Commons Sitting of 23 February 2004

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

    Victims of Crime
    Sue Doughty: What plans he has to widen access to compensation for victims of crime. [155743]
    The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety(Ms Hazel Blears): On 12 January we issued a consultation paper, "Compensation and Support for Victims of Crime", which invites views on proposals for amending the criminal injuries compensation scheme and for encouraging the wider and more effective use of compensation orders made by the criminal courts in the victims' favour. We will consider how best to proceed when all the responses to the public consultation have been carefully analysed.
    Sue Doughty: I thank the Minister for her response. Does she agree, however, that proposals to link
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    punishment and compensation with driving offences are particularly unfair on drivers who may not commit other crimes, and that it would be better to link punishment and compensation with the crimes that take place? It is unfair to fine motorists for the purposes of compensation in respect of other kinds of criminal activity.
    Ms Blears: The hon. Lady raises an issue that has been the subject of much speculation. I can reassure her that motorists are not singled out in our proposals. In setting up a victims' fund, we have to ensure that we strike the right balance between the taxpayer and the offender. Speeding is connected to some 1,100 deaths a year in this country, so it is a significant problem. It may well be appropriate to ask motorists, together with other people who commit criminal offences, to make a small payment towards the establishment of a victims' fund that can provide much better services for victims.
    Mr. Lindsay Hoyle: Will my hon. Friend consider ensuring that people who are guilty of committing crimes contribute more, instead of relying on the state to fund those poor victims who have suffered? That would be one way to ensure that we get fairness and justice for the victims of crime.
    Ms Blears: My hon. Friend makes an important point. As he will know, restorative justice is an important thrust of Government policy: we want to ensure that those who commit offences have to make reparation to their victims and thereby have a stake in the system. Our criminal injuries compensation scheme is the most generous in the whole of Europe. We pay out more compensation than all the other EU member states added together—last year, we paid out £232 million. As my hon. Friend suggests, we must try to strike the right balance between funding by the taxpayer and what is contributed by offenders.
    Mr. Mark Oaten: Can the Minister confirm that under the Government's new

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    arrangements for compensating victims, police and other public sector workers will still be able to make claims in respect of injury at work? Last year, more than 3,000 such claims were made, many as a result of very grave actions. What would happen to those individuals under the Government's new scheme?
    Ms Blears: As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, this is a consultation document and we are consulting employers, the insurance industry and a whole range of people with an interest in the matter. People in employment can obtain compensation in three ways: they can get a compensation order from the court; they can, and always have been able to, sue for civil damages for personal injuries caused as a result of such incidents; or they can get an award through the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. Through the consultation process, we are exploring the right balance between contributions from employers and from offenders, as well as the right to pursue civil damages through the court system. It is a complex area. Of course we want to ensure that people who are injured in the course of their duties have the maximum amount of protection, but it may well be appropriate for employers to play a bigger role in future.

    Asylum Applications
    John Robertson: If he will make a statement on the backlog in processing applications for asylum. [155744]
    The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration(Beverley Hughes): We continue to make good progress. At the end of September 2003, the latest date for which published data are available, the number of asylum applications awaiting an initial decision had fallen to 29,100—the lowest for a decade—and I anticipate that the asylum statistics that are to be published tomorrow will demonstrate further progress. We are determined to reduce the number of outstanding applications to normal work-in-progress levels and, at current intake and output levels, we expect to do so during the course of this year.
    John Robertson: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the three asylum seekers in Glasgow who stitched up their mouths and went on hunger strike. Their applications for asylum were rejected, yet they have still not been sent back to Iran. These are not the first cases of that type, so what does my right hon. Friend intend to do about such people?
    Beverley Hughes: I am aware of the case that my hon. Friend raises. Of course, like him. I very much regret the action that the men have taken. He will understand, however, that if a person's claim has been refused and, as in this case, subsequently refused at independent appeal, they are not eligible to remain in the UK and must return home. Clearly, there are difficulties in returning people forcibly to some countries, Iran being one of them, although that does not mean that they cannot go home voluntarily. We are working hard to open up returns agreements with several countries,
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    including Iran—indeed, we are the only country so far to have returns agreements with India, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka—and we are making very good progress.
    David Davis: While we welcome the Minister's announcement of the reduction in the asylum backlog, does it not result partly from a Government policy of deliberately ignoring illegal immigrants who would otherwise claim asylum? Is she aware of reports in the national press last year that stated that an immigration service directive was in operation, calling on officials to soft-pedal on investigations into illegal immigrants?
    An immigration officer told one newspaper:
    "The message from senior bosses was that we should not 'look for illegals'. When we asked why, we were told that once they were detained, they would simply ask for asylum and we would be making their job easier."
    Can the Minister state categorically that she is confident that such a memo does not exist?
    Mr. Speaker: Before the Minister replies, I should stress that although I am reluctant to say this to Front-Bench Members, I have often told Ministers to he brief in their responses. I also expect brief questions.
    Beverley Hughes: I am glad that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) acknowledges that the figure of 29,000—I am sure that it will be lower by tomorrow—is much lower than 54,500, which represented the Conservative party's backlog in 1997. I categorically reject the assertion that we have asked staff to soft-pedal on illegal immigration to protect the asylum target. If the right hon. Gentleman had done his homework more thoroughly, he would realise that the evidence does not support that claim.
    Non-asylum removals have increased from 3,500 in 1997 to more than 8,000 in 2002—the latest date for published figures. Operation Reflex is co-ordinating operations against organised criminal activity and immigration and has disrupted 60 criminal groups. The number of staff in immigration enforcement and removal has increased from 1,670 to 2,500 and the budget has increased by £40 million. The question that the right hon. Gentleman has to answer is whether he can commit the necessary resources—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I call David Davis.
    David Davis:
    Thank you, Mr. Speaker. You will have noticed that I did not get an answer—long or short—to my question. In view of that, let me ask the Minister another. After the Morecambe tragedy, the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Geraldine Smith) called for an inquiry into inaccurate and misleading information that the Home Office had given her. Will the right hon. Lady authorise that inquiry? Furthermore, will she empower it to determine whether the memos that I cited earlier exist? She did not answer my question about them. Are there any other policies of soft-pedalling action on illegal immigration?
    Beverley Hughes: There is already an investigation, which I have authorised, into allegations about the information. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the

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    Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Geraldine Smith) for accepting that I faithfully reported to her the information that I was given. However, we will check for any disparity.
    Again, I reject the allegation that there has been any ministerial instruction to soft-pedal on illegal immigration. Such an instruction would be completely counterproductive. Clearly, the way in which operational managers choose to deploy resources and make operational decisions about where need is greatest is for them. However, the overall picture shows that resources, operations and removals of illegal immigrants have increased. That is more than the right hon. Gentleman can say for the Conservative Government's record.
    Kate Hoey: My right hon. Friend will know that many Zimbabweans are seeking asylum in this country. Is she aware of the concern that some of them, who have travelled here on South African passports, are being fast-tracked back to South Africa, where they are clearly not safe because of the Zimbabwean intelligence at work there? Will she assure us that no Zimbabwean will be sent back to either Zimbabwe or South Africa?
    Beverley Hughes: No, I cannot give my hon. Friend that assurance. Clearly, if someone claims asylum here as a Zimbabwean but does so falsely on a false passport and is really South African, that person should be returned to South Africa.[Interruption]I am afraid that that is happening in some cases. Conservative Members like to talk tough to the media about asylum and what they would do, but at every opportunity during the passage of legislation on undocumented and inadequately documented passengers that we want to introduce, they fail to support such measures. Indeed, all they have done is try to dilute them.
    Norman Baker: May I suggest that the processes for dealing with people who arrive unexpectedly in our country leave something to be desired? Is the Minister aware of the front page of the Brighton evening edition of The Argus, which℄[Laughter.] Well, she ought to be, because it reported on two stowaways who arrived at Newhaven port in my constituency and were apprehended by the police and handed to immigration. The immigration service, apparently because it did not have enough staff, took the stowaways to Newhaven Harbour station and invited them to get on the train to Gatwick, changing at Lewes. Surprise, surprise—they are now anywhere but at Gatwick. Will the Minister look into that incident and find out why levels of immigration staff are so low at Newhaven, and why two people who were apprehended by the police were urged to escape into the country?
    Beverley Hughes: On the face of what the hon. Gentleman has said, that incident appears unacceptable. However, I shall qualify that. Despite the substantial additional resources that we have put in, which I have just outlined and which mean that the immigration service can take on a large number of additional operations and is now removing more people than ever before, the service must also make decisions on the effective distribution of those resources between
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    competing priorities. I do not know whether, at the time of that particular case, another operation was going on that was likely to yield many more illegal immigrants than those two. The immigration service has to make such operational decisions. However, I shall investigate the case that the hon. Gentleman raises and write to him on it.

    Shopwatch (Warrington)
    Helen Jones: If he will make a statement on the role of shopwatch schemes in Warrington in combating retail crime. [1557451]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department(Caroline Flint): The Home Office has provided more than £29,000 to assist retailers in the Warrington area, half of it to provide walkie-talkie radios for the Fearnhead and Poulton shopwatch project. There has been a 41 per cent. reduction in thefts from shops involved in that partnership. I congratulate my hon. Friend and those involved in the scheme.
    Helen Jones: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. I am sure that she will agree with me that one of the scheme's main benefits is the protection and security that it provides for those who work in shops, and I therefore invite her to respond positively to the "Freedom from Fear" campaign run by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—USDAW—by looking at how such schemes can be extended and how further funding can be provided. Given that she has said that she would like to visit my local scheme, may I ask for her good offices in securing an early date for that visit so that she can see how well it is working, and discuss with the local police how it could be extended?
    Caroline Flint: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Violence against shop workers is very worrying, and USDAW has played an enormously important part in bringing that issue to public attention. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary attended a conference organised by USDAW last year, and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) is involved in the issue. My hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety has met representatives of USDAW, and Baroness Scotland is due to meet the general secretary of USDAW very shortly. We are working with retailers and employees' representatives to try to deal with the situation, which is totally unacceptable. That is why we are putting £900,000 into creating a national association to develop more partnerships on the ground, as extensions of those that we have already funded.

    Antisocial Behaviour
    Huw Irranca-Davies: What guidance he has issued on the use of antisocial behaviour orders and related powers to tackle nuisance behaviour. [155746]
    The Secretary of State for the Home Department(Mr. David Blunkett): In January, we issued new guidance on the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003. We have also set up the "together" action line, and we are establishing the

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    "together" academy to provide face-to-face training. We will ensure that in every part of the country—in every region, including in Wales—training and support will be available.
    Huw Irranca-Davies: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. In the two years during which I have been a Member, the greatest bane of my life has been constantly trying to persuade local agencies, authorities and divisional commanders to use ASBOs and related powers. Will my right hon. Friend undertake to write to those people in my area to ensure that there is at least some use of those powers? In the past two years, there has been none whatever.
    Mr. Blunkett: I can do even better than that. On Thursday, I am sending Baroness Scotland to engage in the big conversation in my hon. Friend's constituency: how to activate and use the new legislation against antisocial behaviour.
    Miss Anne McIntosh: Does the Home Secretary share my concern that ASBOs, and the new contracts that are used prior to them, do not cover noise pollution and antisocial behaviour in public car parks? The provisions on noise pollution would cover such an incident on a private drive but not in a public car park. Will the Home Secretary use his good offices to review that, and make such incidents subject to ASBOs?
    Mr. Blunkett: I am happy to investigate how environmental health powers could be used in such cases, and how more general noise nuisance provisions could be applied to sources of nuisance in car parks—for example where a local pub or club was not properly controlling or supervising what was taking place. I am happy to write to the hon. Lady on that.
    Mr. Adrian Bailey: I thank my right hon. Friend for his replies. My own local authority, Sandwell, has pioneered ASBOs, having issued 16 to date with another nine in the pipeline. Its assessment is that they make a very positive contribution to tackling antisocial behaviour in the area. Has my right hon. Friend made an assessment of the percentage of ASBOs that are adhered to, and the percentage of those that are breached and result in custodial action, which is itself beneficial to the local community?
    Mr. Blunkett: I am happy to do that. We have now reached agreement with the Magistrates Association on a code of guidance relating to breaches of antisocial behaviour orders. This will be very important because, as I have said before, if people get the message that they can get away with it, they will get will get away with it, but if the message is that breaches will be treated very severely, with up to a five-year custodial sentence, people will stop breaching those orders.

    Gloucestershire Police Authority
    Mr. Laurence Robertson: What discussions he has had with the Gloucestershire police authority about its budget for the forthcoming year. [155748]
    The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety(Ms Hazel Blears): I have not had any formal discussions with Gloucestershire police authority about its final budget for next year. I understand that it has now set a final budget of £92 million for 2004–05, an increase of 6 per cent. over this year.
    Mr. Robertson: I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, but my office spoke to the chief constable this morning and he told us that the increase in the precept of four times the rate of inflation that the authority is having to introduce will not prevent him from having to transfer serving police officers into civilian work, in order to cover tasks relating to the new police complaints procedure, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and so forth. The Government might increase the grant to the Gloucestershire constabulary, but the amount of extra work that they are asking it to do means that the chief constable has to take serving police officers off the streets and keep them in offices.
    Ms Blears: The hon. Gentleman will know that there has been a significant increase in support for the police over the past three years—in fact, a 30 per cent. increase for policing in this country, and a 17 per cent. increase in real terms. If the formula had been applied this year in regard to the hon. Gentleman's own authority, it would have received only £56.9 million, but because there is a flat-rate allocation, it has actually received £58.9 million, which is an extra £2 million. It has also been allocated a range of specific grants, and has done particularly well out of the Airwave grant that has been made available. I am also pleased to be able to tell him that I have written today to his colleague, the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), to outline a further payment of special grant in relation to the policing of RAF Fairford, which I am sure will be gratefully received.
    Mr. James PaiceNow that Gloucestershire has set its budget, which comes on top of an increase in precept of more than 90 per cent. in the past three years, when will the Government sort themselves out and stop giving conflicting messages over the capping criteria? Should Gloucestershire and the other 42 police authorities listen to the Minister for Local Government, Regional Governance and Fire, who has threatened to cap rises of more than 5 per cent., or to the Home Secretary, who has apparently said that he will be concerned only about rises of more than 15 per cent? Now that we are in the last week of February and police authorities up and down the country are setting their budgets for next year, is it not time that they knew what the capping criteria were? Is it not time that we had joined-up government?
    Ms Blears: That is exactly what we have. The hon. Gentleman will know that we have been working extremely closely with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and that we have been speaking with one voice in saying to local government and police authorities that we expect them to make reasonable, justified and prudent decisions in consultation with their local communities. In the case of Gloucestershire, we are looking at an increase of 27p a week on a band D

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    property in relation to policing in that area. The hon. Gentleman will also know that we are trying to ensure that local police authorities take into account the views of their local community, and that we have asked them to set proper prudent budgets that they can justify to the community.

    Internet Pornography
    Mr. Andrew Mackay: What plans he has to review the operation of the Obscene Publications Acts of 1959 and 1964 in the light of internet pornography. [155749]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department(Paul Goggins): Operators of internet sites who knowingly host illegal material in the UK can already be prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Acts. While the Government support effective action in relation to sites hosted in other countries, we believe that this can be achieved only through international co-operation. In addition to seeking such co-operation at European and global levels, we will continue to keep all the relevant domestic law under review.
    Mr. Mackay: I thank the Minister for that response. We dare not be complacent, however, as we have seen in relation to the recent Graham Coutts is murder conviction and the increase in international paedophile websites. Can I press him further, and say that there must be much more international co-operation to ensure that action is taken? Otherwise, there will be a terrific amount of child abuse as well as other problems. Can we have further guarantees that there will not be complacency?
    Paul Goggins: I concur entirely with the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman in relation to the horrific murder of Jane Longhurst. I assure him and the whole House that there will be no complacency in respect of this issue. On his specific question about international co-operation, I assure him that we will continue to pursue this matter. I can confirm that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will raise this issue when he meets John Ashcroft in the United States in the near future.
    Mr. Stephen Pound: Among the expressions that I never thought I would utter in this Chamber is, "Can I advise my hon. Friend the Minister to have a word with The Mail on Sunday?" That newspaper appears to have closed down two of the most foul, sadistic brutal sites by impacting on people's ability to subscribe to them. I am loth to do so, but, in view of the greater good, I ask him respectfully to examine this option, which appears to have worked in the case of that newspaper.
    Paul Goggins: I join my hon. Friend in thanking The Mail on Sunday for the campaign that it initiated. Any organisation, service provider or newspaper that can help in fighting this battle is to be applauded. What we need, however, is concerted international action, from Governments in particular, to make sure that we have a consistent approach right across the globe.

    Prisoners (Education)
    Mr. Kelvin Hopkins: What action he is taking to improve educational opportunities for prisoners. [155751]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department(Fiona Mactaggart): We have increased substantially our investment in learning opportunities and funding will continue to rise—from £97 million this year to £137 million in two years' time. Prisoners have gained more than 100,000 qualifications in literacy and numeracy since April 2001 and are set to exceed targets again this year.
    Mr. Hopkins: I thank my hon. Friend for her answer to my question. I recently had the interesting experience of visiting a prison for the first time— [Interruption.] I was a guest, not an inmate. I was impressed by the quality and commitment of the staff, and was most interested by conversations with inmates. They said that while they appreciated the opportunities for education, what they really wanted was skills training, particularly in construction trades, which would give them real alternatives to crime as and when they were released from prison.
    Fiona Mactaggart: I am pleased to be able to reassure my hon. Friend that not only have we exceeded our targets in terms of achieving basic skills qualifications, but we have succeeded in increasing resources and achievements in vocational skills for prisoners. On work-related learning targets, in the first nine months of 2003–04 prisoners achieved more than 80,000 work-related qualifications against a target of 60,800
    Angela Watkinson: Does the Minister agree that successful rehabilitation of offenders through education and training while they are in custody depends on their having employment opportunities when they have finished their sentences? What discussions has she had with trade, industry and commerce on providing those employment opportunities to prevent reoffending?
    Fiona Mactaggart: The hon. Lady will be aware that under this Government there are more employment opportunities for everybody as a result of our effective economic policies. Part of that process, through jobcentres and so on, is to provide appropriate support for ex-offenders to get into jobs.
    Mr. Huw Edwards: I invite my hon. Friend to come and see the success of the education and training programme at Usk prison in my constituency, and at the Prescoed centre nearby. When I last visited the prison, I was particularly impressed to hear prison officers admit that they first came into the job as hard-nosed screws but are now involved in literacy programmes, as they recognise that if prisoners are not to offend again they need the skills to be able to apply for jobs, keep jobs and have the sense not to reoffend.
    Fiona Mactaggart: My hon. Friend is right to recognise the sense of personal reward that many prison officers gain from contributing to the learning of

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    offenders—because, I believe, they realise that by improving offenders' qualifications they can ensure that they do not see them again. That, in the Prison Service, is a mark of success.

    Prisoners (Police Cells)
    Gregory Barker: How many prisoners are being held in police cells. [155752]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department(Caroline Flint): As at 22 February 2004, there are no prisoners held in police cells under Operation Safeguard and no prisoners held overnight as lock-outs.
    Gregory Barker: Can the Minister ensure that when prisoners are held in police cells, as they have been in the past, they are in the care of police officers who have been properly trained in looking after prisoners, especially the vulnerable and those on suicide watch? We cannot rule out the possibility of prisoners being held in police cells again.
    Caroline Flint: Operation Safeguard is an arrangement between the Prison Service and the police. Senior police officers and senior Prison Service representatives must ensure that, as far as possible, provision is adequate, and that includes training. Fortunately, Operation Safeguard has not been used since 20 December 2002.
    Mrs. Cheryl Gillan: The Minister is being disingenuous. Because of the rapid rise in the jail population, the Prison Service is in crisis, and—according to the service—there are only 600 places left. The Minister says that Operation Safeguard was last used in 2002, but it cost the taxpayer more than £10 million. Each place cost £363 a night, which is more than three times the cost of a high-security prison place or a de luxe room at Claridge's. Will the Minister confirm that several police forces are now on standby to reintroduce Operation Safeguard to save the Home Office's bacon? Who will pay for this crisis? Will it be paid for by the Home Office or by hard-pressed police budgets?
    Caroline Flint: We are dealing with the issue of capacity in the Prison Service by providing 3,000 more places and building two more prisons that will provide 1,290 places. We constantly review the management of prison places, but we must also think of the future. The national offender management system will offer a scheme providing more places for serious, violent and dangerous offenders, as well as using other forms of sentence, such as community sentences, to deal with short-term prisoners.
    The hon. Lady talks about more resources. The shadow Chancellor's standstill Budget would mean a loss of £669 million to the Home Office. Just how would the Opposition pay for the Prison Service—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I call Mr. Dismore.

    Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act
    Mr. Andrew Dismore: How many individuals have had (a) nationality and (b) indefinite leave to remain removed under the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002; and if he will make a statement. [155753]
    The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration(Beverley Hughes): The Home Secretary has exercised his right under the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 to remove citizenship from one individual. That individual has appealed, and the case is currently awaiting a hearing by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission.
    We are not currently aware that the provisions to revoke indefinite leave to remain under section 76 of the Act have been used. Both measures were passed by Parliament to be used by Ministers sparingly and, in relation to section 76, in the special circumstances in which we could not deport someone. However, where removal is possible, indefinite leave to remain is invalidated automatically as part of the removals process.
    Mr. Dismore: Is there not a serious loophole? A year on, Abu Hamza's appeal still has not been heard and his lawyers are threatening a seven-year legal battle. Every terrorist suspect so far, from the shoe bomber to the ricin plotters, has left a trail of slime leading back to Hamza. The British people, including most Muslims, cannot understand and do not accept the fact that Hamza is allowed to block the road every Friday to spout his anti-semitism, holocaust denial and hatred of our country and our society, from Her Majesty the Queen downwards. Why has he not been put behind bars, thrown out or extradited to the Yemen to stand trial for his terrorist offences there? When will we deal with this evil influence in our society and get rid of him once and for all?
    Beverley Hughes: I share my hon. Friend's frustration, but the timing of the appeal is in the hands of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which is the court, and not in the hands of the Home Office. SIAC is keen to make early progress. The funding was in the hands of the Legal Services Commission. We are not at liberty to interfere in either the funding or the court process. However, I assure him that any opportunity to prosecute this individual will be taken and that the local police are monitoring him very closely, including outside the mosques on Friday, and are currently investigating allegations in a newspaper about one recent sermon.
    Mr. David Cameron: Is the Minister personally content with the current powers that she and the Home Secretary have to expel people they believe may pose a risk to this country? Yes or no?
    Beverley Hughes: We have taken the powers that are available to us, but in the implementation and exercising of those powers we have to give people rights of appeal, which exposes them to court processes, over which—rightly, many would argue—we have no jurisdiction.

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    That is the position in this case: it is in the appeals process, and we must allow SIAC to determine the outcome. I hope that it will do so as soon as possible.
    Mr. Humfrey Malins: Will the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill enable a person wrongly deprived of citizenship or indefinite leave to remain to appeal to the courts against that deprivation on a point of law?
    Beverley Hughes: The Bill has very little bearing on that question, as it deals with arrangements to translate into a single tier appeals processes arising from asylum and other applications. The SIAC process is separate from that, and is confined to this kind of case. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there is the opportunity outside SIAC, with permission, for people to go to higher courts.

    Terrorism
    Vera Baird: What plans he has for changing the standards of (a) proof and (b) evidence in criminal cases believed to involve terrorism. [155754]
    The Secretary of State for the Home Department(Mr. David Blunkett): On Wednesday, at 9 o'clock in the morning, so that right hon. and hon. Members will have the opportunity to read it before the debate, I intend to publish a discussion document on the challenges laid down by the Newton Committee, and the challenges that were posed to us when we, as a Parliament, originally passed the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.
    Vera Baird: I acknowledge the difficult task that my right hon. Friend has in protecting the public from British people whom he believes to be a terrorist threat, when, almost by definition, the intelligence that informs him of that is not admissible in court, but I ask him to bear it in mind that there is a whole range of powers currently in statute that have not yet been brought into force, which could help, including in particular, in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, the admissibility of hearsay, which can be second-hand, third-hand or written evidence from abroad. Using that provision could transform the picture. If what is said in the press this weekend is right, I encourage him enormously to pursue the course that he appears to have embarked on, and allow the admission of phone-tap material in court as quickly as possible.
    Mr. Blunkett: My hon. and learned Friend is right, in that we want a sensible, balanced approach that protects the rights of the innocent and retains the long-standing presumption of innocence, acknowledging that all of us in the House are committed to maintaining those historic rights, while allowing us to admit evidence in a way that is acceptable. The current review of intercept is an important part of that debate. I appeal to everyone—and I will do so on Wednesday—to address these very difficult issues in a spirit that presumes that even the Home Secretary is innocent until proven guilty.
    Mr. Elfyn Llwyd: What the Home Secretary said about the presumption
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    of innocence is most welcome, but I urge him also not to interfere with the standard of proof, which would, unfortunately, undermine respect for the rule of law.
    Mr. Blunkett: In the lecture that I gave to human rights lawyers and members of the supreme court in New Delhi, I did not suggest that we were intending to alter the standard of proof wholesale. I said, and my hon. and learned Friend has just said, that there are other ways forward. When I publish the paper, hon. Members will see that we are trying genuinely to find the right ways, with a lengthy consultation that will avoid anybody being bounced into any solution. All I want is that people come up with solutions, not with objections, because in the end the primary duty of Government is to protect our citizens from the undermining of their freedoms and democracy by those who know no bounds and have no understanding of the issues of punishment or prosecution when they take the lives of others through suicide bombing.
    David Winnick: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the interpretation of his remarks was bound to cause concern that there could be a weakening of the rule of law? At the same time, will he accept that those who have concerns and reservations about what he said—or what he is alleged to have said—recognise that 9/11 was not meant to be a one-off in respect of attacks on western democracies and that this country is no less under attack than it was immediately after 9/11?
    Mr. Blunkett: It is precisely for that reason that I am initiating this discussion, but I do not accept the first premise of my hon. Friend's question. I did not expect a noble Baroness or, for that matter, a solicitor whom I remember well from joining in battle with her when she was defending the Militant Tendency, to be the ones whose pronouncements were reflected on, rather than the speech I actually gave in New Delhi.
    Mr. Douglas Hogg: May I remind the Home Secretary that one of the other purposes of the Home Secretary's office is to ensure that justice is done, and that many of us who are involved in the criminal courts are concerned with the proposition that, as regards the standard or burden of proof or the admissibility of evidence, those who are alleged to be guilty of terrorist offences should be treated differently from those alleged to be guilty of other serious offences?
    Mr. Blunkett: When we established the Special Immigration Appeals Commission as a superior court of record chaired by a High Court judge, we did so first because of the immigration rules under which we were unable to remove people from our country whom we intended to remove; and, secondly, in recognition of the difficulty of dealing with such cases through the normal criminal justice system. It must be clearly said, however, that we have dealt with very many cases through that system since 11 September 2001. The presumption, as during the debate at that time, is that we should continue to do so. I only ask right hon. and hon. Members to come up with their way of squaring the circle and making it possible to deal with people—on the evidence base and in the light of the difficulties that we face—through the normal courts.

    Community Policing
    Gareth Thomas: If he will make a statement on the effect of community policing on the reduction of crime. [155755]
    The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety(Ms Hazel Blears): There is a growing body of evidence that community policing can have a positive effect on crime levels. Community policing, however, is not just about crime reduction, but is fundamental to the future direction of the police service.
    Gareth Thomas: I thank my hon. Friend for her reply. Does she agree that CCTV has a role in improving the effectiveness of community policing? Will she agree to meet me and representatives of North Wales police and Denbighshire county council to assess proposals for a CCTV scheme for rural communities within the Vale of Clwyd?
    Ms Blears: I am more than happy to accede to my hon. Friend's request and I am delighted to be able to highlight the excellent work of North Wales police on community policing. They have recently introduced a system of community beat managers under which police officers give a three-year commitment to being the local police officers in their community. They get to know the local people and report back to them, which is having significant results. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to see how we can do even better in north Wales.
    Mr. Peter Pike: Does my hon. Friend agree that community policing and working with neighbourhood wardens is reassuring many people that a minority will not be allowed to destroy the lives of the majority? Will she give an assurance that we will continue to see further development of both community policing and neighbourhood warden schemes?
    Ms Blears: My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point and he knows that we now have record numbers of police officers—more than ever before in this country—out on our streets. There are also about 3,000 community support officers now patrolling, and increasing numbers of neighbourhood wardens, some of them funded not only by local authorities but by housing associations, so we are beginning to see a real partnership of people who can reassure communities and tackle the problems of antisocial behaviour. They are on the side of the decent law-abiding majority in this country, helping to ensure that antisocial behaviour is properly tackled wherever it arises.

    Criminal Records Bureau
    Mrs. Louise Ellman: What progress is being made in implementing the action plan for the Criminal Records Bureau in Liverpool. [155756]
    The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety(Ms Hazel Blears): The Criminal Records Bureau is now reliably delivering more than twice the number of checks undertaken by the police
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    under the old arrangements. Furthermore, since June 2003, 92 per cent. of applications for standard and enhanced disclosures have been processed within two and four weeks respectively. That substantial improvement in performance has recently been acknowledged by the National Audit Office. Significant progress has also been made in implementing the recommendations of the independent review team.
    Mrs. Ellman: Those employed at the Criminal Records Bureau in Liverpool are dedicated and work hard, but we were told that Capita would be a good private sector partner. How much has Capita been penalised for failing to deliver, and how much extra finance has been awarded to it, in addition to the amount agreed when it won the tender contract?
    Ms Blears: My hon. Friend will know that the contract was initially evaluated properly by an independent team, that there was little to determine the difference between the Capita bid and the other bids, and that it was deemed at the time that the contract was very good value for money. She will also know that a settlement has been reached in relation to Capita's previous performance—in the sum, I believe, of about £3.5 million; I can provide my hon. Friend with further details of the payments that have been made. We now have a contract that will in future start to deliver significantly more and better value for money, and more productivity, in the important process of carrying out criminal records checks.

    Asylum Applications
    14. Jim Dobbin: What progress has been made in meeting the target to reduce asylum applications by half. [155757]
    The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Beverley Hughes): My hon. Friend will know that the benchmark that we took was the monthly figure for October 2002—the period immediately before the introduction of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. In September 2003—the latest month for which data are available—there were 4,225 applications for asylum. That figure is 52 per cent. lower than the number in October 2002. We have therefore met the Prime Minister's 50 per cent. pledge, which is very encouraging. However, we are not complacent and we continue to look into ways of reducing the number of asylum claims further.
    Jim Dobbin: In those figures I am sure that there will be a number of families with children. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that their rights regarding housing, health and education will be protected during the whole asylum process?
    Beverley Hughes: Yes. While an asylum claim is ongoing, until it is finally completed, individuals and families, including children, have access to health and education as well as asylum support and housing through the National Asylum Support Service process. Of course, if and when a claim is refused and the appeal rights are exhausted, we expect failed applicants. including families with children, to return home. My

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    hon. Friend will know that there are measures in the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill, which is currently before the House, to ensure that they do so, and that we do not carry on supporting people once their claim has been refused.
    Dr. Vincent Cable: Is the Minister aware that because of the emphasis on the asylum backlog. routine visa applications such as those connected with marriage are inordinately delayed, often for years? Why does the Home Office not adopt the simple policy of copying travel documents once they have been verified, and releasing them so that people can get on with their lives while they are waiting?
    Beverley Hughes: I agree with the spirit of what the hon. Gentleman proposes; that is exactly what we are trying to do. In some cases, for various important reasons, it is not possible, but I agree that in general, documents can be copied and sent back, and we have asked the immigration and nationality directorate to implement that process in future.
    Mr. John Denham: I welcome the considerable success that the Government have had in reducing the number of asylum applications, but does my right hon. Friend accept that there is a danger that some people who might have applied for asylum will be drawn into illegal working in this country? Will she take this opportunity to say that she would welcome the use of the Proceeds of the Crime Act 2002 against employers who knowingly employ illegal labour?
    Beverley Hughes: That is a suggestion that my right hon. Friend made a little while ago in the context of the Home Affairs Committee inquiry and, as I shall indicate in my response to the most recent inquiry, we are looking at it in great detail. I shall be happy to provide him with further information once we have undertaken that investigation.

