Commons Sitting of 24 June 2004

Preamble
The House met at half-past Eleven o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRAYERS

  NEW WRIT
  Ordered,
  That Mr. Speaker do issue his Warrant for the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the borough constituency of Leicester, South in the room of James Marshall, Esquire, deceased.—[Ms Armstrong.]

  NEW WRIT
  Ordered,
  That Mr. Speaker do issue his Warrant for the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the Borough Constituency of Birmingham, Hodge Hill in the room of the right hon. Terry Davis, who since his election for the said borough constituency has accepted the office of Steward and Bailiff of Her Majesty's three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham in the county of Buckinghamshire.—[Ms Armstrong.]

Oral Answers to Questions
  ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS
  The Secretary of State was asked—
  ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS

    Civil Servants
    Mr. David Heath: What plans she has to move civil servants (a) within her Department and (b) in agencies for which her Department has responsibility, presently based in London to rural areas of England. [180204]
    The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Margaret Beckett): Work is under way to evaluate how and where civil servants should be located to meet the business needs of the Department and its agencies. That work will complement the Lyons review on public sector relocation and the Gershon efficiency review.
    Mr. Heath: I suppose that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will eventually give a response to the Haskins review and, indeed, the reviews that the right hon. Lady mentioned. Would it not be a splendid idea if it showed its commitment to rural areas by moving headquarters staff to, for instance, the west country, where staff might occasionally meet
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    dairy farmers, use rural bus services and experience the glories of wetland areas? If she wants a suitable site, I am happy to suggest Frome.
    Margaret Beckett: I assure the hon. Gentleman that he is not the only person with ideas for places, including areas in the south-west, where staff could go. We hope to make an announcement soon on the Haskins review, and he will understand that I do not wish to anticipate discussion of any further decisions. We are, however, mindful of the fact that our Department has a high profile and that there is a strong need to provide services in rural areas.
    Mr. David Kidney: Will my right hon. Friend accept my stronger bid? If Prue Leith succeeds in her plan for a visitor attraction, chefs' training centre and food hall in the Great British Kitchen at Stafford, would my right hon. Friend regard Stafford as sufficiently rural—[Interruption.] This is important. Does my right hon. Friend think that the synergies with the work of her Department are sufficiently strong for Stafford to be an excellent location for those civil servants?
    Margaret Beckett: That is an interesting observation, and it reinforces my caution about giving advice about the decisions that will be made.
    Mr. James Gray: The Secretary of State boasts of her plans to redeploy staff to rural areas, but if all those plans were implemented, they would affect 673 jobs out of 31,000 in the DEFRA family. Is the Minister aware of the evidence that her permanent secretary, Sir Brian Bender, gave the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee last Wednesday, in which he said there was a policy of "deliberate churning" of DEFRA staff, which means that more than half of all senior civil servants are brand new to the job? Sir Brian went on to say that 49 per cent. of staff are proud to work for DEFRA. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether she is proud to be in charge of a Department that deliberately churns its staff, in the permanent secretary's expression, and where 51 per cent. of staff are apparently ashamed to work?
    Margaret Beckett: Yes, I am proud to be in our Department, which I think is an extremely good Department. I take the hon. Gentleman's point about what presumably concerns him about the phrase "churning of staff", but there is considerable merit—not least in a Department like ours, where there are great synergies across the subject specialties that the Department covers—in people acquiring a range of experience and expertise. We believe that the Department is better for it.
    Hugh Bayley: I congratulate the Department on moving the Pesticides Safety Directorate headquarters, the Meat Hygiene Service headquarters and many other DEFRA staff to their brand-new, purpose-built headquarters accommodation at Kings Pool in York, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend on moving the Central Science Laboratory to Sand Hutton in rural North Yorkshire, just outside York.

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    May I remind her that North Yorkshire is the largest rural county in England, and urge her to move further DEFRA jobs there without delay?
    Margaret Beckett: The longer the question goes on, the more confident I am that whatever decision is ultimately made, it will be extremely unpopular with large numbers of hon. Members.

    Queen Bees
    Mr. David Cameron: What steps she has taken to urge the EU to permit the import of queen bees from Hawaii; and if she will make a statement. [180205]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): We have approached the European Commission on a number of occasions about the import of queen bees from Hawaii. The trade will be able to resume when the United States can match European standards for bee health controls. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree that we must do all we can to protect our bees from foreign pests and diseases, such as the small hive beetle and American foul brood.
    Mr. Cameron: Does the Minister share the frustration of my bee-keeping constituent, Mr. Burrows, who wants to import queen bees from Hawaii, as he has done before? Is the Minister aware that the Department has said that Hawaii has a high bee health status? While I am sure he would welcome a fact-finding mission to Hawaii, and I would gladly go with him, will he consult his wall map and see that Hawaii is 1,625 miles from mainland USA? So will he get down to Brussels and tell officials to amend their rules, which are stopping my constituent producing the best honey?
    Mr. Bradshaw: I am aware that Hawaii is a very long way away from mainland USA, but I am afraid that Hawaii must be treated as territorially part of the USA for this purpose. I point out to the hon. Gentleman's constituent that there are alternative sources for queen bees: Argentina, New Zealand and Australia, and I understand that Slovenia and Greece, both in the European Union, also produce very fine queens.
    Ann Winterton: While the British pig industry has managed to contain the fall in production, which has levelled out at 500,000 tonnes—
    Hon. Members: Ask your question.

    Pig Industry
    Ann Winterton: What measures her Department is taking to promote the British pig industry. [180206]
    The Minister for the Environment and Agri-environment (Mr. Elliot Morley): The British Pig Executive of the Meat and Livestock Commission is the
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    body responsible for promoting the interests of the British pig industry. My ministerial colleagues and I are happy to support those activities.
    Ann Winterton: Queen bees carried me away for a moment, Mr. Speaker.
    While the British pig industry has managed to contain the fall in production, which has levelled out at about 500,000 tonnes, with prices remaining sustainable at present, is the Minister aware that pig producers are still under considerable pressure from imported pig and pig-meat products, much of which it would be illegal to produce in the United Kingdom because of our higher animal welfare standards, such as the banning of stall and tether production? Will the Minister therefore support wholeheartedly the National Pig Association's best practice guidelines to be published next month, and encourage retailers and the food service sector alike to sign up to UK sourcing and honesty in the food chain?
    Mr. Morley: I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes in relation to the UK pig industry. She is right: it produces meat to high welfare standards. We have been campaigning for the same standards across the EU, and European producers will ultimately meet the UK standards. At present, there is an advantage for UK producers in terms of marketability. In that respect, we warmly welcome the industry's efforts to speak to retailers, and in principle we support its approach to the code of practice. We look forward to talking to the industry to see how we can take matters forward.

    Dairy Industry
    Richard Younger-Ross: How many dairy farmers have left the industry in the last 12 months. [180207]
    The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Margaret Beckett): We do not hold figures for the number of dairy farmers who have left the industry. The agricultural census for England shows that between June 2002 and June 2003, there was a net reduction of 786 holdings where dairy farming is the predominant activity
    Richard Younger Ross: May I suggest that the Secretary of State should hold such figures? At the beginning of this week, the Western Morning News reported that many farmers in the south-west are losing up to £24,000 a year and that more than 3,000 dairy cattle a week are being sold off. My constituent, Anthony Rew, questioned me the other day about how he could continue in the dairy industry when last year he received less than 17p a litre. What action will the Secretary of State take to preserve the British dairy herd from decimation?
    Margaret Beckett: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is well aware that there is overcapacity in milk production. He will also be aware that the Government have taken initiatives through the Food Chain Centre and through my noble Friend Lord Whitty and the Dairy Supply Chain Forum. Through those means, a considerable amount of advice is available to the industry. The hon. Gentleman will also be conscious of

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    the fact that there are genuine problems in dairy and that they are not necessarily resolvable at the wave of a ministerial wand.
    Mr. Lindsay Hoyle: I know that my right hon. Friend is very concerned about the future of farming in the UK, but dairy farming in particular has suffered. We can see that the monopolies of the supermarket are not fair. There should be a fair price at the farm gate to ensure that dairy farming continues and that we can attract young people into dairy farming. If we cannot do so, we will see the end of such farming in the UK. We need help and protection, and I will welcome whatever support she can give.
    Margaret Beckett: I understand the concern that my hon. Friend expresses. The latest milk price, the April price, was the highest April price since 2001, at just under 18p a litre. He rightly said that this is a long-running saga. There is concern in the industry and there are difficulties, but he will know that the Office of Fair Trading has recently undertaken a compliance audit of the supermarket code of practice in order to try to address some of the concerns that have been raised by hon. Members in all parts of the House.
    Andrew George: Following on from the question of the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle), does the Secretary of State accept that dairy farmers in the UK are among the most efficient in Europe? She must reflect on the fact that they are being paid less and going out of business in their droves. What discussions has she had with the Secretary of state for Trade and Industry? Does she accept that now is the time to strengthen the supermarket code of practice to ensure that dairy farmers and other farmers are given the proper protections in the market that they richly deserve, now?
    Margaret Beckett: I can only repeat that there are, and have been for a very long time, genuine problems in the dairy industry. The Office of Fair Trading has considered the position and reported on a number of occasions, but it has responded, as we hoped that it would, to the concerns that continue to be expressed by producers. For that reason, it has undertaken a compliance audit, and we await the results. I am afraid that there is no point in hon. Members continuously saying, "Let us look at it again." We have many conversations with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and, through her, with the Office of Fair Trading. I can only say yet again that, however often the matter has been looked at, the Office of Fair Trading has up to now been unable to find the sort of distortion of competition that I know many in the industry suspect exists. I repeat that it is presently undertaking a further compliance audit, and we await the results.
    Mr. David Drew: My right hon. Friend will have seen the report from the Select Committee on Agriculture, which highlighted the level of distrust in the industry. One of the recommendations made by the Committee was that the Government
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    should remain in the chair in the supply chain initiative to ensure that the sector pulls together. Will she ensure that that continues to happen?
    Margaret Beckett: Yes, indeed, I will. Many people welcome the Dairy Supply Chain Forum's work, and we will continue to keep up the pressure. That includes, for example, our acceptance of the Select Committee's recommendation, which I warmly welcome, that the OFT and the Competition Commission should do more to convey the fact that the dairy sector understands that they are not opposed to vertical integration in the sector. The Select Committee report, to which we shall respond in due course, is interesting, and it confirms the existence of considerable, long-standing problems.
    Mr. Michael Jack: I am grateful for the Secretary of State's acknowledgment of the importance of the Select Committee report on milk pricing. Can she assure me that one of the priorities for the Dairy Supply Chain Forum will be to establish a proper dialogue about openness and transparency in the milk industry, because different sections of the industry seem not to engage in such a dialogue? Will she also ensure that Lord Whitty understands what the forum is about? When I asked him what it does, he said:
    "I am not sure of the precise terms of reference".
    Margaret Beckett: First, I share the right hon. Gentleman's view that greater openness and transparency are required, and, secondly, I share the Select Committee's view that many of the sector's difficulties are issues for the industry, although it is important for the Government to do what we can to help the industry to help itself. I was slightly surprised by the right hon. Gentleman's remarks about my noble Friend Lord Whitty, because most people know how well my noble Friend understands the difficulties and how much he has done to help.

    Single Farm Payment
    Mr. Andrew Robathan: What assessment she has made of the amount of administration and form-filling that will be involved in ensuring compliance with the single farm payment. [180208]
    The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Margaret Beckett): Common agricultural policy reform will bring significant benefits for our agriculture industry. It will introduce a new freedom to farm and will release our producers from a significant burden of bureaucracy associated with the old CAP.
    Mr. Robathan: I hope that that is right. I must declare that I am a farmer, and that I consider myself to be relatively—I stress "relatively"—well educated and intelligent, but filling in the integrated administration and control scheme form is one of the most mind-numbingly complex things that I do each year. The Secretary of State should spend an hour trying to fill in that form, which is extraordinary.
    Although I broadly welcome the single farm payment—I would welcome the scrapping of the CAP even more—farmers throughout the country are

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    concerned that it will impose heavier burdens, particularly with regard to soil management plans and the like. Can the Secretary of State reassure farmers that the bureaucratic burden and the cost of compliance will not be heavier than under the CAP, which involves filling in a ludicrous number of forms?
    Margaret Beckett: I assure the hon. Gentleman that nobody will be more disappointed than Labour Members and me if CAP reform does not result in substantially greater simplicity. At least two of the 10 schemes that are being replaced involved up to 12 claims a year. Although the complexity is greater than if we went straight to the new scheme, the transition period is unfortunate but inevitable. In the long term, it is better to provide an adjustment period, and the new scheme, which involves one form, one payment date and one application, should make a huge difference.
    Diana Organ: The overwhelming majority of farmers recognise that administration and form-filling are necessary to avoid fraud, to create a healthy and safe environment and to allow the meat that we eat to be traced. Although farmers endeavour to fill in forms promptly and correctly, they may be overwhelmed by farm tasks during busy periods. That happened to a farmer in my constituency, Mike Manning, who forgot to register a couple of his calves because he was silaging. The British Cattle Movement Service helpline informed him that he could register his animals by phone or fax. That was new to him and to many other farmers in my constituency. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that farmers are made aware of the facility whereby they can register their animals not only on the website but by phone and fax—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that the Secretary of State understands the case.
    Margaret Beckett: I take my hon. Friend's point entirely. I am sorry to learn that her constituent was not aware that we are trying to make it easier for people to meet the requirements. I share her view that it is important to make farmers aware of that, especially as we can move increasingly towards easier methods of access to schemes. The introduction of the new scheme will give us a good opportunity to do that.
    We hope that, in future, the Rural Payments Agency can build up a bank of information. That ties in with my hon. Friend's question and that of the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan). It will mean that only changes need to be notified, which will be an enormous help.
    Mr. David Curry: The right hon. Lady will appreciate that, before the single farm payment can take effect, it will be necessary to define precisely where the moorland line lies. Does she also appreciate that farmers want to know what machinery will be set up to adjudicate that, who will man it and the sort of information that has to be supplied? Clearly, there is great uncertainty and farmers are anxious to be able to see their way forward as soon as possible.
    Margaret Beckett: I entirely appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's point. He knows that we are conscious of
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    the fact that, when the moorland line was established, no specific payment was associated with it because there was no perceived need at the time and there was therefore no appeal mechanism for individual decisions. We are now considering as a matter of urgency what process we can introduce to ensure that people have the opportunity to make representations about exactly where the moorland line should run. I hope that we can make an announcement about that in the not-too-distant future, because I share the right hon. Gentleman's view that it is important that farmers know where they stand.
    Sir Nicholas Winterton: Although I am reasured by the Secretary of State's reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), does she share my concern and that of many of my marginal land farmers and hill farmers and members of the Peak park authority that there may be far fewer farmers to fill in the forms under the single farm payment scheme? That is damaging to those who farm on our marginal land.
    Margaret Beckett: I am not sure what leads the hon. Gentleman to that conclusion, but there will inevitably be losers as well as winners. That applies to every change that is introduced. However, breaking the link between production and subsidy will generally benefit farming and allow for economic improvement. People must make the decisions that are right for the future of their businesses, but they will have considerable stability from knowing what they will receive for some eight years. People in many other industries would welcome such a business-planning horizon.
    Mr. John Whittingdale: Does the Secretary of State know that the proposal to require a 2 m uncultivated buffer strip as one of the cross-compliance measures to obtain a single farm payment may cost many farmers up to thousands of pounds? How do the Government justify the fact that the farmers who have done most for the environment by creating hedgerows and habitat will be worst affected by that proposal?
    Margaret Beckett: We have only just reached the closing date for the consultation process on cross-compliance. The idea of a 2 m strip was raised during it. Although some people expressed great concern, others take a different view—either that the proposal is welcome or that it does not present great difficulty. We shall study all those responses with great care before we reach our decisions.

    Hazardous Waste
    Sue Doughty: If she will make a statement on progress on the preparation of European Union directives relating to the disposal of hazardous waste. [180209]
    The Minister for the Environment and Agri-environment (Mr. Elliot Morley): Preparation of EU directives rests with the European Commission. Several existing directives relate to the disposal of hazardous

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    waste. The main ones are: the hazardous waste directive, the landfill directive and the waste incineration directive. Each is at various stages of implementation.
    Sue Doughty: I am particularly concerned about that answer because the landfill directive, which bans co-disposal of hazardous waste in landfill, becomes operational next month. There are insufficient sites in this country to deal with hazardous waste and we shall be faced with the prospect of thousands of lorry movements up and down the country, and of the fly-tipping of hazardous waste as lorries are turned away from the sites that they have previously used. Will the Minister stop expecting the industry to take a lead, when DEFRA has failed to do so, and will he put in place the remedies and resources necessary to deal with the problem that will arise next month?
    Mr. Morley: I do not accept what the hon. Lady says. She should understand that the industry is responsible for the investment and business decisions relating to waste disposal. Our responsibility is for regulation and permitting, through the Environment Agency and the Department. Her point about insufficient sites is also wrong, because the latest projection is that there will be adequate facilities for hazardous waste disposal in this country. She needs to understand that one of the reasons behind the change is the need to reduce the amount of hazardous waste going into landfill. At the moment, 60 per cent. of the hazardous waste stream is contaminated topsoil. We have recently heard that a major site that would otherwise have provided 400,000 tonnes of contaminated topsoil will instead bring in machinery to treat the soil on site. That is an example of exactly the kind of thing that we want to encourage.
    Mr. Bill O'Brien: I certainly support my colleague in pressing to reduce the amount of hazardous waste that is being produced. However, there are genuine concerns that, when the new rules come in next month, the amount of fly-tipping will increase as the cowboys who operate in the industry try to cut costs. We need the regulator—the Environment Agency—to be given the powers and resources necessary to ensure that those people are brought to justice. Will my hon. Friend also take note that the number of serious fly-tipping incidents involving hazardous waste doubled between 2001 and 2002, and that there are fears of further increases? Will he therefore ensure that the issue is given serious consideration?
    Mr. Morley: Yes, I want to assure my hon. Friend that we take the issue seriously, and that we are in no way complacent about the risks created by people who try to cut corners by operating illegally. Fly-tipping is one of our priorities, and we have given new powers both to the Environment Agency and to local authorities in relation to stop and search and to the confiscation of vehicles. We are also introducing new streamlined procedures for permits, so that the people who collect hazardous waste will need authorisation to do so and will be able to be traced. I agree with my hon. Friend that we must ensure that the necessary attention and priority are given to tackling those people involved in fly-tipping, and that we make an example of them in the courts.
    Mr. Simon Thomas: One concern must be that some of the hazardous waste that will now
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    be diverted, quite appropriately, from landfill will then go to be incinerated. In that regard, what is the Government's view of the Environment Agency's proposals to allow the burning of more toxic materials in cement kilns? Many local populations accepted the burning of tyres in cement kilns as an appropriate way of dealing with that waste, but they will be very concerned that more toxic materials might be burned under the new proposals. What do the Government have to say about that?
    Mr. Morley: What we say is that the very highest standards must apply when any material is burned in any incineration process. An impression has been given that a lower standard of regulation will apply to the burning of alternative fuels in cement kilns than in high-temperature incineration. That will not be the case. We will expect the Environment Agency to apply exactly the same strict standards as it applies at the moment, and each case will be considered on its individual merits.
    Mr. Michael Clapham: My hon. Friend will be aware that the EU large combustion plants directive is intended to reduce nitrogen and sulphur emissions. However, the two approaches that have been suggested—the national plan approach and the emission limit value approach—both threaten jobs. Will he therefore robustly tackle the Commission on adopting an effective hybrid approach that would not result in a loss of jobs and would protect British industry?
    Mr. Morley: I understand my hon. Friend's point on the large combustion directive. There are two alternatives, one of which is favoured by the manufacturing sector, and one of which is favoured by the coal sector. Outcomes are important to DEFRA: we want not only environmental standards but a system that reflects the operations and needs of the particular sectors. We are, of course, considering this issue, and we are talking to the Department of Trade and Industry. We understand his point very well.
    Mr. Tim Yeo: Is it not complacent to the point of irresponsible for the Minister to say, with less than a month to go, and with only five sites licensed to tackle hazardous waste, at least one of which is unlikely to come into operation, that facilities are now adequate? By trying to shove the blame on to industry, which is ready to rise to the challenge if only the Government would stop dithering over the detail of the regulations on the operation of licensed sites, the Government are trying to throw off their duties.
    The Environment Agency has warned that there will be more fly-tipping. We know that there will be vast increases in the distances over which waste must be carried, and that the Government's brownfield development programme may be jeopardised by that. Will the Minister urgently address the concerns expressed by businesses, which want to meet the challenge but are unable to do so as long as confusion and dithering remain the order of the day?
    Mr. Morley: First, may I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new role? It seems that Opposition Front Benchers are more into recycling than many other people, and I welcome that.

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    I can be accused of many things, but complacency is not one of them. We understand that there are risks when new regulations and changes are introduced. We must work with that. We set up the hazardous waste forum with the industry, and I do not seek to put blame on the industry. I merely wish to point out that DEFRA is not in the waste disposal business. I do not know whether it is a new Tory policy to nationalise waste disposal in this country. If so, that is quite interesting.
    It is not the case that the details are not available. The industry knows exactly what needs to be done. It has been involved at every stage of the process—there have been six consultations since 1999, an independent report, the Babtie report, was commissioned to examine the issue, and we regularly talk to the industry and the Environment Agency. It is true that not all the sites have yet been permitted, but the agency is working them at the moment. Fifteen merchant site applications are in, not counting in-house sites, and the Environment Agency is dealing with the applications of 37 separate cell sites.
    A reduction in sites in the short term is likely, and the cost of disposals will probably increase, but that is an inducement to reduce and treat waste. We do not in any way take fly-tipping lightly. There are always risks, and we will deal with them appropriately and will certainly actively pursue the matter.

    Water Metering
    Mr. Robert Key: What measures her Department is taking to promote the take-up of water metering in homes. [180210]
    The Minister for the Environment and Agri-environment (Mr. Elliot Morley): We expect individual water companies, under the guidance of the Office of Water Services, to keep customers informed of their rights of choice in their method of charging, including the right to a free meter.
    Mr. Key: Does the Minister agree that we all need to explain to people that the ever-increasing rise in demand for water relies on unsustainable levels of abstraction in southern England, especially in the Avon catchment? The only answer is to use less water. The best way of using less water is to relate the volume of water used directly to price.
    Mr. Morley: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. He has been a long-standing campaigner in relation to unsustainable abstraction in the chalk rivers in his constituency. He knows that I share his concern. I very much welcome the fact that the number of households moving to water meters is increasing, and I agree that it is the most sustainable way to manage water. He will also be aware of a working group involving Wessex Water, English Nature and the Environment Agency, which is examining the problems of abstraction in his area. It reports to me, and I take a personal interest in that.
    Mr. Peter Pike: I am one of those who already have a water meter, although I wish that I did not. My hon. Friend will recognise that water pricing policy and conditions vary from region to
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    region, and that the north-west is very different from the region of the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key). Now that people are becoming increasingly concerned about the level of increase in charges for sewerage and water services, is it not important to find a way to replace the rateable values, which no longer exist in reality but have teen preserved as the system for charging most customers? They now have no relevance at all, and it is time that a new system was found.
    Mr. Morley: I understand the point that my hon. Friend makes, but the alternative is for people to switch to water meters. Legislation provides for the free installation of water meters. An increasing number of people are choosing that option, and I expect that to continue. However, the price issue is very important, which is why we are carefully following what is happening in the price review and the work of the regulator. It is important to have a link between what people use and how they pay for it, and water metering is the best way of providing that.
    Norman Baker: But is it not simply indefensible, as the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) says, to continue to base most water bills on the theoretical value that a person could get from renting their property in 1973? Is it not indefensible that there is no link at all between consumption and the bill that lands on the doormat? Is the Minister aware that, in my constituency, South East Water plans to install a desalination plant, of all things—we normally associate such plants with the middle east—to produce enough water, because the Deputy Prime Minister wants more housing in the area? Would it not make more sense to have a proper system of universal metering? Should not the Government give a lead, rather than having metering by stealth, as at present? A system of metering with safeguards for those on low incomes would be sensible for the environment and better for consumers.
    Mr. Morley: The hon. Gentleman will be aware, because he served with me on the Water Bill, that water companies are free to apply to the Secretary of State to have powers for metering in their areas. So far, no water company has made that proposal, but the hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that we have supported the move to metering. We think that that is the right way forward, but while there are many properties that are not on a meter, there has to be some means of calculating the price that they pay. I am sure that there are many weaknesses. with the present system of rateable value, but the costs of moving to an alternative system would also produce winners and losers, and that system would still have problems. It would not necessarily give anyone a better advantage. A greater advantage is gained by continuing to encourage people to move to water meters, which is why they are provided free of charge.
    Mr. Gordon Prentice: Is it not a paradox that some parts of the country are awash with water while others suffer drought? What consideration have the Government given to constructing a national water grid?
    Mr. Morley: That has been discussed. My hon. Friend is right to say that there are huge regional differences in

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    water. The eastern region of England has less rainfall per head of population than Sudan. This issue is one not just of development but of proper water resource management. The costs of establishing a national grid through pipes are very high, and the establishment of such a grid by linking river systems would have environmental and ecological consequences that we could not ignore. We must take those factors into account.
    Richard Ottaway: This question is about not just how, but how much, people are charged for their water. The Minister will be aware that prices are going up, but has he fully absorbed why? The reasons include national insurance and pension liabilities, a new tax and financing regime and, worst of all, a lack of investment in infrastructure because of an artificial price cut in the run up to the last election. The pigeons are now coming home to roost, with a 30 per cent. rise in water charges. Will the Minister accept that that is wholly the result of Government action?
    Mr. Morley: No, I most certainly will not accept that. We have an independent water regulator, although that seems to have escaped the hon. Gentleman's attention. Of course there are issues relating to price pressures on water and I do not dispute that there is a combination of those issues at work, which the regulator must take into account. Companies take them in to account in their draft business plans. The biggest single factor is, of course, continued investment and maintenance of capital assets, which has led to a major clean-up of our rivers and beaches. That has led to the best quality water that we have ever had in this country. While no one welcomes price increases, people nevertheless want continued improvements in the quality of water that they enjoy—both for drinking and in relation to the aquatic environment of this country.

    Animal Slaughtering
    Mr. Graham Allen: How many animals were slaughtered in the UK to provide food in the last year for which figures are available; and if she will make a statement. [180211]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): Mr. Speaker, 27 million cattle, sheep and pigs, and 877 million poultry were slaughtered in 2003.
    Mr. Allen: I thank the Minister for that reply. Wearing his environment hat rather than his agriculture hat, he will know that it takes 10 tonnes of corn to make 1 tonne of beef. Does my hon. Friend feel that the level of meat eating—in this country and, indeed, globally—is sustainable in the long term? What research is his Department undertaking to ensure that we sustain our environment both nationally and globally?
    Mr. Bradshaw: I think that my hon. Friend is right to say that it is possible to feed more people on grain than it is on meat, but I would point out that the biggest increase in meat consumption has been taking place in the developing world, particularly in those countries that enjoy the highest economic growth in south-east
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    Asia. The evidence from European meat consumption, which is pretty stable, suggests that it gets to a level at which it does not increase any more, while at the same time productivity increases at a faster rate. I am not quite sure that my hon. Friend's argument completely holds water.
    Mr. Edward Garnier: The Minister will know that my Harborough constituency is a beef-producing constituency that is dependent, agriculturally, on that sector of the industry. Will he let me know when the Government will ensure that the over-30 month scheme is removed so that we can develop the sector better and export meat to the developing countries that the Minister mentioned?
    Mr. Bradshaw: We are as keen as the hon. Gentleman to get the OTMS system lifted and our beef exports resumed. I am sure that he will welcome the fact that the beef sector has recovered since foot and mouth, and that beef prices are now increasing quite usefully. We are working hard in discussions with the Food Standards Agency and our colleagues in the Department of Health to make progress on both OTMS and the export scheme.
    Alistair Burt: At the East of England show last week, I was repeatedly asked by farmers and consumers alike why our food labelling still fails to distinguish adequately between meat produced from animals grown, raised and slaughtered in this country and that from elsewhere. Is the Minister satisfied that nothing further can be done with food labelling?
    Mr. Bradshaw: As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, food labelling is now a matter for the Food Standards Agency. We are as keen as he is on having accurate consumer advice when it comes to labelling and country sourcing. Most of the meat that he would buy in supermarkets or from his local butcher would be labelled if it were produced in this country. We want to improve that, but it is a matter for the Food Standards Agency.

    Fisheries
    Mr. Austin Mitchell: If she will provide financial help for the Grimsby and east coast fishing fleet over the next two years. [180212]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): Fishing communities are already benefiting from various grants, which will continue, but we do not consider it a sensible use of public funds to maintain over-capacity in the fleet.
    Mr. Mitchell: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer, but I hope that he will not enter into any premature no saying, without first studying the report by Andrew Palfreyman, commissioned by Yorkshire Forward, on how to arrest the decline in the catching side in Yorkshire and Humberside. It shows that we have already declined disproportionately—more heavily than in any other part of the country—and that unless

    1447
    support is provided, that disproportionate decline will continue. Owners will sell their track records to others who are receiving Government support–a code name for Scotland. That will lead to the industry falling below the critical mass necessary to support the jobs and facilities onshore. The report also says that it might lead to the closure of one or more white fish catching ports on the Yorkshire east coast. I hope that my hon. Friend will study the report closely—I am waving it at him as I speak—and that he will consider ways of helping the industry on the east coast of Yorkshire to ensure that it does not bear another disproportionate decline.
    Mr. Bradshaw: I shall certainly study the report carefully. My hon. Friend is right to say that fishermen in his constituency have suffered disproportionately, but that is because the stocks that they have targeted—cod stocks in particular—are the ones that have become especially depleted. However, he is wrong to suggest that the Scottish industry is being treated differently this year. It is not: it has not received any of the tie-up grants, for instance, that I imagine my hon. Friend would advocate for the industry in his own area. In the end, the industry in his area wants a sustainable future, so that it can make profits. That will require recovery in the cod stocks, and that is why the measures that we have introduced are so essential.
    Mr. Henry Bellingham: Is the Minister aware of the Wash inshore shellfish fishery in my constituency? Fishermen there fish for cockles, whelks, mussels and shrimps, and they are not interested in grants from the Government so much as in having a system of environmental health testing that is fair, compared with the EU. Has the Minister had a chance to visit the Wash fishery; and, if not, will he come and meet fishermen in my constituency?
    Mr. Bradshaw: I should be delighted to consider a visit to the hon. Gentleman's constituency. I am well aware of the problem that he raises. We have been in discussions with the Food Standards Agency about the methods that have been used up to now to test the waters used by our shellfish industry. I believe that the latest statements from the FSA will address the concerns that the hon. Gentleman raises.

