committee shortly. The reason for that is that the Government's response was delayed by the general election being called in May, as my hon. Friend acknowledged. Also, for a lengthy period, from May to October, there was no Select Committee in existence and thus nobody for the Government to respond to.
    Once the new Select Committee was established, there was a need to update the material in the Government response, given the passage of time. Finalisation has been further delayed to take account of the recent waste summit and the Prime Minister's announcement that the performance and innovation unit has been asked to review the waste strategy and consider what more needs to be done to ensure its effective delivery.
    My hon. Friend made important points and I shall try to take most of them up. He said at the outset that we are not a sustainable society, and that is perfectly true. I always use this example: there are 60 million people in this country and average yearly consumption is 1 tonne per person. Taking into account input to the productive process and the energy involved in processing products and waste material, the figure is 11 tonnes.
    A ratio of 1:11 is simply not sustainable and we recognise that. The Prime Minister established the PIU review on resource efficiency and the report was produced recently. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) said, we have announced that the PIU will now review the waste strategy. It will deliver its initial findings in the first half of next year, with a final report due in summer.
    There is no doubt that the minimisation of waste is most important. Contrary to the impression given by several hon. Members, there is a clear national waste strategy plan. There is also a clear waste hierarchy, the first and most important element of which is waste minimisation. The best thing is not to create waste in the first place—not to quarrel about recycling or incineration.
    Secondly, and clearly—in response to the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell)—the requirement of the waste strategy is to maximise recycling, re-use and recovery as long as that is the best practicable environmental option. In the vast majority of cases, that will be true, but it is not always so. For example, it may not be easy to extract waste from individual households in tower blocks. Similarly, as rural households may be at a considerable distance from recycling treatment centres, it may be best to use alternatives. However, recycling is obviously the most desirable course in the vast majority of cases.
    We realise that, on its own, merely to set targets will be insufficient to deliver waste minimisation. I am keen to develop effective mechanisms actually to reduce the creation of waste. However, there must be adequate policy instruments, some of which we have already introduced: the landfill tax escalator—I shall talk about levels in a