    Gun Crime
    Mrs. Ann Cryer: What measures he is taking to support communities in the fight against gun crime. [155758]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department(Caroline Flint): We need effective legislation and enforcement. but we also need to harness the support of local communities in tackling gun crime. That is why we have provided support for the Disarm Trust to work directly with affected communities and community groups, and have allocated £1.2 million of recovered assets money to support community action in the most affected areas. In January this year, we held a very good conference in Birmingham, involving more than 200 community organisations, individuals and young people, to identify better ways to work together in the future and to stimulate more ideas for action.
    Mrs. Cryer: I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful reply. Does she appreciate that in my constituency,
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    during a period of about a year, two young Keighley men were killed and a violent street battle took place in an otherwise peaceful and law-abiding area? The common thread in all three incidents was that they related to turf wars between drug dealers, firearms were used and the police had great difficulty in bringing prosecutions owing to the intimidation of potential witnesses. How can we move forward?
    Caroline Flint: I am aware of the incident to which my hon. Friend refers. She is right to draw attention to the links between gun crime and other organised criminal activities, especially drugs. The serious organised crime agency will look into such issues and that will be helpful for the future, but we also have to ensure that there are operations on the ground to deal with them effectively. The Bradford district is taking a proactive approach to gun crime and over the next six weeks it will launch a media campaign to make local people aware of what it is doing and to encourage them to come forward with information. We are seriously looking into how we can further improve witness protection nationally. We need to attend to that very serious issue.

    Immigration and Nationality Directorate
    16. Keith Vaz: What plans he has to tackle the backlog of cases at the immigration and nationality directorate. [155759]
    The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Beverley Hughes):We are committed to reducing the numbers of outstanding cases in all areas of the immigration and nationality directorate to a steady state of frictional levels of work in progress and we have allocated dedicated resources to achieving that. As I have already mentioned today, the number of outstanding asylum cases awaiting an initial decision had fallen to 29,100 in September 2003—the lowest level for a decade. The number of outstanding asylum appeals is being reduced by 1,500 cases a month. We expect to clear outstanding leave to remain work by spring 2004 and nationality work by autumn 2004.
    Keith Vaz:I welcome the Minister's commitment and the news that she has announced today; however, the fact remains that there is still a substantial backlog. A constituent who came to my surgery last Friday has been waiting for two and a half years for a letter from the IND. Will my right hon. Friend look in particular into the fact that Home Office presentation officers do not attend immigration tribunal cases? A third of all such officers simply do not attend and that must have an impact on the backlog. Will she make a commitment to ensure that there is better attendance by those officers at the hearings?
    Beverley Hughes: I acknowledge that the availability of presentation officers has been a problem, especially in London where there has been a shortage. However, I am happy to tell my hon. Friend that we have already taken action and that 65 additional officers are being appointed. The process is far advanced and I expect them to be in post by March this year. I am sure that, as my hon. Friend says, that will have a discernible impact on the problem that he outlined.
    Mr. James Clappison: The Minister has told us that the backlog stands at 29,000. Can she tell us how many asylum seekers have benefited from the relaxed criteria introduced by the Government in their backlog clearance exercises? How many?
    Beverley Hughes: If the hon. Gentleman is talking about the indefinite leave to remain exercise announced at the end of last year, the process of identifying people who meet the criteria is still going on-as I made clear when we made the announcement. People have to be checked, both as to whether they meet the criteria and, for example, whether they have committed any criminal offences in the meantime. We expect to conclude the whole exercise by April or May this year.

    Neighbourhood Watch Schemes
    Derek Wyatt: If he will fund neighbourhood watch schemes; and if he will make a statement. [155760]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department(Fiona Mactaggart): The Home Office provided a grant to the National Neighbourhood Watch Association of £150,000 in 2002–03 and of £200,000 in 2003–04. The National Neighbourhood Watch Association provides guidance and training to local neighbourhood watch associations. Local neighbourhood watch schemes are independent and largely self-financing. They are supported by police forces with which they work closely.
    Mr. Wyatt: I commend to the Minister a scheme in San Jose, California by which each neighbourhood watch is funded. When graffiti appears, telephones and microwave systems are used, and graffiti can be removed within 24 hours. Those neighbourhood watches make neighbourhoods safer, and they are funded at a very low level. There are more than 700 neighbourhood watch schemes in my patch, and I would love to enable them further because they are so successful.
    Fiona Mactaggart: We recognise that neighbourhood watch schemes are vital partners for the police in preventing and reporting crime and in supporting witnesses. The US scheme that my hon. Friend describes is interesting. Neighbourhood watch schemes and other community groups can work with the police to try to tackle such issues. In America, however, local community associations and local government are less vital than in the UK. Perhaps Americans depend on neighbourhood watch schemes where we have other resources, but I will examine the scheme that he describes.
    Bob Russell: Will the Minister concentrate on neighbourhood watch schemes in this country? Does she agree that, alongside Crimestoppers, community policing and neighbourhood wardens, the neighbourhood watch is an important part of the jigsaw that provides safety in our communities? Although national funding for neighbourhood watch schemes should he recognised and appreciated, does she agree that much more could be done locally if there were core funding for back-up administration?
    Fiona Mactaggart: We recognise the vital role of neighbourhood watch schemes, which was laid out for the first time in statute in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, demonstrating the value that we place on them. The hon. Gentleman rightly says that neighbourhood watch schemes play a practical local role, which is why we work to ensure that they are closely involved in crime and disorder reduction partnerships and that they can work closely with the police. We have not ruled out considering providing them with resources, which is often best done locally. We see them as partners in part of our police reform programme, in part of our crime and disorder reduction programme and in tackling antisocial behaviour and crime in neighbourhoods up and down the country.

    Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996
    Mr. Tam Dalyell: What representations he has received from the National Union of Journalists on the requirement on journalists to reveal their sources under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996. [155762]
    The Secretary of State for the Home Department(Mr. David Blunkett): To the best of my knowledge, none—I thought about approaching the NUJ to see whether I could access any of its sources of information from my Department, which would enormously reduce my blood pressure on a Sunday morning.
    Mr. Dalyell: I want to declare a personal interest, of which I have informed a senior official at the Home Office: I am under pressure from defence lawyers and West Mercia police in relation to the revelation of sources on the brutal and callous murder of the Shrewsbury rose-grower, Hilda Murrell. What is the Home Secretary's general attitude to the use of the 1996 Act to put pressure on people to reveal sources?
    Mr. Blunkett: My attitude is clear: it is not the job of the Government or the police to bring pressure to bear on MPs or other citizens to reveal their sources, but it is their duty to investigate and find out the facts. Investigation involves interrogating people, and it is open to the individual to reveal what they believe would be helpful in finding the truth—I hope that we are moving to find the truth in that historic case.

    Leicestershire Police Authority
    Mr. Andrew Robathan: If he will make a statement on funding to the Leicestershire police authority. [155766]
    The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety(Ms Hazel Blears): Leicestershire police authority will receive general grant funding of £102 million in 2004–05, an increase of £3.2 million or 3.25 per cent. over this year. In addition to that, it will receive more than £10 million for targeted programmes and capital provision. I understand that Leicestershire police authority has set a final budget of £138.1 million for next year-an increase of 6.1 per cent.
    Mr. Robathan: The Minister will know that the authority has had to increase its budget because it received some £4 million to £5 million less than it expected from the Government. The result has been an increase in council tax. Perhaps, the Minister could explain to her colleagues in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister why council tax will have to go up in Leicestershire as a result of the mean-minded funding for the police by this Government.
    Ms Blears: The hon. Gentleman would have known, had he been in his place earlier, that the police have
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    received generous funding settlements in the past three years of some 30 per cent. Leicestershire will receive an increase of 3.25 per cent. this year, as well as a whole range of specific grants. The hon. Gentleman will know that his local force now has a record number of police officers out on the streets, with 45 more than in March last year and 210 more than in March 1997. It also has record numbers of police staff. I am sure that he welcomes those increases in policing and in reassurance for his local community.

EU Enlargement (Free Movement of Workers)
3.31 pm
The Secretary of State for the Home Department(Mr. David Blunkett): I wish to make a statement on the Government's approach to the accession of 10 countries to the European Union from 1 May. EU enlargement is extremely welcome to, and important for, our country. It is something to be celebrated. All parties in this House are in favour of enlargement. John Major played an important role in launching the process. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was instrumental in calling for early accession of the 10 countries.
After 1 May, citizens of accession states will be free to travel across all EU borders. Our position has always been clear—that the UK would benefit from all new EU citizens working legally, paying taxes and national insurance. That is an alternative to illegal working, which would fuel the sub-economy and undermine existing conditions of work. But we will take every step to ensure that our benefit system is not open to abuse. We have already tackled benefit tourism by tightening the habitual residence test. Today, we are building on that by announcing measures that will ensure that those who come here from the accession countries but do not work will not be able to claim benefits.
It is important to remember the positive aspects of migration. The UK is already benefiting from more than 20,000 accession nationals who have been granted work permits in the last two years. From 1 May, that requirement will be replaced by a workers registration scheme.
The United Kingdom has one of the most dynamic and successful economies in the world. Since 1997, our economy has experienced growth and prosperity greater than any other large state. Growth has been higher, we have created more sustainable jobs and we have lower levels of unemployment—almost half the levels of France and Germany—which is a tribute to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, and to the creativity and flexibility of the British labour market. We currently have more than 500,000 vacancies and will benefit from the skills, flexibility and willingness to work of those new migrant workers, as we have in the past.
To say that we will welcome legal migrants is not new. We set out our policy in our White Paper "Secure Borders, Safe Havens" two years ago. We have consistently developed legitimate and legal routes for managed migration, including issuing 175,000 work permits this year, compared with 40,000 in 1997. At the same time, we have balanced that by taking tough measures to clamp down on illegal working, abuse of the asylum system and clandestine entry into our economy.
We have radically overhauled the asylum system. Over 80 per cent. of asylum claims are now processed in under eight weeks. We now have the lowest asylum backlog for a decade—half the level that we inherited in 1997. We have halved the number of asylum claims from its peak in October 2002. We are removing record numbers of failed asylum seekers and illegal migrants. That balanced approach enables us to make the positive case for legal, managed migration.
The accession of new countries into the European Union opens up new opportunities for trade and labour market flexibility. That is why all EU countries and all
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political parties in the House welcomed expansion. That is why I am confirming today our decision to allow workers from the accession states access to our labour market, subject to certain sensible conditions.
When we first set out our position, only those countries with high levels of unemployment were planning to introduce restrictions on work for accession nationals. Since then, other countries have changed their stance. It clearly makes sense for us to ensure that our approach does not leave us exposed.
We will therefore introduce a new workers registration scheme to replace work permits for accession nationals. That will place an obligation on all accession nationals to register where they are working and for whom. Their right to work in the UK will depend on their being issued with a registration certificate. It will be incumbent on the employer to check that the employee has registered. That will provide a platform for the national identity card scheme under which, in time, all non-UK nationals will be required to register. That will help us to determine accurately how many new workers are in Britain, and in which sectors and types of employment. It will also assist with enforcement and inspection and enable us to react immediately if, against all the odds, there are destabilising effects on the labour market.
It is important to emphasise that the Government retain full discretion to remove all or part of the concessions at any time. We will not hesitate to do so if necessary. We will in any case tighten controls and deal with those who evade their responsibility by the employment of clandestine workers. I know that all decent employers will want to join with us in cooperating and rooting out those who exploit.
We will put before Parliament a set of affirmative regulations that will allow access to the labour market, while ensuring that our benefits system is not open to abuse.
This is a coherent and sensible package of measures that builds on the principles and policies laid out by the Government over the past three years. We believe that proper, legal, managed migration is good for Britain and fair to genuine workers from the accession countries. Whether they are plumbers or paediatricians, they are welcome if they come here openly to work and contribute. At the same time, it is clearly not right that people should be able to come here, fail to get a job and then enjoy access to the full range of public services and social security benefits.
Therefore, the second element of the package that we are announcing today is that those who wrongly believe that they can move here to claim benefits without working should be in no doubt that they cannot do so. They cannot draw benefits without themselves contributing to the rights and entitlements that should go hand in hand with the responsibilities and duties. For two years, possibly longer, we will require accession nationals to be able to support themselves. If they are unable to do so, they will lose any right of residence and will have to return to their own country.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will bring forward regulations to prevent access to benefits for those not working, and my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General will bring forward

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regulations to prevent them from claiming child benefit. We will also restrict access to other benefits such as social housing.
This package reinforces the balanced approach to immigration that I have spoken about within a clear set of rules. I reiterate that we welcome people, as we have throughout the centuries, to come to our country to work, to contribute and to be part of our society. We reject those from wherever they come who exploit our hospitality. This approach takes account of the simple reality that, under the treaty of accession, no EU member state has the right to interfere with freedom of movement. The issue. therefore, is on what basis people come to our country.
By taking these measures, we will ensure that those arriving in Britain can work for their living openly and honestly and are not drawn into the sub-economy. Those who wish to find a job will be free to do so; those who come for short periods will have the means to do so. In this way, we avoid any expensive bureaucracy and, at the same time, protect ourselves against clandestine work and the exploitation of the sub-economy. This is the right approach for Britain in the 21st century—fair on ourselves, fair on our new partners and tough on those who would abuse the system. I commend the new approach to the House.
David Davis: I thank the Home Secretary for early sight of his statement although, frankly, I wish I had seen it even earlier six months earlier to be precise. The enlargement of the European Union is not a concept that has suddenly emerged in the past six weeks. It has been on the agenda for years.
Britain's strategy for the free movement of labour, which impacts on British jobs and our public services, should have been clear, consistent and planned well in advance. Yet in the past few weeks, we have witnessed the astonishing spectacle of the Prime Minister inventing policy at the Dispatch Box, being contradicted by his official spokesman within hours, being put in his place by the Home Secretary and being blatantly ignored by the Minister for Europe. We have seen Ministers rushing to crisis meetings in Downing street to hammer out plans just weeks before enlargement takes place.
Nevertheless, the Government have, at last, recognised that there is a problem albeit that they have misdiagnosed it and come up with a bureaucratic solution that carries unnecessary risks. The problems created by enlargement result from the massive differences in wages between the accession states and the United Kingdom. That is why the Home Office's predictions on new immigrants arc wrong and have been challenged, not least by the Home Secretary's own advisers. A large number of people will come to Britain—some as benefit tourists, but most seeking work. That will put huge pressure on housing and our public services. The most straightforward and fair method of dealing with this is to use the work permit system, which allows us to control month by month how many people come in and the skills they bring.
Today, the Home Secretary has announced that, instead, he is toughening benefit rules by tightening the habitual residence test and access to benefits. We agree
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that benefit tourism needs to be stopped. Indeed, a Conservative Government introduced the habitual residence test under much criticism from the Labour party at the time. However, is he entirely satisfied that the provisions are compatible with our obligations under EC law? Is he confident that they will be sustainable in the British courts? What will the Government do if people from accession countries come to the UK—as they are perfectly entitled to do but have no employment? Will they deport them? Their record on deportation has not been very successful so far. What will happen if people are left destitute? What if they have children? Will they be left to sleep on the streets? The legal position is unclear and the problem is compounded by the fact that we have only a few weeks before it can be tested.
Have the Government considered what impact large numbers of workers may have on our already overstretched public services? According to the Government's estimates, the UK already needs to build 39,000 more houses every year. Does the Home Secretary not therefore agree that mass migration may exacerbate the housing problem? Considering that London and the south-east is the preferred destination for two thirds of immigrants, has he assessed the impact on housing, health and education services?
Will the Home Secretary explain why he has decided not to use work permits? What are the advantages of reinventing the wheel through this clumsy and bureaucratic new registration scheme? How is it better than the proven, existing work permit scheme? Without any methods of enforcement, this is little more than another headline-grabbing initiative.
The Home Secretary said that it will be incumbent on the employer to check that the employee has registered with the scheme, but only eight people have ever been found guilty of employing an illegal immigrant. Who is going to enforce this system? He doubtless hopes that identity cards for immigrants will give him a tough-sounding headline, but the crux of the problem will arise in the next two years, and it will start in two months. When will his ID card system bite? Not, I warrant, in two months, or even in two years.
If the Government are right in saying that only 13,000 people from accession countries will come to work in Britain, the work permit system would cope perfectly well. After all, in 2002 Britain granted more than 120,000 work permits—`as the Home Secretary said, the figure for this year is 175,000—including almost 14,000 to people from countries in eastern Europe. In other words, we already process 1,000 more eastern Europeans than the Government are forecasting will come here.
A policy of work permits would not mean slamming the door on migration but would allow us to control exactly how many people come to the UK, and what skills they bring, on a month-by-month basis. Why are work permits good enough for Sweden and the rest of Europe, but not for us? Have we not simply adopted the lesser of two options not on the ground of what is best for Britain, but to avoid the accusation of a U-turn or climbdown? Is that not what happens when crucial decisions are taken in crisis meetings at the last minute?

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This is not so much a policy of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, as opening it to see whether the horse wants to run. Yet again, the British people have been badly served by this Government. The shambles that we have witnessed surrounding this policy sums up why Britain deserves better.
Mr. Blunkett: I am genuinely bewildered as to whether the hon. Gentleman—[HON. MEMBERS: "The right hon. Gentleman."] I must get it right. I am genuinely bewildered as to whether the right hon. Gentleman is in favour of allowing people to come here to work, or not. Listening to him, there seems to be one difference between us: whether there should be a pre-entry system of work permits, or a post-entry registration scheme. The CBI, the TUC and the British Chambers of Commerce favour the post-entry registration scheme that we propose. The director general of the BCC is on record as saying:
"We will not support a work permit scheme if it means greater administrative and regulatory burdens".
That is clearly what it would mean, and for the reasons that I am about to spell out.
The existing work permit scheme is for those who do not have automatic right of entry to the United Kingdom. They have to apply and to have a preordained job before they come here, and the employer has to apply to the work permit system—it is based in my own city—to obtain a permit to get the person in. That costs the individual a great deal of money, and the employer a great deal of time. Doing that for those who have right of entry—those who can come into the economy and work legally—would simply push them into the sub-economy, where they would be exploited by the worst employers. The minimum wage and working conditions for existing employees would be undercut, and national insurance and tax would not be paid. What sort of economy is that? What sort of politics is that?
It is the politics of despair and immorality because it pushes employers and individuals into an immoral situation in which, in order to compete, they start to undercut the rate by employing clandestine workers. Our policy is to clamp down on clandestine working and allow those who have access to come freely into our country to work freely, but they should do so openly, pay their dues and be entitled to their residency.
Under the residency rules, we should be able to apply stringent tests to avoid people claiming benefits because there can be only two reasons why people wish to come here: to work to earn their living, or to draw down on services. If we are stopping people drawing down on services and benefits yet allowing them to work legally, what on earth are the Opposition talking about? What could be the risk? I have never said that there would be only 13,000 people.
David Davis: Yes, you did.
Mr. Blunkett: No, I have not. We published independent research on the website last summer, with its methodology. The figure of 13,000 has never crossed my lips. We will not know the situation until people apply for the vacancies that exist in our economy,
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including, it must be said, in construction. Building houses requires construction workers, and if we get construction workers to fill vacancies, we will actually be able to build houses—that is also a simple economic reality.
Conservative Members preach flexibility, free movement of capital and labour and an economy of balance in which labour market forces balance out those who want jobs with the jobs available. They say that that is good for Britain, but the minute we do it, they are against it on purely opportunistic grounds. Well, not all of them, because the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins), who is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench—
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department(Caroline Flint): He has gone.
Mr. Blunkett: No wonder, because the hon. Gentleman must have known that I would quote what he said on this morning's "Today" programme. He said:
"if you and I wanted to go to Slovakia or Slovenia to work, that's fine, but if we were to go there and simply claim benefits, most normal, sensible people would say 'that's wrong'."
I agree entirely with him. If people want to come and work in Britain openly and legally, that is right. If they want to come and claim our benefits, that is wrong. I commend to the House what we have done.
Mr. Mark Oaten: I thank the Home Secretary for advance notice of his statement, but I hope that he will at least acknowledge that the Government have left it very late in the day to resolve these critical issues. With just weeks before the accession countries join, today's announcement is either the result of bad planning, a panic response to tabloid pressure or the sign of a disagreement in the Cabinet. While I welcome the positive language that he used on migration, why has he decided to introduce the measures from 1 May? He acknowledged that he was not sure of the figures involved, so would it not have made more sense to wait and base the policy on fact rather than prediction and to review the situation in six months to determine whether there really is a difficulty with migration and benefit abuse?
With that in mind, will the Home Secretary take it upon himself to produce a quarterly report on migration figures from the new countries so that we can see the facts? When deciding on work registration certificates, will he clarify whether restrictions will be imposed on issuing certificates in areas with job shortages? What right of appeal will individuals claiming those certificates or benefits have if they are refused?
Finally, does not the whole episode show two things? On Europe, the Government must decide if they really want a full Europe or a two-tier Europe, and, on immigration, they must decide whether they want a policy based on facts or on tabloid fiction.
Mr. Blunkett: I did not think that I had announced anything this afternoon that was tabloid fiction. I thought that I had enunciated a policy that we set out two years ago in the White Paper to which I referred and that I have been following ever since. There has been no disagreement between the Prime Minister and me on the

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Matter— none. We are agreed that we want people to come here to work, and we are agreed that we do not want people to exploit our benefits and social services. That is simple, straightforward and everyone can understand it.
We will not need an appeals system under the rules. If people have a job and are registered, they will be entitled to benefits. If they do not have a job and are not registered, we will be able to disqualify them from benefits under the European accession rules. Those are the rules that we are laying down. My right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Paymaster General will together lay the necessary orders to enforce that.
I am happy to publish the number of those who register, as we do the number of those who are granted work permits, so that people can see how many people have come to our country and are working. There will be no need for a bureaucratic system forbidding registration in particular parts of the country. A labour market is a labour market: if people can get a job, they get a job, and employers have the opportunity to take them on. My only appeal is that people who do not have a job at the moment in this country are willing to be as flexible and as prepared to move and to work as those who come from other parts of the European Union. In that way, we would ensure that people who can work and who have no disability that precludes them from working get a job instead of being dependent on benefit. To be honest, that has been our policy all the time: welfare to work, make work pay, ensure that people are welcome to work and have an honest, open debate about it.
Mr. Kevin McNamara: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many editors of tabloid newspapers will very much regret what he said in his statement? He has refused to rise to the bait of the scare stories and race hatred stories that they have published over the past few weeks and produced a reasonably balanced statement. However, what will the position be for immigrant workers who have a work permit and are registered and in employment? Surely they and their families will be entitled to the day-to-day benefits of the national health service, education for their children and so on once they begin to pay taxation and national insurance. Will he confirm that they will not be excluded from that?
Mr. Blunkett: I am not going to speculate on what the morning papers will say, except to say that a number of tabloids that do not take our political point of view are strongly in favour of honest work and of people declaring that they are working and paying their taxes and national insurance. I look forward to them backing what we are doing wholeheartedly and being totally against clandestine exploitation.
On my hon. Friend's second point, I can confirm that that is the case. When someone has worked consistently for 12 months and paid national insurance and taxes, they will be entitled to those benefits.
Sir Teddy Taylor: Will the Home Secretary say for how long the European Union will allow him to apply the restrictions on benefit entitlement? Is he wholly satisfied that they are legally sound?
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People who come here and secure a job will be entitled to housing benefit and, of course, to use the health service. Will that not create major problems in areas such as seaside towns, which already have a major problem? Will the right hon. Gentleman look into that? Finally, as the average income in eastern Europe is one third of what it is in the European Union, does he not genuinely think that the problem could be much greater than he anticipates?
Mr. Blunkett: On the first question, the answer is initially for two years, which is renewable. On people drawing down housing benefit, I have made it clear that social housing will not be available to anyone who is not working. It will not automatically be available to those who are working because they have to take their turn in the queue. However, I expect people who are earning their living to want to live here sensibly and respectably, and to be able to rent accordingly in the private sector. We would want them to do that.
On the hon. Gentleman's third question, I remember people saying exactly the same thing when Portugal, Spain and Greece acceded to the EU. The disparity in comparative wage levels when Portugal and Greece, in particular, entered the European Union was very similar to that which exists now between employment and wage levels here and in the accession countries. That is why we are confident that what we are doing is sensible for both the British economy and our society.
Andrew Mackinlay: The press and politicians are preoccupied with the lower-wage end of the market, but on the other side of the coin, will the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions deal with some of the professional bodies and royal colleges which are putting obstructions in the way of people with a profession coming here who can meet an unmet need? For instance, there is a surfeit of dentists in Poland, and I want them to be able to come here.
What discussions has my right hon. Friend had with his opposite number in the Irish Republic, bearing in mind our common travel area? Their problems are ours, and vice versa, and if we do not deal with the British Isles, rather than the United Kingdom, these and other measures relating to the control of immigration will not work.
Mr. Blunkett: I said "plumbers or paediatricians"; I should have said "dustmen or dentists", but we are not allowed to say "dustmen" any more. Where there is a market or a shortage, and people have the relevant skills, I am in favour of them coming here, earning their living openly and being able to contribute. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that that is sensible.
Andrew Mackinlay: The Irish Republic?
Mr. Blunkett: We have of course been in touch with our opposite numbers in Ireland, and they are considering today whether they want to replicate the measures that we are taking.
Mr. Peter Lilley: I welcome the Home Secretary's belated conversion to the habitual residence test, which he and his party so

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vehemently opposed when I introduced it. However, is he aware that, according to the House of Commons Library brief, the accession treaty contains a standstill clause that ensures that rights to access to the labour market prevailing at the time of accession may not be subsequently further restricted? He says that the Government retain full discretion to remove all or part of the concessions at any time, which clearly is untrue beyond 2007. Is there any truth in his statement or in the Library's statement? If the Library is incorrect, what restrictions would he propose subsequently to introduce if the numbers proved excessive?
Mr. Blunkett: There is a right to withdraw the concession within the time scale to which the right hon. Gentleman refers, because it is a concession.
Mr. Lilley: What about the standstill clause?
Mr. Blunkett: Well, our legal advice is very clear, and we believe that we are not bound from 1 May. We do not believe that there will be a difficulty, but if there were, we could return to the issue and consider it anew. What might be open to us is to do as the Germans propose—I am totally opposed to this—and allow people free entry, which they have to do, not allow them to work, but be prepared to countenance their working in the sub-economy. That is both dishonest and dangerous.
Kate Hoey: Will the Home Secretary clarify again the position on social housing? If a properly registered worker enters the country with his family and comes to stay in the borough of Lambeth, where there are thousands of people on the waiting list and people have been told that they must wait seven years for any chance of moving from a two-bedroom to a three-bedroom property, what exactly will be their position?
Mr. Blunkett: The position is as my hon. Friend has just spelled it out: people are likely to wait in excess of seven years to get anywhere near a property, by which time they will have paid plenty of taxes and national insurance and they will be long-standing and valued members of her community.
Mr. Elfyn LIwyd: Does the Home Secretary agree that the whole argument may be a little overblown? His own figures show that last year 78,000 people from the EU managed to claim habitual residence status in this country. which has a working population of 29 million. Does he also agree that any perceived influx would in any event be shortlived, as the eastern European economies picked up?
Mr. Blunkett: That is exactly the point of all parties and all politicians in the House having welcomed accession. The whole intention was to provide a trade area, lifting the standard of living and increasing the interchange of trade of people between countries that are, mainly, former communist states, and that is what we are doing. The EU has accepted that Malta and Cyprus, with which we have tremendous historical
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connections, have freedom across the board in every country for both work and benefits and support, as we do.
I take the hon. Gentleman's point entirely.
On the habitual residence test, it is worth reflecting on the fact that that was tightened by this Government in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and in regulations precisely to prevent non-EU nationals resident in the EU from coming here to exploit our system.
Mr. Neil Gerrard: I welcome my right hon. Friend's refusal to bow to the hysteria about large numbers of people coming here and adoption of a sensibly system of allowing people to work here legally. I am sure that he agrees, however, that if it is to work he will have to crack down on employers who are prepared to employ people illegally. Employers who do not bother to check up on people under the current system will not bother to check whether they are registered under the new scheme, but will continue to employ people illegally, to pay less than the minimum wage, to fail to pay national insurance and so on. We have not had a good record in dealing with those employers, so I urge that he take that extremely seriously. We should target people who employ illegal workers to ensure that significantly more are prosecuted.
Mr. Blunkett: I agree that we should step up our inspection and enforcement system. Good employers, including those represented through the TUC, British Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses, are in favour of that. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration chairs an intergovernmental working group to consider how we can improve on section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996. That regulatory framework, which was introduced by a former Home Secretary who is now Leader of the Opposition, has signally failed—it never worked and will need radical updating.
Mrs. Gillian Shephard: Officers of Breckland district council, part of whose area I represent, calculate that some 15,000 migrant workers have arrived in the past two to three years. Some are here legally, but some are here illegally, with, in some cases, the obvious consequences of appalling exploitation and pressures on health and other public services. Does the Home Secretary accept that he has left somewhat late his response to what will happen as a result of the European directive? Can he give the House any idea of the numbers he expects to arrive; and can he reassure the House that the pressures on local services, about which I have warned him, his Department and other Departments for at least two years, will be avoided when we have large numbers of additional people in these islands?
Mr. Blunkett: I know the right hon. Lady well, and I know that she will welcome those people coming to Norfolk legally, rather than illegally; their being registered, rather than unregistered; and their being monitored, rather than left to sink in the sub-economy. Through that regulation and monitoring, we will be able to plan for the requirements that she spells out, avoid

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the unwarranted pressures to which she rightly draws attention, and ensure that we have a degree of sensible planning within this flexible market system.
On numbers, I cannot give the right hon. Lady a definitive figure. Last June, we published the figures that have been mentioned. We do not intend to be held to those figures. Neither my right hon. Friend the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration nor I have ever used them—although the Department clearly has, because it funded the research. I have no intention of being held to the 13,000 figure: if I had, I would be a very foolish politician, because in future the only issue raised in this House would not be whether those people were good for our country or had paid their tax or national insurance, but whether I had got the figure wrong.
Mr. Gwyn Prosser: I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement and support his balanced approach. That will also be welcomed in areas and constituencies that have experienced large flows of people from eastern Europe—most seeking asylum and most with unfounded claims. However, does he agree that it is important to raise the issue in those eastern European countries and send a signal that people will be welcome to come to seek work but that there will be difficulties for and restrictions on those who want to abuse the system? What measures will he take to get that message across?
Mr. Blunkett: We spelled out our intention some time ago, but I reiterate it this afternoon: we will spend resources on ensuring that the message is clear, especially in those countries where there is misinformation about people's likely entitlements if they reach our shores. That is fair to them, so that they do not trail themselves and often their children across Europe only to find that they are not entitled to benefit, and fair to us to ensure that those people do not make the attempt to exploit a system that we are now closing down.
Miss Ann Widdecombe: Does the Home Secretary accept that the best word that can be applied to the measure is "dilatory"? Does he recall that his predecessor announced that the Government would not implement the measures that we had introduced against illegal working in 1996 and then two years later had to admit they were wrong? Now, some two years after that, they have managed to prosecute no more than one person—in 2001—for employing people illegally. They have known for a long time that this particular problem was about to arise, and that it is bound to increase the amount of illegal working, because people will have —
Mr. Malcolm Savidge: What is the question?
Miss Widdecombe:The question was, does the Home Secretary accept that the applicable word is "dilatory"? Does the right hon. Gentleman accept—
Mr. Speaker: Order. That should be enough.
Mr. Blunkett: I am tempted to say simply that the answer is no. The applicable term is "common sense".
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Many countries in Europe have not laid regulations or spelled them out in detail. The Germans have done that, but many countries have not set out precisely what they will do. Since I have spelled out precisely the policy that I have enunciated for two years, I can hardly be described as dilatory or contradictory.
Mrs. Ann Cryer: I appreciate everything that my right hon. Friend said in the statement. I want to ask him about the comment that the proposals would provide a platform for a national ID card scheme, under which, in time, all non-UK nationals would be required to register. How will we know who are non-UK nationals if we depend on employers, such as the gangmaster who allowed the men to die in Morecambe bay, to be in charge of registering? Are we reaching the point where we may have to move towards a national ID scheme for us all?
Mr. Blunkett: We are moving towards an ID scheme for us all, as I said at the end of last year. We will introduce a draft Bill in the spring for prior consideration and scrutiny and present it for the House to decide whether it wants to go ahead with the scheme that is being recommended and is now agreed by the Cabinet. Yes, we need to toughen up on gangmasters and ensure that any ID card scheme that commences with overseas nationals takes account of the terrible exploitation of clandestines that I am trying to avoid, through the measures announced this afternoon.
Mr. Andrew Mackay: Is the Home Secretary comfortable about being so out of step with our European Union partners? Is it possible that Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are all wrong?
Mr. Blunkett: Not all of them are wrong. However, some have decided to adopt bureaucratic methods of achieving the same goal. The British Chambers of Commerce has condemned those methods and the Confederation of British Industry has not welcomed them. I have avoided the massive bureaucracy involved in trying to stop people getting in-in the first place by providing for them to register when they arrive and have a job to do. That is a commonsense approach, which I hoped hon. Members of all parties would welcome.
Keith Vaz: What has happened in the past few weeks to make the Home Secretary renege on a commitment to which the Government proudly held in the past seven years as the champion of enlargement? He has presented no evidence to suggest either that benefit tourists will come here for those purposes or that the Home Office will be able to cope with the new registration scheme. We have already heard about the backlog. On 1 May, surely we should warmly welcome the new members of the EU rather than rip away the welcome mat from under them.
Mr. Blunkett: You see, Mr. Speaker. the dilemmas amid which we walk. I shall just ask my hon. Friend to consider the way in which we maintain community and race relations in this country, the way in which we have

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been able to open up a new work permit system and legal, managed migration, and the way in which we shall become able, during the next few weeks, to welcome people openly as asylum seekers to this country, via the United Nations route, rather than in the back of lorries. Those methods are precisely to ensure that people in this country do not believe that their taxes and national insurance contributions are exploited by those who have no entitlement, have not contributed and would come to this country to draw on one of the most generous welfare state systems in the world. That is the balance that I have achieved right across the board in asylum and immigration, and that is what I am seeking to achieve this afternoon. It is not only common sense; it is absolutely critical to the maintenance of decent race relations in Britain.
Mr. David Cameron: Further to the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), if the standstill clause in the accession treaties does not mean that restrictions cannot be introduced after accession, will the Home Secretary explain what he thinks it does mean? Will he make it absolutely clear that he had specific legal advice on the part of his statement that said that
"the Government retain full discretion to remove all or part of the concessions at any time"?
Did he have legal advice on that point?
Mr. Blunkett: That is what I said, and that is what I meant.
Mike Gapes: The Home Secretary said that accession country nationals will have to be able to support themselves for two years. Does that mean a change to the habitual residence test for British-born citizens who have chosen to move to an EU country or to the United States, which would make it more difficult for people to return to this country from working abroad? I should be grateful if he clarified that.
Mr. Blunkett: The statement applies to accession country nationals, not to British nationals returning from overseas. Their entitlement remains the same.
Andrew Selous: On access to social housing, can the Home Secretary confirm whether the restrictions that he spoke of earlier will apply purely to members of the accession countries, or whether they will apply to members of existing EU countries as well?
Mr. Blunkett: The changes that we are bringing about in benefits and housing apply to accession countries, but the restrictions that I have already described relate to those who are not working, rather than to those who are working. On that basis, what we are doing in relation to EU nationals as a whole is consistent.
Ms Diane AbbottThe Home Secretary is to be
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congratulated on his clear defence of legal, managed migration in the face of much media hysteria; but on the question of clandestine, illegal, exploited labour, the consequences of which we saw in the Morecombe bay deaths, may I again stress the importance of bringing pressure to bear on employers? If my right hon. Friend is looking again at the 1996 Act, will he look at how the law bears down not just on employers, but on those who employ the subcontractors and gangmasters who employ illegal labour? Those subcontractors could not tender successfully without their reliance on cheap, unregistered labour.
Mr. Blunkett: Yes, we will certainly do that, which is why we are backing the Gangmaster (Licensing) Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire (Jim Sheridan), which will be debated in the House on Friday. We shall give that Bill every support, and good passage.
Mr. Henry Bellingham: Further to the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard), is the Home Secretary aware that officers of Kings Lynn and West Norfolk borough council, which covers all of my constituency and part of that of my right hon. Friend, have estimated that last summer there were roughly 2,500 illegal immigrants in Norfolk, many of them in the west of the county? Does the Home Secretary agree that as many of those were probably working in a clandestine manner and being exploited in a sub-economy, it is crucial that he stick to his word and back tighter measures against the ruthless gangmasters who are exploiting those people?
Mr. Blunkett: Yes, and if any of those 2,500 people are from the eight accession countries affected by my statement, we will ask them to come forward to declare themselves and be registered openly and properly, so that they will be entitled to the rights that go with that.
Paul Flynn: My right hon. Friend is right not to overreact to the tabloid hyperbole on this subject. Does he agree that there has been abuse? From the Czech Republic over a five-year period, there were 6,000 so-called asylum seekers, less than 20 of whom were judged to have well founded cases. One of those came to my constituency after a long career in crime in Czechoslovakia. He came with a warrant out for his arrest, and he committed a dreadful crime in my constituency for which he is serving a long sentence now. Can we say that under this new balanced policy people with those intentions will not be allowed to abuse the system in future?
Mr. Blunkett: Certainly, committing crime will not be eligible for registration under the scheme, if I may lighten the tone for a moment. In response to my hon. Friend's question, yes, the scheme will enable us to do so, and we will be able to cross-reference in relation to registration, which will be helpful in that regard.