    Litter
    Mr. Bob Blizzard: What steps she is taking to reduce the amount of litter dropped in public places. [180213]
    The Minister for the Environment and Agri-environment (Mr. Elliot Morley): We are undertaking a number of initiatives aimed at reducing litter in public places. These include introducing a voluntary code of practice for the fast food industry, revising the code of practice on litter and refuse, issuing guidance to responsible bodies on dealing with drug-related litter, and reducing the irresponsible disposal of chewing gum. We also fund ENCAMS, the charity that runs the Keep Britain Tidy campaign, to undertake targeted public campaigns aimed at changing behaviour.
    Mr. Blizzard: Does my hon. Friend agree that, as well as spending millions of pounds on cleaning up litter, we
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    should do much more to deal with the people who drop it? I introduced two private Members' Bills on this subject, and I was delighted that the Government introduced section 119 of the Local Government Act 2003, which gave local authorities the power to retain revenue from fixed-penalty fines to enforce the law. However, some councils do not take advantage of that power, and I am sorry to say that one such is my own Waveney district council. What can my hon. Friend do to ensure that councils do what is expected of them, and make the polluter pay?
    Mr. Morley: I am very concerned to hear that my hon. Friend's local council has not taken up the power that it has been given, especially as my hon. Friend deserves much credit for changing the law to allow local authorities to keep she revenue accruing from the fines that they levy for littering. That is a very unusual facility, and it allows councils to plough back the money into tackling the important quality-of-life issue that is the litter problem. We meet the Local Government Association regularly, and I assure my hon. Friend that I shall take the matter up in those discussions.
    Miss Anne McIntosh: It is clear that the Government's action has not worked. There has been a 12 per cent. increase in litter in the past year and—given that the Minister mentioned chewing gum—a 94 per cent. increase in chewing gum droppings. Westminster city council issued 21,000 litter fines in the past five years, whereas Bath council issued only one. When will the Minister get tough on litter and tough on the causes of litter? When will he require councils to levy fines in a uniform manner?
    Mr. Morley: The hon. Lady will know that the Government's relationship with local government means that local councils have a great deal of autonomy about their choices and responsibilities. I am very glad that some local authorities take the litter problem seriously, and we are backing that up with our talks with the industry about matters such as the serious problem posed by chewing gum. Also, ENCAMS provides funding for awareness campaigns that are aimed specifically at young people—although I am sorry to say that the problem of littering is not confined to them. We want all local authorities to meet the standards of the best, which is why we have the local government quality programme. As I told my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard), we talk to the LGA regularly about this matter. That organisation would be concerned if local authorities, having been given as much autonomy as is possible, were not using it effectively in the interests of the people whom they are elected to serve.

    Animal Welfare
    Chris Bryant: What plans she has to reform the laws regarding cruelty to domestic animals. [180216]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): We hope to publish the draft Animal Welfare Bill this summer. The Bill will update and

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    consolidate over 20 pieces of animal welfare legislation dating back to 1911 and will introduce a new duty of care on all animal owners.
    Chris Bryant: I am delighted to hear what the Minister has just had to say. Many people feel that the fact that our legislation is so piecemeal and hideously outdated—going back to 1911, as the Minister said—is a disgrace. For example, it is still legal to tether a dog all day as long as it has minimum food and shelter. Will the Government introduce changes to ensure that RSPCA officers can intervene not on the 25th occasion that they visit an animal that is being treated cruelly but on the first occasion?
    Mr. Bradshaw: Yes, the Bill will deal with the problem that my hon. Friend outlines; it will include in the duty of care an obligation to avoid treating an animal in such a way that suffering is bound to occur.

    Silkstream Flood Defence Project
    Mr. Andrew Dismore: If she will make a statement about progress with the Silkstream flood defence project. [180217]
    The Minister for the Environment and Agri-environment (Mr. Elliot Morley): The Environment Agency expects construction work at Prince Edward's playing field in Harrow to start later this year. This site is the first of six flood storage reservoirs to be constructed in the Silkstream catchment. All other work on the project is expected to be complete in the next three years, subject to securing the necessary funding and successful negotiations with landowners.
    Mr. Dismore: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that reply. He will know that the issue has been outstanding since 1992 when the problems were first identified. There is some local concern that the standards to which the scheme is being developed will not provide for the once in 100 years flood. Can he assure me that the scheme is the best that can possibly be designed? Will any financial assistance be available to Barnet council, which has to provide a significant share of the finding?
    Mr. Morley: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend. He is right. I know from many years of standing at the Dispatch Box that he has been a doughty campaigner for the scheme on behalf of his constituents. It is a £7.2 million scheme that will protect more than 1,100 households in his constituency. I understand what he says about the standards, but they are subject to a range of independent assessments and re views and the scheme will go ahead only if it meets the three criteria of cost-benefit, environmental impact and technical specification. There is a formula for funding, and the local authority will receive a share of the funding under it.
    Mr. Nick Gibb: As a result of the Government's decision a few years ago to prioritise flood relief schemes such as the worthy Silkstream project, important projects to protect against coastal erosion such as the one at Middleton-on-Sea in my constituency have been put off. Given that we
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    have had a few years of focusing on flood relief, is it not now time to restore a more equitable point scoring system that will enable a number of delayed coastal erosion schemes to proceed?
    Mr. Morley: The whole point of the scoring system is to have an open, transparent and coherent system for prioritising schemes. It is not right to say that it discriminates against coastal schemes. In the past 18 months, the bulk of our expenditure has been on coastal schemes because they have come highest on the priority scoring system and met the criteria. Decisions will always have to be taken on priorities and which schemes to take forward. I strongly believe that a point scoring system that allows people to understand where they are in the priorities is the best approach.

    Departmental IT Strategy
    David Taylor: What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the departmental IT strategy in delivering flexible, high-quality and cost-effective computer systems in support of her Department's services; and if she will make a statement. [180218]
    The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Margaret Beckett): An Office of Government Commerce review helped shape the strategy and the approach to implementation. Effective governance is in place to keep the strategy up to date and take implementation forward, and gateway reviews have been undertaken on major IT initiatives that are part of the strategy.
    David Taylor: There is a sad inevitability that the strategy will put its faith in outsourcing despite all the evidence from failed large-scale Government IT projects. How confident is the Secretary of State that the legitimate interests of clients and staff will not be subjugated to the commercial priorities of the chosen IT supplier and that future Ministers and taxpayers will not be left picking up the pieces?
    Margaret Beckett: I accept my hon. Friend's basic point entirely, in that the development of new IT strategies has a rich history of problems in both the private and public sectors. It is not clear to me that those are necessarily automatically related to outsourcing. There have probably been as many disasters when people have tried it in-house as from outsourcing. However, the Department is pursuing a rigorous process and we greatly needed improvement in our IT services. The process is being peer reviewed at every stage by the Office of Government Commerce and my hon. Friend had the opportunity to question the management side about the issue in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee the other day. I assure him that we are mindful of our reliance on good IT and we have no intention of seeing our staff or the taxpayer lose out.

NHS Improvement Plan
12.30 pm
The Secretary of State for Health (Dr. John Reid): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement about the NHS improvement plan. Almost four years ago, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister came to this House and made a statement to launch the NHS plan. He said then:
"The challenge is to make the NHS once again the health care system that the world … envies."—[Official Report, 27 July 2000; Vol. 354, c. 1261.]
I can tell the House that we are making good progress towards meeting that challenge. Today, I will set out that progress and our next steps in delivering the world-class service that people in this country deserve and expect.
I can confirm one principle at the outset. We will not waver from the founding principle of the national health service. Under this Government, NHS care will continue to be provided according to need and not according to ability to pay. No one will suffer disadvantage through lack of means, and no one will gain unfair advantage in medical treatment because of their financial position. The comprehensiveness, and above all the fairness, of the national health service are qualities that are already admired throughout the world, with a few possible exceptions, and this Government will retain them.
I can report today that the improvements promised in the NHS plan have been, and are being, delivered. We said that we would put more money into the NHS, in a sustained way—more than ever before. We have done just that, with an average of 7.6 per cent. real-terms growth for the last four years. We said that investment would help us to expand capacity. It has. Compared with 1997, the figures speak for themselves, with 67,500 more nurses and 19,000 more doctors working in the NHS; 68 major new hospitals built, under way or planned; and 224,000 new employees, 84 per cent. of whom are involved in direct patient care.
We said that those increases in capacity would mean improved services for patients and faster access to those services. That is now the case. There are now more than 258,000 fewer people on the in-patient waiting list, compared with March 1997. There are now virtually no waits of more than nine months for a hospital admission—down from more than 18 months in 1997. Almost 19 out of every 20 people are now seen, diagnosed and treated within four hours in accident and emergency departments—some of the best figures in the world. More than 97 per cent. of people can see a GP within 48 hours.
We said that we would put in place reforms to ensure that services improved. We have. We have brought in new contracts, new institutions and new services such as NHS Direct, which was used by 6.5 million people last year, and NHS walk-in centres. We have also embarked on the world's largest health-related IT programme.
Most importantly, we said that outcomes for patients would improve as a result of that investment and those reforms—and they have. To give but two illustrations, cancer death rates are down by more than 10 per cent. since 1997 and premature cardiovascular disease—heart-related—death rates are down by no less than
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23 per cent. or above since 1997. So what is clear is that extra investment and capacity have allowed us to meet the people's first requirement: a better resourced, more easily and faster accessed health service in their own area—not perfection, but solid, significant progress. But of course, there is still a huge amount to do, given the position from which we started. I would never claim that everything is perfect, and now is certainly not the time to consolidate or to be complacent; rather, it is the time to renew our radical vision for the national health service of this country—a vision to meet the expectations and ambitions of people today, of this generation, in this country.
That vision embraces an NHS that is not only fair to all of us but also personal—increasingly so—to each of us, offering all our people equal access to, and the power to choose from, the widest possible range of services of the highest quality, based on clinical need and not ability to pay. So today, the NHS improvement plan that I have published and laid before the House sets out radical ambitions: sustaining our record high investment; maintaining our improvement programme; offering patients an even greater degree of power, information, control and choice than ever before; and improving further the health of the population as a whole, targeting inequalities and promoting prevention as well as cure.
Let me give the main features of that plan. The first is investment. As the Chancellor made clear in his 2002 Budget, we are committed to sustained record investment in the NHS. Total investment will rise year on year to more than £90.2 billion by 2007–08, averaging 7.3 per cent. real-terms growth over the five-year period. I can confirm that all of that—every single penny—will be directed towards increasing capacity for everyone in this country. None of it will be diverted as a subsidy for the relatively well-off few to jump the waiting queue.
I can also tell the House today that under that new programme we will limit the whole patient journey from GP referral through out-patients and diagnostic tests and finally to treatment. There will be no more hidden waits—[Interruption.]—the hidden waits that extended to years under the last Government. I can therefore announce that by 2008, building on the improvements we have already made to the NHS, from the time they are referred by a family doctor to the door of the operating theatre, no one in this country will wait more than 18 weeks for an operation, which should ensure an average wait of about nine to 10 weeks for everyone: a maximum wait of years under the last Conservative Government for just part of the patient journey, but a maximum wait of just 18 weeks with a Labour Government for the whole journey—a measure of the difference between the two Governments.
In addition to that improvement in access, we want to fulfil our manifesto commitment and give patients a greater degree of information, power and choice over their treatment—not just for the well-off, not just for those with affluence or influence. We want all patients to be able to choose from a range of services that best meet their needs and preferences. We have been introducing that scope incrementally, as capacity in the NHS increases. By the end of next year, for instance, all patients who need to be admitted to hospitals for elective care will be offered the choice of four to five providers at the time that they are referred for treatment

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by their GP—[HON. MEMBERS: "Ah!"]. That pledge, which appears to be news to Members on the Opposition Front Bench, was made three years ago. [Laughter.] I am glad that they have now awakened. It is, in itself, a substantial step forward, but they will be delighted to know that I want to go further still today.
I can tell the House today that, by 2008, every patient referred by their GP will be able to choose to be treated at any facility in England—including, of course, their local hospital—that meets NHS standards and can provide care at the NHS price for the procedure that they need. [Interruption.] From a sedentary position, I am being asked—[Interruption]—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order.
Dr. Reid: From a sedentary position, I am being asked what is different from the policy put forward yesterday. I will oblige the House. Let me make it clear that it would be nothing short of hypocrisy to come to the House and promise that greater choice will be open to everyone, while reducing or diverting resources away from the national health service to a privileged few, allowing unlimited waiting times by removing targets and proffering an advantage in access to those with money. That combination would in reality, reduce choice for the many in this country and in practice extend it only to those able to pay the charges outside the NHS in the private sector. That hypocrisy would be precisely the effect of yesterday's proposals from the Conservative party. We will not do that.
Our choice is in reality for everyone, paid for by the NHS and backed by further resources in the NHS, by continuing reform and by new patient rights. But there is another group of patients for whom local services in the community are important—at least to Labour Members—so we will extend the greater personalisation of patient care to people with chronic and long-term medical conditions. [Laughter.] Those people are not a matter for laughter; they are people who are suffering from some incurable and extremely difficult illnesses—arthritis, diabetes and asthma. [Interruption.] They are to be taken seriously, not frivolously.
Some 17.5 million people in this country have long-term conditions that cannot yet be cured and that have a real impact on their life. Providing those people with the personalised support and care that they deserve and need to live fulfilling lives should be a priority for all of us. We will do that by providing thousands of new and additional community matrons, rolling out the expert patients programme across the country and ensuring that the new contract for GPs delivers the best care for patients—thousands of new people in the community to help the 17.5 million people whose suffering was such a cause of frivolity among those on the Opposition Benches.
As the Select Committee on Health has pointed out, we need to ensure that the NHS becomes more than just a sickness service. We have a duty as a Government to ensure that everyone has the chance to live a healthy life, and to foster prevention as well as providing cures. The White Paper that I will publish in the autumn will set out in more detail our plans to tackle the major causes of ill-health, including smoking, obesity and sexually transmitted infections. We will do that by ensuring that
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the NHS takes a leading role, but that it involves other relevant organisations. [Laughter.] I note that the reference to sexually transmitted infections causes schoolboy humour among those on the Opposition Benches.
The plan that I have outlined today will therefore deliver a national health service characterised by access based on need, not ability to pay; free delivery to everyone, not charges that can only be paid by some; investment in the mainstream national health service, not cuts or diversion; guaranteed waiting times, not unlimited waits; queue cutting, not queue jumping; and a national health service fair for everyone and personal to each of us, not just to those who can afford it. It is above all an improvement plan to ensure that the greatest gift ever from the people of this country to the people of this country—our national health service—will not only retain its basic fairness and equity, but be able to meet the expectations of all our people in this new century irrespective of their wealth, race, geographical dispersion or social standing and background. That is how the national health service started and that is how we will continue in this century. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The House must come to order.
Mr. Andrew Lansley: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for sending me a copy of his statement, but we knew yesterday morning what he intended. He told the "Today" programme that what the NHS needs is "more targets". No one in the NHS tells me that they need more targets. They tell me that they need less bureaucracy, fewer targets, more autonomy and more resources which reach the front line. Today, we have heard the Secretary of State reiterate Labour's pigheaded belief that setting a target is the same as getting things done. It is not. It is the staff in the NHS who get things done. It is the doctors, the nurses—[Interruption.] Is the Minister arguing with me? It is the doctors, the nurses, the professionals in the NHS, the support staff and the managers—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. This is an important statement; we will have some order.
Mr. Lansley: It is the doctors, nurses and professionals, it is the support staff and, indeed, the managers in the NHS who deliver health care. They tell me that targets distort clinical priorities and that red tape and bureaucracy stop them devoting the time that they wish to devote to caring for patients.
Let us take the Secretary of State's statement on his own terms. The Government have failed through their obsession with plans and targets. Let us look at the NHS plan 2000. It referred to
"an end to the postcode lottery in the prescribing of cancer drugs",
but the availability of some cancer drugs varies from 18 per cent. to 100 per cent. in different parts of the country. The NHS plan 2000 said there would be
"7,500 more consultants by 2004",
but the latest whole-time equivalent figure is just over 5,000. The director of human resources in the NHS has said:

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"we now know the way the target was originally constructed was not as helpful as it could have been".
On mental health, the NHS plan 2000 said that the Government would establish 335 crisis resolution teams, but the chief executive's report says there are 137.
On mixed-sex wards, the NHS plan said:
"old Nightingale wards will be phased out",
but the Commission for Health Improvement found mixed-sex wards and unassigned toilets in one in six of the acute trusts that it reviewed. On cancelled operations, the plan said:
"From 2000, when a patient's operation is cancelled"
they will be offered
"another binding date within 28 days",
but last year 5,500 patients were not readmitted within 28 days.
On dentistry, the plan said that the Government were
"firmly committed"—
in this instance Members will note that the NHS plan said "firmly committed"—
"to making high quality NHS dentistry available to all who want it by September 2001",
but 40 per cent. of children and nearly 60 per cent. of adults are not registered with an NHS dentist, and only just over 40 per cent. of dental practices are making NHS dentistry available.
On patient and public involvement, what happened to the letters on an individual's care being copied to the patient? That idea was in the NHS plan, but it disappeared. The NHS plan said that patient and public involvement would somehow be improved. It is my experience in my constituency that a community health council that did an effective job in scrutinising and representing patients is replaced by patients forums, and we do not even know who the members of that forum are. Labour's record is not one of targets set and targets met, but one of targets set and targets not met.
Let us consider what the Secretary of State is saying will happen. There was a lot of advance briefing about public health. We now know that there will be a White Paper in the autumn—as distinct from the summer, when he originally said it would be published. There is an epidemic of sexually transmitted infections. Cases of chlamydia and, I think, gonorrhoea have doubled. HIV infection has increased, whereas after the 1980s a successful Conservative-led campaign was fought against HIV infection and for safe sex.
The Government are now going to have a target on obesity, at a time when it is at a crisis level, as everyone has recognised far too late. As a result of binge drinking, young people are at serious risk of increases in liver disease. TB rates are up significantly and the Government have not delivered an action plan. Some 180,000 people have undiagnosed hepatitis C and there is no active screening programme. The Secretary of State talks about smoking. In his report, Sir Derek Wanless said that the Government's target on smoking was "unambitious". How likely is it to be achieved if the Secretary of State's attitude is that it is one of life's few pleasures? So the Government have failed on public health.
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Now the Secretary of State says that the Government are going to think about chronic disease—seven years after they came into office. My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) said in March that it was necessary for us to give patients greater control over the management of their care. Of course the Government are playing a game of grandmother's footsteps: we say one thing, and they follow along. But there is a big difference between the way in which we are going to deliver care for those with long-term diseases and the Government's approach.
We are going to design the service around the needs of patients, and there be an entitlement to a standard of care. The Secretary of State, however, says that he will have community matrons. Community nursing would be a jolly good thing. [Interruption.] The Government Chief Whip might like to know that there are 800 fewer district nurses than there were in 1997. She might also like to know that the number of episodes of care from health visitors has gone from 3.6 million in 1997–98 to 2.9 million and that the number of episodes of care from district nurses has gone from 2.2 million to 1.9 million. It has gone from 370,000 to 320,000 for community mental health nursing; from 930,000 to 830,000 for chiropody; and from 1 million to 500,000 for community dental services. We are not going to take any lessons from the Secretary of State about what is needed in the community—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Once again, I implore the House to hear these important statements with some civility.
Mr. Lansley: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The Secretary of State says that he has now converted to the idea of offering a choice. He might mention that to the rest of his party, because most of them have not. But how lacking in ambition is it for the Government to say that by 2008 people should be able to choose which hospital they have treatment in? It is another illustration of the Government's lack of ambition. We said yesterday—again, if imitation is a form of flattery, I suppose we should feel flattered—that patients should be able to choose where they have their treatment. We want that to be true for elective surgery at the end of 2005. Perhaps there is a practical reason why that will not be possible—for example, the NHS programme for IT not implementing, the electronic booking system in 2005 as the Government said it would. Perhaps the Secretary of State will tell us whether that is the constraint on extending choice in 2005, as we intend to do.
The Secretary of State also says that the Government are going to set a new target for waiting times. What they are proposing that people wait four and a half months for treatment in four years' time. He says that that will be 10 weeks on average. Of course there is a bit of a debate about what the average waiting time is. We are told many times that the average waiting time has gone down, but a letter from the permanent secretary at the Department of Health says:
"we are admitting a higher proportion of long waiters off the list and the median is rising."
So there it is: the median—the average—wait is rising in the NHS, and the permanent secretary to the Secretary of State's own Department tells me that that is true.

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The Secretary of State's ambition is in four years' time to make everyone in the NHS wait as long as the average now. We are told that the average wait is about 10 weeks. In fact, it is more like 13. In four years' time, the right hon. Gentleman's ambition is for the average waiting time to be virtually no different from what it is today. What has happened to the Government's ambition? We said yesterday that we want waiting lists to be a thing of the past. Four years ago in the NHS plan, the Government said:
"Traditional waiting lists for surgery will become a thing of the past."
There you have it, Madam Deputy Speaker. That is the difference between us and the Government. They had ambition and they failed; we have ambition and we are going to deliver. The choice for the public is clear: it is between a Conservative party that has the ambition to make waiting lists a thing of the past and a Labour party that wants patients to be left to wait.
Dr. Reid: That seems to have had a salutary effect on the hon. Gentleman's audience. In congratulating him on his appearance on the Front Bench, I must say that he was a bit let down by his colleagues. Only 19 of them were present, and one of them, who has now woken up, fell asleep during his contribution.
Let me try to deal with the hon. Gentleman's comments. I have now discovered why he does not understand the idea of reducing waiting times: he does not even understand the definitions. The truth of the matter is that for 60 years under successive Governments—it did not matter which Government were in power—the definition of a waiting time applied to only one third of the patient journey. It applied only to the period after the diagnosis to the treatment table. That was the only part that was measured. In other words, all the time waiting for a diagnosis and before it—the time between the GP visit and the first consultant visit—was disregarded. It was a hidden wait. So what we have measured for 60 years has been the last third. That last third, which is 10 weeks on average now, was years under the Conservatives.
I am not saying that that one last third will be 10 weeks in four years' time; I am saying that the whole journey—from beginning to end—will be an average of 10 weeks. So the Conservative Government gave us waiting times of years for one third of the journey and we are going to give the people or this country access within weeks for the whole journey. That is the difference between us.
Before I deal with the deficiencies in the NHS that the hon. Gentleman picked out, I will deal with choice. He said that we are promising today what he promised yesterday. That is not true. We are promising to put in the means to get to the end result of giving people real choice. Two things matter for choice. People would prefer to have the best treatment available at the end of the street, in the local hospital, with quick access. The biggest driving force for making people say, "I'd like to go elsewhere", is the lack of capacity in the system and long waits at the local hospital.
Yesterday, the Conservatives promised to give us unlimited waits by removing the targets on waiting times, and reduced resources by taking £1.5 billion out of the NHS for the minority in the private sector. They
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made a deceitful, hypocritical and disingenuous promise to the British people yesterday, and today we are setting out the means to give people a real choice.
I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman's point about deficiencies in the NHS. Yes, there are grave deficiencies in the NHS. Yes, there are shortages of midwives and of radiologists. Yes, there are still problems of new hospitals needed, new equipment needed and more nurses needed. However, by heaven, after 224,000 more staff—
Mr. George Osborne: All managers.
Dr. Reid:—40 new hospitals and 2000 refurbished premises—[Interruption.] I am coming to the comment that the additional staff are all managers. Do not worry. On behalf of the staff, I will not miss the Conservative party and hit the wall on that question. If after all those injections of capacity we are still so short, does not that show how dilapidated the NHS was under the Conservative Government?
I shall deal with the figures that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) gave, which in so many areas were spurious. Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition, from the Opposition Dispatch Box, made the most serious allegation in the most public forum in this country, impugning the staff of the NHS. He at least—now that it has been proven to be wrong—should have returned to the Opposition Dispatch Box and apologised to the House for misleading it. On behalf of his leader, who does not have the guts to do it, the hon. Gentleman should have apologised to the hard-working staff of the NHS. There are the time limits, where 20 months were mistaken for perhaps 14 weeks. That could have happened only to a Tory who was used to 20-month waiting lists for radiotherapy.
After reducing capacity in the NHS and introducing unlimited waits, the Leader of the Opposition then tells us that all waiting lists would be finished by the wave of a magic wand. It is Teletubby time in the House. The right hon. and learned Gentleman really believes that we are in La-La land. Yesterday, he gave us a cobbled together, incompetent, unfair and inefficient replay of the record of the Tory Government, which was a disaster for the NHS, and no one will believe otherwise.
Mr. Paul Burstow: I thank the Secretary of State for the courtesy of allowing me a chance to see his statement and the White Paper before he rose this afternoon.
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is entirely right for Members to bring to the House concerns and complaints from their constituents so as to get justice done, but that it is an entirely different matter to come to the House and parade a constituency case as propaganda? Surely that should not be what we do.
Liberal Democrats have supported the extra investment that is going into the NHS. At the last general election we had the courage and conviction to make the case, and we voted for it in the House. However, that investment will be wasted if innovation is stifled by ministerial meddling. Does the right hon. Gentleman understand that one of the messages that many will take from the statement and the White Paper is that the Government still do not trust the NHS to do

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the right thing? The culture of targets and tick-boxes, which ties the hands of doctors and nurses, gets in the way of clinical judgment and means that the sickest do not always get treated the quickest.
The Secretary of State has outlined his proposals for an 18-week target from the family doctor to the door of the operating theatre. Will he be honest with patients and start collecting and publishing diagnostic waiting times now? When will he start to publish all the waiting times for cancer treatments?
When it comes to choice, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that access to health care should never be based on a person's wealth, and that subsidising the better-off is no more than a gimmick in search of a blank cheque? On the subject of charges—the right hon. Gentleman has waxed lyrical about the founding principles of the NHS—why has he not taken the opportunity today to end the scandal of elderly people being charged for basic care? If more people are to receive intensive home care, will they have to raid their bank balances to pay for it? Is that what the Prime Minister meant yesterday by the right to charge—a right to charge the sick elderly, the frail elderly—for their basic care?
Why has the Secretary of State failed to announce a long overdue review of prescription charges, something that is particularly relevant to those with chronic and long-term medical conditions? The last such review was in 1968. Surely it is not fair that those who, for example, have diabetes get their prescriptions free of charge—rightly so—while those, for example, with cystic fibrosis do not. Surely that anomaly and that scandal should come to an end.
As for making most use of the investment that is going into the NHS—at a time when seven and a half hospitals, effectively, are being filled every year by those who pick up infections while they are in hospital—why does the White Paper say nothing about improving the way that infections are dealt with in our hospitals?
The future of the NHS, as the Secretary of State has said in his statement, depends crucially not only on services that cure people but on all services that prevent and postpone the progression of ill health. The White Paper sets some targets in that respect, but will the right hon. Gentleman say, for example, on smoking, that it is time to accept the overwhelming public health case and follow Ireland and other countries by banning smoking in enclosed public places?
As for obesity, is it not time to introduce clear front-of-package, traffic-light labelling on foodstuffs to give parents and other customers the information that they need?
The White Paper makes it clear that the Government do not trust the NHS to do the job. Under this Government, choice is for the pushy and the articulate, and under the Tories we know that it is about choice for the wealthy. The NHS must deliver choice for all. That means making sure that we have good quality health care delivered closer to home.
Dr. Reid: I shall respond as briefly as I can. The question of choice goes much wider than hospitals. It is about giving people power. We all know that in the real
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world there are some people in this country who get choice. There are people outside the NHS who have money. They can get choices that are not available, or have not been until now, to others. Within the NHS there are people who might have connections, influence, a degree of affluence, relations, knowledge and social capital that others do not have, which informally gives them choice.
I exhort the Liberal Democrats not to get into a position where they are against what we are trying to do. They are against much of their own philosophy, in a sense, if they are denying people the empowerment to make choices about their health and health care. We want to extend that to people irrespective of social background. That means collectively putting the finance in to compensate for people's lack of money in their own pocket.
When it comes to decentralisation and targets, I want local decision making. Personalisation is about much more than either the secondary sector or just about the idea of choice. It is about accepting that there are groups in our society—individual, personal-type groups, ethnic minorities, working-class people, and people from the north of England as opposed to the south—who have suffered a widening gap in health outcomes over the past 60 years despite all of the advance. We are committed to tackling those inequalities. That is part of personalisation, as it is about providing care for those who are chronically ill, who know much more about their own illness and disease than they are sometimes given credit for, and information and support in the community to enable them to deal with the situation.
I shall not make any comments about the White Paper on public health because it has yet to come out. I note the hon. Gentleman's comments. At least we are discussing in the most radical fashion the biggest ever programme of potential public health moves. The hon. Gentleman asked me whether I would change the criteria now by which we judge waiting lists. If I changed the criteria mid-term, I would inevitably be accused, even if it were to my own detriment, of fiddling figures. I have said already that we should be completely honest. For the past 60 years, under every Government, there has been a hidden wait, which we should now take into account. Let us do that in the next Parliament. We shall certainly look at diagnosis.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman's criticism of the so-called patients passport. It has been repackaged—the Opposition have shot the messenger and have given the new guy—they are going through new guys at a fair rate now—a little box with a new bow which, however, contains the same product. The patients passport reduces the NHS capacity and opportunities for fast access, forcing people to go to the private sector. The Tories are telling people who can afford half the cost of an operation that they will provide the extra money, but we can read them like a book and oppose their policy completely. Medical need, not the money in someone's pocket, should dictate health care priorities.
Finally, if the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will avoid the subject of snuffing. I have already been accused of being almost personally responsible for binge