    805
    Moment—producer responsibility and support for Envirowise, which gives businesses advice on waste reduction.
    I think that the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) mentioned the fact that there had been an increase of about 3 per cent. a year in waste arising. That is far too high and must be reduced. The objective is to reduce that plus-three percentage towards nought and then to a minus figure in order to decouple economic growth from waste arising. Although we can all agree on that objective, it is another matter to deliver it. We need effective instruments and I hope to introduce a clearer and more comprehensive policy than we have managed to initiate in the past.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish referred to targets. I do not accept that the recycling targets are unambitious. I am grateful for the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Jane Griffiths) in that regard. Many hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed) who spoke for the Opposition, referred to the much higher recycling figures in other countries. I shall refer to the record under the Tories in a moment.
    High recycling rates in other countries are often cited as evidence that our targets are too low. However, many countries include construction and demolition waste in their recycling rates for municipal waste. Such waste is both heavy and easily recyclable, thus increasing the potential for higher recycling rates. Construction and demolition waste is, however, largely excluded from the figures for England and Wales. That is an important consideration.
    The targets set are demanding. It is rather too easy for Members to say that instead of talking about doubling and trebling the amounts we should be aiming for a 60 per cent. increase. Let us achieve a doubling and trebling of the amounts within a relatively short time—let us get that under our belts—before we aim for more ambitious targets.
    Those targets are not, of course, ceilings—they are targets that we expect people to exceed. They are realistic minima that every local authority is being required to achieve. In fact, under our proposals, 83 local authorities are required to achieve recycling and composting rates greater than 33 per cent. by 2005–06, although the overall national target for that date is 25 per cent.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish mentioned markets. He referred to Aylesford and the £20 million that WRAP had made available to enable further newsprint recycling to take place. That will have a major impact on recycling in this country.
    I should also certainly like to mention other examples of markets. Several such examples have been produced by WRAP—the waste resources and action programme—which was established to develop as a centre of expertise in market development. That is its precise purpose. In its first three years, WRAP is being supported by £40 million of Government funding from my Department and other Departments. Its first business plan has focused on seven key sectors in which there are particular market barriers to increasing recycling. It is tackling those barriers with the Government's support.
    806
    My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish also raised the incinerator issue, which is often the most controversial part of the strategy. He made the important point on the security of supply in relation to an incinerator's long lifespan. I make it absolutely clear, however, that the Government are not encouraging incinerators. We are simply recognising that there may be a role for some incinerators if we are to achieve by 2016—or, with the derogation period, by 2020—a massive shift from the 1997 position in which about 85 per cent. of household waste was landfilled—that is 28 million tonnes a year—to one in which no more than 35 per cent. of 1995 levels are landfilled. However, we are not encouraging such a role.
    There is absolutely no figure on incinerators in our back pocket. The figures of 100 and 165 have been mentioned, but that was totally mischievous. The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire knows perfectly well that that is nonsense—I have said so, and he has heard me say it. He repeats such figures simply to be mischievous. We have no intention of supporting or recommending any such total whatever.
    Mr. Drew: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
    Mr. Meacher: I have very little time and am very reluctant, but I shall give way this once because it is my hon. Friend.
    Mr. Drew: I am grateful and I shall be very brief. Will my right hon. Friend therefore agree to examine closely and rule out of order any waste plan proposing waste importation to bulk up the numbers and make an incinerator economic?
    Mr. Meacher: The requirement in our policy is that statutory recycling targets must be met and that no incineration proposal shall be permitted which will pre-empt recycling or reduce the option of recycling for the future. A local authority may be able to demonstrate that it can achieve those targets consistent with small-scale incineration, preferably linked with combined heat and power. Although I do not rule out such proposals, I do not think that there will be many such examples. The Government's proposal is to increase recycling to the fullest degree to which it is environmentally the best option.
    I am not sure of the exact figures on fluorescent tubes, which my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish mentioned, but I know that they are nowhere near what they should be. I shall write to him, and I shall once again press local government and central Government Departments to recycle more of their fluorescent tubes.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish also mentioned refrigerators. The ozone depleting substances regulation was agreed in October 2000. Before that, my Department queried Brussels on the exact interpretation in relation to the extraction of chlorofluorocarbons, not only from cooling equipment but from foam. We did not receive an answer for 18 months, until June 2001.
    Contrary to what the hon. Member for Gordon said, it is a question not of misreading but of interpretation of the regulation's exact meaning. As soon as we found out the meaning, we took the necessary action, which is to seek