Expert Witnesses (Family Court Cases)
4.20 pm
The Minister for Children(Margaret Hodge): I share the deep concern that has been expressed both in this House and by the wider public following the Court of Appeal's judgment in the appeal against the conviction of Angela Cannings.
This has been a tragic case and we recognise that there may well be other cases in which parents and children have been wrongly separated. With the passage of time, it is extremely hard to put right past wrongs. When such wrongs are identified, however, we must do what we can. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that there are cases in which children have properly been separated from parents who have harmed them, or their brothers and sisters—cases in which intervention has served to safeguard the children.
Child abuse is a real issue, which can lead to injury and death. It is essential that we maintain our vigilance as a society in responding to this wrong. We must acknowledge the important contributions of all those professionals—paediatricians, social workers, police officers and others—who work to safeguard vulnerable children. I pay tribute to the vital work that those professionals undertake on our behalf.
The judgment of the Court of Appeal, however, made it clear that in relation to sudden unexplained infant deaths in which the outcome of a criminal trial depends exclusively, or almost exclusively, on a serious disagreement between distinguished and reputable experts, it will often be unsafe to proceed. I therefore welcomed the announcement by the Attorney-General on 19 January of his intention to consider 258 past convictions for the murder, manslaughter or infanticide of children under two, in order to ascertain whether the court decision may have been unsafe. The intention is that such cases might then be looked at further by the Criminal Cases Review Commission or be the subject of an appeal.
Since the Court of Appeal judgment, I have given careful consideration to its consequences for cases dealt with by the family courts. The implications are not straightforward. In a criminal case, the court is concerned only with the guilt or innocence of the accused. If there is any reasonable doubt about the guilt of the accused, he or she should go free. By contrast, in care and adoption cases, the best interests of the child are made paramount.
Although it is ultimately a matter for the courts to determine individual cases that come before them, it is right for me to give proper guidance to local authorities as to how they should proceed. I will therefore write shortly to councils with social services responsibilities to ask them to take the following action. First, I will ask them to consider those cases that are affected by the Attorney-General's review. In those cases, councils should stand ready to act in the light of the outcome of that review.
Secondly, within the next four weeks, councils with social services responsibilities should identify and review current cases. Those are cases in which they have commenced proceedings in relation to a child and in which the court has not yet made a final order. In those cases, councils should consider with their lawyers the implications for those proceedings of the Court of Appeal's judgment in the Cannings case.
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Thirdly, within the next 12 weeks, social services departments should, together with their lawyers, identify cases in which a final care order was made in the past which involved harm to the child or a sibling, and in which the grounds for the making of an order depended exclusively, or almost exclusively, on a serious disagreement between medical experts about the cause of the harm. In such cases councils should again consider, with their lawyers, whether there are now doubts about the reliability of the expert medical evidence. If that is so, they should—bearing in mind the child's current circumstances and current best interests—consider whether to apply to the court for the care order to be discharged, or whether to support any application that may be made by the parents or the child. When reviewing cases, councils will also need to take into account any fresh case law judgments from the Appeal Court that may be relevant.
The number of cases falling in the category that I am asking councils to review is likely to be manageable, although I do not intend to speculate about the precise number. Our best estimate is that it may number no more than the low hundreds, rather than thousands. I am not suggesting that it will be appropriate in every case, following a review, to apply for the discharge of the original care order. The decision must depend entirely on the circumstances of each case.
Councils already have a duty to review the cases of children who are the subjects of care orders at least every six months. Given the range of public concerns that have been raised, it would not be right to impose an arbitrary limit on the types of case that should be reviewed. The key determining factor is that the making of the care order depended exclusively, or almost exclusively, on a dispute between medical experts.
When applications are made to the court, whether by the local authority, the parents or the child, it will be for the court to decide in all cases whether the care order should be discharged. The president of the family division has set out the arrangements to be followed by family court judges in the light of the judgment in the Cannings case. When applications are made, cases are to be listed as soon as possible for directions before a High Court judge in the family division.
Let me now consider cases in which a child has been adopted. There will be cases in which children taken into care in those circumstances have since been adopted. We all accept that adoption is the best option for many looked-after children who cannot live with their birth families. In the overwhelming majority of cases, adoption gives a child the chance to be part of a loving family for life. I recognise that following the Appeal Court's judgment, there will be concerns in cases in which an adoption order followed a care order that had been made on the basis of disputed expert medical evidence. As I have said, however, the position in civil cases is quite different from that in criminal cases.
After adoption has taken place there are, of course, the paramount interests of the child to consider, and the interests of the adoptive parents, as well as those of the birth parents. The whole basis of adoption is that it ensures permanence and finality for all parties. For that reason, only in the most exceptional circumstances have courts been prepared to set aside an adoption order. It is not for me, or for any of us, to say whether any of the cases with which we are concerned would fall into this category. These are very complex issues, and are of course a matter for individuals and the courts.

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It would be wrong of me today to give a false impression of the scope for reopening existing adoption cases, when in truth it is extremely rare. That would give false hope to those who might wish to argue that the original adoption was based on flawed evidence. It would risk causing distress to adoptive families where children are happily settled.
If birth parents are worried, they should take their own legal advice and that of a number of organisations that provide support for such parents. If adoptive parents are worried, they should get in touch with the agency that arranged the adoption to seek further information and support. If adopted children are worried, they should talk first to their adoptive parents or. if that is difficult, to another responsible adult.
Under the Government's new adoption support regulations, which came into force last October, every local authority is required to have an adoption support services adviser, which may be an appropriate point of first contact.
These are difficult and sensitive issues, and there are no easy answers. I have set out a route forward for the period ahead, within the limits of my ability to act. With this review, and with the current and forthcoming judgments in both care proceedings and appeal cases in the courts, we will ensure that we are acting in the best way possible to protect the interests of children, both today and in the future.
Mr. Dominic Grieve: First, I thank the Minister for the advance copy of her statement and for the opportunity that she gave me, and doubtless others, to discuss these matters before she came to the Dispatch Box. She is right when she says that this is a very serious matter, and I welcome the decision to facilitate the local authority review and provide an indication to local authorities of how it should be carried out. It remains a matter of huge public concern. and it relates to what could be one of the worst miscarriages of justice seen in this country for a very long time.
The Minister said that the number of cases is likely to be in the few hundreds, but it is clear from her statement that that relates specifically to cases in which the medical evidence was contested by other medical evidence. Can she give us any indication of how many cases in all there might he that depended on the medical evidence of Sir Roy Meadow, even if that evidence was not challenged? Is she aware that, in many cases—I have this on good anecdotal evidence from within my profession as a barrister—and especially cases heard outside London, when an eminent expert such as Sir Roy Meadow was involved. the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service commissioned joint reports from that expert with local authorities, and individual solicitors representing families did not feel readily able to challenge, or to go about the process of finding somebody to challenge, his opinions?
That is evidenced by the fact that in the answers given to the questions of my noble Friend Lord Howe on 12 February, it was pointed out that Sir Roy Meadow was the preferred lecturer of choice at the Judicial Studies Board for nominated child care judges between 1997 and 2001, and his opinion was taken as gospel. Is there
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not therefore a danger that we may be overlooking a large number of cases that still require consideration? I say that mindful of the difficulty and of the Minister's relying only on contested medical cases—but I believe that there may be others. Can she assure us that, by not fettering the type of case that can be considered, which she specifically said in her statement, we can allow local authorities to consider other cases, in which the medical evidence was not disputed by other medical evidence?
Concerning the mechanics, the Minister said that local authorities are required to make an informed criticism of their own past actions—that is clearly implicit in the process that she has set in train.
While I hope that they will be able to do so, my experience in representing local authorities in care proceedings and appearing against them suggests that bureaucracies are often ill placed to review their own past assumptions and the errors flowing from them. I appreciate that the Minister can only give a steer in these matters, but should there not be some mechanism for an independent review of the process, particularly if the numbers are as small as the Minister hopes they will be? As I understand it, CAFCASS, as the guardian of the child's interest in court proceedings, would be involved only if the case went back to court. Should there not be a mechanism for enabling its earlier involvement if that were appropriate?
What resources will be made available to local authorities to carry out the review? I am mindful—I am sure the Minister is mindful—of the fact that local authority social services are enormously stretched. Services are often dependent on locum social workers and often come in for criticism because they are so stretched. Will further resources be made available to local authorities that have to carry out this delicate and self-searching process to ensure that they reach the right decision on whether to return to court?
In reviews of cases where a final care order has been made and an adoption may be imminent, can the Minister give the House an assurance that the adoption process will be frozen until the review is completed? The same applies, to some extent, where current care proceedings cases are pending, but it is much easier to deal with them than cases where the date of the formal adoption may lie at the end of the next week.
It is likely that the review will lead—perfectly properly in some cases—to local authorities taking the decision not to reopen some cases. In those circumstances, what notification will families be given of the basis on which the decision was arrived at? Clearly, in some cases, families may wish to challenge the decision, and I am sure that the Minister would acknowledge that, before they embark on what may be harrowing and difficult litigation, it is important that those families have some idea of the reasoning behind the local authority's decision not to go back to court. Will the Minister give an assurance that proper notification of the background reasons for a local authority decision will he given? Will there be an opportunity for legal aid to be made readily available to families wanting to go to court?
Finally, in cases where adoption has taken place, there may be circumstances in which there is no going back, even though a court might otherwise have wanted to reopen proceedings. However, that inevitably raises the possibility that claims for compensation will be

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made at some later date. I mention that because I urge the Minister to examine that matter now, rather than to let it slide to some later date. If compensation turns out to be payable to families that have been unjustly deprived of children, it is much better to resolve matters in an amicable fashion than to have prolonged litigation over years to come.
When the Solicitor-General made her statement in respect of criminal cases, I said that this is not a party-political issue. It is, however, an issue of great seriousness for the Government, who have to ensure that good government is carried out, and for Parliament, because we have to ensure that injustices are righted. I look forward to continuing to co-operate with the Minister to achieve that end.
Margaret Hodge: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution and I assure him that I also view this as an extremely serious matter, in which the House has huge interest and concern. I shall report back as regularly as is appropriate, as I fully intend to keep the matter under review in the forthcoming period.
The hon. Gentleman asked about cases where the evidence was not disputed and the sole basis for undertaking care proceedings for a child was the conduct of a particular individual. He asked whether there would be a review of those cane proceedings and he will know that all care cases are reviewed every six months. I have no doubt that in cases where one particular individual was the sole expert in the proceedings, local authorities will act in a sensible and rational manner and review them.
I also draw to the hon. Gentleman's attention a fact that, as someone who has practised in that field, he will already know—that on the whole, when care proceedings are taken, although medical evidence is one of the issues on which the decision is based, the best interests of the child are seen in the round, and the courts have regard to many other factors before coming to a decision.
In asking local authorities to review cases, I am mindful of the fact that the Cannings judgment and what has arisen from it do not constitute a criticism of local authorities' conduct of care proceedings. New information has come to light, and it is in the context of that new information that we are asking local authorities to proceed as they have done in the past in reviewing the cases of children who are subject to care orders. The issue is therefore not a challenge to the local authority process or procedures. The hon. Gentleman will also know that in every local authority review process, an independent review officer will have a role to play in determining how to go forward with a case, and I think that that provides sufficient independence to give us confidence in the procedure.
The hon. Gentleman asked about local authority resources, and we shall watch that issue closely, because we have always said that we would compensate local authorities for new burdens. What happens will depend on the extent to which additional work falls on local authority departments, especially social services departments. We shall have to keep the matter under constant review.
The hon. Gentleman also asked whether, when an adoption was imminent, a decision to adopt would be held, subject to the completion of the review. Of course
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that is the sensible way forward, and I can give him that assurance. He also asked whether families would be notified about why local authorities had taken particular decisions in reviewing particular cases. Again, that is a sensible idea, and we would encourage local authorities to do that as they come to the conclusions of their reviews.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether legal aid would be available for families. The answer is yes, on the usual means and merits tests that exist for current civil proceedings. He also asked whether we had thought about claims for compensation. We have considered that matter, and I entirely agree that we must keep it under close review, so that should such action be taken by individuals against particular local authorities, it would come as no surprise.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: Frankly, my question is based on gossip—but it may be informed gossip. Were there points at which the Government machine raised the proverbial eyebrow at the decisions of Sir Roy Meadow, given the fact that many people could not swallow the figure of one in 73 million? Why on earth one in 73 million? Small oddities often reveal bigger oddities, so my question is: were there warnings inside the Department, as there certainly were with other cases in the Scotland Office, about that so-called medical expertise? I am not challenging the medical expertise, but we must ask questions about anybody who could be so silly, statistically.
Margaret Hodge: Whether there is credibility in the evidence given by a particular individual is a matter not for the Department but for the courts. The issues with which we have to deal are incredibly difficult. With judgments in relation to child proceedings in the courts there is often disputed medical evidence, and it is difficult to say that the science is certain. Furthermore, as our understanding of the science proceeds, matters change. There is increased understanding of the issues surrounding the unexplained deaths of children, which has led to review by the courts, and to the decisions of the courts on which we are now acting.
Mrs. Annette L. Brooke: I, too, thank the Minister for her courtesy in providing an early discussion, and for making her statement available in advance. I associate myself with her comments about the tragic cases and extend my sympathy to all those involved. I also associate myself with the comments of the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), which I shall not repeat.
I accept that each case is individual, but people will want reassurance that all councils are following the same procedures. For example, the phrase "best efforts" occurs in the statement, but what monitoring will there be to establish the performance of councils reviewing current cases over the next four weeks? What monitoring will there be across councils to establish uniformity of approach as a result of the review both of current cases and of those cases where a final care order has been made?
Many people face uncertainty—birth parents, adoptive parents and adopted children—so will the Minister consider setting up a national helpline for the first point of contact, with clear routes for further advice?

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Has there been, or will there be, any research into child deaths that have occurred after an adoption that itself took place because the natural parent was judged to have Munchausen syndrome by proxy? That might shed further light in respect of expert witnesses.
What discussions has the Minister held with colleagues in the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Home Office in the light of the review of the coroner service and the lack of paediatric pathologists? What efforts are being made to fill the vacant paediatric co-ordinator positions in regions throughout the country? It is important that people are not deterred from applying for those vital positions.
Finally, does the Minister agree that, despite the great concern that we are expressing today, if justice is to prevail, the police, social services and other professionals must not be discouraged from fully investigating all cases of suspected child abuse?
Margaret Hodge: I welcome the hon. Lady to her new position as the Liberal Democrat representative on children's affairs. I concur entirely with her final statement: it is extremely important, in the prevailing climate, to re-state our commitment to all the professionals who work in the extremely difficult field of trying to detect and prevent child abuse and who have responsibility for safeguarding children. Indeed, one of my concerns throughout the process has been to support many of the paediatricians who work in that field, who feel vulnerable and threatened by much of the criticism that has been levelled against them. There are difficulties in recruiting high-quality paediatricians to support the work of safeguarding children. We cannot tolerate that, and we want to support the profession in recruiting and keeping high-quality individuals to work in that field.
The hon. Lady asked whether councils would do as we asked. We are issuing guidance and that will form the basis of the requirement that they act as we have asked them to do. She asked whether we would establish a national helpline. We considered that, but, as a range of support agencies is in situ, we decided that it was better to work through the helplines and organisations that already exist. All local authorities have adoption support facilities and a number of national organisations offer support to all the groups of people who might be involved. Such organisations include NORCAP—the National Organisation for the Counselling of Adoptees and Parents—the Family Rights Group, After Adoption and the Post-Adoption centre. There is a whole range of such groups and we thought it better to work through them.
Any child death, whenever it occurs, will of course be investigated, so I did not quite get the point that the hon. Lady was making about that. Any child death will be the subject of investigation by the relevant professionals. With that, I think that I have dealt with most of the hon. Lady's questions.
Mr. Hilton Dawson: I commend my right hon. Friend for a balanced and wise response to a very difficult situation. Will she assure me that the independent reviewing officers, who have a crucial role in chairing the six-monthly statutory reviews
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of children in care, will play a full part in the process? Can she confirm that those officials will have a direct line to CAFCASS if they feel it is necessary in defence of children's rights?
Such situations may involve children who are settled and who cannot possibly be disturbed, but given that care situations and adoptive placements are more open these days, will she assure me that the president of the family division and her colleagues will look more sympathetically upon applications for contact from parents who have been placed in such dreadful and tragic situations?
Margaret Hodge: First, I acknowledge my hon. Friend's important role in supporting social workers in their work of safeguarding and protecting children and the wide professional experience that he brings to the House.
Secondly, I confirm that the independent reviewing officer will play a key role. My hon. Friend knows that we are developing advocacy support arrangements in all local authorities—some arrangements are more developed than others—so that the child's interest and voice are heard in difficult proceedings. There are also a number of national organisations and children's rights officers in local authorities. I hope that the National Youth Advocacy Service and others will play their part—ChildLine is, of course, the first port of call for many young children
Finally, my hon. Friend raised the issue of contact for adopted children, where it may be appropriate for them to re-establish contact with a birth parent. Again, the matter is for the courts, where children's cases may be taken. I am sure that the courts will examine such situations sympathetically where it is appropriate to do so.
Sir Patrick Cormack: May I press the Minister on the matter of Sir Roy Meadow? Will she assure the House that every case in which he has been an expert witness will be re-examined? There is wide public disquiet.
Margaret Hodge: The hon. Gentleman probably knows that we do not keep central records of local authority care proceedings, so there is no way to detect the number of cases in which the advice of one particular individual was used. It would be inappropriate for me, or indeed for him, to pass judgment on all the cases in which Sir Roy Meadow gave evidence, and in particular those involving children, before the General Medical Council has examined Sir Roy Meadow's professional competence and his evidence—Sir Roy Meadow is currently subject to GMC proceedings. I assure the hon. Gentleman that under the guidance that I am publishing, local authorities will review cases in which the decision to take a child into care rested wholly or mainly on disputed medical evidence and make sure that the child's best interest is promoted and protected.
Vera Baird: I compliment my right hon. Friend on the care that she has taken over the weeks to ensure that this difficult matter is dealt with correctly and fairly. Will she consider this possible further step? The local authorities that are being guided

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to review such cases were, of course, adversarial opponents of parents in cases that relied upon such evidence—they will, of course act with integrity now. None the less, it would perhaps be wise to communicate with the Law Society's family law practitioner group, which is certain to have acted for parents. In cases where such evidence was given, local authorities should perhaps examine their old files and consider whether there is further advice that they should proffer to parents, so that parents are fully apprised of their position straight away. On ascertaining the cases in which Professor Meadow has appeared, it would be a good idea to ask him for his tax records.
Margaret Hodge: I compliment my hon. and learned Friend on the work that she has done on this difficult issue and the positive contribution she has made to the deliberations on how to move forward on these complex matters. I will certainly consider her suggestion of asking the Law Society family practitioners group to give advice to parents and I will come back to her on that point. We will keep under review her suggestion that we should take further action in relation to one particular individual and his expert witness activities.
Mr. Robert Key: In anticipation of the Minister's welcome statement, I spoke not two hours ago to Councillor Judy Seager, the cabinet member responsible for social services for Wiltshire county council. She raised the important issue of what happens when a case has to be reviewed but the evidence was heard in camera. What guidance would the Minister give in those circumstances?
Margaret Hodge: We have considered such difficulties and the best advice is that in reviewing whether a care order should be revoked or amended—which is the focus of the review—individual social service authorities will have to look back at the best record they have of the evidence given. I recognise that there is not always a full record of the proceedings, but we can trust the professionals engaged in this review to take a commonsense approach to the matter, to review the reasons why a care order was made and decide whether, in the interests of the child, they should review it and refer it back to the courts.
Mr. Michael Jabez Foster: As the father of two adopted sons who are now far too old to be involved in this issue, I am conscious of the concern, distress and apprehension felt by many adoptive parents about what might happen. Would my right hon. Friend be prepared to say that it would be unusual for adoption orders to be overturned or revoked? However, it is important to have some process by which a wrong can be righted, perhaps by a declaration of some kind. Has she given some thought to how the record may be put straight without necessarily overturning adoption orders?
Margaret Hodge: My hon. Friend is right to say that it would be unusual for adoptions to be overturned. I hope that I made that clear in my original statement. Whether a declaration could be made in relation to particular birth or adoptive parents is a matter for the courts, and that is why my advice would be for individuals to seek legal advice and return to the courts if appropriate.
Mr. George Osborne: The statement by the Minister anticipates the debate that I have been granted in Westminster Hall on this very subject tomorrow. Will she return to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) raised and say why she is restricting the guidance to disputed cases? Why did she feel unable to issue guidance to local authorities about cases with just one piece of evidence about sudden infant death, given what we now know about the Court of Appeal's verdict in the Angela Cannings case and the case of Sally Clark, my constituent?
Margaret Hodge: I was mindful of the Cannings judgment, which was very narrow indeed and related to disputed evidence in respect of just one category in which care proceedings and possible adoption proceedings could take place, where an unexplained infant death or multiple deaths had taken place. We broadened that very narrow category to provide for the review of all cases in which an instance of disputed medical evidence was the only or main reason for referring them to court.
I shall simply reiterate what I told the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), which is that in most care cases where only one medical expert has given evidence, the courts and social services departments will have considered other issues in looking at the best interests of the child in the round. We have to trust the common sense of social services departments to ensure that, in their statutory six-monthly review of all care orders, they will have regard to the sort of evidence that led to a care order being instigated in the first instance.
I think we have got things about right in this difficult policy area, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that, if that proves not be the case over time, I will return to the House with further proposals.
Ms Sally Keeble: I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement. She has referred to the lack of centralised information. In view of the public concern and the serious public policy issues, will she consider publishing some of the results of the reviews that local authorities have undertaken and ensure that the best practice from those reviews is captured and disseminated widely across social services? I hope that, as a result, improved procedures would work through local authorities and not only apply to cases that come under the present review, but improve arrangements for children in care on a much wider basis.
Margaret Hodge: We must beware of giving publicity to individuals. This is a very difficult area, and publicising details about how individual cases have been considered is extremely difficult. In dealing with the situation that arises from the Cannings judgment, there has been no criticism of the way that local authorities have conducted the reviews and taken the decisions about whether or not to proceed with action in the courts in relation to individual children. What has happened is that, because of the new knowledge and evidence and because of the judgment of the courts, local authorities must now have regard to the new information that is available to them and consider each child's interests in the light of that new judgment. It is in no way a criticism of local authorities that has led me to make my statement today or has caused local authorities to undertake the review that I am asking them to undertake.

Point of Order
5.3 pm
Mr. Owen Paterson: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Dairy Crest site in Ellesmere in my constituency has lain derelict for 15 years. A proposal to develop it has the support of the town council, North Shropshire district council, Shropshire county council and the regional development agency and was passed with flying colours by the Deputy Prime Minister's inspector last March. It therefore caused total consternation in the town when the Deputy Prime Minister threw out the proposal—a decision that was seen to be arbitrary and capricious. I wrote to him on 3 February, asking that I be allowed to bring a delegation of local councillors and other parties to meet him. He has refused to see me on the grounds that he has a judicial role in the matter. I have also been told that I cannot see any of his other Ministers. What advice do you have for me, as the elected representative of the public of Ellesmere, whose town will be blighted for a generation unless that proposal goes through? How can I represent my constituents' interests when the Deputy Prime Minister and his fellow Ministers flatly refuse to see me?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving notice of his point or order. If he consults the Table Office, I am sure that he will be able to find a way to raise his concerns with a Minister in the House.

Orders of the Day

  Gender Recognition Bill
  Order for Second Reading read
  5.4 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs(Mr. David Lammy): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The Department for Constitutional Affairs was created in June last year to spearhead across government a coherent programme of constitutional reform. This programme is designed to improve the credibility and effectiveness of our constitutional arrangements, engage citizens in decision making and enhance trust in our public institutions.
  The Bill is part of the Government's commitment to reforming the constitution so that it better meets the needs of all people. It reflects, too, our commitment to social inclusion. Transsexual people are a small and vulnerable minority in our society and the Bill addresses one of the key problems that they face. It is essential that no one is left behind as we create the conditions for a credible and effective modern democracy.
  There is a strong tradition of legislation in this country that has sought to respond to the concerns and needs of minority groups—whether they have been ethnic minorities, people who are disabled or, with this Bill, transsexual people. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Government intend to introduce legislation this Session that will enable same-sex partners to acquire a legal status for their relationships. I believe that the reformist tradition behind such measures is one that the country can be proud of. We, as a Government, are committed to continuing that tradition.
  The Bill provides transsexual people with the opportunity to gain the rights and responsibilities appropriate to the gender in which they are now living. At present, transsexual people live in a state of limbo. Their birth gender determines their legal status.
  Kali Mountford: My hon. Friend has now referred at least twice to transsexual people and once to gender dysphoria. Will he clarify whether the definition, for the purposes of this Bill, includes people who were born with ambiguous genitalia and whose proper gender could not he identified at birth, or does it cover only people who are identified by the medical profession as having gender dysphoria?
  Mr. Lammy: I know that my hon. Friend has taken a keen interest in these issues. The Bill does not specifically deal with people who are born with ambiguous genitalia. They are, of course, already able to re-register their birth certificates with the general registrar after having the appropriate medical assessment. The Bill deals specifically with people with gender dysphoria who present themselves as having acquired a new gender because they are driven to that by the medical condition surrounding gender dysphoria. I shall come to that point, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising it.

