Commons Sitting of 25 March 2004

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

    Broadband
    Mr. David Cameron: What steps are being taken to increase the take-up rates of broadband in the UK. [163433]
    Mr. Jonathan Djanogly: What steps she is taking to increase the availability of broadband in rural areas. [163439]
    The Minister for Industry and the Regions (Jacqui Smith): We are making good progress towards ensuring that the UK has the most extensive and competitive broadband market in the G7 by 2005. Work across Government through the regional development agencies, local authorities, industry and community groups means that broadband is now available to more than 85 per cent. of homes and businesses, and use by small and medium-sized enterprises has doubled in the past 12 months. The joint Department of Trade and Industry/Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs rural broadband unit is working to ensure a specific focus on the needs of rural areas.
    Mr. Cameron: Does the Minister agree that access to broadband is vital for our rural communities? Will she join me in congratulating British Telecom on setting trigger levels for all areas throughout Oxfordshire; and more to the point, will she congratulate local campaigners—heroes and heroines in our communities—who have campaigned to meet those trigger levels? Does the Minister accept, though, that in rural areas like mine, there are still many farms, businesses and sometimes whole hamlets that will not get broadband because they are too far from the exchange? Will she work with the development agencies and others to learn from the best practice round the country, and make sure that the Government lead the process of finding good solutions to make broadband available to all who currently cannot get it?
    Jacqui Smith: I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman. Of course it is important that we maximise the number of exchanges that are enabled, but BT's
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    ADSL technology is not the only solution, particularly—as the hon. Gentleman points out—for communities that want broadband services and are more remote from those exchanges. That is why I commend, for example, the activity of the Oxford rural broadband project funded with a grant from the South East England Development Agency and from Europe. That provides a good example in the hon. Gentleman's constituency of how community organisations can take the lead in partnership with RDAs, local authorities and, in this case, the co-operative movement, to make sure the benefits are shared more broadly. I know that he has also welcomed that initiative.
    Mr. Djanogly: By the end of this summer all the exchanges in my constituency should be enabled, which is good news. As my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) described, people who live more than 6 km away from an exchange will probably not be able to receive a broadband service. The Minister gave an example of a community getting together in rural Oxfordshire. However, I shall be interested to hear what the Government intend to do to ensure that access is available to people living in remoter rural areas, such as my constituency. Have the Government ascertained the extent of the problem in terms of numbers?
    Jacqui Smith: It was Government investment in the regional development agencies that enabled the action in the constituency of the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), and through the East of England Development Agency in the hon. Gentleman's constituency as well—a £30 million investment that has led, for example, to a £3.8 million connecting communities project which impacts on the hon. Gentleman's constituency, an awareness campaign, confirmation from BT that the take-up of broadband services in the eastern region is the highest in the UK, and funding for technology trials so that, for example, the interestingly named Rabbit project across rural parts of the region is ensuring that those which previously had no hope of broadband connection by any other means are having the technology trialled. This is, of course, funding from the Government through regional development agencies—funding and agencies that Conservative Members opposed.
    John Robertson: The Government should be commended for the work they have done on broadband, and it would be churlish to blame them for the fact that the technology has not yet reached remoter areas. However, in the rural areas of Scotland—the highlands and islands—there is a genuine problem of access to the service for businesses. Will my right hon. Friend look into that and consider subsidies for such areas for broadband and telecommunications in general?
    Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend makes an important point. As I outlined, it is the considerable additional investment being made available through the devolved Administrations as well as the development agencies that is enabling other technology—wireless technology and the development of other means of connecting businesses and homes to broadband—which allows us to make such progress. I share my hon. Friend's

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    concern. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services has outlined, we will do all we can in Government to ensure that we meet the target of having the most extensive and competitive broadband market, and of access in every community to the benefits that broadband can bring to households, communities and businesses.
    Mr. Stephen O'Brien: The Minister knows that the UN-affiliated International Telecommunication Union ranks the UK only 25th in digital take-up. Will she accept that that is because, even where broadband is available, the digital speeds offered by some so-called broadband packages are so slow that they have disappointed users, particularly businesses seeking to improve their productivity? The Government's definition of "broadband" is deliberately wider than it should be. Will the Minister adopt the ITU definition of broadband, or is she a victim of the Government's habit of relying on a looser, easier definition to try to meet their self-proclaimed targets—she used the word "target" earlier?
    Jacqui Smith: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman feels it necessary to talk down the considerable progress in developing both availability and take-up of broadband, which has been achieved in partnership with regional development agencies, local authorities and devolved Administrations. Take-up has more than tripled because of Government action, and although the hon. Gentleman can bicker about definitions, the progress is obvious. The progress would be undermined by Opposition policies not only to cut investment, but to do away with RDAs, which have contributed so much.

    Doha Trade Round
    Hugh Bayley: What recent discussions she has had with other countries' Trade Ministers about the Doha trade round. [163434]
    The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Ms Patricia Hewitt):Since the ministerial meeting in Cancun last September, I have met or spoken to a wide variety of Trade Ministers about how we can more forward on the Doha round, including Commissioner Lamy, colleagues in other European Union member states, Minister Amorim from Brazil, Minister Erwin from South Africa, Minister Jaitley from India and Minister Zhang from China.
    Hugh Bayley: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one way to restart the stalled World Trade Organisation negotiations on trade and agriculture would be to revive the proposal to eliminate export subsidies? Our Government have made that proposal on many occasions, and even President Chirac of France floated it when he held his Africa summit one year ago. Might that not provide a way to put energy back into the talks and get people moving towards agreement once again?
    Ms Hewitt: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The point is enormously important because part of the European Commission's negotiating mandate, which we helped to construct, is an offer to end export subsidies on all products of interest to developing
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    countries, which have not started negotiations. I have recently written to Trade Ministers in a number of developing countries, and reinforced the point in discussion, to say that the offer is not a negotiating trick from the European Commission. If those developing countries produce a list of products on which they want an end to export subsidies, it will be negotiated. I am delighted that Agriculture Commissioner Fischler said in public on Monday that it is up to developing countries to say which products they are interested in, and that if they say "all products", we must discuss that too. That is how to abolish those appalling export subsidies, which are so damaging to developing countries.
    Tony Baldry: In their response to the Select Committee report on Cancun, the Government said:
    "We agree the EU needs to work harder to explain to many countries the longer term impact of the CAP reforms agreed last year".
    Is it the Secretary of State;s view that the European Union has done enough on agriculture and common agricultural policy reform, and that it is simply a matter for others—notably, the United States—to reform; or do the Government take the view that there is more work to be done in the EU on CAP reform if we are to have a successful development round?
    Ms Hewitt: Much has been done since December, when the European Union agreed its position post-Cancun. I welcome the fact that Commissioner Lamy has gone to so many countries and talked to so many Trade Ministers around the world to set out in detail the implications of the CAP reform package that we agreed last year, and the offer on export subsidies to which I have just referred. There is, however, more to do. I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a close interest in those issues, and he will know that we are already engaged in discussions within the Agriculture Council on further reforms on cotton and, in particular, sugar, which are crucial to developing countries and which must form part not only of Europe's reform programme, but of a successful conclusion to the Doha round.
    Mr. Martin O'Neill: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the stalling of the Doha agenda has led not only to problems for developing countries, but to a number of countries entering into free trade agreements, almost as an expression of frustration? Last week, when I was in south-east Asia with my colleagues on the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, we visited Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, which have entered into such agreements. There is a worry that the EU's trade agenda is being lost in respect of such countries. Moreover, there is a danger that the bigger Europe created by the accession process will have a "fortress Europe" tendency that ignores certain countries that are not developing countries, but mature economies from which we could benefit a great deal through improved trade relations.
    Ms Hewitt: My hon. Friend makes a series of extremely important points. I pay tribute to his work on this issue as Chairman of the Select Committee. I told the House in the wake of Cancun that there was a real

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    danger of bilateral agreements taking the place of making the right efforts on the Doha round. That has happened to some extent, although not as much as many of us feared. In reality, it is only through the World Trade Organisation that we can deal with some of the most difficult issues, including agriculture, which was exempted from the recent free trade agreement between the United States and Australia because they simply could not reach agreement on it.
    I welcome the fact that Commissioner Lamy is focusing his efforts on reviving the Doha round. That will be difficult, but I share the view expressed by Commissioner Lamy, Ambassador Zoellick and several Ministers in developing countries—that we can move the talks forward and agree by July the framework that we should ideally have reached at Cancun last September.
    Malcolm Bruce: I congratulate the Secretary of State on her recent robust Mansion House speech in which she warned of the dangers of US protectionism. In the spirit of her remarks about the Doha round, will she do more to end the intransigence over cotton that is having such severe consequences in west Africa? Will she press for greater flexibility on, or indeed the abandonment of, the Singapore conditions, which are causing great concern among G77 countries? On agriculture, will she insist that, in ensuring that the United States and Europe have viable farming economies, we do not do so at the expense of destroying the livelihoods of subsistence farmers in developing countries through unfair and devastating export subsidies?
    Ms Hewitt: I agree with the hon. Gentleman and thank him for his opening comments. On cotton, we are in the process of negotiating with our European partners a significant decoupling of income support to farmers from production subsidies. That will make a great difference. However, I share the hon. Gentleman's view that the real challenge is to the United States, which has enormous cotton subsidies. More generally, if the European Union is to deliver its share of the phasing out of export subsidies, the United States, too, must deal with the food aid and export credits that fulfil the same damaging purpose.
    I made it plain last year that the Singapore conditions were not UK priorities, but I welcome the fact that the European Commission wants to decouple the four issues. There is general agreement that we should proceed with discussions on trade facilitation, and some, but a little less, agreement on transparency in Government procurement, investment and competition. My view is that those matters should be put to one side for the moment while we get on with the really important issues in this round.
    Ms Julia Drown: I have received letters from constituents who are worried that one result of the trade talks will be that developing countries have to privatise water services. The Government deny that, but non-governmental organisations keep campaigning on it. Can my right hon. Friend tell the House whether informal pressure on developing countries is making them privatise water to
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    the detriment of poor people? Will she support any developing country that is under pressure to do that but does not want to?
    Ms Hewitt: I have repeatedly tried to make it clear in this House, and in correspondence with my hon. Friend and other hon. Members, that there is nothing whatever in the general agreement on trade in services—GATS—that would require any country to privatise its water industry or anything else. The same non-governmental organisations that make that accusation also say that GATS would require the privatisation of the national health service, which is also nonsense. When we speak to Ministers in developing countries, we hear that they welcome the opportunity that GATS gives, because it gives them the power to decide which sectors to open up and which not to open up.
    The reality is that in some developing countries, it is the judgment of their Government that the only way to get the massive investment that they need to provide clean, affordable water and decent sanitation is to bring in private capital. That is a judgment for those countries to make, not for us and, frankly, not for the NGOs. Our advice to developing countries, however, is that if they seek to open up water industries in that way, they need a strong framework of regulation to make sure that they protect affordable water for their poorest communities. We stand ready to assist with that process, particularly through the Department for International Development.
    Mr. James Arbuthnot: Does the Secretary of State agree that there is nothing more important for lifting poorer countries out of poverty than a successful conclusion of the Doha round? Does she agree that it is not just the elimination of export subsidies in the developed world that is important for that, but the elimination of domestic subsidies, and that while free trade is important for rich countries, it is often a matter of life and death for poorer countries? What prospect does she see of completing the development round, a very important round indeed, by the target date of 1 January next year?
    Ms Hewitt: I welcome the right hon. Gentleman's support for all our efforts to get the round and the negotiations back on track. The potential gains for developing countries are enormous. An ambitious round could boost the incomes of developing countries alone by some £150 billion, dwarfing the amount that they receive in aid and bringing hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty. The prize is enormous.
    This of course requires progress not only on agriculture but on market opening and the tariff escalation that prevents developing countries from moving into much higher value-added production. It also requires the larger developing countries to open their markets to the smaller developing countries—in the way, to be fair, the European Union has done for the least developed countries with the "Everything but Arms" agreement. The timetable has clearly slipped, and the crucial issue now is to agree, I hope by July—before the United States moves into its election campaign—a framework for the round so that we can make the necessary progress to move forward to completion next year. Our Government, holding both

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    the presidency of the G8 and the presidency of the European Union next year, will make that a very high priority.

    North Sea Drilling
    3. Miss Anne Begg: If she will make a statement on her Department's initiatives to stimulate levels of North sea exploration drilling. [163435]
    The Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services (Mr. Stephen Timms): We have taken a number of important steps to help, including introducing new types of licence to increase exploration levels, and increasing the data available to the industry. Through PILOT, the Government/industry oil and gas forum, we have been working to ensure activity in previously fallow areas, and we are making good progress on that. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is introducing an exploration expenditure supplement to stimulate exploration by new entrants to the North sea.
    Miss Begg: I welcome the announcement in last week's Budget on encouraging exploration, but I am sure that my hon. Friend is well aware that there is nervousness in the North sea area that there is not enough exploration. If exploration does not happen, either on known reserves or to find new reserves, the future of the oil and gas industry in the North sea will not be as rosy as we all hope. Will my hon. Friend make sure that the Government, either through the Treasury or through his Department, do everything that they can to ensure that extra exploration is encouraged, whether through the exchanging of licences or changing the nature of licences, to make sure that new entrants and existing operators have the chance to explore as much as they can?
    Mr. Timms: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend, and as she knows, there could easily still be as much oil and gas in the North sea as we have extracted in the past few decades. It is essential that we fully exploit those resources not only to benefit her constituents, but to benefit the economy as a whole. We are working very hard in that regard and there are some very encouraging signs. However, I am aware of the concerns that exist in the industry, and I met the United Kingdom Offshore Operators Association recently to discuss them.
    My hon. Friend may have seen this morning's report by 3i, which shows sharply increased asset disposals from the big oil companies that create major new opportunities for drilling. That is expected to make a very important contribution over the next few years. Moreover, my Department's latest survey of drilling intentions, which was also published today, shows that drilling expectations for the coming year are 30 per cent. higher than a year ago. So there are encouraging signs, but I agree with my hon. Friend that we need to work very hard with the industry to make sure that those positive signs become full grown.
    Sir Robert Smith: Do the figures for drilling intentions relate to development drilling—the expanding of
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    existing reserves—or to the new frontier exploration that will unlock the other half of the oil reserves that the Minister says we have yet to extract? There is real nervousness in the north-east of Scotland because, despite a long and sustained run of high oil prices, we are still not seeing the activity that we would expect. We urge the Government to look again at how to incentivise the exploration that would unlock the key to those reserves.
    Mr. Timms: Again, I agree that this issue is important, and the figures that I gave cover drilling of all kinds. The hon. Gentleman will doubtless have heard the announcement concerning the frontier licence in the current 22nd offshore round, which will encourage drilling in areas west of Shetland in particular. It is a long time since there has been much exploration in those areas, and we certainly want to see more.
    On fiscal incentives, I should point out to the hon. Gentleman that the Treasury works very closely with us through PILOT, the oil and gas industry taskforce, and that there have been big improvements, such as the abolition of royalties and the ending of petroleum revenue tax on new third-party tariff business relating to pipelines and other infrastructure. However, all these matters will be kept closely under review.

    Spin-out Companies
    4. Mrs. Anne Campbell: How many jobs have been created by spin-out companies from universities in the last five years. [163436]
    The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Ms Patricia Hewitt): The Government have overseen a huge cultural change in the attitude of our universities towards business in the past five years. In 2001—02 alone, 213 spin-out companies from universities created a total of more than 12,000 jobs, compared with an average of 70 a year in the first half of the 1990s. The steps that we have taken to encourage universities to commercialise good ideas have contributed directly to this record.
    Mrs. Campbell: There are many successful spin-out companies in Cambridge, such as Astex Technology, which is involved in discovering novel cancer drugs, so it is not just jobs that are being created but real opportunities. But how does my right hon. Friend intend to ensure that Government investment in the UK's science and research base will be maintained in the long term and not fall prey to short-termism?
    Ms Hewitt: I certainly congratulate Astex Technology and all the other companies in my hon. Friend's constituency that are doing such extraordinary work, particularly in the field of new medicines and bioscience. Through the 10-year framework for science and innovation that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and I announced before last week's Budget, we will ensure that there is a stable and strong funding foundation for the basic science in which our country is a world leader, but which was so appallingly neglected—if I may say so—during the years in which the Conservatives were in power. We will couple that investment with a continuing increase in investment in

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    innovation, to ensure that businesses exploit the wealth of ideas and technology coming from our wonderful universities.
    Mr. George Osborne: How many jobs and spin-out companies have been created by the Cambridge-MIT Institute, the joint venture of Cambridge university and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which is costing the taxpayer £65 million? Will the right hon. Lady confirm the National Audit Office's finding that the money was allocated in breach of the Treasury's own rules? And will she further confirm that up to half that money—British taxpayers' money—is being given to MIT, which is an extremely well endowed American institution?
    Ms Hewitt: The Cambridge-MIT partnership is a wonderful partnership between two world-class institutions, which we secured against a great deal of competition from universities all over the world that wanted the partnership for their countries. We won it not just for Cambridge, but for Britain, and that partnership is delivering benefits to universities and businesses throughout our country. The NAO report was generally favourable and positive about the partnership, and on the 29th there will be a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee on the subject. I do not have the figures to hand, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman about them.
    Mr. Barry Sheerman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that we have made some steady progress, but that we cannot afford to rest on our laurels? We need an evaluation of how well each of our 123 universities is doing annually, to establish where the strengths and weaknesses lie and how we can spread best practice. Will the Secretary of State talk to people such as Professor Boucher, the vice-chancellor of the university of Sheffield, who is very concerned about what the Treasury did in last year's Finance Act, which is inhibiting spin-out companies and interesting innovative partnerships?
    Ms Hewitt: My hon. Friend makes an important point about the need to maintain progress and ensure that all universities, whether research intensive or not, are contributing to improving the economic performance of the regions and the country as a whole. I am aware of concerns about schedule 22 of the Finance Act 2003, and I am happy to be able to tell my hon. Friend that the universities and the Inland Revenue have discussed the problem; and that the Inland Revenue has been able to agree on a model for a standard spin-out company that will provide the certainty about the tax position that the universities are quite properly looking for.
    Mr. Julian Brazier: Will the right hon. Lady join me in commending the remarkable work carried out at the university of Kent in the bio-sciences and medicine—in respect of both spin-out companies and established majors such as Pfizer's? Indeed, two young scientists were at the display exhibited in the House a fortnight ago. Does the Secretary of State agree that her Cabinet colleagues should reflect carefully on
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    that before they decide on whether to grant Canterbury university's application for a medical school, currently under consideration?
    Ms Hewitt: I am sure that the university and the companies to which the hon. Gentleman refers are doing wonderful work, and I shall certainly draw his point to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join me in welcoming the recent announcement in the Budget that the Department of Health will in future ensure that its significant R and D budget for health developments will be used in a way that not only maximises the benefits to patients of new medicines, but increases the chances of getting new innovative and successful companies here in Britain to produce those new medicines.

    Fair Trade (Belize)
    Mr. Tam Dalyell: What action her Department is taking in relation to the objectives of the Fairtrade movement, with particular reference to Belize. [163437]
    The Minister for Trade and Investment (Mr. Mike O'Brien): The Government are committed to supporting the objectives of the Fairtrade movement. Fairtrade fortnight was a great success. Some 6,000 events took place across the UK raising awareness of the issue. In broader terms, the Government have provided £500,000 to assist the Fairtrade objectives.
    As to Belize, the Government have provided £225,000 to support cocoa farmers from the Toledo region, one of the poorest areas of the country. It has enabled the Toledo cocoa growers association to expand the production of its cocoa products and increase its exports overseas.
    Mr. Dalyell: Deeply impressed as I have been by inaugural meetings of small groups such as the one in the Linlithgow borough or larger groups such as the one at the university of Edinburgh, I still want to ask what the Department of Trade and Industry can do to enlarge the Fairtrade market. I am grateful to the Minister for what he said about Belize.
    Mr. O'Brien: Fairtrade is an enormously important way of enabling disadvantaged producer groups in developing countries to receive a minimum price above that offered by mainstream markets. The price includes a premium to be used for community development projects. We have been trying to work with the Fairtrade movement to increase awareness of the benefits that that brings. Stimulating awareness of the wider problems is also important.
    We can welcome the fact that Fairtrade coffee producers have about 8 per cent. of the market; but frankly, if we really want to resolve the trading problems of developing countries, the Doha development agenda is crucial. Fairtrade is an important initiative: we strongly support it and have invested some resources in it, but the most effective way of helping developing countries must be through the World Trade Organisation and proper international agreements.
    Dr. Vincent Cable: Is Belize one of the countries covered by the extraordinary suggestion by the European Trade Commissioner that import controls should be imposed on countries that he says have different cultural values? When such nonsensical protectionist stuff comes out of the European Commission, why do the Government not condemn it?
    Mr. O'Brien: We have always made it clear that we want markets to be open and fair. Throughout the WTO process and the Doha development agenda, Pascal Lamy has always made it clear that the aim is to achieve an agreement that progressively opens markets, encourages trade and lifts people out poverty. Both he and the British Government have made it very clear that we will promote those open markets.
    Mr. Peter Pike: My hon. Friend will know that there is widespread public support for the Government's policy in respect of Doha, but he will recognise also that Belize and many other countries benefit from fair trade. Should we not congratulate the co-operative movement, which has played such a key part in this country in promoting Fairtrade products?
    Mr. O'Brien: I entirely agree. We welcome the Coop's recently announced initiative to double the size of its range of Fairtrade products by the end of 2004. That is a great initiative, and the Co-op is leading the way. We hope that other supermarket chains and businesses will follow suit.

    Renewable Energy
    Mr. Alistair Carmichael: If she will make a statement on the level of transmission access charges levied on renewable energy providers in the north of Scotland. [163438]
    The Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services (Mr. Stephen Timms): Scottish and Southern Energy currently levies charges for all generators to access the transmission system, through its subsidiary Scottish Hydro-Electricity Transmission Ltd. The new BETTA arrangements in the Energy Bill will create a Great Britain-wide market, in which transmission charges will be the responsibility of the National Grid Company.
    Mr. Carmichael: I thank the Minister for that answer, and commend him for some of the Government amendments to the Energy Bill in the other place. They will clip Ofgem's wings in respect of charging for transmission and access, and that is very welcome. What assessment has he made of the proposals by many members of the Scottish renewables forum that access charges should be capped instead of being subject to a rebate system? Does he agree that that would have the benefit of being much simpler and much less bureaucratic?
    Mr. Timms: I agree that there is huge opportunity for renewable energy in the north of Scotland and the highlands and islands, and I have also been very impressed by the very strong public support for it. Our clear view is that we should not put that potential at
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    risk with a charging scheme that would make electricity generation uneconomic, or which would threaten it. That is why we have tabled the amendments to the Energy Bill to which the hon. Gentleman referred. The scheme sets a threshold, above which we will be able to apply a discount. That leaves open the possibility that a cap could be imposed if there is a 100 per cent. discount on the portion above the threshold. However, that will depend on the analysis that we will carry out to determine what is needed to ensure that we retain and realise the potential offered by the north of Scotland.
    Dr. Ashok Kumar: Given the importance that the Government attach to renewable energy, does my hon. Friend agree that we need to spend a lot more on research and development to meet our targets in the future? Recently, Sir David King has floated the idea of establishing a UK research centre to demonstrate our strong commitment to renewables in the future. Does he agree with that?
    Mr. Timms: I agree very much with my hon. Friend about the importance of R and D in achieving our targets. We aim to get 10 per cent. of our electricity from renewable sources by 2010, and we want to double that by 2020. I am sure that my hon. Friend was encouraged, as was I, by what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said in the Budget about the 10-year strategy and about public support for the centrality of science and innovation in the nation's economic strategy. I shall certainly be very keen to talk to Sir David King about his proposals, and my Department works very closely with the Government's chief scientist. However, there is no doubt that publicly supported R and D is one of the major keys to bringing about the changes that we need.
    Miss Anne McIntosh: The Minister said that there were huge opportunities for renewable energy in the north of Scotland. Can he justify the Governments complete obsession with wind farms? They are a danger not only to birds, but to human health and the environment generally. Will he confirm that there is an estimated cost of £2 billion for each wind farm to enter into the grid and that the electricity cannot enter the grid and be transmitted without ghastly, dangerous, overhead lines?
    Mr. Timms: The hon. Lady is wrong on a number of points. Certainly wind is currently the most cost effective of the renewable energy technologies available, so the current renewables obligation mechanism is bringing forward a welcome increase in wind energy capacity. However, we are also supporting the development of other technologies. It is important that every proposal should be put through a proper planning process, as each of them is. The hon. Lady will know that there is a serious threat to birds and wildlife generally from the development of climate change. We need to ensure that we change our energy economy to address that. That is why the World Wildlife Fund recently called on the Government to increase their targets for renewable energy.