    807
    to put in place, when we can, a producer responsibility regulation. We are also installing a capability for recycling which currently is not available. Many developers are certainly interested in creating that capability provided that they are assured of a market. Many of them have said that they can have the technology in place early next year.
    In the interim, we are also funding local authorities' storage capacity, providing £6 million which should cover them until the end of March 2002. We believe that the rate of about £2 million a month is certainly adequate. We have made it perfectly clear that in the light of experience, we will make further funding available as necessary.
    Mr. Sayeed: Is the Minister saying that the Government—I am not sure which one—signed up to a directive without knowing what it meant?
    Mr. Meacher: The regulation, we believed—along with many other member states—did not include the extraction of CFCs from foam. We are not alone in uncertainty on this matter. It is remarkable that the Commission took 18 months before making up its mind.
    My hon. Friend's last point was about the zero waste concept. It is an attractive idea—nothing should be wasted to landfill or incineration but should be recycled or re-used and there should be penalties for non-biodegradable material. It is a valuable concept, although a long way from being realised. That, ultimately, would be the optimum solution.
    The hon. Member for Gordon does not seem to have taken on board what has happened. He is diligent and conscientious, and I cannot understand how he could make some of the statements that he made. He said that we are dragging our feet—we are patently not. He said that we need a national recycling programme—we already have one. He said that what was needed were incentives, penalties, markets and funding. With regard to incentives, there are statutory recycling targets introduced by this Government, not the last one. They are statutory and enforceable, and we shall enforce them.
    Secondly, there will be penalties for local authorities which do not achieve the doubling or trebling that we require of them. We are concerned about markets. There is no point in recycling if people have a collection of glass, aluminium or cans that cannot be used, but that is what WRAP is meant to do. The Government set it up with £40 million.
    Following the 2000 spending review, by the end of the three-year period, we provided £1.1 billion in the local government settlement for environmental protection and cultural services, a sizeable proportion of which I hope will go towards waste management. The sum of £140 million has been ring-fenced for local authorities, specifically for waste management, £220 million is for private finance initiatives and £50 million is for the new opportunities fund for community recycling. That is a sizeable amount of funding.
    The hon. Gentleman also mentioned packaging. The regulations are being tightened year on year. They are 50 per cent. this year, with 15 per cent. material-specific requirements for each product. Those will be tightened in successive years. The hon. Gentleman mentioned Germany as a better example. He should say that to the packaging industry. The green dot system that Germany
    808
    uses costs three times more than our packaging waste regulation system. Our system costs about £0.6 billion, while theirs costs nearly £2 billion. I do not think that our industry has much doubt about which is the better one, and nor do I.
    On the role of incineration, the hon. Gentleman said that we have left the door open to large-scale use of incinerators. That is blatantly untrue.
    Malcolm Bruce: The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish said that.
    Mr. Meacher: Well, I do not think that my hon. Friend did say that. Whoever said it, it is not true. I repeat again that there may be some incineration as a result of integrated waste management plans so long as there is maximisation of recycling, re-use and recovery.
    Having paid a visit in or near the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien), I agree that Rockware Glass is a model company. It provides educational facilities at the factory to enable people to understand the importance of recycling. I agree with him about the need for encouraging civic amenity sites and the importance of kerbside collection. Our view—[Interruption.] I have never before managed to turn off the microphones.
    I recognise the commitment of the hon. Member for Guildford (Sue Doughty) to such issues, but I was surprised that she asked how to measure recycling and whether it includes packaging waste. Of course, they are two totally different systems. Packaging waste comes under the regulations on packaging waste and involves a specific requirement on retailers. The hon. Lady also mentioned the £12 landfill tax, but we recognise that a £1-a-year tax—
    Sue Doughty: Will the Minister give way?
    Mr. Meacher: I am sorry; I simply cannot give way—I need to mention so many other hon. Members. We are certainly considering what level of landfill tax will deliver the increase in recycling that lies at the heart of the strategy.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) referred to the need for a big gear change in landfill tax, and I understand that point. He also referred to the desirability of charging households directly. Of course, the point is that we need to incentivise waste minimisation, and the hon. Member for Gordon intervened to suggest that the simplest way to do that is to get local authorities to provide multicoloured boxes and then take away the contents. However, in no way does that incentivise the reduction of waste; it is simply a more organised way to get local authorities to take away whatever waste is produced.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood also made a point about the Isle of Wight and the renewables obligation. The Government have recently consulted on our view that waste incineration should not be promoted through the renewables obligation and that such projects will not contribute to the Government's proposed target that renewable sources should comprise 10 per cent. of electricity sales by 2010.
    The Government propose that support under the obligation should be concentrated on those technologies that require such support to succeed commercially.