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drinking and the spread of sexually transmitted infections, so the last thing that I need is to get involved in snuffing with the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. David Hinchliffe: I warmly commend the Secretary of State on his statement and the Government's positive progress in health policy. I have been concerned over the past few years about the increasing consensus between the two major parties on a range of policy issues, including health. I am delighted that at the end of this week there is clear distance between them, on which I commend the Government. I should also like to commend the Opposition, because their policies are extremely helpful to the Labour party.
I should like to ask my right hon. Friend about two things. First, if people are sent to private hospitals to be treated by consultants, whether as private patients, semiprivate patients or NHS patients, they will be seen by people who work in the NHS, as consultants work in both sectors. Is it therefore not nonsense to suggest that by putting people in the private sector we are increasing capacity, as we are simply taking that capacity out of the health service? Secondly, I welcome the fact that in the autumn a public health White Paper will be published. However, will my right hon. Friend reflect on how we can shift the focus of debate on health policy away from an obsession with hospitals and treatment and towards prevention and public health?
Dr. Reid: It is no longer the case that when someone goes into the independent sector they will automatically be seen by someone who also works for the NHS. Some of our actions—incidentally, they brought a new efficiency to private sector services, for which there was previously an unlimited demand because of rising waiting lists—have resulted in the introduction of additional assets in the form of treatment centres staffed by the best clinicians from the United States, South Africa, and Germany. In their own countries, those people provide the best health care only to the rich but they are now here to assist and add capacity to the NHS by providing services that are free at the point of need. That supplements the NHS and is not a substitute for it, and I hope that all Labour Members accept that.
I agree that the old way of doing things, in which we bought individual treatments at any price and were prepared to pay public money to the private sector, no matter what the price, was crazy, inefficient and unfair. That is exactly what the Opposition want to bring back. Just as we are achieving efficiency in the NHS, driven by targets, they are abandoning them, and just as we are introducing efficiency in the private health care sector, because many private providers are performing operations for us at a reduced tariff they want to hand the sector a big book of blank cheques so that anyone who wants to pay half the cost of a private operation will have the rest funded by public money, which is crazy and inefficient. I agree with my hon. Friend about the emphasis on primary care and prevention, and I hope that, despite the headlines that appear on choice, we all recognise that what people in this country want most of
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all is a decent, easily accessible, high-quality health service in their locality to which they can go in times of need. That is our first priority.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Many Members are hoping to catch my eye, so I ask for brief comments, questions and responses, so that more of them are successful.
Mr. John Gummer: Does the Secretary of State not accept that all waiting times are personal, as they affect individuals? I failed to discover from his statement whether he could meet the considerable concern about the amount of bureaucracy, control from the centre and the fact that people are not free enough, which would allow my constituents to know that they would not have to wait six months to get a hearing aid, would not have to raise private money to provide accommodation for children with diabetes in Ipswich hospital, and would no longer have to wait on trolleys all day in hospital, which is a current issue. Can he explain how he will stop centralisation and enable people to make those decisions locally?
Dr. Reid: If I may say so without ruining the right hon. Gentleman's career, those are sensible points, and I agree with all of them. If people are waiting on trolleys all day that is not acceptable, so I urge him to contact me about that.
We are trying to do two things. First, we are trying to drive the third biggest organisation in the world from the centre with a series of targets that we established some years ago which, as they are met, are not being replaced. Secondly, we are simultaneously changing the system so that patients have more power, choice and information. Gradually, 80 per cent. of the money and 80 per cent. of the driving of the system will be controlled by patients themselves. We are half way through that journey, and it would be crazy to assume that we can drive everything from the centre indefinitely. It would be equally crazy, however, to drop all the targets in our efficiency drive and just put in £90 billion without any objectives whatsoever. No business in the world, whether public or private, would behave in such an irresponsible fashion, and Opposition spokesmen would not have done so if they had not been so keen to cobble a policy together in a fortnight so that they could issue a statement before mine.
Mr. Kevin Hughes: I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement, unlike the Opposition spokesmen, who behaved disgracefully while he was making it. As my right hon. Friend knows, most people's contact with the national health service is with their GP, so what does he propose to offer GPs so that they can improve and expand local services at their surgeries?
Dr. Reid: The first, best and most important contact is in primary care, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Health, said. We have already extended choice in that sector, as I can demonstrate. A few years ago, a mother whose child was coughing late at night

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could not visit a walk-in centre where an appointment is not needed. She could not pick up the phone and ask for advice from NHS Direct, as 6.3 million people did last year. She could not go to accident and emergency and be seen within four hours. All those options are now available, quite apart from someone being able to see their doctor or a nurse practitioner within two days. We are therefore opening up the sector but, in addition, we have a new contract for doctors that encourages them to expand in an entrepreneurial fashion by bringing in chiropodists, nurse practitioners, and physiotherapists at primary care rather than hospital level. We have increased primary care funding for doctors by 33.3 per cent., which represents a genuine advance, and shows that we are taking radical action for everyone's benefit.
Mr. Nick Gibb: A constituent of mine told me yesterday about his appalling experiences after he was diagnosed with cancer two years ago at a London hospital. His CAT scans went missing several times, his notes were mixed up with those of another patient, and his consultant's demand that he be treated immediately was ignored by administrative staff. Is that not the result of poor-quality management and administrative incompetence, which are also the principal cause of the spread of MRSA and high levels of waste in the NHS? How will the Secretary of State's announcement today tackle the deep-rooted management problem in the NHS? Will not policies such as foundation hospitals, which increase the diffuse nature of accountability in the NHS, do nothing to bring about high quality modern management methods?
Dr. Reid: The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if, after yesterday, I do not attempt to respond to the accuracy or otherwise of what he claims he was told by someone else who is a constituent. Yesterday should be a lesson to all of us, as the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Mr. Burstow) said, not to use constituency cases, especially when we have not checked the facts against what we are told for propaganda purposes.
If the hon. Gentleman is making a general statement that we want to decentralise more power to patients to drive the system, the answer is yes. If he is suggesting that we need more and better management in the NHS—he is nodding—the answer is yes. That is completely at odds with what those on his Front Bench continually say—that we need less management in the NHS—but at least he is not making the mistake that they make when they continually portray all the new staff in the NHS as useless and unproductive bureaucrats. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that nothing angers the staff more than the constant implication that they are all bureaucrats, and that they are getting lots of money but producing no increased output. It is not true. The NHS staff, including management, but more importantly the 85 per cent. who are involved in direct patient care, do a wonderful job and we ought to be proud of them.
Mr. Jon Owen Jones: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on bringing forward the fruits of investment, which the Conservative Opposition have traditionally opposed, and reform, which the Liberal party has traditionally opposed. My
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right hon. Friend has brought those fruits to us in England, but will he do all he can to encourage a situation that allows his constituents, my constituents and perhaps the family of Madam Deputy Speaker also to benefit?
Dr. Reid: I am always willing to help when asked. Wherever people are—England, Scotland or Wales—there will be a choice at the next general election between two philosophies as regards the national health service. One of them believes in continuing investment for the 95 per cent. of the population who are dependent upon it, continuing reform and efficiency, greater output driven not only by the staff, but by objectives such as any business would have, decreased waiting times, and greater choice in real terms. The philosophy of the other party would offer the old theoretical choice that we all have—of dining at the Ritz, were it not for the fact that we were too skint to do so. The Opposition would divert money away from the NHS to the minority to help the relatively rich jump the queue, they would reduce capacity and, above all, they would introduce the right to charge. That seems to me a pretty clear choice.
Sandra Gidley: I welcome the Minister's commitment to fairness and equity and the NHS being free at the point of delivery, but that is all very well unless one happens to be old. He said little about choice in long-term care, and little about the fact that people have to supplement that care from their own pockets. What do the old look forward to? Would it be better to provide free personal care for the elderly?
Dr. Reid: It is a little unfair to say that I said nothing about the elderly or chronic care. I did speak about chronic care. On personal care, let us be quite straight. We have made a decision in this country that there will be free medical care for everyone, and that in the vast majority of cases there will also be free personal care. About 30 per cent. of people who are the better-off have to contribute towards their own personal care, not medical care. If we were to say that everyone including the best-off in Britain—including millionaires—would also get free personal care, it would cost us £1.7 billion, which we would have to take from elsewhere. We have made a decision, consistent with our priorities, that it is better to allocate that to those who cannot afford the medical and the personal care. That is a judgment that we have made.
Finally, I did not comment when the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam mentioned it because it seems a bit churlish, but it would be a little more consistent if what was suggested by the hon. Lady was not entirely contradicted by Liberal councils, including, say, Cumbria, which is introducing charges for social care for the elderly in the area that it controls.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: Is the Secretary of State aware that the most important decision taken by the Government in the past two or three years was the brave decision to increase national insurance by 1 per cent. in order to ensure that we had the wherewithal to make the massive improvements that we have made in health and to make even greater improvements in the future? May I also inform him that I am pleased that there is a manager in the national health service—the Opposition call it red tape—who sends me a letter to go

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for a cancer check-up every six months? I am pleased that he is a manager looking after me. As for being a target, yes, I am pleased to be a target when I go for another treadmill test in order to look after my heart. In an era when technology is so important in the health service, we do not see all the people who are helping us dressed in white uniforms. In all the policies that we present, we have to please people and persuade them, but with the national health service, we must please, persuade and inspire. That is what we are doing today.
Dr. Reid: That is certainly what my hon. Friend did, as he always does, to me. If we were looking for the living embodiment of the huge benefits that the NHS brings to the country, we could not find a national treasure comparable with my hon. Friend. He is right about inspiration. Let us remember when this country decided that everyone, irrespective of their background or their money, would be an equal partner in the fight against that great disease. It was after everyone in this country, irrespective of their background, had fought against the great evil of fascism on the continent, when the country was on the verge of bankruptcy and after it had come through six long years of war. If we could afford a system that gave everyone in the country health care irrespective of the money in their pocket at a time of such difficult circumstances, surely to God everyone in the country apart from those on the Opposition Front Bench believes that we can provide it in this century as well.
Mrs. Cheryl Gillan: My constituents in Chesham and Amersham will not be impressed by the self-congratulatory statistics trumpeted by the Secretary of State, not least because they get 18 per cent. less per head than the average funding in the national health service. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be grateful to me, as I shall give him an opportunity today to put his money where his mouth is. He will be familiar with the National Society for Epilepsy in my constituency, which looks after people in the NHS from across the country who have a chronic and long-term medical condition—epilepsy. The NSE does not have the money to modernise its care homes. If the Secretary of State really means that he will provide those people with the personalised support and care that they need and deserve in order for them to live fulfilling lives, and that he will make that a priority, as he said in his statement, will he now agree to fully fund the Government-required upgrades at the entire site of the National Society for Epilepsy? When can I tell the chief executive that he can expect the cheque for £17 million?
Dr. Reid: First, whatever the hon. Lady thought about the deficiencies of what I said. I hope that at least she welcomes the fact that I prioritised chronic care in terms of people and resources and gave it the attention that it should receive. I do not blame her at all for raising one specific charitable cause and asking me to agree immediately to pay that £17 million. I know she will understand if I do not give her an instant decision on that. I look forward to even closer work between the state sector and the charitable sector. I know that the National Society for Epilepsy and others do a huge amount of good. I do not know the details of the case, but I hope she will write to me about it. I will demur from making a rash decision. We have had enough cobbled-together
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decisions from the Opposition Front Bench in the past few days without my making a sudden one before giving the matter the fullest consideration.
Tony Wright: The health service is now improving dramatically, and if we can avoid the idiocies of the Conservative party, it will continue to do so. I was interested in what my right hon. Friend said about giving guarantees to patients on waiting times. Can he tell us exactly what he means by guarantees in that context and what will happen if the guarantees are not met?
Dr. Reid: What I mean is that we already have plans, from December next year, at the point of referral, which is when a patient goes to the doctor, to put in the technology, establish the rights and customs and put in the resources to ensure that people are not simply told, "You will go to your local hospital, but go home; it will write to you in due course, perhaps in a week or a month, to tell you when you will go." We have already established a system in which people will be given not only a degree of choice—a choice between four other hospitals or treatment centres apart from their own—but an ability to book online at their convenience a time and date that is most convenient to them. We are going to retain that arrangement, but in addition, by 2008—we will be able to have the IT in place by that time—people will be able to get rough information about other hospitals and treatment centres throughout the country to enable them to say that they want to go somewhere else in England.
I should point out that, as we reduce the waiting times and increase the capacity, the normal expectation would be that fewer and fewer people would want to exercise that choice, but they will have the right to do so. If they discover that the area that they choose cannot meet the 18-week time limit, they will have the right to say that they want to be treated somewhere else or to go ahead and say that they choose to wait longer to get their treatment. If an offer from the primary care trust is not met within 18 weeks, that will be reflected in the assessments that are made by the health care commission, which eventually feed through to the allocation of resources.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: I am sure that the Secretary of State will agree that hon. Members in all parts of the House have shown total commitment to the health service. With that in mind, I wish to follow up the point raised by the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) in respect of chronic and long-term medical conditions. Will the Secretary of State give the House a commitment that the Government will look at funding long-term chronic conditions and that they will not expect people to pay either in full or in part when they have diseases such as Alzheimer's, and also not expect them to he charged by social services when they need to go into a nursing home for ongoing care and treatment? That is critical. The situation has been neglected by successive Governments, and I believe that it is an injustice that needs to be rectified.
Dr. Reid: First, I understand that some people in all parts of the House are committed to the national health

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service. I do not question that, although it applies to some people, not all. Secondly, I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes and the passion and sincerity with which he makes it. It is a difficult choice. Of course, I would not want it to be thought that we do nothing for the chronically ill, and I have made further announcements today in that regard. We help with social work costs, and the idea of the community matrons—I mentioned that there will be 3,000 additional ones—is to help people to stay at home rather than go into homes. We pay all the medical care and, for about 70 per cent. of people—I speak from memory—all the personal care. We try to make that distinction at the same time as using the money efficiently in allocating the £1.7 billion that would otherwise be spent in giving everyone free personal care. We think that we are making the right decision. I do not pretend that it is an easy judgment. Of course, we keep it under review every time we look at expenditure, but I cannot tell him today that we are going to change the position.
Ms Dari Taylor: I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend's statement, which I believe was powerful and persuasive. In particular, I see community matrons as an excellent innovation, but I am seeking reassurance. Labour's 2001 manifesto stated:
"We will give more patients choice."
I have no problem with that, but I am seeking reassurance that the choice that we are making available to patients will be free at the point of use. I am most particularly seeking reassurance that, when that choice is given, we will be giving it because we have high-quality services.
Dr. Reid: I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. Those of us on the Labour Benches have known too well over the decades how the incantation of "We are all free to choose to buy a Rolls-Royce" and the theoretical freedoms that are always espoused on the Conservative Benches mean nothing if we do not have the means to exercise that choice. Indeed, the whole mission of the party in which I was brought up was converting that theoretical choice for the many into real choice by giving decent wages and public provision. That will be the case. We will not introduce charges, unlike the Opposition. What we will do is take the public services, which are already fair, and make them more personal by building them around the convenience of today's individuals.
Rev. Martin Smyth: The Secretary of State has referred time and again to the national health service and to England, Scotland and Wales. Has he consulted his colleague who deals with the health service in Northern Ireland, bearing in mind that some of the specialist units have to be located in England or elsewhere other than Northern Ireland because its population is too small?
May I also press the Secretary of State on provision for general practitioners? I am aware that some GPs in Northern Ireland have been told that they cannot even get a guarantee that they will move into new premises in 2005. I will take up the matter with the appropriate
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Minister, but it is important that, when we are talking about a national health service, it is just that, and not simply an English national health service.
Dr. Reid: The hon. Gentleman will allow me to explain that the only reason why I did not mention Northern Ireland and referred to Scotland, Wales and England was that I was speaking in the context of a choice between the Conservative and the Labour parties. He would not want me to misportray the important role that he and his party play in Northern Ireland. Of course, the facilities that are used here and extended to the people of Northern Ireland will continue. We keep in close touch with the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Angela Smith). The last point is a matter for her, but I will see that we bring to her attention the fact that the hon. Gentleman has raised it today.
Jon Trickett: On the subject of choice, is it not clear that there are now two visions for the national health service in this country? When people reflect on those two visions, the choice of the nation will be the vision espoused in my right hon. Friend's excellent statement.
In an organisation as large as the NHS, the devil is often in the detail. Will my right hon. Friend or one of his colleagues please meet me and one or two hon. Friends to discuss the situation in Pontefract hospital, where an inherited cumulative deficit appears to be inhibiting the further development of the NHS? In particular, will he ask one of his officials to look at the case of Mr. Jason Day in Featherstone, a constituent of mine who was diagnosed as suffering from multiple sclerosis? The money is available for beta interferon to be prescribed to him, but there appears to be a financial problem with the clinic allowing the diagnosis to take place. I would be grateful if he could look into those matters.
Dr. Reid: I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. Indeed, I think that the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton), has begun to look at some of those matters, and he will be happy to continue his discussions with my hon. Friend.
Mr. George Osborne: Despite the best efforts of the East Cheshire NHS trust, which serves my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), some of my elderly constituents face very long waits for the fitting of digital hearing aids. Will the Secretary of State allow those constituents to go to other hospitals in the region that might be able to fit such hearing aids sooner and greatly improve their quality of life?
Dr. Reid: We have made progress, but I note what the hon. Gentleman says. We are investing more money on this matter. While such hearing aids were technologically available under the previous Government, they were not available in practice because the money was not there to get them. Any delay for

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someone in such a distressing position is a bad thing, and we will try to look at what we can do to speed up the process. What he cannot do, however, is one day demand more efficient production of more equipment by more people in the NHS, and then tell us the next day that the Conservatives are going to take out £1.5 billion to help the relatively well-off to jump the queue.
Laura Moffatt: At a recent consultation with the families and friends of chaotic drug users, the top recommendation on the treatment and care of such drug users was more targets. Not only those who work in the service, but those who use the service recognise that targets are an important driver in improving services. Does my right hon. Friend agree that those who advocate an alternative to targets are making a huge mistake?
Dr. Reid: Absolutely. No one was surprised when the Conservative party introduced incompetent and unjust proposals, and no one expected those proposals to be competent and fair. Those of us who remember the claims that the Conservative party used to make thought that its plan might encourage efficiency, but when it abandoned the drive for efficiency and reform through targets to match the big investment in the public sector, and announced that it would subsidise with public money anybody to pay any price whatsoever in the private sector, without regard to limitation or efficiency, it abandoned any pretence of being a serious contender to form the Government of this country.
Sue Doughty: We have heard little about psychiatric care, other than the important topic of Alzheimer's. Good psychiatric care can transform an individual's life, but excessive delays and a lack of resources can be disastrous for individuals and for those around them. Far too many problems occur in my constituency because of delays and a lack of resources. What hope can the Secretary of State give to me and to my constituents in Guildford that improvements will be made?
Dr. Reid: For a start, we are putting in more resources and more money, but I will not pretend that instant solutions are available in psychiatric care, dentistry and one or two other areas. Last night, I was amazed when the Leader of the Opposition revealed to the assembled world that, if he waves his magic wand, waiting lists will somehow disappear, meaning that nobody would ever have to wait for anything. Indeed, under the Leader of the Opposition, people would be operated on before they were ill in order to avoid any Form of waiting list. I cannot make such promises, but I can promise greater resources and more personnel. It is difficult to recruit psychiatrists and psychologists, but we are minded to do so and mental health care is a priority.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Gordon Prentice: Oh.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The Select Committee stated one hour; I have allowed an hour and 10 minutes. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should examine the Select Committee's recommendations before he mutters and complains.

Business of the House
1.42 pm
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Peter Hain): With permission, I shall make a statement about the business for next week.
MONDAY 28 JUNE—Proceedings on the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Human Tissue Bill.
TUESDAY 29 JUNE—A debate on London schools on a motion for the Adjournment of the House, followed by motion to take note of the outstanding reports of the Public Accounts Committee to which the Government has replied. Details will be given in the Official Report.
WEDNESDAY 30 JUNE—Opposition Day [14th allotted day]. There will be a debate entitled "Confusion in Regional Government Policy", followed by a debate entitled "Failure to Deliver Business Deregulation". Both debates arise on an Opposition motion.
THURSDAY 1 JULY—A debate on Zimbabwe on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
FRIDAY 2 JULY—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the following week will be:
MONDAY 5 JULY—Opposition Day [15th allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
TUESDAY 6 JULY—Progress on remaining stages of the Finance Bill (Day One).
WEDNESDAY 7 JULY—Conclusion of remaining stages of the Finance Bill (Day Two).
THURSDAY 8 JULY—A debate on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
FRIDAY 9 JULY—The House will not be sitting.
Following are the details: Tuesday 29 June—outstanding PAC reports 2003–04 to be considered: 1st report, "Tackling fraud against the Inland Revenue" (HC 62) (Cm 6130); 2nd report, "The new electricity trading arrangements in England and Wales" (HC 63) (Cm 6130); 3rd report, "The Sheep Annual Premium Scheme" (HC 64) (Cm 6136); 4th report, "Improving service delivery: the Forensic Science Service" (HC 137) (Cm 6155); 5th report, "Warm Front: helping to combat fuel poverty" (HC 206) (Cm 6175); 6th report, "Department of Trade and Industry: Regional Grants in England" (HC 207) (Cm 6155); 7th report, "Progress on 15 major capital projects funded by Arts Council England" (HC 253) (Cm 6155); 8th report, "The English national stadium project at Wembley" (HC 254) (Cm 6155); 9th report, "Review of grants made to the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns" (HC 305) (Cm 6175); 10th report, "Purchasing and managing software licences" (HC 306) (Cm 6175); 11th report, "Helping consumers benefit from competition in telecommunications" (HC 405) (Cm 6191); 12th report, "Getting it right, putting it right: Improving decision-making and appeals in social security benefits" (HC 406) (Cm 6191); 14th report, "Inland Revenue: Tax Credits" (HC 89) (Cm tbc); 15th report, "Procurement of vaccines by the Department of Health" (HC 429) (Cm tbc); 16th report, "Progress in improving the medical assessment of incapacity and disability benefits" (HC 120) (Cm 6191);

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18th report, "PFI: The new headquarters for the Home Office" (HC 501) (Cm tbc); 19th report, "Making a difference: Performance of maintained secondary schools in England" (HC 104) (Cm tbc)
Mr. Peter Luff: I thank the Leader of the House for the business and apologise to him for the unavoidable absence of my hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House, who is, as the Leader of the House knows, on important House of Commons Commission business and, despite his strenuous attempts, simply cannot be here.
Can the Leader of the House give us any information about the date for the comprehensive spending review? I know that the Chancellor likes to play such things close to his chest, but it is an important event in the parliamentary calendar, and it would be a great courtesy to the House if a date were provided at the earliest possible moment.
The Leader of the House will be aware of the interest on both sides of the House and across the country about the timetable for the European constitution Bill. Can he tell us when we should expect to see the Bill, and whether it will include the necessary paving provisions for a referendum? The Opposition are keen to have the referendum at the earliest possible moment; why are the Government dragging their heels?
Turning to regional assemblies, this week we were promised the publication of the draft Bill in July, but what really counts is the opportunity to debate it. Can the Leader of the House promise a debate before the summer recess on the draft Bill setting up regional assemblies? Furthermore, what is the explanation for the inconsistency of the Government's position on the two referendums on the constitution and on regional assemblies? Why must we wait up to two years for a referendum that everyone wants, which, apparently, can be held only after the most detailed parliamentary scrutiny, while the other referendums, for which demand is slight, are rushed through ahead of any scrutiny whatsoever?
Is there any news about the promised debate on Iraq?
When can we expect the outcome of the Government's review of Select Committee powers, prompted by EDM 760?
[That this House expresses its concern that select committees are not able to obtain from the Government the documents and witnesses necessary in order to fulfil their role of scrutinizing the Executive; notes the comments of the honourable Member for Thurrock in the debate on the Hutton Report when he said that Lord Hutton had been able to cross-examine John Scarlet in public, but the Foreign Affairs Committee was refused access to him, and that they had been refused the drafts of the September dossier but Lord Hutton published them on the worldwide web; and calls on the Leader of the House to institute a major review into the way in which Government and ministers treat select committees and the provisions of the Osmotherly Rules and the Ministerial Code.]
Has the Leader of the House done anything yet about the Sessional Orders, following the Procedure Committee's important report?
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Finally, can the Leader of the House tell us whether the Butler report on the handling of intelligence in the run up to the Iraq war will be published before the by-elections on 15 July or will it mysteriously be delayed until the following week, the very last of the parliamentary Session?
Mr. Hain: I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new position. I fully understand the important duties that the shadow Leader of the House is undertaking, and we all accept his explanation.
First, I shall respond to the hon. Gentleman's last question. The timing of the publication of the Butler report is a matter for Lord Butler.
Mr. Eric Forth: Oh please.
Mr. Hain: The former shadow Leader of the House shouts out in his normal fashion, but I suggest that he makes that comment to Lord Butler, with more courtesy than he uses towards me.
On the comprehensive spending review, I understand the importance of advance knowledge of the date. I am discussing the matter with the Chancellor, and as soon as we can give the House that information, we shall do so.
On the Bill to ratify the European constitutional treaty, the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) knows that we must obtain a text that has been through the legal process, which is normal practice after intergovernmental conferences. That text is not expected until October at the earliest, and the Bill will follow in due course, so he must wait for the Queen's Speech.
The Conservative party said that it would oppose the new European constitutional treaty before it knew what was in it. One year ago, it said that it would oppose the treaty, and, a few weeks ago, it repeated that point before the final negotiations occurred. After the final negotiations, it became self-evident that the treaty is a good deal for Britain and that all the key red lines promised by the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have been met. Now Conservative Members say that they want to proceed rapidly, before they have seen a legally sanitised text. The Foreign Secretary has agreed to publish the political text as a White Paper in September, which is something that I am sure the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire welcomes, and we will, of course, want to debate it.
The distinction between the regional assemblies referendums and the European constitutional treaty referendum is clear, as I have said consistently over the past few weeks. A draft Bill on the regional assemblies referendums will be published before the recess, at which point it will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, about which the House has already been informed.
The two approaches to referendums are not inconsistent. The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire will recall in respect of Wales, and you, Mr. Speaker, and other hon. Members will recall in respect of Scotland, that the people of Wales and Scotland were invited to make a decision on the principle whether they wanted a Welsh Assembly or Scottish Parliament. That matter was rightly decided before the Bill was

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introduced. We are now considering whether to ratify a constitutional treaty. Before we hold a referendum, it is important to prepare the Bill and have the full text of the final treaty before the House so that we can debate it in detail. There is no inconsistency in that.
As I have already made clear, we want to hold a debate on Iraq as soon as it is possible and appropriate. I shall inform the House accordingly.
I am keen to hold a debate on Select Committee powers and Sessional Orders. We will do that as soon as we can.
Mr. Barry Sheerman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that opinion polling and the opinion polling industry are of central concern in a modern parliamentary democracy? Can he help me in my attempts to hold a debate on the opinion polling industry in the Chamber or at least in Westminster Hall? I have spent three weeks trying, with great help from the Speaker's Office, to get a Department to take responsibility for that. The Department of Trade and Industry passes the matter to the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which passes it back. I am not getting anywhere. Will my right hon. Friend intervene and bang some heads together so that the important subject is debated at an early date?
Mr. Hain: I acknowledge my hon. Friend's expert ferreting on opinion polls. He has developed a powerful case, which everybody needs to answer, about the role of opinion polls and their regulation, especially during election periods. The more he is encouraged to pursue that, the more everybody involved, including opinion poll companies, will have to respond to his points.
Mr. Paul Tyler: We greatly welcome the debate on Zimbabwe. Will the Leader of the House guarantee clarification of the Government's position on sporting links, especially cricket tours, including one-day fixtures? In his radical, Liberal days, the Leader of the House took a strong view on the extent to which such connections can give apparent support and endorsement to dictatorial regimes. I hope that he agrees that that remains an important issue. On 6 May, my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) and I raised the matter with him. My hon. Friend said that we should seek
"an opportunity for all parties in the House to join together to pressure the International Cricket Council to change its rules to allow the cancellation of such tours on the ground of moral issues, without fines being imposed".
The Leader of the House, in an excellent response, said:
"I am at one with the hon. Gentleman on this. Undoubtedly, the villain of the piece at present is not just Robert Mugabe's despotic regime, but the way in which the ICC is turning a blind eye to that."—[Official Report, 6 May 2004; Vol. 420, c. 1503.]
However, in correspondence with ny hon. Friend, the Minister for Sport and Tourism said:
"I am not persuaded to lobby the ICC to change their rules so that moral issues can be a legitimate reason for tour cancellation."
May we have a clear statement on the Government's position in next week's debate? Will the Leader of the House please ensure that his forthright views take precedence?
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I was amazed to hear the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) on the radio this morning saying that the Government may impose a three-line Whip on the Human Tissue Bill on Monday. The Liberal Democrats will have a free vote and I understand that that also applies to Conservative Members. Four prominent Labour Members, including the Father of the House, previously introduced private Members' Bills on the subject. Will they be forced on Monday to take a position that goes against their judgment?
Mr. Hain: Government policy on voting and whipping on the Human Tissue Bill remains unchanged.
The hon. Gentleman referred to my past days—they were my past, anti-apartheid days—in respect of white South African sports links. I have made my views clear on Zimbabwe. That also applies to the Minister for Sport and Tourism and the Foreign Secretary. We hold the same view. We wish that there were no cricketing and other sporting links with Zimbabwe because Robert Mugabe uses them as a propaganda weapon. However, we are not in a position to instruct the cricket authorities to do anything. The hon. Gentleman should not ask us to do that. We can simply express our point of view.
Ms Ann Coffey: Did my right hon. Friend read an article in one of yesterday's papers, entitled, "Women fight late nights for MPs"? It refers to correspondence that was sent to members of the Modernisation Committee for yesterday's private session. In the article, the shadow Leader of the House, who is a member of the Committee, makes a party political point. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is a sorry state of affairs when papers are leaked, without the correspondents being informed, from a Committee, one of the aims of which is to re-establish the reputation of Parliament? Does he also agree that leaking documents from Select Committees is a breach of parliamentary standards, does nothing to enhance Parliament's reputation and is a serious matter?
Mr. Hain: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I regret that the papers that the Modernisation Committee was due to discuss yesterday were made available to The Daily Telegraph on the previous day by, I have been informed, at least one Conservative member of the Select Committee. "Erskine May" makes it clear:
"Once received by the Committee as evidence, papers prepared for a Committee become its property and may not be published without the express authority of the Committee."
That clearly did not happen.
Mr. Desmond Swayne: You will know, Mr. Speaker, that some important new clauses are up for discussion on Monday, including one that I tabled on transplants. I hope that you will be inclined to select it for debate. Is the Leader of the House sure that we shall have enough time for the important debate, given that he has tabled other business for Monday?
Mr. Hain: Yes, I am confident that there will be enough time.
Due to an inadvertent slip up, I did not announce the business for Westminster Hall. I should like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for July will be—