    Wind Turbine Farms
    Dr. Alan Whitehead: What discussions she has held with other Government Departments concerning the allocation of sites for the development of offshore wind turbine farms. [163440]
    The Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services (Mr. Stephen Timms): The recent award of site leases for offshore wind farms was made by the Crown Estate working with the Department for Trade and Industry. The lease awards exercise closely involved other Departments, including the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Transport.
    Dr. Whitehead: I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree about the importance of the development of offshore wind farms in ensuring that our renewable targets are achieved. Has he entered into a dialogue with the Ministry of Defence about its concerns about radar and wind turbines at sea? If so, is he willing to ask the Ministry of Defence for an open exchange of information so that those issues can be resolved, rather than the guessing game which appears to be going on now concerning whether MOD radar is a problem for offshore wind farms? Is he willing to resolve those issues speedily so that the developments can proceed?
    Mr. Timms: I agree with my hon. Friend and welcome his strong support in this House and elsewhere for the development of renewable energy. I certainly am in dialogue with the MOD about its concerns, which I understand and which are proper. I agree that it is important that those concerns should be addressed and I am confident that they can be. This morning the MOD laid some objections to the offshore wind farms in round two. We shall certainly work closely with it to resolve those issues. I agree also with my hon. Friends point about the need for openness so that everyone can see the way forward.
    Mr. Stephen O'Brien: Against the background of the increasing resistance, of which I know the Minister is aware, by local communities, environmentalists, animal and bird welfare organisations and our armed forces to wind farms in some of our most treasured natural environments, both onshore and offshore where the Chamber of Shipping continues to raise serious concerns; and given the intermittent nature of wind-derived energy, however desirable as a renewable source but which will only ever be a relatively small contributory element to the United Kingdom's overall energy supplies, will the Minister who carries the ultimate responsibility for keeping the lights on now give an undertaking to the House that his Government's taxpayer-subsidised push for wind is not at the expense of the UK's medium to long-term safe, secure, competitively affordable mix of energy supplies from gas, oil and coal, or as the Minister has said, at the expense of ruling out new nuclear power?
    Mr. Timms: The development of a substantial renewable energy generating sector will make an important contribution to security of supply. A diverse range of sources is needed and renewable electricity can only help.
    Mr. Kevin Hughes: When the Minister considers the many offshore sites, will he encourage the applicants at Tween bridges in my constituency to move to an offshore site so that Thorne moors, a site of special scientific interest, will be not blighted by huge, ugly structures that work only 30 per cent. of the time?
    Mr. Timms: I am aware of the concerns in my hon. Friend's area, which will be fully considered in the planning process. Development of onshore and offshore wind energy generating capacity is needed and there is clear evidence across the country of overwhelming public support for moving in that direction. We cannot go on burning more coal and oil; renewable energy is required as well.
    Mr. Nigel Evans: The Minister must recognise that not everybody loves those wretched, inefficient wind turbines. I prefer them offshore to onshore but when they are close to the coast, will the Minister ensure that discussions are held with local residents about the impact on tourism and water sports—and on birdlife? A Californian experiment showed that a considerable number of birds, including rare breeds, were dying. If a small part of the subsidy for wind energy were spent on energy conservation, more energy would be saved than is produced by the wretched wind turbines.
    Mr. Timms: As I have said, there is strong public support throughout the country for the development of renewable energy. The recent round two offshore wind energy announcement included a coastal exclusion zone from 8 km to 13 km—particularly to protect birds, inshore fishing and other interests. A careful assessment will be made of every project's impact. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that wind power will make an important and substantial contribution to meeting the demand for electricity—not least in addressing the terrible problems and threats posed by climate change.

    Coal Industry
    Paddy Tipping: What steps she is taking to aid the United Kingdom coal industry. [163441]
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Nigel Griffiths): Since 2000, the Government have provided £165 million under the coal operating scheme and a further £54 million is available under the coal investment scheme, to access coal reserves and help safeguard and create jobs in mining areas. I thank my hon. Friend and other right hon. and hon. Members for helping the Government to compensate 366,000 sick miners, their widows and families. At a cost of £1.9 billion, that is probably the largest public compensation scheme in the world.
    Paddy Tipping: The investment in compensation for former coal miners is extremely welcome—as is the £54 million of investment aid. Will the Minister act carefully when implementing the large combustion plant directive? A national plan approach could lead not to the coal industry's long-term sustainability but to its early demise.
    Nigel Griffiths: The Government are working hard to ensure that decisions are in the best long-term interests of the economy. British collieries are among the most efficient in the world. I am aware of the concerns voiced by my hon. Friend and I know that the Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services, my hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Mr. Timms), is meeting a number of colleagues and will listen carefully to their views.
    Mr. Laurence Robertson: As the son of a former miner and someone who has lived in coal areas, I am concerned about the industry's future. The emissions trading scheme plans to reduce carbon dioxide but—as was said by the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping)—the directive threatens not only the coal industry but coal-fired power stations. Does the Minister think that power stations can be helped to install flue gas desulphurisation, which will be needed for clean coal technology, or will coal have to be imported to survive in future? Or does the Minister see no future for the British coal industry?
    Nigel Griffiths: Far from it. It is nice to hear words of sympathy for the coal industry from the Opposition, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman—I am sure that the House will know—that Drax, one of the largest and most efficient plants in Europe, is already utilising flue gas desulphurisation. So we have a proven track record in that area and my hon. Friend the Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services will this afternoon tell colleagues with genuine concerns on the issue about the steps that he intends to take to make further progress.

  MINISTER FOR WOMEN AND EQUALITY
  The Minister for Women and Equality was asked—
  12.31 pm
  Mr. Oliver Heald: Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?
  The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Peter Hain): The business for next will be as follows:
  MONDAY 29 MARCH—If necessary, consideration of Lords message followed by remaining stages of the Employment Relations Bill.
  TUESDAY 30 MARCH—Opposition day [8th allotted day]. There will be a debate entitled "The Need for a Referendum on the Proposed EU Constitution" followed by a debate entitled "Failure of the Government to Prepare for Changes in Doctors' hours in the NHS". Both debates arise on an Opposition motion, followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords message.
  WEDNESDAY 31 MARCH—Remaining stages of the Higher Education Bill.
  THURSDAY 1 APRIL—Motion on the Easter recess Adjournment.
  The provisional business for the week after the Easter recess will be:
  MONDAY 19 APRIL—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill.
  TUESDAY 20 APRIL—Second Reading of the Finance Bill.
  WEDNESDAY 21 APRIL—Opposition day [9th allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced.
  THURSDAY 22 APRIL—A motion to approve the first joint report of the Accommodation and Works Committee and the Administration Committee on visitor facilities: access to Parliament.
  FRIDAY 23 APRIL—Private Members Bills.
  Mr. Heald: I thank the Leader of the House for the business. Has he any idea of when we will debate the aviation White Paper? He will know that I have raised that issue on other occasions, but it is of importance to hon. Members on both sides of the House and, indeed, to the country.
  With final council tax figures out today, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the 6 per cent. increase is three times the rate of inflation and well above low single figures? Does he realise that council tax has gone up a whopping 70 per cent. under Labour? Does he realise how unpopular that is? Is not the reason for it the fact that the Government have laden councils with extra duties without providing adequate funding? As that is the Governments fault, will he assure the House that there will be a full debate in the Chamber before any capping takes place? Does it not all show that the old adage is true: dogs bark, cats miaow and Labour Governments put up taxes?[Interruption.]. I am glad that you enjoyed that, Mr. Speaker.
  Can we have a statement from the Prime Minister about his Spanish discussions on the European constitution? His spokesman said yesterday that the Prime Minister would continue to insist
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  "that anything essential for our"
  criminal
  "court system cannot be changed".
  Does that mean in reality that we will be able to veto only in a narrow area and that everything else will simply be decided by the European Union?
  In his discussions with the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, will the Prime Minister press for full information about the arms that have been sold to the IRA? Clearly, that would be helpful to the decommissioning process. Will he also ask the Libyan leader to use his special relationship with Robert Mugabe to improve the disgraceful civil rights situation in Zimbabwe? May we have a statement from the Prime Minister on both those issues, and can the Leader of the House tell us when the promised debate on Zimbabwe on the Floor of the House will take place?
  Finally, will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating the England cricket team on their triumphant tour of the West Indies? Can he tell us what plans the Prime Minister has to welcome the team back? Has he already booked the reception at No. 10?
  Mr. Hain: I know of no plans to book receptions, but I know that the English cricket teams performance has been magnificent. I am delighted to join the hon. Gentleman in congratulating the England team on those two brilliant victories.
  On the aviation White Paper, I cannot give the hon. Gentleman any further information than I have been able to give before.
  The council tax increases are very low by comparison not just with what they have been in recent years, but with what they were under the Conservative Government who introduced the council tax in the first place. I understand that, on average, Conservative local authorities have had higher council tax increases in this settlement than Labour ones. That is because they are not applying themselves to their work in the way that they should. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, the truth is that local government has had real-terms increases in funding of more than 25 per cent. since the Government came to power compared with what happened under the Conservatives—the party that he supports and is a member of—when there were often cuts or at least freezes in real terms in spending. That is the background against which we are operating.
  On tax, the hon. Gentleman knows full well that, in 1997–98, under the last Conservative Government, the tax burden was 36 per cent. of gross domestic product. This year, it is 35.7 per cent., so the overall tax burden is, in fact, lower than that applied by the Conservatives.
  On the European Union constitution, we have made it clear that we intend to stick by the negotiating red lines set out in the White Paper by the Foreign Secretary, including on key issues of criminal justice and law. It is interesting that, on tackling asylum problems and international terrorism and international crime, we have co-operated and been willing to introduce qualified majority voting—in other words, to give up the veto. We did that because back markers among other member states have dragged down our security. In the case of asylum, that led to asylum shopping where they have

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  passed the buck to us. The new arrangements will stop that happening and provide much better protection for Britains interests, which is what is at stake on this matter.
  I notice that the hon. Gentleman did not criticise the Prime Minister's visit to Libya. I welcome that, particularly because on 19 December the deputy leader of the parliamentary Conservative party welcomed the rapprochement with Libya. It is important and in the interests of Britain and the international community that countries such as Libya—which in the past have been rogue states and sponsored terrorism including, as the hon. Gentleman said, dealing with the IRA—renounce that tradition, as Libya has, and come into compliance with the international community, including on the issue of nuclear weapons. That has been an enormous benefit of the negotiation that the British Government, led by the Foreign Secretary and with the support of the Prime Minister, have been responsible for carrying out. The visit is important for taking that forward.
  Robert Mugabe is certainly one of the issues that has arisen in the negotiations that have taken place and in the relationship that is now developing. It may well be—we shall have to see—that the kind of support that Libya has so shamefully given to Mugabe over recent years in particular will come to an end. I hope so, because the hon. Gentleman and I share the view that the sooner Mugabes despotic rule in Zimbabwe ends, the better not just for the people of Zimbabwe but for the international community.
  On when there might be a debate on Zimbabwe, the hon. Gentleman knows that the Foreign Secretary has promised one. When I am in a position to tell him when it will be, I will do so.
  Mr. Paul Tyler: When does the Leader of the House intend to make a statement on security in and around this building? Can he tell us how many parliamentary security passes go missing each year? My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) extracted figures from Government Departments that show that 6,795 security passes have been lost from Government Departments in the past 12 months. Shockingly, the Ministry of Defence seems to have lost 3,007 passes in just 12 months. It scarcely gives us confidence in its response to terrorism.
  Will the Leader of the House make it clear that that is much more important than the problem that could be identified as people climbing over the railings into this building? Will he lay to rest once and for all the suggestion that appeared yesterday that we are to have a concrete prison wall around these buildings with razor wire along the top? Will he explain to the public as well as to Members of Parliament that it is important that we retain this place as a monument of open democracy, rather than creating a symbol of terrorist success?
  I think that the Leader of the House was here when the Solicitor-General made her statement in the House yesterday. Does he accept that there is a real problem about the contempt issue and that, if a constituent comes to our advice surgery and tells us about, say, a family court case in which they are involved, they may well be in contempt of court? In listening to them talk about that, we too could be in contempt of court. We
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  could refer to the matter in the House but not in the media. Will he undertake to examine the issue and look again at the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, on which I serve, which have still not been properly debated in the House?
  Mr. Hain: On the last matter, I realise the hon. Gentleman's concern, which I think that we all share. The Solicitor-General is looking into that matter, especially the position of Members of Parliament and constituents, who make contact with all of us every week, if not every day. Obviously, it is an important issue and we will monitor it closely. I will keep an eye on it on behalf of the House.
  On passes, I remind the hon. Gentleman and the House that it is a serious matter that must be dealt with. It is a problem principally for Government Departments, as he, to be fair to him, identified, but it is something that we must all be careful of. I hope that permanent secretaries and heads of security in Departments will take immediate action to ensure that the number of passes lost is kept to an absolute minimum and that proper procedures are in place to ensure that.
  On the wider question of Parliament security and access for constituents, I share the hon. Gentlemans view that there must be openness and accessibility for all our voters and citizens because this is their Parliament, not ours. We are Members of it. It is a privilege to be voted here by them. It is important to maintain that openness and accessibility, but a balance must be struck with the security of the Palace of Westminster.
  We are in a new era of threats from terrorists, including al-Qaeda and others, and we must take the proper security measures. That is what Mr. Speaker and I have been discussing with House officials and with others, including representatives of the Security Service and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, to ensure that we achieve proper security and better security than we have now. It is an evolving matter. It changed after 11 September with the armed police around the building. Those security measures must be taken forward and we must ensure that Parliament is protected.
  To summarise, we need a proper balance between—
  Mr. Tyler: What about the wall?
  Mr. Hain: I have read in recent days the most amazing press reports, including some on the wall, which I know nothing about and by which I would be very surprised. Mr. Speaker asked, with my support and that of members of the House of Commons Commission, for a proper independent review by the security services and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. We await that review. Mr. Speaker took that initiative, which I very much support, to ensure that proper security measures are recommended and put in place; but, specifically on the wall, I cannot confirm that, in common with a lot of the other reports this week, and I would be very surprised if we went down that road.
  Colin Burgon: Will the Leader of the House make sure his diary is free next Tuesday afternoon so that he can meet the Prospect trade union

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  members who are lobbying the House to oppose the Government's proposal to privatise the Forensic Science Service? Does he agree that although we have a good Government, that is an absolutely barmy policy?
  Mr. Hain: I do not agree with my hon. Friend, except on the fact that we have a very good Government—I am glad that he acknowledges that. On the Forensic Science Service, he will have the opportunity to make representations to the Home Secretary—he may well have done so already—and to question Ministers during Home Office questions.
  Sir Nicholas Winterton: The Leader of the House spoke earlier about the impact of the European Union on the United Kingdom. Is he aware that European employment directive 2000/78/EC could outlaw companies long-service awards to their long-serving employees? Is not that a ludicrous intrusion into the sovereign domestic policy of this country? Will he arrange for the appropriate Minister to come to the Dispatch Box and make statement on the matter? Does he agree with me—I am sure that most Members do—that long-service awards are a wonderful traditional way of recognising long, loyal service by an individual to a company or firm?
  Mr. Hain: I agree absolutely that long-service awards are a vital part of our culture and tradition of recognising long service. I would be astonished if that were the impact of the directive, about which I know nothing. If it were, it would be ludicrous. As for the wider picture, the hon. Gentleman knows that that is one of the reasons why I have undertaken—I know that I will have his support on the Modernisation Committee—
  Mr. Eric Forth: Oh!
  Mr. Hain: Aside from the former shadow Leader of the House. Whenever I say "Modernisation Committee", he falls into rage and general—
  Mr. Forth: Despair.
  Mr. Hain: Despair—well, there we go. The right hon. Gentleman is a perfectly preserved antiquated Member of Parliament, and I think that he should be kept that way—and given an award for his long service in that capacity.
  To return to the question asked by the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), he illustrates one of the reasons why we want European scrutiny to be shared more widely, rather than to remain confined—albeit effectively and admirably—in the European Scrutiny Committee. That Committee does a great job, but Members at large ought to be more involved.
  Jim Knight: Low pay is an issue in my constituency, especially among young people working in industries such as tourism and catering. When can we have a debate on low pay among young people, so that we can clarify the strategy to deal with it,
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  and make sure that both sides of the House are committed in the long term to resolving the problem of the exploitation of young people?
  Mr. Hain: I would very much like a debate on those lines. Perhaps the Opposition will do the House a great courtesy by calling such a debate, so that we can see what their policy is on low pay. The Governments policy is clear: we have just announced an increase in the minimum wage, including for the first time the minimum wage for young people—16 and 17-year-olds—after a recommendation from the Low Pay Commission. Low pay has been a curse of the British economy for far too long. It survived under the Conservatives, whose leader said that the introduction of the minimum wage would lead to 1 million job losses. In fact, there has been an increase of about 1.8 million jobs. We can have high pay standards, competitiveness and economic success—they should march together.
  Mr. Andrew Mackay: Further to the significant questions on security asked by the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler), although the issue is sensitive, may we have an undertaking from the Leader of the House that before, for example, a screen is installed in the Strangers Gallery or a perimeter wall is erected, there will be a debate and a vote here in the Commons?
  Mr. Hain: I have made clear what would happen, as did Mr. Speaker in his letter to us all and his announcement after the February recess. After Easter, there will be a debate on security. I am grateful for the way in which the right hon. Gentleman prefaced his remarks: he understands that these are sensitive issues. The last thing that we want to do is alert potential terrorists or others to exactly what procedures we are introducing and the way in which we are coping with additional threats. He will want to join me in making sure that the House and the Chamber are free of threats from terrorists and others while preserving all the traditions and, indeed, the openness for which our democracy is renowned throughout the world.
  Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that reply. The reality is that Parliament is a reflection of the electorate, so it is important that he give an undertaking that major security changes that can be openly debated are debated. Will he assure us that no decisions will be taken in the Easter recess without Parliament being offered an opportunity to express an opinion?
  Mr. Hain: We have already confirmed—indeed, Mr. Speaker's letter did so—that any permanent changes will be subject to decision by Parliament. I have a responsibility, as does the Speaker. Indeed, you have the primary responsibility, Mr. Speaker, along with the House authorities, the House of Commons Commission and the relevant Committees of the House, for ensuring that security arrangements are secure. We are in an entirely different era, and I do not think that my hon. Friend wants or expects us to debate every security change in the open before we decide whether to proceed with it. That would be virtually opening the door to the attacks or threats that would undoubtedly follow. Let us

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  approach this on the basis of consensus, but also with seriousness. I do not think that my hon. Friend or the House would want me as Leader of the House or those who are actually responsible for security—I myself am not—to take a casual attitude to this extremely important issue. The House has been under attack before from terrorists, and we want to make sure that it is not again.
  Pete Wishart: Will the Leader of the House confirm that, when the Finance Bill reaches the Committee of the whole House, we will have an opportunity to discuss the Chancellors job-destroying and fraud-prone suggestions for strip stamps on bottles of Scotch whisky? Does he, like me, look forward to Scottish Labour Members, some of whom have large whisky interests in their constituencies, explaining why they voted for this damaging measure?
  Mr. Hain: These matters were debated in the Budget debate, and the Budget's approach was overwhelmingly endorsed in a vote earlier this week. It is a travesty to say that those measures are job-destroying. I like a drop of malt whisky—no doubt the hon. Gentleman does too—but the Chancellor's measures are designed to stop fraud. The whisky industry, the economy and the Exchequer are the victims of widespread fraud at present. The measure is designed to stop that and protect the Scottish whisky industry in particular, so I would expect the hon. Gentleman to welcome it.
  Mr. Ian Davidson: When does the Leader of the House expect to find time to allow us to debate the appointment of the United Kingdom Commissioner to the European Union? Does he agree that that appointment is not a long-service award and that it is essential that whoever is appointed has the credibility that comes from the support of the House of Commons as a whole?
  Mr. Hain: That sounds like a job application to me.
  Mr. Eric Forth: Has the Leader of the House heard the outrageous suggestion that the House should no longer sit on Fridays, thus depriving it of a valuable part of its activities? Is he also aware of the even more ridiculous suggestion that if the House did not sit on Fridays, it would somehow improve security? If that were the case, is not the logical extension of the argument that the House should not sit at all?
  Mr. Hain: That suggestion appeared in reports either this morning or yesterday, and was one of the many press reports swirling around, very few of which have any connection with reality. The House has already decided to sit on 13 of the 36 days available, so we do not sit every Friday, as the right hon. Gentleman knows. He is nodding in agreement, so I assume that he approves.
  Mr. Forth: No.
  Mr. Hain: The right hon. Gentleman wants us to sit on Friday every week.
  Mr. Forth: Yes.
  Mr. Hain: I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman put that to a vote and see how many of his Conservative
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  colleagues support him. Fridays are often important days for constituency business, and allow us another day in addition to the weekend to be in our constituencies to meet and serve our constituents. He may be able to get back to Bromley on a Friday afternoon, but it is not possible for those of us who live far from London to get to our constituencies. I have seen an early-day motion to the effect that the House should not sit on Fridays, but it is only one of the many options that will no doubt be submitted to the Modernisation Committee after the review of the hours of the House conducted by the Procedure Committee.
  David Winnick: On security, does my right hon. Friend agree, especially in view of some newspaper reports, that it is not simply a matter of protecting Members of Parliament but the hundreds of people who work in the Commons and the Lords, who are as entitled to protection and security as ourselves? If certain measures are considered necessary in view of the acute terrorist threat, we should keep that very much in mind and not simply think about ourselves.
  Mr. Hain: I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. As he said, the matter affects the security not just of Members in the Chamber and elsewhere but the many staff who serve us so well and diligently. As he will recall, the assistant of the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Jones) was attacked and killed in his surgery. Such incidents cannot be dealt with by protection in the House, but we must be alert to the security threat to everyone who works in the House, not just Members.
  Mrs. Patsy Calton: What advice can the Leader of the House give to Members in whose areas post office closures have gone ahead without proper consultation or provision of information? What can we do, and is the only alternative to seek judicial review?
  Mr. Hain: Clearly, there have been instances of such closures. In my capacity as Secretary of State for Wales, I am aware of cases in which there has been a lack of proper consultation and proper involvement by local Members of Parliament, which is regrettable and deplorable. However, the hon. Lady will know that there was a debate on the subject yesterday, and she herself secured an Adjournment debate on it. The Government are well aware of people's concerns, as are senior managers in the Post Office.
  Tom Levitt: Next Wednesday, the House will have an opportunity further to improve the Higher Education Bill. Will my right hon. Friend do whatever he can to try to ensure that the principle of variability remains in the Bill, as it is important both for universities such as the university of Derby, with a fine tradition of encouraging young people from nontraditional backgrounds into higher education, and for universities wishing to attract additional students to minority courses? Does he also agree that the principles in the Bill of deferred fees, payment later in life and much more generous grants should be applied across the board and extended to further education where they will offer just as much, if not more, help as they will in higher education?
  Mr. Hain: I strongly agree with my hon. Friend that the principle of variability allows flexibility to, for

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  example, charge no fee for a physics course. We are short of physicists, chemists, electrical engineers and others, as there has been a long-term slide in the number of students doing such courses. An incentive through the fee structure for students to take such courses would be a big boost to the country and the economy. It is therefore imperative that the Bill go through unamended, and I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will bear that in mind. As the Secretary of State for Education and Skills made clear, any amendments could effectively kill the Bill and it is important that what the House voted for in Committee and on Second Reading goes through so that students, especially those from a low-income background, can be properly supported with new grants and other assistance, and so that universities can get the finance that they need to become world-class universities, which is essential to the future of the British economy.
  Sir George Young: When can we have a debate on the report of the Procedure Committee on Sessional Orders so the House can decide what it wants to do about the unsightly cacophony on Parliament square? The Leader of the House may remember that I asked last year for a debate on the matter, and he said it was important and that the debate should take place sooner rather than later. A fortnight ago he was asked about it, and he said that he hoped to be able to give some welcome news in the not-too-distant future. We have not had any. What is going on?
  Mr. Hain: I understand the right hon. Gentleman's concern. We are all concerned about the matter. The Home Secretary has been examining it, and when he is ready to present proposals, we will have a way forward to put to the House. The position remains that we will have a debate and a decision as soon as I am able to arrange it. I know, Mr. Speaker, that you are equally concerned about the matter, because you told me so. Members on both sides of the Chamber are concerned, but we need to proceed in the proper fashion.
  Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the House gives me an opportunity to say that I want the matter dealt with as quickly as possible.
  Jim Sheridan: My right hon. Friend will be aware of successful police raids this morning on unscrupulous gangmasters of the sort who operate throughout the United Kingdom. Will he congratulate the police on those successful raids? Does he agree that the police need the tools to do their job if they are to deal with the problem throughout the UK? For that, they need effective legislation. My right hon. Friend knows that a private Member's Bill is going through the House dealing with the licensing of gangmasters. Will he give the Bill not just a fair wind, but his full support by giving appropriate parliamentary time and resources so that it can become effective legislation, giving the police the tools to deal with unscrupulous gangmasters?
  Mr. Hain: My hon. Friend has done the country a service by introducing his Bill. The Government are
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  fully supportive of it. I understand that the Committee stage is lined up for next week, and my hon. Friend should then be in pole position for Report and Third Reading on one of the remaining Fridays—14 May, 21 May, 18 June or 16 July. He can be assured that we will give the Bill what support we can. I welcome the fact that there have been some 40 arrests this morning, including some senior figures in the gangmasters operation. I know that the House will also welcome that.
  Huw Irranca-Davies: May I first add my congratulations to the England cricket team, not least to Jones the bowler—a good Welshman?
  A week last Monday, I attended a celebration of the new deal in Pontypridd at one of the foremost schemes in the country, combining Jobcentre Plus activities with manpower services. Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the new deal so that we can celebrate the successes of the staff and individuals involved and consider ways in which we can continue to improve it, to reach those parts and those people that other programmes have failed to reach?
  Mr. Hain: I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Simon Jones, or Jones the bowler, as he called him. That reminds the House that it is, in fact, an England and Wales cricket team and that there have been many brilliant Welsh bowlers and cricketers over the generations. We want that to continue. Simon Jones was the spearhead of the attack that destroyed the West Indies' defences. That shows what talent is coming out of Wales.
  On the new deal, my hon. Friend is right. It has done fantastic work in former coalmining communities such as those that he and I represent. In trial pilots that are going on in his area, it is tackling the problem of people who have been in a state of long-term economic inactivity and on incapacity benefit. That is one of the many reasons why it is imperative that the new deal stay in place. I see that the Liberal Democrats are joining the Tories in an extreme right-wing measure that would abolish the new deal, thereby barring many thousands of people across Britain, including those with disabilities, from getting the support and the personal advice that would enable them to get into the jobs market, which everyone should welcome.
  Mr. Nigel Evans: Is it possible to arrange for the Secretary of State for Health to make a statement to the House next week about the guidelines that his Department gives to national health service trusts about the suspension of members of staff? About 1,000 members of NHS staff are currently suspended, costing millions of pounds and no doubt resulting in operations being delayed. The issue was highlighted clearly and starkly by the absurd suspension of Dr. Hope, who, I understand, has now got his job back, but who is a neurosurgeon whose suspension delayed operations simply because he wanted more croutons in