    809
    That is the key point. The issue is not whether something is good and should be supported; it is whether support is necessary for commercial success. The incineration of mixed waste, as a well established technology, is not regarded as requiring support under the obligation. The obligation has also been framed with a view to supporting more efficient and environmentally benign technologies.
    The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Mr. Barker) must be making a bid for the parliamentary award for the silliest speech this year. We have to recognise that there was not a single person behind the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Sayeed) throughout the debate and that it is necessary to recruit someone to say something from the empty Opposition Benches, but surely anything is better than Bexhill and Battle.
    First, I shall mention the Tory record. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle accused us of having only 11 per cent. recycling—in 1992, the Tory record was 2 per cent. After four years of Labour Government, the figure is 11 per cent., and it will be 25 per cent. by 2005–06. The Tory record is one of no statutory recycling targets and no shift from landfill, and some incinerators were built, which has not happened under this Government.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) drew attention to an important initiative, and we will certainly consider it as a national model. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Jane Griffiths) talked about Reading's integrated waste management project, which we shall discuss next week.
    The hon. Member for Colchester asked about the position on incinerators, and I have made that very clear. He also asked whether there is a legal requirement to include incineration. There is absolutely no such legal requirement.
    The speech made by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire at least shows that he has a sense of humour. He made a passionate statement of the Tory commitment to preserving the landscape, but the Tory Government had the biggest road-building programme in modern times; 60 per cent. of building took place in greenfield developments; and they had a recycling rate of 2 per cent. He made an attack on the landfill tax, on the grounds that it had had little impact and had increased fly tipping, but seemed to forget that it was the Tory party that introduced the tax. He referred to 165 incinerators, but he knows that that figure is total nonsense. He referred to a moratorium on incinerators, which is a cheap point in this House when Tory councillors throughout the country—
    It being Ten o'clock, MR. SPEAKER proceeded to put forthwith the deferred Questions relating to Estimates which he was directed to put at that hour, pursuant to paragraphs (4) and (5) of Standing Order No. 54 (Consideration of estimates).

    VOTE ON ACCOUNT, 2002–03
    Question,
    That resources, not exceeding £1,489,011,000, be authorised, on account, for use during the year ending on 31st March 2003, and that a sum, not exceeding £1,488,290,000. he granted to Her Majesty
    810
    out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, for the year ending on 31st March 2003 for expenditure by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport
    put and agreed to.
    Question,
    That resources, not exceeding £955,500,000, he authorised, on account, for use during the year ending on 31st March 2003, and that a sum, not exceeding £993.621,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, for the year ending on 31st March 2003 for expenditure by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
    put and agreed to.
    It being after Ten o'clock, MR. SPEAKER proceeded to put forthwith the Questions relating to Estimates which he was directed to put at that hour, pursuant to paragraphs (1) and (2) of Standing Order No. 55 (Questions on voting of estimates, &c.)

    SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES, 2001–02
    Resolved,
    That further resources, not exceeding £6,469,599,000, be authorised for use for defence and civil services for the year ending on 31st March 2002, and that a further sum, not exceeding £7,238,134,000, he granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to meet the cost of defence and civil services for the year ending on 31st March 2002, as set out in HC 391.

    ESTIMATES, 2002–03 (VOTE ON ACCOUNT)
    Resolved,
    That further resources, not exceeding £122,901,958,000, be authorised, on account, for use for defence and civil services for the year ending 31st March 2003, and that a sum, not exceeding £122,332,660,000 be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund, on account, to meet the costs of defence and civil services for the year ending on 31st March 2003, as set out in HC 392, 393, 394 and 39
    Ordered,
    That a Bill be brought in upon the foregoing resolutions: And that the Chairman of Ways and Means, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Andrew Smith, Dawn Primarolo, Ruth Kelly and Mr. Paul Boateng do prepare and bring it in.

    CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2) BILL
    Mr. Paul Boateng accordingly presented a Bill to apply certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund to the service of the years ending on 31st March 2002 and 2003: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed. Explanatory notes to be printed [Bill 65].
  DELEGATED LEGISLATION
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),
  DELEGATED LEGISLATION

    CONTRACTING OUT
    That the draft Local Authorities (Contracting Out of Highway Functions) (England) Order 2001, which was laid before this House on 21st November, be approved—[Mr. Ringer.]
    Question agreed to.
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

    HIGHWAYS
    That the draft Street Works (Charges for Occupation of the Highway) (England) Regulations 2001, which were laid before this House on 21st November, be approved—[Mr. Ainger.]
    Question agreed to.
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

    SOCIAL SECURITY
    That the draft Social Security (Loss of Benefit) Regulations 2001, which were laid before this House on 22nd November, be approved—[Mr. Ainger.]
    Question agreed to.