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THURSDAY 1 JULY—A debate on the report from the Health Committee on abuse of the elderly.
THURSDAY 8 JULY—A debate on the report from the Home Affairs Committee on asylum applications.
THURSDAY 15 JULY—A debate on the work of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
THURSDAY 22 JULY—A debate on the report from the Work and Pensions Committee on child poverty in the UK.
Mr. Martin Salter: The Leader of the House will have noted the generosity of the Chair in allowing time for discussion on the national health service improvement plan. Given the interest in the subject in the country and in all parties, will he consider allowing time for a full parliamentary debate on it, especially on some of the representations that the Secretary of Health will receive from the Conservative party? Hon. Members could then examine in detail the consequences for the NHS of providing a £1 billion-plus subsidy for those who are already sufficiently wealthy to have private medical care.
Mr. Hain: I should love to find an opportunity, in a compressed business timetable, for such a debate. It will be interesting to note whether the Opposition use any of their time for it. I believe that they will become increasingly shy about their intention to rob the NHS of £1 billion. That means £1 billion-worth of doctors, nurses, consultants, beds and hospitals in the NHS. The money will be used to allow those who can already afford to go private to have a subsidy and take it to a private hospital. That policy will mean the cuts, privatisation and charges in the NHS for which the Conservatives have become renowned.
Mr. Forth: May I tempt the Leader of the House to comment a little more on the timing of the EU constitution measure? He told us that the process known as toilettage will last at least until October, that the Bill may be in the Queen's Speech and will not receive Royal Assent until well into 2005. Does that imply that the referendum will not take place until the following year? That means that we cannot flush the EU constitution down the toilette until 2006.
Mr. Hain: I have explained the situation fully to the House on a number of occasions, but perhaps I should remind the right hon. Gentleman of what he has said about the European constitutional treaty. He said:
"With hindsight the European Union is not acceptable since we joined … The whole thing was probably a mistake".
He also said:
"The process of renegotiation is a precursor to withdrawal".
There we have it. That is the real policy of the Conservative party. It is supported by the right hon. Gentleman and it is getting lots of nods on the Conservative Back Benches and in their constituencies—[Interruption.] Yes, indeed. That is ultimately what the battle will be about. A policy on the European constitutional treaty advanced by the Leader of the Opposition, with individual Members such as the
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right hon. Gentleman behind it, would, in the end, lead us into a completely untenable position in the European Union and put us on a slow train—
Mr. Forth: A slow train?
Mr. Hain: Well, if the right hon. Gentleman became Leader of the Opposition, it would be a fast train out of the European Union.
Joyce Quin: Given that the commitment to allow people in the regions their say over whether to establish regional assemblies was in the Government's manifesto both in 1997 and in 2001, does my right hon. Friend agree that, rather than those referendums being rushed through, they have actually taken a more leisurely route than many of us would have liked? Will he assure us that there will be no slippage, either in the draft powers Bill that is supposed to be published soon, or in the holding of the referendums, whatever voting system is used?
Mr. Hain: I applaud my right hon. Friend's forthright support for a north-east regional assembly, and her eloquent advocacy on its behalf. I want to reassure her that Parliament needs to approve the necessary orders to trigger the assembly elections, so as to allow adequate campaigning periods and the timely distribution of public information in line with the autumn timetable. Three such orders have been laid today, which are subject to an affirmative resolution. The Government will shortly be laying a further order, which will set the date of the referendums, and the local government options to be put to the voters in two-tier local government areas. I think that my right hon. Friend can be reassured about that.
Mr. Roy Beggs: In April 2003, a constituent of mine in Carrickfergus received unsolicited mail regarding Government policy on Iraq from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which apparently acknowledged a letter that he was purported to have sent. My constituent wrote to the sender, S. M. McHugh of the middle east department, on 22 April, and then to the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary on 2 September 2003, asking for the alleged letter to be removed from the record and not attributed to him. He was concerned because the postscript to the letter that he had received stated:
"The Foreign and Commonwealth Office holds and uses data … Such personal data may be disclosed to other UK Government Departments and public authorities."
Neither of his letters was acknowledged. I have been in touch with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at least half a dozen times, and I would like to ask the Leader of the House if he could make time for the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary or his nominee to come to the House and tell us why his Department has failed for 14 months to respond to my constituent's correspondence and to a Member of the House.
Mr. Hain: Obviously, I am not sighted of any of those details. I make no complaint about that; the hon. Gentleman has raised this matter quite properly, and I

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am sure that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and particularly the Foreign Secretary's office, will want to investigate the points that he has raised.
Mr. Andrew Dismore: May I remind my right hon. Friend that, in October last year, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution on the Olympic truce, with the support of the United Kingdom? Since 1992, when the truce was revived, it has had some success—for example, during the winter Olympics in Lillehammer, when a ceasefire was negotiated in Sarajevo to allow the inoculation of all the children from both sides in that terrible conflict. With the Olympic torch passing through the United Kingdom this weekend, does my right hon. Friend agree that this would be an apposite time for us to consider, in a debate in the House of Commons, what we can do to support the Olympic truce?
Mr. Hain: I very much endorse the sentiments of my hon. Friend and the way in which he has made his point. He has the opportunity to apply for a private Member's debate in the normal way.
Sir George Young: Reverting to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff), was not the real reason why the Leader of the House cannot give us a date for the comprehensive spending review statement published in the papers yesterday, namely that the Chancellor remains in serious disagreement with his colleagues and the statement has been postponed? Will the Leader of the House promise that, whenever we have the statement, we shall have a full day's debate in Government time before we rise, so that the House can examine whether the Chancellor's sums actually add up?
Mr. Hain: I completely reject the right hon. Gentleman's assertion that the statement has been postponed. No date has been fixed, and no firm date has been discussed either with me or with other business managers. As that has not happened, it could not, by definition, have been postponed. On the question of a full day's debate, we are seeking to find time in the business programme for a debate following the comprehensive spending review, and we shall see what time can be allocated to that. In principle, both the Chancellor and I are at one in seeking an opportunity to examine the review in detail and, in the course of so doing, no doubt to embarrass the Conservative Opposition Front Bench even more than we already have, thanks to Labour's excellent economic record.
Shona McIsaac: Some newspapers in this country carry a corrections and clarifications column. Will my right hon. Friend find a 15-minute slot each week so that hon. Members can come to the House to correct any comments that they might have made in the House? I am particularly concerned that, yesterday, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) asserted that a constituent had a 20-month wait for cancer treatment, when the national health service trust in question has stated that nobody waits longer than 14 weeks. Whether that comment was made deliberately or
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inadvertently, would not such a slot provide an appropriate opportunity for the right hon. and learned Gentleman to come and apologise to the House?
Mr. Hain: I fear that 15 minutes would not be long enough for all the apologies that the Leader of the Opposition needs to make to the House, not only for the appallingly irresponsible use of that case yesterday but for the consistent way in which he comes to the House every week and takes an opportunistic line, yet is nowhere to be seen when it comes to pursuing it the week after. The same applies to his appearances in the media, so we should need rather more than 15 minutes in his case.
Mr. Henry Bellingham: The Leader of the House hinted that there would be debates either next week or the following week on the NHS improvement plan, which was the subject of the statement earlier in which the Secretary of State said that
"no one will gain unfair advantage in medical treatment because of their financial position."
Will the Leader of the House tell us how many people last year who did not have private medical insurance were forced, out of desperation, to buy operations in the private sector?
Mr. Hain: I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman has been correctly informed about the debate that he mentioned. The important point here is that, under Labour, there have been 450,000 more NHS operations each year than there were under the Conservatives. That is the key. Under Labour, the private sector is clearly experiencing great difficulty now because the NHS is becoming better and better, and is therefore offering a much more competitive alternative to those who, for one reason or another—particularly during the Conservative years and as a result of their legacy—chose to go private because they were not getting decent treatment under the NHS.
Kevin Brennan: May we have a debate on the music industry, and in particular on the very welcome development of legal downloading services available on the internet? Is it not the case, however, that such services will not be taken up if they are not available at a reasonable price to the consumer? Will my right hon. Friend ask his colleagues in the Department of Trade and Industry and, perhaps, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to look into why British consumers have to pay more to download tunes from Apple's iTunes service on the internet than people in continental Europe or the United States?
Mr. Hain: I am not sure that I understood all that, but it sounded very convincing. May I just say that I hope that Cliff Richard's songs will feature prominently in any downloading of music from the internet? The Leader of the Commons is right behind Tony Blackburn in his choice of music.
Pete Wishart: May we have a proper debate about how our immigration policy is being applied across the constituent parts of the United Kingdom? Something clearly is not working. A young

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constituent of mine, Miss Jemimah Speed, is an Australian citizen who has been forced out of Scotland even though she very much wants to stay there. She has a job with prospects and is even planning to marry. In fact, she is an ideal candidate for the Scottish Executive's fresh talent initiative to get people back to an underpopulated Scotland. Will the Leader of the House look into this case, and do what he can to encourage the Home Office to allow us in Scotland to attract and retain people such as Jemimah Speed?
Mr. Hain: Obviously, the Home Secretary will want to examine the case closely. When the hon. Gentleman talks about fresh talent, I assume that he is searching desperately for fresh talent in the Scottish National party after losing its leader.
Ms Julia Drown: Will the Leader of the House arrange for an urgent debate on financing for development? That would give the opportunity, during these last few days when decisions on the comprehensive spending review are being taken, for the more than 200 MPs who signed the early-day motion calling for a timetable for us to achieve the target to spend 0.7 per cent. of our income on international aid, which was agreed 34 years ago, to put not only the moral and political case but the case that it is affordable. Millions of people in the third world who are seeing their relatives die from lack of water, food and basic health services cannot afford for us not to reach that target.
Mr. Hain: The whole Government are seeking to reach that target. The Chancellor and the Secretary of State for International Development are among the most well respected international champions of support for the poorest countries of the globe. The Labour Government have led the campaign to lift the burden of debt off the poorest countries, of which we can be proud. We have also been responsible for doubling the overseas aid and development budget in real terms, from the desperate situation that we inherited from the Opposition. We are getting there, and I know that the Chancellor will have noted my hon. Friend's comments carefully.
Mr. Mark Francois: May I reiterate a request that I made prior to the Whitsun recess for a debate in Government time on failures in the Royal Mail's delivery network? Since the changeover to the single delivery system, there has been a range of operational problems around the country. A recent "Panorama" documentary highlighted just how much mail has gone missing and the vulnerability of the new system even to fraud. That affects Members on both sides of the House and it is a serious problem. As the Government own Royal Mail, they have a moral duty to allow the House to debate this serious matter before the House rises for the summer recess.
Mr. Hain: The hon. Gentleman has the opportunity to apply for a debate in the normal way. He will understand, however, that while we have all experienced difficulties from time to time, and the Royal Mail managers, the trade union concerned and the workers
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are anxious to improve the quality of service—because we and all our local postmen and women take pride in the service that they seek to achieve—the Royal Mail is responsible for delivering 85 million letters a day. We should concentrate on its fantastic achievements as well as remedying its shortfalls and defects, as everybody, including the Government, is determined to do.
Dr. Evan Harris: During Second Reading of the Human Tissue Bill, Members on both sides of the House, although the majority were Labour Members, explained how they were looking forward to a proper debate on the question of an opt-in or opt-out system for transplantation. On Monday, on Report, an all-party amendment is to be tabled on that issue. It is a true conscience issue and a matter of life and death for people on transplant waiting lists. My question, of which I gave the right hon. Gentleman notice, is: given that there are strongly held views on both sides, what possible justification can there be for the Government to impose a three-line Whip on the Labour party, which would force scores of his colleagues to go back on how they voted on the measure when it was in a private Member's Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer)? Is it that the Government are worried about losing the argument, or that they cannot make an argument, or is it simple control freakery?
Mr. Hain: I was going to answer the hon. Gentleman's question much more sympathetically than his last comments have allowed me to do. It is nothing to do with control freakery, and I am sure that he will regret those remarks—
Dr. Harris: I might withdraw them in that case.
Mr. Hain: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I understand his position, and the different position of many Members on both sides of the House who may honourably disagree. I emphasise that Government policy remains that presumed consent has no place in the Bill. It is a Government Bill, however: we are responsible, and it has been subject to a great deal of consultation and scrutiny in the other place, which will also take place in the House of Commons. It is important that the Bill proceeds.
Mr. Clive Betts: Will my right hon. Friend organise a debate on industrial investment, job creation, and the role of Government offices for the regions in that? In that debate, I could discuss the excellent news that Polestar, the largest printing company in Europe, has planning permission to invest £100 million in a new factory in my constituency, creating around 1,000 jobs. That shows the resurgence of the Sheffield economy under a Labour Government and a Labour council. The planning department of Sheffield city council has worked tirelessly on this matter and the Department of Trade and Industry has been supportive, but right at the last minute the Government office for Yorkshire and the Humber has intervened with a section 14 stop notice

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that prevents the development going ahead on the grounds of some basic, spurious environmental objections, even though the regional officer has known about the proposal from its inception. I want that intervention by the Government office for Yorkshire and the Humber to be subject to the strongest parliamentary scrutiny, because my view is that its work should be to assist developments of this kind, not obstruct them.
Mr. Hain: I can well understand my hon. Friend's concern about this important project. The Secretary of State has been asked by a third party to consider directing that an environmental impact assessment be prepared in respect of the planning application involving Polestar. The relevant papers were received by the Government office today, and I assure him that a decision will be made as soon as possible. In view of the statutory requirements incumbent on the Secretary of State in this case to fully consider the request made, it is not appropriate for me to comment further on the request or the scheme involved.
Mr. Simon Thomas: May I ask the Leader of the House, who is also, of course, the Secretary of State for Wales, whether we can have an urgent debate on discrimination and prejudice faced by the Gypsy, Romany and travelling community in Wales, and particularly the use of that discrimination by political parties to whip up feelings against that community? I refer him to an awful and disgraceful leaflet published in Cardiff recently that alleged that a vote cast for the Liberal Democrats would bring more Travellers and Gypsies into Cardiff. That breaks every code, including the code of conduct to which all political parties are signed up with the Commission for Racial Equality. Unfortunately, that leaflet was published by
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his party, the Labour party. Perhaps a debate could clarify the issue and allow him to condemn his party for producing such an awful, disgraceful leaflet.
Mr. Hain: I am not seeking to defend that leaflet any more than the hon. Gentleman, I am sure, would defend a leaflet that circulated in Cardiff either in the name of his party or that of the Liberal Democrats, which had a picture of Lynndie England with a whip, and an Iraqi prisoner being subject to abuse, saying, "This is what you get if you vote Labour". I cannot recollect whether it was his party or the Liberal Democrats. Whichever party was responsible, it should apologise, too. The last day for tabling questions for Wales questions is Tuesday. He may want to take advantage of that.
Mr. Bob Blizzard: Yesterday's reference in this Chamber to a 20-month wait for cancer treatment prompted a constituent of mine from Bungay in Suffolk, who was a cancer patient last year, to contact me. His experience was that within seven days of seeing his GP he was seen by a specialist, and seven weeks after he went to see his GP he had an operation, and he had a second operation three weeks later. This is not a false statement but a true case and, I believe, a much truer reflection of the national health service—a national health service that is not failing people but succeeding for the majority of people in this country thanks to the investment and reform of the Government. May we have a debate on this matter so that the true state of the national health service can become even clearer?
Mr. Hain: Again, I would love to have such a debate, and I will certainly examine the opportunities for doing so. Under the policy announced by the Secretary of State, the maximum waiting time by 2008 will be 18 weeks, compared with 18 months and more under the Conservatives. Patients are getting a better and better deal, month by month and year by year, as the investment pours in under Labour. Under Labour, there is a right to choose decent health care. Under the Tories, there is a right to be charged for it. That is the choice.

Points of Order
2.19 pm
Mr. Kevin Hughes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Given that it is now abundantly clear that the Leader of the Opposition grossly misled the House yesterday at Prime Minister's Question Time—
Mr. Speaker: Order. Neither the Leader of the Opposition nor any other Member would grossly mislead the House.
Mr. Kevin Hughes: Apparently misled.
Mr. Speaker: Order. Inadvertently.
Mr. Hughes: Inadvertently. It may well have been inadvertent, Mr. Speaker. I pass no judgment on that. What I want to know is whether the Leader of the Opposition has a message for your Office to apologise not only to the House for misleading it but to the people who work in the national health service in his area.
Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for the Chair.

ESTIMATES DAY
[3RD ALLOTTED DAY]
ESTIMATES DAY
  ESTIMATES, 2004–05
    Highways Agency

      DEPARTMENT FOR TRANSPORT
      [Relevant Documents: Eighth Report from the Transport Committee, Session 2002–03, on The Work of the Highways Agency, HC453, and the Government's Response thereto, Cm 6088, the Highways Agency Business Plan 2004–05, and the Department for Transport Annual Report 2004, Cm 6207.]
      Mr. Speaker: Before I call the Whip to move the motion, I should like to make a statement to the House. Given that two subjects are being debated on one estimates motion, Members will wish to know that the debate will be divided between two subjects. Exceptionally, I have decided that Members may speak twice to the same Question, once on each subject. We will begin with the debate on the Highways Agency. At a point to be determined, the debate on that subject will be concluded, and the House will move on to debate the regulation of taxis and private hire vehicle services in the United Kingdom.
      Motion made, and Question proposed,
      That, for the year ending with 31st March 2005, for expenditure by the Department for Transport—
      (1) further resources, not exceeding £5,665,964,000, be authorised for use as set out in HC 466,
      (2) a further sum, not exceeding £5,144,950,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to meet the costs as so set out, and
      (3) limits as so set out be set on appropriations in aid.—[Joan Ryan.]
      2.21 pm
      Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: The maintenance of the roads system in the United Kingdom occasionally seems to be a matter of great emotional involvement. I never quite understand that, any more than I understand the undying love that some people have for the combustion engine. They are both particular commitments that have rather passed me by.
      The work of the Highways Agency not only is fundamental to the efficient working of the economy of the United Kingdom but provides one of the most basic and important functions of any part of our economic interest. It is therefore concerning when major difficulties arise. In debating this subject, I hope that we can refer to the work of the Highways Agency and to the eighth report of my Committee from Session 2002–03.
      Perhaps I should begin by saying that I believe that the Highways Agency generally performs well, and any criticisms that one has to make are on specific aspects of its work or specific difficulties that arise. However, my Committee was deeply concerned when we discovered, as far as we could see after taking detailed evidence, that in the period when we were suddenly hit by major snowstorms an agency as important as the Highways

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      Agency not only suddenly found itself unaware that its contractors were not performing to the level that would enable them to keep our motorways clear, but was not aware that the contractors concerned appeared to be unable to communicate with their own work force.
      In the United Kingdom, we have an interesting attitude towards weather. I had a Russian friend who used to say to me, "In Russia, we know it will be cold and so we have big coats and big fires, and we are always prepared. In the United Kingdom, you know it will be cold but you always hope it will not be." I suspect that many of our major services are based on assumptions of that kind. It seems extraordinary when we consider in detail what allowed a major agency to be taken by surprise by what is, after all, a traditional part of the British winter: a fall of snow. We took evidence from both the agency and the Department for Transport, and it became clear that there were a number of difficulties. The agency said that it was well informed of what was happening generally but had not been aware that the contractors working for it had such an inadequate form of communication with their own work force that they did not know that many of the ploughs that were supposed to be working to keep the roads clear were not operating. The contractors appeared not to have a way of communicating with their own work force. What was more, that situation went on for such a long time that some people were trapped on the motorway in their vehicles for 11 hours. That must have been a frightening situation, and it is extraordinary that it did not cause a great deal more comment and uproar.
      Further to that, the Highways Agency did not seem to become aware of that difficulty for four days after the situation had become manifest. I have to confess that I find that extraordinary, and when the Committee issued a report it made it very clear that it thought that that was unacceptable and should not be allowed to continue. The Highways Agency did not have at the time, so far as we could see, an information system or a response system to enable it to deal with such circumstances. We asked it to come and give evidence, and we were singularly unimpressed with the performance of the then chief executive, who is no longer in charge.
      The situation was very strange, and it gives one pause. All Departments have developed stand-alone agencies that are nevertheless staffed by civil servants, who are responsible to their particular Department. Indeed, their accounting systems are only partially at one remove and it is possible for the Department for Transport suddenly to find itself at the end of a financial year having to account for problems in the accounting not of the Department itself but of a stand-alone agency. When we queried what had happened, we were told that when the Department was moving to a system of resource accounting, a system that had been discussed for a long period and examined by our Select Committee, it suddenly found that one agency had produced budgeting that left it with a major amount of money in the wrong part of its accounts and distorted the overall accounting of the Department.
      That seems to me an extraordinary set of circumstances, and one that I trust will not arise again. Not only were the Department and the agencies concerned given very long notice of the change in the accounting procedures that were going to come about, but the Select Committee looked at the move towards
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      the new system and made various recommendations. We have said that we think that the accounting treatment of the Department and the agencies must be monitored carefully in future to ensure that if mistakes are made in the agencies, they do not cause the Department's accounts to be overspent. I should have thought that that was common sense, and it is extraordinary that we have to highlight that matter and make the agency aware of the need to look very carefully at how it is proceeding.
      We also said that it should be fundamental to the routine operating practice of the Highways Agency that the day-to-day maintenance of the motorways be fully co-ordinated. We highlighted the inadequacy of the control that the Department had over contractors. Just because a contract exists, the Department must not assume that everything is therefore going to proceed on a perfectly even basis. When we took evidence, it became clear that in many of the contracts—I almost laugh because the absurdity of the situation strikes me so forcefully—the Department did not have sanctions that it could apply to people who were not conforming to the contract terms. Why not?
      The Government are keen on the sort of arrangements whereby many private functions are handed over to individual companies and not left as the responsibility of the civil service. That might or might not be an efficient way of proceeding, but surely it demands that the least that we as taxpayers can expect is that the contracts will include penalty clauses. If not, why not? Can the Minister assure me that, in future, all those contracts will automatically include sanctions that can be taken against those who do not do the work that they have undertaken to do in the manner that we would expect? Even in our own homes, we would hardly pay up for an inadequate builder, yet the Government seem to be prepared to pay large sums to people who are not even competent.
      The Select Committee also believes that, although the Highways Agency was not directly involved in coordinating operations when they went badly wrong on 30 and 31 January 2003, it is essential to establish a method by which it can take direct control when faults in the arrangements come to light. It should not be allowed to sit back and wait for four days to be told that things are not working properly and that someone else has not performed adequately.
      In their reply, the Government said that the Highways Agency anticipates that improvements will come from its direct operational command and control. They talk about the introduction of regional control centres and a uniformed patrol of traffic officers. The Minister will know that I, being a rather cynical old bird, have some reservations about traffic management officer schemes. First, can he tell us exactly what training these new civilian officers will undertake? Secondly, where will the dividing line be between their management of the motorway system and the police's management of the system? Thirdly, is it the intention of Her Majesty's Government to insist that traffic goes back into the core responsibilities of chief constables?
      It is extraordinary that the Home Office, in setting up the responsibilities of individual forces, does not seem to think that traffic management, particularly of our motorways, is a matter of national importance. I would have thought that it was one of those things that

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      manifestly have to be the same across the whole of the motorway network. That can happen only if police forces have a direct responsibility and maintain the same standards throughout the whole motorway system.
      We said that the Highways Agency was sometimes producing results, but with inadequate information—occasionally with inadequate methods—about its own responsibilities and solutions when things went wrong. How much more likely are there to be problems when there is a civilian work force whose sole responsibility is to keep the motorways running?
      I have highlighted the difficulties that could arise if, for any reason, the agency's staff arrived at the site of an accident on a motorway before the police, and then took decisions that in some way corrupted the evidence relating to that accident. I know that the Minister is well aware of our worries about that. However, it is still not clear who is going to be responsible for what; it is not clear what the instructions to the motorway officers will be if they get to the scene of an accident before the police; and it is not clear who will take the final decision about the moment at which the motorway can be cleared and the traffic called on.
      There is increasing use—and increasing advocacy of the use—of the hard shoulder. This morning I received information from the Department and I looked carefully at some of the schemes that were being suggested. I have to tell the Minister that I am very concerned. Emergency services use the hard shoulder and find it very difficult when, for one reason or another, there are solid blocks of traffic across a road system.
      The Minister might like to examine the history of a particular site, with which those of us who regularly use planes as well as trains may be familiar. Part of the road to Heathrow is on a raised platform and emergency vehicles find it extremely difficult to get there when there is an accident. I have seen ambulance men come up the wrong way on that part of the motorway and climb over the barriers to get to an accident on the opposite carriageway. Where ambulances cannot get to incidents such as that, I am seriously worried about the advocacy of hard shoulder use for motorway controls. I understand the reasons, but I hope that the Minister will assure me that it will apply only to a very limited stretch of motorway. I am not convinced that, at the moment, sufficient note has been taken of the implications for accidents.
      Mr. David Kidney: Is my hon. Friend aware that construction work is now going ahead on the first of these schemes—on the M42 in the west midlands? Does her Select Committee intend to carry out further investigations into the safety implications of using the hard shoulder?
      Mrs. Dunwoody: With a member of the Committee in his place looking at me, I am sure that my hon. Friend will understand that I cannot give a commitment on our future programme. However, this morning I saw the lists of people who were consulted on this particular scheme, and it was noticeable that many representatives from the police, the fire service and other road agencies were involved, but only one from the ambulance service. Frankly, that worries me.
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      It has been suggested to me that, if the hard shoulder were being used for running purposes and an accident occurred, it would be possible to stop the traffic and allow the emergency services to approach from the opposite direction. Having spent 20-odd years helping in a medical practice, I can tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I saw the results of some very nasty road accidents and spent a lot of time trying to help people in those circumstances. I am afraid that accidents do not always happen in the way that the emergency services would like them to happen or in the way that some people have planned for them to happen. Before we make use of the hard shoulder a common practice, I hope that we set up a series of limited experiments and look closely at the results. I believe that there are considerable difficulties still extant.
      My Committee is not concerned with only the day-to-day working of the Highways Agency. We said that we found it, frankly, intolerable that it had no financial sanctions available to it. I hope that the Minister will assure us today that the Government have not only examined that problem, but remedied it. The Government suggested in their reply that there was a right to damages where one party to a contract suffered loss as a result of the other's breach. Have the Government allowed a large sum for legal expenses? If we are going to resort to law every time a contractor fails to maintain a proper standard, I can see some real difficulties arising.
      We pointed out that the Highways Agency was performing its functions, but that there were a number of shortcomings. The Secretary of State told us that the agency would have a much more active role, but we felt that the failure of operational communications and the failure to co-ordinate emergency operations had been revealed and that we expected the new chief executive to deal with those problems.
      I am sorry if I have rambled on across the various concerns of the Committee, but I believe that I should make one or two points in conclusion. If the Government want to set up and control arm's-length agencies while at the same time delegating direct responsibilities and expecting the tasks to be carried out, they must be quit clear about their methods for producing the final results. It will not be good enough for the Department for Transport to say that a matter is a responsibility for the Highways Agency, on the grounds that the agency controls the operational work on our motorways, that its officers are responsible for deciding when a motorway should be reopened after a crash, or that it must take responsibility for relationships with contractors and deal with them about breaches of contract. That may be the narrow legal point, but the Department has political and financial responsibility for such matters. Ultimately, it is answerable to the House of Commons for the efficient working of the Highways Agency and its ability to deliver the services that we expect.
      There is no point in waxing eloquent about the need for more roads to be built or for their better maintenance unless we are clear that it is taxpayer's money that is used for those purposes. Taxpayers demand that we in this House have a clear and identifiable way to call the Department for Transport to account when we think that the agency is not performing properly
      2.41 pm
      Mr. David Kidney: It is a pleasure to follow the distinguished Chair of such a high-performing Select Committee. I shall begin by saying something about the changing role of the Highways Agency.
      The week has been dominated by debates about public services and their responsiveness. We should treat users of public services with the same respect and attentiveness as they receive as consumers in other areas of their lives. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister is pleased that the Secretary of State is well ahead of the field in that respect. I recall the speech that my right hon. Friend gave at the Automobile Association awards ceremony on 26 March last year. It was entitled "Treating Motorists as Customers", and it is pleasing that the Department should consider that people who use the roads should be treated as customers, worthy of attentiveness and respect.
      The role of the Highways Agency has shifted. Where its role used to be one of building and maintaining roads, its new role is as a network operator, responsible for ensuring that the whole network is used effectively. The trunk roads for which the agency is responsible amount to only 4 per cent. of the road network, but they carry more than one third of all traffic.
      Today's debate on estimates is important, as the strong growth in the Highways Agency's budget is due to the fact that its new role is more expensive. The agency will continue to build new roads and widen existing ones, but it will also make better use of existing capacity.
      In part, that is what the Traffic Management Bill was all about. The Highways Agency already has uniformed staff in liveried vehicles patrolling motorways in the west midlands. Some may be surprised at that, as the Bill has not yet received Royal Assent, but those staff are operating under existing powers, not the new ones that will be brought into force when the Bill is enacted. The task for those staff members is to tackle congestion and keep traffic moving, and thereby to keep customers satisfied.
      I am chairman of the parliamentary advisory council for transport safety, and I am concerned that the Highways Agency does not lose sight of its key function, which is to ensure that road safety is the top priority for road users. As they patrol the country's motorways, I am sure that traffic officers will always have road safety at the forefront of their minds. To that end, they will make sure that they remove obstructions, such as debris, before they cause a crash, and they will arrange the safe recovery of vehicles that are stationary, broken down or abandoned at the side of the road. Those officers will also contribute to reducing long delays, so that people do not get frustrated and take risks that cause collisions, and they will collect information at the scene of crashes that will contribute to the prevention of their reoccurrence. I hope that road safety will be improved by the new role of the traffic management officers employed by the Highways Agency.
      I do not suppose that my hon. Friend the Minister will want me to say too much about the fears of the recovery companies such as the AA, the Royal Automobile Association and Green Flag about the extension of the Highways Agency's business empire into the new area of
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      vehicle recovery from the side of the road. However, I am sure that he will not object to taking one more opportunity to reassure them on that score.
      When we talk about road users as customers, it is inevitable that we will discuss what they pay for the service, and how they pay for it. Once, politicians did not want to talk about road charging for fear of offending people, but it is coming awfully close. We have congestion charging in London, and the M6 toll motorway is already operating in the west midlands. Not too far in the future, all lorry operators will have to pay road user charges. That shows that road charging is now a reality, and we must get to grips with our policy on it.
      The M6 toll motorway opened earlier this year. Its construction, by a private operator, finished ahead of schedule. It opened smoothly, apart from a slight hiccup early on when it had to close because of a problem with the road surface, and it is now being used regularly. I use the M6 motorway on many occasions, and I can attest that the toll motorway is a qualified success, in that it takes some traffic away from the very overcrowded M6. By spreading the load, it has helped to reduce congestion.
      Drivers, especially of motor cars, use the toll motorway in reasonably large numbers, but the high toll imposed on lorry drivers means that they stay away. That is a bit unfortunate: clearly, the operator does not want to meet the cost of the maintenance that would be required if lots of lorries used the toll motorway. I am somewhat surprised that neither the Conservative Government nor the present Labour Government ensured that the contract for the toll motorway contained at least a right of representation about the charges imposed on drivers. There are clear strategic national interests involved that we should be able to explain to the operator, so that they are taken into account when charge levels are set.
      Most of all, I want to speak to the Minister about the role of the Highways Agency in widening the M6. He knows that that subject is close to my heart; he and I enjoyed a debated in this Chamber on 27 March last year on that very matter. One of his predecessors as Minister of State met me and a delegation of local councillors in Staffordshire on 10 February last year about the Secretary of State's announcement—made on 10 December 2002—that the M6 would be widened. The Minister's predecessor told the Staffordshire delegation that the Highways Agency would produce new plans for the widening of the M6 through the county. He said that there would be widespread public consultation, and that the Government would put the plans in its targeted programme for investment by September 2003.
      Nothing had happened by the end of September 2003—nor by April 2004, which is when I asked another parliamentary question about progress. The answer that I received was that the plans were proving more problematic than expected. I was told that they were not yet ready, but would be soon. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will say what progress has been made with the plans.
      This is a vital matter for the more than 1 million people who live alongside the M6 as it passes through Staffordshire and Cheshire. It is also very important for the top half of the country, which depends on the