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  his soup. That is ridiculous. There must be sufficiently sane guidelines in place to ensure that such insanity does not happen in the future.
  Mr. Hain: If those reports were true, I agree that that was pretty insane. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and his Ministers will have taken careful note of the hon. Gentleman's points.
  Tony Lloyd: Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the fact that one of the strengths of the ITV network in the past has been the regional system of broadcasting so that the English regions, Scotland and Wales have had proper reporting of events in their local areas. That has come under threat with the Carlton-Granada merger. There was a lobby of Parliament this week by the National Union of Journalists and BECTU, and concerns have been expressed that rationalisation taking place in the midlands presages future centralisation among the ITV companies. Will my right hon. Friend take on board the fact that when the Government passed the Communications Act 2003 they placed on Ofcom a duty to examine the regional distribution of broadcasting? Will he draw that to Ofcom's attention and call for more action from it?
  Mr. Hain: Ministers in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will note my hon. Friends comments and take careful steps to ensure that the points he has made are looked into. I agree that it is imperative that regional and—in the case of Scotland and Wales—national broadcasting through the ITV network retains its distinctive flavour and makes sure that news, especially, and culture are reflected in its content and programming, and that the necessary resources are available. After the chaotic near-destruction of the ITV network under the Government of Margaret Thatcher, I hope we will see an ITV that is effectively a unified service providing quality national programming and allowing regional and national broadcasts to take place in the way that I described. But BECTUs concerns must be addressed as they are clearly important.
  Dr. Jenny Tonge: Does the Leader of the House agree that events during the past week in the middle east have made it more important for us to consider the subject, and that an hour-and-a-half debate in Westminster Hall—even if I managed to catch the Speaker's eye, or whatever the term is for gaining debates in Westminster Hall—would not be adequate to cover it? Will the right hon. Gentleman consider holding a full debate in the Chamber on the situation in the middle east as soon as possible, or do the Government just have nothing to say on the matter?
  Mr. Hain: The hon. Lady spoiled an important and effective point by that last comment, and I ask her to withdraw it or reflect on it. She, I, the Government and, I expect, the entire House take the same position on the matter and deplore the assassination of Sheikh Yassin. The Government work tirelessly to try to secure peace in the middle east, including on an independent Palestinian state, security for the state of Israel and recognition by surrounding Arab states that Israel's future must be secure. That is what we should work towards. If the hon.
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  Lady is successful in securing an hour-and-a-half debate on the subject, it would enable everybody to say pretty much the same thing—that we share in the condemnation of such attacks, and of suicide bombings, and that we want to work together to find the best way to solve an intractable problem.
  Lawrie Quinn: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the report by the Prime Minister's strategy unit about the future of the sea-fishing industry, published this morning, is deeply significant for coastal communities across the United Kingdom? The industry is vital for some of the most remote communities in the country. Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate as soon as possible after Easter so that all right hon. and hon. Members who have an interest in the issue, which is a matter of life and death for those communities, can discuss it and the prospects for a sustainable future for many of our constituents?
  Mr. Hain: I shall certainly consider that request, because, as the Fisheries Minister has made clear, the Government share my hon. Friend's concerns and his support for the report, which points the way towards sustainable fishing. Sustainable fishing is at the heart of the issue because our seas have been depleted and fish stocks are being eradicated at an alarming rate. We must work towards a more sustainable future for fishing, because there will be no jobs if fish stocks are exhausted, and the report points the way towards achieving that future.
  Mr. Andrew Robathan: Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on ethical foreign policy, which we do not hear much about these days? Such a debate would give us an opportunity to discuss Gaddafi's support for terrorism, and human rights, democracy and good governance—or otherwise—in Libya, and, in particular, overall responsibility for the murder of Yvonne Fletcher and for the mass murder of people at Lockerbie. Some of us fear that ethical foreign policy is being replaced by a culture of impunity for a dictator who may or may not bear overall responsibility for mass murder.
  Mr. Hain: It is not clear from the hon. Gentleman's question whether he supports the Government's initiative.
  Mr. Robathan: I asked for a debate.
  Mr. Hain: Indeed, but does the hon. Gentleman support the Government's policy of bringing Libya into the international community rather than its sitting outside as a rogue state? I should have thought that everybody would support the policy, and the Prime Minister's visit has been welcomed by the families of victims of the Lockerbie disaster and, indeed, by the family of WPC Fletcher. The problem goes back over many years, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) began to resolve it, a process that the Foreign Secretary has taken forward. The Prime Minister's visit symbolises the beginning of a new process by which Libya complies fully with international standards.

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  As for ethical foreign policy, the truth is that the Government, through an arms exports policy that bans the export of arms that could be used for internal repression or external aggression, have adopted a policy based on the highest possible standards and ethics, which stands scrutiny anywhere in the world. In many other respects, we promote human rights across the world.
  Mr. Robathan indicated dissent.
  Mr. Hain: The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but the Conservative Government had a shabby record on arms exports and human rights. The Labour Government have established a good reputation as a result of the high standards that we have introduced.
  Mr. Mark Lazarowicz: Yesterday was an Opposition half day, and, once again, the subject matter was not revealed to the rest of the House until the morning of the debate. I understand why the official Opposition take some time to dream up a subject on which they can attack the Government, but whether that is a matter of tactics or incompetence, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is not right or fair to the rest of the House for the subject matter of Opposition debates to be brought up at the last minute, which happens frequently? Will he consider introducing a system whereby, if fair notice of the subject matter for Opposition day debates is not given, the time will be forfeit and awarded either to the other Opposition parties or, indeed, to the Government to focus on the consequences of Tory policies, if the Conservative party were elected.
  Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Hain: My hon. Friends shout, "Good idea" and, "Hear, hear" at that suggestion. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) makes an important point, which I have raised with the shadow Leader of the House on a number of occasions, although, to be fair, I know that advance notice has been given of next weeks Opposition topics, for which I am grateful. None the less, my hon. Friend cannot intervene in a debate on, for example, post offices, if he can only find out the topic on the morning of the debate, and that prevents hon. Members from organising their business. Advance notice is courteous to the House and is part of good procedure and process. I hope that the Opposition will bear that in mind, as they have done for next week.
  Dr. Andrew Murrison: This week, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence took the unusual step of recommending the withdrawal of disposable tonsillectomy instruments following a number of unfortunate post-operative haemorrhages and an audit by the university of Birmingham. Does the Leader of the House agree that the Secretary of State for
  1070
  Health should come to the House to explain why his Department advised the use of those instruments in the first place? Does he agree with the parents of deceased toddler Crawford Roney that an urgent investigation is needed into exactly what went wrong in Richmond house three or four years ago?
  Mr. Hain: That incident is obviously serious, which is why the Secretary of State has put in place stringent standards and inspection arrangements. I know that the Secretary of State for Health will take careful note of the hon. Gentleman's points and make sure that the appropriate procedures and policies are implemented.
  Dr. Alan Whitehead: In the light of the publication of final council tax levels from local authorities, will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate about the future of local taxation, so that we can compare and contrast various proposals, particularly local income tax? We could also consider the effect of the £100 to help pensioners with their council tax that the Chancellor recently announced.
  Mr. Hain: My hon. Friends suggestion is welcome, and business managers and the Deputy Prime Minister will want to examine it. The House would do well to reflect on the different solutions to the problems with council tax, which we inherited from the previous Government and have continued to operate. On the one hand, the Government are committed to low council tax increases, as evidenced by the general level of settlement this time; on the other hand, the shadow Chancellor has announced that a future Conservative Government would cut local government budgets by £2.4 billion in their first two years, which would result in sky-high council tax increases. That is the choice: it is between a Labour Government who continue to invest in high standards of public service and provide local government with the resources that it needs, or a Conservative Government committed to cutting local government budgets, which would put council tax increases through the roof.
  Kevin Brennan: May we have a debate on the music industry, which the National Music Council reports as contributing £3.6 billion per year to the UK economy? Does my right hon. Friend acknowledge that protecting copyright is important to the health of the industry, which loses £241 million a year through internet downloads? The key is to educate people about the importance of copyright protection, and can we therefore debate today's announcement by the British Phonographic Industry, which is launching a scheme to warn significant illegal uploaders of music on to the internet that they are breaching the law?
  Mr. Hain: My hon. Friend is an accomplished guitarist, and he therefore takes a personal interest in the matter. All music lovers want to know that our music industry is properly protected, and that the sort of practices to which he referred are not allowed to continue without restriction. I know that the Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry and for Culture, Media and Sport will study his remarks closely, and they are alive to the problem, which they are working on solving.
  Mr. David Amess: Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on human rights and fair trials abroad following the sentencing of my constituent, Majid Narwaz, to five years in prison in Cairo? He has already been detained there for two years. His trial was a disgrace, and the charges were entirely trumped up. When the Leader of the House arranges such a debate, will he ask the Prime Minister to attend and to explain to the House why he has refused to get involved in that case?
  Mr. Hain: Such cases are sensitive. The hon. Gentleman has properly raised the case of his constituent on the Floor of the House, and the Foreign Secretary will want to study his remarks closely. However, there have been serious problems with terrorism in Egypt, and the Egyptian authorities have repeatedly made representations to us about British citizens whom they allege are involved. I do not know whether that is true, but the hon. Gentleman takes one view of that particular case, and the Foreign Office will want to study what he said closely.
  Hugh Robertson: I fully realise the sensitivities of this issue, but is the Leader of the House in a position to confirm that he has taken security advice on the type and scope of demonstrations in Parliament square? It clearly makes very little sense at the moment to allow the erection of a series of banners that form a barrier directly outside the main entrance to Parliament, restricting the field of view and the ability of the armed police to operate.
  Mr. Hain: I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. There is a balance to be struck between the right to protest, which is an ancient and honourable part of our democracy—the hon. Gentleman is nodding in agreement—and proper security for the House of Commons in an era of terrorism and threats from al-Qaeda directed specifically at Britain and at important institutions of the British state, including Westminster.

  MINISTER FOR WOMEN AND EQUALITY

    Pregnant Women (Discrimination)
    Julie Morgan: What plans she has to reduce discrimination against pregnant women in employment. [163453]
    The Deputy Minister for Women and Equality (Jacqui Smith): Employers who discriminate against pregnant women are breaking the law and could be liable to pay compensation. Furthermore, they are harming their own businesses by excluding talented women from the work force. The Government welcome new research in that area and, in particular, look forward to the results of the Equal Opportunities Commission's investigation.
    Julie Morgan: I thank my right hon. Friend for that response and I am pleased that she is aware of the EOC research. Is she aware that the initial findings show that more than 1,000 women a year bring cases of pregnancy
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    discrimination in the workplace and that the compensation they receive is £2,000 lower than for non-pregnancy discrimination dismissals? Will she take seriously the results of the EOC research and consider acting on them?
    Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Although the final results of the EOC's investigation will not be available until 2005, we have already seen some important early information from its research. I am pleased that the investigation is focusing on the extent of the problem—how many women are affected by pregnancy discrimination—on the impact on their lives and families and on what can be done to make pregnancy a positive experience in the workplace. The EOC is also working with employers, many of whom have good practice in relation to pregnant women, so that we can learn from them what more we need to do to get rid of the few bad employers who discriminate against pregnant women, to the detriment of those women and their businesses.
    Mrs. Eleanor Laing: I am sure that the Minister will agree that the voters of Epping Forest deserve to be commended for showing no discrimination against pregnant women when they reelected me at the last general election with an increased majority exactly one week before the birth of my son. The Minister will therefore be in no doubt that I entirely share her aim, that of the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) and that of the EOC. However, I urge her to try to achieve that aim by changing attitudes so that it is generally recognised that a pregnant woman in employment is doing two important jobs. After all, the production of the next generation is just as important as the production of goods and services. However, I encourage the Minister not to introduce further regulation, because the more regulation we have, the more employers are likely to be dissuaded from employing and promoting good women who might bear children.
    Jacqui Smith: I welcome the hon. Lady to her new position on the Front Bench. I strongly agree with her that women can be both pregnant and extremely productive, as I also know from recent experience. However, I disagree with her recommended approach. Helping women to work more flexibly, and increasing statutory maternity pay and leave, will benefit women and enable them to combine the crucial job of producing children with remaining productive in their workplace. The hon. Lady cannot will the ends unless she is able to will the means. The changes introduced by the Government will improve the position of all women, and men, in sharing responsibilities in relation to the work-life balance. I hope that she will not take the approach—
    Mr. Speaker: Order.
    Vera Baird: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the worst employers use manifold legal devices to try to oust pregnant women? Despite the case in 1988, it is still frequently disguised as redundancy when a woman is, in fact, being sacked because she is pregnant. When the EOC finally reports, will my right

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    hon. Friend look carefully into all the implications to see whether there is a need to tighten up the law to give better protection for pregnant women? Will she also look into increasing the compensation, which, nowadays, is too low?
    Jacqui Smith: My hon. and learned Friend points to some important issues, and I am pleased that the EOC will be considering them. It is clear that case law and our current legislation make it illegal to discriminate against pregnant women, but the problem still exists, which is why we need to consider it through the investigation. We shall most certainly look at the recommendations and take action based on them. We need to ensure not only that the law is in place, but that employers—from the best to the worst—act according to both its letter and its spirit to protect and promote pregnant women.
    Sandra Gidley: The hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) has already highlighted the fact that compensation for pregnant women is, on average, under £2,000 less; but is not the reality that for most employers the penalty for getting rid of a pregnant woman is only a fraction of her annual salary, so it is a quick and easy option? The fact that 21 per cent. of people know somebody who has experienced problems due to pregnancy shows that the problem is real and it should not be minimised by the Minister saying that only a minority of employers discriminate.
    Jacqui Smith: I am sorry if the hon. Lady thinks that I was minimising the problem. Actually, I started with the extremely strong statement that employers who discriminate against pregnant women are breaking the law and that they could be, and should be, liable to pay compensation. I also said that we support the Equal Opportunities Commission. The hon. Lady made a point about compensation in tribunals, but there is another important argument that we need to get over to employers: to replace a leaver, an employer will spend, on average, £4,000, so not only is it wrong to get rid of women because they are pregnant, it costs the business money, too. That is why we shall continue to take legal and other action to ensure that pregnancy discrimination is outlawed.

    Muslim Women (Working Practices)
    Mr. Gordon Prentice: What steps she is taking to encourage more Muslim women to enter the labour market. [163454]
    The Minister for Women and Equality (Ms Patricia Hewitt): We are helping all women, including women in Muslim communities, to enter and remain in employment—whether part-time or full-time. Increased maternity rights, new rights for working parents, better child care, the working tax credit and the new deals for lone parents and partners, together with our economic policy, have all helped to ensure that we have more women, as well as more men, in employment than ever before.
    Mr. Prentice: But does my right hon. Friend share my concern that only 17 per cent. of British Bangladeshi women aged between 16 and 59 are in the labour market
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    and that only 24 per cent. of British Pakistani women are in employment, compared with 71 per cent. of white women? When shall we see a narrowing of the gap, so that there is the same participation among parts of our ethnic minority communities as in the white community?
    Ms Hewitt: My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point and I share his concern about the many factors, which include, in some cases, cultural attitudes and in other cases language difficulties, that keep so many Pakistani and Bangladeshi women out of employment when they would like to be in employment—society as a whole would benefit from that. I have recently discussed that issue with a group of women from Muslim communities whom I meet regularly, and I am glad that the Womens National Commission will be holding its first meeting next week with women leaders from different Muslim communities to discuss those and other difficulties that face those groups.

    Pay Differentials
    Mr. Alistair Carmichael: What steps the Government are taking to reduce pay differences between men and women. [163455]
    The Deputy Minister for Women and Equality (Jacqui Smith): Since 1997, the difference in median hourly pay has fallen from 16.2 percentage points to 12.9 percentage points. That reflects, in part, increases in womens opportunities in the labour market due to increased flexible working, greater maternity pay and leave, and the help that we, together with the EOC, have provided employees with to tackle unequal pay where it exists. Last week, we launched plans to streamline equal value tribunal procedures in another step to improve the way that the Equal Pay Act 1970 works in practice.
    Mr. Carmichael: I thank the Minister for that answer. She may be aware that figures from the Office for National Statistics show that workers in part-time jobs are seven times more likely to be paid less than the minimum wage than workers in full-time jobs. As women form a higher proportion of the part-time work force, does she agree that dealing with that difference between part-time and full-time workers would do a lot to address the gender pay gap and that, in fact, a lot could be done by increasing awareness among women of their rights in relation to the minimum wage?
    Jacqui Smith: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the national minimum wage, which has had the largest impact on low-paid women's pay since the Equal Pay Act 1970, and he is also right that we need to do everything that we can to ensure that those rights are made clear to women. Of course we also need to pursue our target to ensure that large companies carry out equal pay reviews, where the factors that cause pay differentials are often identified and action can then be taken. That is why, for example, we have again supported the Equal Opportunities Commission to produce guidance for companies and special guidance for small companies to carry out those equal pay reviews and to take the action that will help to ensure that people are fairly rewarded at work.

  Points of Order
  1.20 pm
  Mr. Oliver Heald: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In light of the remarks of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz), it might be helpful if I indicate that the Opposition generally provide the topics for their Opposition days if they fall on a Monday or a Tuesday, but in the interests of topicality we do not do that in respect of Wednesdays and Thursdays.
  Mr. Speaker: That sounds more like putting the matter on the record than a point of order.
  Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I caught the tail end of the comments of the Leader of the House on council tax, when he talked about the policy of Her Majesty's Opposition. Will you confirm that it is still a rule of the House that Ministers are present to account for the actions of the Government? They are here to account for what they said in their manifesto, such as:
  "We will not introduce top-up fees and have legislated to prevent them";
  or saying, "We will reform the House of Lords." They are here to account for what the Government are doing, or not doing, not for what the Opposition may do in future.
  Mr. Speaker: I have repeated time and again that at Question Time, including during business questions, Ministers should not indulge in speaking about the policies of the Opposition or of the Liberal Democrats while attempting to answer the question—they should be accountable for their own portfolio. I make it clear that it is different in a debate on the Floor of the House, when everything is open to criticism, including the policies of Her Majesty's Opposition.

  Employment Relations Bill (Programme) (No. 3)
  1.22 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Gerry Sutcliffe): I beg to move,
  That the Programme Order of 14th January 2004 in relation to the Employment Relations Bill (as amended by the Order of 9th February 2004 (Employment Relations Bill (Programme) (No. 2)) be varied as follows—
  Consideration and Third Reading

  Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the Order of 14th January 2004 shall be omitted.

  Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after those proceedings are commenced.

  Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion four hours after the commencement of proceedings on consideration.

  The motion will allow full debate on the Government new clauses on intimidation during statutory recognition ballots and remaining important topics such as workplace bullying, information and consultation, and the union modernisation fund. The Bill has made good progress and I hope that this will be a short debate.
  1.23 pm
  Mr. Henry Bellingham: I listened carefully to what the Minister said. I gather that we will have three hours on Report and one hour on Third Reading. In normal circumstances, that might well have been perfectly adequate. Now, though, the Bill is substantially longer than it was when it went into Committee—it now runs to 49 pages, 50 clauses and two schedules. The Government have already added two important new clauses in Committee: new clause 28 on exclusion and expulsion from trade unions, and new clause 46, the union modernisation clause—the bung or bribe to trade unions, which we debated at some length. The problem is that when new clauses are tabled in Committee, we can debate them but not amend them. That is why we will need some time to discuss them on Report.
  The Bill is the product of an exercise involving discussions with several parties, including the TUC, the CBI, the Engineering Employers Federation, the Institute of Directors and British Chambers of Commerce. There was widespread consensus. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) said on Second Reading that he feared that the Bill would be used by the Government as a sort of Christmas tree on which to hang other clauses, or so-called baubles. As I said, we have already debated two new clauses in Committee, including that on the modernisation fund for trade unions—an unlimited amount of money that is to be made available to trade unions for modernisation, which as we have said on several occasions, is simply a bung to the trade unions.
  When we complained on Second Reading that the Bill might be used as a Christmas tree for further new clauses, the Minister said, "You're scaremongering", "Calm down", "Relax", "Take it easy", "Don't get carried away." He said, "This Bill is the product of a consensus-building exercise and we're going to stick
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  very much to the original format." Imagine my amazement and disbelief when I heard yesterday that the Government have tabled not one new clause, but four, in addition to the one that they had already tabled. We have new clause 5,
  Additional duties on employers informed of ballots";
  new clause 6,
  "Unfair practices in relation to recognition ballots";
  new clause 7,
  "Unfair practices in relation to derecognition ballots";
  and new clause 8,
  "Unfair practices: power to make provision about periods before notice of ballot."
  Those may be excellent new clauses—I am sure that they are—but they were tabled only yesterday. We have two working days when the House is sitting to digest, analyse and try to understand them, yet they are highly complicated, and I put it to the Minister that each will require a great deal of time for discussion. For example, new clause 5 runs to nearly four pages and contains a lot of highly technical material. The Minister will have to explain to the House exactly what the "additional duties on employers" will be; what employers can and cannot do; what "inducing" means; and what "relevant meetings" are. Surely, he will require at least 10 minutes on each new clause, while Opposition Front Benchers will require five or six minutes, and many other hon. Members will have a few words to say.
  The Government are trying to rush through the Report stage. I am disappointed about that, because it will be difficult for us to get our heads around all the new clauses and other amendments in such a limited time. My hon. Friends and I have tabled two fairly simple new clauses on intimidation and on appeals, as well as an amendment on the information and consultation directive; and the Liberal Democrats have tabled a couple of amendments and a new clause.
  The key factor is that the Government have said all along that the Bill was the product of a consensus-building exercise involving the main employer and employee organisations, but they have departed from that script by using it to add to the Christmas tree a number of new clauses and additional measures. They have departed from the spirit that was the background to the Bill. I do not know how much time the Minister has spent talking to the trade unions, but has he spoken to the CBI, the Institute of Directors or the Engineering Employers Federation about the four new clauses? We have been given two working days to deal with them; how will they have a chance to analyse them, report back and explain the situation to interested members?
  Mr. Greg Knight: Has the Minister sought to reach an agreement with my hon. Friend on the extra time that might be necessary to discuss the Government new clauses? If the Minister is really interested in consensus, one would have thought that he would start out by trying to achieve it on this business matter.
  Mr. Bellingham: I thank my right hon. Friend. The Minister and I have got on very well recently. He has

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  taken me to one side to discuss the matter on several occasions. I have made it quite clear to him that, although we appreciate that type of discussion and liaison, we need more time. He has invited me and some other colleagues to the Department of Trade and Industry for a drink next week, but by then it will be far too late.
  Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: What explanation has been forthcoming from the Government about why so many new clauses are necessary at this late stage? If the Bill is well thought out, why were those new clauses not tabled some time ago, to enable consultation with the Opposition and employer organisations? It is not acceptable to table a huge chunk of new clauses without having time to consult the various interested bodies that will have to implement the regulations.
  Mr. Bellingham: I am grateful for that intervention, because on Second Reading the Secretary of State made great play of the fact that she had gone out of her way to talk to everyone and had achieved broad agreement on the Bill. She made it clear that the Bill was based on the information and consultation directive, which is an EU directive that we would normally expect to be introduced as a statutory instrument. In fact, it has come before us as a clause in primary legislation.
  The Secretary of State also made it clear that the Government had to respond to the Wilson and Palmer case and the Friction Dynamics case, and she said that she had had far-reaching discussions with all the organisations, particularly the employer organisations. She mentioned a close relationship with the IOD, the CBI, the EEF, the BCC and other organisations. I should think that they are staggered, flabbergasted and dismayed at this raft of new clauses, which are complicated and highly technical. How on earth can those organisations go through the new clauses, and provide proper briefings for their members and for Members of Parliament in such a limited amount of time?
  My party is very disappointed at the way in which the Government have behaved. I pay tribute to the Minister for keeping me in the loop, keeping me informed and being open, but we cannot get away from the fact that the Government have departed from their agreement with all parties in business and industry, and with the House, not to add a whole lot of highly technical, complicated new clauses to the Bill. They should have introduced the clauses well in advance, because the Bill has been around for a long time. The Conservatives are not happy campers, which is why we will ask the House—
  Mr. Greg Knight: I have to say that the more I listen to what my hon. Friend has to say, the more I feel that this whole situation is highly unsatisfactory. Has he suggested to the Minister that he consider withdrawing the motion and perhaps inviting us all round for a drink, to see whether that might produce an acceptable way forward?
  Mr. Bellingham: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. The Minister has invited us—one or two select colleagues—to the DTI for a drink, although perhaps I
  1076
  should not mention that in public because I might destroy his reputation. It is possibly a little premature to go to the DTI to celebrate the completion of consideration of the Bill when we have not even agreed the programme motion. The motion will curtail debate, which is why we are very unhappy with it. I urge the House to vote against it.
  1.33 pm
  Malcolm Bruce: For personal reasons, I have not been able to be in the House this week until today, which might be why I have not received any notice of or been consulted on the programme motion—or received an invitation to a drink. The serious point is that although we support the Bill, as the Minister well knows, and have not moved from that principle, I concur with the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) that it is not entirely adequate to allow what is in effect a half day to complete consideration of the Bill, given that it has been changed and there are various Opposition issues to be debated. It is not a question of wanting x or y hours, but we want enough time to ensure that the Government new clauses and amendments are properly discussed, and that Opposition concerns are properly addressed. For example, we had a heated debate on the money resolution for additional union funding, about which both main Opposition parties expressed concern. The House might want a fuller debate on that, on the basis of what we have heard.
  As the Government have said, the anti-discrimination clauses were difficult to draft. There is more or less universal support for them in principle, but some examination of how they will work in practice will clearly be relevant. As the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk pointed out, my hon. Friends and I have tabled amendments on issues that we continue to regard as important. I do not wish to detain the House by arguing in detail now which issues we think need to be expanded on, but I am a little surprised, given that the Bill has changed and there are important issues to resolve, that the Government feel justified in imposing such a tight timetable. On that basis, I concur with the hon. Gentleman in opposing the programme motion.
  1.35 pm
  Mr. Sutcliffe: I am shocked, saddened and surprised by this afternoons events, although we know that Opposition Members often oppose programme motions. To answer the points made by the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham), the Government have not deviated in any way from their consultation process, which is why we are in this situation. There is a full consultation process, which involves talking to the employer organisations and trade unions, and we have not deviated from that. The Bill's progress has been excellent, and there have been good, meaningful debates on many issues. I am sure that we can have more of those debates on Monday within the time allotted.
  This afternoons debate has been about the Opposition's problems with programme motions. We have heard about bungs and baubles, and about shock and amazement. There are serious issues to discuss, but there is adequate time for that. I hope that the House

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  supports the work that has been going on through the usual channels, and that hon. Members will support the programme motion.
  Question put:—
  The House divided: Ayes 234, Noes 128.
  Division No. 110] [1:36 pm
  Question accordingly agreed to.