    SECTION 5 OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES AMENDMENT ACT 1993
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Order [3 December] and Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

    PRE-BUDGET REPORT 2001
    That this House takes note with approval of the Government's assessment as set out in the Pre-Budget Report 2001 for the purposes of section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993.—[Mr. Ainger.]
    Question agreed to.

    EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9) (European Standing Committees),

    EUROPEAN ARREST WARRANT AND THE SURRENDER PROCEDURES BETWEEN MEMBER STATES
    That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 13425/01, Draft Council Framework Decision on the European Arrest Warrant and the Surrender Procedures between the Member States; and supports the Government's active participation in the debate on the draft Framework Decision and the Government's intention to ensure that extradition within the European Union takes place on the basis of the principles of mutual recognition.—[Mr. Ainger]
    Mr. Speaker: I think the Ayes have it.
    Hon. Members: No.
    Division deferred till Wednesday 12 December 2001, pursuant to Order [28 June].

    Drinking Glasses
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ainger.]
    10.4 pm
    Mr. David Borrow: The issue that I raise should concern all Members of the House. It relates to the problems that arise in the pubs and clubs throughout the land that are frequented by young people and to the injuries, in particular facial injuries, that can result from incidents involving glasses and bottles.
    A few months ago, a constituent came to see me following an incident involving her child at a licensed premises in Lancashire. The child was badly injured by a glass as the result of an assault in a public house. Following her visit, my constituent spent a great deal of time and energy examining how the incident happened and the factors that might be involved in reducing the incidence of glassing in pubs and clubs.
    My constituency includes the town of Leyland and the southern suburbs of Preston, so many of the young people in my area go to pubs and clubs in Leyland, but most of them go to the town centre pubs and clubs in Preston. The university in Preston now has more than 20,000 full-time students and it is the seventh largest university in Great Britain. It is a Mecca for young people.
    The police and the local authority have been assiduous in ensuring that the pubs and clubs catering for young people are grouped together. There is closed circuit television, a strong police presence and most of the public houses and clubs have people on the doors. However, that does not stop incidents happening.
    If large numbers of young people mix together with significant amounts of alcohol available and with glasses and bottles close to hand, violent incidents occur. Some of them will involve glassing that leads to severe facial injuries. We often think that such incidents involve males who one might argue have only themselves to blame. However, that is not always the case. Many incidents involve innocent bystanders or women both as victims and as aggressors. Therefore, we need to examine the scale of the problem as well as its causes.
    I have carried out a little research on how many incidents of glassing take place each year. In 1999, the British crime survey estimated that there were 80,000 incidents involved glassing and that figure was based on a survey of a certain number of households. A survey a couple of years earlier produced a figure of 178,000 each year, but not all those incidents led to conviction or severe facial injuries.
    I have a number of letters that give a Home Office figure of between 3,400 and 5,500 glassing incidents a year and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority has released figures on the incidents involving severe injuries that have led to compensation claims. In 1999–2000, 6,550 claims were made following violent incidents in public houses, and many of them would have been glassing incidents. Of those, 3,448—that is 53 per cent.—led to monetary awards costing £7.2 million.
    It has been pointed out to me that the statistics deal only with incidents in licensed premises and do not cover those that spill out of them on to the streets or surrounding areas. It has been estimated that the cost of glassing incidents to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority is about £10 million. The figures are not insignificant.