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  The Bill provides transsexual people with the opportunity to gain the rights and responsibilities appropriate to the gender in which they are now living.
  Mr. Frank Field: We will be discussing the Pensions Bill next week, and although my hon. Friend may not be able to reply to this point now I hope that he will consider it before this Bill reaches Report. He is stressing the rights and duties of transsexual people, but we must also consider the rights of the people who were their partners. Will he therefore consider carefully what might happen to the pension rights of women who, under the Bill, may lose not only their rights to the company pensions that they expected as partners or perhaps as widows, but their national insurance pension rights?
  Mr. Lammy: I know that my right hon. Friend has much experience of this issue, and I inform him that we are examining pension arrangements closely. He will understand that many of those arrangements relate to the pension arrangements for same-sex couples, and we will introduce our civil partnership legislation in that regard. We are considering the matter closely, and I suspect that there will be much debate about it in Committee.
  Mr. Field: The question of pensions for same-sex partnerships will be about extending pension rights. However, the concern of some wives in this situation is that they will lose pension rights.
  Mr. Lammy: In a sense, the issue of people in same-sex relationships has arisen in the same context, and I have certainly received correspondence from transsexual people who will find themselves in same-sex relationships. I accept the point that my right hon. Friend makes, and I am sure that we will look closely at this complex issue in our debates in Committee and on Report.
  Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: My hon. Friend is being very tolerant in giving way. This issue is very important, because a decision officially to change a gender could wipe out the entitlement of a previous wife and family, who were not involved in the decision in any way, through no fault of their own. That is very unfair and will have a direct impact on many people's lives.
  Mr. Lammy: Of course, there is choice—the Government are not requiring transsexual people to apply for a gender recognition certificate. They will look at the choices available to them, and different pension companies will take a view on these matters. But my hon. Friend is right: some very important pension issues arise. We are looking at them closely, both for same-sex couples and for existing couples who will be in opposite sex relationships.
  Sir Patrick Cormack rose—
  Mr. John Bercow: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Lammy: No, I shall make progress, if I may.
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  At the moment, transsexual people live in a state of limbo. Their birth gender determines their legal status, even though they may have lived fully in the opposite gender for many years.
  Sir Patrick Cormack rose—
  Mr. Bercow: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Lammy: If I may, I shall make some progress. [Interruption.]
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order. The hon. Gentleman will indicate when he is prepared to give way.
  Mr. Lammy: Without legal recognition of their acquired gender, transsexual people face a wide range of problems. Frankly, there may be few other matters that are quite so personal, yet because of the disjuncture between their birth gender and the gender in which they are now living, transsexual people may have to describe their gender history to complete strangers when they seek insurance or employment, or when they visit their child's school. The Gender Recognition Bill will ensure that this intensely private matter remains private.
  More than that, transsexual people currently have no access to the legal rights and responsibilities of their acquired gender. Although a person may have lived as a man for many years, for example, because his legal status remains that of a woman he is entitled to marry only another man—he may not marry a woman. After a proper process of transition under medical supervision, and after the determination of the judicial panels that this Bill provides for, we think it right that transsexual people should have access to the rights and responsibilities of the acquired gender.
  Mr. Bercow: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. In fact, I am trying to be helpful to him. I support this Bill. It is fair-minded, it should certainly get a Second Reading and I hope that it progresses successfully through the House, but may I politely point out that it would probably help at this stage if the Minister were able—in response to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and others who are quizzical on the point—to confirm that in advancing the rights of transsexuals, which the Bill correctly does, he will guarantee that the rights of other people who could be affected in the process will not suffer in any way? That is the only assurance that the Minister need give.
  Mr. Lammy: I think that I have said that the Bill is also a matter of choice for people when considering carefully whether they want to go forward with these matters. That is clearly a decision that transsexual people will take with their partners and think about carefully.
  Sir Patrick Cormack: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Lammy: I shall make some progress, if I may.
  The Bill has a long history. It has emerged from about 20 hours of scrutiny in another place and is the product of much prior thought and consultation with

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  stakeholders—we were determined to get it right. The Government have been working on issues affecting transsexual people since 1999. The interdepartmental working group on transsexual people published its report in April 2000 and was reconvened in 2002 to resolve finally the many difficult technical issues involved in changing a person's legal status. That work led to our announcement on 13 December 2002 that legislation would he introduced, and to the publication of a draft Bill on 11 July 2003.
  Sir Patrick Cormack: I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has at last given way. If the Government have been working on the Bill for all these years, why can he not answer clearly and unequivocally the question put by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), from his side of the House, and by his sympathetic supporter, my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), from this side of the House?
  Mr. Lammy: On pension rights, I said that specific issues arise for same-sex couples in civil partnerships. Specific issues arise for a person who was previously a woman and would have been required to retire at 60, but who would be required to retire at 65 after acquiring the new gender of a man. There are, quite properly, matters that a family will have to consider when deciding whether to go forward with gender recognition, which, of course, will pertain to pension rights that exist under specific policies. Those matters will properly be debated in Committee, but, if I may, I shall make more progress.
  Lynne Jones: May I try to be helpful to my hon. Friend? I understand that it is the intention that if there is a marriage in which both partners wish to continue their relationship and the transsexual person wishes to have full recognition, it should be possible for the marriage to be dissolved and for a new same-sex partnership to be created in the same day. Therefore, should it not also be possible for pension rights to be transferred?
  Lammy: That is something that the Government should quite properly consider in line with the civil partnership legislation that we hope to introduce in this Session. In that sense, I do not want to prejudge the debate that we will have on that matter, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising an important issue.
  The draft Bill was considered by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Although differences of opinion remain between the Committee and the Government, after a period of detailed scrutiny and receiving 47 separate submissions, it was on the whole satisfied that the Bill would bring the UK into compliance with its obligations under the European convention on human rights. I should say something about those obligations because they underline the importance of having UK legislation in this area. The European Court of Human Rights interpreted the convention, which is now a part of UK law, in the case of Goodwin v. UK, and its judgment stated that a system for recognising
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  transsexual people in their acquired gender must exist and that transsexual people must be granted their rights under article 8, the right to respect for private life, and article 12, the right to marry. The Law Lords, in the case of Bellinger, concurred with the view that transsexual people ought to have a means of marrying in their acquired gender. Their lordships stated that transsexual people do not have that right at present and that legislation would be required to ensure that they do.
  The Bill proposes to provide legal recognition in the acquired gender to those transsexual people who have taken decisive steps to live fully and permanently in that gender. The effect of legal recognition will be that a transsexual person gains the legal rights and responsibilities appropriate to the acquired gender.
  Tim Loughton: As we have not made much progress on the thorny issue of pension rights, may I ask the Minister about another practical implication of the Bill? Will prisoners be liable to apply for a gender change certificate if they started that exercise before they became prisoners? If so and they are granted a certificate, what will be the accommodation arrangements for that prisoner? Will he or she have to be moved, or is this something else that the Government need to think about but have not, as with pension rights?
  Mr. Lammy: Prisoners can apply and that person will be subject to prison arrangements for their new acquired gender. We are talking about a very small group of people and the hon. Gentleman knows that that situation would arise in limited circumstances.
  Miss Ann Widdecombe: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; I appreciate that he is taking many interventions.
  If a woman who has lived her life as a woman, has been registered at birth as a woman and has borne children decides that she wishes to change gender to become fully a man, and the birth certificate is rewritten to reflect that, who is the legal mother of those children?
  Mr. Lammy: She is the parent of those children and she has acquired a new gender, but the right hon. Lady should let me describe the terms under which the panel will make that decision.
  The specific provisions are divided into three sections. The first makes provision for applications for a gender recognition certificate. The second sets out the consequences of the issue of a gender recognition certificate. The third deals with supplementary matters.
  The first section sets out the criteria for application and the process by which applications will be determined. That process must be robust, credible and sustainable. That is why the Bill proposes the establishment of gender recognition panels to determine all applications. The panels will consist of legally and medically qualified members. Schedule I sets out some of the detail of the proposed practice and procedure of the panels. We will continue to work with the professional medical bodies to ensure that the panels consider only medical evidence that comes from reputable sources. We will also continue to work with

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  groups representing the transsexual community to ensure that the process does not place undue demands on applicants.
  An application for recognition in the acquired gender will be considered according to three criteria set out in clause 2. The person must have or have had gender dysphoria, the recognised medical condition that drives the transsexual person to live in the opposite gender. A person must have lived in the acquired gender throughout the preceding two years and must intend to continue to do so until death.
  Mr. Andrew Robathan: I have been listening with great care. I do not applaud the Bill. I think it is the most arrant nonsense. However, will the Minister explain what happens if, after someone has acquired a new gender, they decide that they wish to go back to their previous gender?
  Mr. Lammy: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not support legislation that attempts to support a vulnerable group of people. However, he is right that a very small minority of people wish to return to their existing gender. The panel will be able to consider that request.
  Mr. Mark Oaten: Does the Bill provide the opportunity for an individual to appeal against the panel's decision, and, if so, how does that work?
  Mr. Lammy: Individuals will have the opportunity to return to the panel six months later to request that the decision be reconsidered.
  The criteria are designed to establish whether a person has taken decisive steps to live fully and permanently in their acquired gender. That must be the test for legal recognition in the acquired gender, not whether the person's physiology fully conforms to the acquired gender and not whether they "look the part". Such tests are inappropriate and inconsistent with our broader ambition to respond to the needs and concerns of a small minority group.
  The Bill must also account for the situation of the relatively small number of transsexual people who are in existing marriages. After recognition in the acquired gender such couples will become same-sex couples, and marriage is of course an institution for opposite-sex couples. It has always been so, and the Government intend it to remain that way. That means that existing marriages will have to end. We acknowledge that that will have emotional and practical repercussions.
  The decision to require existing marriages to end was not taken lightly. Ultimately we believe that these same-sex couples should be treated in the same way as other same-sex couples and should therefore have access to the civil partnerships that the Government propose to make available for same-sex couples, but marriage should remain an institution for opposite-sex couples.
  Angela Watkinson: I thank the Minister for giving way; he has taken an inordinately large number of interventions. The explanatory notes say that if somebody who is married acquires a new gender and an interim gender recognition certification, the marriage is voidable, but they also state:
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  "Proceedings for dissolution on this basis must be begun within six months of the issue of the interim certificate."
  Does that mean that after the six months have elapsed the spouse loses the right to have the marriage voided on those grounds?
  Mr. Lammy: It is our intention to make this process as swift and easy for the applicant as possible. We would like the process to take place in a day, but six months is the period within which we have mandated that that decision should be made.
  Mr. David Rendel: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Lammy: If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will make some progress. I have taken a number of interventions, and if I can make progress we can then have a full debate.
  In short, although the marriage will have to end, there is no impediment to the continuation of the relationship, and, should civil partnership legislation be enacted, it will be possible for the relationship to regain a legal status and for there to be mutual rights and responsibilities.
  On how the marriage is to end, we are concerned to leave the individual in control of the process and to tackle the practical difficulties that ending an existing marriage may create. If a married individual applies and is successful, he or she will receive an interim gender recognition certificate, which will provide the basis, in schedule 2, for a new ground for dissolution of the marriage. On dissolving the marriage, the court will substitute a full gender recognition certificate for the interim one. In that way, the Bill proposes to avoid the situation where a married applicant first has to end his or her marriage and only then learns whether his or her application meets the criteria. The process provided in the Bill eliminates the potential for that vulnerability and allows a person to plan his or her affairs. When dissolving the marriage the court will also be able to deal with practical matters such as the sharing of pensions or making provision for children of the family.
  The Government will also introduce during this Session legislation on same-sex civil partnerships. Should that legislation be enacted, a couple who have to end their marriage to allow one party to gain recognition in the acquired gender will be able to enter into a civil partnership. After the recognition of the acquired gender, they will he a same-sex couple like any other, and will have access to the rights of a same-sex couple. The effect of that is that the couple will be able again to acquire a legal status for their relationship, with legal rights and responsibilities. We plan to make it possible for a couple to end their marriage, for the full gender recognition certificate to be issued, and for a civil partnership to be formed, all on the same day.
  The second section of the Bill outlines the consequences of issuing a gender recognition certificate. The consequences are largely straightforward. The two main principles are stated in general terms in clause 9. Once a certificate has been granted, a person's gender becomes in law the acquired gender. The Bill proposes to provide transsexual people with access to the rights and responsibilities that are appropriate to their

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  acquired gender. This change of gender is, however, prospective only—the Bill does not seek to rewrite history.
  Clause 10 and schedule 3 are critically important. Following a successful application for recognition, the panel will issue a gender recognition certificate. The appropriate Registrar General, depending on whether the individual's birth was initially registered in England and Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland, will then create a new record on the individual in the gender recognition register. A birth certificate in the new name and gender recorded on the gender recognition certificate can then be issued from the new record. The link between that new birth certificate and the original birth certificate will be confidential. I want to make one thing very clear. The original birth record will not, and should not, be erased, because it is a record of a historical fact. The original birth record will remain in existence, and any person who has the original birth details will have access to a certified copy of that record. The point of issuing a new birth certificate is to allow the transsexual person privacy by not revealing their gender history in a public document. We feel that this is a reasonable safeguard for that small group of people.
  I shall mention one vital aspect of the third section of the Bill. Clause 22 prohibits the disclosure of information about a person's application for gender recognition or about a successful applicant's gender history. That information is to be protected whenever it has been acquired in an official capacity. Changing gender is a difficult process. It is difficult in terms of the person's own identity and in terms of their relationships with others. Recognising the change of gender in law will produce benefits for transsexual people. Those benefits will be undermined if there remains open access to, and open disclosure of, the fact that the person was once of the other gender.
  Gender dysphoria is, after all, a medical condition whereby a person feels driven to live in the opposite gender. To be reminded of the original gender, to be regularly confronted by it, and to have others knowing that one suffers from that medical condition and to know that they might be talking about it is not conducive to feeling secure and it makes it very difficult to live in the acquired gender in dignity. We do not believe, as a Government, that we are able to, or should seek to, prevent all rumour and gossip—that would require too great an encroachment into the private sphere—but we do believe that those with access to information about a person's gender history in an official capacity should play no part in any such activity. Clause 22 seeks to achieve that.
  There will be instances of the individual's previous identity being relevant. All human rights legislation should try to balance the rights of one set of individuals with the rights and interests of others. To that end, clause 22 sets out the limited circumstances in which disclosure is permissible, for example, for prevention or detection of a crime or in pursuance of a statutory duty.
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  I should like to add to the theme of respecting the rights and interests of third parties. Schedule 4 contains a conscience clause for ministers of the Church of England and the Church in Wales.
  Lynne Jones: I wish to take my hon. Friend back to clause 21, which covers foreign gender change and marriage. I apologise for not intervening at the appropriate time. Why is it necessary for transsexual people who have full legal recognition abroad to apply to the panel for recognition here? What would be the status of marriages that take place abroad? Would it not simply be possible to recognise countries that grant legal status and accept that status in this country, provided that we have approved the process, just as we accept a passport from another country as a valid document?
  Mr. Lammy: Let me say to my hon. Friend that we [Interruption.]
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps we could hold only one debate in the Chamber.
  Mr. Lammy: We want to ensure that the standards in other countries are the same as those that we apply here. We also want to make sure that we do not create a position whereby people who cannot get the gender recognition certificate here apply abroad to fulfil the criteria. That is why we believe that it is right for the panel to consider applications. My hon. Friend will understand that the applications are essentially considered on the papers and that, over time, the panel will build up expertise on the criteria and standards in other countries.
  Schedule 4 contains a conscience clause for ministers of the Church of England and the Church in Wales.
  Donald Anderson: My hon. Friend is about to deal with the conscience clause and the exemption for the Church of England and the Church in Wales. I hope that he agrees that members of other Churches, including the free Churches, also have consciences. Will he guarantee that the proposed legislation does not mean that Churches in other denominations will experience expensive litigation because of deeply held views of conscience? My hon. Friend will know of a case in south Wales in which an individual took a free Church to court unsuccessfully under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. It could have been liable to expensive litigation. What exemption is he prepared to give those free Churches—probably a small minority—that, because of their religious views, will not wish to accept the Bill?
  Mr. Lammy: The Church of England and the Church in Wales have a specific exemption because of their obligations to solemnise marriages. That does not pertain to free Churches. The Bill does not extend the law on equal rights and equal opportunities in human rights or other legislation and it therefore places no extra duties on the free Churches. Doubtless the transsexual person who applies will be minded of the understanding of the priest or clergyman of those matters.

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  However, it is important to make the distinction between the specific status of the Church of England and the Church in Wales, which have obligations when someone asks for a marriage to be solemnised, and that of other Churches
  Donald Anderson: What about the very real danger of Churches being put to expensive litigation because of activists in this field, and of being bankrupted on grounds of conscience?
  Mr. Lammy: That does not arise, in that the Bill does not make provisions in relation to equality in any new fields, beyond our existing arrangements. My right hon. Friend might know that when the Joint Committee on Human Rights considered the matter, there was some discussion on extending discrimination, and hon. Members might well seek to take those arguments forward later in this debate, but the Government's view is that this Bill is specifically about gender recognition. It is not about wider issues of discrimination relating to transsexual people, which might well pertain to the issue that my right hon. Friend raises and lead to new powers and legislation.
  There was considerable discussion in another place of the interests of family members of applicants. We clarified that the gender recognition panels will be able to take evidence from immediate family members and that, in the case of a spouse or partner, we would expect them to do so. That will be pertinent to the criteria in the Bill.
  The Bill seeks to provide transsexual people with the opportunity to enjoy the rights and responsibilities appropriate to their acquired gender, and to leave behind the vulnerable position—the limbo between two genders—that they currently have to endure. However, it also has a wider impact. It, affirms the values of tolerance, inclusion and social justice that are we as a country embody, and that we as a Labour Government are committed to fostering.
  5.42 pm
  Mr. Tim Boswell: I am grateful to the Minister for his attempts to explain the Bill. Given that he has run into considerable difficulty with questions from both sides of the Chamber for the past 40 minutes, it would be fair and charitable for me to say that I attribute at least some of those difficulties to the Bill's inherent complexity, rather than to any deficiency on his part. Indeed, to give a rare compliment, it is a little unusual for the present Government to take such trouble over the details of legislation.
  It is possible to read the clauses, if not the schedules, with a degree of understanding, which reflects the history of the Bill's creation, including the preparatory studies of the interdepartmental working group on transsexual people—which the Minister's Department reconvened, with an extended remit, to consider the implications of the Goodwin judgment—and the wise publication of a draft Bill last summer. There were then the observations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Bill's introduction in substance in another place, which led to some thorough and lively debates. I sense that those might continue in this place.
  The Joint Committee and others have declared the issues complex and delicate, and I thoroughly endorse that comment and share the Committee's concern. I
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  want to approach the subject not with political triumphalism—we saw some signs of that from the Minister—but with a degree of humility and in a spirit of honest inquiry. It seems that there is scope in this matter for the proper expert input of at least three learned professions, although of course they never agree with each other on such matters. They are theology, the law and medicine. I practise none of those, but I take advice from those who do.
  We can certainly agree that Parliament now has an opportunity to tackle this matter definitively, and I believe strongly that, in the interests of everyone, we had better get it as right as is humanly possible, if not absolutely perfectly right. I should make it clear at this stage that the official Opposition will allow their Members a free vote on this issue tonight. This reflects not only the sensitivities to which I have already referred, but the clear reservations of principle that have already surfaced in debate, particularly, although not exclusively, from people of faith. I should also record that the opinions of people of faith are not unanimous. At this point, I should perhaps make it clear for the Minister's comfort that I shall support the Bill.
  We often find that we learn from our constituents on these issues. I have a constituent who is a male-to-female transsexual, and who has been discussing the issues with me and briefing me on the matter over the number of years in which I have taken an interest in it. She is a former senior official, and as such is well aware of the processes of legislation. She has taught me a great deal about the problems that transsexuals face, particularly people in a situation such as hers, as she is legally married to a woman.
  To borrow from a literary reference from a Roman historian, the unknown is often magnified in circumstances such as these. If people could come to terms with some of the difficulties that some of our citizens encounter, they might take a more sympathetic view—although not, as I hope to show, a completely uncritical one—of the issues.
  To move from the particular to the general, I believe that I echo the spirit of the Minister's remarks when I say that Parliament has a long and entirely decent tradition of legislating to meet the deeply felt concerns of even quite small numbers of individuals about their status. That status could well be defensible under some principle of law; equally, however, it could have arisen from some long-past concern or controversy so deeply buried in history that we do not even remember why it was originally introduced. I am thinking, for example, of the intense debates that were held in this place a century ago during the passage of the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907, or the minor but remarkable and commendable legislation passed half a century ago to correct the position in which foundlings had to have a special birth certificate labelled "foundling", which must have deeply offensive to them.
  Issues such as these are not generally a matter of political weight. With great respect to the 5,000 transsexual people in this country—I think that we would all wish to show that—they are extremely unlikely to turn the result of the next general election. However, that imposes a duty on us collectively to try to be as helpful to individuals as we properly may.

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  In this case, as the Minister has said, there is also a European dimension, and I am personally exercised that British law is harsher on transsexuals than most of its European counterparts. The Liberty submission suggested that only four other countries were equally harsh, and that only Britain and Ireland refused transsexuals any rights such as these at all. As the Minister has implied, however, the impact of the recent judgment of the European Court of Human Rights and the Bellinger judgment in the UK must be tackled.
  I should stress that we are, by definition, contemplating a change in the operation of the civil law—no more, no less. At least since Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1753, Parliament has taken an interest in matters that have a clear ecclesiastical and theological interface, such as provisions regulating marriage. That Act, as a matter of interest—this bears on some of the concerns of the faith communities—regulated the conduct of the clergy in the matter of marriage, and, I understand, imposed extremely severe penalties, up to and including capital punishment, on transgressors.
  As to the theology, over which we can all pass briefly and tentatively, I hope that the Minister will appreciate it if I confine myself to the argument in the Acts of the Apostles of the wise Gamaliel, who told the Jewish council that God would ultimately be the judge of the worth of what was being done, and that, in effect, we could do no more than offer our good faith in the matter. We need to acknowledge that good faith and good will may be necessary conditions for legislating but are not necessarily sufficient. We therefore need to tackle the difficulties, too.
  I genuinely accept the sincerity and intensity of views of those on the other side of the argument and of those who may wish to oppose the legislation in the Lobby. In some cases—not always—those counter arguments start with objections of intrinsic principle. For example, in the debates in another place, the Lord Bishop of Winchester referred to the biblical text,
  "male and female created he them",
  and pointed out that that is an intrinsic part of the beliefs of Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. I note that a number of objectors in another place took sex as a given at birth. Even then, however, some genuine doubt existed as to the uniqueness of the criteria to be employed, whether the definition of sex was simply a chromosomal definition the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) has mentioned the separate issue of intersex people—and in certain cases whether even the chromosomal definition could be ambiguous in determining sex. I was impressed by some of the medical comments made by learned peers on that matter. Whether or not there is or could be a precise, conclusive definition of sex, it is clear to me, modestly, that the defining characteristic of transsexuals is that they are in the real world deeply unhappy with their birth gender. That is the issue that, after due process, the Bill would change.
  Mr. Bercow: My hon. Friend is making a characteristically judicious speech. Notwithstanding his reference to the speech in the other place, may I put it to him that religion is neither the only nor an essential basis
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  of civil obligation of just law? I further put it to him that what saddens some of us who support the principles of this Bill, and who intend to vote for it, is the way in which ghoulish images are conjured up whereby protecting the rights of a minority is somehow interpreted as a great threat to everybody else, which it is not.
  Mr. Boswell: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's comments and for his implied support for the legislation. Everybody who has a faith and a set of principles must form their own judgment. I start from the basis of saying, 'Is there a problem for individuals, our colleagues and fellow citizens? Is that something that we can address without disrupting some other basic principle that we all hold dear?" I agree with my hon. Friend to the extent that the operation of the civil law, which I have emphasised that this legislation will be part of, is binding across the whole population irrespective of their faith. An important distinction therefore exists, which we need to secure through the legislation, between the general operation of the law in relation to marriage, gender or whatever. and the specific ability of faith communities to impose their own conditions on their members.
  Mrs. Dunwoody: With the hon. Gentleman's normal inherent good sense, he is picking his way gingerly through this maze of complex situations. Does he not accept, however, that there may be a good reason to bring this Bill to the House because a genuine problem exists, even if it affects only a small number of people, but that it would be equally wrong were the House to allow flawed legislation to go ahead without considering with extraordinary care the effects on others who may be influenced and damaged by decisions taken in which they have no standing and, frequently, on which they have no influence?
  Mr. Boswell: I agree passionately with the hon. Lady's comment. It is terribly important that we do not consider this issue in a vacuum. We should not seek to solve the problems of one group of people, however intensely felt, at the expense of another group. The Government do not intend to do that, and the detailed work and consideration of amendments that we must do in Committee, with great respect to the other place, which has looked at many of these issues including the broad sweep, is intended to ensure that the Bill does not have repercussive effects. If the hon. Lady will allow me to proceed, she will see that I am sensitive to her points.
  On the general issue, it is interesting, and impressive in relation to my argument, that the chief medical officer and the bulk of medical opinion—although not all, as that is never the case—sanction the diagnosis of gender dysphoria as a real disease or condition and the provision of public funds for its treatment.
  That leaves a number of serious matters to be considered, and I am anxious to make progress so that other Members can make their points. First, there is the issue of birth records. Some Members feel that we are in some way conniving at a lie in permitting the issue of a certificate recording the amended gender. It would be practically impossible. however, to permit someone to

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  change gender in law without the conversion of that basic record, provided that the original records are maintained and can be accessed.
  Sir Patrick Cormack: Does not my hon. Friend accept, however, that we are obliging registrars to connive at an untruth, and no clause in the Bill gives them the right to object conscientiously as ministers of religion can do?
  Mr. Boswell: I am interested in my hon. Friend's comments, and what he says is true not only of registrars in relation to birth certificates but in relation to any duties that they might have as marriage registrars, and I have some thoughts about amendments on that matter. In this particularly difficult situation, however, we are entitled to consider the relief of the individual, even at the expense of parading the original and full record. That is a judgment that we must make. If we do not do it, we run the risk of continuing to treat transsexual people as second-class citizens, or as the organisation Press for Change would argue, as non-people.
  Miss Widdecombe: Please may I follow the question that has just been asked? Ministers of religion can say no, either because they have no legal obligations anyway or because they have been exempted under the conscience clauses in the Bill. Registrars, however, may not say no. Is my hon. Friend content with that?
  Mr. Boswell: I am content, provided that it is sanctioned by the law and that we have taken the decision in Parliament that if a gender recognition certificate is to be issued by a registrar—and he will know that he is issuing it—it is a different legal document from the original birth record. It is a difficulty, and my right hon. and hon. Friends are right to raise it.
  Donald Anderson: Cannot that difficulty be met by some form of clause that preserves the right of those registrars to cite conscience, and ensures that there is no termination of employment owing to the failure of a registrar to proceed with this matter?
  Mr. Boswell: This little exchange has been useful in drawing out the concerns about this issue, which is properly an issue that Members may want to raise in Committee, and I hope that the Government will have an answer. I now want to make some progress.
  For married people in particular, the procedure in relation to the issue of an interim certificate, followed by its conversion to a full certificate, looks cumbersome. I am satisfied, however, that it strikes the right balance between the integrity of the original records and the new requirements of the Bill.
  When we come to the specific issue of people who apply for the certificate when they are married, we come to the most difficult situation of all. We do so in support of marriage itself: I think that that principle is agreed across the Chamber. Those who take what I might call the principled view that no sex change is possible would not wish to break marriages on grounds of gender change. I ask them to reflect, however, on the fact that they would ipso facto allow—or even encourage—two persons who are legally married to continue in that legal
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  state, if they wish to do so, although to the outside world they might for all practical purposes be living as two persons of the same gender. One would have changed gender, and they would still be married to each other.
  Angela Watkinson: I asked earlier about the six-month period during which a marriage can be voided on the basis of one partner's having changed gender. Does my hon. Friend foresee circumstances in which a partner imagined at the time that he or she could tolerate the new situation, but found after the six months that it was intolerable, and had then lost the opportunity for the marriage to be voided on those grounds?
  Mr. Boswell: I did not find the Minister's response on that entirely convincing. My own view is that it would be better to allow a longer period of reflection. Members of the transgender community have told us in briefing that they would rather not feel that a pistol was being held to their heads forcing them to make an immediate decision. I think that there is everything to be said for allowing the interim certificate to remain in force for longer. The Minister may say that it will be possible to apply for another certificate, but that seems to me unnecessarily cumbersome.
  Those of us who are sympathetic to the Bill are faced with a dilemma. We could permit what is in fact a marriage between two persons of the same sex, one being transgendered, to continue in the name of marriage, although I think that in the future it would be a kind of legal fiction. Alternatively, we could force it to be annulled on the principle of not allowing same-sex marriage even when both partners genuinely wish to continue the relationship. I think it right in principle to maintain the fundamental rule that marriage is between a man and a woman. That, in my opinion, makes it essential for legislation facilitating civil partnerships to be enacted and dovetailed with this Bill in its future operation.
  Mr. Rendel rose—
  Hugh Bayley rose—
  Mr. Boswell: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend, but I must then make progress.
  Mr. Rendel: Is there not a further difficulty involving those who wish to remain married, although one has changed sex, because some entitlements—for instance, pension rights—may depend on the date on which the partnership began? If two partners have been forced apart and then reunite by means of a civil partnership, there may be a considerable effect on pension rights.
  Mr. Boswell: Indeed. The issue is set out exhaustively in the schedule, and I have a feeling that we shall need to deal with a number of such matters in Committee.
  I now give way to a former social security Minister.
  Hugh Bayley: I may discuss some of the pension issues if I catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  The Joint Committee on Human Rights examined these matters closely, and recommended that existing marriages should not have to end for a full and final

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  gender recognition certificate to he issued. Does the hon. Gentleman, speaking for the Opposition, agree with the Committee?
  Mr. Boswell: With huge respect, I must point out that I am speaking for the Opposition, and that I have made it clear that this is a free-vote issue for my party; but personally, on this particular matter, I agree with the Government on the logic of pursuing what I consider the overriding principle of marriage being between persons of different genders, and only that. This does, however, give rise to the need to dovetail with the arrangements for civil partnerships.
  Beyond these issues of deep principle are many practical concerns. First, will the Bill work as it is intended to, in the interests of transgendered people? Aspects of that question have already been discussed. Secondly, will it have knock-on effects on aspects of our law or practice that could have unintended consequences, or damage the interests of other people? Thirdly, while most people benefiting from the Bill will be content to take its changes in their legal status quietly and without fuss—I do not ask for their generosity, because I think they have been badly treated over the years, but they may well bank the changes and be glad that at last Parliament has acknowledged their existence—is there a danger that someone will seek to make a point by flaunting exaggerated behaviour? That might have consequences in terms of the way in which people behave in public places, for instance.
  Perhaps more subtly, is there a danger that test cases may be triggered? That worried the right hon. Member for Swansea, East (Donald Anderson). Cases involving, say, equality of employment law could embarrass members of the population, or a section of it such as a faith community, who have certain views that are deeply and honestly held. The Evangelical Alliance, like any decent group, signals to its members the importance of tolerating and accepting individual transsexual people, but is reluctant to accept the concept of the Bill, fearing that its ministers may be placed in an unacceptable position.
  Many of the issues—both practical issues involving such things as sport, and issues of principle—were well rehearsed in another place. I pay tribute to those who tackled them there, notably some of my noble Friends. We should bear in mind, however, that in this instance ours is the revising Chamber. I assure Ministers that, although I support the Bill in principle, I am determined to probe and seek further assurances in Committee.
  This is a Bill about the legal status of transgender people; it is in no sense about the general conduct of those or any other individuals, let alone about individual sexual behaviour. Let us dismiss that idea immediately. If the Bill is to help such people, it must not strain its acceptability to those who come into contact with them, or are more closely related to them—their families, or faith or other interest groups. Nor must it have repercussions for cherished general principles, notably the integrity of marriage. Anything that we do in Committee or thereafter must be aimed at balancing those principles, and anything that we say should take account of the sensitivities of all involved, even if the issues are really challenging.
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  I suspect that, left to themselves, the Government might have been content to let the issue lie, but the European judgment has compelled them to act. In any event, I personally believe that it is right to do so now, and to remedy a long-held and deep sense of injustice among a small number of our blameless citizens. It will not be a painless process, and others may in good conscience reject it; but I believe that today we can make a belated start.
  6.8 pm
  Lynne Jones: This is a big day for me: we are about to approve legislation for which I have campaigned for more than 10 years. The Parliamentary Forum on Transsexualism was established 10 years ago almost to the day, in February 1994, with the support of members of both main political parties. I pay tribute to the former Conservative Member of Parliament for Chislehurst, Roger Sims, and the former Member for Montgomery, Alex Carlile, who is now in the other place and who has participated actively in the Bill's progress there. We set up the forum to campaign for civil rights for transsexual people who were being subjected to appalling discrimination and anxiety.
  This issue first came to my attention in 1993. Like the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), I became involved largely through learning of the personal experience of constituents and, subsequently, other transsexual people with whom I came into contact over the years.
  The transwoman who came to see me was so nervous about seeing a Member of Parliament and admitting that she had transitioned from male to female that she sent her male partner to sus me out first, to see whether her secret, as she saw it, would be safe with me. I had not thought about that issue before, and very much had the idea that people who went through this mutilating process must be disordered or seeking sexual gratification. I had not given it much thought, but as I came to meet people and talk to them, I learned more about the syndrome and realised that it was not a matter over which people had control. It was not a choice: they were living in the wrong body, and their brain identity was different from their chromosomal and genitalia identity—although sometimes there are further complexities.
  Andrew Selous: I am listening to the hon. Lady with great interest. I accept that there are some physiological factors, but what does she say, in relation to the question of choice, about those people— I gather it may be up to 25 per cent. —`who subsequently change back to their original gender, or wish to do so?
  Lynne Jones: Not 25 per cent.
  Andrew Selous: Let us not argue about the percentage; unequivocally, there are some people who change back, which seems to belie the hon. Lady's argument that there is no choice involved
  Lynne Jones: Such cases are extremely rare, and 95 per cent. of transitions are very successful. It is a

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  recognised, successful medical procedure for a recognised medical condition. There is evidence that the aetiology of the condition is that. in the uterus, the foetus is subjected to abnormal hormonal influence, so that the brain develops in the opposite sex to the gonads and the chromosomes. Lord Winston talked about chromosomes varying. as in Turner's syndrome and other syndromes. People can also be mosaic, with some female cells and some cells with Y chromosomes. It is a complex matter, but in the majority of cases gender reassignment is a very successful medical procedure, and the majority of people who go through it subsequently live a much happier and more successful life.
  The Bill is about recognising that, after transition, people are in what they see as their correct gender. It gives them full civil rights so that, although they can still be discriminated against in terms of the supply of goods and services, and other matter that I hope the Government will legislate on later, their correct gender is recognised under the law, allowing them to have a new birth certificate and to marry and enjoy all the rights of other members of their sex.
  Sir Patrick Cormack: I do not for a moment question the hon. Lady's sincerity, but will she accept, as it is on the record, that a very large percentage of these people undergo no physical changes or surgery, and remain physically exactly what they are, male or female?
  Lynne Jones: Again, I would dispute that. The majority of transsexual people want to undergo a medical process that will leave them physically as congruent as possible with their gender identity. This has nothing to do with sexuality. Exactly like other people, transmen and women can he straight, lesbian or gay. The condition is not associated with a particular form of sexuality: indeed, many such people have a lower libido, often as a result of the medical treatment that they have to undergo.
  On occasions, for medical reasons, it is not possible for people to have the full transition. There have been great medical advances, and treatment is much more sophisticated than it used to be. In the past, men in particular could not always have a new penis constructed. There was the famous case of Mark Rees, who for many years identified himself as and was a man, but did not have a penis, and who later, as the techniques developed, underwent the surgery. There was an interesting and moving television documentary about his experiences.
  It is true, however, that the Bill does not require there to have been surgery but requires the individual to demonstrate that they have lived in that role for two years. There are good reasons for that. It may not always be medically possible for people to have the full reassignment surgery, but in my experience, the majority of transsexual people want to undergo the full transition.
  The constituent who came to see me lived in great anxiety about being asked to show her birth certificate. She was worried about employment and told me that she had had to forgo promotion because of her unwillingness to show the certificate. She could not marry her partner. Unfortunately, she had also been raped, and at that time it was not recognised that a
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  transsexual woman could be raped, but I am pleased to say that that was put right in the Sexual Offences Act 2004. It was her experience that led me to take an interest in this issue. She was unwilling to be public about her situation, but I am pleased that she put me in touch with many members of the trans community who, extremely bravely, were willing to come out as having undergone reassignment.
  I pay particular tribute to those people, who did a very difficult thing. Their bravery has, in many ways, been responsible for the sea change in public opinion that has happened over the past 10 or 11 years. We organised our first fringe meetings at the party conferences in 1995. I pay tribute in particular to Christine Burns, who is vice-president of Press for Change, because she spoke at fringe meetings at the Conservative party conference, as she was an active member of the Conservative party at that time.
  When we had the first fringe meeting at the Labour conference, I remember being in the lift with two journalists who had come to witness what they thought would be a freak show. The remarks that I overheard them making were, frankly, disgraceful. We still see evidence of such attitudes in some articles in the press, but I am pleased to say that that is slowly changing. It was wonderful to see the faces of those two female journalists drop when they saw the person who was there to talk about her experience as a transsexual.
  Roger Sims talked about this in 1996 in the discussion of Alex Carlile's Gender Identity (Registration and Civil Status) Bill, a private Member's Bill that did not get very far in the House. He said that he had attended a fringe meeting organised by a lady representative, who was branch chairman and typical of the ladies whom many of my hon. Friends know in their constituencies—yet her birth certificate showed her as a man, so she could not legally marry. He went on to describe how he, too, was impressed by the way in which Christine Burns spoke about her experiences. I am sure that, if hon. Members who have doubts about the legislation met some of the wonderful people who have campaigned through organisations such as Press for Change and others—`I single out the Gender Identity Research and Education Society—they would realise how important the Bill is to them.
  The Bill is not about discriminating against other people. We all want to ensure that others do not suffer. Many transsexual people continue with their relationship in marriage, but in many cases the marriages end when someone undergoes a gender reassignment. It is a very difficult issue, which will arise again in Committee.
  I welcome the changes in the other place, particularly on the establishment of a fast-track process for those who have lived in role for six years or more. Initially, that was to be allowed only for the first six months after the Bill's enactment. It will now be extended to two years, which I welcome. I should also like to highlight the fact that, in the draft Bill, there was no expiry date on the interim gender recognition certificate, and I wonder why the Government subsequently imposed the six-month time limit. Will the Minister explain in his winding-up speech why it is necessary to have such a time limit?