  Defence Policy
  [Relevant documents: Delivering Security in a Changing World: Defence White Paper (Cm6041–I); Delivering Security in a Changing World: Supporting Essays (Cm6041–II); Uncorrected Oral Evidence taken before the Defence Committee on 24th March 2004, from General Sir Michael Walker GCB CMG CBE ADC Gen, Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Alan West GCB DSC ADC, First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, General Sir Mike Jackson KCB CBE DSO ADC Gen, Chief of the General Staff and Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup KCB AFC ADC, Chief of the Air Staff, on the Defence White Paper (HC465–i)]
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Jim Fitzpatrick.]
  1.50 pm
  The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Geoffrey Hoon): At the start of the debate, may I extend my condolences to the family of Brigadier Lord Vivian, who died recently? I had the privilege of meeting him on several occasions, and he was both knowledgeable and thoughtful, certainly when discussing defence issues.
  The publication last December of the Defence White Paper, "Delivering Security in a Changing World", generated significant interest, so I welcome this opportunity for the House to debate the issues with which it dealt.
  First of all, however, I would like to take this opportunity to condemn the appalling terrorist attacks in Madrid two weeks ago. I am sure that the House will join me in extending our sympathies to those who have lost loved ones—and, indeed, to the Spanish people. The appalling scale of those co-ordinated attacks, using devices deliberately set to detonate simultaneously on crowded trains at the height of rush hour, once again demonstrates the callous and barbarous nature of international terrorists. The attack was calculated to take as many innocent lives as possible. It was the latest in a series of such atrocities, going back well before 11 September to the bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The fanatics who are responsible will stop at nothing to cause death and destruction on a massive scale.
  It is therefore inevitable that there is increased anxiety about the prospect of similar attacks occurring here. I want to emphasise to the House that the threat of attack has been recognised across government. Since 11 September, in particular, a huge amount of work has been undertaken to prepare contingency plans. In the UK the civil authorities are responsible for crisis and consequence management, with the Home Office taking the lead for counter-terrorism policy at home. The Civil Contingencies Bill will provide an important and necessary enhancement to the civil authorities' ability to respond to emergencies and rightly places emphasis on civil resilience.
  Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: Does the Secretary of State share the view of the head of the Metropolitan police, Sir John Stevens, that an attack on London is inevitable?
  Mr. Hoon: I regret that, given the evidence that we have seen from elsewhere, the Government have consistently had to take that view and we obviously have to prepare and plan for it.

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  I was outlining where the civil responsibilities lie, but the armed forces clearly have the skills, training, command and control to provide valuable assistance to civilian capabilities when necessary. They will frequently have a role to play. Most recently, they were deployed to Heathrow airport in support of the police to act as a deterrent when intelligence warned of a potential attack.
  Following the strategic defence review new chapter, the Ministry of Defence introduced a number of measures to enhance our ability to respond to a crisis at home. Those measures include the development of command and control arrangements, the establishment of a network of joint regional liaison officers, and the introduction of communications equipment compatible with that used by the police.
  Across the country, we have also established 14 civil contingency reaction forces, which are now fully operational. They provide a pool of volunteer reserves available to deploy at short notice to assist the civil authorities at the scene of an incident—whether it is a terrorist attack, accident or natural disaster. But while we must be prepared to support the civil authorities here in the United Kingdom, it is vital that we address the threats to us before they even reach our shores.
  The White Paper sets out the requirement for this country to be ready, willing and able to deploy overseas to act against terrorists and the states that harbour them. It also sets out the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the consequence of failed and failing states. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is perhaps at its most chilling when it coincides with the desire of international terrorist groups to acquire and to use them. The law and order vacuum in failed states provides opportunities for those groups to flourish and a safe haven from which to operate.
  In addition, where possible, we will work together with the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development to tackle the root causes of terrorism. The Government's conflict prevention pool is made available to provide funding for measures such as security sector reform and post-conflict recovery, which help to tackle the underlying causes of instability in many of the world's potential flashpoints. In recent years, the armed forces have made a significant contribution to peace and support operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, East Timor and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. More widely, the Ministry of Defence has undertaken defence diplomacy activities to encourage the responsible development of military capabilities. Those commitments have been crucial in support of stability in numerous countries.
  Mr. Henry Bellingham: The Secretary of State mentioned various operations around the world. The last theatre of conflict was a very large operation, namely our contribution to the invasion of Iraq, which Conservative Members supported. If we had to launch another such large-scale operation—perhaps next year or the following year—would we be able to do so?
  Mr. Hoon: As the Chief of the Defence Staff made clear in his evidence to the Defence Committee
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  yesterday, it will take a number of years to recover properly in respect of exercises and the sort of training that is required. Obviously, however, if there were an immediate national reason for conducting a large-scale operation in a much shorter time scale, I know from my knowledge and experience of our armed forces that they would be able to mount it. It would necessarily mean that some of our existing commitments would have to be qualified in order to achieve that, but such operations would be undertaken, not least if this country were threatened.
  Bob Russell: The Secretary of State for Defence has rightly drawn attention to the excellent peacekeeping work that members of Her Majesty's armed forces are undertaking in various parts of the world—including in southern Iraq, where 500 troops from the Colchester garrison are based. Will he accept, however, that continued overseas commitments are putting a strain on our Army, and that the armed forces are still under strength? Although recruitment is going well, does he accept that there is a need for greater emphasis on retention; otherwise, the overstretch will become unbearable?
  Mr. Hoon: In fact, both recruitment and retention rates are extremely good at present, but I accept the hon. Gentleman's observation that we need to continue to augment the size of our armed forces and, indeed, to develop particular skills—a matter that I shall deal with in more detail later. It is clear that there are some strains on particular people in the armed forces—those in support and enabling positions, for example. That is inevitable if, as is the case, we are engaged in several different operations simultaneously.
  Mr. Crispin Blunt: I was very surprised to hear the Chief of the Defence Staff say yesterday that it would be another four years before we would be capable of carrying out a large-scale operation again. That seems an extremely long time, so could the Secretary of State offer the House some guidance about the precise thinking of the Chief of the Defence Staff in reaching that judgment about the four years that it would take for a large operation to be mounted again?
  Mr. Hoon: I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman's use of the term "capable" is fair in respect of what the Chief of the Defence Staff actually said. I have already answered the point in detail, but I am perfectly willing to repeat it: to prepare for a large-scale operation, it would be necessary to train, exercise and develop the necessary skills in the time frame set out by the Chief of the Defence Staff, but our forces would be "capable" of conducting a large operation before that, if it were necessary. As the Chief of the Defence Staff explained, however, that would necessarily have some implications for our existing commitments. The Minister of State has explained that position on previous occasions. I know from the hon. Gentleman's knowledge of the Department that none of that will come as a great surprise to him.
  Ms Dari Taylor: I would like some reassurance from my right hon. Friend. When I visited our troops in Bosnia in 1998, I was astounded by

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  the fact that they had to use mobile phones to ensure effective communication between each other. Mobile phones are, of course, easy to track and to listen into. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that that arrangement is not still the case today?
  Mr. Hoon: It is not the case today. I shall set out in greater detail the significant advances that have been made, and are about to be made, in the provision of enhanced communications equipment. That has been an absolute priority for the Government. I recognise the difficulties in delivering such programmes that previous Governments have encountered over a long period of time. However, the Bowman programme is on the verge of success. I welcome the efforts that have been made.
  I was outlining the commitments made by UK armed forces around the world. Only last week, in response to escalating levels of tension and violence between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo, additional UK troops were deployed in support of KFOR. The Ready Battalion of NATO's operational reserve force and the 1st Battalion, the Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Regiment had been earmarked precisely for such a rapid deployment. Their role, which I anticipate will be short term, is to assist KFOR in restoring calm to the province and preventing unrest from spreading to areas outside Kosovo. It is an example of the kind of rapid deployment capability that we will increasingly need to be able to call on.
  Clare Short: I am worried that, if we cannot settle Kosovo's final status, its economy will remain dreadful. Unemployment is enormous, which means that the atmosphere is tense and likely to be disorderly. The military situation will not be resolved unless we get political progress.
  Mr. Hoon: I agree. The events before last weekend illustrate the continuing difficulties between the two communities. A number of Serb families were forced to leave their homes, and Serb churches were burned. That suggests that the presence of our troops is still necessary, but it also shows that we must make progress on a constitutional and political settlement to avoid our military responsibility going on indefinitely.
  Mrs. Alice Mahon: Does the Secretary of State agree with the NATO Secretary-General and one of the senior members of UNMIK, who said that the unrest was almost certainly organised by Albanian separatists? Will he confirm that at least 3,000 Serbs and members of other ethnic minorities have lost their homes?
  Mr. Hoon: I have looked carefully at the evidence, and I am not sure that any of it points to an especially sophisticated organisation. As I said in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), there are such simmering tensions between the two communities that any incident—whether true or not—can set off the sort of violent and dangerous reaction that we have seen. Clearly, that has real implications for the presence there of troops from the UK and other countries.
  Mike Gapes: The Secretary of State will know that members of the Select
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  Committee on Defence were in Kosovo a few weeks ago and what we heard made all of us worried about what was happening there. Although it is important to resolve the status of Kosovo, will he assure the House that there will not be a final status agreement without guarantees about human rights and the rule of law? Also, does he agree that we must clamp down on the criminal, mafia society in Kosovo, and the leading Albanian politicians there who are behind it?
  Mr. Hoon: I certainly give that undertaking in respect of human rights. That was one of the reasons we went into Kosovo, and our other aim was to preserve a multiethnic society. We were right to go and protect the Albanian community against the appalling treatment by Milosevic's regime, but the recent events in Kosovo suggest that Albanians are perpetrating behaviour that is similar to what the Serb minority did. That is of great concern to us.
  The threats that we now face are ever more fluid, and less predictable than the monolithic Warsaw pact that dominated our defence planning and posture for two generations or more. However, they are no less real, and no less dangerous. Our armed forces have to adapt as a result.
  The strategic defence review set us in the right direction, with its emphasis on expeditionary force. The defence White Paper builds on this work to present the case for still more flexible forces, structured and equipped to perform a wide range of tasks, often concurrently, in simultaneous operations in different parts of the world. The success of the operations that we undertake will be measured more by our ability to exploit fleeting opportunities to engage an elusive enemy, and in deterring and disrupting future terrorist activity, than in any decisive pitched battle.
  The rebalancing of our armed forces is therefore required, with flexibility being the key. Experience has shown us that we should plan on structuring, equipping and supporting our armed forces to deploy rapidly on concurrent small and medium scale operations. That pattern has become the norm in recent years, and it is likely to remain the trend for the foreseeable future.
  Mr. John Smith: My right hon. Friend speaks of supporting our armed forces in this changed environment, so after yesterday's announcement by the Ministry of Defence, will he assure me that the MOD remains committed to the success of the Red Dragon project at RAF St. Athan?
  Mr. Hoon: I assure my hon. Friend that we remain absolutely committed to that project. We believe that the people engaged in it have a significant role to play in the future.
  Obviously, we need to ensure that our armed forces retain the ability to adapt themselves at longer notice for the much less frequent, but more demanding, large-scale operations. We must continue to keep up to date our approach to standing tasks and commitments. The White Paper seeks to strike the right balance.
  Where military action is used, it is clear that it is most effective when brought to bear through multinational coalitions and alliances. The ability to operate

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  seamlessly alongside other nations, particularly with our NATO and European Union allies and partners, is therefore at a premium.
  We plan to maintain a broad spectrum of capabilities to ensure that we are able to conduct national operations, or be the lead or framework nation for coalition operations, at small to medium scale. However, we do not envisage needing to generate large-scale capabilities across the same spectrum as, in the most demanding operations, it is highly unlikely that the US will not be involved, either leading a coalition or as part of NATO. For large-scale operations, our focus nationally must be on the retention and development of capabilities that ensure a seat at the political and military decision-making table, securing for the UK an appropriate level of influence in the planning and prosecution of operations. Therefore, the armed forces must be able to interoperate with US command and control structures, match their operational tempo, and provide credible and significant capabilities that provide the greatest impact.
  Mr. Ian Davidson: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. He is making an excellent speech and I am sure that he will be a first-class European Commissioner in due course. I am interested in the process of determining capacity in respect of building ships and aircraft carriers. Obviously, we want to obtain value for money in the order for aircraft carriers, but does he agree that it is also essential to take account of the totality of shipbuilding procurement? Would we not be able to secure much better value for money if the MARS—military afloat reach and sustainability—initiative orders and the orders for aircraft carriers and frigates were all taken together? In that way, the peaks and troughs in demand that would otherwise impact on the shipbuilding industry could be smoothed out.
  Mr. Hoon: I have always appreciated my hon. Friend's compliments, but I am somewhat disappointed that he is so anxious to get rid of me.
  Bob Russell: It is friendly fire.
  Mr. Hoon: I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Pollok (Mr. Davidson) to the extent that it is necessary for the MOD to assist the shipbuilding industry in securing civil orders as well as military orders. The MOD has a tremendous order book for warships at the moment, but that will not sustain shipbuilding indefinitely. The MOD can make a significant contribution to shipbuilding, but the industry should not assume that those orders will keep it going indefinitely. My hon. Friend talks about smoothing out supply and demand, but that has to come from the civil orders. They supplement the military orders, and will provide a long-term future for UK shipbuilding.
  I was talking about the necessity of interoperating with the US. However, I emphasise that we are simply focusing on niche capabilities that the US is short of. We should not want to confine ourselves to only a supporting role in military operations. In order to meet
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  our own security objectives, we will need to continue to be at the forefront of operations. The changes that the White Paper sets out will enhance the UK's ability to conduct expeditionary operations, both nationally and, as is most likely to be the case, as part of a coalition of allies.
  Mr. Barry Gardiner: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who has been most generous in allowing interventions. On co-operation with the United States, does he agree with Robert Maggi, the head of defence trade controls at the US State Department, that in looking towards conflict prevention and the illicit transfer of conventional weapons to non-state actors, the ability to apply effective controls to such transfers, including extraterritorial controls, is critical?
  Mr. Hoon: We have certainly looked at that. By way of qualification, I should say that if we introduce such controls, it is important that they be introduced multilaterally. It is necessary that new nations should also be subject to the existing code of conduct, which could be reformed to take account of such particular illicit transfers, or to other international agreements. I would be concerned if the UK moved too far ahead of other countries that might then be tempted simply to step in and fill the trade void that we had left.
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: Before we leave the subject of expeditions, may I add, as chairman of the all-party Latin American group, that we, the European delegates, were warmly welcomed by Vicente Fox? May I ask about the strange business of the servicemen who are caving in Mexico? What are we to make of it? Surely it would have been courteous and tactful to tell the Mexicans that servicemen were going there.
  Mr. Hoon: I am always impressed by the range of my hon. Friend's interests and concerns and he has just added a new one to the long list with which I am familiar. I was referring to Latin America, not caving, but I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will have noted those wise observations.
  NATO of course remains the cornerstone of our security policy. Lord Robertson, in his capacity as Secretary-General of NATO, worked tirelessly to adapt NATO to the challenges that it is likely to face. His successor, whose appointment I welcome, has promised to continue this work. As technology develops, it will become even more important that we and our NATO partners invest in the capabilities that enable us to operate at the same tempo as the United States. We are actively encouraging this approach through the Allied Command Transformation and the development of the NATO response force, with its emphasis on flexible, deployable and technologically advanced and interoperable forces.
  The Prague capabilities commitment is making progress. Our allies have committed themselves to improvements in key areas such as nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities, secure communications, strategic lift and air-to-air refuelling. Looking forward to this year's Istanbul NATO summit, we will try to ensure that our allies deliver these capability improvements. NATO needs to be leaner, more

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  responsive and fit for new challenges. We therefore support a broad review of NATO structures, processes and decision making.
  Where NATO as a whole chooses not to engage, it is likely that we will work with our European allies. Improving the military effectiveness of European nations therefore remains a key priority. Hence our proposal that EU member states should develop rapid response capabilities through the battle group initiative. Building on the progress towards achieving the Helsinki headline goal, member states, individually or on a multinational basis, will provide deployable and sustainable battle groups of around 1,500 troops, drawn from existing national forces. Having high readiness forces available will improve the ability of the European Union to respond effectively to emerging crises, particularly in support of the United Nations. We will ensure that this initiative is developed in a way that also strengthens NATO and the NATO response force.
  There is no conflict between aspiring to strengthen both NATO and European defence and security policy. We will not agree to ESDP developing in a way that impairs the security guarantee established through NATO. The security architecture that we have constructed over the past six years allows for flexible approaches to crises either through a NATO operation or the EU using NATO assets under Berlin-plus arrangements, or indeed through an autonomous EU operation.
  The EU and NATO have established a strategic partnership in crisis management that we want to see strengthened. The arrangements for EU-NATO consultation agreed last December were a significant step forward. Regular dialogue between the EU and NATO would be stepped up during a crisis. That ensures that the relationship between the two organisations is transparent and mutually reinforcing.
  In directing our finite resources at those capabilities that are best able to deliver the range of military effects that we require, we will inevitably have to make important choices. As we indicated in the White Paper, we will look to create the headroom for highest priority investments in network enabled capabilities and medium weight forces.
  Central to our thinking on network-enabled capabilities is the need to improve the collection of information on the battle space and enable those in charge of ships, tanks, aircraft and other combat systems to be able to share that information more quickly. The Watchkeeper unmanned aerial vehicle, for example, will provide a substantial increase in surveillance capability over the Phoenix system currently in service. The Bowman secure tactical voice and data communications system will markedly improve our ability to share information. Such improvements in equipment capability will enable those involved to understand the battle space more quickly, so that they can speed up the decision-making process.
  Mr. Gerald Howarth: On the Bowman issue, it has been put to me that there has been some difficulty in communicating across hilly terrain. I understand that in those circumstances a high frequency channel will be used. This is a technical question and the
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  Secretary of State may not have the answer at his fingertips, but, broadly speaking, is he satisfied that Bowman will deliver what he imagined it would?
  Mr. Hoon: Recently I had an update on the arrangements for Bowman. The progress on introducing the system is extremely good and I am confident that we will resolve any technical difficulties as they arise. I am confident that this will be an extremely successful operation for UK armed forces.
  To return to improvements provided by network-enabled capabilities, we need to match improved sensor performance and information exchange with a more decisive delivery of effect. During the Kosovo campaign, as recently as 1999, around 25 per cent. of munitions that the RAF used were precision-guided. Barely four years later, during Operation Telic, 85 per cent. of munitions used by the RAF were precision-guided. By taking advantage of such significant progress in the use of high technology, we will be better placed to ensure that our platforms are used to greatest effect and that the coherence of our military capabilities is enhanced.
  If we are to have truly expeditionary forces, able to deploy quickly to deliver effect at significant distance from the United Kingdom, we need to rebalance our force structures. We must ensure that we can move our armed forces quickly to where they are needed with equipment that enables them to carry out the tasks we expect of them. The introduction of the future rapid effects system group of vehicles will provide our armed forces with battle-winning equipment that can be moved quickly by strategic airlift. As part of this rebalancing process, we have already been able to announce plans for a new light brigade, and the reduction of one armoured brigade—from three to two. This will enhance our existing light forces by offering a third choice in addition to 3 Commando and 16 Air Assault Brigade. Whenever such advances have been made in modernising defence equipment or capability it has always been necessary to make adjustments in the number of older platforms. It is right that we do this to ensure that our armed forces are properly equipped to meet the challenges of the future.
  Mr. Blunt: In announcing the changes that will follow from, one hopes, the extra money that the Chancellor may make available in the comprehensive spending review and the extremely challenging long-term costings process or work strands process that is going on in the Department now, which appears to be on twice the scale of "Front Line First" of 10 years ago, there will plainly be some significant changes to follow the brigade changes that the Secretary of State has already indicated. How does he propose to announce the changes?
  Mr. Hoon: I was about to deal with that point in my speech. In my statement on the publication of the White Paper last December, I set out to the House that I had asked the Ministry of Defence to undertake a significant examination of our capabilities and overheads. I anticipate that we will be in a position to make some announcement on the results of this work in the summer through the usual channels.