    813
    What are the key factors that cause this problem? An important element in any glassing incident is the nature of the glass or bottle itself and significant progress has been made in many pubs and clubs in that regard over the past 10 years. Many traditional glasses have been replaced by ones made out of toughened glass, but it is clear that the repeated use in pubs and clubs of toughened glassware leads to the weakening of the glass itself. When toughened glass goes through the washer many times, it no longer has the properties that led people to support its introduction. An increasing number of severe injuries are arising from its use.
    In 1998 or 1999, a patent was made for Safeglass, although production of glasses and bottles in that safety glass has not got off the ground. The documents relating to the patent state that there are two important applications of safety glass. The first is glassware and bottles. The documents explain that
    "12000 drink related incidents happen every week. The Home Office are to order magistrates to tighten conditions of pub and club licences to use toughened glasses to serve beer. This will reduce the injuries caused when glasses are used as weapons, currently running at 5500 per year. Safeglass glasses and bottles could play an important safety and security role in clubs or live events, they would also be cheaper than glass."
    Will the Home Office consider whether more research and investigation should take place into the use of such safety glass? Perhaps the Government could recommend that or introduce it in regulations as an alternative to toughened glass, given the weaknesses that have been discovered. Research into that is insufficient, and that needs to be addressed.
    Figures from a survey in 1993 on the wider problems of glass and their effects on bar staff suggested that 40 per cent. of bar staff received injuries not as a result of violent attacks, but simply through handling glassware in pubs and clubs. Anything that can be done to make glassware less likely to cause injury would have significant health and safety implications for bar staff.
    My constituent and several organisations have mentioned the value of placing kitemarks on glassware. That would give people who go into pubs and clubs, and local authorities who inspect them, an idea of the quality and type of glassware that is being used. I am sure that that would improve things.
    We need to consider the whole issue of alcohol-related violence. The use of CCTV in many pubs and clubs, which is growing, makes a difference by controlling the licensed premises. There are serious concerns about under-age drinking and excessive drinking by young people. There is also concern about the policies of the alcohol trade, which manufactures products with a high alcohol content which are attractive to young people.
    Young people have nights out when they drink excessively, and that will probably always be the case. When I was 18 or 19, drinking pints of beer was a slower and different experience from drinking high-alcohol sweet-tasting products, which is what many young people drink. Much more alcohol is consumed in a short space of time than it was 30 years ago. It would help if the Government invested in schemes to deal with alcohol-related violence.
    My constituent has been assiduous in campaigning locally on the issue. I have no intention of mentioning her by name because of the trauma that she and her family
    814
    experienced, but I made the commitment to raise in the Chamber all the matters that she has discovered from her research.
    I have received a number of petitions and letters of support from police and Church groups. I also received a letter from Katie Parr, the welfare officer at the university of Central Lancashire, which says:
    "These acts are mindless and stupid and if we could implement the Safety glass, kite marks and a new scheme which concentrates on incidents relating to alcohol, then I feel we would all suffer less."
    The students' union at the university has taken a particular interest in the safety of its members when they are enjoying themselves in the centre of Preston.
    I received a letter of support from Tina Morrow, the director of Victim Support in Preston, who has been active in collecting signatures on petitions in the area, and a letter from Kevin Quigley, the principal at Cardinal Newman college in Preston, which takes many young people from my constituency. He says:
    "I write to support you in your attempt to get something done through the House of Commons about this issue."
    I have received a letter and much active support in collecting signatures for petitions from the Knights of St. Columba and the 323 branch of Leyland council. I had a very long and thoughtful letter from David Jenkins of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, which has looked at the ways in which the number of accidents can be reduced. It is particularly concerned about the use of better glass.
    There may be no simple method of making it safer for our young people to have a good night out. Young people will always be fairly active and run the risk, when they have had a bit too much to drink, of being aggressive. As I said, the combination of energetic young people, excessive alcohol and dangerous weapons in the form of glass bottles and glasses full of alcohol leads to all too many severe facial injuries. Incidents will always happen, but as Members of Parliament, we need to do what we can to minimise the risks.
    10.17 pm
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Bob Ainsworth): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr. Borrow) on securing the debate. I know what competition there is for such debates and the effort that he has had to make. All those present will join me in offering regrets and sympathies to his constituent, and also our thanks for the fact that some good has come of a terrible event, in the sense that my hon. Friend and others have been encouraged to campaign on this important matter.
    My hon. Friend drew attention, in particular, to the devastating consequences of glass being used as a weapon when violent incidents occur on licensed premises. Before responding to the detail of his remarks, I should like to state clearly for the record this Government's absolute determination to tackle violent crime, including violence that occurs on or in the vicinity of licensed premises, which we know is often fuelled by heavy drinking.
    We know that something like 90 per cent. of the adult population in this country drink alcohol, often in the social setting of a pub, club or other licensed premises. They do so lawfully, peacefully and without causing harm