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  This is a good Bill, and it will mean a lot to a very small number of people. I greatly hope that it will have a fair wind in the House and that transsexual people will soon be able to enjoy the legal recognition that they deserve.
  6.22 pm
  Mr. Mark Oaten: I am pleased to have the opportunity to say a few words about the Bill. I profess straight away that I do not claim to be an expert on the issues, but I have listened carefully to the remarks of the Government and Opposition Front Benchers and of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones), and I have been taken by the degree of consensus on the matter. The Liberal Democrats certainly want to give the Bill a fair hearing and we hope that it proceeds to its next parliamentary stages.
  I say that in acknowledgement of the fact that there are real concerns, particularly on the part of those holding strong religious beliefs, who struggle with the matter and have serious difficulties with the Bill. I read with interest the contribution of the Bishop of Winchester, whom I know well, in the other place. There comes a point, frankly, where one can argue as much as one likes, but people simply have to agree to differ on some of the issues because they are approached from a wholly different perspective. Little can be gained from getting into endless arguments on narrow points, when there are fundamental differences.
  We support the measures in the Bill. largely because of the tradition in the House whereby we eventually—perhaps not as fast as some would like—catch up with social changes and reflect how society is moving. Sometimes we are ahead; other times we lag behind. On this particular issue, we have lagged behind, but it is a tradition, as I said, that the House acknowledges what is happening in the real world outside of both Houses. There is also an important tradition whereby we do all we can to protect minorities out there, many of whom are persecuted because of their position or beliefs. As ever, we politicians should protect those people's rights. The Bill recognises that we needed to catch up and put those rights in place. It is important to recognise that transsexuals have rights and I hope that, as the Bill proceeds, we are also aware, as other hon. Members have said, of the impact that conferring them could have on other individuals' rights.
  Mr. Rendel: Does my hon. Friend accept that those who have undergone the process are almost unanimously in favour of the Bill? I have a letter from the chair of the Gender Trust—the largest organisation working for transsexual and transgender people. She urged me
  "to support this Bill on behalf of transsexual people in general.. The Bill meets our needs and is vital in allowing transsexual people to integrate fully within society rather than forever remaining on the fringe attempting to live a 'stealth' existence."
  Mr. Oaten: I certainly agree with that point and I congratulate those transsexuals. including some of my hon. Friend's constituents, who have persistently raised the issues in Parliament. The hon. Member for
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  Birmingham, Selly Oak spoke about her constituents and people who have not been able to talk as openly as they would have liked about the issues. They will welcome our sensible and mature debate in Parliament today.
  The process of arriving at the present position was partly set by European legislation, which was once again ahead of us. We have had rulings from the European Court of Human Rights, but we have also had valuable pre-scrutiny in the work of the other place and of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, so no one can accuse us of rushing to this particular stage. Many of the issues have been thoroughly examined.
  The Bill has resolved several problems. The first, mentioned in the other place and in our earlier debate, is what I describe from a layman's view as the car insurance point. By that I mean the ridiculous circumstances under which someone who has changed sex can phone up and ask for car insurance under a woman's name—there is nothing wrong with that—but if an accident were to happen and a claim were made, that person would, as I understand it, be committing fraud on the basis that the person is really a male. That is daft, silly nonsense and it is the sort of problem that the Bill will help to sort out. We should all welcome that.
  I also welcome the Government's clear commitment to putting in place a new birth certificate. It is another sensible, practical measure for someone to have a piece of paper that is requisite for many forms of legal documentation, which does not cause awkwardness or embarrassment.
  Sir Patrick Cormack: The hon. Gentleman is a fair-minded man and recognises that some of us are not lacking in sympathy for this small group of people, but do not believe that the Bill is right. I accept that the Bill will be passed, but does he accept that it is important to build in a conscience clause for registrars and others who find it offensive to take part in what they would view, frankly, as issuing fraudulent documents?
  Mr. Oaten: My inclination is to agree because I respect the hon. Gentleman's views, but I have to say that I cannot agree on this occasion, because the job of a registrar is to implement the law. If we were to allow some form of waiver on this particular issue, on what other laws would a registrar be allowed the same thing? Although I could he persuaded that conscience opt-outs are appropriate in some circumstances, I could not accept that in respect of an individual whose job is to manage and register the law. I could not therefore agree with the hon. Gentleman on that point.
  The Bill also deals with access to pensions and benefits, and I believe that some of the measures will usefully tackle current problems. It is also important that individuals will have a right to marry under the new gender, which is wholly sensible and right
  Rev. Martin Smyth: On that point, have I been misinformed that under case law, a person could be divorced on the grounds that a marriage was void because the person was transsexual?
  Mr. Oaten: I am sorry, but I did not quite understand the point of the hon. Gentleman's intervention. Perhaps

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  I shall be able to answer it by moving on to my next point, which deals with the issue of how marriages currently stand. There is a problem there, and the Government have not moved far enough to deal with it. I hope that the Minister will reconsider the matter and not be so rigid about what happens to the tiny number of individuals—no more perhaps than 150 or 200— currently living in a marriage, who have undergone gender reassignment but want to continue to be married.
  I am not being pre-judgmental, but it strikes me that for a marriage to be able to survive in those circumstances, and for people to stay together, there must be an incredibly strong bond between them. Given that bond, that love and that affection—there may even be children involved—if everybody is comfortable and happy with the situation, there must be a way round the problem. The Government must be able to allow the marriage to continue. We are talking about a very small number of people, and we do not wish to create difficulty, tension and unhappiness where none existed.
  Even if it were not for that moral issue, I would still argue that there is a practical issue, which several hon. Members have raised—pension rights. Obviously, the ability to draw down a pension in such a partnership is dependent on whether, at a particular point, a marriage existed. If we require marriages to be dissolved, we could be jeopardising pension rights, so I hope that the Government will reconsider the issue.
  Peter Bottomley: Is not the way forward to accept that, except in cases of bigamy, which we are not discussing at the moment, marriages will not be put asunder in a civil sense unless someone applies for them to be ended in one way or another, or made void? Perhaps the Government could accept that without such an initiative, people could continue as they were.
  Mr. Oaten: Whether that would be legal is a complex and tricky question, and I would also have concerns about who might apply for the marriage to be broken up. It might be a way forward—but I am sure that when the detail is discussed in Committee, the issue will be revisited by Members who want to ensure that we get the balance right. When the Government get round to introducing the welcome legislation on civil partnerships, that may resolve some of the issues, but for the sake of those 150 or 200 people, I hope that they will think again now.
  I welcome the provisions on privacy, and the fact that the Minister said that he was concerned to ensure that in the context of documentation and birth certificates, an individual's privacy would be protected as much as possible. He also said, however, that despite that desire for some form of privacy, we would need to ensure that police records were maintained. That is important. Either now or in Committee, will the Minister tell us how far that provision will be extended?
  I am thinking in particular oft access to such material through the Criminal Records Bureau, an organisation not known for the effectiveness of its operations. I would like to know at what level the information will be made available. For example, if an individual is likely to be employed in a school, or as a care worker, some sensitive
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  issues will be raised. There will be information that could be made available, and some difficult judgments will have to be made about what information to release to a school governor or a head teacher—information that would completely take away someone's privacy. Will the school governing body suddenly have to judge whether it feels that gender recognition is an issue for it to deal with?
  I would want to be very clear about where information will be passed on. I understand the need to have it in police records, but if it became available through the Criminal Records Bureau, it could suddenly become widely known. We should be very careful about how it might be used.
  Mr. Bercow: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is making a typically decent speech on this subject, for giving way to me. It follows, does it not, that where improper disclosure takes place, any redress that may be secured will necessarily be after the event? It will be retrospective, and therefore rather modest compensation for the wrong done. Does the hon. Gentleman therefore agree that the question is not merely the level at which information is disclosed or exchanged, but the number of people in an organisation who should ever have access to it?
  Mr. Oaten: I entirely agree. The way in which information is passed on means that it will become available to many more people. In the climate of concern that currently surrounds many such appointments, one individual may feel unable to take a decision alone and may wish to share the responsibility with a wider group, for fear of getting it wrong. There is a real problem, which we need to look at as the Bill proceeds.
  I want to know how the panel will make its decisions. I intervened on the Minister earlier, but may I ask him again to consider the process of appeal carefully? I understand that at the moment the right of appeal will not come in for six months, but I hope that whoever winds up the debate will give more information about the way in which the Government envisage the appeal process working, and on what grounds an appeal could be based. Would those be purely issues of law or fact, or would somebody be able to put a stronger case and try to strengthen the arguments with which they had originally failed to convince the panel? I would be worried if an appeal could be based only on a point of law, because someone might want to try again to put across an emotional case to the panel.
  On a more sensitive and perhaps complex issue, there is some concern—to be honest, even I, as someone who supports the Bill, share that concern—about the need for clarity about whether a medical procedure has taken place. As I understand it, one of the arguments that has to be put to the panel, and which the panel has to consider, is whether a surgical procedure has taken place—but I think that the panel can also consider whether it is someone's intention to undergo a surgical procedure in future.
  I confess that I have not read the Bill in great detail, and I would like to know whether the timing is crucial. The panel's decision could be taken on the assumption that a surgical procedure will take place. Would the

  71
  certificate—the approval—apply only after the surgical procedure, especially if the panel had taken the decision on the assumption that that procedure would take place? If that had been the tipping point for the panel, there could he concern about whether the panel had checked whether the procedure had taken place. The timing is important, and as the Bill now stands, I do not think that there is enough detail in it to explain what would happen first, and at what point in the process.
  Mr. Eric Joyce: I think that it may help the hon. Gentleman if I tell him that I am fairly confident that the Bill says that there is no requirement for surgery to take place.
  Mr. Oaten: The Bill also says—or at least, when I read it through I understood it to say—that one of the issues that the panel will consider is whether a surgical procedure has taken place or will take place. I realise that that is not the only consideration, but it is one of the considerations. It seems to me that, in the context of making good law, if that had been the tipping point and the key consideration for the panel, there would be an issue about whether the procedure had happened or would happen. If somebody can be given a certificate because of a promise that in six months' time they will have a surgical procedure, the issue of timing must be clarified. I entirely recognise that that is not the only consideration, and that there is no requirement for a surgical procedure to take place, but it is one of the issues that the Committee will examine, and it would be helpful to know about the timing.
  There is also the question of foreign nationals. Can the Minister who will wind up the debate clarify whether other countries have similar Bills going through, or similar legislation already in place? Would not one way to overcome the difficulty that the Minister raised in his opening speech be to introduce a reciprocal arrangement? That would not only benefit transsexuals who come to this country, but make the procedure easier for transsexuals who wish to travel abroad and perhaps to live there. There may be barriers in the way of their doing that now, so a reciprocal procedure would make sense.
  Finally, in connection with the need to maintain some kind of privacy, I support the provisions covering birth certificates—but there are other certificates that people may be required to show more often than a birth certificate. I am thinking of public examination certificates—although I must confess that I have never been asked to show mine.
  Mr. Bercow: Let's see them.
  Mr. Oaten: It is probably a good thing that I have never been asked, because people probably presume that my results were better than they were. There may be a more practical day-to-day requirement for people to show certificates for public examinations, qualifications and training rather than birth certificates, and I imagine that there could be real embarrassment if somebody were suddenly required to do that.
  Have the Government given any thought to such issues, as they will probably have a bigger day-to-day impact than whether a person can have a new birth certificate?
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  A number of those questions will, I am sure, be resolved in Committee. I acknowledge the real doubts and concerns that individuals have expressed, but we shall have to agree to disagree. I welcome the measure; it is modern and it accepts and understands what is happening in society today. I hope that it will go some way to dealing with the real anxieties that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak outlined earlier. There is hurt and real hardship for some individuals and I hope that the Bill will tackle some of those issues.
  6.40 pm
  Mr. Shaun Woodward: The Bill is very important; it is important because it will dramatically affect the lives of several thousand people in this country and because it will create a climate that will enable people who have experienced the issue in some way to feel more comfortable and more equal in our society in the future. The Bill does not give anybody special rights or special privileges; what it is doing—like so many things on what might be described as the equality or fairness agenda—is giving transsexual people in this country the same rights that everybody else is rightly free to enjoy.
  The Conservative party is to be congratulated on its decision to have a free vote on the measure, which is not something that we might realistically have imagined to be the case a few years ago. That decision genuinely represents a proper consideration of the need to address Britain as it is rather than Britain as some people might wish it to be.
  I rise partly as the Member of Parliament representing a constituent who wrote to me only a few weeks ago asking for my support on the Bill, saying:
  "I would like to point out that the likes of me just blend into the crowd'. I go to work, do my job, everybody likes me. I do not go around shouting for my rights on the radio and television, I just want to live a normal life which is in fact what I do on a daily basis."
  That person wrote to me because they have actually experienced difficulties. The person says:
  "I have worked for a major clearing bank for the last 38 years, and during that time they have supported me whole heartedly and covered for me when I had my operation, saying that I did not work for the bank when the press came after me, those days are now over, thankfully."
  When the Bill was being described earlier, the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) referred to it as nonsense. Hand on heart, charitably, I can only feel that the hon. Gentleman t as never met someone who has experienced such things. Had he done so, he could not describe the Bill as nonsense.
  I say that on behalf of my constituent and also on behalf of my sister, formerly my brother. I mention my sister not because I believe that it is a good idea to bring one's private life into the Chamber, but because when, four years ago, I made a certain political decision, certain parts of the media felt it incumbent on them to draw my sister into the argument. She was not drawn into the argument as a way of adducing factual information; certain tabloid newspapers and one broadsheet—one of whose sketch writers was in the Gallery earlier—felt it incumbent on them to refer to the fact that my sister "used to be a fella". She found herself plastered over the front pages of various newspapers whose aim was to "get" me.

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  There is a real need to recognise that in this country, sadly, this legislation is still really important. It is about changing climates and attitudes, and recognising that we actually have an opportunity to do something right. The Bill is not, as the hon. Member for Blaby said, nonsense; it is sensible and very, very important.
  Much work has gone into the Bill. As a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I pay tribute to its officials and my colleagues on the Committee. I pay tremendous tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) who has done a huge amount. When my sister began to talk to me about the issue, she was extremely aware of the work of the hon. Lady and asked me particularly to pay tribute to her today. I am aware of the hard work and commitment of the officials in turning the draft Bill into the current Bill.
  However, the Government must look again at some issues, in our position as a revising Chamber for the other place.
  Andrew Selous: I share the hon. Gentleman's concern about the fact that the tabloid and other press often behave hurtfully and irresponsibly in the ways to which he has referred, but I should like him to explain why he thinks the Bill can help deal with that. I am worried that certain things in the Bill could engender more concern and opposition, and could encourage the sort of irresponsible behaviour that we both find distasteful.
  Mr. Woodward: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. In this Chamber, we often broadly discuss matters of principle. Sometimes it helps to listen to the individuals who are affected by legislation, to find out whether we may be applying our own principles highhandedly and, as a consequence—often with the best intentions—doing more damage rather than what we intended. In the course of my speech, I shall adduce the comments of some of the individuals who have written to me about the issue. I hope that that will convince the hon. Gentleman that the Bill is the right thing to do and that, rather than preserving our current inequalities, pursuing equality is always a step forward.
  In relation to the Bill, I draw the Minister's attention to clause 22, on privacy. Will it do enough to protect individuals from the infringement of their right to a private life? That protection is needed because I am worried that we might continue to see gratuitous press intrusion, along the lines suggested by the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), and, more specifically, the kind of thing that can easily happen unless people feel a duty to behave differently. I refer to my sister's experiences. She has received legal documents—for example, from a court—addressed to "Miss Lesley Woodward, formerly known as Mr. Leslie Woodward". That might seem a minor thing to hon. Members, but it is not to the individual concerned, and the Minister needs to be confident that those people are fully protected. Is he confident that there will be adequate protection in the future for people who have suffered that kind of thing? Will a duty of care be imposed on officials in such circumstances?
  The second point I want to raise with the Minister relates to discrimination. The Joint Committee considered whether the Government should go further in their protections against discrimination. The Committee's response was that it
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  "took the view that the most pressing need had been to amend the law in relation to employment and vocational training"
  It did not consider
  "that there was any evidence of a pressing need to protect transsexual people against discrimination in other fields".
  Housing is an extremely important field and the Minister should think carefully about whether the law will provide adequate protection. When many young people go through the experience of being transsexual it is coupled with psychiatric problems. In the most appalling circumstances, that can mean that the individual is ejected from their home and loses their job. Sometimes, they are destitute. A hostel, or somewhere to live, is critical at that point. It is thus essential that such an individual is not subject to the kind of discrimination whereby, because they may be presenting themselves as a woman, the person in charge at the hostel says, "I'm sorry you can't come here because really you are a man", or the other way around.
  I am slightly worried by the Government's explanation of why they do not need to move—they feel that the issue is too complex to sort out. I say to the Minister that that is not a good reason for not trying to address the matter, which it is still incumbent on the Department to re-examine. When the legislation is scrutinised in Committee, we must be confident that further injustices will not be done to the same people.
  Mr. Bill Wiggin: The hon. Gentleman is discussing the amendments that are likely to be tabled in Committee. Does he believe that the Government will take away some of the amendments introduced in the other place or will the Bill stay as it is today?
  Mr. Woodward: I have no idea what is in the Minister's mind, but he may indicate what will happen in his winding-up speech. Hon. Members can obviously table amendments in Committee, but on Second Reading it is important to introduce concerns for consideration today or in Committee that have been raised by constituents who will be directly affected by the legislation.
  During the debate a lot has been said about the Church. It is important to put on record comments by groups such as the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester that wrote to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. It said how much it supports the Bill, which it does not regard as aberrant, wrong or nonsense. A particular member of that Christian community told the Committee:
  "On behalf of the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester I am writing to indicate our broad support for the bill. This reform is long overdue and will be warmly welcomed by our members… Many of our members are transgendered and we know how difficult the current legal situation is for people with gender dysphoria. The introduction of this bill by the Government helps to rectify injustice and is very good news and long overdue.
  I hope you are aware that many Christians will be supportive of this bill. Some Christian organisations, like the Evangelical Alliance"—
  which was mentioned earlier—
  "and the Christian Institute, are very good at promulgating their views but they only represent one stream of Christian opinion. There are many churches and groups of Christians who are supportive of any and all moves towards justice and greater social inclusion and cohesion."
  Mr. Robathan: I am sorry that I was not present at the beginning of the hon. Gentleman's speech, but I was

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  watching the monitor and know that he mentioned me a couple of times. To avoid doubt, I assure him that I have met a transsexual. The hon. Gentleman says that the Bill is not nonsense, but why is he criticising it so much? I do not say that the Bill is nonsense because I lack sympathy for people in that difficult condition; I say that it is nonsense because I listened to the Minister's speech and he had no answers to the questions —indeed, he has no answers to the hon. Gentleman's questions.
  Mr. Woodward: The hon. Gentleman is right to qualify his position, but this is obviously an opportunity to say why he believes that the Bill is nonsense, in which case the Minister will answer his questions.
  The Church argument that tends to be adduced in relation to this matter concerns marriage. It must be said at the outset that marriages go wrong. Things sometimes happen through no fault of the individuals concerned—equally, things sometimes happen that are the fault of individuals—that make it right to dissolve a marriage. The particular point about which I am concerned does not involve a marriage having gone wrong. As a consequence of the Bill and not because their marriage has gone wrong, several hundred people will be faced with what can only be described as a terrible choice.
  I say to those hon. Members who perhaps think otherwise that it was not a matter of choice for my sister to take the gender that she felt herself to be. It was about putting something right that had gone wrong very early on; it was not a matter of choice. The Minister must consider whether it is appropriate to force people to dissolve marriages that may have lasted for 30 years or more to fulfil a legal obligation.
  It is interesting to consider the evidence submitted to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. One couple said:
  "For any marriage to survive, it takes a huge investment of emotion, energy and money, and a great deal of love. This bill, if passed as proposed, would ignore the realities of people like us in the cruellest possible way. We would be put in the invidious position of having to choose between a female birth certificate"
  for one partner
  "and our marriage. We cannot believe that someone has actually suggested that we should have to trade one set of rights for another."
  I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) who has done a great deal of work with a couple who also came to see me—he took them to see the Minister concerned and presented their case. The couple, Joy and Christine, were written about sympathetically in The Daily Telegraph and have been married for 36 years. As one of them said:
  One of us is going to feel disappointed"
  if they make this choice, and one of them will feel absolutely wrecked. The couple do not want to divorce, they have children and they married in church.
  Their priest has written to them, and his comments are worth considering given the arguments adduced, He said that he had been thinking about this issue for some time, and that the character of their marriage vows—a lifelong and exclusive partnership for better or for worse—seemed uncompromised by their wish to remain
  together. He said:
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  "It seems to me that the intention at your marriage was for you to be together and explore the nature of love. Your marriage has survived (as you put it) and I don't think that voidance"—
  the word used in the Bill—
  "can be anything other than 'putting asunder', which is exactly what the state can't do … the state can sanction divorce where the 'love' has broken down, or 'annul' where there was not intention of lifelong commitment …. But here these characteristics of marriage remain. I don't think that the state"
  should
  "sanction either a divorce, or an annulment or a 'void' whilesoever you continue to maintain the 'character' of marriage."
  It is interesting to reflect on what the couple's priest says the Bill may unintentionally force them to do. The state is forcing them to wreck their marriage, which has nothing to do with their wishes, and break their commitment to each other and their love. They feel that the situation will damage their children. Sometimes it is right for marriages to be broken, but neither Labour nor Conservative Members are saying that that is the right thing to do in this case, and the couple do not want to do it. However, the Bill would force them to destroy their marriage. Some people may genuinely feel that it is still appropriate to break that marriage because the matter is too near to the question of same-sex marriage, which everybody is frightened to discuss, and it would be better not to frighten the horses. In some cases, we may be doing more than forcing a terrible choice.
  One couple wrote to me to say that about 15 years ago one of them came to accept that they were transgendered. They went on to say that the adopted policy was to put family first and gender considerations second and that this repression led to depression, resulting in failure to gain promotion and eventually in 1995 retirement on the grounds of ill health. The letter said that since then there had been a continued decline in the physical and mental health of one of them and that it became a choice between full gender reassignment or a very short life expectancy. They said that the problems seemed immense: their commitment to their children has meant that there has only ever been one income earner, and both of them now suffer health problems. Again, we are saying to such people, "Choose between your marriage and your certificate."
  Perhaps the choice is not that simple. It is sometimes incumbent on us to be a little less judgmental and a little more understanding.
  For those who may have experienced only one person coming to talk to then I about the issue, I simply say that thousands of people have experienced it, and perhaps we need to listen to them before we listen to our own prejudices.
  Andrew Selous: The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Evangelical Alliance and may have said that it was not a major part of the Church—[Interruption.] If I misheard him, I apologise, but I wish to make it clear for the record that the alliance has 1.2 million members and includes groups such as the Shaftesbury Society, the Tearfund and the Salvation Army. It is a large, well-respected organisation.
  Mr. Woodward: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman made his point, but it was not what I suggested. I simply represented the view of one Church group that felt it was

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  necessary to correct the impression that the Church only has one argument, such as that put forward by the Evangelical Alliance, which has been good—as instanced by the hon. Gentleman—at getting its point across. Other Church groups have not been quite so efficient at doing so.
  Mr. Bercow: The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. I just wish to suggest that although constituents' representations are important, they should not be regarded as the overriding—still less, the only—criterion that should influence Members. I have not received a single representation from a constituent urging me to vote for the Bill. I will do so because its principles are right.
  Mr. Woodward: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman, but as we are also here to represent our constituents when they do write to us, we might be forgiven for doing so.
  My final point relates to pensions, which have been mentioned by several other hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field). The Bill raises a serious issue that the Government need to think through. for two reasons. The first is the general point of principle and the second is the timing of the civil partnership Bill and the consequences if it is delayed for people adversely affected by this Bill. A case history may illustrate the problem.
  Let us take two people we will call Claire and Barbara. Claire was a committed police constable who loved her job but was forced to leave when she told her boss that she was transsexual and was transitioning. She would not have left her job if she had not been asked to go. She had a 10-year police service record and was entitled to a pension. Let us suppose that something should tragically happen to Claire. Where would that leave her partner, Barbara? The problem is that for Barbara to qualify for the survivor's pension under the Police and Firemen's Pensions Act 1997—this is just one example—the couple must have been married both at the point of Claire's retirement from the police and at the time of her death. So if they had to divorce as a consequence of the Bill, the partner would lose the rights to the pension.
  We need to look carefully at the issue in Committee. We do not need to delay the Bill, because it is important for everybody affected by the issue. However, the Government must recognise the problem and the need to review it. It may be necessary to appoint individuals in the Department as points of contact for members of the public who may be affected by the Bill. Those individuals might also discover serious problems caused by the Bill and we would then be able to rectify the matter at the first possible opportunity. It would be tragic if, for the best of reasons—and I believe that the Government have the best of reasons at heart—the Bill adversely affected the lives of people caught up in circumstances through no fault of their own and who suffered as a result. The Government clearly do not intend that anyone should suffer by the Bill: indeed, they want to make life fairer and more equal for everybody in our country. However, the pensions issue is very important and we need to be open-minded about it in Committee.
  7.5 pm
  Mr. David Atkinson: I support the Bill. As the Minister explained, because of a court ruling more than 30 years ago transsexual people in this country have been condemned to be always of the sex written in their birth certificate. That has sentenced them to a life of constant secrecy, fear and depression, at risk of suicide and self-mutilation. Their position in law prevents them from safeguarding themselves, their partners and their families. The Bill will do much to end that. I regret that it took five failed petitions to the European Court of Human Rights, before the two that succeeded, to bring forward the Bill.
  There are two reasons why I want to speak in support of the Bill. Like several hon. Members who have spoken, the first is the experience of a constituent who sought my help in my surgery two years ago, in 2002. She was 62 years old, a post-operative transsexual male to female. She had always known her birth certificate was wrong. She had a particularly tragic childhood. She had a terrible puberty. No one knew what gender she was, except herself. She married, but was compelled to divorce. She paid for her surgery and subsequent treatment herself. She lost her male partner because they were unable to marry in this country. She pursued a teaching career. When she reached 60, she was told that because she was a woman she had to retire, but because she had been a man she would have to wait five years for her pension. Understandably, she became ill as a result of the financial problems that caused and the stress she faced.
  In response to my representations, the then Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney), confirmed that my constituent would not receive her pension until she reached the male age of retirement, 65. Of course, my constituent feels that she has been denied natural justice. By then, the European Court in Strasbourg had delivered its judgment in favour of Goodwin v United Kingdom. My constituent has rightly been pressing me for the legislation that is before us today.
  The experience of my constituent and my sympathy for her compels me to support the Bill. Will the Bill enable transsexuals in my constituent's situation—described as male on her birth certificate, now a female—to enjoy a woman's pension from the age of 60? If so, will the pension be backdated in her case?
  The second reason I support the Bill is that it is in response to the findings of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. It is as a member state of the Council of Europe that we are committed to the European convention on human rights. I accept that some of what the convention imposes and the ECHR finds is not always welcomed by Ministers, hon. Members or the public. For example, many hon. Members and the majority of the public do not accept the abolition of the death penalty. Home Secretaries cannot change sentences passed by the courts, despite outcry in the tabloids, because the ECHR says they may not. However, all of us, I believe, need to be reminded from time to time that the European convention on human rights, with its unique enforcement machinery of the ECHR, is a response to the genocide and discrimination that Europe experienced under the dictators. That discrimination, no doubt, applied to transsexuals.