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  The Government are committing significant extra financial resources to support changes envisaged in the White Paper. The 2002 spending review delivered the largest sustained increase in planned defence expenditure for more than 20 years—adding more than £3 billion over three years. Last week, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer confirmed a further real-terms increase in the 2004 spending review. That does not mean we can afford to relax our efforts to use that money efficiently. In the challenging defence environment, we need to make every pound count.
  Labour's record contrasts markedly with that of the Conservatives. During 18 years of government, the Tories imposed swingeing cuts in defence without any long-term strategic rationale. Spending was cut by nearly one third in real terms during the Tories' last 10 years in government.
  There are always financial pressures on major Departments, especially during a demanding period. It is clear that the Conservative plan for a two-year freeze on defence spending would mean a £1.5 billion real terms cut in the unlikely event that the Tories returned to office. Members of the Opposition Front Bench need to come clean about how they plan to make that £1.5 billion cut. Will they withdraw British armed forces currently doing vital work in Iraq and Afghanistan? What part of the equipment programme would the Conservatives scrap—and what impact would that have on Britain's future defence capabilities and British industry?
  Does the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) stand by his comments on the Radio 4 programme "Today" on 6 January, when he said:
  "You can't do defence on the cheap"?
  If so, why has the hon. Gentleman failed to explain that to his shadow Chancellor?
  Mr. Michael Jack: I am always suspicious when Ministers attack the Opposition. The Secretary of State said that the Chancellor had promised a real-terms increase. The right hon. Gentleman seeks specific answers from my hon. Friend, so will he tell the House what extra money the Chancellor has confirmed to him will be available?
  Mr. Hoon: That announcement will be made in due course, as the spending totals for all Departments are made known. That process will take some months but that is not unusual. The right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) keenly questions spending on fast jets, for example. Conservatives talk about cuts in defence spending, while at the same time complaining about a series of projects that they want delivered. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to ask those same searching questions of members of his own Front Bench. Recognising the difficulties that face all Departments in meeting their budgetary commitments, how is that Conservative spokesmen believe that they can cut £1.5 billion from defence?
  Mr. Nicholas Soames: Before the Secretary of State becomes more confused and tied up as he goes around in circles, I will clarify for the record that
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  no one in the Conservative Opposition—including myself and the shadow Chancellor—has ever said that there will be a cut in defence spending.
  Mr. Hoon: I do not believe everything that I read in the newspapers, but I read that the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex was less than enthusiastic about the shadow Chancellor's commitment. I will read out the words of the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), just in case he has not told his hon. Friend the Opposition's spending plans. He said:
  "I have agreed with my Shadow Cabinet colleagues that the baseline for spending across all of these departmental budgets will be 0 per cent growth for the first two years, followed by 2 per cent growth per year for the remaining four years of the period covered by the strategy."
  Everyone knows that zero per cent. growth is a cut in real terms of £1.5 billion—even before the extra money for defence committed by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor at the time of the Budget is taken into account. The Conservatives plan a real-terms cut in the existing defence budget and an even bigger cut in our planned defence spending.
  Mr. Paul Keetch: Given General Sir Michael Walker's comment yesterday that it might be several years before Britain could undertake a major war operation, will the Secretary of State speculate by how much that period would be extended if the Ministry's budget was frozen in real terms during the first two years of a hypothetical Conservative Government?
  Mr. Hoon: I look forward to the right hon. Member for Fylde asking that question of the shadow Cabinet spokesman for defence. We want to know where those cuts will be made. Will there be cuts in capability or in equipment? That is for the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex to explain.
  Mr. Kevan Jones: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the problems facing our armed forces today originate in decisions taken in 1992, 1993 and 1994 by the last Conservative Government? Does my right hon. Friend further agree with the comments of the First Sea Lord to the Defence Select Committee yesterday, who said that stopping recruitment had been a dreadful mistake and had led to a black hole—particularly in respect of leading hands. Does he agree that we are having to pick up those mistakes now?
  Mr. Hoon: The previous Government's lack of spending on public services had a dramatic effect on hospitals and schools. The dramatic effect on defence was not always appreciated. We had to make good many of the cuts and shortfalls that we inherited. Year by year, we are doing that by spending more on defence—so it is right to highlight the cuts proposed in the unlikely event of the Conservatives again achieving power.
  Mr. Jack: Given events at the time in eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and beyond, was it irresponsible of the last Conservative Government to react to the rapidly

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  changing defence scenario and to adjust Britain's defence capabilities to new threats and scenarios—as the Secretary of State is doing in the world of today?
  Mr. Hoon: Would the right hon. Gentleman say that it was irresponsible of members of his own Front Bench to announce a cut in defence expenditure at precisely the time more needs to be spent, to provide security against threats? I look forward to the right hon. Gentleman questioning his own Front Benchers about their commitments. The right hon. Gentleman regularly urges the Government to spend more on fast jets and military equipment. There ought to be some consistency. I would be delighted to know the right hon. Gentleman's position.
  Mr. Jack: I come to the House to ask the Secretary of State, on behalf of my constituents working in the aerospace industry, to honour the commitments and budgets that he has promised to programmes such as the Eurofighter and joint strike fighter.
  Mr. Hoon: I am delighted that in the context of the extra spending that we have promised, a range of successful military equipment will be available to support Britain's armed forces. I want to know the kinds of cuts and the equipment that the Conservatives will cancel in the event of the right hon. Gentleman supporting his own Front Benchers' efforts to reduce defence expenditure.
  Mr. John Smith: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Hoon: I had better carry on. There is a limit to how much fun one can have in one day.
  The campaign in Iraq began just over one year ago. It showed our armed forces and the Ministry of Defence at their best and demonstrated how far we have come in achieving truly expeditionary forces able to deliver a range of military attacks over long distances. I have acknowledged that there were some deficiencies, but I welcome the thorough investigations by the National Audit Office and the Defence Select Committee, which have helped to illuminate the issues.
  I have no doubt that Britain's intervention in Iraq has been and will continue to be beneficial to the Iraqi people. Earlier this month, members of Iraq's governing council signed a transitional administrative law for Iraq. That signing was a significant milestone.
  Given the uncertainties of the modern world, standing still on defence policy is not an option. We must not fail our armed forces. We must ensure that they are structured and equipped to carry out the tasks and challenges that we expect them to face. The White Paper provides the policy basis on which we will rebalance our armed forces, to ensure that they are best placed to meet the security challenges of the first part of the 21st century. The White Paper recognises that to be an effective and influential player in a changing world, the United Kingdom must be committed to working in partnership with our international friends and allies and be prepared to take action when needed. By doing so, we shall together confront the threats presented by international terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and the challenges posed by failed and failing states.
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  The White Paper recognises also that we cannot predict precisely where and when we will next have to deploy significant numbers of UK armed forces in support of our foreign policy and security aim. We must modernise our force structures and harness technology and information networks to enable the UK to act quickly, accurately and decisively anywhere in the world.
  2.29 pm
  Mr. Nicholas Soames: I wish first to apologise to the House, as I have already done to the Secretary of State and the Minister of State, because I will be unable to be present for the winding-up speeches. I have an important speaking engagement, and I apologise for my absence.
  I also thank the Secretary of State for his generous and warm tribute to my noble and gallant Friend Lord Vivian, who played such a distinguished part in defence debates in the other place for many years. He was extremely knowledgeable and very popular on both sides of the House. He was highly regarded and respected for his knowledge. We will miss his advice and considerable experience as a serving soldier—at the rank of Brigadier when he retired—and we extend our deepest sympathy to his wife and family.
  I also wish to pay a warm tribute to the men and women of the three armed services for the wonderful way in which they have carried out their duties in the past onerous year, and for the patience and fortitude of their families—qualities that are often over-tested at present. I also pay warm tribute to our reserve forces, which have played a distinguished and remarkable role in operations in the recent past, and continue to do so. We salute their efforts and are grateful to them, their families and their employers for their understanding. Finally, I pay warm tribute to the civilian staff of the Ministry of Defence, wherever they work, for the remarkable and important work that they do to support our armed forces.
  Even allowing for the Secretary of State for Defence having a bit of fun at my expense—which was entirely legitimate—it defies belief, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) pointed out, that the Secretary of State should think that the end of the cold war required no strategic reduction in the posture and shape of our armed forces: it was one of the biggest changes in military affairs for generations. However, it is a matter of common consent throughout the world that the peace dividend taken in many countries at the end of the cold war was probably overdone. It did represent a significant change from positional defence to the evolving policies that have found catharsis, in many ways, in the White Paper, including the creation of highly deployable forces, which was started in the last years of the Conservative Government and in which the present Government have made substantial and welcome investment.
  We generally accept the White Papers assessment of the strategic environment and the difficulties that flow from it. Indeed, it is clear that we have come to a decisive moment in history, when a new and diverse constellation of threats have appeared that are not nearly as obvious as their relatively certain predecessors. Today, we are confronted by an extra-national,

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  religiously self-defined entity with something ominously like a nation's power to wage war. Terrorist outrages in New York, Riyadh, Istanbul and Madrid—I join the Secretary of State in extending our condolences to the people of Spain following that dreadful atrocity—are a horrific reminder of the new challenges we face, and the clear duty that the Government have to ensure that we are fully prepared to cope with such a disaster.
  Mr. George Foulkes: The hon. Gentleman deals with the issue in a statesmanlike way, but does he not think that it was opportunistic of the shadow Foreign Secretary to criticise the Prime Minister for meeting Colonel Gaddafi in an attempt to reduce the threat to which refers? That is particularly true given that my right hon. Friend's intention in that regard was announced last December and welcomed by the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Secretary of State for Defence. Was not that condemnation ridiculous political opportunism by the shadow Foreign Secretary?
  Mr. Soames: From one statesman to another, I must say that, unusually, I am in deep but respectful disagreement with the right hon. Gentleman. All of us welcome the developments taking place in Libya, but the meeting may turn out to be premature. We welcome those developments and it is right that recognition should be given to Libya for the steps that have been taken. However, as so often, some of the language is overdone and the visit may be premature. That was the point that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) was trying to make.
  While that uniquely threatening form of terrorism must be effectively engaged, we must also address the deeper and abiding reasons for its very existence. That will be a major duty for the Government in years to come. In the new strategic environment, as the Secretary of State said, homeland defence is of the first importance. Traditionally, our armed forces focused on deterrence, stability, and war-fighting missions in overseas theatres. The home front was regarded as a rear area, not a front line, and the job of securing it was primarily a task for civilian agencies, with the exception of Northern Ireland. However, the new strategic environment reaffirms the role of the Government as protector of the country against foreign aggression, and so defence of our homeland represents one of the primary tasks of the MOD and must receive the level of attention and co-ordination that it deserves. Indeed, as the White Paper states, our forces are expected to
  "protect our citizens at home and counter international terrorism across the globe".
  It is clear that a fundamental shift in the mindset of the MOD decision makers will be required—a shift of which, incidentally, there was precious little evidence in the White Paper.
  An evolving national strategy for homeland security requires that the MOD may have to consider the employment of military forces in ways previously considered outside the scope of operations. What specific training are the armed forces undergoing in order to be able to respond to what the Metropolitan
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  Police Commissioner suggested would be an "inevitable" attack on London? Furthermore, can the Minister comment on the level of co-ordination established since 2001 between the MOD, the Home Office and other Departments?
  Mr. Kevan Jones: I agree with the emphasis that the hon. Gentleman places on the threat to the homeland and the need for extra vigilance and expenditure on that. Can he explain how a future Conservative Government would meet that threat when bound by the straitjacket imposed by the shadow Chancellor?
  Mr. Soames: I shall continue my speech, if I may.
  The tasks imposed on our armed forces will continue to be more and more onerous. It is clear from the Prime Minister's speech in Sedgefield that they could become even more so, but I have read the evidence that the Chief of the Defence Staff gave to the Defence Committee yesterday and it is difficult to see how the armed forces could cope.
  The Government's definition of Britain's interests has continued to widen over the past seven years. The Government have deployed our forces on major operations four times in the past five years, and we continue to have major obligations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as maintaining a considerable presence in the Balkans, which was recently reinforced by the Spearhead battalion as a theatre reserve force. As the Chief of the Defence Staff made plain yesterday, those operations are making near impossible demands on our troops.
  The White Paper states that
  "we must extend our ability to project force further afield than the SDR envisaged."
  Given the extraordinary demands being made on the services, the Government have a first duty to our servicemen and women to realise that it is they who will have to deliver success and that they will need to be reassured as to the direction of the Government's policies. I find that there exists at present a great sense of uncertainty and unease among our armed forces, who I am afraid feel very much taken for granted and increasingly believe that they are not properly supported, resourced or looked after. That is a serious message for the Government.
  Mike Gapes: Given the great pressures to which the hon. Gentleman has referred and in the context of a possible standstill budget, in which of the areas in the world where we are currently deploying forces to assist international peace and security would he make cuts?
  Mr. Soames: If the hon. Gentleman will contain himself, I shall come to that point later in my speech.
  In discussing the White Paper and the application of the new doctrines, especially the network-enabled capability, it is essential that we do not forget the need for balance between old and new concepts, a point that was powerfully made in a distinguished and important speech, which I commend to the Secretary of State, by General Lord Guthrie in the House of Lords yesterday.
  The lessons, from the Balkans to Basra, must be remembered. Infantry and armour on the ground can be augmented by technological wizardry but they cannot

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  be replaced by it. The peace in Basra and in the Balkans is being kept by thousands of soldiers on the ground, so can the Secretary of State confirm that, given the exceptional tempo of operations at present, he has no intention of cutting back the number of infantry regiments? In our judgment, those regiments are sorely needed.
  We welcome acknowledgement of the need to continue robust and collective military training at all levels. That is one of the lessons about which the Select Committee has raised concern. Its report states:
  "The high number of operations which UK service personnel have been involved in has had an adverse impact on their training."
  Reductions in training have a progressively damaging effect on fighting power, particularly at the highest level—joint combined arms collective training at formation level and above. It may indeed take years to recover fully standards and capabilities that have been lost.
  The problem is truly serious and the Government must rectify it. If they do not do so, sooner or later it will lead to disaster and to the creation of lesser, more ordinary, armed forces. It is becoming clear that many who went to fight in Iraq did not have adequate training; for example, during pre-conflict training there was a restriction on track mileage for armoured vehicles. That seems an unacceptable state of affairs.
  The Secretary of State must acknowledge that training saves lives. Many deployments involve considerable danger and it is unacceptable that our people do not have enough time to prepare for them properly and thoroughly. Such risks are unacceptable, but they are becoming frequent. I look to the Secretary of State to put that right.
  Mr. John Smith: I am not sure that the emphasis of the hon. Gentlemans point is clear. Is he saying that there is no need for additional investment in C4ISTAR—command, control, communications, computers and intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—without which we cannot operate as a modern force?
  Mr. Soames: I think a lot of things are unclear to the hon. Gentleman, but that was not the point I was making. I was saying that there is an absolute requirement for thorough and professional training before troops are committed.
  The services cannot buy in experience. Under the current pressures, individuals at more junior levels are unable to achieve the career progression to which they aspire. The result is that, over a period of time, technical standards slip. Can the Secretary of State comment on reports that about 50 per cent. of combat arms training has been cut back owing to funding problems? Can he assess the impact of that on the armed forces capabilities?
  Overstretch has been a recurring theme for the armed forces in recent years. When I was Minister of State for the Armed Forces, the then Labour Opposition chided me in relation to overstretch but at that time the Army was only about a quarter as committed as it is nowadays. With overseas deployments coming thick and fast and the overall size of the armed forces in
  1096
  decline, overstretch is a recurring and fundamentally important problem. Indeed, it is only a slight exaggeration to say that most of the UK Army is either on deployment, returning from deployment or getting ready to go.
  Last year, the MOD announced that 40,842 personnel were expected to be stationed abroad during 2004, representing about 40 per cent. of trained strength. That is, of course, leading to increasing problems with tour lengths. In February, the Secretary of State admitted that the Government had wholly failed to meet that target. What has been done to address that issue?
  The armed forces have recently become grossly overstretched by the number and scale of their deployments. That simply cannot go on, as the Chief of the Defence Staff implied when he appeared before the Select Committee yesterday. As the Defence Committee report rightly states:
  "The Government must recognise that the armed forces are simply not large enough to sustain the pattern of operational deployment since the Strategic Defence Review permanently without serious risk of damage to their widely admired professional standards."
  What is the Secretary of State's response to the evidence of the Chief of the Defence Staff to the Committee last night? He warned that a large operation of the size of Telic would not be practical until we approach the end of this decade. The Opposition believe that to be a sign of Labours fundamental lack of effective stewardship of the armed forces.
  Mr. Davidson: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is an odd juxtaposition of policy to say that the Government are committing the armed forces to too many duties while saying that his answer would be to cut expenditure to a lower level than the Government intend?
  Mr. Soames: I realise that the hon. Gentleman has the most serious difficulty in understanding even the simplest things; I have already told the House that neither I, nor the shadow Chancellor nor anyone else has talked of a cut in the defence budget.
  May I turn to equipment and procurement? Let us have a look at the state of the Government's procurement policy on new technology. Despite the much vaunted, and, in fairness, welcome, defence industrial policy set out by the Secretary of State in October 2002, the Government have failed to apply it coherently to their procurement programme. An uncertain and anxious defence industry has been given no strategic steer by the Government about the essential capabilities that they believe the UK must retain. The cornerstone of their policy, introduced under the SDR, was smart procurement. That lasted a couple of years before being reinvented as "smart acquisition". Smart acquisition? Tell that to the trade unions that joined us in fighting tooth and nail to persuade the Government to buy the British Hawk advanced jet trainer. It was so smart a process that they placed an order just hours before 500 employees of BAE Systems were due to be handed their redundancy notices. Tell that to the work force in Telford, who for the past two years have been anxiously awaiting a decision from the Government on the future rapid effects system battlefield vehicle that the Chief of the General Staff requires to be in service by

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  2009, but for which there is not yet even a drawing. Tell that to BAE and Thales who read about the MOD's intention to take command of the aircraft carrier programme. Tell that to the National Audit Office, which found that Ministers failed to order sufficient stocks of kit for the Iraq war to be delivered in time. "Just in time" became in too many cases "Just too late".
  Clare Short: This is not a popular position, but I think that we need to review our commitment to procure only from British defence companies. When there are procurement problems, there is less of a case for procuring only domestically. If we want our armed forces to have the best radios, the best rifles—the best equipment—we should move away from that absolute commitment to British Aerospace and the inefficiency in our procurement systems. What does the hon. Gentleman say to that?
  Mr. Soames: I say that procurement is indeed a difficult process. However, we have a magnificent defence industry, which employs hundreds of thousands of people and is an enormous export earner. Of course, we should support British industry, but at the end of the day there is no strategic vision as to how that should be done. We propose to develop a proper strategic vision and provide real leadership for an industrial policy on procurement that will make sense.
  The procurement budget is more than £3 billion overspent this year alone, and not just on the so-called legacy programmes for which the Government have been responsible for managing for the past seven years. There is a huge bow-wave of projects building up whose affordability is increasingly questioned. Programmes continue to slip, and worst of all, across the board significant gaps in capability are being actively planned for. Nothing better illustrates that than the maritime air cover problem, whereby the Government are gambling that we shall be able to get away with no such independent cover between 2006 and 2012 at the earliest.
  Most chilling of all is the Government's language on platforms—tanks, ships and aircraft to the British public. Last summer, we were told that platform numbers would not be so important in the brave new world of effects-based warfare. Now, we are told that platform numbers will be cut to make way for investment in network-enabled capability. The truth is that numbers remain critical. The White Paper refers to the increased frequency and duration of operations. The Prime Minister alluded to all those ideas in his very important speech in Sedgefield. I can tell the Secretary of State that we need those platforms to undertake the number and scale of operations envisaged by the Government's policy. Ships, planes, armour and men cannot be in two places at the same time.
  Mr. Jack: Did my hon. Friend notice that the Secretary of State did not comment once on any of the programmes to which my hon. Friend has referred? As a result, does he share my deep suspicion about precisely
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  what the future holds for many of the programmes about which the Secretary of State failed to make any remark in his address?
  Mr. Soames: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for pointing that out—I intend to deal with some of those points in greater detail—and I share his anxiety. The Secretary of State started off with a dignified and an important speech on defence that degenerated into a rather futile and pointless knockabout.
  The White Paper is full of buzz words and phrases, but the truth comes out only in the following statement, which will interest my right hon. Friend:
  "We will not be able to hold on to platforms or force elements that do not have the flexibility to meet the demands of future operations."
  On the face of it, that is a sensible remark, but the Government make no effort to spell out which platforms or elements we will not be able to hold on to, even though if they have been identified, the cuts must have been identified, too. Can the Secretary of State clarify which platforms or force elements we will not be able to hold on to? If we are to have a proper discussion on the White Paper—the debate is meant to be about the White Paper—the Secretary of State will have to clarify the details of which platforms and force elements are involved, and we will want to debate that with him most vigorously. I note that he is to come to the House to announce the cuts that he intends to make in summer, and I hope that he will then be able to tell us which cuts he must make as a result of the new strategy in the White Paper.
  Specifically, I call on the Secretary of State to confirm the informed speculation that the Type 45 destroyer procurement will be cut by a third. Is it true that tranche 3 of the Eurofighter Typhoon project will be cut? It is clear that mismanagement and indecision by the Ministry of Defence about the future aircraft carrier programme is seriously delaying the project and leading to a substantial waste of funds. The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but it is well known already that the carriers will be one and a half years late. Is the objective of having two 65,000 tonne ships, each capable of carrying some 50 aircraft, to be met, and what is the new time scale? The MOD is wasting money and time through a lack of any strategic leadership on those projects and it must provide the House with urgent clarification on the management of those major procurement programmes.
  We welcome the intention to enhance the strategic enablers of communication, logistics and intelligence—that may be the point that the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith) was groping at through the fog that surrounds him—but as a former Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Guthrie, rightly pointed out recently:
  "It is important that we do not concentrate our efforts to too great an extent on one emerging threat—a knee-jerk reaction—forgetting that there are other threats which have not gone away for which we should still be prepared."
  I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will pay the closest attention to what Lord Guthrie and Lord Boyce had to say in two very important speeches in the Lords

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  yesterday. We believe that such principles are of the first importance. Indeed, the most recent events in Kosovo furnish excellent lessons in that regard.
  Mr. Hoon: The implication of all that the hon. Gentleman has been setting out to the House is that, if the Conservatives were returned to power, they would retain all our existing equipment and buy all the equipment that we propose to buy and that they would do so on the basis of all the previous plans set out, presumably by Conservatives in government. Has it ever crossed his mind that, in the face of a cut in the amount that the Conservatives are planning to spend, his figures simply do not add up?
  Mr. Soames: For the record, the only people making cuts are the Government, and I am glad that I managed to get the right hon. Gentleman's head up so I could say that. I would like to say that he is like an old pike, but in fact he is like a rather fat trout, hiding in the weeds. It seems that I have to cast a particularly delectable fly over his nose before I can get him up, but I am glad I have done so. There are substantial cuts, and 14 separate strands of work are under way in the MOD to secure £1.5 billion in savings. That will do great harm to capabilities and to people's capacity to do their duty.
  Mr. Keetch rose—
  Mr. Blunt: While we are on the subject of money, it might be as well for the House to remember that the Government imposed a cut of £500 million a year in the defence budget in their first comprehensive spending review—cumulatively, that will now be £3 billion—and that the so-called increase in the subsequent defence review will be £2.5 billion at the end of that period, so the Government have been responsible for a net cut in defence expenditure on that which they inherited.
  Mr. Soames: Precisely. I suggest that the Secretary of State pay attention to what my hon. Friend says. He is a well-informed member of the Select Committee, and is absolutely right. Another issue that we must address is that of acquiring the technology necessary for the network-enabled capability. The baseline for Labours defence policy was the 1998 strategic defence review, which, as we all know, was never properly funded. Many of the funding problems that face defence today are a direct consequence of Labour's failure in that regard, as my hon. Friend pointed out.
  The Government have asked our armed forces to carry out more and more commitments, without adequate resources. At times, it has been extremely difficult for Parliament to discover the details that relate to the defence budget, as the Government have gone in for their usual practice of re-announcing old money. For the second year in succession, the Comptroller and Auditor General has refused to sign off the MOD's resources and accounts budget.
  When the Secretary of State published the defence White Paper in December last year, there were said to be no resource implications. Since then, we have discovered that the MOD is undertaking 14 work strands to identify capabilities to reduce or cut, which will provide savings of £1.5 billion. I understand that those cuts will be announced in the spring. The very underhand way in
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  which the Secretary of State is going around making those cuts is to be deplored, and we look forward to an opportunity becoming available for him to clarify and give us transparency about where he is looking and what the effects will be on the capabilities of the armed forces.
  Against the background of that failure adequately to fund defence while at the same time increasing commitments, the Conservative Party must plan for the future. We believe that our front-line armed forces must be, and will be, a fundamental priority and that they must have sufficient resources adequately to fulfil their duties and extensive commitments. When we announce our detailed spending plans later in the year, we will make clear how we intend to shift money to the front line to maintain and enhance our defence capabilities.
  Of course the consequences of more deployments and fewer resources are obvious in the serious deficiencies that have emerged during and after the completion of Operation Telic. The NAO and Select Committee reports have rightly highlighted the brilliant achievements of our troops and the great success that they achieved. However, both reports were also highly critical of equipment shortages that could have had disastrous consequences for the 46,000 British servicemen and women who were deployed.
  In the defence debate last year, the Secretary of State said:
  "I want to reassure the House and the country that British personnel deployed on operations will be properly equipped by the Ministry of Defence, and fully capable of fulfilling the tasks that may be required of them. They will be properly equipped to deal with the environmental conditions that they face. The Ministry of Defence has long had contracts in place to ensure that sufficient stocks of desert clothing and boots are available quickly."
  He went on:
  "The protection of our troops is an absolute priority. Contrary to press speculation, our ability to protect and operate in a nuclear, biological or chemical environment is second to none. Our training and equipment mean that we are prepared to meet this threat if necessary, and make a proportionately serious response should anyone use such weapons against us.—[Official Report, 22 January 2003; Vol. 398, c. 336—7.]
  That was far from the reality on the ground. The Defence Committee report has found that those assurances were fundamentally unreliable and wholly inaccurate.
  Mr. Keetch rose—
  Mr. Soames: Commanders were unaware of where equipment was stored; plates for enhanced ceramic body armour disappeared and never got to the right units; and vital biological and chemical equipment was deemed unserviceable. Not enough desert clothing and equipment was available on time, and many people did not even receive their desert combats until the war was over. There was not enough ammunition, nor were there enough chemical protection suits. The Secretary of State shakes his head, but these are very serious matters. As the Committee report states:
  "Given the potential threat posed by Iraqi armed forces, sufficient chemical warfare detection and protection were particularly important for this operation."
  I again urge the Secretary of State to reread the MOD account of the brilliant assault on the al-Faw peninsula by 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines. It states that