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      motorway for its main communications north to south. Many businesses in my constituency support the widening of the M6, whereas many other people—and I am one of them—oppose it on environmental grounds. It remains vital that we sort the issue out. Clearly, it is unsatisfactory that the Department should claim to have made a decision as long ago as 2002 when, 18 months later, nothing has happened.
      I lost the debate about whether the M6 should be widened, but my concern is that the greatest possible environmental protection should be afforded to all those who live alongside it. Some people's back gardens are immediately adjacent to the motorway, and they must be protected from the effects of the widening works and of the increased traffic that will follow.
      I should be very grateful if, when he winds up this short debate, my hon. Friend the Minister will say something about the Highways Agency's work in the future, and about the need for it to consult about protection with the people who live alongside the M6.
      My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) mentioned the plans for active traffic management and I intervened on the subject. The plans include the regular use of the hard shoulders of motorways for running traffic. That is something that causes alarm and raised eyebrows among the public. Only this week I was speaking to another hon. Member about those plans and the hon. Member asked me whether I was joking. But it is serious. It has been done already in some parts of the world—the United States and the Netherlands in particular. In the Netherlands the measure not only reduced congestion but reduced accidents and casualties. So there seems to be some argument in favour of it. The worry is bound to be about the safety of using the hard shoulder for traffic when there is an accident. How on earth do emergency vehicles get to the scene quickly? My hon. Friend the Minister has to convince the doubters that his scheme will allow for that.
      I know from an Adjournment debate in which the Minister and I took part that the regional control centre will have real-time information and the ability to respond immediately when something out of the way happens so that the safety and treatment of people injured in crashes on the motorways can be ensured speedily. I would welcome the Minister's confirmation that that will be the case.
      This is a debate about the budget of the Highways Agency. I have explained how the budget is growing. I believe that its new role is the right one. It is a valuable role. It is important that as the changes happen the Highways Agency is attentive to the people who are interested in its work—not just road users but decision makers such as Members of Parliament—and keeps them informed.
      Recently my constituents and I received from the Highways Agency some literature about its plans for the network in my area. That is a sensible thing for it to do. It is a good use of public money to keep people informed so that they know about things before they happen and what may happen in the future. My particular concern is to know what may happen about the widening of the M6 in Staffordshire.
      2.52 pm
      Clive Efford: The lack of attendance in the House can be put down to the fact that many hon. Members want to use our highways to get back to their constituencies in order to be in front of a television set by 7.45 pm. That is a laudable objective, and we wish our players all the best this evening.
      I shall comment on only a couple of matters because my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) has covered all the issues that the Select Committee looked into. It is worthy of comment that the Highways Agency on the whole is a very efficient organisation. Its actions go largely without comment, which is probably testimony to the fact that it does its job reasonably well. As with all organisations, it is in extreme circumstances that its preparations for certain eventualities are tested and its activities brought to the fore. In the severe weather last year the arrangements that the Highways Agency had put in place were found wanting in the extreme.
      The communications system was inadequate and seemed to rely on the mobile telephones of drivers. It was most shocking to us when we cross-examined people from the agency that once the gritting lorries had left the depots it was impossible to keep track of where they were, what they were doing and whether they had got stuck themselves. That was clearly a failure of the agency to put in place adequate procedures to maintain an efficient service when it was most needed by people on our road network.
      The other issue that came to light in that cross-examination, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich has referred, was the lack of penalty clauses in the contracts for private contractors. My hon. Friend the Minister has obviously taken that message on board because I can see him nodding, but the problem needs to be stressed and emphasised. We need to ensure that we do not fall down on that issue in future. If we are setting aside seriously large sums of money for litigation to deal with penalty clauses, perhaps we ought to consider an in-house service over which we have more direct control so that we do not rely on so many contracts that are perhaps not as enforceable as we would like.
      Another issue to which I should like to draw attention, and which was also referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich, is the role of the police and the Highways Agency at the time of a severe accident on the road network. The issue concerns who takes control at that point, and who has responsibility for reopening the road. A clear protocol needs to be drawn up to ensure that the responsibilities are clear. Responsibility for the road network and enforcement of the relevant laws should clearly lie with the police. It has been emphasised recently—not just in evidence to our Committee—that there is a link between crime and antisocial behaviour and traffic offences, so we would create difficulties for ourselves if we separated the responsibilities for traffic management and for enforcement. There is increasing concern in our communities about antisocial behaviour and we are trying to build partnerships between local authorities, the police and other agencies. At times, that can prove to be difficult. New powers have been handed to the police to deal with antisocial behaviour. I am finding it excruciatingly difficult to get the local authority to go

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      along with what the police want to do to deal with the problems. I use that as an example of how the police may lose out on essential information and intelligence if they lose the responsibility for traffic management and traffic issues.
      In the knowledge that hon. Members who are present may want to get back to their constituencies, I will conclude my comments.
      2.57 pm
      Mr. Paul Marsden: This is a useful debate, and it is a pity that for the most part only eight hon. Members have been present in the Chamber. It is important that the House hold to account the Minister and in turn Government Departments and agencies following Select Committee reports. The Highways Agency has a budget of some £4.6 billion, which is bigger than the whole international development budget. Clearly, an enormous amount of expenditure goes on the maintenance and expansion of our road network. Hence it is a pity that more hon. Members are not able to take part in the debate.
      I wish to highlight a number of issues. I pay tribute to the staff of the Highways Agency; they do an exceptionally good job. The tragedy is that only when mistakes are made do they come to the fore, whereas they play an important role in keeping our roads moving day to day—some 5,860 miles of motorways and trunk roads.
      The aim of the Highways Agency stated in its business plan is:
      "Safe Roads, Reliable Journeys, Informed Travellers."
      For the most part, it achieves that It aims to reduce congestion, improve reliability, and improve road safety while respecting the environment and seeking feedback from customers. I know that the roads Minister likes to mention the fact that the Highways Agency plants more trees than any other organisation in the country.
      The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. David Jamieson): After the Forestry Commission.
      Mr. Marsden: Absolutely. I pay tribute to what the agency does to put something back into the environment, even though obviously with road expansion and building it has to take something out. I saw that at first hand when the A5-Nesscliffe bypass was built. The Highways Agency in conjunction with the Environment Agency and the local authority did a superb job in protecting badger setts and other wildlife during and after construction. They were extremely professional in mitigating the damage to the environment.
      I was slightly alarmed to note that customer satisfaction levels have fallen in respect of the performance of the Highways Agency on motorways and trunk roads. That applies to several of the criteria, including the availability of phones, provision of signs, clarity of signs, positioning of signs, availability of variable message signs and the maintenance of signs. Perhaps the Minister could comment on that and flesh out the details of the actions that the Highways Agency has taken to improve customer satisfaction. I make no apology for raising that issue, but I should put it into
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      context by saying that the satisfaction level of road users is still around 80 per cent. Most businesses would be happy to achieve such levels, but it is worrying that the trend is downwards.
      I know that an extra 600 or so variable message signs have been installed in the past year, but many motorists get frustrated if those signs are not up to date. There is nothing worse than receiving while driving information that turns out not to be true, such as a lane closure ahead or the need to reduce speed.
      The Highways Agency deserves credit for reducing the casualty rates in the past seven years. It is on target to continue to reduce those rates. I worry that the agency does not seem to be achieving its target to reduce the number of slight injuries, and I hope that the Minister will be able to assure the House that improvements will be made and the agency will get back on schedule in that area.
      As the Transport Committee pointed out and as our Chairman has mentioned, just one inch of snow in January 2003, combined with the failure of the agency's contractors to send out gritting lorries, resulted in thousands of motorists being stranded in north London and Essex. The Government's reply to the report set out the development of contingency plans, which the agency has tested by undertaking
      "an additional technical audit of … winter maintenance plans, and … an emergency exercise."
      What were the results of that audit and what improvements have been made?
      The Committee also pointed out that
      "It is intolerable that the Highways Agency has no immediate financial sanction available where a contractor fails to keep the motorway and trunk roads system free of ice and open."
      The Committee Chairman also mentioned that issue and she said that new maintenance contracts were now in place. Those contracts include new termination clauses, but I wonder whether those clauses could be invoked quickly enough to allow another contractor to take over at a moment's notice. It would be no help to motorists stranded by ice and snow if the contractors who were not doing their job could not be replaced quickly.
      Other hon. Members have made valuable contributions this afternoon about the work of the Highways Agency, including the need to expand certain roads. As I mentioned, my constituency has a new bypass, which has improved air quality and reduced pollution, especially for St. Andrew's school, which used to have thousands of vehicles pass its doors every day. It was also very difficult to cross the road outside the school, but that has now changed. The A5 is part of the trans-European national network, so it is very important.
      I accept the case for some road expansion and some new roads—such as the M6 toll road, which has been very successful. Indeed, I use it myself and it is very convenient. However, I worry that we will continue to expand and build new roads at the expense of the environment. We need a new, concerted effort to try to reduce the amount of congestion and traffic on our roads.
      I am also concerned about the bureaucracy and red tape that seem to bind the 1,780 staff of the agency. Last year in my constituency, we had the case of Dorrington

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      village. That village is on the A49, one of the main roads that runs north to south through the English and Welsh Marches. The A49 is a major tourist route and, at the height of the summer season, the agency decided to close half that road to repair a railway bridge. I know that the work was essential, but it took six months to complete. Lack of consultation and poor communication from the regional office and the chief executive's office made it difficult for the agency to win over local hearts and minds and convince people that it was doing a good job.
      As the Chairman of our Committee pointed out, failures can be very costly. For example, the Thelwall viaduct project has gone hopelessly wrong. It was refurbished in 1996 at a cost of some £30 million. It is an important viaduct that carries some 180,000 vehicles every day. A spot check revealed terrible failings in the bearings, some of which had almost split in half. Remedial work is under way and will probably continue for another year, and the total cost will be an additional £24 million. Who was responsible for that? Will that extra £24 million come out of the agency's budget? Is legal action against the contractors pending? Can the Minister assure the House that such a failure will not happen again?
      3.7 pm
      : I congratulate the Transport Committee and its robust Chairman, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), on yet another excellent report. However, it is disappointing that the main subject matter dates back to January 2003. The Committee's inquiry was set up then; it took evidence in March 2003; and it waited for more evidence in answer to its questions from the Highways Agency that did not arrive until May 2003. The report was not produced until October 2003 and it is now June 2004. Inevitably, much of the material is out of date, although it is clear that the agency has learned its lesson and is apologetic about the way in which it let down the motoring public in the winter of 2003.
      I thought that today we should test the Minister on the genuineness—or otherwise—of the Government's roads policy. The excellent contribution from the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) is a good lead into that test. The hon. Gentleman pointed to the way in which the Government speak with forked tongue on the issue of the widening of the M6. He told us that the Government announced their plans in 2002 and promised that the project would be incorporated in the targeted programme of improvements by September 2003. However, it is still not in that programme. Appendix 5 of the Highways Agency's business plan for 2004–05 contains a long list of major motorway improvement schemes, under the heading "Summary of Expected Delivery for Major Schemes on the M1, M6 and M25."
      A large number of those schemes—the M1 junction 21 to junction 30 widening, the M1 junction 30 to junction 31 widening, the M1 junction 31 to junction 33 widening, the M1 junction 33 to junction 35A widening, the M1 junction 35A to junction 39 widening, the M1 junction 39 to junction 42 widening, the M6 junction
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      11A to junction 19 widening, the M25 junction 1b to junction 3 widening, the M25 junction 5 to junction 7 widening, the M25 junction 16 to junction 23 widening, the M25 junction 23 to junction 27 widening, the M25 junction 27 to junction 31 widening and the A12/M25 Brook street interchange—to which the Government have given priority are not yet included in the targeted programme for improvements. I do not want to depress the hon. Member for Stafford, who is keen to get his local scheme into the programme, but the Government already estimate that expenditure on the 91 schemes already in the TPI is in the order of £8.6 billion. That figure comes from the Highways Agency report of April 2004. As £8.6 billion-worth of work is already in the programme, and all those other schemes are waiting to go into it, one is left with the grave suspicion that the Government intend to go into a general election having promised the earth but without having put any money into the programme they say they support.
      At least the Government have changed their rhetoric. Back in 1997, it was that we should spend no more money on roads; they said that the way to control the traffic problem was not to provide more money for roads but to force people on to public transport. Now, the Government have changed that rhetoric and are talking about strategies for improving our road infrastructure.
      Recent correspondence epitomises the fact that a huge alliance has built up on the matter—it is not something that concerns only Opposition Members. A letter published in the Financial Times last week was signed not only by those the Government would describe as the usual suspects in the campaign for improved road infrastructure, but by members of other organisations that have never before combined in such an alliance. They recognise, as the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich pointed out, that our highway infrastructure is fundamental to the competitiveness of our economy.
      The Government have set out a programme of targeted improvements but they are not delivering. They are holding back on adding new schemes and they are not even beginning work on the schemes already in the programme and due to start. On page 1 of the foreword to the Highways Agency business plan for this year, its chief executive states:
      "We expect to add 29 miles … of new capacity by completing seven major improvements. A further eight schemes will start construction during the year, and many other projects in the Government's targeted programme of improvements will progress through consultative and statutory processes."
      If eight schemes start this year and no others are added to the TPI, that still means that work will not have started on 73 or 74 schemes already in the TPI.
      If the Government were really committed to mending their ways and to delivering road improvements, one might have expected to see the start of work on some of the schemes that the chief executive of the Highways Agency said would begin in this financial year. Unfortunately, that is not what has happened. Appendix 6 of the business plan lists the expected delivery for schemes
      "currently in the TPI as at 3 March 2004".
      It includes the following starts of works: the A14 Rookery crossroads grade separated junction; the A249 Iwade-Queenborough improvement; the A421 Great

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      Barford bypass; the A47 Thorney bypass; the A5 Weeford-Fazeley improvement; the A63 Melton grade separated junction; the M4 juncton 18 eastbound diverge and the M5 junctions 17–18 northbound climbing lane. But, in each case, before the words "start of works" there is an asterisk, which leads us to the phrase
      "Start of works dependent on the outcome of the Spending Review 2004".
      Why should all those schemes be dependent on the outcome of the spending review when the Government have already signed up for and committed to a 10-year programme? The programme runs from 2002 and was revised in December 2002.
      In its evidence to the Select Committee, the Freight Transport Association pointed out that the Government's review of the 10-year plan showed that there would be an increase of up to 15 per cent. in road traffic congestion on strategic roads by 2010, compared with their original pledge to reduce traffic congestion by that date. More significant, and more worrying, the FTA said that if the plan was not delivered, congestion on our strategic road network could be up to 67 per cent. worse than in 2000. The Government's dilatory progress on their roads programme suggests that they expect, and are content, that the plan will not be delivered and that that could lead to congestion on the strategic roads network that is up to 67 per cent. worse at the end of the 10-year plan than it was at the beginning.
      When the Secretary of State for Health made his statement earlier today, he did not say that everything he was promising was dependent on the outcome of the spending review. Expenditure on railways has run out of control due to the Government's botched attempts to renationalise parts of the railway network and, as a consequence, the Department for Transport, with a limited budget, will only be able to balance the books by penalising, once again, the roads programme and especially the Highways Agency, which is charged with the important responsibility of delivering that programme. Will the Minister assure us that schemes whose start was promised for this year will actually begin? If he cannot even guarantee that those schemes will start, what hope is there for the other schemes already in the TPI, let alone the ones that the Government have led people to believe will be included in future? A big logjam is building up, and the Government have raised expectations to try to calm all those people who are rightly aggrieved about the prospect of much worse congestion on our roads. That is just the rhetoric, but we have the opportunity in this afternoon's debate to examine whether the Government are delivering.
      I hope that the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich and her Select Committee will look in more detail at what the Government are delivering, as against what they have promised. The Highways Agency business plan says that about £265 million in capital is expected to be spent on the highway network this year, as against the programme of £8.6 billion contained in the targeted programme for improvement. At that rate, that expenditure would take about 20 or 30 years to deliver, and the Government are not even continuing the programme at that rate. Although they say that they will invest £265 million this year, they have not yet started work on any of those schemes. Of course, one of the
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      great virtues of starting work on highway schemes in the late spring or early summer is that the major earthworks can be carried out in the best weather conditions.
      I suspect that the Government will delay the start of all those works even further and that they will then come to the House to suggest to hon. Members that they are making a grand gesture by announcing the start of works, after not announcing any for a long time before. That will contribute to the logjam in the programme. That is just so unfair to the motoring public, who pay the highest fuel and motoring taxes of any country in Europe. This year, they will pay the best part of £42 billion in taxes to the Government, but the Government are not even delivering them £265 million in capital investment in the highway network. That is very serious indeed.
      A number of hon. Members have commented on the relatively poor attendance at the debate. I do not think that that matters; it is a question of whether the Minister is prepared to face up and respond to the strength of feeling among the motoring public and business interests in the country about the fact that the Government are badly letting down business and the motoring public by neglecting their prime responsibilities to ensure that the highway network is in a fit and proper condition to deliver the competitiveness that this nation demands. At the moment, the Government are failing in that responsibility.
      The Highways Agency is charged with looking after assets worth some £65 billion—a really big business responsibility—and one would have thought that the Government would be more prepared to contribute to ensuring that that network is maintained and improved.
      Mr. Paul Marsden: I understand that some schemes are obviously important to business and local communities, but which Government programmes and Department's budgets would the hon. Gentleman reduce to pay for the increases in the highways programme that he suggests are needed imminently?
      Mr. Chope: The hon. Gentleman poses a false dilemma. The Department for Transport has mismanaged its budget and—as the Secretary of State said, in effect, during Transport questions—the railway system that has been set up under his control and the schemes designed by his two immediate predecessors as Secretary of State for Transport in the Labour Government are eating public money hand over fist. My concern is that the hapless motoring public must now pay for the Government's folly.
      The Minister may think it perfectly reasonable that the motoring public should pay £42 billion a year in motoring taxes and get back precious little for it. I do not agree with him. It is incumbent on a responsible Government to invest in our highway network. I assure him that the next Conservative Government will invest seriously in the highway network in the same way as we did when we were last in government and I was privileged to be the Minister for Roads and Traffic.
      I opened more roads during the year or so that I was Minister than this Government will start work on in a two-year period. [Interruption.] The Minister refers to the scissors that I have got at home. I have a very large number of boxes of scissors, each of which represents a

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      triumph for the environment and improvements for the motoring public. Most of the road openings at which I was privileged to preside were to the benefit of local people—bypasses were built for them—and certainly to that of the motoring public as well. Certainly, with great significance, they were to the benefit of road safety.
      The hon. Member for Stafford referred to the importance of road safety, which cannot be understated. The number of fatalities on our roads is currently levelling off. Indeed, in 2002, more people were killed on the roads than in 1998, whereas the number of people killed on the roads fell consistently, year after year, under the previous Conservative Government. One of the reasons for the levelling off in the number of fatalities on the roads is that the Government are no longer investing in road improvements in the way that their predecessor did. That is another reason why the Government should be pushed in the debate to admit that they have been going slow deliberately on their roads programme, while trying to delude people with their rhetoric that they are still on the side of the motorist, which manifestly, when one looks at the facts, they are not.
      3.26 pm
      The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. David Jamieson): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) on securing not one but two debates this afternoon. She truly is an influential force in the Liaison Committee, as well as the Transport Committee, over which she presides with such aplomb. I also congratulate her on her very fine Russian accent; I was very impressed indeed. Unfortunately, Hansard will not be able to reflect her accent, so I thought that I would do so instead.
      I noted the criticisms made by my hon. Friend, and I will deal with them in my remarks. The criticisms that the Transport Committee made were very real and certainly related to things that needed firm action, although I also note that she said that, in general, the Highways Agency performs well. That was reflected in a number of hon. Members' comments. I should like to put on record the fact that the Highways Agency runs an excellent road system. Our trunk road and motorway system must rank as one of the very best in the world. It is certainly one of the best on which I have ever travelled in any country that I have visited. The way that our roads are handled, managed, repaired and maintained is quite outstanding, and we must congratulate the agency on that.
      My hon. Friend raised the important issue of finance and accounting. The criticisms made at the time were very real and proper, as there was no proper accounting system for the change to resource accounting, but lessons have been learned and acknowledged. Not only the Highways Agency but a number of Departments were on a fairly steep learning curve at that time. A new finance director has now been appointed, and that person is making considerable changes to the way in which the agency operates.
      I want to deal with one or two points made by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope). When I was doing a scissors motion—I have certainly opened quite
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      a number of roads; the office has a large number of pairs of scissors as a result of cutting tapes—I was referring to the cuts made when he was a Minister. We would take his comments today a little more seriously if his own party was not about to embark on a mass of cuts, particularly to the transport programme.
      The hon. Gentleman said that there was an overwhelming strength of feeling that motorists are being let down. That is certainly not reflected on his Back Benches, because only two of his party have turned up for this debate. He will not have noticed, but while he was speaking, his Whip fell asleep—although he seems to have perked up now that I am on my feet.
      The hon. Member for Christchurch made a point about deaths on the roads. I would hope that the matter of safety on our roads would not become a party political football. We have a very good record of safety on the roads in thus country. Casualties have been reducing year on year for a long period. That is testament to the work of successive Governments. Some of the actions taken 30 or 40 years ago are still bearing fruit today.
      We produced some more figures on deaths on the roads yesterday, and they sadly show that the reduction has levelled off at about 3,400 or 3,500. That has happened in other European countries as well, and we are not entirely sure why it should be. However, it is interesting that the number of people seriously injured is continuing to fall, and fall rapidly. Also, the number of children who are killed or seriously injured is falling rapidly. In fact, the number of deaths on our roads is falling in all the categories except two. There is a slight increase in the number of car occupants who have been killed. That may reflect the fact that there are more vehicles on our roads, or that some people are involved in unsurvivable collisions. We must look into that carefully. At the same time, the number of serious injuries of car occupants is falling.
      The figures would have shown a further fall in deaths were it not for the increase in the number of motorcyclists who have been killed on our roads. Yesterday's figures showed yet another increase, which is a very sad fact. I hope that, when we produce the report of the working group that has been considering issues to do with motorcycling, the hon. Gentleman will support some of the measures that we want to take to decrease those disturbing figures of deaths on our roads.
      Mr. Chope: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that one third of the contribution to improving road safety should be investment in engineering measures, and that it is the Government's failure to deliver on that part of the programme that is contributing to those disappointing figures?
      Mr. Jamieson: That just is not the case. If that were true, the number of serious injuries would be levelling off or rising. It is not; it is falling rapidly, which is testament to the goad work not just of the Highways Agency, but of the police, local authorities and many others. Education programmes for drivers and for children crossing roads are also contributing to greater safety. I would hope that there would be some cross-party agreement on that. Much of the good work is being done by local authorities of all political parties. I

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      have had discussions with leaders of councils and those responsible for road safety on Liberal Democrat, Conservative and Labour authorities, and they all share concern about death on the roads.
      The Transport Committee has produced a number of thought-provoking reports—on the work of the Department and not least one on the Highways Agency. This debate is a timely opportunity to explain to the House the key role of the agency in helping to bring about a better quality of transport for all. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich pointed out how important the road systems are to our economy. As our economy grows—we have a highly successful economy under this Government, and I am very proud to say that—we are seeing more traffic on the roads and hence greater pressure on our road systems.
      The agency is responsible for the motorways and trunk roads in England. Those roads are the lifeblood of the country and vital to our economic success. Although they form less than 3 per cent. of England's road network, they carry nearly one third of all traffic and two thirds of all freight. The network is essential to industry and commerce. It is also used extensively for social purposes—for pleasure and leisure. As more people in the country are working, they have more money in their pockets for such activity. A good example of that is the fact that the M4 and the M5 were successfully used by thousands of football supporters for the FA cup play-offs in Cardiff during May.
      The successful economy has seen a dramatic rise in traffic levels, which has resulted in pressure on our road systems, particularly where economic growth has been strongest. To do nothing is not an option for us. If we did nothing, we would be faced with a growth in congestion levels on our strategic roads of more than 50 per cent. by the end of the decade. Our goal is a road network that provides a safe and more reliable, freer-flowing system for motorists and business.
      We all accept that we cannot just build our way out of congestion, but providing more capacity where it is most needed has a part to play. We are therefore investing in the targeted programme of improvements, or TPI. That includes widening key strategic routes such as the M1, the M6 and the M25, as well as building much needed bypasses throughout the country. Many of those schemes have come about as a result of the recommendations of the multi-modal and road-based studies that we set up to consider the most serious problems on the network.
      The Highways Agency will be investing more than £500 million this year alone in major improvement and widening schemes. It has developed techniques to speed up the delivery, so that improvements can come on stream as soon as possible. An example of that is the early contractor involvement in the design process. That approach has the support of the construction industry, and the programme currently costs £8.8 billion and comprises 82 schemes. Of those. seven are due to open to traffic before the end of 2004–05. A further eight are under construction and will open in the next two to three years.
      Mr. Chope: Will the Minister answer the point that the present schemes will take 17 years to complete at the
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      present rate of £500 million a year—totalling £8.8 billion—and that a whole lot more are waiting to be added to the TPI? That is not good enough—is it?
      Mr. Jamieson: That is absolutely correct; we have set up a programme for a long period, and also set out how the schemes will be financed. I return to the point that the hon. Gentleman is chiding us for not building, but his party has no intention of increasing the transport budget. In fact, it intends to decrease it. When asked by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Marsden) which of the budgets he would cut and where the money would be found, he had no answer. He will of course be telling me that there will be tax cuts as well as all these roads. Before we get to a general election, it would be wise for the hon. Member for Christchurch to have a policy that stacks up. It is not enough to have a load of promises; he needs the money as well. Many years ago, my party used to do the same thing. We had lots of promises but were not sure how to deliver them. We spent 18 years in opposition. He may well be on the way to doing the same thing.
      Clive Efford Clive Efford: I was just wondering whether the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) was asking for targets to be set since that seems to be a subject of great debate this week.
      Mr. Jamieson: The Conservatives do not seem to have targets in mind these days. They want to get rid of them, except when it suits them. They want targets for road building but not for health care.
      We also need to consider ways of managing our roads more efficiently, to reduce congestion and provide more reliable roads. Keeping traffic moving is the key to motorists getting a better service. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) talked about the change from the Highways Agency's traditional role as a road builder and maintainer to its pivotal role as a network operator. This year the agency embarked on its new role as traffic manager and it is developing the new traffic management systems that will deliver that better service.
      The first signs of that new role that the road user will have seen are the agency's new traffic officers. They have been operating on the motorways around the Birmingham box since 26 April. They provide seven-day-a-week patrols between 6 am and 8 pm. A 24-hour service covering the entire west midlands motorway network will be in place by spring next year.
      The traffic officers' main aim is to keep the traffic moving and make journeys as reliable as possible. Initially, they are focusing on patrolling motorways and assisting road users. They deal with debris, broken-down vehicles and other problems that can hinder people's journeys. They will also support the police in road safety-related activities and incidents. An additional benefit will be that the police will have more time to focus on accident investigation and managing crime.
      As my hon. Friend said, when the Traffic Management Bill receives Royal Assent, the traffic officers will take over the full responsibility for handling traffic incidents, with the police retaining responsibility for enforcing traffic laws and investigating road

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      accidents. They will want to get the traffic moving as soon as possible following incidents, and that will play a crucial role in tackling congestion.
      My hon. Friend raised an issue that has been raised a number of times by some of the breakdown operators. The AA, the RAC and Green Flag do an excellent job on our roads. There will be times when a vehicle has broken down—perhaps in the outside lane of a motorway or in another dangerous place—and the Highways Agency traffic officers will remove it to a place of safety. That makes good sense. The police do it now by bringing in a contractor. However, there is no intention that the Government, the Highways Agency or the traffic officers should set up any form of alternative breakdown system. We have no intention of doing that. We are well covered at the moment. It is not a service that we want to pay for when the private sector is doing such an excellent job.
      The agency will roll out the traffic officer service to other motorways by the end of 2005.
      Mrs. Dunwoody: On the terms and conditions of the traffic officers, will my hon. Friend assure me that they will have access to union rights and will be allowed to organise within the control centres?
      Mr. Jamieson: Yes, indeed. They will have the rights of any other workers who work for the Highways Agency or any other Department. That is right and proper. My hon. Friend may have seen some of the officers in her visits to the west midlands recently. Like me, she will no doubt be extremely impressed with the quality and dedication of the people who have been recruited to the service. I have been pleasantly surprised at the quality, the enthusiasm and the dedication of the people who have come forward for the job.
      Mrs. Dunwoody: I am extraordinarily grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. There will be a question of dual status. The centres will have civil servants who work directly for the Highways Agency and private employees who work for a private contractor. I just want my hon. Friend to assure me that there will be equal union opportunities for both sets of workers. As there will also be police employees in some of the centres, will he also assure me that difficulties will not arise because of the differences between terms of employment?
      Mr. Jamieson: That will be the case. There will be no change. The Bill does not change the status of the police in any way. They obviously operate under their own laws and their ability to organise is set out in legislation. The laws that apply to the traffic officers will be the same as those that apply to any other civilian worker or civil servant. That is right and proper. I know of no reason why that should be changed.
      By the end of 2005, 1,200 officers will provide a front-line service to road users. They will be supported by seven new regional control centres, which will be jointly staffed by agency personnel and the police, who will allocate officers to incidents, co-ordinate the responses of the emergency services and other providers, manage
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      and monitor traffic, and control electronic signs, which many Members will welcome, because that information is not always up to date. Someone will have the dedicated role of making sure that the signs give good-quality, accurate information that does not apply to something that happened a few hours or even a few days ago.
      The agency already operates one centre in partnership with the central motorways police group at Perry Barr in the west midlands. It controls all electronic motorway signs and signals in the area, as well as answering calls from emergency roadside telephones. That is already bringing benefits, as police control room operators are freed up to concentrate on intelligence-led policing activities, including the increased application of automatic number plate recognition technology, and the agency can monitor and control traffic officers on the network. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich that the officers on the road will be fully trained for the tasks that they perform. The Highways Agency has Investors in People status, and is committed to staff receiving appropriate training for the work that they undertake. My hon. Friend will appreciate the fact that the work force are new—I admit that we are still on a learning curve—and, although they have received initial training, they will need more as their role increases. When the Traffic Management Bill receives Royal Assent and becomes an Act we will need to look at other issues, such as traffic officers' ability to stop and guide traffic, for which they will require further training. We will have to work closely with the police, so that the expertise and skills that they have built up over the years can be passed on to traffic officers.
      There will be clear lines of command, and a distinction will be drawn between the role of the traffic officers and that of the police. Protocols are being developed to make sure that there is no duplication of activity, and that there is a clear understanding of who does what. I was asked who makes the final decision at an incident. The police will always be in charge at a serious incident that they are required to attend, and traffic officers will act in support. If a traffic officer arrives at the scene first, he will act according to clear guidelines on what he can do in the circumstances. If people are injured, his first task will be to guide or stop the traffic to ensure that more people are not injured. He will then make sure that the appropriate services are on the way, and clear the road so that the emergency services have access. He would therefore do the things that the police currently do, but once the police arrived they would take control of the incident, and he would operate in a support role.
      Very often, long delays on the motorway network and trunk roads arise after the casualties are taken away and the police have conducted an investigation into any criminal activity. Debris and vehicles have to be removed from the road, and barriers and the road surface repaired. One criticism of our work is that we take too long to do those things, so the roads are closed for far too long. Traffic officers would be able to coordinate some of that work more efficiently, and the police would be freed up to perform other essential tasks. Traffic officers could then ensure that the road is reopened as soon as possible.
      Another crucial tool for dealing with congestion on the roads is information. It is vital that the agency knows what is happening on its network and