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  Now, 50 years after the convention came into force, the rights of transsexuals in this country will also be protected by the Bill. Why has Britain been one of the only four Council of Europe member states that have until now refused permission for transsexuals to change the gender on their birth certificate?
  I hope that the example of the Bill will be followed by similar legislation in the other three countries—Albania, Andorra and the Irish Republic—without the necessity of their citizens petitioning the European Court of Human Rights.
  Given the existence of the Human Rights Act 1998, why were two findings of the European court in 2002 required to change the British law on rights for transsexuals? Surely the Act provides for such rights to be protected without further application to the court in Strasbourg.
  In conclusion, I regret that, of all the Churches, only the Evangelical Alliance has opposed the Bill, claiming that it will allow same-sex marriages—which, of course, it will not. I also regret that some in the Conservative party sought to oppose the Bill in the other place and that, from indications from my colleagues in the House, they will oppose it in this debate. I had hoped that the Conservative party today could accept human nature for what it is. Transsexual people are probably one of the smallest minority groups in this or any country. We have treated them atrociously these past 30 years. We should all give full support to the Bill, which will help to end their unhappy situation.
  7.11 pm
  Hugh Bayley: I welcome the Bill. It is a sensible and humane measure that will give transsexual people legal recognition of their acquired gender. It is right in its own terms, but it will also have the benefit of making UK law compliant with the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights.
  I have been approached by four constituents who either have undergone or are undergoing gender reassignment, all of whom support the Bill. In fact, one of the good things about the debate is how many Members have talked about constituents who have approached them. This really has been a representative Chamber during today's debate.
  I shall vote for the Bill on Second Reading. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Woodward) that the reservations that some people have expressed should not hold up its enactment. Nevertheless, I remain concerned about the Minister's lack of clarity on pension entitlements, and further attention needs to be given to the pension rights and financial security of transsexuals' spouses.
  I should like to describe to the Minister the dilemma faced by two of my constituents: one is a transsexual in the process of male to female gender reassignment; the other is the transsexual's wife. The couple have been married for 35 years, and they have three children. Since the first child was born 32 years ago, the wife has not worked full-time. Like many women, she has stayed at home to raise the children and relied on her husband to make pension contributions to provide her security in old age.
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  I understand why some wives, or husbands, of transsexuals cannot come to terms with their spouse's change of gender and seek divorce, but both my constituents are extremely clear that they wish to stay together and that they do not wish to divorce, and they have good reasons so to do. They care for, support and love each other, and they want the care and support that they mutually offer each other to continue in the years ahead. They want to keep their family together for their own sake and for the sake of their children. They recognise that they will be significantly better off financially if they stay married than if they divorce.
  The trouble is that the Bill's drafting creates a conflict of rights—a conflict between the rights of a wife to marriage and security in old age and the rights of her partner to legal recognition in a new gender. The conflict arises because the Bill will require a couple to divorce before the full gender recognition certificate and, therefore, the new birth certificate can be issued in the transsexual's new gender. If a divorce goes ahead, pension-splitting procedures will, of course, follow, but they are almost certain to reduce the pension entitlement of both partners. So I have two questions for the Minister, and I hope that he will listen carefully to them and reply in summing up the debate. I am not sure which Minister will respond I see that the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie) will do so.
  First, is it right that the state should require a couple to divorce so that one person—the transsexual member of the couple—can obtain the right to gender recognition if neither partner wants to divorce? Secondly, if it is the Government's intention that there should be such a conflict of rights, is it right that the decision about whether to put the right to marriage—which, as the Human Rights Committee stated in its report, flows from the right to private and family life under ECHR article 8—before the right to gender recognition for the transsexual, or vice versa, should rest with the transsexual partner in the relationship, rather than with his or her spouse, or with the couple jointly?
  In the case of my constituents, I suspect that they will jointly choose what to do if they face that dilemma, but the fact remains that the transsexual in the relationship has, in effect, the power to decide whether to put gender recognition before marriage, or vice versa, while the wife or husband of a transsexual person does not have the same right. My constituents would like the Bill to be amended to allow gender recognition for the transsexual, while allowing the marriage to continue. I recognise that that would give legal recognition to same-sex marriage in that specific circumstance. I believe that that would be the right thing to do, and I see no contradiction between the requirement that people have to be of different sexes when they marry and retaining a married relationship later if that situation alters because of gender change.
  If the Government are not prepared, in the light of what hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have said, to agree to that single and extremely specific exception to the normal prohibition on same-sex marriage, they must create in the Bill a new relationship that would retain for couples of the type that we are talking about the same legal and financial rights and responsibilities to one another, including the same pension rights, that they had enjoyed hitherto in their

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  marriage, because the alternative would be to undermine the rights of the spouse, which are just as important as those of the transsexual person.
  I can think of no other circumstance in which the state tells a couple who are married and who wish to remain married that they must get divorced. If there is such a circumstance, I invite hon. Members to tell me about it, but I do not believe that there is one. I believe that it is fundamentally wrong for the state to tell a couple who are married and wish to remain married to divorce, so an amendment to the Bill is needed.
  I should like to put a final point to the Minister, which I hope is easier to deal with, about the gender recognition panel. Some of my constituents who are transsexuals have suggested that it is important that the membership of the panel should include transsexual people and partners of transsexual people. They suggest not that the panel should be comprised entirely of transsexual people and their partners, but that there should be some transsexual people and their partners among its members, so that it has the same experience as those in respect of whom it will adjudicate and knows what they have been through.
  7.20 pm
  Mr. Robert Key: I intend to vote in favour of the Bill. It is the sort of legislation that political parties do not like, but that Governments have to face. It is certainly not the sort of issue that any party would put in its manifesto before a general election nor campaign on with any zeal or the expectation of reaping electoral rewards.
  The Bill began its course through Parliament in another place and, on Second Reading there, Ministers justified it on the grounds of constitutional reform, social inclusion and developing a culture of rights. Last of all, they admitted that the Bill had been influenced by judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, which has ruled that a system recognising transsexual people in their acquired gender must exist and that transsexual people must be granted their rights under article 8 of the European convention on human rights—the right to respect for private life—and under article 12 on the right to marry. The Law lords in this country judged in the case of Bellinger that the law must be changed so that transsexual people have the right to marry in their acquired gender.
  The Government have therefore been forced to introduce the Bill, which was not in the Queen's Speech, but I make no complaint about that. Indeed, I welcome it. This is very difficult legislative territory and Members on both sides are on their own in deciding how to cast their votes. The Whips will tread on this piece of law at their peril.
  Andrew Selous: I think that my hon. Friend will find that Government Members are under a three-line Whip.
  Mr. Key: I bow to my hon. Friend's superior knowledge, but we shall see. If Labour Members are under a three-line Whip, that is legitimate. It is Government legislation, and there is no reason why they should not be. However, I would be very surprised if the Whips were up to their usual tricks with anyone who had a conscientious objection to the Bill.
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  A great deal of time during the Bill's passage through the other place was spent discussing sex and religion. However, I have read the debates and spoken in the past few days to a number of transsexual people, and I am in absolutely no doubt that the most important reason for supporting the Bill is because it is about justice. It is about the justice denied to a very small minority of people down the ages, the justice denied because of taboo, prejudice and incomprehension and the justice denied because business managers and Cabinets can always find less controversial and more pressing matters to deal with. Now, that injustice is finally being confronted by the rule of law.
  I go back a long way when it comes to issues of minority rights. When I was a student at university, the then Member of Parliament for Hampstead, Ben Whitaker, ran something called the Minority Rights Group and I read his reports avidly. As my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) said, the influence of constituents will always be important in our decisions.
  A member of a Christian transgender group to whom I spoke only yesterday wished me to stress the fact that, as far as she is concerned, same-sex marriage is not on, that civil partnerships are equitable and that most transsexuals get by nicely until something goes wrong, but that by far the most important issue is the simple justice at stake here. I beg the House to remember that we are not arguing about angels dancing on the heads of pins. We are debating run-of-the-mill, everyday issues such as motor insurance. A person born a male, registered as a male at birth, currently remains a male legally even though she has, in fact, changed gender. If she has a car accident, she risks prosecution for driving without insurance and for fraud. She will also be forced to reveal her gender history to officials who are complete strangers. This is humiliation up with which you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, or I would not put.
  Much reference has been made to pensions, which are an extremely important issue. I draw the House's attention to schedule 5. It deals not only with pensions but with state benefits, which are also at stake. It refers to the widowed mother's allowance, the widow's pension, the widowed parent's allowance, long-term incapacity benefit, the category A retirement pension and so on. The explanatory notes provided by the Department for that schedule are very revealing. Paragraph 112 on page 19 says:
  "In summary, these provisions ensure that a transsexual person who has been granted a full gender recognition certificate will be entitled to the state benefits which are appropriate to his or her acquired gender, and will no longer be entitled to a benefit or pension which is payable only to someone of his or her birth gender."
  I hope that my hon. Friends will pay great attention in Committee to paragraph 113. It says that
  "the Department is of the view that if there is any interference with the Article 8 rights of a transsexual person as a result of these provisions it is minimal, justified as a means of according full recognition to transsexual people in their acquired gender, and a proportionate means of obtaining that end."
  In other words, it is the Department's view that it is all right to have diminished pensions and to cut state benefits if transsexuals have their certificates because their object surely was to obtain their certificates. It is important that the Government listen to the view of Parliament and not just to the views of Department when it comes to these issues.

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  Clause 11 and schedule 4 raise important issues for all the Christian Churches and for other religions. Without going into the theology that might be more appropriate for Committee, let me say that I smiled quite broadly when the bishops lined up to vote against those Lords Temporal who thought themselves more religious than our Fathers in God. I am neither a theologian nor a clinician but, as a practising member of the Church of England, I take very seriously the teaching of Christian Churches on this issue. I have with me the excellent Church of England report on "Some issues in human sexuality" that was published last year with the authority of the Archbishops of York and Canterbury. I have read the report—as you can see, Mr. Deputy Speaker, it is quite well thumbed—and the good news is that we cannot blame the Bible. Paragraph 7.3.2. of the report says that
  "there is general acceptance that there are no biblical texts that can be seen as addressing transsexualism as such"
  There are those who believe that human beings are either male or female because of their God-given biology and that nothing a surgeon can do can alter that fact. They say that sex reassignment surgery can never make a man a woman or vice versa, but is it fair to blame God in this way?
  Others believe, as I do, that the existence of gender dysphoria is a consequence of the fact that we live in a fallen world and that it is right for us to take action to correct the consequences of our fallen state when God has given us the means for us to work out how to do it. My wife and I did not blame God when our first child died after a few days, more than 30 years ago. We did not blame anyone. We sought to find out what had happened, and whether it would happen again. We entered the world of genetics. We were told that he had a random, one in 8,000 genetic abnormality—a chromosome 13 partial monosomy. We assessed the risk; we took advice; and we now have three wonderful adult children all earning an honest living.
  I had always taken my sex and the sex of others for granted. It all seemed so obvious, but it is not. Perhaps the most enlightening debate in the other place, where the Bill started, took place on 3 February when an amendment to schedule 4 sought to prohibit marriage between two persons each possessing XX chromosomes or each possessing XY chromosomes, or each possessing genitalia appropriate to the same sex. "After all," it was argued, "that is the undoubted determinant of biological sex," but it is not. What about Turner's syndrome, which affects women with only one X chromosome? Is one X chromosome enough to count as a woman? What of Klinefelter's syndrome, which affects men who have two Xs and a Y? Should they be classified as men or women? They believe that they are men.
  Lord Turnberg also reminded their Lordships that many babies are
  "born with genitalia that are at variance with their chromosomes."
  Many of them have surgery to place them firmly in one gender or the other. If those genders do not coincide with their chromosomes and if those people marry and try to have children, they will sadly be infertile.
  As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) pointed out earlier, Lord Winston reminded us that
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  "even in the case of Turner's Syndrome…it is possible to have an XY mosaic, with some of the cells carrying a Y chromosome and some having a deleted X chromosome."
  Therefore, such people
  "may have varying degrees of masculinity or femininity."
  He also said that most geneticists would
  "describe sex on six, totally separate, definitions."
  They can be chromosomal, but they are also genetic. He pointed out that
  "genes on the Y chromosome are not the only genes that define sex. Although the SRY gene is by far the most common and important, there are genes on chromosome 17, chromosome 11, chromosome 10, chromosome 6 and chromosome 3 that …can determine sex of various, kinds. Those people can carry on a completely normal life."
  I am indebted to Shaun Fountain, of the Salisbury Fertility Centre, for taking time out from yesterday's Ireland versus Wales rugby match to explain to me about 46 XX males, who lack a single Y chromosome, and about 46 XY females, who have testicles and no uterus because of androgen insensitivity, and cannot respond to testosterone. So in addition to genetic sex and chromosomal sex, there is hormonal sex. Some people produce hormones that will tend to feminise them, while others will be masculinised. That can happen in utero. Serious medical evidence exists that some people who become transsexuals in later life have been exposed to an abnormal surge of either male or female hormones during pregnancy, which has caused them to have a psychological sex that is different from their genital sex.
  As Lord Winston told the other place, we should be very cautious about defining sex in terms of chromosomal, genital or any other simple definition. He said:
  "It simply is not medically just, and I am sure that it would produce bad law".—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 February 2004; Vol. 657, c. 620.]
  That is why the Government are right to establish in this Bill a system to recognise acquired gender in law, through the determination of an application for a gender recognition certificate. The original birth certificate will not be destroyed, but superseded. We are dealing here with the most intimate secrets of a human being. I will take some convincing that the Bill should be amended to allow access to those secrets by any other person—by right, and against the will of the person concerned—in any circumstances other than those described in clause 22. In fact, I have my doubts about some of those circumstances.
  In recent weeks there has been correspondence about human gender in the columns of The Tablet.I end with the remarkable contribution of Dr. Bernard Ratigan, of Loughborough university, who is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. On 7 February, he wrote:
  "Simply put, we are all both male and female, and the `physiological indicators' are only the surface markers but they are not the whole story. Given the vicissitudes of pre-natal and postpartum physical (and then psychological) development, the more experience I gain in the field of gender dysphoria the more I wonder at the mystery of human gender development. It is a triumph of nature that so many of us are secure in our gender and surprising, given the profound pressure to gender conformity, that so few suffer from gender dysphorias"
  In conclusion, I can do no better than echo the words of my noble Friend Baroness Buscombe, who said that because the Bill's measures involve some important

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  Principles of law, we must proceed with caution. That will be achieved in Committee. Indeed, as the Bill proceeds through all its stages, it is important that we approach the many issues with care and with compassion for those for whom the measures are intended.
  7.33 pm
  Kali Mountford: I want to begin where the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) left off, and with the point that I made in my question to the Minister at the start of today's proceedings. None of us can be absolutely sure of who we are at any point, and there is nothing wrong with that My reading around this subject began in 1997, as a result of a constituent's case. I read about the question of where our gender identity comes from, and we certainly cannot find an answer by looking in medical books, because the arguments are many and varied. I am glad that the hon. Member for Salisbury discussed so thoroughly the various different conditions, as he has saved me the trouble of doing so. He is right: if we look in that direction for an answer, we might find no answer at all, or too many to come to a sensible and logical conclusion about who we are.
  In trying to devise laws so that we can act out our daily lives with a proper sense of reality, it is therefore sensible to look to those individuals who find that any definition of themselves does not fit with their own sense of self. It is not for us to insist, as a result of any test that we might be able to devise as time goes by, that a given person is someone with whom they do not themselves identify. To decide gender on the basis of an XY chromosome, for example, might be to go down a very tricky path indeed. It is therefore right for people to present for themselves what they perceive as a problem in their own lives.
  That leads us to the question of how to proceed sensibly from there. We have already made some progress on that front. By deciding that people can have treatment, with national health service support, that properly identifies their physical appearance, we go some way towards recognising gender dysphoria as a true and proper medical condition. That has taken some people a long way forward, but not nearly far enough. Nor will this Bill take us the entire way. Our society is in transition, as, indeed, is our medical profession and this House. And the same is true of some of the people whom we are talking about. In this period of transition, there are some specific issues that we need to address carefully.
  The issues that we face today will not be those that we face in future. We are discussing very complicated family relationships that have evolved because the recognition of somebody's gender has been decided on later in life. There are many reasons why people might want to conform to their physical appearance. We could debate that issue at length and it would not help us very much, but at this stage of our social maturity, people are presenting at a much later stage in life than might be the case in the future. That will change because social attitudes will change. We have had many debates on people's sexuality, but in generations to come, as people go through puberty their gender identity will not be so difficult to address. Indeed, such progress might not be that far into the future. During development in puberty
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  and early adult life, it might be more possible for people to say, "The person who you think I am is not who I really am after all." It might be possible to make such decisions much sooner, so that there are fewer complicated family relationships involving marriage. That will be a natural social progression.
  But we are in a different place at the moment. Complicated family relationships already exist, and they will exist whether or not we legislate. The fact remains that marriages break down because of gender identity. They do not break down as a result of the state; they dissolve because the differences between the people involved are irreconcilable, and they feel that they cannot go on. It is also true that some people can overcome apparently irreconcilable differences and carry on with a relationship that they have developed over 20 or 30 years. They do not stay together simply because the financial situation is easier that way, or because it is easier to manage their family; they do so because they truly believe that they are meant to be together.
  Those whom I have met the same is true for many other Members of this House find that their life together is incredibly difficult. There is no easy solution. My hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley) pointed out some of the very painful decisions that people will be required to take. I agree with him entirely, but I am not sure that this legislation will be the end of the matter. I hope that, over time, the House will develop other solutions that might not fall within the Bill's parameters. It is difficult to make such choices, but the fact is that people make difficult choices throughout their lives. Even as things stand, the choice between staying together and divorcing is a painful and difficult one for families.
  The choice between staying together or divorcing—the decision to put gender before marriage—will be difficult, but the question is: are we ready to accept same-sex marriages? I am—the prospect does not trouble me at all—but I can see that there would be substantially greater opposition to the Bill if I were to insist on such marriages forming part of it. So I look at the situation pragmatically, and ask myself what it is that I can accept. I must also recognise that some of my constituents will not agree with me. Some will think that I am taking a step too far, while others will say, "Kali, I really need you to go a lot further than this. Please support more such measures. Please think about my life."
  I have to offset one set of concerns against another. I have reached the view that the Bill might be about right for where we are, but I do not think that the situation will remain static because things will have to be addressed as a result of changes to relationships after it is enacted.
  We must consider how complicated family relationships will affect people's finances. Pension rights, which have been addressed by several hon. Members, clearly present a difficult problem. The Minister could not give unequivocal answers about what will happen as a result of future partnership arrangements, but the Government have made significant moves to give an indication of what we can expect. We will not simply ask people to divorce, accept their new gender and have their birth certificate as they wish it to be, and then leave them in a void with nothing

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  in place. We must ensure that the legislation that we expect to be introduced in this Session dovetails properly with the Bill; otherwise the system will not work.
  Measures on people's benefit rights, entitlements and pensions have already been introduced that provide for more equality between the genders so that men's rights are now more similar to women's rights and vice versa. That was achieved especially by the consideration of the rights of widows and widowers. Now that men have the same rights as widowers that widows used to have, we have made progress toward ensuring that men and women have similar support.
  Mr. Bercow rose—
  Kali Mountford: I see that the hon. Gentleman is eager to speak; I give way to him.
  Mr. Bercow: The issue of obligatory divorce, which was highlighted by the hon. Members for St. Helens, South (Mr. Woodward) and for City of York (Hugh Bayley), is of the first importance and should surely be decided on its merits. The hon. Lady would always be the first to stand up for what is right rather than what is simply convenient. Does she honestly think—I am listening closely to her argument—that the opposition to the Bill would be that much greater if it were amended in the terms that the hon. Gentlemen suggested? It does not seem to me that it would make much difference—those who are against the Bill are just again it, full stop.
  Kali Mountford: I understand what the hon. Gentleman is trying to say, and I think that that would be true of several hon. Members who have debated the matter. However, I am not sure that it is true of all my constituents or many communities in my constituency. For some people, the question of a man and women being married—with that being the nature of marriage—is so fundamental that they cannot see around it. As I have already said, that is not a problem for me. I do not feel troubled by it, and I would not have been troubled if such a measure were in the Bill. I hope that there will be a time when the matter is not an issue in society, but we must accept that it is an issue now. Many more people would have hammered down my door to oppose the Bill if it had included such a measure. I, and many transsexual people whom I know, expected a much more heated debate than we have had. As there is compromise on both sides of the debate, we have found a position in which people may find consensus.
  Mr. Woodward: Just as a point of clarification—my hon. Friend and I certainly do not disagree on these matters—it is essential to recognise that the question is not about something to be promoted for the future. We are dealing with a situation with happily married people who married in good faith and wish to stay together after something has happened in that context. We will be saying, "You now have to divorce so that you can be recognised as being yourself." If we presented the argument to our constituents in the context of forcing existing couples to divorce, I wonder whether, if the House really came together on the issue, it would be that
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  hard to convince them that we were doing the right thing by enabling couples who want to stay together to be together.
  Kali Mountford: My hon. Friend makes a valid point, but I would then expect other people to come to me and say, "What is so inequitable about my relationship that I must have a civil partnership registered yet I cannot marry?" That would be a reasonable position for people to take and if we reached that situation, we would have to accept that we were entering a new form of marriage. Many people currently think that that would be a step too far. It is not a step too far for me to accept that, but I appreciate that it would be for other people. I am trying to find a way to set complex moral values against actual situations to try to make sense of people's lives and allow them to make reasonable decisions.
  Hugh Bayley: If, for reasons of pragmatism rather than conscience, my hon. Friend cannot go along with my view that there should be one clearly defined and specific circumstance in which same-sex marriage could be permitted, will she go along with the alternative that I put to the Minister: we should construct within the Bill a legal relationship that would preserve for a formerly married couple who had to divorce because of the Bill all financial and legal rights between each other, including pension rights, that they had when they were married?
  Kali Mountford: My hon. Friend makes the right point—that is what I would like to be preserved. There is no great strength in arguments about whether we recognise relationships in one way or another under law—or before God, if that is people's preferred way of recognising their relationships. However, when making legislation, it is important to ensure that we do not disrupt people's lives in such a way that a decision becomes impossible. That is why we want the measures that we hope will be contained in pension legislation and, most importantly, the Bill to recognise same-sex relationships in a civil manner because the dovetailing of the Bill with new legislation will be absolutely crucial. We will make decisions on the Bill today and in Committee in the light of suspicions about legislation to come, but without any guarantee of that. That is always a difficulty, but is not life always like that?
  Friends of mine. Who, are in the same situations as the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for City of York, are faced with the abhorrent decision of whether to stay together or for the gender of one of them to be recognised as she believes herself to be. That is difficult, but there are difficult choices to make in marriages and all relationships. Some people will choose to stay married—that is their choice. It is not for the House to say to them, "You must put asunder what you have always had." However, we propose that they should at least have a choice that has not been available to them before. That choice will be paramount for some people.
  We have heard about relationships that have survived for 35 years through all sorts of ups and downs—not least of which being the gender of each partner. Such people have relationships in which those matters may be discussed. I suggest that people without such a relationship probably parted many moons ago, so the Bill will help them not one bit. The way in which society views marriage and gender is in transition—it is

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  changing quickly over time. It has changed more quickly over the past 10 years than it did during the 50 years of my life so far. There have been amazing changes that I thought that I would never see when I was young, but that are now considered to be mundane and ordinary. Although television programmes are made about people's actual lives, transsexual people now turn up all over the place in soaps and dramas without people flickering an eyelid about how odd that might be.
  Society is moving faster than legislation in some ways, but it is moving slower in other ways. There is a conflict in social opinion between those individuals people know and recognise and what they feel about institutions. We need to get a balance between those real people's lives and attitudes to institutions. That is the situation we encounter when we discuss the institution of marriage in the light of the decision by a small number of people to stay together irrespective of their gender. That is a difficult problem to conjure with, but the Bill will take us a long way towards changing people's actual lives. There will be difficulties for some people, but others will benefit hugely from the Bill.
  I talked to some of my friends about deciding between gender recognition and marriage. The big step forward in opinion, legislation and people's rights has been of such benefit to them that although they might decide that they cannot make use of the legislation now, which will be seriously distressing for them, they will accept that many others will benefit because the Bill will change social attitudes so much and so quickly—even more quickly than changes experienced so far—that the benefits for future generations will be immense. The Bill's contents place it in the middle of enormous social change.
  Another set of relationships is vital and has only been touched on. It is difficult to legislate for the relationship between parent and child in the best of circumstances, but it is even more difficult in the circumstances that we are discussing. It behoves us to ensure that if the relationship can be maintained, it should be supported in every way. To decide on the title of a parent post-change is not very helpful. We need to ensure that the relationship between the parent and the child is maintained in law and maintained financially. I know the Bill does not deal with that, but we need to mention that the child should be supported through the Child Support Agency in the same way as he or she would be should the parents decide to part. It is crucial that if the child decides to break contact with a parent because of family circumstances, that child's support is at least maintained. I hope that social structures can be changed over time so that the proper relationship between parents and child can be properly maintained.
  In the cases of the people I know, children found it difficult when one parent changed gender, but the love and bond between parent and child was so strong that it was not changed for ever and the good, close, loving relationships continued. Sadly, however, that is not always the case. We need assurances that support for children will be maintained. I have not detected anything in the Bill that makes me think that it will not be, but it needs to be mentioned so that people are clear, when reading the debate, that we are not overlooking children and their basic need for contact with their parents.
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  I want to pay a couple of tributes. The first is to the House for its maturity. My friends who advised me on speaking in the debate said that I could expect to encounter terrible hostility and cruel and harsh words. I hope, on watching the debate, that they will be relieved that their particular relationships have been held in regard by the House. That will be of some comfort. The debate has been mature and it reflects the maturity of society at large.
  In particular, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) whose fortitude and persistence over the years deserves recognition. Some of my constituents who are members of Press for Change have written to her a number of times. They think that our debate is largely, if not entirely, a result of her hard work over many years. The House owes her a great debt of gratitude.
  I hope that the House will continue in its mature vein in the years to come.
  7.54 pm
  Andrew Selous: I very much hope that the tone of the debate will continue. I think we would all agree that we have had a measured and reasonable discussion of the subject. I especially hope that that mood will continue, given that I am probably going to be the only Member who expresses a view that is contrary to those expressed so far.
  When we talk about the issue it is tremendously important that we express both sympathy and compassion for those who suffer gender dysphoria and that we do all in our power to help people in that condition with some of the practical everyday problems that they face in their lives. At the same time, however, it is important that we are rigorously intellectually honest with what we are about to ask the House to do. My fear is that we are not being as rigorously intellectually honest as we should be.
  I ask the House to pause and consider exactly what it is that we are planning to do when we are prepared to say that someone born a biological man will be regarded, with the full force of the law, as a woman, and vice versa. That has profound implications for our Parliament and we should reflect on that. My feeling is that we are not going about the Bill's sensible ambitions to deal with practical problems, which we all want addressed, in the right way and are not applying the right, the appropriate or the really honest solutions.
  We heard a bit about the medical background as to what causes gender dysphoria, such as the genetics before people are born. As parliamentarians we have to accept that we are not experts in the field and should defer to those in the medical profession who have studied the subject. I note, however, that when the Government were under pressure and in difficulty in the other place when the medical matters were discussed, it appeared to a number of commentators that Lord Winston was brought in to help them out. I have the greatest respect for Lord Winston. He is an eminent fertility expert who trained as a gynaecologist and an obstetrician, but even he would say that he is not an expert or trained in gender dysphoria. The people who are expert on gender dysphoria are psychiatrists. If hon. Members had taken the trouble to contact the Royal

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  College of Psychiatrists, its past presidents and others, they would have heard a different take from the one proposed by Lord Winston in the other place on the question of whether sex was conditioned before birth.
  Lynne Jones: I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to a document produced by the parliamentary forum on the medical view of the aetiology of transsexualism. There is a link to that report on my website, and work is being done to update that view. The forum is attended by the people who are most expert in the condition and it is advised by them. It is not correct to say that the Royal College of Psychiatrists takes that view. Its lead member on its panel attends and advises the forum.
  Andrew Selous: I hear what the hon. Lady says, but I challenge her and any other hon. Member to produce a list of experts in the field who genuinely believe that the matters are absolutely predetermined physiologically and genetically. I am not saying that there is no physiological element. However, a number of the doctors at the two main centres in this country which deal with the condition—the unit at the Charing Cross hospital and the Portman clinic—have gone into print, and have suffered considerable hostility as a result, saying that they do not share that view. Even research undertaken in the Netherlands is not accepted as conclusive.
  Mr. Woodward: Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that the logic of what he is saying is effectively to reduce all the surgeons who carry out this work to nothing more than cosmetic surgeons, doing it because somebody comes along and says, "Well, I just fancy changing my gender"? That is not what happens. Years of work lie behind such operations, some of it very distressing to the individuals. After having counselling and living in the other gender, there is then a big decision to be made about the operation. The hon. Gentleman must bear it in mind that no doctor would undertake that work as a flight of fancy. It is not a cosmetic procedure; it is a very serious procedure. The hon. Gentleman must reflect on what he is suggesting doctors are doing in these cases because, in my view, they think that they are providing a necessary medical remedy.
  Andrew Selous: I take the hon. Gentleman's sensible point that this is a major, serious operation. There are provisions in the Bill to ensure that gender change cannot happen in a short period, as it currently does in some cases, which causes concern.
  I am simply making a general point that a range of factors cause gender dysphoria, and they are principally psychiatric conditions. Reference has been made to the fact that in every case people who want to change their gender have been preconditioned genetically and physiologically so to do. I am not questioning their right to do so or the fact that they face discrimination. I am merely making the point, which I think a large number of clinicians and others accept, that this is a psychiatric matter as much as it is a matter of genetics or is in any way preordained.
  I have not yet heard in the debate a proper answer to the case of those transsexuals who move from one gender to the other and then back again. That supports
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  my case that these matters are not inherently determined in people's genes. People who choose to go back to their original gender do exist, and the Bill will have to cope with those circumstances. As I said, I do not want to get bogged down in a medical argument because I do not think that we are the right people for that, but it is important to make those general points.
  It is important also to note that we are not discussing intersex conditions—a point that the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) established early on in a useful intervention on the Minister. Those are a separate category from the transsexual issues that we are discussing.
  If the Bill is enacted in its current form it will very much affect marriage, as it will, in effect, legalise same-sex marriage. We should be concerned about that. These points were made by the Bishop of Winchester in the other place, as the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) made clear, and he accepts that he has a difference with the Bishop of Winchester on the matter. We have to accept that if we pass the Bill we will be allowing two men or two women to marry. I have sympathy with the point made by a number of Labour Members that when a married person wants to adopt a different gender the couple should not be forced to dissolve their marriage: I think that they should be able to stay together. I know that the Government are trying to support the principle that marriage applies purely to a man and a woman, but they are going about it the wrong way and putting gender before sex. As the plaque on every registrar's wall says:
  "Marriage according to the law of this country is a union of one man with one woman".
  Kali Mountford: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for advancing the argument about same-sex marriages, which I expected to hear in this debate but had not yet heard. Those are explicitly excluded from the Bill. A moment ago, the hon. Gentleman said that this is a problem to which the Bill is not the answer. Perhaps he would like to tell the House what the answer is.
  Andrew Selous: I shall deal with those two points in turn. The hon. Lady says that same-sex marriage is excluded from the Bill. I disagree. I think that it is same-gender marriage that is not included, because I come from the premise that one cannot change the biological make-up of a human being. I accept that people may want to adopt a different gender, and we have heard movingly from the hon. Member for St. Helens, South (Mr. Woodward) about his sister. I am not denying that people should have the opportunity to do that if they so choose. However, if one accepts that a human being has a unique biological make-up, which any law made in this House cannot change, we are talking about the ability of a man to marry another man and of a woman to marry another woman. There cannot be any dispute about that.
  The hon. Lady asked what other means we could use to prevent some of the problems that transsexuals face. We could deal with employment problems by using employment legislation to ensure that there could be no discrimination. Insurance has been mentioned a number of times, and there are ways of dealing with that. I think that I may be the only chartered insurer who is a Member of the House—I am certainly one of very few.