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  "as final preparations were made on 20 March in the tactical assembly area to launch the assault, there had been attacks by Iraqi missiles. The Brigade fully expected to be subjected to chemical attack and the helicopters to be engaged by air defence artillery."
  The brigade was not subjected to a chemical attack. The report suggests:
  "It was fortuitous that service personnel did not suffer as a consequence, but had the Iraqis used chemical weapons systematically, as employed in the Iran-Iraq war the operational consequences would have been severe…the lack of armoured vehicle filters seems to us to be a matter of the utmost seriousness".
  For the information of the House, let me just say that the 7th Armoured Bridge fought through Iraq in a war allegedly to remove the threat of chemical and biological weapons without having on any one of its tanks the chemical weapons filters that were required. They did not arrive until after the war was over. That is a fundamental and deeply serious failing. It is not acceptable.
  In the Iraq campaign—I want the Secretary of State to listen to this—the Government came very close to breaking the bond of trust that they have with their soldiers. He should not underestimate the effect of those shortages on the morale of the soldiers. This must not happen again, and the Government stand guilty as charged of very grave deficiencies that should have been overcome long ago. For an Army that has deployed four times in five years not to have the ability effectively and efficiently to deliver the logistics supply chain to its troops in the front line is frankly unforgivable.
  I apologise for having spoken for so long, but I wish to say something about NATO. The White Paper rightly states:
  "The UK recognises the pre-eminence of NATO".
  We all agree with that, and I heard what the Secretary of State said. However, the security and stability of Europe and the maintenance of the transatlantic relationship are fundamental to our defence. The most logical way of responding to the 21st century threat would be through NATO as the primary military organisation. However, NATO's primacy has now been somewhat compromised. Since the St. Malo declaration, European government's have spent scarce defence funds and considerable political effort on developing the structures of the European security and defence policy while operational capabilities—which the British public are repeatedly told will be improved by European Union defence—have continued to decline inexorably. That has led to our having grave reservations about Europe's plans to undertake a new defence initiative that involves duplicating the planning and command structures of NATO.
  We do not need and we cannot afford to duplicate NATO's structure. There is nothing that Europe wants to do that cannot be done by using NATO's command and planning structures. The Conservative party supports greater co-operation between European countries on defence, but it should take place within the framework of NATO. Europe should not seek to create a defence structure as an alternative to NATO or as a counterweight to the United States.
  The Secretary of State needs to be aware that the Government are in grave danger of undermining the resilience, the morale and the good will of our armed
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  forces. These are the three cornerstones of all military success. The Government need to nurture them, and to nurture them with great care and attention through some very difficult times ahead.
  Several hon. Members rose—
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has imposed a 15-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.
  3.6 pm
  Rachel Squire: When I first heard that a defence White Paper was to be published, my immediate reaction was to ask why. What was the purpose? After all, we had the comprehensive strategic defence review five years ago, and the SDR new chapter in 2002. The issues that the White Paper deals with, such as network-enabled capability and security challenges, have been subject to widespread debate in defence circles for some time. Why did we need another paper? Was it, as the media speculated and Opposition Members said, to give a policy framework to a hidden agenda for drastic cuts in defence spending?
  I was certainly reassured by the Chancellor's Budget statement last week. He said:
  In the last spending review, we allocated the largest spending increase in 20 years to defence, and I can tell the House that I propose real terms increases in defence spending in the coming round.—[Official Report, 17 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 333.]
  That statement provides a stark contrast to the Conservatives' plans to freeze and—whether they like to admit it or not—to cut defence spending in real terms by £1.5 billion from 2005–06 to 2007–08. Cuts were carried out during their 18 years in government and, although they can talk about the cold war and the need to meet new requirements and demands on our forces, I, as the Member of Parliament for Dunfermline, West, will never forget the way in which they blatantly wasted more than —300 million of public money when they took submarine refitting from Rosyth dockyard and awarded it to Devonport for what it seems clear were merely political, and not defence and security, interests.
  On defence spending, I am also reassured by the views expressed by the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Walker. In his lecture to the Royal United Services Institute in 2003, he made it clear that he welcomed the defence White Paper and considered that it was a long time coming. Yesterday, he said that, although he and his fellow Chiefs of Staff had not seen the details of future defence spending, they were enthusiastic about it. Many of us hope that we, too, will be enthusiastic when the details are revealed. My commitment, and that of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members, is to ensure that implementation of the White Paper does not in any way diminish the high standards and professionalism of the United Kingdom's armed forces, but maintains and builds on their considerable and internationally renowned achievements. I join others in paying tribute to our armed forces and their families.
  The defence White Paper raises issues that we could debate for at least a week, but in the time available I will raise just three, possibly four. The first is the importance of relevant training and adequate time off for it. There is the training required not only by individuals but by

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  companies and battalions. There is the training required to deliver jointery—effective operations by all three services. There is the training needed to operate effectively in multilateral alliances. There is the training demanded by network-enabled capabilities and the trend towards more frequent, small to medium-scale operations. Then there is the training needed for both war fighting and peacekeeping.
  When commitments are high, as they currently are, a balancing act is often required to ensure that people are available for relevant training, and even more so when it involves overseas training, such as exercise Saif Sareea, which everyone agrees was essential, in terms of the lessons learned and experience gained, for the success of our troops in Operation Telic. I want an assurance from the Minister that the White Paper will not seek to reduce either training or recruitment. My impression is that we need to maintain our current force numbers and indeed to reach our recruitment targets if we are to enable time to be available for proper training, as well as for the home and family, in between all the demands of operational commitments.
  I join in the sympathies that have been expressed to the family of Lord Vivian. I read his excellent contribution to the other place's defence debate on the White Paper in January, when he made the important point that 72 per cent. of the MOD's 350 planned exercises in a year were cancelled because of increased operational activity. I express my sympathy to his family. I hope that that demonstrates that his influence and knowledge will certainly long be remembered in this place.
  It concerns me that I have heard that recruitment, particularly the surge in interest from the general public in the past 12 months, has been held back because of the demand and extra cost of training. I hope to hear the Minister say, if that is the case, that it is being effectively tackled.
  I emphasise the importance of core training, of acquiring basic skills, of developing individual service identities, and of building loyalty and commitment to a band of brothers, to a regiment and to a service. They are a vital part of the standards and professionalism of our armed forces. However good the technology, it needs a strong team to make it work and to make it effective. Only a strong team can overcome the unforeseen and unpredictable nature of war fighting and peacekeeping.
  That leads me to the second issue: network-enabled capabilities and the full range of training needed for them. The White Paper sees them as crucial to the rapid delivery of military effect, yet I raise some notes of caution which I have picked up, particularly from an article in the RUSI Journal by General John McColl, which is linked to my concern that technology cannot be a substitute for people and their skills and training. He points out that the battlefield is already an information-rich environment where poor connectivity and bad management of information can confuse rather than assist the commander. Indeed, I, and I think other members of the Defence Committee, have heard some stories in respect of operations in Afghanistan involving our forces and US forces. General McColl says in respect of information:
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  knowing what is important and what is not, what is urgent and what is not, is essentially a human skill, unlikely to diminish in its importance, irrespective of the quality and quantity of information that NEC will deliver.
  I do not think that any of us wants the development of human skills to take second place to technology. I have a concern that at times our major allies, the US forces, tend towards over-reliance on technology, perhaps neglecting the basic skills that are such a core part of armed forces.
  In the time available, I will not carry on with what I was going to say on network-enabled capabilities, but will mention the third issue, which is my concern about what the defence White Paper says on naval and maritime capability and equipment. The House would be surprised if I did not mention Rosyth dockyard in my constituency at some point in a defence debate. Therefore, I declare a particular interest, which has been reinforced by taking part in the armed forces parliamentary scheme with the senior service, as it likes to be referred to.
  I am concerned by the blunt statement in the White Paper that reductions in the numbers of our naval fleet will be necessary. The future of the 1,800 people employed at Rosyth dockyard depends on work available from the naval fleet, particularly the future aircraft carrier. They have demonstrated time and again their ability to take on changes and challenges and to deliver on cost and on time.
  I cannot resist responding to the remark by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) earlier about looking to take some defence manufacturing work away from the UK. I have always argued and will continue to argue that all our royal naval ships and submarines should be built, refitted and repaired in the UK and nowhere else.
  Tribute is not always paid, as it should be, to the part that the Royal Navy plays. That was clearly demonstrated in Operation Telic. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service provided essential fuel, supplies, equipment and food. The navy provided support and transported our troops to shore. It cleared mines from the waters and channels around Um Qasr, so that not only troops and equipment but humanitarian food and relief could be provided. Whatever the changes in our security environment, an island nation needs a strong navy to deal with the terrorist threats that we face to our ports and harbours, and a strong navy that can go anywhere in the world to provide command and control, and to supply the troops who are required.
  I do not have time to talk about NATO and the European Union, but I am sure that they will be debated another day. Overall, I welcome the White Paper and the opportunity that it provides to discuss many issues that are key to our future defence and security. I pay tribute to the progress that has been made so far, but there is a long way to go, and I hope that we shall have many more opportunities to debate key aspects of the White Paper. It contains many right words, but it is short on detail and on the action to come, so we should have the chance to discuss them in coming months.
  Our armed forces have led the way in responding to the changes and challenges brought by the end of the cold war, the threats posed by international terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

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  Let us ensure that the White Paper and its implementation maintain their high standards and reward the armed forces and all who play a part in the defence and security of our country by setting an agenda that they and, in turn, the rest of the world are proud to follow.
  3.21 pm
  Mr. Paul Keetch: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire), who speaks on defence matters, especially naval issues, with such skill. I shall write to her about my visit to Rosyth in a few weeks, to which I look forward eagerly. Like her, I pay tribute to the armed forces parliamentary scheme, in which I, too, participated with the senior service, albeit in a different year from her. I was with the hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. Pollard), who was present in the Chamber until recently. The scheme is of great benefit to many people.
  I join the hon. Lady and the Secretary of State in paying tribute to the late Brigadier Lord Vivian, whom I met when I first entered Parliament. The then Secretary of State was keen to encourage new Back Benchers with defence interests to get involved, and I accompanied Lord Vivian on several trips with the Lords defence study group. I remember the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith) and me accompanying Lord Vivian to see warships in a base in the western isles. Lord Vivian was always courteous and generous in sharing his knowledge with members of other parties. He will be greatly missed.
  I associate myself with the Secretary of State's comments about the terrible events in Madrid. For all of us, they have reinforced the recognition that the main threat to the United Kingdom is now from international terrorism. We must commit ourselves to the campaign against that. On that issue, the Liberal Democrats concur 100 per cent. with the Government.
  I see the Under-Secretary of State for Defence on the Treasury Bench. Yesterday, he and I debated the reserve forces. It seems that defence debates are like London buses: there is none for ages, then two come along at once. The Government have been good, however, in scheduling regular defence debates, and I commend them on that. I also commend the White Paper, which contains much with which we agree.
  Britain enjoys a unique position in being able to project power to enhance the security of the United Kingdom and the world in troubled areas. We should guard that ability at all costs. I pay tribute to British forces—and their families—who are undertaking brave work in reconstruction in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo. In recent weeks, we have seen the real threat that our soldiers face in Kosovo.
  I pay special tribute to the forces in Afghanistan. We hear little of what they are doing—indeed, a Territorial Army soldier in my constituency who returned from Afghanistan a couple of months ago told me that the forces there sometimes feel like a forgotten army. We should record our thanks for their service in the continued hunt for bin Laden and other terrorists. Such work is crucial to our defence. The threat from terrorism has never been far from our minds in recent days, and
  1106
  the armed forces have a significant role to play in tackling that threat. In Afghanistan, where, it is reported, the Taliban and al-Qaeda have enjoyed a resurgence this year, it is important to maintain our commitment.
  The international security assistance force now has a much wider mandate in that country, but lacks sufficient troops to stabilise it. Will the Minister tell us whether there is a timetable for the deployment of more UK forces as part of the NATO forces in Afghanistan; and will he give a commitment that those forces will be found if they are required? The Liberal Democrats have an underlying commitment to NATO, and we are grateful for its work in the difficult environment of Afghanistan.
  Mr. Dalyell: What number of troops would be sufficient? We are talking about the north-west frontier, whose history suggests that sufficient troops means tens of thousands.
  Mr. Keetch: The Father of the House is absolutely right. I was suggesting not that such troops be drawn solely from British forces, but that we play our part as part of NATO. I suspect that during the Iraq crisis, he and I were both concerned about the unfinished business of Afghanistan. We know from our own history how difficult that country is to deal with, and I believe—I suspect that he and others do, too—that sorting out Afghanistan ought to be our No. 1 priority. That concern formed part of the arguments that the Liberal Democrats advanced 12 months ago.
  Mr. Dai Havard: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, although Afghanistan is a priority, it is part of a picture in which the middle east is also a priority? That picture runs from poppy growing in Afghanistan through to Turkey and Kosovo, where the shipments are split up and sent into the drug distribution networks. That is why the matter is becoming a strategic issue, rather than simply a frictional issue.
  Mr. Keetch: The hon. Gentleman is right. Events in Afghanistan—poppy growing and terrorism—have a far more profound impact on the security of the United Kingdom and our constituents than events in other countries in the region with which the Government chose to deal.
  Our forces in Iraq continue to perform sterling work. Let me make one thing absolutely clear: although my party and I voted against the war 12 months ago, we do not believe that it would be right now to withdraw British troops unilaterally from Iraq. Yes, we want greater United Nation involvement and greater internationalisation of forces in Iraq, but as the occupying power, we have a responsibility to support the people of Iraq, and pulling our troops out now would be catastrophic.
  However, I wish to raise a delicate issue relating to our forces in Iraq. One or two complaints have caused us concern, in particular, those regarding the death of Baha Musa and the alleged abuse of others in UK custody in Iraq. The Government have refused to hold an independent public inquiry into the matter, but holding some sort of inquiry might help to isolate the

  1107
  issue and reassure the Iraqis. In the face of continued Ministry of Defence intransigence, perhaps the Minister will at least undertake to make public the findings of any inquiry.
  The practice of paying the families of those who suffer death or injury as a result of UK actions is also problematic. Upon receipt of such compensation, families sign a declaration waiving their right to make any future claim relating to the incident. There is a risk that that will not help to enhance the UK's image abroad. If the families have a case, perhaps that case should be heard in a court of law, and if further compensation is due, it should be paid. The MOD must treat the citizens of Iraq as we would treat those of the United Kingdom.
  Hugh Robertson: If I understand the hon. Gentleman's position, it is that he opposed the war in the vote that was held in this House a year or so ago, but that he now supports the work that our forces are doing in Iraq. Does he or does he not believe that Iraq is a better place for the invasion?
  Mr. Keetch: Iraqis are certainly better placed after the removal of Saddam Hussein. My party and I never said that we would rule out military action in all circumstances, but we believed that it was inappropriate to take military action before the UN process was complete. We also made it clear that if troops were deployed to the Gulf we would support our forces in the field. The hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) criticised the kit given to British troops, but before the conflict it was the Liberal Democrats who raised the issue of kit for our servicemen. We, not Conservative Front Benchers, asked important questions about whether boots and equipment were suitable. At the time, it seemed that the Conservatives had signed up to military action long before the Government. They blindly supported President Bush in his endeavours regardless of the effect on our armed forces.
  Hugh Robertson: The hon. Gentleman has still not answered the critical question—is Iraq a better place now than it was 18 months ago, yes or no?
  Mr. Keetch: Of course, Iraq is a better place now that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power, but Liberal Democrat Members, like Conservative Members, Labour Members, nationalists and others who voted against the war never suggested that we supported his murderous regime. Is that what the hon. Gentleman is implying?
  Hugh Robertson indicated dissent.
  Mr. Keetch: I am glad that is not.
  Clare Short: If one looks carefully at the surveys of opinion in Iraq, one finds that the overwhelming majority of people are glad that Saddam Hussein is gone, but terribly worried about the disorder and chaos that, they say, make their life worse in many ways. A properly planned and organised action through the UN might have made Iraq a very much better place than it is now.
  Mr. Keetch: The right hon. Lady is right. I remember the debates that she had with my hon. Friend the
  1108
  Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge), then a Front-Bench colleague of mine, about planning for the aftermath of the war. Many of us would have liked a full-scale independent inquiry into the war, including the question of whether we were preparing correctly for the aftermath. I certainly remember saying in debates in the House that winning a war would be easy but winning the peace would be much more difficult.
  Mr. Gerald Howarth: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Keetch: I seem to recall that when the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex was speaking I inquired six times whether he would give way. He was not courteous enough to do so, but I shall of course be courteous enough to give way to his Front-Bench colleague.
  Mr. Howarth: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his courtesy.
  Mr. Soames: And charm.
  Mr. Howarth: Indeed.
  May I point out to the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Keetch) that Conservative Members repeatedly asked the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), then Secretary of State for International Development, to come to the House and tell us the plan for post-conflict reconstruction in Iraq? The Government's signal failure to share those plans with the House and the country had chaotic consequences after the war.
  Mr. Keetch: In the run-up to the war, history records, it was the Liberal Democrats arid very brave Members from other parties who asked those questions. The Conservatives appeared to support the endeavours of President Bush, whatever he wanted to do, and it was the Liberal Democrats, some brave Labour Back Benchers, a number of important Conservatives, and Members from other parties who provided the real opposition.
  Clare Short rose—
  Mr. Keetch: I shall accept one final intervention.
  Clare Short: There was a rather strange procedure, and I shall come to those matters if I catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. For the record, I came to the House repeatedly and there was a Select Committee inquiry, so there were full preparations. A lie is being told now that the chaos in Iraq is all because I thought that we were rushing to war too rapidly. That is such a ridiculous proposition that it shames the mental capacities of anyone who seeks to make it.
  Mr. Keetch: The right hon. Lady is more than capable of defending herself. On her actions, all that I would say is that she resigned from the Government after the war had begun. In fairness, many of us believe that her position would be strengthened if she had followed the example of the right hon. Member for Livingston

  1109
  (Mr. Cook), who resigned before the war. Nevertheless, she did an honourable thing, and history will record that fact.
  Turning to the defence budget, I congratulate the Defence Secretary on the assurances that he has received from the Chancellor. I hope that the "real-terms increases" mentioned by the Chancellor are significant and not simply academic, and that any additional funds for operations in Iraq will come out of separate Treasury funds. Caveats attach to the Chancellor's commitments. How much of the cost of British forces' continuing commitments in Iraq will be funded by the MOD budget, and what extra resources will the Treasury make available? Estimates abound, some of them quite wild, about the cost of operations in Iraq, so I would be grateful if the Minister of State could quell the rumours and confirm the monthly cost of keeping forces on deployment in Iraq. If there are increased costs, will they be met from a separate Treasury fund or the existing MOD budget?
  The procurement budget is still over-committed, and adjustments need to be made at some stage. It would be preferable if the Secretary of State could make them sooner rather than later. Liberal Democrats believe that there are potential savings in the defence budget in the area of procurement. For example, speculation continues that the third tranche of Eurofighter Typhoon is already dead in the water and that the Government are simply waiting for the right time to cancel. Can the Minister give a commitment to the third tranche of Eurofighter?
  Some indiscriminate cost savings are proposed by the Conservatives. The shadow Defence Secretary says that there will be no cuts, but a two-year freeze in real terms is effectively a cut. In his speech, he gave commitments—I listed them—on infantry numbers, training, deployment and procurement. He will not be able to do that with a two-year effective freeze on defence spending. We have questioned the rather ridiculous approach to defence spending that seems to be the sole approach of the Conservative party.
  We understand that tough choices need to be made. The third tranche of the Eurofighter programme should be reviewed. That alone could amount to a one-off saving of several billion pounds.
  Mr. A. J. Beith: May I suggest another saving? The MOD should not to seek to recreate the facilities of RAF Bulmer at another base, which would require substantial capital to replace capital that has recently been invested there. I have made the point in detail to the Minister.[Interruption.]
  Mr. Keetch: I hear the Minister for the Armed Forces saying that that is being dealt with. I look forward to visiting Bulmer with my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) in a few weeks. I know that it is an important base that the Royal Air Force and other forces want to keep, and I know my right hon. Friends commitment to that part of his constituency.
  Mr. Jack: When the hon. Gentleman comments on the third tranche—the 155 Eurofighters that his party
  1110
  seems to advocate cutting—will he put on the record the work share implications and the costs to the United Kingdom industrial base if that policy were pursued?
  Mr. Keetch: We have asked detailed questions of the Government, some of which have not been answered. We want to know what the implications would be. Yes, we want to review the third tranche. That is a specific commitment from the Liberal Democrats. We would put some of the money that would be saved back into the defence budget to increase basic kit for our forces. That is in marked contrast to the swingeing cuts proposed by the Tories, who provide no details of the programmes that they would consider cutting and make bland commitments to our overall force plan.
  The Secretary of State said in his speech to the Royal United Services Institute last year that
  "measuring the capability of our Armed Forces by the number of units or platforms in their possession will no longer be significant."
  We understand that. We need to consider it in terms of the MOD budget. It is not a question of how much is spent, but how well it is spent. United States defence spending continues to soar far above that of the rest of the world. No matter what the Government's spending review eventually allocates to the MOD, the UK budget will always be a fraction of that of the US.
  Clearly, however, much of the MOD's planning revolves around the UK working in conjunction with the US. The White Paper stated:
  "The most demanding expeditionary operations, involving intervention against state adversaries, can only plausibly be conducted if US forces are engaged."
  It is difficult to argue with that analysis—indeed, we support it, but it could have an immense impact on our armed forces. We cannot match US defence spending, so we cannot keep pace with the US in defence developments. At the same time, we are seen as the partner of choice in the Pentagon, and the MOD's planning is clearly based on that assumption.
  The key to remaining fully interoperable, to remaining the partner of choice and to remaining able to link to US forces is what the Secretary of State calls network-enabled capability, or NEC. There is no doubt that NEC is a very important development in military planning and operations. The pre-eminence that it receives in the new chapter of the SDR and in the White Paper shows that it is at the forefront of MOD thinking. But there is also no doubt that it is expensive and that if we are to keep pace with the US, it will take an ever-increasing slice of the defence budget.
  I should like a much clearer indication than the Government have so far given of the limits of that approach and how it will affect our ability to contribute to peacekeeping, stabilisation operations and so on. Our forces are overstretched. We know that from the Defence Medical Services and others. There is a balance to be struck between money going into NEC and money going into the basics of our infantry units. We believe that the correct balance may not have been achieved. As regards our reserve forces, we know from the debate yesterday and from the comments of General Walker and General Jackson that they are concerned about overstretch evolving.