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      communicates that to road users through timely and accurate information. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich had the opportunity to see what can be achieved in that regard when she visited the national traffic control centre at Quinton on the outskirts of Birmingham. The centre is at the heart of the agency's information network. It began operations in November last year, and when it is fully operational it will collect and analyse data on traffic conditions to supply accurate real-time quality information to motorists.
      The centre already provides motorists with information on alternative routes and travel advice that can minimise the effects of congestion and incidents. It gives people more information both before they travel, which in some circumstances could influence them to leave the car at home and take public transport, and while they are on their journeys, through the variable message signs and the travel news broadcasts.
      The traffic control centre proved a major asset during the heavy snow conditions that we experienced at the end of January this year. I shall deal in a moment with events that occurred the previous year. The centre enabled the agency's senior managers and myself to be kept fully informed about the ongoing situation on the network. It also provided valuable advice to road users about the prevailing conditions.
      One of the criticisms concerned the reaction to the bad weather during winter 2002–03. It is an important part of any maintenance strategy that key routes are kept open and safe during the winter weather. That was a matter about which the Select Committee was rightly concerned and rightly critical during winter 2002–03, particularly the events of the end of January 2003.
      The Committee pointed out that there were failures in planning, co-ordination, communication and equipment. I entirely share the criticisms that the Committee made of the Highways Agency and the contractors at the time. My hon. Friend pointed out to us in her opening remarks that people were trapped ill vehicles for a very long time, and that was a matter of deep concern to me at the time. I am surprised that then were no collateral injuries to people who were exposed to the cold in their cars for such a long period.
      In future incidents, traffic officers could in some circumstances act as the motorist's friend. We had an incident on the M42 this summer in the opposite kind of weather. It was extremely hot, with temperatures around 40° C, and people were held up for a few hours in their cars. There was a danger that they would dehydrate, particularly children and elderly people. The agency did a very good job helping to provide people with refreshment and water to keep them alive, literally, while they were on the road.
      I can tell my hon. Friend that the agency has learned lessons from what occurred previously. I meet the Highways Agency on a monthly basis, at least. Every month one of the major issues on our agenda is the winter planning. The meeting that we had this week still had that on the agenda. We go through meticulously the criticisms that we received in the past and we review the ongoing planning for winter and events similar to those in the past. I can assure my hon. Friend that the agency has completely reviewed its guidance to its agents and contractors on the winter maintenance arrangements. It
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      has also developed and tested contingency plans and better communication procedures. The agency held a contingency planning exercise to test its winter service, business continuity and contingency plans. I trust that the way these improved procedures kept the network safely open during January this year, when we had quite severe weather in parts of the country, will reassure the Committee and the House that the systems worked very much better this year.
      We will not, however, be complacent on this matter. We have learned further lessons even from the 2003–04 winter, and they will be built into planning for next winter. That will include closer liaison with others, including local authorities and motorway service area operators, to ensure that there are no gaps with regard to where the responsibility of one party stops and that of another starts. One thing that we found this year was that the Highways Agency had done an excellent job in gritting and clearing the trunk roads and motorways, but when people went on to the local roads, they found that the local authorities had not always been able to do the same sort of job. Of course, that created problems throughout the system. We are now working very closely with local authorities to see how we can overcome some of those problems.
      Mr. Paul Marsden: Do the contingency plans allow new contractors to be brought in at a moment's notice and in the space of a few hours if other contractors fail to do their job properly, as we saw them do in January 2003?
      Mr. Jamieson: Even during 2002–03, the vast majority of contractors operated well and efficiently. A particular fault arose with one contractor in one aspect of its work. Clearly, it was manifestly wrong, there was inefficiency, and we will ensure that the contractor does not do the same thing again.
      In the first instance, we are looking not at punitive measures, but at properly monitoring what contractors are doing and ensuring that they are doing what their contract says they should be doing, and doing it well. Previously, that was one of the weaknesses; we were not looking at the contracts sufficiently closely to ensure that they were doing the job. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) also referred to this point. We have the proper monitoring of contracts, we are looking carefully at what contractors are doing and ensuring that they are fulfilling their obligations. The new contracts that will be introduced as the current ones gradually come to the end of their lives will be much more closely focused on performance, and there will be penalty points for contractors that are not meeting parts of their obligations. In those circumstances, they will not be paid for the work that they are doing. That will be one of the penalties.
      If a contractor consistently fails in those circumstances, we can terminate its contract. I do not think that anyone would advise us to take such action because of some small deficiency while the snow is 3 ft deep on the motorway in January. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham asked whether others could be

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      brought in. Of course, we have some mutual aid, so if there is a particular problem in one area, other contractors can move in and take over some of the work.
      There will also be further improvement in how the agency and service providers communicate about the winter service decisions. They are also improving communication to drivers before and during journeys. The agency is building links with the Met Office to ensure that drivers receive consistent and meaningful messages about the weather. It is also reviewing the use of electronic signs and messages, as well as issuing an improved winter driving leaflet.
      While I have concentrated on the way in which the agency is meeting the needs of the road user, I can assure the House that its activities are balanced so that the needs of communities and the environment are not ignored. As the hon. Gentleman said, the Highways Agency is the second largest planter of trees in England. At many road openings, I have seen special arrangements made to enable badgers to cross the road in tunnels. On one of the sites that I visited, I saw that about 59 water voles had been temporarily removed and sent in a charabanc off to north Devon; I think that I passed them when I was travelling down to my constituency, tootling along with their swimming costumes and with their surf boards on the roof. They will also be brought back. That shows the meticulous care that the Highways Agency takes in respect of livestock, birds and other animals, as well as trees.
      We have set the agency challenging targets to ensure that the environment is properly respected. For instance, the agency is reducing traffic noise by resurfacing concrete roads with quieter surfaces, and at least 50 lane-km of concrete roads will be treated this year, bringing a welcome reduction in noise.
      My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford asked about noise attenuation measures. We have put aside a ring-fenced budget of £5 million per year, and we are examining sites where we can put in noise attenuation measures, such as fences, bunding or whatever is appropriate. Obviously, we are dealing first with those sites where the number of people affected and the noise are the greatest, which has provided relief to certain communities.
      On procurement, the agency delivers the majority of its services through third parties such as contractors, managing agents and consultants. Buying in such services is therefore an integral part of the agency's business, and it is at the forefront in that particular field. The agency's procurement strategy benefits the supplier industry, because it provides continuity and certainty, which was not available in the past, by allowing companies to plan effectively and, importantly, to train and retain skilled staff. The agency's procurement strategy also improves health and safety for workers and develops sustainable working practices.
      My hon. Friends the Members for Crewe and Nantwich and for Eltham raised the issue of contracts. We have put more serious sanctions into the contracts to cover service failures, and, as I said earlier, it is possible to avoid contracts altogether.
      The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham mentioned Thelwall viaduct, which is an unhappy case. The current focus is on replacing the bearings, more
      1508
      than 100 of which have failed or are failing. As we replace the bearings, we are determining whether the original contractor was at fault, and we will take the necessary action if we find that to be the case. The exercise has been expensive for the Highways Agency, and money spent on such repairs is money that we cannot spend more positively in other areas.
      I have already mentioned the agency's use of early contractor involvement, which increases the scope for innovation, improves risk management and shortens construction periods. The first such contract, the A500 Stoke pathfinder scheme, is being built, and it will show the benefits of such contracts. The agency uses single point supply managing agent contractor contracts to cover winter maintenance. The maintenance contracts were developed in line with the best practice principles identified in the Egan report, and they are designed to reflect three principles: focus on service delivery, the Highways Agency's priorities and keeping the traffic moving. The maintenance contracts are securing continuous improvement in both supplier performance and service levels, and the Office of Government Commerce promotes their use.
      In conjunction with the construction industry, the agency has also developed the capability assessment toolkit, which is being used to procure major capital improvement schemes and large maintenance contracts. It is an innovative, industry-leading initiative that assesses the management approach of companies that are interested in bidding for major contracts, and it is also a key factor in drawing up tender lists, where it is used in conjunction with assessments of the technical capacity, financial standing and past performance of companies applying to bid for work. The industry has reacted positively to that process.
      I shall pick up the point, which relates to some huge issues, made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford about the M6. The M6 carries a volume of traffic that was not imagined at the time of its construction, and we have been forced seriously to examine that route. The M6 toll road has borne some fruit and taken a lot of car traffic off the motorway. The M6 up to my hon. Friend's constituency has improved considerably. We acknowledge that it is an important strategic route and the Highways Agency is currently investigating options for widening it. However, we must find the right solution to the problem. I am sure that my hon. Friend appreciates that it is a big problem, which would require considerable resources to put right.
      Mr. Kidney: I thought that I could help the Under-Secretary by explaining that the previous Conservative Government had a plan to widen the motorway, consulted on it and cancelled it at the last moment. I believed that at least the technical issues had been sorted out. What is the delay? I picked up from my hon. Friend's response the worrying implication that the Government are considering whether to go ahead with the widening. That would be a strange development. Did my hon. Friend mean that?
      Mr. Jamieson: No. We are considering a variety of solutions. I hope that they will become more apparent to my hon. Friend later this year. However, the problem is

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      especially great and may require some new thinking about the way in which we deal with such problems. I hope that that does not tempt my hon. Friend too much.
      Mr. Chope: Will the Under-Secretary give way?
      Mr. Jamieson: All right. The hon. Gentleman will doubtless tell us where he will find all the money.
      Mr. Chope: Does the Under-Secretary's opaque reference to the M6 apply to all the other schemes to be considered for inclusion in the targeted programme of improvement?
      Mr. Jamieson: The hon. Gentleman knows that that programme includes many schemes and could include many others. I cannot say today which schemes will be included—that is down to the assessment that is made of them. He might be surprised to know that it also depends on the amount of money that will be committed to programmes. He appears surprised to learn that the number of roads that we build is related to the amount of money that we put into the budget. I am surprised at his surprise.
      Mr. Paul Marsden: Will the Under-Secretary therefore rule out the north-west relief road, which is proposed to surround north-west Shrewsbury? That would cost £42 million and be a complete waste of money.
      Mr. Jamieson: I shall not rule that in or out today.
      The agency has a challenging future. It has changed greatly since it was established 10 years ago. The challenge is whether it can provide safe and reliable journeys for customers. It has a customer focus, which means that it will further improve the management of the network and ease the impact of congestion on road users. There is some way to go but I am confident that the agency has been set the right objectives not only to meet the challenge but to achieve the Government's aim of a high quality, safe and reliable strategic road network.
      I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich for giving us an opportunity to debate the Highways Agency. I am sure that we shall have other opportunities to discuss some of the issues. I assure her that the agency and the Department take seriously the points that were made in the report. We shall follow up with some vigour the issues that it properly raised.
      Debate concluded, pursuant to resolution [21 June].
      Questions deferred, pursuant to Standing Order 54(4) and (5) (Consideration of estimates) and Order [29 October 2002].

      Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles
      [Relevant documents: Third Report from the Transport Committee, Session 2003–04, on The Regulation of Taxis and Private Hire Vehicle Services in the UK, HC251–I, Fifth Report from the Transport Committee, Session 2003–04, on The Office of Fair Trading 's Response to the Third Report of the Committee: The Regulation of Taxis and Private Hire Vehicle Services in the UK, HC418, and the Government's response thereto, Cm6183; The Department for Transport Annual Report 2004, Cm6207.]
      Motion made, and Question proposed,
      That, for the year ending with 31st March 2005, for expenditure by the Department for Transport—
      (1) further resources, not exceeding £5,665,964,000, be authorised for use as set out in HC 466,
      (2) a further sum, not exceeding £5,144,950,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to meet the costs as so set out, and
      (3) limits as so set out be set on appropriations in aid.—[Paul Clark.]
      4.8 pm
      Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: With the leave of the House, we unknown, up-and-coming Members of Parliament have to take every opportunity to get heard. I therefore hope that I shall be forgiven for introducing my Committee's second report.
      My Government rely heavily on the theory that only by continually introducing competition to various services can high standards be achieved. I have reservations about that, especially in relation to state services such as the national health service. However, it is a sensible idea for transport.
      Taxis are a form of transport that is not often debated in the House of Commons, and it is not always realised that they are not only part of the general transport system but an essential part of the system for a great many people, including those who do not own a car, and those who no longer drive or no longer have access to a car. Such people are very dependent on the provision of efficient taxi services, and that part of the transport system is always growing. It is therefore essential that the way in which taxis operate, the safety levels that they provide, the prices that they charge and, above all, the services that they offer are those that are required by the general public and are of a consistently high standard.
      Because Her Majesty's Government have, in the past, been so reliant on the opinion of the Office of Fair Trading, the Select Committee on Transport was somewhat surprised to discover that the OFT had produced a report that seemed to suggest that it was no longer a good idea for local authorities to control the number of taxi licences issued in a particular area. A normal way of balancing supply and demand in such services is to ask local people what they want, and to place the responsibility for deciding the size of a particular fleet on an elected authority.
      My own council, for example, decided some time ago, under a previous Administration, that it would be challenged if it sought to restrict the issuing of licences,

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      and there followed a period during which almost anybody with respectable traits—rather than people who did not comply with proper standards—was able to obtain a licence. That resulted in an extraordinary situation, in which there was not only an increase in the number of taxis but a drop in the number of private hire cars, which had previously not been allowed to ply for hire on the roads. That change was not necessarily to the advantage of the general public. I speak from personal experience as one who uses the taxi system in my constituency widely.
      In Crewe, the large taxi firms that had provided a 24-hour service, including at difficult and sometimes unpopular hours—enabling people to get to railway stations or to get home safely at times when there were not large numbers of passengers looking for taxis—suddenly found that, following the issuing of large numbers of taxi licences, the emphasis was on providing lots of taxis at the times when there were lots of people available, but not on an equal basis right across the 24-hour period. So, if someone required a taxi late on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night from one or two of the well known centres of entertainment, there would probably be a large number of taxis available, some of which would previously have been private hire cars. However, those services were not necessarily being provided at unpopular hours.
      I therefore took a very personal interest when the Committee decided to consider the OFT's examination of the provision of taxi licences, and I have to say that the Committee found the report fairly disquieting. In the past, the OFT has been well known for the very high standard of its work, and the care with which it provided reports. Under Sir Gordon Borrie—with whom I had the privilege of working when I was an extraordinarily junior Minister of no import whatever in what was then the Board of Trade—the OFT had developed a very good reputation, not only for looking into the essential problems that were arising across the board, but for coming to measured and careful judgments based on fact.
      I am not making a general assumption that all the OFT's work is now substandard, but the sad thing is that the Committee found that this report was frankly not one of which the office could be proud. Indeed, we found that, in many respects, the report was slovenly and did not seem to have been carefully researched. The research had not been undertaken by the OFT itself, but seemed to have been based on a ragbag of other people's research. Some of the research was done for completely different reasons, and then somehow aggregated into the report, which precipitated a series of decisions that boiled down to the fact that one way in which the travelling public could be assisted to get many more private taxis was to remove many of the responsibilities from local authorities, and to say, in effect, that almost anyone could have a licence if they complied with one or two very minimal conditions.
      When we questioned the Office of Fair Trading, we were concerned about the quality of the research, as I have said, about the conclusions that it had reached, and that it had not given nearly enough weight to the views of local authorities. One of the responsibilities of
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      an elected member in a particular borough, or town, wherever it is in the United Kingdom, is to know what their electors want and, certainly, to be aware of the conditions that apply in relation to the provision of transport. It seemed to us that the OFT had decided in a cavalier manner that local authorities should not have rights to place restrictions on the number of licences based on their assessment of need in a particular area but rather on a rather outdated view of the provision of competition, which had not been justified either by the OFT's report or the modelling that it had undertaken. Our inquiry session with the OFT confirmed that, and when we said one or two things that the OFT seemed to regard as at best disobliging and at worse cruel, it came out with a report saying, in effect, that we were all wrong and that we did not know anything about the subject. Well, it was precisely because we were concerned about the quality of its work that we asked it those questions, and we did not receive satisfactory answers.
      I do not conclude from that that every inquiry into competition throughout the United Kingdom will produce a report that cannot be justified on the basis of facts and figures. In this particular instance, however, I repeat that we were clear that the Office of Fair Trading, which has a special responsibility and could destabilise taxi firms throughout the United Kingdom if it took the wrong decision, had not in this instance undertaken its research to an adequate standard. In some cases, it had been involved in very odd decisions. For example, in Cambridge, a university city, it had done this piece of work during the holidays. When we asked it why it had done so, it seemed to think that that was an unnecessary question. When we pointed out that one of the big users of taxis would be student populations, we did not really get a coherent reply. Indeed, some might say that we did not get a reply at all.
      The Committee's report says plainly that for many women, elderly people and people who do not have access to cars, the taxi is not an indulgence or an expense but a fundamental way of getting to and from essential services such as doctors and shops. If there is not a proper taxi service available to everybody, across the board, at prices that they can afford, that is a definite drawback. It is not an abstract argument. This is a transport system that underpins the existing transport. In some areas, particularly where bus companies arbitrarily withdraw services on their own criteria, without, as far as one can see, considering the needs of the population, only people's ability to replace that with a taxi service, preferably at a reasonable rate, makes it possible for them still to enjoy a normal standard of life. It is therefore very important that we get this right.
      I was not impressed with the original evidence from the Office of Fair Trading, and we have said why: the work was not well done, deeply researched or properly prepared. I was mildly irritated by the OFT's peevish response when we dared to criticise it. I am afraid that the House of Commons is here in order to criticise. Although some Members of Parliament might think that it is more important to notch up the number of television programmes on which they appear, I happen to think that it is more important to be here doing

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      detailed Select Committee work, looking at what we need for our constituents and defending their interests when the occasion arises.
      Even if we are few in number today, the extent to which we make up for that in quality is so notable that I am sure that the House will not be surprised to hear how important I find this debate. I am grateful to the Minister for coming along this afternoon to discuss with us whither the future of the taxi service. We have to get away from the idea that only rich people use taxis. Rich people do not need taxis; ordinary people do. Ordinary people, at all stages of their lives, require access to taxis and private hire vehicles. Those are not the same thing. They perform different functions and it is clear that the ideas that the OFT was promulgating were neither soundly based, sensible nor, ultimately, defensible. That seems to me a sad comment on the OFT, and I hope that it will never do such a sloppy piece of work again.
      4.21 pm
      Clive Efford: I should like to preface my contribution by saying that I have been involved in detailed discussions on the taxi industry as a representative of the industry before entering the House—hon. Members will know that I am a former London taxi driver—and since I have become a Member of the House, particularly on the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998. I have to say that I find that the Department for Transport—although I do not mean the Ministers when I say this—is impenetrable when it comes to trying to get it to understand just exactly what the taxi industry is, what it stands for and what service it provides.
      It is worth starting by trying to determine what a taxi is. It is a highly personalised transport service, but it is also an essential part of the public transport system. From my experience, I can tell the House that many main stations in central London would suffer enormously from the congestion of people and personnel on platforms and around stations were it not for the efficient way in which taxis can move people through those stations. Hundreds of people per hour can be shifted through a station rank as a result of the efficiency of our London taxi service. The failure to understand the contributions that taxis make in all sorts of ways to life not just in London, but in communities up and down the country, is at the heart of why we continually return to false arguments about what a taxi is and what the private hire industry provides.
      It is clear what people want: an efficient service that is safe and affordable. We always return to the argument about what private hire is and what a taxi is. Page 2 of the Government response to the Select Committee report refers to an expectation, or assumption, that if we deregulate or derestrict the number of taxis in an area, there will be a flow of private hire drivers to become taxi drivers. That does happen now, as many private hire drivers are aspiring taxi drivers; but that is not an assumption that can be made. That demonstrates the false assertions and assumptions of which the Department is guilty in its response to the Office of Fair Trading. The Government have shown considerable sympathy for
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      the position advanced by the OFT, though their final conclusion was to give local authorities the opportunity to determine numbers at the local level.
      The private hire vehicle and the taxi provide the exact same service. Whether the vehicle is hired on the street and stops on the street, whether it is summoned through the telephone or pre-booked, the service provided is a door-to-door service that is exactly the same. It is important to recognise that if we are to discuss the taxi industry properly.
      My view—it is a personal view and I would not suggest that others would necessarily support it—is that we should set a target date. I apologise to Conservative Members for referring to targets there. We should set a target date some time in the distant future when there will be a single system of taxi service throughout the country. We should set the standards for the vehicles, the drivers and the knowledge expected, establishing a framework to which all future drivers, proprietors and local authorities would have to adhere. Within that, there would be local frameworks of operation.
      What would be the result? At the moment, several metropolitan districts require vehicles to have metropolitan standards of fitness—turning circles, size of vehicles, applicable tariffs and so on. If we were to require a greater degree of compliance with the metropolitan standards—they may need to be reviewed, but not dramatically changed—we would be opening up a much wider market for purpose-built vehicles. In the long-term future, that would enable us to provide wider variety and wider choice, allow us to meet a wider variety of disabilities through vehicle design—as suggested by the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee in its evidence to the Select Committee—and reduce the cost of vehicles.
      There is no doubt in my mind that the monopoly of London Taxis International—Metrocab until it went out of business—over the purpose-built vehicle industry enabled the company to name its price. Until we expand the demand for purpose-built taxi vehicles and open up the marketplace to a much wider area of demand, we will not have the necessary competition over designs that would force prices down. The inflation in the cost of the taxi to the driver has far exceeded any other costs facing the industry. We should deal with that problem.
      Mr. Christopher Chope: If the hon. Gentleman is correct about London taxi builders, why has the matter not been referred to the Competition Commission?
      Clive Efford: I cannot answer that, because I do not know what rules the Competition Commission would apply, but there is no competition. That is the point. There is only one company. It cannot be accused of restrictive practices, as it is not preventing others from entering the marketplace. The problem is that it is such a closed niche market that very few people have moved into it. The Nissan engine that was placed in the Fairway taxi about 12 years ago was the first purpose-built engine for taxi vehicles. Before that, there were ex-army engines that blew up when the engine blocks

      1515
      broke on them; earlier still, there was the transit engine. Throughout the history of the taxi, the design evolved, but no one bothered to construct a purpose-built engine for the job until Nissan designed one. That demonstrates that we need to generate wider demand for such vehicles to bring about greater competition, more efficiency in the vehicles and lower prices to the driver, which will lead in turn to fewer increases in the tariff to the travelling public.
      I have said already that the Government have displayed considerable sympathy to the OFT's demand for derestriction in various areas. The Government have said that they are sympathetic to that, but it would be wrong to override local knowledge. Local authorities know what problems derestriction might cause at local level, but those are problems that the Government cannot foresee.
      For instance, taxi enforcement officers made it clear in their evidence that derestriction in taxi numbers would cause massive congestion in the centres of some towns and cities because of the shortage of taxi ranks. I know from experience that taxi drivers, when business is slow, tend to stay at the ranks. Drivers can cause congestion by blocking access to stations and other areas, but sometimes they have to wait a long time before they find another job. Driving around merely burns up fuel and increases overhead costs, so it is inevitable that, in periods of low demand, taxi drivers will park their vehicles and wait. If there are too few ranks, there will be congestion in city centres. People with long experience of the industry and of taxi enforcement know that, but the OFT report ignored it completely.
      It is clear that the OFT knew what sort of report it wanted to produce. It had predetermined that it wanted to promote a laissez-faire approach to the industry—a completely free market, open to anyone who met the required conditions. The OFT's evidence made it clear that it was ignorant of the trade, and that very little effort had been made to understand it.
      I shall give an example of that. It is true that, because the tariff is a maximum, people can negotiate it downwards. I congratulate the OFT on getting one thing right, but the report suggests that people could agree a price in negotiations at the taxi window with the driver.
      I can imagine what the result of that would be at some of the taxi ranks that I know, as late-night revellers—perhaps triumphant England football supporters celebrating victory in Portugal—negotiate with drivers the price that they are prepared to pay. The OFT suggested that a marshal would be needed to overcome any problems that might arise. The marshal would be expected to tell tired and emotional revellers what they would have to pay for their journey, or that they should join the queue for another vehicle.
      We have all seen the Robocop films, but a taxi marshal would need to be as heavily armoured and to carry as many weapons as that character. That may sound cynical, but the suggestion shows the extent of the OFT's understanding of the industry. The OFT's approach was predetermined, and it tried to make its facts and figures fit accordingly.
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      In areas with restrictions on the number of taxis, services must undergo unmet demand surveys every couple of years or so. Those surveys determine whether there is unmet demand, and whether the number of taxis should be increased. The OFT criticised the surveys for being inefficient. They are mostly carried out by a company called Halcrow—yet the OFT commissioned the same company to carry out its own survey.
      As my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) noted, the OFT visited Cambridge, but not at a time when the students were around. I know Cambridge reasonably well; I have visited it on many occasions. Even I can see that it would be beneficial to carry out a survey when the students are at college, not away from the city, to get a true picture of the demand there.
      There is a catalogue of other criticisms. Initially the OFT set out to survey only the taxi industry. It took no heed of the existence of the private hire industry and its impact on the outcome of the surveys and the decisions that it might need to make about the industry. I questioned it about telephone hirings, which is a rapidly growing area of the taxi industry, but it took no account of the fact that that was a major part of both private hire and taxis.
      The reason why hon. Members wait longer outside the House for a taxi to answer the light is that many taxis are pre-booked. People standing in the street may complain about empty taxis with the light out and no one in the back, but that is because it is increasingly a pre-booked service. That highlights the fact that the taxi and private hire industries are very similar and it is why the Mayor of London consulted and increased the excess after 10 o'clock at night. He wished to encourage more drivers to ply for hire on the street rather than be pre-booked through the radio circuits. I have made this argument over many years. The way to overcome the increasing trend towards pre-booking is to increase the fare when the driver first puts the meter on when people get in the cab. The radio services in the taxi industry have tried to keep the figure down because they want drivers to sign up for the radio service and not to ply for hire on the streets. That is where the problem comes from.
      The backdrop to the debate is not only the OFT report but the other issue of major concern to the public, namely, safety. For many years I have argued with people about the way in which incidents are reported when someone is attacked in the back of a taxi. Too often, it has been reported that a taxi driver has attacked a member of the public, but when one looks at the detail, often it is an illegal hiring. It is invariably a tout who has picked someone up from the street and then attacked them in the back of the vehicle. We have failed the public by not reporting incidents properly.
      When we debated the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Bill more than six years ago—something that has still not been implemented in London in full—the Government had plans to provide 20 enforcement officers across London. I pointed out that that would lead to a false sense of security among the public about how well regulated the private hire vehicle industry would be under the new legislation. Unless we have enforcement of a kind that can guarantee that a vehicle

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      is licensed, we will create such a false sense of security. We must take such issues into account when we consider derestricting numbers. If any hon. Member steps outside the House now they will be able to spot every licensed taxi that drives past, but they will not be able to spot every minicab that drives past. My point is that enforcement is much easier with purpose-built vehicles than ordinary saloon cars used as taxis and private hire vehicles. That goes back to my argument for moving to a one-tier system in the distant but not too distant future.
      In conclusion, I wish to highlight one of the points that emerged in evidence to the Committee and that was acknowledged by the OFT. Over the past 25 years, the taxi industry has been the fastest growing form of public transport. It has grown by more than 40 per cent. since 1995. The OFT cannot conclude that that has been the result of the derestriction of the number of taxis in certain areas—although it tried to suggest that in response to the Committee's report. If that had been the case, it would have emerged from the OFT's surveys of the industry. That is a damning indictment of the OFT's report and its conclusions.
      Not everything is perfect in the taxi industry. We could improve it in certain areas and we should endeavour to do so. However, blanket deregulation and riding roughshod over local knowledge—as the OFT has suggested—are not the answer. If it isn't broke, let's not try to fix it.
      4.41 pm
      Linda Gilroy: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) and the other members of the Transport Committee for the work that they have done in closely scrutinising the OFT's report. I share many of the concerns that the Committee expressed about the quality of that report and the conclusions it reached.
      Taxis and public hire vehicles play an important part in the lives of most of our constituents, especially in a city such as Plymouth, which has more than its fair share of low-income, non-car-owning households, with many vulnerable and disabled people who depend on such transport. We also have a lively night-time economy, in which taxis and private hire vehicles play an important part in getting people to and from the clubs and pubs. We also have a big student population and I recognise the comments made about Cambridge. At times when most students have gone home, demand for such vehicles is lower, but at other times there are not enough to go round. It is important to consider provision at the appropriate time in the season.
      Cost is important, but so are the issues of safety and reliability. At least the Government have not opted for big bang deregulation in response to the OFT report. It will be up to local authorities to make sense of the local situation, in the context of their local transport plans. In Plymouth, the situation has always presented a challenge to council officers and councillors, and I wonder how they will respond to some of the challenges that the issues will produce locally in future.
      I have two particular concerns, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to respond to them when he winds up. Plymouth has its own legislation on private hire trade issues—the Plymouth City Council
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      Act 1975. The city council is unique in having the power to grant licences for the purpose of private hire, which, technically, gives it the right to limit private hire vehicle numbers. In practice, it chooses not to do so. However, local people are well aware that the council has that capacity and some in the private hire vehicle operator community have sometimes called for it to exercise that power.
      Like my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich, I make wide use of taxis and private hire vehicles in my constituency. Over the years, a number of concerns have been raised with me that should leave us with no illusion that the relatively free market in the private hire vehicle sector compared to the taxi sector is by any means perfect. One of my constituents wrote to me about her current experiences of that trade. Her letter gave me cause for concern that a similar situation could arise for taxis if numbers are derestricted.
      My constituent wrote:
      "For the last two years I have been a private hire driver in Plymouth. For the first few months, it was great".
      Then things became difficult for various reasons. She continued:
      "Things started to pick up gradually and then started to go downhill again. I have realised now just what it is. There are too many private hire drivers and more pouring in each month."
      When she phoned Plymouth city council, she was "absolutely amazed" to discover that there was no regulation to stop the issue of private hire licences, which was, she said:
      "Something to do with freedom and democracy. Well, I'm all for that but not if it affects my weekly income."
      She asked why people are allowed to go through the taxi schools run by some of the fleet operators in Plymouth when there is no work for them and existing drivers struggle to meet their bills. She described the difficulties in meeting those bills:
      "If we were seeing small losses that would be acceptable, but in two years I have lost between £250-£300 per week and I put it down largely to the saturation of the market."
      It is something to do with the market, but it is also to do with the way that some fleet operators suck some of the people they put through their driving schools into leasing vehicles with high maintenance costs. I am worried that we could have the same unrestricted market if we derestrict the numbers for hackney cabs.
      Will the Minister look into that situation? If he goes ahead with the proposals in his action plan, will he ensure that the OFT and the Department of Trade and Industry give as much attention to the unfair competition aspects in the operation of the private hire market as they give to deregulation? Will he consider whether his Department could alert local authorities to look into such issues? He may tell me that they already have such a role, although I am not aware of it. However, if there is to be a greater move towards deregulated markets, perhaps he could provide guidance for local authorities on how to deal with such issues in the framework of competition legislation.
      Secondly, will the Minister look into the position of the very worried black-cab drivers who have invested a considerable amount in their taxi business? They are concerned about the impact of the changes on the value of their plates and the existing trade in plates. Unless local authorities are allowed to manage change sensibly,