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  Believe it or not, underwriters are reasonable, understanding people, and I am sure that separate arrangements could be made with insurance companies.[Interruption.] Perhaps not all hon. Members are prepared to accept that, but having been a member of the underwriting community for a while I contend that they are.
  Lynne Jones: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Andrew Selous:In a moment.
  We should be very keen to stop any form of harassment. We have legislation to stop race-hate and homophobic bullying, and I would be very much in favour of legislation to make sure that transsexual people were not harassed or intimidated.
  Mr. Bercow: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Andrew Selous: I said that I would give way to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones).
  Lynne Jones: I just wanted to inform the hon. Gentleman that there is legislation preventing discrimination in employment: the Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations 1999. That provides guidelines but it does not deal with cases in which employers require to see birth certificates, so people often censor themselves in applying for jobs and promotion. That problem cannot be overcome other than by full legal recognition, enabling transsexual people to have a reissued birth certificate.
  Andrew Selous: The hon. Lady makes a practical point, and one way to get round it might be to say that a gender recognition certificate could be used in place of a birth certificate.[Interruption.] The hon. Lady shakes her head but I see no reason why that would not work while we were looking at practical alternatives. I now give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow).
  Mr. Bercow: I admire my hon. Friend's courage and principle in standing up for that in which he believes. I put to him two simple questions. First, would he acknowledge that at heart his motivation for opposing the Bill is a religious one, which may be convincing to him, but is not necessarily convincing, or a basis for legislation, in the minds of many others?
  Secondly, I put it to him that his opposition to discrimination, harassment and ill treatment would probably sound more convincing if he had argued for practical equality before the law prior to the Second Reading of this Bill.
  Andrew Selous: I shall deal in turn with those points raised by my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour. First, I speak today, as do several hon. Members, from personal religious conviction. However, I have received letters from constituents who are worried about the Bill but do not have a personal faith. People of all faiths and none will be concerned that Parliament is being asked to legislate to create a legal case for something that I do not believe to be valid in terms of biology and physiology.
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  I do not quite understand my hon. Friend's second point. I am on the record as having expressed concerns about homophobic bullying, race harassment and so on, and I repeat that I would not want that to happen to transsexual people.
  Mr. Bercow: My hon. Friend has been very fair, and it is right that I should clarify my second question for the avoidance of doubt. I do not dispute that he is opposed to harassment and violence. My question is this: if he believes that transsexuals experience day-to-day discrimination and disadvantage, and he has long been conscious of that, why did he not argue for reform of the law before, instead of declaring a willingness to consider the matter on Second Reading of this Bill, to which he is explaining that he is opposed?
  Andrew Selous: I plead guilty as charged to not having taken the course of action that my hon. Friend urges upon me. Indeed, there are probably many other worthy causes that I have not taken up owing to insufficient time or interest. However, that does not invalidate my basic point, which is that through the Bill we are legislating to enshrine secrecy and to put into law the case that someone's sex is other than that which has been biologically determined.
  As I said, that has implications for marriage. It also affects many other groups of people. First among those would be the families of those affected, by whom I mean the spouse, partner, children or wider family members. I was pleased that the Minister said that those family members will have the chance to be represented on the gender recognition panel, and I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Leslie), will give the House more detail about that.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Eagle)indicated dissent.
  Andrew Selous: The Minister's colleague is shaking her head. Perhaps I am confused, but I thought that he said that family members will be fully represented on the gender recognition panel. That is tremendously important, because large numbers of people are affected by someone's decision to change their gender. We exist not as individuals, or as atomised beings who are on our own in society, but in relationships with other people as families and communities. Of course, such decisions have profound and personal consequences for the individual concerned, but so too do they for their wider families and for many other people. If those people really care for that individual, they should be able to appear before the gender recognition panel to make any points that they wish—especially given that some transsexuals move from their original gender to an adopted gender, then back again.
  As regards registrars, I have to disagree with the comments made by the hon. Member for Winchester in response to my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack). Of course I agree that public officials have a general duty to obey the law, but this is surely a matter of conscience involving issues of principle about which people may feel strongly. There have recently been comparable cases in which social workers have lost their jobs over adoption decisions

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  following the recent change in the law in that area. Hon. Members will have to be mindful of the position of registrars who, for the highest motives, find themselves having to make a genuinely difficult personal decision.
  Hugh Bayley: I recognise that the hon. Gentleman is arguing against the Bill. However, if it passes into law and a transsexual is able to apply for a birth certificate in their acquired gender, how on earth would the registrar know that the person was a transsexual who had changed gender? When applying for marriage, they would simply use their birth certificate.
  Andrew Selous: I am talking about the specific circumstance whereby a registrar is asked to provide a different birth certificate to change a male birth certificate to a female one, or vice versa, which may well give rise to issues of conscience. The hon. Gentleman may have thought of wider examples that I have not considered.
  Many Churches are worried that they will find themselves open to legal challenge on this matter. That may occur purely in relation to pastoral arrangements—for example, the senior minister may want to share some information with other members of the pastoral team and find that he or she is unable to do so. There is also the worry that malicious legal action may take place. I remind the Minister that the former Home Secretary, who is now Foreign Secretary, said unequivocally in this House on 20 May 1998 that Churches act as public authorities when they conduct a marriage. I hope that people's fears are unfounded and that they can be allayed during the progress of the Bill. However, I have a copy of a letter that a Church recently received in which it was threatened with legal action and told that it would find itself in a more difficult legal position once the Bill becomes law. Churches should not be looking to exclude transsexuals, who should be able fully to involve themselves in the life of a Church.
  However, there are concerns about vindictive legislation that will cost Churches a great deal of cash that they can ill afford. I therefore hope that the Minister can reassure us about that; I can assure him that it is an issue of concern.
  Pension rights were mentioned earlier. We have not received proper answers to the points made about that. I hope that in Committee we will get some proper answers.
  Mr. Boswell: With the leave of the House—
  Miss Widdecombe rose—
  Mr. Boswell: I shall let my right hon. Friend speak.
  8.20 pm
  Miss Ann Widdecombe: I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell); I believe that we were called simultaneously. It was undeniably my fault for not being quick enough on my feet, and I thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker.
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  Even if the Bill were the most perfect measure, I could not vote for it on the ground of conscience. However, the measure should cause everybody, even those who support its principle, to pause for thought. It is muddled and a legal quagmire. Despite the fact that it has been through the other place, there are massive, important questions that the Minister could not answer today. I do not say that abusively; he simply could not answer them.
  No man or woman is an island. When we try to rectify an injustice, we must examine the impact on others and on society. Until we have managed to answer the questions that are raised in that examination, we should not rush into passing the Bill. Again, I stress that even if one accepts the principle—and I make no bones about the fact that I do not —this is a bad Bill.
  Kali Mountford: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
  Miss Widdecombe: Let me make some progress and I shall.
  First, the subject of pensions has been raised time and again. My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) pointed to schedule 5. The issue is not the individual's rights to a pension but those of dependants, especially in circumstances in which the state has enforced a divorce as a result of the Bill, and the impact on the former spouse. That has not been worked through. It must be done, and I do not believe that Committee is the appropriate place in which to do it. The issue is of such fundamental underlying importance—[Interruption] I can see the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) getting agitated; I will not sit down without giving way.
  The Minister must deal with the important issue that I mentioned quite separately from civil registration because, as a result of the Bill, the state will force a divorce on some people who will not wish to stay with the former spouse in a civil relationship. They will therefore become separate entities whose pension needs require tackling and clarifying. They need a guarantee that they will not suffer loss.
  Secondly, I made a point earlier about the identity of the legal mother of a child in specific circumstances. If the Minister had said that, from the moment that a surgical procedure and a sex change takes place and someone is recognised as being legally of another gender, rights accrue, the Bill would at least be more coherent, although I would still disapprove. The problem arises in rewriting history and in the state establishing a life so that a birth certificate has to be issued that provides a name and a gender that were not given at birth. History is thus rewritten.
  Elements of the Bill are farcical, including not providing information about the past. If one has a sex change, everyone from the past knows about it. Everybody knows one as the person one was; they played games at school with David not Davina. Former employers who are asked for references know people only in the gender that they had when they were in that employment. It is nonsense to try to throw a veil of secrecy, enshrined in law, over the past, suggesting that one can rewrite it or wipe it out.
  Changes in life do not mean that the past is rewritten. A marriage can be dissolved but nobody says that it did not exist, that that period of one's life, however unhappy

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  or difficult, did not happen. Rewriting history causes many of the measure's problems. I shall now honour my promise to give way to the hon. Member for Colne Valley.
  Kali Mountford: In the light of the right hon. Lady's clear compassion for people who will be affected by the Bill, how does she believe that their treatment will be worse as a result of the measure? Given that people already assign their gender in a new way, the Bill is simply a matter of recognising that and the consequent choices.
  Miss Widdecombe: There is a difference between allowing something to happen and institutionalising it, with all the legal consequences that flow from that. When someone changes gender, there is a great difference between simply recognising that and saying that it has always been so, with all the resultant implications, for families, financial organisations, responsibilities and, in some instances, employers.
  The Bill is appalling. It is a muddle and a quagmire. It is nonsense. I uphold the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan). I shall not pretend that, if it were the most brilliant Bill on earth, I would not oppose it. However, the measure should give everybody pause for thought. In our desire to rectify a wrong, we should not create more wrongs in its place.
  8.27 pm
  Mr. Boswell: For the second time, with the leave of the House, I am grateful for hon. Members' indulgence in allowing me to respond briefly. The debate has spoken for itself and I need only pick up one or two points briefly.
  We have heard nine passionate speeches, which were clustered in an interesting way. Let me begin by topping and tailing the debate. I was grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones). It was clear from several contributions, including mine, that hon. Members felt that her work in converting her constituents' concerns into a campaign that is within a whisker of bearing fruit was praiseworthy. As she knows from my earlier remarks, I am personally in sympathy with the campaign.
  However, I also believe that hon. Members should be grateful for the contributions of my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone—
  Miss Widdecombe: And the Weald.
  Mr. Boswell: I meant my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe). We would do no service to anybody, transgendered or not, if we pretended that the issues were easy and that there were no debate to be had.
  I derive encouragement from the conduct of the debate. As the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) said, it was not characterised by the sort of heat and nastiness that it could have been. That does us credit. We should not rest on our laurels; we should sometimes take such an issue and debate it properly. We have done our best to do that. That applies to all
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  Members who have contributed, including my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) and for Salisbury (Mr. Key), who supported my line on the Bill, and Labour Members who spoke from personal experience or their experience of, for example, the social security system and developed a position. Occasionally, therefore, we can come away with a sense of a worthwhile debate that was well conducted.
  On such a subject, about which views differ, it would be impossible to hammer out consensus. Indeed, it would not be sensible. However, it is possible to light on several themes that will be germane to the Committee stage.
  There is a very strong concern in principle. The Minister knows that I am on his side, and not that of certain others, over the implications for continuing marriages. We must have a firm debate on that in Committee, and consider any other possible procedures in relation to the transition to civil partnerships, or whether there are other assurances that can be given on that. That matter relates to legal status, and leads to the important issue of pensions. One or two comments that have been made on that are possibly not wholly fair to the Government. Anyone who reads schedule3—I recommend it for insomnia—will realise that it addresses many issues. It might not always be congenial to people, because the basic principle on which the Government are operating is that if a person changes gender, everything else follows from that and there will be no other advantage. However, the consequences to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald referred could well flow from a divorce that took place with no reference at all to transgender issues. We will certainly need to consider that matter.
  The hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) made some interesting points, especially on confidentiality issues. I can just imagine the difficulties if someone asked for a person's GCSE certificate, and it had not been changed because no one was under a legal duty to change it or to consider that matter. We will want to look at such situations.
  We have had a debate, if not of consensus, involving a remarkable consensus of tone. That is a good start, working on the assumption that the Bill receives a Second Reading, but it is not sufficient in itself. I am passionately committed to trying to get the legislation as right as I can—although that is sometimes a little difficult for a lay person—and I give Ministers and the House genteel notice that I intend to table amendments, as and when the Bill has received a Second Reading, precisely so that they can form part of the debate. I hope that other hon. Members, if they are prepared to participate in the Committee, will feel that they, too, can do that. It is greatly to our benefit to debate amendments thoroughly and properly, and I hope that we will not be rushed in doing so.
  I have picked up from my hon. Friends their real concern that in their view, because they feel that the change of gender cannot have taken place, the Bill would allow two men or two women to marry. All I would say in response is that there are essential difficulties in this field. I might throw back to them the situation that can arise now in which a man and a woman are legally married but, because one of them has changed gender, the marriage now exists between two

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  people of the same gender. In the same way, on registration and certification, if someone's birth certificate declares that they are a man, but for all practical purposes they are now living as a woman, I am not sure whether it is happier or more honest to say, "That's a man", or to recognise the fact that that person is now a woman. Then there are all the confusions, difficulties and ambiguities over the medical evidence. Perhaps my hon. Friends have realised that these issues are not straightforward. Some of them feel that they cannot live with the Bill, which I can understand, but equally, aspects of the status quo are not comfortable either.
  That suggests that we need to proceed with a delicate balance. My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury quoted our noble Friend the Baroness Buscombe as having said in another place that we need to proceed with caution—I am sure that that is right, because the law must be got right—but he then added the rider that we must also proceed with compassion. That is the right balance. In my view, if in doubt—this will drive my support for the Bill—we should look at the people concerned and the problems that they face, and try, if we humanly can, although not regardless of any other implication, to meet their needs. The Bill is not perfect, but it is a lot better for the long process of debate and discussion that has already taken place. We can have a further go at improving it, and we intend to do so.
  8.34 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs (Mr. Christopher Leslie): May I say how impressed I am by the conduct of the debate? In my time in Parliament, I have not been involved in such a thorough, sensible and calm debate, which has brought out many of the important issues at the nub of the Bill. I feel privileged to have taken some part in today's debate. It was particularly marked that the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) had such a constructive approach, which I welcome. That constructive attitude will be brought to Committee, and my hon. Friends the Ministers who will take the Bill through Committee—the Under-Secretary of State for Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy) and the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle)—are no doubt looking forward to that experience.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) commented on the nature of gender dysphoria and said that the way in which some individuals define themselves and see their identity is a critical, and very personal, issue. It is important to recap what we are talking about. Transsexual people feel a deep conviction of the need to present themselves in the appearance of the opposite sex, changing their names and identities to live in the acquired gender. Some take hormones and have cosmetic treatment to alter their physical appearance, and some undergo surgery to change their bodies to conform more to their acquired gender. However, the medical condition whereby an individual born to one gender feels adamantly that they are in fact of a different gender is known as gender dysphoria. It is a real phenomenon, albeit one that
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  affects only an estimated 5,000 people in the United Kingdom. Those individuals sometimes feel so strongly that they are of a different gender that they seek gender reassignment socially, hormonally or even surgically.
  The hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) stated that when we debate those issues and try to find solutions, which the Government have genuinely tried to do with the Bill, a point comes at which we have to take a view on the principles that we hold. The Bill enables such a decision to be made, although I realise that there will be different opinions.
  The basic principles behind the Bill are clear. Although it concerns a minority, the test of how civilised a society is rests in part on the care and respect that it gives to minorities. Tolerance and respect are important, and recognition of difference is a key ingredient of that. Giving legal recognition to transsexual people is one step towards removing a sense of exclusion from society for a minority in our community—so there is an important principle at stake. That was the point that my hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, South (Mr Woodward) made in a powerful and moving speech as many Members heard. The Government believe, as does he, that all people should be entitled to basic rights and allowed to live their lives freely and legitimately, as they determine. If some people lack legal status or recognition, that can inhibit their freedom and their ability to take part in society at large.
  Even if that problem affects only a small number of people, it is our duty to address it and to find solutions where we can. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones), as several hon. Members noted, has campaigned strenuously over a long period for many if not the bulk, of the provisions in the Bill. She made her points exceptionally strongly, and I pay tribute to her for her contribution.
  Basic rights to legal recognition are needed to allow transsexual people the right to privacy, without the need continually to describe their gender history to complete strangers in the course of their daily lives. That is another specific reason why this reform is necessary. Of course, the Bill will also enable us to meet our international obligations and honour various rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. The time has come to join a number of European and other states in giving legal recognition to transsexual people. We acknowledge that that will involve changing significant parts of our legislation, and that we need to begin to recognise more fully the human rights of that group in our society.
  The hon. Member for Daventry said that we often come to understand these issues through listening to the views expressed by our constituents. Indeed, many hon. Members have mentioned hearing such views.
  Mr. Alex Salmond: Will the Minister say a little more about the schedule relating to exceptions for clergymen in England and Wales in regard to their obligation to solemnise a marriage? How will a clergyman know whether he is in a position to exercise such an exception? Why are such exceptions not

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  necessary in Scotland and Northern Ireland? I know why they are not necessary, but it might be helpful if the Minister answered that question for the record.
  Mr. Leslie: As the hon. Gentleman knows, various Sewel motion activities and other Scottish Parliament implications exist in relation to extending some of the UK provisions to Scotland, and I shall deal with some of the exemptions shortly, including what has been termed the conscience clause. That proposes that those in the established Church who are under a legal obligation to solemnise a marriage when a person requests them to do so will have the ability effectively to opt out of that legal obligation. That provision has been put in place to allow those clergymen and women to have that opt-out, and it is now part of the Bill.
  The determinants of gender are important, and the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) quoted a number of sources in that regard. In the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Thorpe concluded in the Bellinger case that:
  "The test that is confined to physiological factors, whilst attractive for its simplicity and apparent certainty of outcome, is manifestly incomplete. There is no logic or principle in excluding one vital component of personality, the psyche."
  That is an important point. This involves not only physiological issues; psychological considerations are important, too. There is a growing body of medical opinion in this field, including practitioners and chartered psychologists. The Bill has been discussed with the British Medical Association, the General Medical Council, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the British Psychological Society. No objections were raised about the general principles of the Bill.
  The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said that hon. M embers should defer to those with medical qualifications and experience in these matters. The chief medical officer himself has informed Government thinking and concluded that gender dysphoria is a medical condition that needs to be addressed. We must face up to these problems and issues, and not bury our head in the sand and pretend that there are no issues to be addressed.
  The Bill has already undergone detailed scrutiny, not least in the other place, and it had its genesis in the interdepartmental working group back in 2000. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has considered the draft Bill. The noble Lord Filkin has taken a great interest in the formulation of the Bill, and I would also like to pay my own tribute to the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), for her part in devising and framing it when she was a Minister in the then Lord Chancellor's Department.
  The Bill contains a number of specific proposals. A panel of lawyers and doctors or chartered psychologists will be established and will be capable of issuing gender recognition certificates to individuals who are assessed as having the medical condition of gender dysphoria. My hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley) pressed for hon. Members to include transsexual persons on the panels, but that requirement is not in the Bill and we have no plans to go down that particular avenue. The panel will be set up to take evidence from a wide number of experts, family
  102
  members and others, and that will be the manner in which it will be informed of relevant experience and expertise, rather than by trying to break down the composition of the panel. However, I understand where my hon. Friend is coming from on this issue.
  The medical condition assessment will require the applicant to provide evidence of a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, details of any treatment undergone for gender dysphoria and of whether the applicant has, in practice, lived in their acquired gender for at least two years—family evidence of this will be an important factor, as the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire pointed out—and whether they intend to continue to do so permanently. Evidence of treatment will not solely relate to surgical treatment. Although most transsexual people have had surgery, some have not and should not—perhaps for other health reasons. The key test will be whether a person has taken decisive steps to live fully and permanently in the acquired gender, as the hon. Member for Winchester observed.
  The issue of a new birth certificate will overcome a number of problems currently encountered by transsexual people. The hon. Member for Winchester highlighted the point about insurance, which was a good example. Insurance can be taken out in the acquired gender once a new birth certificate has been issued, so that, in the event of an accident, there would no longer be a risk of prosecution for fraud or driving without insurance, as legal recognition would remove the discrepancy between what the insurance documents record and the reality of how a person presents to the wider world.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak mentioned the interim gender recognition certificates, and asked why a six-month time limit had been decided upon. The only purpose of the interim certificate will be to allow the dissolution of an existing marriage, and six months was felt to provide sufficient time for those proceedings to begin. As the interim certificate provides grounds for ending a marriage, allowing unlimited time would create too much uncertainty for the other partner. It is therefore only fair to limit its use to six months. I am sure, however, that this issue will come up in Committee.
  A number of hon. Members have mentioned the provisions in clause 22 on disclosure of information. It is clear from the approach that the Government have taken in respect of the issuing and recording of birth certificates that we have tried hard to strike a fair balance in the Bill between protecting the privacy of transsexual people and preventing disclosure by public authorities, while not acting excessively and criminalising all aspects of disclosure. For example, when a person acquires information about a person's gender history in the course of official duties, this will be regarded as protected information, and disclosure would be an offence.
  However, there are exemptions that will allow disclosure for valid public policy reasons, such as preventing or investigating crime—as mentioned by the hon. Member for Winchester—and there will be no prohibition on disclosure if information is acquired in a private capacity. If the individual is not identifiable, disclosing protected information will not be an offence—for example, in the use of information for statistical reporting purposes. The Government believe

  103
  that this approach strikes the right balance between protecting the privacy of individuals and safeguarding the public interest. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Helens, South asked whether officials would be bound to have a duty of care in regard to the use of protected information. My understanding of the Bill is that that will be the case, because they will be covered by the tightly defined offence involving the misuse of protected information. I believe that it is right to have that provision in the legislation.
  The issue of marriage was raised by several hon. Members. Transsexual persons will be able to marry persons of the opposite sex. These would not be same-sex marriages—as the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire wrongly asserted—as the change of gender would allow a valid marriage to proceed between a male and a female in law. That is the principle that we have followed.
  Andrew Selous: I feel that the Minister is falling into a slight confusion between sex and gender. One could argue that it would be same-sex marriage. His case is that it would be marriage between people of different genders, but it is not the case that it would not be same-sex marriage.
  Mr. Leslie: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has understood our proposal for the use of the gender recognition certificate to acknowledge, on behalf of society, that individuals have been reassigned by their own volition and have acquired their gender—men and women, as defined by the panel on gender recognition.
  Mr. David Heath: May I bring the Minister back to information held by public bodies? He has not made it clear whether provision exists for a requirement on public bodies to amend registers that they hold, perhaps on professional or academic qualifications. Does he anticipate any change on that basis within the legislation?
  Mr. Leslie: The only core change that the Bill proposes is in respect of the issuing of a new birth certificate through the gender recognition register. That is the main register that will effectively be created by the Bill. No specific consequential series of changes will be made to public information held elsewhere, and, as was said, there will be no attempt to rewrite history. The original birth certificate will remain on record, with the new birth certificate on the gender recognition register. I take the hon. Gentleman's point about wider public information, however, and those are the sorts of issues that we will need to consider in Committee.
  The Government intend to introduce separate civil partnership legislation in this Session following consultation about a framework for the legal recognition of same-sex couples. Indeed, 83 per cent. of respondents to the consultation supported the principle of a civil partnership scheme. That is an entirely different issue, which is unaffected by this legislation, but it is important to bear it in mind that the Government are attempting to address some of the other questions in different pieces of primary legislation.
  104
  The issue of pre-existing marriages is a difficult one, about which the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) and my hon. Friends the Members for St. Helens, South and for City of York were asking. Pre-existing marriages would need to be dissolved in order for legal recognition for a newly acquired gender for married persons to be achieved: marriage in the UK is between a man and a woman, and the panel would therefore issue only an interim gender recognition certificate, which would be grounds for dissolving the marriage, at which point the court would issue a full gender recognition certificate. That is because marriage is an institution distinctly for opposite-sex couples. I accept, however, that careful consideration of this matter is needed, and my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley expressed carefully and pragmatically the difficult judgments that come into play on this issue.
  On the complicated question of pensions and benefits, my hon. Friend the Member for City of York asked two specific questions and made several other comments, as did the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson), the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald, the hon. Member for Salisbury and others. The basic principle that we are following is that pensions and benefits follow the entitlement for the new acquired gender. A male-to-female transsexual person, say, aged 62, will gain state pension eligibility from the date of that gender recognition certificate. It will not be backdated, because we do not have retrospective legislation.
  My hon. Friend the Member for City of York raised a specific example of a case in which an individual whom we will call Y is a male-to-female transsexual person, and X is the wife of that original male individual. Were Y to apply for a gender recognition certificate, but is married to his wife, X, they will have their marriage dissolved. While X will lose her category B married woman's pension, the court will be able to institute a pension sharing order for occupational and other pension sharing rights, and X will be entitled to some category A state pension based in part on the national insurance contributions record of the former husband, Y, or on X's national insurance contributions record.
  My hon. Friend asked whether it was right to require a couple to divorce in order to obtain recognition if neither party wanted to do so. As I said, marriage is an institution between persons of the opposite sex, and that is part of the essential nature of a marriage contract and the marriage legislation. We must look towards some sense of consistency in our legislation. He then asked whether it was fair to put the right to marriage, in some sense, before the right to gender recognition, and to give that spouse less power in the relationship. That is a difficult judgment to make, and we are trying to resolve some of these problems, not least through the civil partnership legislation. which needs to be considered in tandem with this Bill
  Hugh Bayley: I thank my hon. Friend for his full and thoughtful response to my question. My follow-up question relates to the occupational pension entitlement of the spouse—the wife, in this instance—rather than entitlement to the state pension. If my hon. Friend intends not to change his mind on the question of dissolving the marriage, would the Government be

  105
  prepared to table an amendment requiring the supplier of the occupational pension to treat the wife as she would have been treated had the marriage not been dissolved—in other words, to protect the rights of the partner?
  Mr. Leslie: That is an important point, but, I suspect, a point of detail that the Committee would be better placed to address.
  I believe that the test of a civilised society is its approach to minorities and the respect that we have for their rights. Transsexual people face obstacles and legal problems on a day-to-day basis, quite unnecessarily. They have human rights that need defending, and freedoms that deserve respect. The Bill will right a wrong that currently exists, and I commend it to the House.
  Question put,That the Bill be now read a Second time:—
  The House divided: Ayes 335, Noes 26.

  Division No. 55]

  [8:56 pm

  AYES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Caborn, rh Richard

  Ainger, Nick

  Cairns, David

  Ainsworth, Bob (Cov'try NE)

  Campbell, Alan (Tynemouth)

  Alexander, Douglas

  Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

  Allen, Graham

  Carmichael, Alistair

  Anderson, rh Donald (Swansea E)

  Casale, Roger

  Anderson, Janet (Rossendale &

  Caton, Martin

  Darwen)

  Challen Colin

  Arbuthnot, rh James

  Chayton David

  Armstrong, rh Ms Hilary

  Chidgey, David

  Atkins, Charlotte

  Clapham, Michael

  Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)

  Clark, Mrs Helen (Peterborough)

  Bailey, Adrian

  Clark, Dr. Lynda (Edinburgh

  Baird, Vera

  Pentlands)

  Banks, Tony

  Clark, Paul (Gillingham)

  Barker, Gregory

  Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)

  Barnes, Harry

  Clelland, David

  Barron, rh Kevin

  Clwyd, Ann (Cynon V)

  Battle, John

  Coaker, Vernon

  Bayley, Hugh

  Cohen, Harry

  Beard, Nigel

  Coleman, Iain

  Beckett, rh Margaret

  Connarty, Michael

  Begg, Miss Anne

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Bell, Sir Stuart

  Corbyn Jeremy

  Benn, rh Hilary

  Cousins, Jim

  Bercow, John

  Crausby, David

  Berry, Roger

  Cruddas, Jon

  Best, Harold

  Cryer, Ann (Keighley)

  Betts, Clive

  Cummings, John

  Blackman, Liz

  Cunningham, Tony (Workington)

  Blears, Ms Hazel

  Darling, rh Alistair

  Blizzard, Bob

  Davey, Valerie (Bristol W)

  Blunt, Crispin

  David, Wayne

  Boswell, Tim

  Davies, rh Denzil (Llanelli)

  Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W)

  Davies, Geraint (Croydon C)

  Bradley, rh Keith (Withington)

  Dawson, Hilton

  Bradley, Peter (The Wrekin)

  Dean, Mrs Janet

  Bradshaw, Ben

  Denham, rh John

  Brennan, Kevin

  Dhanda, Parmjit

  Brooke, Mrs Annette L.

  Dismore, Andrew

  Brown, Russell (Dumfries)

  Dobson, rh Frank

  Browne, Desmond

  Donohoe, Brian H.

  Bryant, Chris

  Doran, Frank

  Buck, Ms Karen

  Dowd, Jim (Lewisham W)

  Burden, Richard

  Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth

  Burgon, Colin

  Eagle Angela (Wallasey)

  Burnett, John

  Eagle Maria (L'pool Garston)

  Burnham, Andy

  Edwards, Huw

  106

  Efford, Clive

  Jones, Kevan (N Durham)

  Ellman, Mrs Louise

  Jones, Lynne (Selly Oak)

  Ennis, Jeff (Barnsley E)

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S)

  Farrelly, Paul

  Joyce, Eric (Falkirk W)

  Field, Mark (Cities of London &

  Kaufman, rh Gerald

  Westminster)

  Keeble, Ms Sally

  Fisher, Mark

  Keen, Alan (Feltham)

  Fitzsimons, Mrs Lorna

  Kemp, Fraser

  Flint, Caroline

  Key, Robert (Salisbury)

  Flynn, Paul (Newport W)

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Foster, Michael (Worcester)

  Kirkbride, Miss Julie

  Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings

  Kirkwood, Sir Archy

  &Rye)

  Knight, Jim (S Dorset)

  Francis, Dr. Hywel

  Kumar, Dr. Ashok

  Gapes, Mike (llford S)

  Ladyman, Dr. Stephen

  Gardiner, Barry

  Lammy, David

  Garnier, Edward

  Lawrence, Mrs Jackie

  George, rh Bruce (Walsall S)

  Laws, David (Yeovil)

  Gerrard, Neil

  Leslie, Christopher

  Gibb, Nick (Bognor Regis)

  Levitt, Tom (High Peak)

  Gibson, Dr. Ian

  Llwyd, Elfyn

  Gidley, Sandra

  Love, Andrew

  Gilroy, Linda

  Lucas, Ian (Wrexham)

  Godsiff, Roger

  Luke, Iain (Dundee E)

  Goggins, Paul

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Greenway, John

  McCabe, Stephen

  Griffiths, Jane (Reading E)

  McCafferty, Chris

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  McDonagh, Siobhain

  Grogan, John

  MacDougall, John

  Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale)

  Mclsaac, Shona

  Hall, Patrick (Bedford)

  Mackay, rh Andrew

  Hamilton, David (Midlothian)

  McKechin, Ann

  Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE)

  McKenna, Rosemary

  Hancock, Mike

  Mackinlay, Andrew

  Hanson, David

  McNulty, Tony

  Harris, Dr. Evan (Oxford W &

  Mactaggart, Fiona

  Abingdon)

  McWalter, Tony

  Harris, Tom (Glasgow Cathcart)

  Mahmood, Khalid

  Havard, Dai (Merthyr Tydfil &

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Rhymney)

  Mallaber, Judy

  Healey, John

  Mandelson, rh Peter

  Heath, David

  Marris, Rob (Wolverh'ton SW)

  Henderson, Doug (Newcastle N)

  Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S)

  Henderson, Ivan (Harwich)

  Marshall, David (Glasgow

  Hepburn, Stephen

  Shettleston)

  Hesford, Stephen

  Marshall-Andrews, Robert

  Heyes, David

  Martlew, Eric

  Hill, Keith (Streatham)

  Meale, Alan (Mansfield)

  Hinchliffe, David

  Mercer, Patrick

  Hodge, Margaret

  Miliband, David

  Hoey, Kate (Vauxhall)

  Miller, Andrew

  Hood, Jimmy (Clydesdale)

  Moffatt, Laura

  Hoon, rh Geoffrey

  Moore, Michael

  Hope, Phil (Corby)

  Moran, Margaret

  Howarth, rh Alan (Newport E)

  Morley, Elliot

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N &

  Moss, Malcolm

  Sefton E)

  Mountford, Kali

  Hoyle, Lindsay

  Mudie, George

  Hughes, Beverley (Stretford &

  Munn, Ms Meg

  Urmston)

  Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck)

  Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

  Murphy, Jim (Eastwood)

  Humble, Mrs Joan

  Naysmith, Dr. Doug

  Hurst, Alan (Braintree)

  Oaten, Mark (Winchester)

  Iddon, Dr. Brian

  O'Brien, Mike (N Warks)

  Illsley, Eric

  O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)

  Irranca-Davies, Huw

  O'Hara, Edward

  Jackson, Glenda (Hampstead &

  Olner, Bill

  Highgate)

  O'Neill, Martin

  Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough)

  Osborne, Sandra (Ayr)

  Jamieson, David

  Ottaway, Richard

  Jenkins, Brian

  Owen, Albert

  Johnson, Alan (Hull W)

  Palmer, Dr. Nick

  Johnson, Miss Melanie (Welwyn

  Perham, Linda

  Hatfield)

  Picking, Anne

  Jones, Helen (Warrington N)

  Plaskitt, James

  Jones, Jon Owen (Cardiff C)

  Pollard, Kerry

  107

  Pope, Greg (Hyndburn)

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Pound, Stephen

  Stevenson, George

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham

  Stewart, David (Inverness E &

  E)

  Lochaber)

  Prescott, rh John

  Stewart, Ian (Eccles)

  Price, Adam (E Carmarthen &

  Stinchcombe, Paul

  Dinefwr)

  Stoate, Dr. Howard

  Primarolo, rh Dawn

  Strang, rh Dr. Gavin

  Prosser, Gwyn

  Straw, rh Jack

  Purchase, Ken

  Stringer, Graham

  Quin, rh Joyce

  Stuart, Ms Gisela

  Quinn, Lawrie

  Sutcliffe, Gerry

  Randall, John

  Taylor, rh Ann (Dewsbury)

  Rapson, Syd (Portsmouth N)

  Taylor, Dari (Stockton S)

  Raynsford, rh Nick

  Taylor, David (NW Leics)

  Reed, Andy (Loughborough)

  Thomas, Gareth (Clwyd W)

  Reid, rh Dr. John (Hamilton N &

  Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)

  Bellshill)

  Thurso, John

  Rendel, David

  Timms, Stephen

  Robertson, Angus (Moray)

  Todd, Mark (S Derbyshire)

  Robertson, Hugh (Faversham &)

  Touhig, Don (Islwyn)

  M-Kent)

  Trickett, Jon

  Robinson, Geoffrey (Coventry

  Truswell, Paul

  NW)

  Turner, Dennis (Wolverh'ton SE)

  Roche, Mrs Barbara

  Turner, Dr. Desmond (Brighton

  Rooney, Terry

  Kemptown)

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Turner, Neil (Wigan)

  Roy, Frank (Motherwell)

  Twigg, Derek (Halton)

  Ruane, Chris

  Tyrie, Andrew

  Russell, Bob (Colchester)

  Vaz, Keith (Leicester E)

  Vis Dr Rudi

  Russell, Ms Christine (City of

  Ward, Claire

  Chester)

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Ryan, Joan (Enfield N)

  Watson, Tom (W Bromwich E)

  Salmond, Alex

  Watts, David

  Sanders, Adrian

  Weir, Michael

  Sarwar, Mohammad

  White, Brian

  Savidge, Malcolm

  Whitehead, Dr. Alan

  Sawford, Phil

  Wicks, Malcolm

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Wiggin, Bill

  Shaw, Jonathan

  Williams, Betty (Conwy)

  Shephard, rh Mrs Gillian

  Williams, Hywel (Caernarfon)

  Sheridan, Jim

  Winnick, David

  Skinner, Dennis

  Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster

  Smith, rh Andrew (Oxford E)

  C)

  Smith, Angela (Basildon)

  Wishart, Pete

  Smith, rh Chris (Islington S &

  Woodward, Shaun

  Finsbury)

  Woolas, Phil

  Smith, Geraldine (Morecambe &

  Worthington, Tony

  Lunesdale)

  Wright, Anthony D. (Gt

  Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)

  Yarmouth)

  Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

  Wright, David (Telford)

  Smith, Sir Robert (W Ab'd'ns &

  Wright, Tony (Cannock)

  Kincardine)

  Wyatt, Derek

  Soley, Clive

  Spink, Bob (Castle Point)

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Starkey, Dr. Phyllis

  Mr. John Heppell and

  Steen, Anthony

  Jim Fitzpatrick

  NOES

  Beresford, Sir Paul

  Rosindell, Andrew

  Burnside, David

  Selous, Andrew

  Chope, Christopher

  Syms, Robert

  Cormack, Sir Patrick

  Taylor, Sir Teddy

  Djanogly, Jonathan

  Trimble, rh David

  Dodds, Nigel Forth, rh Eric

  Turner, Andrew (Isle of Wight)

  Grieve, Dominic

  Watkinson, Angela

  Hunter, Andrew

  Wilshire, David

  Leigh, Edward

  Winterton, Ann (Congleton)

  Lilley, rh Peter

  Winterton, Sir Nicholas

  Loughton, Tim

  (Macclesfield)

  Mclntosh, Miss Anne

  Paisley, Rev. Ian

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Robertson, Laurence (Tewk'b'ry)

  Miss Ann Widdecombe and

  Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

  Mr. Anderw Robathan

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Bill read a Second time.