    815
    to themselves or to others. Although they rightly expect to be able to do so without the threat of violence or other antisocial behaviour, we know from a Portman Group survey, conducted about a year ago, that 14 per cent. of people have been the victim of violence in a pub at some time or other.
    The British crime survey tells us that about 40 per cent. of all violent crime is alcohol-related, with as much as half of all stranger violence taking place in or around pubs and clubs. So as my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, we are not talking about a small minority of people who drink too much and get into fights. Far too many completely innocent people are affected by this problem.
    The issue raised by my hon. Friend concerns drinking glasses and the harm they cause when used to inflict horrible facial injuries in a violent act. I agree that we must do all we can to reduce that potential but, at the same time, we must ensure that we are doing all we can to tackle the circumstances in which violence occurs in the first place. Our general approach is set out in the action plan to tackle alcohol-related crime and disorder, which was launched by the Home Office in August 2000 and which explicitly recognises the part that glass can play in violent situations; some of the facts and figures that it quotes are well worth repeating. First, about 120,000 people suffer from facial injuries in violent circumstances each year in this country. In the vast majority of cases, either the victim or the assailant will have been drinking. About 5,000 of those incidents will involve what is commonly known as glassing, with devastating and often permanent consequences for the victim.
    Research undertaken by the university of Wales suggests that bar glassware accounts for 10 per cent. of assault injuries in accident and emergency departments that lead to permanent, disfiguring facial scars. We believe that one response to that is the adoption of toughened drinking glasses in pubs and clubs. My hon. Friend mentioned safety glass, but the critical point is that toughened or safety glass alone will not prevent violence or injury, as he pointed out. Toughened glass can be up to six times more resistant to impact than conventional annealed glass, and breaks into smaller, blunt-edged pieces rather than long, sharp shards, so it significantly reduces the injuries that can be inflicted if the glass is used as a weapon. That is an undoubted benefit.
    My hon. Friend spoke about the effect of time and wear on the properties of toughened glass. We are fully aware that it weakens far more quickly than conventional glass and has to be replaced more often. However, there are benefits to toughened glass, including its resistance to breakage and the manner in which it breaks. If my hon. Friend was trying to suggest that the way in which the glass breaks changes over time, I should be interested to know the facts, as we are not aware that it has such properties and would be happy to look into the matter.
    Whatever the relative merits of toughened glass versus safety glass, the British Medical Journal noted in an editorial some years ago that
    "injury caused by drinking glasses could be reduced substantially by the universal use of toughened glass in bars and clubs."
    I am pleased that those words did not fall on deaf ears. In October 1997, the Brewers and Licensed Retailers Association—now the British Beer and Pub Association—estimated that toughened glass was in use in about a third
    816
    of public houses and recommended the more widespread adoption of toughened glass. Since then, those responsible for licensed premises have been making the switch to toughened pint and half-pint beer glasses—the glasses that are most often used in violent incidents—as they replace old stock. The British Beer and Pub Association now estimates that toughened beer glasses are used in about 90 per cent. of establishments, which is good progress.
    As well as looking at toughened or safety glass, we need to look more fundamentally at the availability of glass and glass bottles, particularly in some of our busier city centre establishments, where they are more likely to cause problems. Like glasses, empty beer bottles can be used as weapons and it is worth looking at whether or not anything can be done about that. Options are available, including a refusal to provide drinks in bottles—a practice that is followed in some establishments—or the adoption of plastic drinking glasses to replace beer glasses entirely. The Government support such measures, but we know that there can be resistance to ideas like these. Drinking from bottles is very much in vogue, particularly among younger drinkers, but fashion can be changed over time if there is a willingness to do so on the part of those who may be able to influence it. We are keen to promote a dialogue on such issues with the drinks industry. We know that some manufacturers and retailers have experimented with the use of plastic beer bottles in pubs and clubs, which may offer a viable way forward.
    Home Office Ministers meet with representatives of the alcohol industry from time to time. I last met industry representatives as recently as 3 December, and at that meeting I raised the issues that my hon. Friend raises in the House. We should like the greater use of plastic to be considered, as part of our forward programme for tackling alcohol-related crime and disorder.
    In the individual establishment, there is a wide range of steps that can usefully be taken. Specifically in relation to glass, those include the education of customers, licensees and staff about the potential dangers arising from the careless use of glass; ensuring that bar staff are diligent in collecting up empty bottles and glasses within the establishment, thereby reducing the potential for accidental harm; and ensuring that licensees and door staff keep a tight rein on their bottles and glasses, preventing them from being removed from the premises where they might later cause injury or other problems to people leaving the premises.
    Those are relatively simple steps, but we know that where they are followed—as they have been, for example, by establishments in Liverpool city centre—they can reduce the potential dangers considerably. We are keen to see those and similar measures adopted throughout the country.
    Alongside those important measures, there is more work that can be done to ensure that licensed premises are safe and trouble-free places. Indeed, we must recognise that the overwhelming majority of them are. The licensed trade clearly has the primary responsibility for managing licensed premises properly, so as to prevent trouble occurring in the first place or see that it is nipped in the bud.
    It has for many years been an offence for a licensee to permit disorder on his or her premises, and we have recently strengthened the law in section 32 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, which came into effect on