  1111
  The series of reports from the National Audit Office, the Ministry of Defence and, most recently, the Defence Committee, shows that a number of areas—for example, asset tracking—have improved as a result of operations in Iraq, and the Government must make a commitment on those areas and not blindly follow the US into ever-increasing technological warfare. Whatever the technology, one cannot keep the peace on the streets of Pristina or rebuild Iraq from satellites, so one must have troops on the ground.
  The White Paper discusses medium-weight troops that are well armoured but rapidly deployable, yet it does not dispute the continued need for some light and some heavy forces. We believe that tanks, fighter aircraft and several parts of the fleet are less important than they used to be, and that point is argued in the White Paper. However, the White Paper does not contain firm proposals for reshaping our armed forces, which is a recipe for instability and anxiety—it is an interesting pointer to the direction in which the armed forces may be heading, but it hardly charts their course. We believe that that deficiency should be addressed sooner rather than later in a spirit of consultation and consensus, and if the Government give us that, we will certainly participate in the process.
  3.41 pm
  Mike Gapes: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy—That's another fine mess you've got me into—came to mind when I listened to the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames). I know that the hon. Gentleman looks more like Oliver Hardy than Stan Laurel, but it is his friend Oliver who has got him into the right mess of trying to justify the Conservative Front-Bench view. The Conservative policy of cutting or freezing the armed forces budget while making massive commitments is untenable.
  Given what we had to do in Iraq, I wondered what policy the Liberal Democrats would have adopted if Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon had been their leader during last year's conflict. Whatever my views of Paddy Ashdown, I recognise that he adopts consistent views and would not flip-flop from one day to the next to try to fit in with perceived public opinion in either this country or Iraq.
  The Defence Committee, of which I am a member, was in Bosnia and Kosovo one month ago. We recently published an important report it has already been quoted—on the lessons of Iraq, and it made many recommendations, which I do not have time to refer to today. Some of those recommendations are extremely important, particularly those that point out that, given the armed forces' other operational requirements, Operation Telic placed demands on the armed forces that were close to the maximum that they could sustain. Whatever other lessons are learned—this point was confirmed by remarks made by the chiefs of staff in yesterdays Defence Committee hearing—this country's international commitments to NATO and the UN, our EU obligations, Operation Fresco during the firefighters dispute and the foot-and-mouth crisis placed enormous demands on our armed forces. We have an ongoing commitment in Northern Ireland, which unfortunately cannot be reduced significantly because of the current situation. On top of the deteriorating situation in
  1112
  Kosovo over the past week, difficulties may also arise in parts of the world that we are not even thinking about at the moment.
  I want to highlight the issue of Kosovo and the Balkans. I was quite impressed by what has been achieved in Bosnia. Paddy Ashdown is doing an excellent job, and, although the agreement was not ideal, a framework was laid down in the 1995 Dayton accords, so there is a basis for progress. Discussions are moving towards establishing a joint defence ministry and forming an association with NATO's partnership for peace. That is all to the good. It means that in its political institutions Bosnia can begin to build on the already established levels of security and normality, whereby people from different religions and ethnic groups can walk around without being stoned or kidnapped, instead of having to be bussed under Army protection.
  Sadly, one cannot say that about the situation in Kosovo, which has been frozen since 1999: almost no progress has been made in any of the major areas. Those who supported the 1999 bombing of Serbia without a UN resolution, believing that it would liberate the country and create a multi-ethnic, harmonious society, have to face the fact that that has not happened. Kosovo is a mafia society, where there is 60 to 70 per cent. unemployment and ongoing ethnic cleansing. The continual attacks on UN personnel have only recently been highlighted in the media again because of the appalling atrocities and outrages that were carried out last weekend. In the past few days, a church built in 1352 was burned to the ground, thousands of people were driven out of their homes, and between 28 and 31 people were killed. In the past two days, two UN police were killed. It is a society where criminality is dominant. My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard) referred to the smuggling of drugs through the Balkans.
  If we do not get Kosovo right, we will have a running sore at the heart of Europe. Europe and the European Union must take the greater responsibility, but we must handle the situation very carefully. It is easy for the EU to say, There can be no partition. On the other hand, we cannot suggest that we should allow an independent Kosovo on the basis of its current structures and its domination by one group—the largest group, comprising more than 90 per cent. of the population. Given the continuing policy of ethnic cleansing, we must take into account the plight of the minorities. There are Albanian minorities in the Presevo valley in Serbia; there is a substantial Albanian minority in Macedonia; and a right-wing, nationalist coalition Government have been elected in Serbia. There are significant political problems of instability. In thinking of a way forward, we must not foreclose any options, but be very sensitive to what might be required.
  Mrs. Mahon: I agree with everything that my hon. Friend has said, but does he think that it would have been better had NATO and UNMIK bitten the bullet and arrested people such as Agim Ceku—a wanted war criminal—and Hashim Thaci, who are now running Kosovo? Good people in Kosovo such as Dr. Rugova

  1113
  and Veton Surroi are being marginalised while these well known criminals and war criminals, who are involved in organised crime, are in charge.
  Mike Gapes: I do not wish to comment on particular individuals who should be arrested. However, it is clear that there is an active organised crime network that is linked to political godfathers and overseas funding from expatriate communities, and that there have been ongoing operations. When we visited, we were told, Being in the Kosovo police service is a tough business for an honest cop. That suggests that there are problems, and we need to be honest about them.
  On NATO's future involvement, it is absolutely essential that we do not weaken security in Kosovo. Fortunately, we, the French and the Germans sent extra forces in very quickly, which I hope will stabilise the situation so that we can make progress, but there are worries. Owing to the good progress that has been made in Bosnia, the military presence there has been reduced, and we are planning to move from the NATO stabilisation force, SFOR, to a European Union force, EUFOR, by the end of the year. That force in Bosnia is the reserve force for intervention in Kosovo, should events go badly there. I would like assurances from the Government that the transition to EUFOR—I do not oppose it—will be robust, that the national caveats with some of our EU partners will be removed so that the force can work effectively, not just on the military side but on the paramilitary and policing sides, and that intelligence work can continue. That would be good, but I do not want to end up weakening our capability to reinforce what could be a much more serious situation in Kosovo, because we have run down or changed the mandate in Bosnia.
  Another question is how we deal with the politics and dynamics for the future. Last December, the international bodies that oversee Kosovo agreed a document called Standards for Kosovo, which was published and presented on 10 December. It sets out as an aspiration:
  "A Kosovo where all—regardless of ethnic background, race or religion—are free to live, work and travel without fear, hostility or danger and where there is tolerance, justice and peace for everyone."
  In the space of one and a half years from the date of that document, Kosovo is meant to become such a society, and have independent status. It is supposed to have:
  "Functioning Democratic Institutions… Rule of Law… Freedom of Movement…Sustainable Returns and the Rights of Communities and their members."
  There should be an economy where:
  "Basic economic legislation is in place and enforced, relevant Government institutions and services are functioning, the budget process is functioning and meeting all legal requirements,"
  and so on. Property rights should be resolved, there should be political dialogue and the Kosovo protection corps should be functioning in full compliance with the rule of law.
  The Albanian-Kosovan community believes that it can sign up to that document, and that by the middle of 2005 Kosovo will become an independent state, within its existing borders. Is it realistic to pretend that all those
  1114
  things can happen in a society where there is no industry, where some of the institutions barely function, which has a Serb area in Mitrovica in the north that operates a parallel Administration—separately from the central Administration—and whose Parliament has banners, posters and symbols of one community only, not of all the communities in the state? We have underestimated the problems. We need to be robust about pushing forward the standards agenda, but we must be realistic. We will not secure investment to deal with unemployment in Kosovo until the legal basis is established. What pressures, then, does that put on our military and on our long-term commitment as a whole, through NATO and the EU?
  Mr. Dalyell: As a man who raised an urgent question on this subject, may I say that my hon. Friend is making a speech of such importance that I hope that it is read by the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister? Does he agree that something must be done about industry, particularly the repair of the nickel factory, which will be the engine of any economy that Kosovo might hope for?
  Mike Gapes: I saw that nickel factory from afar—in fact, I smelled it from afar. Standing at the top of the monument in Kosovo Polje—the Field of Blackbirds—and looking across, it was all that was visible on the horizon. The temperature was minus 16° and the smoke was lingering in the distance. On top of everything else, there is serious pollution; it is a very polluted society.[Interruption.] Other members of the Select Committee who are present are laughing, because they remember that scene as well.
  In the time remaining, I want to suggest a possible way forward politically and administratively. I was involved in the talks in Northern Ireland in 1997 and 1998, as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, when he was Minister of State. One factor that made those talks successful was the involvement of the British and the Irish Government's, together with close support from the United States in the form of Senator George Mitchell, and financial and political support from the European Union.
  We need to look again at Kosovo, and to create a structure that will bring together the Albanian and Serbian Government's and enable discussion, and that will involve the European Union, NATO, the United States and the United Nations. We need to put everything on the table, and to try to find a way through without taking entrenched positions on status, cantons or partitions. The process needs to be intensive and we need to begin it now. If we do not, we will not succeed in eliminating this running sore, which constitutes a threat to the stability of the entire Balkans region and potentially, therefore, to western Europe.
  It is in our interests to take such action because we want a Europe that is harmonious. We do not want ethnic or religious conflict on this continent; we do not want Orthodox Christians pitted against Muslims; we do not want ethnic cleansing or any of the developments that have tragically occurred in the past week. We have

  1115
  got to act quickly and we need engagement. We have spent $8 billion in Kosovo since 1999, but one wonders where it has gone.
  Clare Short: I agree with my hon. Friend that this running sore must be dealt with and that we need to bring everyone together, but there is another dimension. One reason why the economy is not moving is the lack of final status. The World Bank cannot engage and no one will invest, which means that the economy is bad. We need to secure final status to get the economy moving, and to make the progress that my hon. Friend is calling for.
  Mike Gapes: I made that point earlier. I accept that until final status is achieved it is almost impossible to invest, but we cannot achieve that status without securing assurances about human rights and resolving the other issues. We are talking about a regional problem that requires a regional solution. The Albanian and Serbian government's must be partners in a process that must also involve Macedonia and the other countries in the region. That process must be backed up by European Union resources and a security guarantee from NATO, and be under the overall umbrella of the United Nations. Even then we might not succeed, as we saw in Northern Ireland, but we have to try.
  3.59 pm
  Mr. Crispin Blunt: I begin by drawing the House's attention to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests. It is a particular pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes), who devoted much of his speech to Kosovo. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short) made it clear in her repeated interventions that what is needed is final political status. It would have been a good idea to understand what that final political status was going to be before committing our armed forces in 1999. That lack of knowledge is precisely why we are in our current wretched position, which I, among others, predicted. We have ended up fighting the Albanians—the very people whom we went in to help in the first place.
  The wretched truth of our involvement in Kosovo is that we now have to deal with criminal gangs—the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) mentioned them—who are responsible for the criminal behaviour taking place in that country. NATO and the UK—particularly our Prime Minister, who had a personal strategy—were manipulated by the Kosovo Liberation Army, which began a campaign of terror against the Serbian authorities in Kosovo. In turn, they reacted with all the brilliant strategic skill that might be expected of President Milosevic, triggering the intervention in his country. We should have been much clearer about what exactly we were intervening for, and what the political status would be at the end of the intervention. We still have to sort that out.
  I welcome the fact that the President of Serbia is now talking seriously about partition. It is difficult to see any other solution in Kosovo than to accept the reality of the ethnic cleansing there. There are now very few Serbian schoolchildren in Kosovo; people with families have effectively disappeared from the country and gone to
  1116
  Serbia. We have to accept the reality of that position, as we accepted the reality in Bosnia with the de facto acceptance of two political authorities there.
  I wish to deal briefly with the canard of the defence budget. Having been special adviser to the then Secretary of State for Defence between 1993 and 1995—not the easiest time for the defence budget—it is a little rich to hear the comments of Labour and Liberal Democrat Members today. Where were they in the days when the defence budget was under pressure? The Labour party was committed to a policy of a 30 per cent. cut to bring us down to average of EU member states, and the Liberal party trumped even that with a demand for a 50 per cent. cut.
  I listen to the reinvention of history in this afternoon's debate with the same interest as I listen to the Chairman of the Defence Committee, who likes to present the Labour party as riding to the country's rescue in the 1930s in support of Mr. Churchill. I have to point out that, until 1935, the party was led by Mr. Lansbury, who wanted to disarm the UK in its entirety.
  My confidence is the same as that expressed by Lord King in yesterday's defence debate in the other place. He said that whenever he had to go to a Conservative Chancellor or Chief Secretary to the Treasury to ask for money, he was satisfied that no Conservative Government would ever be found wanting in providing the defence resources that were required. At the same time, Conservative government's have a proper responsibility to ensure that the fiscal affairs of the country are kept in good order. We are not a party wedded to public expenditure and taxation: we want to spend the public's money wisely. I believe that that is exactly what we did in our last period of office, which also explains why the present Government enjoyed such a magnificent golden economic inheritance. The Chancellor's success has come from his first Budget of 1997, when he continued the public expenditure plans that he inherited.
  We should also remember that the strategic defence review of 1998 was accompanied by a budget cut in real terms of about £0.5 billion a year. By 2005–06, that will have rolled up into a cumulative cut of about £3 billion-worth of defence expenditure. The Government now tell us about budget increases, but by that time the sums allocated will have reached only £2.5 billion, so the truth is that the Government have cut defence expenditure during their period of office.
  The Secretary of State for Defence devoted a considerable proportion of his speech to attacking my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) and my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor, but, as yet, the Conservative party has adopted no position on defence expenditure. The Secretary of State alleged that the shadow Chancellor had spoken about expenditure being limited within all Departments. As far as I am concerned, that is a wholly satisfactory state of affairs; I was not elected to the House to raise taxes or support overall increases in public expenditure. My responsibility is to ensure that my constituents' money is spent more wisely, so that they can choose where their private expenditure goes. The differing approaches to public and private expenditure represent the philosophical difference between the Opposition and the Government, and they are a proper subject for debate.

  1117
  At present, the defence budget and our armed forces are in considerable trouble. I draw the House's attention to the remarks made yesterday in the other place by Lord Guthrie, with whom I do not always agree, especially about Kosovo. He said:
  "My experience and instinct tells me that we are already in very difficult times, perhaps as difficult as any time since World War II. The only time of similar concern that I can recall was the late 1970s when it became necessary for a new government to rescue defence from ever increasing decline. But today I judge the situation to be far more serious than it was then."
  That is the background to the rumours emerging from the MOD about the work going on in the lead-up to the annual round of long-term costings for the defence budget. Yesterday, the Chief of the Defence Staff told the Defence Committee that it was all part of the normal annual process. If so, the scale of the challenge is greater than anything experienced in my time at the MOD.
  The 1993 public expenditure settlement called for a cut of £750 million in the defence budget, and we embarked on an exercise called Front Line First. Something like 23 or 24 cost studies were carried out across the MOD, and they found savings worth £1 billion in the way that the MOD did business. No frontline provision was cut, and in fact £250 million in additional annual expenditure was made available. That was used for additional flying training for the RAF, and the Tomahawk cruise missile was also a product of those savings.
  "Front Line First" was a serious and far-reaching study, covering the whole of the MOD. However, it had a deleterious effect on some areas, including recruitment and the Defence Medical Services. That is worth remembering: savings on that scale are very unlikely to produce a completely positive effect.
  The MOD is now being invited to achieve savings on twice the scale of Front Line First. The exercise is cloaked by the claim that it is merely the normal, annual process of balancing the budget and ensuring that everything fits the long-term costings that have been made. The challenge that we faced was only half as big, and our approach was to ask those members of the armed forces and MOD civil servants who would be affected for their ideas about delivering defence more efficiently.
  Statements were made to the House about the process and its conduct. It began after the public expenditure settlement of October and November 1993, and was completed in the summer of 1994, when a report was made to the House. No such detail is available today, either to the House or to members of the services. All we know is that quite high-level studies are being carried out into areas of capability such as anti-submarine warfare or ground-based air defence. Those studies deal with the choices being made in the defence White Paper.
  The White Paper is a terribly thin document, compared with its predecessors. They went into detail about where expenditure was being applied, and provided proper analyses of what the MOD was being invited to do and the defence tasks facing the armed forces. Of course, the nature of those defence tasks moves on with the times, but I counsel the Government to adopt a philosophical approach similar to that of the 1993 White Paper.
  1118
  That seminal document laid out three sets of defence tasks. The first was the defence of the United Kingdom, the second was NATO and the third defence task was in effect the rest of the world. The analysis meant that defence tasks one and two were delivered with the force structure that was being followed by the Government and defence task three was a free good delivered on the back of the forces being provided for mandatory tasks one and two.
  Times have moved on a little and we are faced with a different challenge, namely, the relationship between Europe and the United States. My concern is that we appear to be betting the shop on the US. Again I shall quote Lord King. Yesterday during the debate on defence the Under-Secretary, Lord Bach, said that it was inconceivable that there would be any major conflict in which the United States would not wish to be involved. My noble Friend replied:
  "The Minister said that it was inconceivable that we would find ourselves in certain circumstances where the United States would not be with us. I merely warn him that it was my experience when I had any responsibility for defence that the inconceivable usually happened—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 March 2994; Vol. 659, c. 730, 745.]
  In trying to decide on the shape of the armed forces for the future, we should try to pursue a relationship with the United States that takes advantage of network-enabled capabilities and of making sure that our armed forces can co-operate with the United States in terms of command and control, and so on. In that way, and in what we expect to be the majority of circumstances where we shall deploy troops on large-scale operations, we can operate effectively alongside the States. If, in the process of doing that, we ignore the development of our European allies' defence capabilities and do not ensure that we can operate alongside the Germans, the French, the Italians and the other main European members of NATO, we do so at our peril.
  The Government are trying to cover both bases, but they must ensure that the UK Government have a choice about their future defence policy. It is the traditional geo-strategic position of the United Kingdom to have to try and cover both bases. If we end up becoming Robin to the United States Batman, we shall have neglected the ability to have properly organised, trained and equipped forces that can also operate with our European partners. Then we may be presented with what currently appears inconceivable: that the United States might lose the political will to intervene around the world. I suspect that we are seeing the high watermark of US willingness to intervene around the world, to bear the burden and to pay any price, to quote a President of 40 years ago. The United States may reach the stage where they are not prepared to pay that price. The United Kingdom, with our spread of interests around the world, is a global, international country, and it is absolutely in our interests to continue to make a contribution to global security as the greatest per capita trading nation in the world. We need to ensure that we can do that either with the US or with our immediate neighbours in Europe. The challenge facing the Ministry of Defence is to produce policies and equipment that enable us to do that.
  4.13 pm
  Mr. Dai Havard: I shall return to the broad swathe of the White Paper, although I was tempted to narrow it down and deal with particular areas. I should like to comment on how thin it is in terms of its physical structure. Clearly, it is a conceptual document and it is not meant to have the detail in it. It is trying to get people to buy into a general conceptual approach—the detail will come later. It stems from the important decision, made some time ago, to introduce expeditionary forces in peacetime—however one defines peace since the second world war. The White Paper reviews the type and periodicity of operations and raises questions about the range at which British forces will operate. In that sense it differs from the last strategic defence review and earlier documents. The report deals also with homeland security and the military interface with the civil authorities.
  Defence equipment is the sexy part of the document on which the press and others immediately pick up. As to air defence, there are questions about whether there will be single-role fast jets and if so, how many; training for multi-role tasking; and whether there will be 200 Typhoons or only 130 as rumoured. The Defence Select Committee will try to find answers from the appropriate individuals. Will there, for example, be a carrier version of certain aircraft? We hope to put flesh on the bones of the conceptual document. There have been welcome announcements about air tankers and refuelling but there are also issues about heavy lift capabilities.
  Legitimate questions are being asked also about carriers—such as the length of their decks, and whether there will be a short take-off and vertical landing version of the joint fighter. What will be the role of destroyers? The Defence Select Committee recently reported on Operation Telic, the use of helicopters, and where the land starts and the sea stops. There are questions to be asked also about defence both on the sea and from the sea. I ask my right hon. Friend to consider seriously the place of the merchant marine and whether British ships and British-registered ships should be involved.
  The hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) asked earlier whether the Bowman communications system works in the hills. I hope that it does. As that equipment is made in south Wales, there are plenty of opportunities to test whether it works in the hills. That massively important equipment is clearly having a disturbing effect in terms of integration, and I am sure that questions about Bowman training are being addressed, perhaps in some of the work strands to which Conservative Members have referred. We will wait to see.
  It is now generally acknowledged that the importance of our reserve forces has recently grown and that they will be fundamental to the operation of the armed services in future. Yesterday, the chiefs of staff seemed to indicate that they were not so concerned about the size of the regular forces. But even if told that they could increase numbers, how would recruitment and retention be achieved? It is therefore clear that reservists will play an increasingly important part and that they will serve alongside and be integrated with the regular forces. We welcome the fact that people are signing up for civil
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  contingency reserves but it will be interesting to see how that activity will be balanced against the work of expeditionary forces.
  Compulsory mobilisation will bear examination in future. That has become an issue particularly recently, and the relationship between the reservists, their families and employers, and the support mechanisms to sustain them when they are mobilised will be an important part of the detailed planning for the future. We must also address how reservists are to be used, in formed units or as specialists. Perhaps they might be used as a reconstruction force. It will be interesting to see whether the studies indicate a need for dedicated reconstruction forces, as some other countries have suggested. I have been warned about that, however, and it has been pointed out that reservists do not necessarily join up to do their day job in the reserves. A balance has to be struck.
  As for the regular services, there has long been a debate about how to support them and their families, and about their living conditions. Serious decisions will have to be made about where people are based, whether they belong to the RAF or, particularly, the Army. Some of our allies in Europe and the Americans will have to make decisions about how to use more agile forces that are capable of moving more quickly.
  One of the chiefs of staff pointed out to me yesterday that both the reservists and the regulars are war fighters and that is what we must train them to be. They can step back from that role, however, to take on the additional tasks that people now expect from British service personnel. Our forces are utility players. They are so capable of performing a range of tasks that they fit easily into the three-block war—in which fighting is taking place at one end of the town, security operations in the middle and reconstruction at the other end. Our forces can change quickly from one activity to another, and that utility comes from their training and experience.
  The detailed work on the White Paper should also examine the relationship between the MOD and other Departments engaged in relevant activity. That includes the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and how defence and diplomacy knit together. As one senior officer said to me the other day, If you want to play brinkmanship, you can do it in several ways. You can give all sorts of indicators to be people, even when buying equipment. Perhaps the Treasury should also be involved, and planners in other Departments could suggest to its bean counters how to deal with decisions. The Department for International Development could also be included, as well as the non-governmental organisations. The Home Office is also involved in relation to homeland security. Arrangements to co-ordinate all those strands are needed, to make it work.
  I, too, was in the Balkans with the Defence Committee recently. The area is an example of what is needed for nation building. The heady mixture of crime, nationalism and terror is a strategic threat that raises questions about the sustainability of operations over time. It is not the case that all excursions in the future will be like Iraq. Our forces will have to undertake a range of activities, and some will last longer than originally expected. We have only a small number of personnel in the Balkans, but they punch significantly

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  above their weight. They do so because intelligence is crucial, whether it is military intelligence, defence intelligence, one of the various aspects of Secret Intelligence Service intelligence or police intelligence. All such intelligence has to be joined up. We have seen turf wars in the past, but they will have to stop. Perhaps we should have some special arrangements in the future for linking military intelligence with the other intelligence services to deal better with strategic threats. Human intelligence is crucial. It can involve only very simple things; for example, some of the Gurkhas in the Balkans told us that they wanted night vision equipment. We talk about the need for aircraft carriers and other things that cost millions or billions of pounds, but we can do very simple things that would effect a massive change.
  On money, there have been declarations that the defence budget will continue to increase in real terms, although we shall not know the figures until the comprehensive spending review. Obviously, the announcement of a real-terms increase is better than one that says the reverse, but I shall be interested in the amount. I have some questions about the way the Treasury deals with these matters under resource accounting and budgeting, as there are various rumours about the effectiveness of that tool. Keeping the shelves stocked means a lot for Sainsbury's, but the exercise is quite different for the Ministry of Defence. Although resource accounting and budgeting can be useful—it shines a light on many areas, and many members of the armed services will admit that that was necessary—it must be deployed intelligently in the future.
  Mr. Blunt: Like me, the hon. Gentleman was present when the Committee made its report on Iraq and he will have heard the presentation by Francis Tusa, supporting his thesis that small incremental enhancements to our current capabilities can make a huge difference for our soldiers on the ground. Francis Tusa referred to improvements to CVR(T)—combat vehicle reconnaissance (tracked)—while the hon. Gentleman referred to night vision goggles, but I hope that he will join me in commending to the Minister the work of Francis Tusa in identifying small increases in spending that could produce a huge capability change for our troops.
  Mr. Havard: I was about to say that the White Paper suggests that the whole process should be much more joined up and that many actors can contribute to the debate. I am concerned about the political pressures on us when we make statements about expeditionary forces—as we saw recently when we had to make decisions about going to Iraq. A declaration about an expeditionary force is fine, but that does not mean that I agree with George Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive action. We need to be clear about what we are doing in this place.
  We all need intelligence to make those decisions—that is crucial. However, as a member of the Defence Committee, I am sometimes disappointed about the degree of openness shown by the Ministry of Defence, even towards parliamentary institutions that are actually trying to help to ensure that Parliament has
  1122
  proper information to make those crucial decisions. I appeal to the Minister of State on that point, because the Select Committee will certainly want continual monitoring and debate on such issues. One debate in the Chamber will not do the trick—nor will two or three such debates. We need enduring mechanisms to undertake such monitoring; Obviously, the Select Committee has offered to do so. The process involves not only the Ministry of Defence but other Departments; for example, in relation to intelligence for the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs.
  We need to ensure that there are ways of doing and ways of seeing. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, as it says on the old trade union banner. Now and again, that is equally true in relation to the Ministry of Defence. Our decisions on the broader political questions are crucial, and we have to make them. What we cannot and must not do is abdicate that responsibility to those who do not want it, are not prepared for it and are the wrong people to undertake it—the military and the armed forces. Those decisions have to remain in this place and we must have mechanisms to ensure that they do so.
  4.28 pm
  Mr. Michael Jack: It is a pleasure to follow the thoughtful and interesting remarks of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard) who, as a member of the Select Committee, speaks with great knowledge. However, I think that in stepping past the point of detail he let his Front-Bench colleagues off the hook. I would have expected the White Paper to deal in much more detail with our defence situation. The hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire) asked whether it was worth producing the White Paper. My answer, which I hope to explain in a few moments, would be, Probably not.
  Mr. Havard: I was not trying to duck the issue. I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to have a word with Conservative Front Benchers. If they did not take up so much time, perhaps we Back Benchers would have a bit more time, and the same might apply equally to members of the Government.
  Mr. Jack: As a Back Bencher, I have some sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says, but the debate is about the Government's stewardship of our current defence capabilities. What surprises me is that the White Paper is like a menu without prices. There was no mention of resources; there were no costed programmes; there was no detailed information whatsoever about the defence budget. The Chancellor has cited what he terms a real-terms increase, but we do not know how far above the rate of inflation the forward funding of the defence budget will be. There is a clear indication that all sectors of the existing defence budget are under considerable pressure.
  Why does paragraph 4.14 of the defence White Paper, under the heading Air, state that there is an opportunity for
  reducing the need for single-role fast jets.?
  It continues:
  "Multi-role capability will also allow deployed force packages to be smaller where coverage of multiple roles has previously required additional aircraft."