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      people who count on that as part of their retirement fund could face a sudden loss that might hit them very hard indeed.
      I should like the Minister to say to what extent local authorities will be able to take account of such positions, given that, under the Government's proposals, they will have not only to review regularly but justify their decisions to continue to restrict licences. An article published in the Financial Times earlier this year shows just how unfair that would be. It was written by John Kay, who says:
      "When licences are restricted. they acquire a value".
      That value can vary. He says that
      "in Crawley or Wycombe you may have to invest up to £50,000."
      I suspect that the figure is probably a little less in Plymouth. He continues:
      "The potential profit a taxi driver might derive from restrictive licensing through higher fares and fuller cabs is absorbed in the costs of servicing the loan needed to acquire the licence. Today's taxi drivers are no better off than if the restrictions on numbers of cabs had never been introduced … who does benefit from quantity licensing? The gains go to the people who were in business when the restrictions were introduced".
      So a problem could arise if local authorities had difficulties in justifying deregulation.
      We are all vulnerable with regard to our safety and, often, to our ability as consumers to know whether we are being taken all round the houses to get where we want to go. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) referred to the difficulties that people face in trying to bargain over price; but, equally, if people turn up in a city or community with which they are not familiar, they do not know whether they are literally being taken all round the houses to get to their destinations. So there is scope for abuse.
      I hope that the Minister will bear in mind the points that I have raised in ensuring that taxis and private hire vehicles can continue to serve our constituents' interests. On balance, at best, the benefits of implementing the sort of deregulation that the OFT envisages might be described as a cake that is not worth the candle and, at worst, such deregulation could open up a very nasty new can of worms.
      4.52 pm
      Mr. David Lepper: I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), who is the Chairman of the Transport Committee, and the members of her Committee on their work—I was going to say, "for the demolition job that they have done", but it is, in fact, not a demolition job but a systematic, step-by-step taking apart of a wholly unsatisfactory piece of research by the OFT. We are all indebted to my hon. Friend and her Committee for the way in which they have approached the OFT report.
      I will declare an interest. I am one of the few people in the country who not only does not drive, but has never learned to drive. I imagine that that can be said of few hon. Members. So to do my job—and, indeed, to do the job that I did before I was elected to the House—I have had to rely on public transport. I welcome the fact that the Government say in their response to the report that
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      they consider taxis and private hire vehicles to be an integral part of local transport provision and that proper account should be taken of them in the local transport planning process. Like many other people, I regard taxis and private hire vehicles as important parts of public transport.
      I echo the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) made about the investment that so many taxi drivers have made in setting up in the trade that they are engaged in. Given that investment, they must pay huge attention to the quality of the vehicle and its maintenance. The job that they do can be risky. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) mentioned the ridiculous proposals about haggling over prices that were recommended as part of the OFT report. I would recommend that members of the Office of Fair Trading group that carried cut the report come to West street in my constituency on a Saturday night and try to haggle at the taxi rank. I wonder how long they would last and whether they would be successful in getting a cab or would be set upon by others in the queue.
      For taxi drivers themselves the job can often be risky. They do not know who they will be picking up late at night in our big cities—whether at a rank, when they are hailed or when they are sent in a private hire vehicle in response to a telephone call. All of us may well have heard from taxi drivers who, having taken a fare to a destination, are told by the passenger, "Sorry, mate. I haven't got any money with me." They can then get into difficulties trying to get the fare that they are rightly owed.
      The OFT report shows no understanding of what the taxi trade is about and totally disregards the work that is going on locally in so many places to ensure that the quality of service offered by the taxi fleet is high. Let me put the report into the context of what has happened in my local authority area. Over the past three or four years, the taxi trade in Brighton and Hove has been through two upheavals. Two licensing authorities—Brighton and Hove—were eventually brought together uneasily when we became a unitary authority. Some leeway in the time scale was given for that process, but it caused concern and disruption to the livelihood of some taxi drivers.
      Just a year or so ago, the licensing authority commissioned Halcrow to carry out research into significant unmet demand in the Brighton and Hove area. As we have heard, Halcrow not only carried out some work for the OFT but usually conducts research for local licensing authorities. There was haggling locally between the trade and council officers, but a plan was agreed as a result of the Halcrow report for the managed growth of the trade over the following few years. That agreement was not necessarily reached easily, but everyone Knew where they were.
      Then, in a matter of months, the OFT's report came along, disregarding completely the detailed local negotiations that went on all over the country of the kind that I saw from a slight distance in my constituency. The report caused a shock wave sufficient to bring out 270 drivers in the Brighton and Hove area in a convoy in protest through the city. I am not sure whether that was the best way for them to make their

      1521
      point, but that was what they decided to do. Some 30 or 40 came up here to discuss the report and my views on it with them.
      Managed growth is the key to a successful taxi fleet as part of the public transport network in any area. The people best suited to make decisions about the form that that managed growth should take are those on the local council and the local licensing authority, in consultation with local representatives of the taxi trade. In that way, we can end up with a system that is more likely to best suit the needs of the area. The underlying mistakes of the OFT's report—there were lots of mistakes—were to assume that one system was right for everywhere in the country, and to overlook totally the likely negative results of the delimitation of numbers.
      I welcome the response to the OFT report. I also welcome the Department for Transport's decision that the delimitation recommendation at least should not proceed and its adoption of a more cautious approach than the OFT would have liked to many other recommendations. The taxi trade—I include in that the private hire trade—wants some certainty about the future. It does not want to think that every two or three years there will be another revision of how it does things. I think that local authorities want that certainty as well so that they can truly make their taxi fleets and private hire vehicles part of their local public transport network.
      This is the second time in a couple of years that the OFT has considered an activity that is a business and a service. I also have in mind its report on community pharmacies. There are serious questions to be asked about the way in which it considers service industries of any kind. It shows glaring ignorance in both reports of the impact, or the likely impact, of its recommendations on the lives of the communities that we are here to represent. Although I welcome the response and, more cautiously, the approach adopted by the Department, there are wider issues on the remit of the OFT that might also need consideration.
      5.2 pm
      Mr. Paul Marsden: I congratulate the Transport Committee, and not just because I am a member of it, on this very useful report. It demonstrates yet again the power of Select Committees. I also congratulate all hon. Members on their fine speeches: the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) showed robust leadership, the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) demonstrated his expert knowledge, and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) showed her in-depth knowledge of constituents' concerns.
      The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper) raised a number of issues not least that taxis and private hire vehicles offer a public transport service. That should never be forgotten. He also said that it can be overlooked that they provide safety for passengers. Those drivers are often put at risk, especially late at night. Having spoken to taxi drivers and private vehicle operators in Shrewsbury, I know that those isolated attacks can be frightening and have devastating long-term effects on the health and welfare of drivers, who provide such an important service.
      Taxi drivers and private vehicle operators offer a vital service to local communities, especially those in rural areas. Where there are few bus, train or tram service
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      sand so on, or if those services are non-existent, taxis are the only recourse for people who cannot afford a car or who want the convenience of someone else driving them. Every time a bus service is altered in my constituency, it is often the elderly and disabled who have to turn more and more to taxi services to get them from A to B. I know of one case in which a route change to a bus meant the elderly taking taxis to the local hospital far more often. That is why it is important that the services are affordable.
      Taxis do their bit for the environment. They reduce the need for car parking spaces and reduce congestion. As has been mentioned, they have been the fastest growing part of the transport sector for the past 25 years, with the greatest usage coming from those on low incomes, and disabled groups.
      The problem with the OFT's report, which has been dissected by the Chairman of the Transport Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich, stems from a patent lack of understanding of how the industry works, and the fact that it is important that local decisions are taken by local people.
      The OFT's report, which was published in November 2003, set out three recommendations, of which only the first was seriously put forward as a solution. The three were
      "quantity regulation … quality and safety regulation … fare regulation".
      It is key that it is the Office of Fair Trading, not merely free trading. It should be about making sure that it is a free and fair marketplace, not unfettered free trade. We do not want to see a derestriction of numbers, which will result in a lowering of regulations and a lowering of standards.
      The Select Committee showed in its report a number of key faults of the OFT. It stated that it did not understand why the OFT did not ensure that its surveys matched its wider dataset, and particularly why it did not ensure that all the evidence relating to derestricted authorities was usable. I hope that the Minister will be able to explain why repeatedly the OFT did not seem to have robust and accurate data available. Likewise, when the OFT made the claim that the relevant basis upon which the decision to derestrict should be made was whether restricting taxi numbers benefited consumers today, its analysis robustly demonstrated that it did not, yet the Committee had to point out that that was based on flimsy evidence to do with waiting times.
      The Committee also talks about the confusion of the quality of data. I hope that the Minister will be able to show the House that the OFT has learned from its mistakes. Page 2 of the Government's response states that they had concerns about the evidence. The Government, contrary to what the OFT were saying, stated that ultimately,
      "local authorities are best placed"
      to determine local transport needs. Why did the OFT seemingly make such a poor case, by basing it on poor data, in its report?
      The Government also responded to the issue of best practice licensing guidance. They said in their response that advice on quality standards for vehicles to be licensed, covering the needs of disabled people, would be published. When will that advice be forthcoming?

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      Likewise, it is said that the situation will be reviewed in three years' time. It would be useful for the House to know whether that will be at the beginning or the end of 2007. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion said, stability is so important. Those in the industry deserve to know what will happen in future as soon as possible.
      Taxis are not as polluting in some regards as other vehicles, but in other regards they most certainly contribute significantly to overall air pollution. To set this in context, I know that in Bejing city centre, 70 per cent. of taxis fail to meet even basic emission standards. That goes to show that we are making great strides in the EU and in Britain in improving air quality and reducing air pollution. However, as The Scotsman showed on 21 January, in a report to Aberdeen city council environment committee, the council's head of road management stated:
      "There is a statutory requirement to tackle poor air quality because of the risk to human health."
      The AA's view is that there is a real problem in Aberdeen city centre that is caused by old buses, old lorries and old taxis, and all diesel-engined vehicles in particular. The Commission for Integrated Transport has said that the retro-fitting of catalytic converters could be one of most effective ways of reducing emissions, although it would cost up to £500 per vehicle. Would the Government consider introducing an incentive for the retro-fitting of such converters to older taxis?
      Elsewhere, there are robust attempts to tackle the problem of air pollution. In California, for instance, all cars, including taxis, in downtown Los Angeles are to be powered by alternative fuels, which would be a considerable advance on current EU standards. Diesel-powered taxis compare favourably with conventional taxis, as they emit only a third of the carbon monoxide and two-thirds of the hydrocarbons emitted by taxis with petrol engines. However, they emit twice as many nitrogen oxides and 10 times as many particulates, which affect people with asthma and breathing difficulties. Seventy-eight per cent. of particulate pollution in London is caused by road transport vehicles, of which taxis are a significant proportion. I welcome the fact that the Government have agreed to introduce new EU standards in January 2006 that will encompass taxis and halve the particulate emission rate. However, I urge them to look at older vehicles, because we want a thriving and robust taxi service that is nevertheless less polluting.
      I will conclude with the concerns of the LTI and the industry. As has been said, the LTI has a virtual monopoly on the manufacture of vehicles, but it has said:
      "Taxi vehicle manufacturers need to play their part in improving air quality and preventing damaging climate change."
      It wants to increase the efficiency of diesel and petrol engines and decrease the pollution that they cause, and it urges manufacturers to consider the use of alternative fuels. However, it wants more encouragement and support from the Government to meet the ideal of zero emissions. I pay tribute to taxi drivers, particularly in London, who have the knowledge. The LTI asks for a review of
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      "antiquated administration and testing techniques"
      and says that the Public Carriage Office should
      "remove unnecessary delays from the Knowledge test process whilst not diluting the standard."
      It is concerned about proposals for the rear loading of wheelchair users that threaten the security and safety of disabled people. I hope that the Minister can address those concerns and ensure that, above all, the OFT is rebuked for a clearly substandard report.
      5.13 pm
      Mr. Christopher Chope: I, too, congratulate the Transport Committee on its report, which has inspired a well-informed debate and influenced the decisions that the Government made in March. It is right that local licensing authorities should decide certain issues, as that is a true example of localism, which is supported throughout the country by Conservative authorities. We are delighted that there is to be a Conservative chairman of the Local Government Association as a result of our continuing success in local government elections.
      Everybody loves a cabbie. Members of Parliament particularly love cabbies because they are a useful barometer of the political climate and are well informed about what members of the travelling public think. Now is an especially good time for Conservatives to travel in the back of cabs, as we are getting encouraging messages from cabbies.
      It is interesting that, as has been pointed out in the debate, since 1995 taxis have been the fastest-growing form of public transport. It is significant that they are not subsidised. They are flexible and responsive. One can get a cab on Christmas day or in the early hours of the morning. One can get a cab more or less on demand, and it is not surprising that despite not receiving a subsidy, they meet the needs of the public. On the whole, the cabbie is an entrepreneurial, hard-working person. That is exactly what is needed in a dynamic industry that is consumer-facing, as the taxi trade is.
      It has become apparent from the debate that for a taxi driver who has invested in purchasing a plate or the right to ply for hire in a particular locality, it must be worrying to think at out the future. As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy), the only people who benefited from the introduction of restrictions on the number of cabs in particular localities were the people who were there at the outset, who were immediately able to sell their restricted right to ply for hire at a premium. Now that people have bought in under that system at premium rates, it is difficult see how the local licensing authorities can be fair in relaxing those restrictions while at the same time preserving the investment of those who purchased the plates
      Despite the flexibility and the growth in the taxi service, there are times in parts of the country when there still is not an adequate taxi service. That is the case in London in the early hours of the morning. If there were an adequate taxi service at that time, there would not be a proliferation of unlicensed minicabs. It is a difficult matter to enforce. I wonder whether thought has been given to the possibility of licensing a particular type of cab so that it can ply at particular times of day. At present, understandably, relatively few cabbies want

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      to be out at 2 am, when they can earn no more than if they were out at 10 pm. There is a problem of demand exceeding supply.
      Clive Efford: There are many types of taxi driver and they fill different niches in the industry. Many choose to work nights because they prefer the free roads and the speed with which they can get work done. They earn very good money indeed working at night, so it is an attractive type of work in the industry. It is not necessarily the case that there are fewer cabs on the road at night because of the lack of trade
      Mr. Chope: I bow to the hon. Gentleman's great knowledge of the subject. I, no doubt like him, have often left functions in London late at night or in the early hours of the morning and looked in vain for one of those cabs to which he refers, yet have found myself being offered the services of unlicensed minicab drivers, who draw up alongside, see someone in a suit and think, "There's the opportunity for a rip-off exercise." In my experience, there is a mismatch between supply and demand, particularly in the early hours of the morning.
      It is clear that in certain parts of the country, the cost of taxis is a significant burden for people for whom no public transport is available. In many areas, there is no true bus or rail alternative, and taxis are effectively the only form of public transport. They can be a pretty expensive option, so affordability is an issue.
      I hope that the Minister will respond to the points that have been made, which come from a knowledgeable group of participants. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Marsden) referred to many of the points that LTI Ltd. made in its briefing. I hope that the Minister will respond to the points that the hon. Gentleman raised, but I should like to add another—the metropolitan conditions of fitness review. LTI Ltd. is concerned that the metropolitan conditions of fitness should not be altered so as to remove the very tight turning circle that London cabs enjoy. I am a proud Volvo driver. The Volvo has a pretty good turning circle, but even its turning circle is not as good as that of a London cab. LTI makes a very good case on the grounds of reducing congestion and allowing flexibility, particularly in London circumstances, for maintaining the standard conditions of fitness.
      Although the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) argued the case for national standards, there are different circumstances in different parts of the country. In some areas, there are many part-time taxi drivers. Such drivers may run garages during the day, for example, and offer a taxi service on an occasional basis. In London, taxi driving is very much a professional's activity.
      Mrs. Dunwoody: Surely, the reality is that we should have a set of standards enabling somebody who has a mobility difficulty, a pram or a lot of difficult parcels to use a taxi. All those needs are much better catered for by a proper, agreed design and by vehicles that have large doors and proper access, which mean that people can use any available vehicle. We should not be saying that
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      people throughout the country can accept different standards, as they face the same sort of problems wherever they are.
      Mr. Chope: The hon. Lady is right that the problems of a disabled person who wishes to go to a particular destination are the same anywhere in the country, but we would not want to introduce a system that restricted entry into the cab trade by imposing a very high barrier in terms of providing an expensive vehicle. Sometimes, such a vehicle will be used relatively infrequently, perhaps because of the remoteness of the location where it is kept and used. Would we really want to penalise villagers in remote locations where nobody can afford the capital investment that is required to purchase a cab of a standard similar to those in London? London cabs can be used by a series of drivers almost 24 hours a day.
      I submit that we need to maintain some flexibility and common sense in these matters, so that the consumer is advantaged and will not be precluded from having the important mobility that we all cherish, yearn for and wish to extend to as many people as possible.
      5.23 pm
      The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Tony McNulty): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), as others have done, on choosing taxis as the subject of the second part of today's debate. They are a very important transport mode in the wider context of integrated transport strategies, and they are all too infrequently debated in this place.
      The Government are dedicated to delivering better transport, and taxis and private hire vehicles, which are sometimes called minicabs, have an important part to play. I demur from the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) about the Department for Transport somehow being a black hole or a dead zone in terms of taxis and PHVs. If my hon. Friend and others read the body of the Government response to the OFT report, they will find that it is more at one with the Transport Committee than it is with parts of the OFT report, so I did not understand the point about the impenetrability of the DFT on taxis. We broadly agree with the Transport Committee that the relationship between PHVs and taxis is a lacuna in the report, and I shall return to that matter in a moment.
      I shall start at the same point as my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich by acknowledging the invaluable service that the taxi and private hire industries provide to the people of this country. I shall tell a short anecdote, which may add to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham. I met representatives from the taxi trade shortly after I joined the DFT. Hon. Members who are familiar with the fifth floor of Great Minster house will know that it is replete with pictures of various transport modes such as planes and buses in all their respective glory. After one meeting, colleagues from the taxi trade went up and down the corridor looking in vain for a picture of a black taxi. However, if one goes up to the fifth floor now, a photograph of a black cab in all its splendour is on the wall straight outside my office, although perhaps that is part of the problem raised by my hon. Friend.
      My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich made the important point that taxis and PHVs are not only for the rich—far from it, because the rich can afford

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      alternatives. In the more deprived parts of our towns and cities, taxis or PHVs may be the only form of transport that people can rely on. Furthermore, taxis or PHVs provide safety, security and reliability. Even in areas where the transport network is well developed, PHVs and taxis complete the tail end of journeys from the railway station to locations such as the home or hospital.
      The use of taxis or PHVs is not linked to affluence. As a matter of record and research, people in the lowest income groups make the most taxi trips, so taxis and PHVs are vital in tackling social exclusion to enable the most marginalised members of society to access services and a quality of life that many of us take for granted.
      In that context, it is not surprising that, as many hon. Members said, the taxi and PHV industries have experienced some of the greatest growth rates for any transport mode over the past 20 years, and that is true not only in cities, but in rural communities as well. Taxis and PHVs provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to innovate, which is why we relaunched our guidance "Flexible Transport Services" in 2002. The guidance explains the various options that the law allows and provides many examples involving buses, taxis and car-sharing schemes. We want people to utilise taxis and PHVs to fill the gaps. Even if nothing else emerges, it would be a broad advance if hon. Members were to leave this debate with the notion that taxis and PHVs are key to an integrated transport system, and that the DFT treats them as such.
      It is most important that transport authorities outside London consider taxis and PHVs as fundamentals in any local transport plan. To aid that—I freely admit that the first round of transport plans contained a gap on taxis and PHVs—we shall produce model local taxi-PHV policies for the next round of local transport plans in the taxi-PHV best practice licensing guidance, which I shall return to later and which was part of the response to the OFT.
      Aside from which party is in power, for the first time we shall reach a stage where local transport plans, which are the key resource allocation packages, routinely include a strategy that places PHVs and taxis at the heart of every community outside London's local transport planning strategy.
      Let us consider the Office of Fair Trading's market study into taxi and PHV services. It is not for the Government to comment on the OFT's choice of subject for the study—that is a matter for the OFT. Beyond our response to the report, it is not necessarily my place or that of the Government to go into the same amount of detail, robust or otherwise. It is up to us to respond to the substance of the report and consider its recommendations carefully. To that end, it is appropriate to commend my hon. Friend and the Committee for producing two reports that helped greatly in our consideration of the OFT taxi and PHV study.
      One or two hon. Members have alluded to the influential nature of the reports, of which we took full cognisance. As hon. Members know, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State responded to the OFT on
      1528
      behalf of the Government on 18 March by means of a written statement. We responded to the two Transport Committee reports last month.
      Our response to the OFT included an action plan for taxis and PHVs that we are now taking forward. Although we accepted many of the OFT's recommendations, we concur with the Committee that local authorities an best placed to make local decisions in the light of local needs and circumstances. Many colleagues made that point in a far more erudite fashion than me.
      I was struck by the experience of hiccup and disruption outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper), first through the merger of Brighton and Hove into one unitary authority. The new joint unitary authority conducted a survey of unmet demand, but there is a fear that the Government's response will cause great disruption for the third time. We shall send a letter to all local authorities and, without wishing to pre-empt Brighton and Hove, I should think that, given the detailed work that was conducted last year on a managed growth strategy and the amount of local detail in it, the Government would not seek to change the position that prevailed under it after the survey of unmet demand. Brighton and Hove's strategy appears exemplary and something that we would request of all local authorities that would like to retain quantity controls.
      We start from the premise that quantity controls are appropriate given local circumstances and that any change to the position should be in local hands and determined by local people. It is entirely justifiable to say to local authorities, "You know the local market far better than we do and the unmet demand that exists in your area. Please tell us in simple language, because we are simple folk at the Department for Transport, why you think restrictions should remain." In most circumstances, that should be a straightforward exercise for most local authorities.
      We therefore concluded that it was not the role of central Government to take away local discretion on the number of taxi licences granted by local licensing authorities, as the OFT recommended. For the reasons that I have outlined and that have, I believe, all-party support—local knowledge and autonomy for local government—it is appropriate for local discretion to remain. However, it is right and proper that local authorities first justify maintaining the restrictions. I stress that approximately half of all local authorities have such controls. I make it clear that the power to restrict taxi licence numbers in England and Wales outside London will stay with local government. I emphasise a point that perhaps the OFT overlooked. There are already two or three discernibly different sorts of market for taxis and PHVs.
      As I have said, about half the authorities have no restrictions, including London—although London has a different regulatory framework. Some authorities—although not a whole lot—have reviews on a regular basis. Others decide, after exhaustive annual research, that they should allow 10, 20 or 30 more licences a year—this might be a bit of a caricature—thus allowing the same level of increase on a yearly basis as a sort of escape valve for the unmet demand. Other authorities go further and have restrictions in place which they review perhaps less than once a year.

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      So we already have a disaggregated market, rather than the pure market that, if I were being less than kind, I might say that the OFT report seemed to suggest that we had. We are very comfortable with the notion that things should stay local. We have already written to all authorities that have restrictions in place, not to ask them to justify their position—"justify" is the wrong word—but simply to substantiate why carrying on having restrictions is appropriate. If they are anything like Brighton and Hove, they will be able to answer that question in very short order.
      Clive Efford: I understand why my hon. Friend has written to those authorities that have restrictions on numbers to ask them why that might be the case, and to assess whether it is necessary to continue to operate restrictions, but has the Department also written to those authorities without restrictions to ask whether they felt any need to cap the numbers because problems were being caused in their local area?
      Mr. McNulty: My hon. Friend makes an entirely fair point. In the first instance, the answer is no. We have written to those authorities that have restrictions in the context of our response to the OFT report. They will need to reflect on whether they should have restrictions in the context of their local transport plan, and of how the PHV and taxi plan fits into it. It is not for us in the first instance to ask those authorities without restrictions why they do not have them, because that is beyond the purview of our response to the OFT report.
      Mrs. Dunwoody: That is a perfectly reasonable attitude to take, as long as the Department is aware that some authorities that had initially deregulated found that the ensuing chaos did not provide a better service—in fact, it resulted in a much worse one—and sought a form of re-regulation. I know that my hon. Friend is as concerned about this issue as I am, and I would ask him to ensure that, when the Department decides which attitude it is going to take, it bears in mind the fact that it is not always simply a question of removing restrictions and saying, "Fine, this is the market and it works better." Sometimes, it works much, much worse.
      Mr. McNulty: In the wider context, I would accept that argument. I would expect authorities that sought to put restrictions back in place to justify that decision in the context of how taxis and PHVs fitted into their overall local transport strategy. I would guess—this can only be a guess—that if a PHV and taxi strategy had been at the heart of local transport plans years ago, when deregulation first took place people might have thought twice about that deregulation, because they would have been able to see how it fitted in with all the other aspects of transport in their area.
      As I was saying, we have written to those authorities that have restrictions in place, and they should at least be able to tell us whether there is unmet demand for taxis in their area and whether they have plans to grant new taxi licences accordingly. That has essentially been the legislative position for the last 20 years. We have asked all the local authorities concerned—fairly, I think—to respond by 31 March 2005. We have also made a
      1530
      commitment to review the position in this regard in three years' time, with a view to taking further action if needed.
      Clive Efford: I do not want to labour this point too much, but in the Select Committee's second report—in our response to the OFT's response to our original report—we point out that the modelling suggests that local authorities with entry regulations in place are likely to have lower regulated fares. Bearing that in mind, it would seem logical for authorities without restrictions to consider whether their policy works in the best interest of the consumer.
      Mr. McNulty: They may well do, and it is an entirely fair point, but I will not prescribe how each local authority, with or without restriction, should respond to their local circumstances. That is precisely counter to the theme running through our response to the OFT, which is that local people should discuss local circumstances and come to local remedies within the legislative framework, and within the context of the guidance that we will issue. That is the way matters should go forward, for both those with and without restrictions.
      Mr. Chope: The Minister said earlier that the issue was not one of justification, and yet the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in a written statement in March, said that
      "the Government believe that local authorities should publish and justify their reasons for restricting the number of taxi licences issued."—[Official Report, 18 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 34WS.]
      Mr. McNulty: Well, that was terribly well spotted by the hon. Gentleman. I meant justified in the context of standing up on a pile of bibles and discussing in public policy terms why it is appropriate that restrictions should be maintained. That was the tone of at least some of the contributions. Of course, they must justify. We will not write to them to ask what their policies are—we know what they are. Justification is to be in the context of the latest unmet demand survey, how taxis and PHVs fit within overall local transport strategies, and in relation to all the reasons that I have suggested. I thought that we were having a serious debate about the OFT report and our response to it, rather than a silly little game of call my bluff. But there we have it.
      We have accepted the OFT's recommendations to produce best practice taxi-PHV licensing guidance because we consider that that should help local licensing authorities with a range of licensing issues. There will be full consultation on draft guidance before a final version is published—by the summer, I hope, but we shall wait and see. The guidance will cover most licensing issues, including quantity controls—in the context that I have set out—taxi fare setting, and, as I said earlier, a model local taxi-PHV policy framework for the local transport plan process.
      I should stress that this guidance will of course be on a voluntary basis: ultimately, licensing decisions are matters for local authorities and they will remain so, in the current legislative framework—there was at least a nuance in some Members' contributions that somehow we are about to introduce new legislation, which I know was one of the OFT's recommendations. We have no