    817
    1 December, so that it is now an offence for anyone who works on licensed premises, not just the licensee, to permit drunkenness or violent behaviour on the premises.
    Other key measures that we are raising with the industry include initiatives to encourage sensible drinking and to discourage binge drinking, which can often precede trouble on licensed premises. The recent phenomenon of "happy hour" and other retail initiatives encourage the wrong kind of drinking and do great damage to the reputation of the industry. We support initiatives such as Pubwatch schemes, backed up by exclusion orders, to keep known troublemakers out of licensed premises. We believe that the industry can do more to avoid irresponsible sales promotions, such as those that offer, for a fixed fee, the chance to "drink `til you drop." Those encourage heavy drinking, which often leads on to trouble.
    We know that other measures can be taken when all the local key partners work together to develop innovative solutions to local problems. That may provide some of the answers that my hon. Friend was looking for when he spoke about the need to reduce alcohol-related violence. In a number of areas, local licensees sit on the local crime and disorder partnership, which can help to a produce co-ordinated local programme such as the city centre safe initiative in Manchester, which offers a clear example of what can be achieved through effective partnership working.
    The partnership in Manchester includes local sponsorship and has been able to set up a wide range of key initiatives, including late-night transport, targeted policing, pub and club-watch schemes and design and
    818
    training initiatives to make the city centre a safer place for those who go there to enjoy an evening's entertainment. Any ideas that my hon. Friend wants to feed into the ongoing debate between the Home Office and the industry would be very welcome. I look forward to receiving those suggestions and to having a continuing dialogue with him.
    I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important issue and enabling us to raise its profile through this debate. I hope that I have been successful in demonstrating to him that we take these matters seriously and are seeking to work with the industry. We are receiving from the overwhelming majority of those involved in the industry a fairly positive a response to the sort of initiatives that we are asking them to consider. If we can persuade them, there is an awful lot that we can change in terms of the habits that have grown up in the retail sector and the alcohol trade.
    We have seen some great changes with regard to the way in which the product itself is marketed. My hon. Friend referred to some of the high-alcohol drinks now available, which were not available some time ago. Some of the advertising associated with such drinks, aimed at young people and the very worst of habits, was effectively curtailed by guidance followed by the industry. We now need the sort of thing that has been done so successfully with regard to the product to be applied to the retailing of alcohol as well. I think that we could make great strides in reducing the sort of incidents that my hon. Friend so graphically brought to the House. I thank him for doing so.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes to Eleven o'clock.