  GENDER RECOGNITION BILL [LORDS] (PROGRAMME)
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Orders [28 June 2001 and 6 November 2003],
  That the following provisions shall apply to the Gender Recognition Bill [Lords]:
  committal
  1.The Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee.
  Proceedings in Standing Committee

  2.Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on 16th March 2004.

  3.The Standing Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

  Consideration and Third Reading

  4.Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.

  5.Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day

  6.Sessional Order B (programming committees) made by the House on 28th June 2001 shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.

  Other proceedings
  7.Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords amendments or on any further message from the Lords) may be programmed.—[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
  Question agreed to.

  GENDER RECOGNITION BILL [LORDS] [MONEY]
  Queen's recommendation having been signified—
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a) (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with Bills),
  That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Gender Recognition Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—

  (a)any expenditure of the Secretary of State under that Act, and

  (b)any increase attributable to that Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided. —[Ms Bridget Prentice.]

  Question agreed to.

  DELEGATED LEGISLATION
  Madam Deputy Speaker(Sylvia Heal): I shall put together the two motions on employment and training.
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

  DELEGATED LEGISLATION

    EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING
    That the draft Industrial Training Levy (Construction Board) Order 2004, which was laid before this House on 18th December, be approved.
    That the draft Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Construction Board) Order 2004, which was laid before this House on 8th January, be approved. —[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
    Question agreed to.

    INDUSTRIAL ORGANISATION AND DEVELOPMENT
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation)
    That the draft Milk Development Council (Amendment) Order 2004, which was laid before this House on 26th January, be approved. —[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
    Question agreed to.

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

    EUROPEAN SPACE POLICY
    That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 14886/03 + ADD1, the Commission White Paper on European Space Policy; and supports the Government's aim of engaging with European partners and the Commission to encourage the formulation of policies that offer clear commercial and scientific benefits targeted at the Union's wider aims. —[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
    Question agreed to.

  Seroxat
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
  9.11 pm
  Paul Flynn: The Seroxat scandal is one of gigantic proportions, which affects millions of people. There has been over-prescribing and misprescribing of this antidepressant on a scale equalled only by the over-prescription of tranquillisers 40 years ago. It is likely that the legacy—[Interruption.]
  Madam Deputy Speaker(Sylvia Heal): Order. Will Members please leave the Chamber as quickly and quietly as possible?
  Paul Flynn: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
  It is likely that the legacy of the misery created by what has happened with antidepressants will be at least as severe as what happened with tranquillisers.
  The pharmaceutical industry has achieved miracles in disease control and elimination in the past century. It is not my intention to attack the science of that industry, but it is my intention to attack the spin, the marketing and the propaganda, all aimed at maximising profits, and the ineffective regulatory control that has failed to protect the public. GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer of Seroxat, has been exposed as duplicitous, profit-driven and irresponsible over the 14 years for which the drug has been available. It prizes its profits above the health of its customers.
  Where there should have been scientific objectivity there has been voodoo medicine; patients who have sought care have had their trust abused. Seroxat has turned mild stress into suicidal despair, and in many cases a passing anxiety has become a lifelong addiction, leading to self-harm, suicide and even murder. Those who have long questioned the safety and efficacy of Seroxat were ridiculed and undermined by the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline.
  That company is the villain in those tragedies, but happily there are heroes— those who fought to expose the truth about the dangers, addictiveness and ineffectiveness of Seroxat. The heroes include Dr. David Healy, professor of psychiatry at the university of Wales, Bangor; the "Panorama" programme, which produced two splendid accounts about the effects of the drug; Sarah Boseley of the The Guardian; the charity Mind, one of the few charities that takes no money from the pharmaceutical industry—a significant point in this case—The Citizen,a local Gloucester newspaper which is to be congratulated on conducting a campaign with national results; and my hon. Friends the Members for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda). for Dundee, East (Mr. Luke) and for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) who have also been involved.
  Seroxat is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. The drug appeared only in the 1990s and took over from the tricyclic antidepressants that had been available since the 1940s. I believe that need for the drug is based on a great myth: the idea that we can go through our entire life in a state of continuous euphoria and that if we suffer a moment of discomfort, pain, boredom, grief or anxiety we should be classified as ill and in need of

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  medicine. If any of our loved ones feel similar unhappiness, we are supposed to feel guilty unless we provide them with a pill. If we are sadder today than we were yesterday, there must be something wrong with us. Humankind has progressed through many millennia without using antidepressants, yet the myth has been perpetrated and we are conditioned to believe it.
  I wrote to GlaxoSmithKline more than a week ago to tell the company what I planned to say in the debate and asked for its comments. It has not had the courtesy to reply although I have received a number of letters from it over the last four years. The company has expressed the view that antidepressants should be taken by half the female population of the United Kingdom and a third of the male population; it wants to see 25 million people on antidepressant drugs. That is certainly not the number of people who suffer from the type of depression that needs medical intervention—serious, pathological, clinical depression. I do not want to minimise the effects of that dangerous illness, which can lead to self-loathing or self-destruction and certainly requires the attention of the medical profession.
  We have been conditioned to believe that we need those drugs, but there are far better alternatives. For example, counselling does not involve chemical drugs; it is over-prescribed at present, but if people are looking for a way out of the hell of clinical depression, they would be well advised to study the work of Dr. Dorothy Rowe, who has written a splendid book about clinical depression, Depression: the Way Out of Your Prison". She gives vivid descriptions of people's reaction to deep depression—their feelings of hopelessness, of being locked inside a room and that no one can help them. She offers practical ways of dealing with depression through self-knowledge, meditation and exercise, which is very much in line with current Government thinking. Having spent the better part of my life ignoring exercise, I am a late convert to its joys. After discovering the great pleasure of endorphin-releasing exercise, I can go along with what is said about it.
  The effect of Seroxat is not to free people from the prison of depression, but to create a new prison wall around them; that wall is all-encompassing and often encloses them in a prison of addiction. At the heart of the debate is ensuring that the Government do two things: the benefits of new medical discoveries should be enjoyed by all who need them, but the public should be guarded against the serious side-effects that such drugs can often cause.
  We do not want to return to the terrible scandals of the past such as tranquillisers, thalidomide, Eraldin, Opren and others that have resulted in wasted lives. The charge against GlaxoSmithKline could not be graver: it has deliberately suppressed information on the danger of Seroxat and its lack of utility.
  Two years ago, GlaxoSmithKline wrote me a letter that contains very little that is truthful apart from the date. We know that its spokesmen made preposterous claims on "Panorama", and the letter states:
  "The safety and efficacy profile of Seroxat has been confirmed through clinical trials involving thousands of individuals and the experience of tens of millions of patients over the 10 years the medicine has been available."
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  The letter does not mention the number of reports that GlaxoSmithKline has disregarded, ignored or, as happened recently, actually suppressed.
  The issue is not new, but we learned about the worst case very recently. Studies have been conducted that prove that Seroxat is no more effective than a placebo, and that in many cases it is less effective. Such claims have been around for a long time, but in spite of that Seroxat was increasingly prescribed, and it overtook Prozac as the No. 1 antidepressant in the UK, with four million prescriptions a year at one time, and now that figure has greatly increased.
  It is difficult to get precise figures about how many prescriptions are issued and how many people are on Seroxat, but, as with many things, we are following the United States line. We know that there are 3 million children on antidepressants in Canada and that there are 10 million children on antidepressants in the United States. Dr. Healy says
  "There is probably no area of medicine in which the academic literature is so at odds with raw data."
  After many denials, a particular report, headed "Confidential. For internal use only", has been revealed. It was prepared not a couple of weeks ago, although that is when it was published, but in October 1998. It refers to studies conducted in 1993 and 1996 of children and adolescents who were given courses of either Seroxat or a placebo. In one trial, there was no beneficial difference in the outcome between the placebo and Seroxat; in the other, the placebo produced superior results, which was not unexpected. The studies demonstrated that there is no beneficial effect in treating adolescents with Seroxat.
  One difference was noticed in children: suicidal behaviour was 1.5 to.3.2 times higher on Seroxat than on a placebo. It was not until 2003 that the body responsible for regulating medicine, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, issued guidance to doctors that Seroxat should not be prescribed to people under 18.
  However, a parliamentary answer that I have received in the last half an hour says that the Government do not intend to change the rules on prescribing unlicensed drugs to children. The Government seem to say that, if a drug works for adults, it should work for children. If so, it must also be true that, if there are increased suicidal tendencies among children, there is a similar effect on adults. Dr. David Healy reports that GlaxoSmithKline had evidence that approximately one in every 60 adults on Seroxat made a suicide attempt, while the figure for those on the placebo was one in 550 adults. That is an extraordinary difference.
  David Healy gave evidence to the regulatory body, when it investigated Seroxat last year, and there is a rather bizarre story to tell about what happened. About nine months before, Dr. Healy had applied for a meeting with the regulatory body. When the meeting eventually took place, he was surprised that no one questioned the evidence that he gave to the regulatory body, although he was a long-time critic. Although some agreed minutes were supposed to be prepared, they were never sent out because many of the members of that committee had financial and other interests in GlaxoSmithKline and in other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. That is a deplorable situation.
  I am sure that the Minister will say—it was said at the time—that the body is beyond suspicion and that those professional people will act in a disinterested way and

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  reach conclusions. That may be so. but it is unlikely that the public will trust such a body, when so many of those who judge the safety of medicines have dual interests of that kind, as well as an alternative duty as a regulatory body to ensure the success of the British pharmaceutical industry. If we are to have full trust in our regulations on such matters, we need a body that has only one commitment: the safety of the public and those who take the drugs.
  GlaxoSmithKline has repeatedly failed to respond to patient reports of withdrawal difficulties and refused to publish reports that demonstrated that 85 per cent. of healthy volunteers in a controlled experiment suffered from agitation, abnormal dreams and insomnia, and there was one suicide. Let me make it clear what that shows: 85 per cent. of that control group of healthy people were not suffering from depression, even mild depression, but they experienced those problems. Time and again, we hear evidence of people whose behaviour is modified tragically by Seroxat.
  Last year, the Brecon coroner, Geraint Williams, wrote to the Secretary of State for Health to ask for an inquiry into the drug after one such case. The family wished people to know about that case because they hoped that some good might come from the tragedy that had engulfed them. The case involved a retired head teacher, Colin Whitfield, who took his life after he was prescribed Seroxat. His wife said in court that that was totally out of character and that she believed that his mind had been affected by the drug. The coroner said that he was profoundly disturbed by the effect that Seroxat had had on Mr. Whitfield, and he accepted expert opinion that Seroxat could induce agitation and lead to people having suicidal thoughts.
  Sadly, there are many cases of that kind. The Tobin case in America has become very well known. Again, the behaviour of a man who had taken just a few tablets changed in a way that his family said was completely uncharacteristic of him. He killed the three women in his life—the three people whom he loved the most—a wife, a mother and a granddaughter. He then killed himself. That was reported in the first "Panorama" programme on the subject.
  Another case, which emerged in the second programme, involved someone in this country who suffered a similar character change after taking a few tablets of Seroxat. He tried to take the lives of his wife and daughter. and he then tried to take his own life.
  It is difficult to see these cases as coincidental, because they are so similar. However, we must examine them and ask ourselves why such terrible tragedies have taken place. The clinical evidence suggests that the drug must take the blame.
  The defence put up by GlaxoSmithKline is that the people involved are depressed anyway and that there is a chance that their taking the drug may lead them to self-harm. When GlaxoSmithKline examines the results of the trials, it gives the credit for beneficial results to the use of Seroxat. However, when there is a bad result, that is blamed on the depression suffered by those involved. The company cannot have it both ways.
  Other side effects have been reported by the volunteers who took part in one of the trials. They reported difficulty in withdrawing from the drug and one peculiar effect of this drug and no other was electric
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  "zaps". They reported difficulty in walking, coordination problems, aggression, confusion, memory difficulties and lethargy. Yet the published account of that report never mentioned any of those things. The information was obtained because, in the court case in America, Dr. David Healy was allowed access to the files of GlaxoSmithKline, which did not include these results in its report.
  That contrasts with the response received by "Panorama" following the broadcast of its first programme on Seroxat. It received 67,000 phone calls and 1,400 e-mails, almost of all of which reported problems with side effects and difficulties of withdrawal. Among the cases reported were 16 of accomplished suicide and 47 of attempted suicide. Those responses came from just the group of people who happened to be watching BBC 1 on the Sunday evening when the programme was broadcast. A follow-up survey by Panorama and Mind of 229 people using Seroxat found that 83 per cent. experienced withdrawal symptoms. The symptoms were "intolerable" for 44 per cent. and "severe" for 32 per cent. Therefore the use of the drug did not succeed for 76 per cent.
  Seroxat heads the World Health Organisation's league table of drugs from which it is difficult to withdraw; it is higher than Valium. Our Department of Health agrees, and a reply that I received from one of the Minister's colleagues last year pointed out that, in her view, Seroxat makes the symptoms of depression more severe in the early stages. That point is widely recognised.
  In spite of that, GlaxoSmith Kline repeatedly failed to remove the words on the side of the packet that said in unambiguous terms:
  "These tablets are not addictive …You cannot become addicted to Seroxat".
  The company changed its mind, but only in April 2003, 13 years after the problems began to emerge. In the first television programme, it was adamant that the drug was not addictive; in the second one, it blamed the patients for not understanding the warning. However, it is hard to imagine words that could be more explicit or less unambiguous. To this day, the company still gives the same advice on dependency to doctors. It argues that Seroxat does not cause dependency, but it certainly does, as the World Health Organisation and our Government agree.
  The patient information leaflet that GlaxoSmithKline puts out now states that 25 per cent. of those taking Seroxat will suffer a withdrawal reaction. That is an extraordinary change when compared with what it previously said. It declared the figure to be 0.2 per cent. until 2002, but it then increased the figure to 0.7 per cent. Now it has decided, after years of misleading everyone, that the true rate for addiction is about 25 per cent.
  It is disappointing that the United Kingdom regulatory authority has failed to protect patients from the profiteering of GlaxoSmithKline. Even moves by the US Food and Drug Administration to warn patients about the potential problems associated with Seroxat amount to a slow reaction, and almost to a dereliction of duty. Patient complaints have been ignored by GlaxoSmithKline and by doctors, and by the regulatory body and its predecessors in this country. This is a familiar story.

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  One constituent wrote to me, saying that she reported a bad reaction to her doctor, who declined to report it under the existing yellow card scheme. That scheme, which was introduced after thalidomide, is ramshackle, does not work and is hopelessly ineffective. I remember receiving an answer from Gerry Malone, the then health Minister of a previous Government, in which he told me that the number of deaths arising from paracetamol in Britain were 46 in one year and 52 in another. I was astonished by that reply, because according to the coroner's report, there were between 500 and 600 deaths in each of those years. Mr. Malone was quoting the number of deaths reported through the yellow card system, but it understated the number; in fact, there were 12 times as many. Yet we are relying on that system to guide us on adverse reactions to drugs. It is no surprise that a system that is 40 years old is working in such an inadequate way. Only a tiny fraction of the reportable adverse effects are actually reported. It is nonsense to continue to rely on that system in this way. That is why there is a huge understating of adverse reactions, suicides and addictions. When the Minister sums up, I hope that she will say that we need to look seriously at any reliance that we place on the yellow card system.
  In the television programme to which I referred, Dr. David Healy said that the evidence shows that roughly one person in 60 who uses Seroxat makes a suicide attempt. On the same programme, a GlaxoSmithKline representative gave a transparently dishonest account of its position. We are talking about a drug that is probably ineffective. There are few reports to suggest that it achieves markedly better results than placebos. As we know, it is addictive, and I should also point out—this is an important factor for the Government—that it is ruinously expensive. There has been a huge increase in the prescription of antidepressants, and few people who spend long spells in hospital can escape the well-meaning attentions of hospital staff, who regularly come round with their medicine trays and announce that one has been prescribed this pill and that pill.
  A constituent of mine told me that when she was in hospital, she demanded to know what each of the types of pill that she was taking was. She was regularly told, "This is a painkiller", to which she replied, "Well, I'm not in pain, so I'm not taking it." On being told, "This is an anti-depressant", she said, "I'm not depressed either, so I'm not taking that." The excuse for prescribing such drugs is that one might well be in pain or become depressed later, so one must take them in anticipation of future pain or depression. Now that we know beyond any doubt that such pills are addictive, why on earth do we continue with this approach? Why do we still measure the efficiency of hospitals not by how much pain is relieved—admittedly, that is impossible to Measure—or how much depression is dealt with, but by how many pills are prescribed? That is an extremely ineffective method, and it is also extremely wasteful. One of the current problems is that although funding for the health service has gone up by 40 per cent., outcomes have increased by a much smaller percentage. One main reason for that is the extraordinary inflation of the drugs bill, which has increased at a far greater rate. Many of the drugs that are prescribed are probably useless or damaging.
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  Charles Medawer, the director of the medical research group Social Audit, said many years ago—before the latest announcement—that a study at the university of California's neuropsychiatric institute found that just over 50 per cent. of patients who were given Prozac, which is a similar drug, reported an improvement in their symptoms, but that an identical proportion of patients who were given a placebo drug reported the same results. That is nothing new because it has been known for a long time that SSRIs have a poor outcome for patients, so why on earth do we continue to espouse them and support their use?
  Twenty-six new SSRI drugs are under development, so they will come later. We are undertaking an extraordinary experiment with human beings on a massive scale. There are rightly complaints about the drug ecstasy because it is used recreationally. It disturbs the chemistry of the brain, and no one can say what the long-term effect of that on the mental health of those who take the drug will be. The argument is precisely the same for altering the serotonin levels of the brain in the way that SSRIs do. No one can say what the long-term effects will be after 40, 50 or 60 years. The experiment is being carried out for the long-term interests of drug companies' profits.
  I would like my hon. Friend the Minister to deal with several points. Although research is continuing, Charles Medawar says:
  "I see antidepressants as the biological equivalent of thumping a TV on the top to help improve the picture"—
  we know that that works, but we do not know how it works. However, in this case, we know that the drug does not work, but we still go on thumping. He said:
  "My belief is that in 30 years, our grandchildren will look at the way we treated depression in the 20th century with the same disbelief as we look at the way we prescribed tranquillisers 30 or 40 years ago".
  That is the position that we are in now.
  When will the inquiry on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors that ended in such confusion be re-established, and when will it report its findings? What are my hon. Friend's proposals to restore full confidence in the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which is, strangely enough, entirely funded by the drug companies—only two countries in the world are in that position? The Public Accounts Committee was critical of the situation last year, and said that stakeholders would have a lack of trust because the agency is entirely funded by the companies—that is like getting Arthur Anderson to audit Enron.
  What action does my hon. Friend propose to take to ensure that the pharmaceutical companies publish all results of their drug trials? We know that two trials took place that proved beyond doubt that the drugs had no utility and that Seroxat was useless. We also know that the results were not published, and the drug company made it clear why it was not publishing the results by saying:
  "it would be commercially unacceptable to include a statement that the efficacy had not been demonstrated, as this would undermine the profile of"

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  Seroxat. That is an indication—a confession—that the suppression of the truth of the report has nothing to do with health or safety; it was done only for commercial considerations.
  No one else is carrying out such trials on a similar scale. We give a free hand to the drug companies to carry out trials. If they do not like the results, perhaps because they are likely to reduce their profits, they suppress them and keep them secret. We must ensure that the regulatory bodies have the power to insist that the results of all trials are published. They might claim that they already have that power, and that may be the case, but the results of the trials, which finished in 1998, should be available; otherwise, there is no way of informing patients.
  Will the Minister act now to at least reduce the prescription of unlicensed drugs to children? That continuing scandal has gone on for a long time. I know there are many reasons for it, but some drugs are prescribed to children which are almost certainly harmful because of a child's different metabolism. Does she have proposals to end the under-reporting of the yellow card scheme? Will she consider developing a scheme to allow testimonies from patients to be considered along with those from doctors? Underreporting is serious, but when the patient whom I mentioned tried to persuade a doctor to report her problems, the doctor refused.
  Seroxat should be withdrawn from use, certainly for new prescriptions. That might cause difficulties for those who have been on it for a long time because of withdrawal symptoms. It would be cruel to take them off the drug to which they are addicted overnight, but for new patients it should be withdrawn. The evidence is there to support that. There should be an urgent review, not the relaxed leisurely review of the past two years, of Seroxat and the other SSRIs to determine their safety, the possibility of addiction and the other severe reactions that have taken place in a significant group of people, in particular those who have felt suicidal.
  There has been a major failure by the regulatory authorities, especially in the light of the fact that they refused to take patients' testimonies. The new MHRA should be far more proactive in seeking adverse reaction reports and establish further ways of using direct experience of medicines in drug safety monitoring. It was shocking to discover that the MHRA and its predecessor often only looked at summaries of conclusions rather than at the conclusions themselves. All those patients who are taking drugs need better information from manufacturers and doctors on possible side effects and withdrawal effects and need advice on how to manage and support withdrawal.
  There has been an immense scandal, involving many millions of people. Those patients who have gone on to Seroxat, who have sought solace and care, have been abused by the system and GlaxoSmithKline, and have been let down by us as parliamentarians and the regulatory authority.
  9.48 pm
  Mr. Parmjit Dhanda: I shall be brief, not least because my hon. Friend the Member for Newport. West (Paul Flynn) has done a thorough job,
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  and I congratulate him on his work on the drug, which he has done over many years. I am relatively new to the field, as someone who was elected in 2001, but I have become aware of the effects of Seroxat on many of my constituents. When I tabled early-day motion 238 last year, it took virtually no time to gather 100 signatures.
  I also ally myself with the congratulations and thanks that my hon. Friend paid to The Citizen for its work on the ground, to the BBC team that made the "Panorama" programme—I am mindful of its help and support—and to the Seroxat users group, which has done a great deal of work to raise the profile of some of the difficulties that our constituents have suffered as a consequence of the drug.
  As I highlighted in the early-day motion, side effects and withdrawal symptoms include muscle spasms, insomnia, anxiety, depression and, in some cases, aggression and violence.
  In addition, as my hon. Friend highlighted, there have been cases such as the one in America which resulted in the killing of the entire family of a user of Seroxat, or Paxil as it is known in the United States. That has led, among other things, to court rulings that mean that adverts for the drug are no longer shown in the US. In this country, more than 1,000 Seroxat users have taken legal action against the drug company. The World Health Organisation puts Seroxat at the top of its league table of drugs from which people have difficulty withdrawing.
  I am pleased to see the significant changes to the labelling of the drug which have been implemented as a consequence of the pressure applied by my hon. Friend and others, including The Citizen, "Panorama", Mind and the Seroxat users group. That took an awful lot of work, but it is important that people are aware of the side-effects that they are likely to experience if they take the drug. It is a shame that it took so much pressure for GlaxoSmithKline to accept that the drug has addictive qualities that go beyond the scientific definition of "addiction" and come under the definition understood by the rest of us, as lay people.
  I follow what my hon. Friend said with three questions for the Minister. These points have been made but need to be emphasised and re-emphasised. As my hon. Friend said, the expert working group on SSRIs has been reporting, or on the verge of reporting, for some time. It is important that we have a date for that. There have been problems with that review, and I ask the Minister to consider those that have occurred at a European level. Members who were part of that review were alleged to have had interests in the drug company and, indeed, reported to have acted on its behalf in legal matters affecting it in America.
  Perhaps most important is the transparency of trial data which is required. I shall not labour the point because my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West has already made it effectively. At the moment we are totally reliant on drug companies for information about the drugs, and the only mechanism by which it comes into the public forum is the MHRA, so we need far greater transparency.
  To reiterate, the WHO puts Seroxat at the top of its league table of drugs from which people have difficulty withdrawing. At the very least, it needs to be monitored

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  far more closely, and I urge the Minister to heed what my hon. Friend said and do whatever is in her power to ensure that that happens.
  9.53 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health(Miss Melanie Johnson): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Paul Flynn) on securing this debate on an issue about which I know he and others feel very strongly. I welcome the support given to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda). I am well aware of the early-day motion on the subject and the questions that both Members have asked of Ministers.
  Before I say more, given earlier references to suicide, I would like to place on the record my heartfelt view that, whatever the circumstances, suicide is obviously a devastating event, and our thoughts go out to the families of those who have suffered as a result.
  The burden of depressive illness is felt at all levels of society and from the young to the elderly. One in three families suffer as a result of a member being diagnosed with depression, and sadly the toll of lives lost remains too high, with suicide claiming, on average, one person's life every two hours.
  The treatment of depression with the older tricyclic antidepressants is characterised by significant side effects and a high risk in overdose. The newer class of medicines, which are known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, of which Seroxat is one, have a different safety profile and, importantly, are less risky in overdose. Antidepressants, and SSRIs in particular, have undoubtedly saved many lives. However, all effective medicines are associated with side effects, and questions remain about the effects of SSRIs on some individuals. A great deal of interest has been expressed, both here and in the other place, about Seroxat and the wider class of SSRIs. This debate provides us with a welcome opportunity to update the House on recent developments, as well as to address the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West.
  The concerns expressed by patient groups and in the media over the safety of Seroxat and other related drugs have been taken very seriously and acted on. In response to concerns about withdrawal reactions and the question of an association of Seroxat with suicidal behaviour, an expert working group of the Committee on Safety of Medicines—CSM—was convened to examine the safety of Seroxat and related antidepressants. That group, through the committee, has already delivered important new advice, but it has more to do—I shall come to that in a moment.
  Seroxat was not, and never had been, licensed for use in those under 18, but it was used in that age group outside its licence. New data on Seroxat use in children under 18 years were evaluated promptly as soon as they became available and was considered by the CSM. Ministers accepted the committee's advice that the benefits of Seroxat in children for the treatment of depressive illness did not outweigh the risks, and that children under 18 years of age should not use Seroxat. Therefore, in a written statement to both Houses on 10
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  June last year, the Government announced new advice from the CSM advising against the use of Seroxat in children under the age of 18 for the treatment of depression. Since then, the balance of risks and benefits of Seroxat has been the subject of a referral to the European equivalent of the CSM—the Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products, or CPMP—which is undertaking a further review of all the available evidence on Seroxat. In the United States, as hon. Members will be aware, the Food and Drug Administration has been considering the use of SSRIs in children and is considering what regulatory action is necessary.
  Thus in Europe and across the world, the UK has taken action ahead of other regulators to issue clear advice on the risks and benefits of treatment with Seroxat in the under-8 age group, and has gone further still to consider the remaining five drugs in the SSRI class and one that is related. Most recently, on 10 December last year, a full review of the remaining drugs in the class was published, again in a written statement to both Houses. Importantly, responding to feedback from clinicians and others, the Government took the unprecedented step of releasing summaries of the clinical trial data on which the advice was based to ensure total transparency for health care professionals, patients and the public.
  I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West will join me in paying tribute to the rigorous approach that is being taken by the expert working group of the CSM. The group has completed the most comprehensive review yet undertaken of the safety of SSRIs in paediatric use, and is now focused on completing its task of reviewing all the data on the use of Seroxat and related drugs in adults.
  All lines of evidence are being examined, including a dedicated research study that uses the general practice research database to examine the evidence further, especially the difficult question about the age at which the benefits of treatment outweigh the risks.
  Paul Flynn: Does the general practice research database mean that my hon. Friend has evidence from doctors? We now know about the extraordinary underreporting by doctors, who have many things to do.
  It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
  Paul Flynn: Can my hon. Friend influence the body to accept evidence from the general public and not only from the medical profession? The Seroxat users association makes that complaint.
  Miss Johnson: I believe that that refers to the yellow card scheme, with which I shall deal shortly. My hon. Friend asked when the group was expected to complete its work. It is expected to report in the summer. I am sure that that is welcome news.
  At this time, CSM advice is that in adults, the benefits of treatment outweigh the risks. I am sure that both my hon. Friends agree that we need to be clear that patients who benefit from Seroxat or other SSRIs should not be frightened into stopping their medication. Indeed, my

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  hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West made a similar comment. Patients who experience side effects or are worried about their treatment should discuss that with their doctor.
  Following paediatric advice and taking on board patients' comments, the information to patients that accompanies Seroxat was revised to reflect patient reports more closely. My hon. Friend also made that point. The MHRA has issued a question and answer leaflet to form the basis of discussions between doctors and patients. That is also available on the MHRA website.
  On the resources available to support the group's work, the chairman of the MHRA has given us his personal assurance that the important work is being resourced as a priority. The team, which includes medical, professional, scientific and statistical expertise, has demonstrated considerable commitment to ensuring that the work is taken forward urgently.
  It is right that the expert group adapted its work programme to reflect new information on paediatric use, first on Seroxat and then on the other drugs, to prioritise consideration of other paediatric data. I know that the group is now keen to tackle the wider issues with all due speed, but they must also be tackled thoroughly and in a way that will stand up to scrutiny.
  Let us consider the alleged delay by GlaxoSmithKline in submitting data to the MHRA. The agency treats seriously any failure to comply with the law and has a statutory responsibility to enforce the requirements of both European and UK law. The obligations on marketing authorisation holders within the law are clearly set out and failure to comply with them properly is serious and potentially a criminal offence, with the penalty of fines or imprisonment.
  I am sure that hon. Members understand that, in those circumstances, I cannot make any statement that would prejudice the investigation or a potential prosecution of one or more parties. I can assure hon. Members that the issues will be pursued without fear or favour, but I cannot say more in public about the facts or what proof may or may not exist to suggest that a breach of the law has occurred.
  Let me deal with some of my hon. Friend's other points. I have already answered the question about the time frame for the inquiry reporting. He also asked about confidence in the MHRA and its relationship with the industry. I assure him that there are clear safeguards
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  in MHRA staffs terms and conditions, as with those of civil servants, to prevent any influence. Furthermore, the governance of the agencies is constituted to oversee its operations appropriately.
  There are clear powers in the medicines legislation to require the marketing authorisation holders to submit all data that bear on any risk or benefit to the producers. I can assure my hon. Friend that I do not share his concerns about the operation of the MHRA.
  In regard to the prescription of unlicensed drugs to children, we are clear that the use of such drugs is a matter for the individual responsibility of those who decide to prescribe them. As my hon. Friend will appreciate, this is generally a matter for the medical practitioners deciding to issue the prescription, as it would be for any other treatment issues between doctor and patient. We are working towards producing an effective strategy to deliver medicines to children, and towards ensuring that they are licensed pending new EU legislation that will become effective in 2006. There will therefore be a change in the arrangements, but it will not involve an end to the prescription of unlicensed drugs in relation to children, for the reasons that I have already given.
  The National Institute for Clinical Excellence is producing guidance on the effective management of depression, which should tackle the question of prescription and over-prescription in this area. We are currently reviewing the yellow card scheme and will be considering proposals to strengthen it. The reports from patients have been a valuable contribution to the SSRI review and, yes, the current independent review of the yellow card scheme will make proposals on patient reporting. I can therefore assure my hon. Friend that many of the issues that he has raised are either in hand or being taken forward very seriously.
  It has not been possible to address every issue that might arise out of this debate, but I hope that I have made clear the Government's actions to date, and our absolute determination to establish all the facts—as far as that is possible—and not to shrink from the action necessary to protect and promote public health by ensuring that Seroxat and the related antidepressants are used to maximum benefit and with minimum risk. The Government are committed to ensuring that that course of action is carried out efficiently and effectively.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at eight minutes past Ten o 'clock.