      1531
      intention of introducing new legislation, and we feel that what we want to achieve in our response to the OFT, and in terms of maintaining the local dimension, can be done within the existing legislative framework and within the guidance.
      I have already mentioned the importance of taxis and PHVs to socially excluded groups, which is a very strong point. I would now like to say something about their importance to disabled people. Taxis are the form of public transport on which many disabled people depend most. Although they generally travel less often than others, for obvious reasons, when they do so, they make proportionately much greater use of taxis. That is why we encourage local licensing authorities to introduce local policies for accessible taxis before we make accessible taxis mandatory. As I announced last October, we are pursuing a policy that would see regulations introduced in many areas between 2010 and 2020. We are currently considering research findings, which will inform those technical regulations. In the meantime, we have already regulated to ensure that taxi drivers and PHV operators and drivers are under a duty to accept assistance dogs travelling with disabled people and to carry those animals free of charge. That said, of course, there is still much that we can do generally as regards taxis and PHVs before 2010.
      Enforcement is of major importance, so that the taxi and PHV trades are seen to be for legitimate, licensed drivers and vehicles only. We are determined to crack down nationwide on the touts who jeopardise the legitimate taxi trade and encourage all police forces to give this problem the priority that it deserves. In London, for example, a lot of time and effort is going into combating touting.
      Mr. Lepper: I hoped to catch the Minister before he left the issue of disabled taxi customers. Many of my disabled constituents who use taxis feel that one style of vehicle is not necessarily appropriate for all disabled travellers. Many people with disabilities would prefer and find it easier to use a saloon car than, for the sake of argument, a London-style black cab. Does the Department accept that that is so?
      Mr. McNulty: We do. That is absolutely right, and the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee and others who have done significant research would say quite freely that although the London hackney-style configuration is very useful, certainly for wheelchair access and a range of other disabilities, it is not the 100 per cent. all-singing, all-dancing, all-purpose vehicle for every single form of disability. Without going into the matter too much, that is why I profoundly disagree with the suggestion of a one-tier taxi. My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper) is entirely right, not least in that the design of some saloons—those taxis that are more like people carriers—is far more appropriate and convenient for those with impaired mobility but who are not in wheelchairs. The whole array of different saloons that are on offer means that it does not follow that only one model is appropriate.
      I want to dwell momentarily on touting. I recently went out on an anti-touting exercise to see for myself the good work being done by the enforcement authorities. I
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      stress that we must not be complacent about the touting problem, but must continue with initiatives such as the recent decision to make the touting offence recordable, to deter persistent offenders. Such high-profile measures contribute greatly to making passengers feel safe when travelling by taxi and PHV.
      To those in London and other urban areas who are tempted after an enjoyable night to jump into the first car that pulls up outside the nightclub, I take this opportunity to say "Don't do it, because you do not know what you are getting into." Unless that is a properly licensed cab or PHV that has been ordered for that customer, they do not know whether it is licensed, whether the driver has a licence, whether it is insured, whether it is roadworthy or whether or not the person behind the wheel is violent or a sex offender. Many people, not least young women—it frightened me when I saw this when out on the exercise in London—are jumping into the backs of cars that are in one form or another potential death traps. They simply should not do that, however much they are tempted simply to get in the car and go home.
      Clive Efford: I could not agree with my hon. Friend more on that point. Does he agree that the reporting of those incidents is t essential to ensure that people are made fully aware that it is an illegal tout that is the cause of the problem? When people understand that, they will be more wary of getting into those vehicles.
      Mr. McNulty: That is absolutely right. Far too often, touting is reported as a problem of the minicab or PHV sector, when it is not. Some of the most vociferous calls for more to be done to raise awareness and change the regulatory framework to stop touting—such as making the offence recordable—come from the legitimate end, which is overwhelmingly the largest, of the PHV industry. This problem is not about dodgy minicab drivers, but about t unlicensed touts who should not be plying their trade in the first place. I was grateful when I went out on the exercise that not only police but benefits officers and people from a range of other public agencies were in tow. Rather than just catching touts whose cars were unroadworthy or had no insurance, those officers caught the odd person who according to their records had been in bed ill for three months, or who had been taking disability allowance and not worked for a number of years. That was a good example of joined-up working.
      Some of the anomalies in the regulations that govern taxis and PHVs in out of London still need to be addressed, as and when they are pointed out to us. This is an enormously complex area with much of the legislative and regulatory framework going back to Victorian times. We will seek to do something about those anomalies.
      There is a little loophole in the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998—a fairly recent piece of legislation—which we want to deal with when we get the opportunity to do so. The 1998 Act, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham suggested, provides a framework for the licensing of private hire operators, drivers and vehicles in London. It was introduced as a private Member's Bill with Government support. The objective was to introduce a system of licensing for private hire vehicles in London, thereby bringing the

      1533
      capital into line with much of the rest of England and Wales, where touting is less of a problem precisely because that sector has always been licensed.
      The Act was framed initially in terms of giving the Secretary of State the power to appoint a licensing authority. However, under the Greater London Authority Act 1999, responsibility for private hire and taxi licensing in London was transferred from the Secretary of State to the Transport for London organisation. TFL is introducing private hire licensing in three phases. Operators must have held licences since 2001; driving licensing was introduced last year; and vehicle licensing has just been introduced earlier this year. Special arrangements are in place to ensure a smooth transition to a fully regulated system, hopefully by 2006.
      TFL and the trade have requested a change to the 1998 Act in order to close an apparent loophole that allows operators and drivers to work within the licensed structure without being licensed. The existing definition of private hire vehicle requires a vehicle to be licensed if it is made available to the public. Some operators and drivers who service contracts with hospitals, schools and so forth—often serving the most vulnerable people—are avoiding licensing by using the argument that they are not making their vehicles available to the public. A number of contract workers are therefore still operating unlicensed.
      TFL and others, including the GMB, have been told that the Government intend to rectify that problem as soon as parliamentary time permits. I will certainly seek to do all that I can in that regard. It may be possible to test the difficulty more readily under the law, but small areas of law like that can have profound consequences for our attempt to put a fully licensed system in place in London, so they should be dealt with at the earliest opportunity.
      Significant progress has been made in our understanding of where taxis and PHVs fit into the wider transport network. That is all to the good and the excellent reports from the Transport Committee also help in that regard.
      There are a variety of views about the Office of Fair Trading report, and no one who has contributed to the debate has been shy in giving the House their full understanding of it. We believe that our response underlines the fact that we need to deal more fully with certain issues such as guidance across the range of issues that I have outlined. The first key recommendation about quantity control was important. Hon. Members have stressed the significance of the local dimension, local knowledge and local understanding of local markets. We take that point entirely on board, which is why we responded to the OFT report as we did.
      I hope that the OFT report and the Government's response to it has, if nothing else, highlighted the crucial importance of taxis and PHVs throughout our communities. I hope that those who have expressed an interest thus far or those with a longstanding interest in the sector will understand all that we are trying to do in respect of the wide-ranging guidance that we will be issuing to the licensing authorities. They will know how licensing authorities already restrict some controls and will see how they respond to our initial suggestions.
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      We anticipate a rolling programme on a three-yearly basis. We have not yet determined the time frames. However, we are asking authorities by letter to respond by the end of March next year and we intend to respond to those responses by the end of April. The three-year rolling programme of review would start at about that time. I do not believe that the duties involved are too onerous.
      Mr. Kelvin Hopkins: I am sorry to have missed most of the debate, but I have heard much of what my hon. Friend has said. I agree with the thrust of what the Government are doing. I want to ensure that there is a good provision of taxis and PHVs, as many people cannot afford—or do not want—to use cars. They depend on taxis where there are no public transport services. Many people who choose not to own motor cars depend on public transport, and fill in the gaps with taxis and PHVs. It is most important that the Government promote that option.
      Mr. McNulty: I do not disagree with that. I am sure that there is a good reason to explain why my hon. Friend was not present earlier, but if he had been here he would have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion confess that he has never driven a car and that he does not have a licence. He manages very well without a car, and would like to continue to do so with the help of a strong and vibrant PHV and taxi sector.
      My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) spoke about Plymouth's unique position, thanks to the 1975 Act that she described. In the first instance, Plymouth council must resolve the matters that she raised. I hope that the guidance that we issue will assist in that regard, as will an exhortation from me—to put it no more strongly—to Plymouth and everywhere else that a PHV and taxi regime has an important place in any local transport plan as part of an integrated transport strategy. I await the city's responses to our requests.
      Linda Gilroy: I am not sure that I heard my hon. Friend correctly earlier, but is that guidance out for consultation? If it does not cover some aspects of the operation of the market in Plymouth, will he accept representations, from me and the city council, in search of clarification?
      Mr. McNulty: I hope that the guidance will be out by the summer, and I assure my hon. Friend that it will be available for consultation. I do not want to pre-empt it, or Plymouth's reaction to it. Plymouth occupies a legislatively unique position, having its own Act to cover taxis. It would be churlish of my Department not to listen to what people have to say about that narrow legislative framework, and to see what gaps there may be in the guidance.
      We have discussed in some detail matters that go slightly wider than the OFT's report and the response to it from the Government and the Select Committee. The debate has been very worth while. I do not want to be too critical of the OFT report, as it came to some good conclusions that we have, broadly, taken on board.

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      However, any omissions in it stem from the fact that there is not a universal and pure market for taxis and PHVs, as the situation varies between towns and licensing authorities. As the Select Committee response notes, there is wide variation in the relationship between the PHV and taxi sectors. Some people never see a hackney cab until they come to London, whereas others have no understanding of experience of minicabs.
      The local peculiarities faced by each licensing authority mean that our decision to leave determinations of quantity restrictions at local level is the right way forward. I think that I heard the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) express agreement with that, on the grounds that it is a splendid example of the new Conservative localism.
      All of a sudden everything is left to the local community. He has clearly pointed out that he understands the word "justification", although not the notion of nuance or irony, but he might just go back to the dictionary and look up the word "hubris"—I will spell it for him if he wants—in telling us how wonderful—
      It being Six o'clock, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER proceeded to put forthwith the deferred Questions relating to Estimates which he was directed to put at that hour, pursuant to Standing Order No. 54(4) and (5) (Consideration of estimates etc.) and Order [29 October 2002].

  ESTIMATES, 2004–05
  Resolved,
  That, for the year ending with 31st March 2005, for expenditure by the Department for Transport—
  (1) further resources, not exceeding £5,665,964,000, be authorised for use as set out in HC 466,
  (2) a further sum, not exceeding £5,144,950,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to meet the costs as so set out, and
  (3) limits as so set out be set on appropriations in aid.—[Charlotte Atkins.]

  ESTIMATES, 2004–05
  Resolved,
  That, for the year ending with 31st March 2005—
  (1) further resources, not exceeding £195,591,528,000, be authorised for use for defence and civil services as set out in HC 466, HC 467, HC 468 and HC 469,
  (2) a further sum, not exceeding £177,378,551,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to meet the costs of defence and civil services as so set out, and
  (3) limits as set out in HC 466, HC 468 and HC 469 be set on appropriations in aid.—[Charlotte Atkins.]
  Ordered,
  That a Bill be brought in upon the foregoing resolutions: And that the Chairman of Ways and Means, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Paul Boateng, Dawn Primarolo, John Healey and Ruth Kelly do prepare and bring it in.

  ESTIMATES, 2004–05
    CONSOLIDATED FUND (APPROPRIATION) BILL
    Ruth Kelly accordingly presented a Bill to authorise the use of resources for the service of the year ending with 31 March 2005 and to apply certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund to the service of the year ending with 31 March 2005; to appropriate the supply authorised in this Session of Parliament; and to repeal certain Consolidated Fund and Appropriation Acts. And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on 28 June 2004, and to be printed. [Bill No.121.]
    EUROPEAN UNION DOCUMENTS
    Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9)(European Standing Committees),
    EUROPEAN UNION DOCUMENTS

      ESTABLISHING A EUROPEAN DEFENCE AGENCY
      That this House takes note of the unnumbered explanatory memorandum of 26th May 2004 from the Ministry of Defence on the Council Joint Action on the establishment of a European Defence Agency; endorses the Government's support for the Council Joint Action to create the European Defence Agency and its swift implementation; and supports the Government's wider aims in seeking a key role for the Agency in the development of European Union military capabilities.—[Charlotte Atkins.]
      Question agreed to.

    BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
    Ordered,
    That, at the sitting on Tuesday 29th June,—
    (1) proceedings on the Motion for the adjournment of the House relating to London schools may continue for three hours or until Four o'clock, whichever is the later, and shall then lapse if not previously disposed of; and
    (2) the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of Mr Edward Leigh relating to Public Accounts not later than Seven o'clock or three hours after their commencement, whichever is the later; proceedings may continue after the moment of interruption; and the Orders of the House of 28th June 2001 and 6th November 2003 relating to deferred Divisions shall not apply.—[Charlotte Atkins.]

    DELEGATED LEGISLATION
    Ordered,
    That the Horse Passports (England) Regulations 2004 (S.I., 2004, No. 1397), dated 19th May 2004, be referred to a Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation.—[Charlotte Atkins.]

    PETITIONS

      Hospitals (St. Albans)
      6.2 pm
      Mr. Kerry Pollard: I bring a petition from many thousands of residents of St. Albans and the surrounding areas which
      declares that there is a need for a new acute hospital and centre of excellence—
      to include a cancer centre—to serve the community of central Hertfordshire and]

      1537
      that there should be a medical school linked to the University of Hertfordshire and that St. Albans City Hospital should continue to provide non-acute services.
      We are grateful for the help of the St. Albans Observer in this petition.
      The petitioners remain, etc.
      To lie upon the Table.

      Pets
      6.3 pm
      Janet Anderson: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me this opportunity to present a petition of more than 1,000 signatures which have been collected by my constituent Miss Murielle Elliot of 7 Foxhill drive, Rossendale. The petition of residents of the Rossendale valley
      Declares that a great many pets—
      particularly cats—
      have been stolen from their owners in the Rossendale area.
      The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to make provision for the protection of pets, and for the return of stolen pets to their rightful owners.
      And the Petitioners remain, etc.
      To lie upon the Table.

    Schools Reorganisation (Northumberland)
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Charlotte Atkins.]
    6.4 pm
    Mr. A. J. Beith: I am glad to have this opportunity to focus the Minister's attention on education in Northumberland and in particular to seek some clarification and help for parents and communities as they consider the difficult issues of reorganisation that they now face. Parents, children and school staff and communities in Northumberland face the prospect of a massive reorganisation of schools, which on present plans will change the age range of every school in the county and will require a substantial building programme. It has generated a major public campaign of opposition, with many thousands of supporters in the county's middle schools, and different views have been put forward by some of the high school and first school teachers and parents.
    The background to all that can be found in a critical Ofsted report on the Northumberland education authority, which stood in marked contrast to the very good Ofsted reports on many of the schools threatened by that reorganisation. The report referred to the fact that the county has one of the highest levels of surplus places in the country and argued that that cannot be explained entirely by the fact that there are many very small schools serving isolated rural areas, especially in my constituency.
    The report criticises the county's past attempts to deal with the problem by ill thought-out school closures, which were rejected by the adjudicator. It says that
    "this is not an LEA which evaluates its own performance rigorously".
    It also says that
    "the LEA does not engage sufficiently with its schools or with the local authorities to find innovative or imaginative solutions to the problems it faces."
    In addition, Northumberland and its schools, which already suffer from a poor standard spending assessment that is 8.5 per cent. below the national average, have been turned down again and again in bids for education action zones and specialist school status. The impression given was that the Department for Education and Skills would not help Northumberland unless something drastic was done. And it was.
    The chief education officer of Gateshead and a team of officials were drafted in to take over on a temporary basis, and a massive reorganisation plan was produced. It involved the replacement of the county's three-tier system with a two-tier system, replacing transfer at 9 and 13 with transfer at 11. The plan depends on £270 million in funding from the Government's "Building Schools for the Future" programme and on capital receipts from the sale of school sites.
    Following widespread public discussion and in the face of strong opposition from middle schools, including a 35,000-signature petition, the county's executive voted in favour of the two-tier system. At the full council on 9 June, the proposals were again carried, but with an opposition amendment making two-tier the preferred option but putting the three-tier system out for

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    consultation alongside it. The Church of England and Roman Catholic dioceses have indicated an intention to move to a two-tier system.
    I have much experience of the county's present system. Both my children were educated in it throughout their education. My first wife, who died six years ago, taught extensively in the county's middle schools and high schools. Middle schools have considerable advantages. In my experience, most of them are very happy schools, with an atmosphere of enthusiasm among both staff and children. The Rothbury Church of England middle school produced a wonderful video as part of its campaign that vividly portrayed the shared enthusiasm of staff, parents, community and children in support of the school, and a generally enthusiastic attitude towards education during the years between 9 and 13.
    Most of the middle schools have good or excellent Ofsted reports and they provide good opportunities for the oldest children to take on positions of responsibility. The most recent visit I made to Berwick middle school was to attend a meeting of the school council, which consists entirely of pupils. No staff were present at all. The pupils engaged in a mature and carefully thought-out discussion with me about the advantages of middle schools. Many of them were exercising responsibility in the school at the ages of 12 and 13, or in their classes at lower ages. It reminded me forcibly that in such schools those who take responsibility do so at a relatively young age. From my observation of those children, that equips them well for later school and adult life.
    Another advantage of middle schools is that because they were nearly all built as secondary modern schools, they are spacious, with good facilities for science, craft subjects and sport. The presence of specialist teachers benefits the age groups from 9 to 11.
    In rural areas, transfer at 13 is felt by parents to be much better than having 11 and 12-year-olds travel 15, 20 or even 30 miles each way every day to high school, waiting at town bus stations and changing transport, sometimes several times in a journey. That advantage was vividly expressed in a letter from a Rothbury parent, which states:
    "In the case of rural children there will be social exclusion from an earlier age if this 2-tier idea is forced upon us because they will not be able to access out-of-school activities from 11 instead of 13 years of age. Do you know that when our children undertake after-school activities at High school in Morpeth, this can mean parents undertaking 40–64 mile round trips to pick them up from school?"
    The same letter points out:
    "Our 11 year olds will be travelling between 1 h 50 min and 4 hrs a day."
    As the letter says, that will mean that they face days longer than those recommended by the European working time directive.
    So why change? If the system is to be changed, parents need to be convinced by the educational arguments, not the money arguments. The Department's answers to parliamentary questions from me and from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) are studiously non-committal on the educational case for and against middle schools. The LEA has produced data suggesting that too many
    1540
    children make too little progress between the ages of seven and 13, and high schools argue that transfer in the middle of key stages 2 and 3 is disruptive and at odds with the national curriculum and the exam timetable.
    Under a two-tier system, primary schools would be wholly responsible for key stages 1 and 2 and high schools for everything after that. Some of our high schools have had serious problems in raising achievement levels and their heads believe that they would do better if they had the full age range and the new staffing and accommodation opportunities that reorganisation could provide.
    Many first schools see the change as a lifesaver for village schools. Back in the 1970s, many communities objected to the creation of middle schools because it took two age group; from local schools, making many of them liable to closure. It also involved nine-year-olds making long journeys to the new middle schools. However, there is wide interest in the federal arrangements for some small rural schools suggested in the county council's proposals, which build on the county's successful work in recent years building up clusters of small rural schools that work together and have some shared support teaching. The idea was pushed back by lack of funding but it was extremely successful and could be developed under the federal ideas for small schools. It was also accepted by some of the people who were opposed to the change to the two-tier system.
    Parents fear that the change is too much driven by arguments about buildings and money. Surplus places are clearly at the heart of it. Over the years, we have had many arguments about whether calculations on surplus places are either fair or realistic, especially in villages where the school's facilities are used as a vital resource for the whole community.
    We should remember that buildings were a key factor in the decision to introduce middle schools in Northumberland in the first place. Most of those schools are in former secondary modern buildings that could not be utilised effectively in the 11 to 18 comprehensive system, which was being introduced with very limited capital expenditure. Those were the newest buildings that the education authority had on its hands and part of the motive for creating middle schools was to make use of them, although they then became the focus of real commitment from head teachers who believed in middle schools as an extremely effective part of the system.
    The present plan depends on releasing £31 million through capital receipts from the sale of school sites to fund the primary end of the system. However, it is difficult to see how that can be achieved while Northumberland is so severely restricted in the amount of house building that is permitted. The proposed figures allow only 30 houses a year in Berwick borough and between 65 and 70 a year in Alnwick district. That leaves the sale of sites dependent on hope value that may not be realised.
    Central Government funding from the "Building Schools for the Future" programme will be essential for the building and extension of high schools. For example, Alnwick will require a new high school and major investment will be needed at the Berwick high school site. Parents need to know whether the Government will

    1541
    put their weight and their funding behind the reorganisation. If the money is not forthcoming, the whole scheme will collapse and there will be educational chaos. Bearing in mind that every proposed closure and every change in the status of a school can be challenged through the formal statutory process, and that parents will—understandably and rightly—use those challenges if they are not satisfied that they will get a better system after reorganisation, the Government must provide reassurance and answer some crucial questions. If they do not, the whole process will drag on. Indeed, on that point, some people have suggested that the whole thing should be put on ice while we hold the referendum on regional assemblies and reach a decision as to whether Northumberland will become a single-tier area or be divided into two areas.
    I am not in favour of deferring the matter, because whether the result was a new single authority or two new authorities, they would face similar decisions and probably reach similar conclusions, with the added complication that, if two authorities were created, there would be movement across the boundary between the two areas, as well as all the upheaval of creating two education authorities. As education would be split between two unitary authorities, instead of being a whole-county responsibility, a significant number of my constituents would have to travel from one of the new proposed authorities to the other. So there are too many complications and disadvantages in deferring the issue until a possible local government reorganisation. We must face up to the decision and produce a timetable that can be achieved, perhaps based on one that the county has proposed. That can be attempted only if there is some confidence that the end result will be better and parents' anxieties and fears can be allayed—so far, those of many have not.
    Parents need answers from the Government on key questions. Are officials at the Department for Education and Skills telling Northumberland county council that there will be no money for new schools unless they get rid of middle schools? That is the impression that has been pretty firmly left by the county council, although the chairman of the education committee denied that when I put it to him on the radio this morning. The story is that those in Whitehall have said, "Sort your system out, or you will continue to be unsuccessful"—as unsuccessful as Northumberland has been in many of its recent bids. At least, the Department is virtually on record as saying, "Unless you do something about your surplus places by this or some other means, you will get no additional money for new schools." Are the Government putting on pressure? If so, and they have good reason for doing so, they should tell us.
    Do the Government believe that the middle school system is less educationally effective than transfer at 11 years? If so, is there any research evidence for that view that would convince the parents who are so committed to middle schools? If the county undertakes the enormous task of reorganisation. will the money be there to build the new high schools, or could all this be in vain? What a disaster it would be if we embarked on that horrifyingly difficult and complicated process and, somehow, the money was not forthcoming at the end of the day.
    If the first schools become schools for five to 11-year-olds, how will they provide the facilities for science, technology and sport that have been available to nine to
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    11-year-olds in the middle schools? The first schools do not have provision for that age group and so do not have developed science and technology facilities—even the rooms, let alone the staffing—or the extensive sports facilities that nine to 11-year-olds can now benefit from in the middle schools.
    What if the county decides that some areas must get special treatment? If the county accepts that areas such as Rothbury and Wooler, for example, need to keep middle schools because of the travelling distance, even if the rest of the county changes, will the Department accept a mixed system and still give Northumberland the funds that it needs for new schools? Other places in other constituencies might be candidates for that—for example, Bellingham and Allendale.
    Will rural pathfinder bids be possible to provide resources for special schemes at rural schools? As well as the possibility of retaining middle schools or combined first and middle schools in some rural communities, some other ideas are forthcoming. At Belford, for example, a learning village centre of excellence is proposed for three to 14-year-olds, with youth and adult learning facilities as well—an exciting and pioneering idea, making use of existing buildings, while enabling children to stay in the village. Such ideas could benefit from rural pathfinder funds, but we need to know whether that is a serious possibility if such things are to be pursued.
    Parents, communities and the teaching staff of schools are facing difficult choices against the background of suggestions and hints that the abolition of middle schools is, in practice, a condition of future funding. There is a great deal of uncertainty about what resources are on offer to carry through any change, thus a great deal of anxiety. Ministers need to come clean about their attitudes, so that there can be a genuine and open debate about which system is best for Northumberland's children and young people.
    I ask the Minister to put himself in the position of a parent of children starting at a middle school in Northumberland and to consider what it would take to convince him that losing the advantages of that system will be effectively compensated for in those children's educational experience by something very significantly better. That is what he and the authority must do between them if such a change is to be carried through.
    6.19 pm
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Mr. Stephen Twigg): I congratulate the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) on securing this debate and on having the opportunity to speak on behalf of his constituents and other residents of Northumberland, and particularly on bringing his family experience to bear on his opening remarks. I am acutely aware of the very high level of concern and interest in this matter among people living and working in Northumberland, which is obviously particularly felt among not only parents and pupils but staff, governors and the broader schools community. I shall seek in responding to the debate to address the particular concerns that he has raised.
    We welcome and support the stated aims of the local education authority in conducting the review: to raise standards and to transform and improve the education

    1543
    service. We understand that the LEA is reviewing provision on the basis of a possible move to a primary and secondary system, as the right hon. Gentleman set out. My understanding is that its proposal is to start public consultation on a county plan in the autumn.
    The right hon. Gentleman challenged me to come clean on the view in the Department for Education and Skills. My starting point in seeking to do so is to say that we do not prescribe a particular pattern of provision. That is very much to be determined locally. He asked specifically whether our officials are telling Northumberland that there will be no money for new schools unless it abolishes the middle schools. The answer to that is emphatically no. There is no suggestion of Ministers or officials in the DFES prescribing that.
    In more general policy terms, the Department knows that the national position is varied. The majority of LEAs have a primary and secondary model, but a significant minority operate middle school systems. We accept as a Department that both systems can be effective, and we are not aware of any clear research evidence to suggest that one is preferable to the other. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman set out arguments for both the two-tier system and the three-tier system. Having seen both in practice in different parts of the country, I think that his points are a legitimate part of the debate.
    The right hon. Gentleman made the point that the county may undergo considerable reorganisation and then face the question of whether funds will be made available to enable that to be implemented on the ground. He referred to the "Building Schools for the Future" programme, which aims to rebuild or renew all secondary schools in England over the next 10 to 15 years. The first wave of "Building Schools for the Future" was announced a couple of months back. Northumberland was not successful in that first wave of the programme, but will certainly feature in a future wave. We hope to be able to make an announcement on the future waves later this year. Clearly, there is contact between our officials and those in Northumberland on that.
    Mr. Beith: This is a crucial matter of timing. I can only assume that Northumberland failed in the previous bid because it was too early a stage in the process. Is it therefore likely that some clear indication about funding possibilities could be given during the autumn or towards the end of this year, when the reorganisation is under discussion and it will be important to give some assurance to parents?
    Mr. Twigg: Absolutely. Only 14 LEAs were successful in the first wave of "Building Schools for the Future". We are hoping to be in a position to make announcements in the early part of the autumn about the next wave. That will be important as a reassurance to Northumberland, as well as to schools in other parts of the country.
    The right hon. Gentleman raised the possibility that at least some areas—he mentioned Rothbury and Wooler—in Northumberland will keep middle schools because of travelling distances, and asked for the
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    Department's view on a mixed system and whether it would still be prepared to fund Northumberland if it decides to go down that route. I emphasise that funding from "Building Schools for the Future" is not dependent on the adoption of a two-tier system; it is not dependent on having a primary and secondary model. Other parts of the country continue to operate a three-tier system with middle schools, and they are preparing their applications and are in discussion with the Department about the funding under BSF that could be available to their schools. When we consider proposals as part of "Building Schools for the Future", we will be concerned to ensure that there has been appropriate consideration and consultation at the local level to secure the local consensus necessary for the particular application that an authority has made. In fact, the right hon. Gentleman made a specific suggestion about rural pathfinder bids. I want to take that suggestion away and write to him about it.
    "Building Schools for the Future" is a hugely ambitious national programme of renewal for all schools. Large authorities, in particular rural authorities, may wish to phase their programmes within "Building Schools for the Future", with clusters of different schools reciving funding at different stages. Those are the sorts of discussions that we are having with other county and large metropolitan areas. It may well be a suitable way for us to proceed in Northumberland. I shall write to the right hon. Gentleman, setting t hat out in more detail.
    I have a couple of other things to say about the position in Northumberland and how the process will move forward. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the Ofsted inspection, which was conducted in June 2003 and published last September. It set out a number of serious concerns about the local education authority, and there had been some deterioration since the previous inspection in 1999. He set out some of the ways in which the LEA has been trying to address those weaknesses. The Department for Education and Skills has worked closely with the LEA to assist it in drawing up and progressing an action plan to overcome the weaknesses and some of the problems highlighted. We welcome some of the early signs of progress as a consequence of that work.
    The right hon. Gentleman also rightly said that surplus places are a significant issue in Northumberland. Of course, that is not unique to Northumberland because of demographic trends, in particular the declining number of children of primary school age. The latest review of surplus places last year shows an overall level in Northumberland of around 5,000. I emphasise that it is very much a matter for individual LEAs to decide whether and how they reduce their number of surplus places. I welcome some of the innovative ideas to which he referred—collaboration, clusters and federations—as possible models in moving forward. The other possibility is to look to extended schools and using some of the surplus capacity in school buildings to provide extended services for the local community, rather than simply to take the option of closing a school down all together, thereby losing that critical asset for the local community, which is especially important to those in rural areas.
    I have spoken about "Building Schools for the Future", so let me conclude by saying a little about where the process goes from here. It is important that

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    the right hon. Gentleman's constituents, and the schools, parents and pupils in Northumberland, are aware of where the debate and consultation will go now. The combination of issues that he referred to form the backdrop for the consultation that the LEA will undertake. Any LEA that decides to reorganise provision takes that decision locally Such decisions are not taken in the Department or by Ministers.
    The LEA will consult all interested parties, as is required by law. It must issue statutory notices in a newspaper, post them at the gates of the affected schools and put them in another prominent place locally. There is then a six-week period for objections and comments, and the notice and other supporting documentation need to be sent to the local school organisation committee. If no objections are received, the LEA may proceed to implement its proposals. If objections are received, the proposal goes to the school organisation committee, made up of five or six groups representing the major stakeholders in the provision of education. If the school organisation committee cannot reach a unanimous decision, the case is referred to the independent schools adjudicator for a final decision.
    We recently issued new guidance from the Department for those who are publishing and deciding upon these proposals for changes to local school organisation, making it clear that the Secretary of State wants to see local education authorities organise provision so that places are where parents want them. We are clear that the removal of surplus places must always be in support of the agenda of raising standards and matching places with parental choice.
    I reiterate that any decision to change the current pattern of provision rests, first, with the LEA and, secondly, needs to support those key policy priorities of improving standards and ensuring that we maximise choice for parents. The Department does not specify the type of provision that should apply. It is true, as I said earlier, that increasingly LEAs have adopted a two-tier approach, but there are a number of LEAs that
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    successfully operate three-tier systems with middle schools, with the benefits of middle schools, as set out by the right hon. Gentleman. I can confirm that there are no plans on the part of the Department to phase out middle schools, as a matter of national policy, or to make our funding of particular programmes, including "Building Schools for the Future", in any way dependent on that sort of reorganisation.
    Our priority as a Department is to give support to local communities in reaching these decisions themselves. I hope that the community in Northumberland will have the opportunity to have a full and informed debate about the merits of the proposed reorganisation, in which parents, governors, pupils and the wider community can seriously consider the advantages and disadvantages of the status quo as against the proposed change in the system.
    I can certainly reassure the right hon. Gentleman and his constituents that whatever decision is reached locally, the major programme of investment that we are undertaking through "Building Schools for the Future" will be available to the schools in Northumberland to support their improvement, in the way that we seek to improve schools throughout the country. Our other capital programmes in the Department are also available to support first schools, which obviously by their nature will not qualify for "Building Schools for the Future". However, there will be opportunities, for example, through target capital funding as well as the mainstream capital funding of primary schools, to ensure that those schools are also receiving the investment that they need.
    I finish where I started, which is to thank the right hon. Gentleman for airing this important issue for the people of his constituency. I very much hope that a full, open and rigorous debate can happen among the people of Northumberland.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes to Seven o'clock.