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  There is then a sentence that I should have liked to be developed in more detail:
  "We are now considering how and when we should reduce the numbers of combat aircraft in order to reflect these developments."
  No one can make judgments about our future capabilities—whether in respect of purchasing future projects or in respect of sustaining the operation of current equipment—without that detail. The Government have left us dangling on a hook, wondering exactly what the detail will be.
  As the Member of Parliament for Fylde, where BAE Air Systems has a significant plant with some 6,000 employees at Warton, I know that such paragraphs in the White Paper do nothing but leave uncertainty in the minds of the employees, the company and, certainly, the RAF about exactly what their capability will be. It is evident both from the Secretary of State's remarks and from the White Paper that air superiority is a precursor to successful operations in all the conflicts in which we have been involved in recent years.
  Aircraft such as the Tornado and the Jaguar illustrate that we are capable of building systems to achieve that success, but those aircraft are now either reaching the mid-point or are towards the end of their service life—certainly, in the case of the Jaguar—and they need to be replaced. Eurofighter has been mentioned, but one must recognise that that aircraft was ordered in the first instance to replace many of the ageing types of aircraft to which I refer. The Conservatives can claim a proud part in ensuring that the Eurofighter project was not only started but sustained, particularly given the pressure from our German partners, who once wanted to pull the plug on it.
  I congratulate the Government on continuing with the programme, but I have been tabling parliamentary questions for months asking Ministers when they will make a decision on tranche 2. The ministerial rubber band has now been stretched almost to breaking point. It must now be five or six months since negotiations between the company and the MOD began. There are some important issues in relation to cost. The company's position on the price it is asking for the aircraft and the development of a ground attack capability are central issues, but does it really require such a long time to elapse to get those negotiations sorted out, allowing BAE Systems and its employees at least a degree of certainty?
  In answer to my last parliamentary question on the issue, the MOD assured me that moneys had been put in place to try to ensure a smooth flow between the existing activity on tranche 1 and the fact that tranche 2 is now late, but I have now completely lost sight of whether those programmes can sustain the work force or whether some of the rumours that are now sweeping Warton and Salmesbury will come to fruition and the company will start shedding labour. Some difficult decisions will have to be made.
  Taking at face value the Secretary of State's speech of October 2002, he made it clear that the United Kingdom had to maintain a strategic aerospace capability, to sustain our technological ability and our design and build capability. We need all those things if we are to maintain independence of action with our own
  1124
  equipment. Unless the decisions are made about tranche 2, we will not know whether that skilled work force can be sustained.
  Mention has been made of tranche 3, about which I would not expect the Minister to give a clear view from the Dispatch Box at this juncture: there are negotiations about the aircraft, and the capabilities of the plane may move on, just as tranche 2 is different from tranche 1. However, we need certainty about tranche 2.
  It was perceptive of the MOD to spend £3 million with BAE working up a configuration to determine what the naval version of such an aircraft would look like. If nothing else, it positions itself as an extremely useful negotiating chip in the discussions that the MOD will inevitably have on the final cost of the joint strike fighter. We are heavily involved in the project and the new factory at Salmesbury has begun work to make the 10 per cent. share that we have won in the joint strike fighter. The Americans understand competition if nothing else and, if we want to keep their minds concentrated on giving us good value for money for the aircraft, doing something about the marine version of the Eurofighter would be an extremely good way of going about that task.
  If the hon. Members for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) and for Preston (Mr. Hendrick) and others had been in their places, I am sure they, too, would have wanted to echo the questions that are being asked in BAE Systems about the future of the project. However, I return to the White Paper, which is completely silent on those questions. The Government show a lack of responsibility in raising questions to which they do not supply answers.
  We are at the top table on the joint strike fighter because we have the capability in terms of skilled manufacturing ability and our knowledge of short take-off and vertical landing. However, in a parliamentary question to the Prime Minister, I asked what was being done about the findings of the Rand Europe report—which the MOD commissioned some time ago—about the possibility of the United Kingdom being responsible for the repair and maintenance of the joint strike fighter or even its final assembly and check-out. All that requires the United States to release to us, beyond its current agreements, the technologies that underpin the aircraft. I was reassured not only by what the Prime Minister said, but by the nodding of the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary, that all these matters were actively under discussion with our partners in the United States. So far, we have had no word back at all from the Americans that they will release to their closest ally the detailed technologies that underpin the aircraft. So if somebody drops a hammer on and dents the plane that we ultimately buy, we will not have a clue how to repair it, because no one will have told us how it was put together. That raises an important point.
  If the United Kingdom, as Ministers have suggested, is to work more in parallel with and alongside the United States in terms of our war-fighting capability, the United States must stop being so selfish is in guarding these technologies. If our systems are to develop alongside each other, there must be compatibility and a genuine understanding that allies must work together on projects such as the joint strike fighter. If we were to go into repair and maintenance and, ultimately, the updating and upgrading of the

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  weapon system when it comes into service, that would provide continuity of employment for tens of thousands of very skilled aerospace workers.
  The White Paper is also silent about the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft. This was a £1.8 billion project. Lots went wrong and BAE has worked hard to get it back under way. We hope that a prototype aircraft will soon fly and that the MOD will order another two maritime versions of it, but what about the other 18 fuselages that remain? There was no word from the MOD as to whether the capability of the aircraft was going to be developed, perhaps even as a bomb-carrying aircraft.
  We have heard about the new technologies. I remind the Minister of an article in the August 2003 edition of Aerospace International about unmanned aerial vehicles, which appeared under the heading, The UK—lagging behind?. The Secretary of State talked about Watchkeeper but said nothing about the UK's unmanned combat aerial vehicle or unmanned aerial vehicle demonstrators. The article simply asks, "Where are they?" We seem to have no work going on to develop our technology. New developments will be utterly central to supporting our troops on the ground, enhancing our war-fighting capability and possibly in future delivering weapons systems by UAVs. Where is the UK's position? I say all that against the background of the aviation innovation and growth team report.
  The Minister who is to reply to the debate will have read the Secretary of State's speech in October 2002, when he said:
  "But there is a wide range of defence industrial capabilities which we would like to retain in the UK industrial base for economic reasons."
  I hope that he meant defence reasons as well. He continued:
  "These bring valuable employment opportunities to particular regions of the country; they add high economic value; and they can contribute to defence exports to civil applications."

  He went on to say why we must sustain our military aerospace capability. Perhaps in his reply the Minister will tell us what comes next after Eurofighter and the joint strike fighter, because there is no vision in the White Paper about what our air-fighting capability will be over the next 20 or 25 years.
  In 1986, the experimental aircraft programme, the precursor to Eurofighter, flew, yet only now, in 2004, are Eurofighters being accepted into RAF service. Unless we have some indication about how that capability is to be sustained, companies such as BAE Systems will struggle to know what their future role will be. Should they amalgamate with United States companies? Should they form closer alliances with Europe? If we are to have an independent capability to maintain our air war-fighting capability, one thing is clear: we need an industry that has the technologies to form alliances, whether with European or with American companies, and to take part in joint projects. Without a clear steer from the Government and without guidance, the company and its work force will struggle to see their future.
  Some important issues have been raised. If I have one wish, it is that, at the end of the debate, the Minister will remove some of the uncertainties surrounding Britain's military aerospace capability.
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  Let me conclude on a positive note by putting on record my appreciation of the work that the Government have done in helping finally to bring to a successful conclusion the longest running saga in terms of overseas export orders: that involving the Hawk, the finest military training plane in the world. At last, the Indians have signed the piece of paper and the march you up to the top of the hill and march you down again scenario is over once and for all. I am delighted about that. The work started under a Conservative Government and was finished by this Government. I hope that the Government will show the same determination as they showed in securing the Hawk order to remove the uncertainties that surround many of our vital aerospace projects.
  4.44 pm
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: All of us who listen to him can easily understand the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), and I have considerable sympathy for his concerns about keeping together the skilled teams at Warton and elsewhere. Nevertheless, I have an unpleasant and unpalatable question. Some of the contracts to which he referred—not all, but some—are surely for systems that are as relevant to Britain's 21st century needs as a fleet of dreadnoughts.
  Let us take for our example the Eurofighter. As I understand it, 232 are on order, at about £80 million apiece. We have to ask whether we should give such financial priority to a cold war interceptor. What would be the consequences of reducing the number in terms of our relations with the German, Italian and Spanish partners? Some of us wonder whether such systems are suitable for any plausible 21st-century task, but before any decision can be made, we have to know the situation regarding contracts. What contracts have been signed, and what would be the cost of undoing a contract at a later stage? Ministers face an extremely difficult problem. The same sort of argument can be made in respect of Type 42 destroyers, at £1 billion apiece. Some of us have to ask at this stage what would be the military objective of such a sophisticated weapons system in a foreseeable task that our country may be called on to perform?
  Sometimes—not very often—a colleague makes a speech in this Chamber that states a problem more eloquently than one could have done oneself. As one who raised the issue of Kosovo and was granted a private notice question on the subject on Monday, I can only say that the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) should be read by all who have to make decisions on that desperately difficult problem in the Balkans. I am glad that he referred to the nickel factory.
  I shall simply relate a personal experience, and I hope to be forgiven for crudity. I went to stay for four days in Kosovo with my national service regiment, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, which was on duty there. In the presence of the then colonel, David Allfrey, and the then second in command, now colonel of the regiment, Ben Edwards, I was able to talk at length with some of the local Albanian leaders. I would not have had that conversation had not the guns of the British Army been behind me, because they were pretty rough customers. They were truculent, saying, to put it crudely, Of course we're going to win—we have the power of the

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  penis. By that, they meant that they were going to use population to achieve their objective—greater Albania. Some of us who opposed involvement in Kosovo from the beginning thought that we were being taken for a ride—twisted around the little finger of people whose agenda was very different from what Britain and the United States thought they wanted. The way in which we were manipulated by the Albanians must teach us a lesson.
  Last week, with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, some hon. Members had long and serious discussions with the incoming Serbian delegation. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South was present and my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) chaired the meeting, and they will bear out my account. The Serbs said, among other things, that it was all very well to talk about rebuilding Belgrade, but the old buildings were constructed under the Austro-Hungarian empire, so the centre of their capital city could not be rebuilt unless every stone was taken down and construction started again. Bitterness is mounting, and my impression, which my colleagues might share, was of a highly dangerous and explosive situation. People say that it will take between $30 billion and $100 billion to improve the position.
  Turning to Afghanistan, after two and a half years, it has been restored to the warlords without our achieving the stated objective of the Afghan bombing, namely the apprehension of al-Qaeda members responsible for 9/11. What exactly are our objectives, and what is the time scale? Having listened to the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Keetch), I believe that we are entitled to say that it is easier to put troops in than pull them out. I hope that in the winding-up speeches we will be told what the short and medium-term objective in Afghanistan is. Drug production has gone up 14 times since the Taliban were in power, but I do not think that was the objective of the military intervention.
  As for Basra, Brigadier Nick Clark said that there is a clear attack, not on the local community but on the coalition forces. We are seen more and more as an occupying army, and our presence is regarded as an extension of the crusades, which is highly dangerous. The Whips rightly asked me to be brief, so I shall ask one final question, which is not meant to imply, I told you so. At 5.6 am on 18 December 1979, with Jack Weatherill in the Chair, as part of the old Consolidated Fund debate, I raised at inordinate length—I spoke for three quarters of an hour—the case of a young research student in the university of Brussels who had gone to Urenco at Almelo and pinched nuclear information about centrifuges and, more to the point, addresses of locations where various parts for nuclear weapons could be found. I then tabled two questions to the Prime Minister, and in the Corridor told Mrs. Thatcher, with whom I was then on very good terms, I hope you don't think that I'm wasting your time with my concerns about this research student. She replied, Whatever anybody else thinks, I do not think—the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) will know very well how she could emphasise I and say it in a way that no one else could—that you're wasting time at all. I deduced that the intelligence services were going to take a proper interest in the activities of that research student, whose name was Abel Qader Khan.
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  The debate started off with my saying that the Rosenbergs, Alan Nunn May, Klaus Fuchs and Bruno Pontecorvo combined may not have done as much damage as that research student. That is all history, but, as I have had rather succinct answers to my parliamentary questions, I want to know, once people were told that there was a problem, what effort was made in the past 10 years to follow it up and keep tabs on it. That man, who sold information to the Iranians, North Koreans and whomsoever has created mayhem, which even the atom spies did not achieve 20 years before. My question is, was that followed up, and have any lessons been learned?
  4.54 pm
  Mrs. Alice Mahon: I, too, will try to cut my speech down and keep it brief.
  We had to deploy an extra 750 troops to Kosovo last week. The entire violent episode exposed the character of the Albanian separatists, some with terrorist and criminal links, who are now in leading positions of power in that province. The Kosovo Liberation Army never disbanded. It simply became the Kosovo Protection Corps. Agim Ceku—I name him again—the man who ethnically cleansed the Krajina, is in charge of the Kosovo Protection Corps.
  I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) that what we saw last week was a flagrant example of ethnic cleansing: 3,500 Serbs were burned out of their homes by well organised gangs and joined the 200,000 who have been expelled from the province during the past five years. Those people are scattered all around Serbia and Montenegro in camps. The hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) and I, as officers of the joint group on Yugoslavia, visited some of those camps. I wish other hon. Members would take the trouble to do so. I am pleased that the spotlight is again on those forgotten ethnically cleansed people. Maybe now note will be taken of them.
  The violent attacks against the Serbs and other minorities have gone on under the UN, KFOR and so-called protection force administration since the military campaign ended. It is inconceivable to me and many others in the House that thousands of troops from 30 countries are unable to protect the Serbs and other minorities living in the province. Between June 1999 and last week there were 6,923 attacks on the minorities by the Albanian separatists. I make a distinction between them, and people like Dr. Rugova and the men and women of peace in the Albanian community, but the separatists are in charge and they want an ethnically pure state and a greater Albania. Why else would they destroy 154 churches and monasteries? Why else would they want to wipe out a whole culture and eliminate diversity? Their aim is a greater Albania. I am old enough to remember another regime in Europe that sought to eliminate other races and cultures. The consequences for Europe and the world were disastrous.
  The latest outbreak of ethnic cleansing was well organised. The Secretary General of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, accused the Kosovo Albanians and said:
  "What happened last week, orchestrated and organised by the extremist factions in the Albanian community, is unacceptable—it should be condemned and it's a shame."

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  The UN spokesman said that more than 50,000 people took part in the violence. Only 163 have been arrested. The mob also turned against KFOR and the UN. We know, too, of the tragic killing of two UN policemen.
  KFOR must take immediate steps to provide effective protection for the minority communities living under siege. The war criminals such as Agim Ceku and Hashim Thaci who give the Albanian community such a bad name should be arrested and taken to The Hague. UNMIK, which on several occasions has tried to overturn warrants and criminal proceedings against Ceku, should stop doing that.
  Let me say something about the links between the separatists and other extremist Islamic groups. On 15 October 2003, a GIS/Defence and Foreign Affairs report—there have been regular reports since the 1970s—indicated that Ceku was directly engaged in support of Albanian-trained Islamic terrorists, and noted:
  "During the first half of August 2003 300 Albanian-trained guerrillas including approximately 10 mujahedin (non-Balkan Muslims) were infiltrated across the Albanian border into Kosovo, where many have subsequently been seen in the company (and homes) of members of the so-called Kosovo Protection Corps. The guerrillas were trained in three camps inside the Albanian border at the towns Bajram Curi, Tropoja and Kuks where camps have been in operation since 1997".
  From visits to Interpol as a representative on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I know that some extremists in Albania and the Kosovo Liberation Army have links with al-Qaeda. Kosovo is in the hands of mafia extremists, organised crime is the main economic activity, and the sinister link to terrorism is definite. I agree with my hon. Friends, and, in particular, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), that we must have a serious discussion about the final settlement in Kosovo, because the issue will not go away.
  I shall turn briefly to the most pressing and dangerous situation facing our armed forces today—Iraq. I wish the Secretary of State had updated us on the horrific pictures that we saw yesterday, in which our soldiers were fighting people who were throwing petrol bombs at them. I hope that the Minister will address that point when he sums up. I deeply regret that, just more than one year ago, we were unable to stop what I consider to be an illegal, immoral and extremely dangerous invasion of Iraq.
  We know that 600 coalition troops, including 60 British troops, have been killed, and thousands have been injured. It is deeply shaming to the Bush Administration that they take their dead and injured back to America in secret, and I congratulate our Government on honouring our dead, on making sure that the injured get the best possible treatment and on not trying to keep the public away.
  I want to say something about the civilians who have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war, because most of the people who have been killed are civilians and their deaths are rarely reported. Dr. John Sloboda, an academic with the Oxford Research Group, has set up a body called, Iraq Body Count, which is an independent count of media-reported civilian deaths as
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  a result of coalition military action and the occupation. His sources are published and are easily available on the internet for anyone to check or dispute, but, to the best of my knowledge, no one has done so up to now.
  Dr. Sloboda and his team should be congratulated, and I shall quote from Iraq Body Count, because, as part of the occupying force, my Government have a responsibility towards Iraqi civilians, and, at the very least, we should report and record the dead and injured:
  "An Iraqi family … lost 11 members when U.S. soldiers opened fire as their sport utility vehicle approached a checkpoint."
  The mother in that family kept saying this over and over again to the media:
  "'I saw the heads of my two little girls come off,' Hassan's wife, Lamea, 36, recalled numbly. She repeated herself in a flat, even voice: 'My girls—I watched their heads come off their bodies. My son is dead.'"
  Similarly, we were responsible for civilian deaths when we hit the wrong targets. At about 6 am, one family sheltering in a bunker, which had been constructed when the last American bombs fell, lost 10 members as the house collapsed around them. How can one compensate for that kind of tragedy?
  Killings are still taking place under the occupation, and even in UK-controlled areas such as Basra, public security is inadequate. We now know that up to 10,600 civilians have died since we invaded in March 2003, and the civilian death toll is the worst from a war waged by either the United States or the United Kingdom since the Vietnam war. We should all reflect on that point: we should certainly not try to hide from it, and we should record the figures. The US-UK coalition has repeatedly said that it will not record the figures, and now the US-appointed Baghdad authorities have refused to recognise the need and the duty to account for those civilian deaths. As Dr. John Slobodo says, Iraqi civilians are now relegated to the status of "non-people".
  Decisions have to be made about Iraq. With the death toll of American soldiers mounting and a presidential election in the offing, the United States is desperate to transfer powers by the end of June and wants to step back from the bubbling cauldron that it helped to create. That strategy of bringing democracy to Iraq stands little chance of success unless certain things happen. The temporary governing council, its ministers and their advisers all owe their allegiance to Mr. Bremer and the United States, and the Iraqi people know that. Many people in the interim Government are still based outside the country and show no signs of returning with their families to settle in Iraq, so they do not command much public confidence.
  The intercession of the United Nations is welcome, but we want it to be done in a proper manner, and only if Kofi Annan is able, and is seen to be able, to act as a genuinely independent element in resolving the impasse. If Iraqis perceive him as providing a fig leaf for United States intentions, he, too, will be rejected. The situation in Iraq is desperate, and requires much more discussion.
  5.6 pm
  Clare Short: I rise to set the record straight on the very important question of why there is such a disastrous lack of security in Iraq and why better arrangements were not put in place to help the people of Iraq to reconstruct their country. That

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  issue is obviously terribly important for the people of Iraq. As I said earlier, the current disorder is leading them to say that no matter how much they welcome the fact that Saddam Hussein is gone, the situation in which they are living is worse than that which preceded it. The question of how we are to bring them security is enormously urgent and difficult. It is important to learn how we got into this mess in order to find our way forward.
  More broadly, in the post-cold war world, the military phase of any conflict that arises from failed states and civil wars is quite short and relatively easy. The reconstruction of countries is the difficult and complex part, but it is crucial to ensuring future stability and security. We need to learn those skills more effectively and hone the international system for dealing with such situations.
  I have already drawn the House's attention on a point of order to the false claim made in the report by the Select Committee on Defence entitled, Lessons of Iraq, which was published on 3 March 2004. It states at paragraph 358:
  "It has also been suggested that"
  the Department for International Development's
  "role in post-conflict planning was constrained by the attitude of the then Secretary of State towards the prospect of military action. Although our witness from DfID denied that this was the case, we remain to be convinced."
  That assertion is completely untrue and is based on absolutely no evidence. I am enormously surprised that any Committee of this House should conduct itself in such a shoddy manner by making an assertion based on no evidence, not having taken evidence from the Member concerned.
  Following the publication of the report, I wrote to the Chairman of the Select Committee telling him that the claim was untrue and offering to give evidence to the Committee on the preparations that were made. He replied that the Committee stood by the false claim, and I was invited, along with anyone else who might be interested, to provide written evidence to rebut it. What a topsy-turvy world we appear to be living in. I hope that no one makes that suggestion to the Home Secretary in relation to our courts—he might even take it up.
  Mike Gapes: My right hon. Friend is attacking the Defence Committee. She should be aware that during our investigations over the past year many of us on the Committee had extensive discussions with many people about what was happening in Iraq. On that basis, we were not satisfied with the response that we received from officials in her former Department. The Chairman of the Committee is not here at the moment, so he cannot reply on his own behalf. I should like to place on the record that the Committee has written to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), and that if she has something to communicate to us, she can no doubt do so, and we can continue with it later.
  Clare Short: I am sorry, but obviously my hon. Friend was so busy getting up to rebut what I said that he did not listen to it. I just referred to the letter that I received—a letter that invites me not to give evidence but to rebut a false assertion, which was based on no
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  evidence whatever. This is a serious matter. It is an insult to me and an insult to my former Department. It also suggests that the Defence Committee is not interested in learning lessons and finding out the truth about why there is such chaos in Iraq. That is a serious matter for the government system.
  Rachel Squire rose—
  Clare Short: I will not give way, because I would like to get on and make my speech.
  From the very beginning, my view on Iraq was that it was right to threaten to use force to back up the UN's authority, because containment was crumbling and sanctions were hurting, but that there was no need to rush. That is where all the failure has come from. The Defence Committee failed to face up to the reasons for the lack of supplies for our troops and the lack of preparation for the possible use of chemical weapons. Defence intelligence had assessed that there was such a risk. Those reasons were that the date for war was fixed early on, that there was deceit about that date having been fixed, and that the preparations for military action came very late and were not fully made.
  Rachel Squire rose—
  Clare Short: No, I will not give way because I want to get on, if I may.
  Matters were different, however, over preparations for the reconstruction of Iraq. We prepared for reconstruction with international support. When I agreed to stay in the Government, having been pressed very hard to do so by the Prime Minister—I had intended to resign at the time of the war and to vote against the Government—I did so on an absolute promise that there would be a UN mandate for reconstruction, and that reconstruction would be internationalised. I decided to take the flak and the criticism for failing to resign because, knowing that the war was unstoppable, I wanted to try to ensure that reconstruction was carried out properly. That was the most crucial matter to the interests of Iraq and the people of the middle east.
  Various preparations were made. First, the military, as an occupying power, has a duty under the Geneva convention and The Hague regulations to keep order and to provide for any immediate humanitarian needs. We worked with our Ministry of Defence to purchase food and make preparations for the possible humanitarian crisis, giving our support and advice. Secondly, we provided funding and support for some British non-governmental organisations that have experience of working in Iraq. We gave much support to the Red Cross, which worked in Iraq through the war but, tragically, withdrew afterwards because of the disorder.
  We also supported the UN in preparing its intervention. The UN knew an awful lot about Iraq; it had been running the oil-for-food programme for a long time and had considerable numbers of Iraqi staff as well as international staff. Those staff were withdrawn during the conflict, but the UN had supplies in the region and was ready to go back in. The UN, through the office of Kofi Annan and his deputy Louise

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  Frechette, was fully prepared to move in, under the sort of mandate that it had been given in Afghanistan, to help the Iraqis to put in place an interim Government to start the reconstruction. If that had happened, the whole international community would have engaged with the process. I had discussions with my fellow Ministers across the international system, including in France, Germany, the Scandinavian countries and Canada, and had said to everyone that, whatever our differences over the route to war in Iraq, we must all come together to help Iraq to reconstruct. All that was in place, and ready to go.
  So what happened then? There was a big argument, which the Select Committee report alludes to, between the State Department and the Pentagon in the United States of America. The State Department had made full preparations for the situation after the conflict, but it was pushed to one side. The Pentagon took over, made it absolutely clear that it did not want any significant role for the UN, and set up ORHA—the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in Iraq—which was assembled only weeks before the conflict began. Major-General Tim Cross, whom I had worked with in Kosovo in the support of refugees, became its deputy and found that the furniture was still being moved about and that there were no plans.
  That is what happened. The international system and all the international preparations were brushed to one side, and ORHA moved in with retired general Jay Garner in charge. That body was in Kuwait for a time, and it had been busy with Secretary Rumsfeld selecting which Iraqis would have significant positions. No proper preparations were made for keeping order or for giving the UN a proper role—which would, in turn, have brought in the international community. Members will remember the arguments. Will the Indians come in? Will the Pakistanis come in? It was a very good idea to have a substantial Muslim country supporting the keeping of peace and order in Iraq, but none of them would do so without a proper UN mandate and resolution.
  That is the shameful story. There were two great blunders, the first of which was to rush to war too fast, without first exhausting all possible means of disarming Iraq or proving that it had no weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, we should have tried to indict Saddam Hussein, while authorising armed support for the UN weapons inspectors if need be. We had to be willing always to contemplate force to back up the authority of the UN if necessary, but in my view we should have taken more time. The reason why we went to war when we did is that there was an unwillingness to rotate the troops through the hot weather. That is why we got into the mess that we did, and why our troops were subjected to such risks.
  The second failure was the arrogance of forcing other members of the Security Council to say yes to a war by a pre-ordained date. In doing so, the UN was completely brushed aside, and the international system's machinery for helping a country to reconstruct was not used. In addition, because the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance was so focused on its political tasks, the military moved away from their duty under the Geneva convention and The Hague regulations,
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  which is to keep order. There should have been military rule and an absolute focus on keeping order. The latter failure, which resulted from the closing down of the Iraqi army, explains the situation that we are in.
  We have to get out of this situation, which is a disaster for the middle east and for the people of Iraq. The answer is the same as that which should have been secured at the time: a proper UN mandate and lead; international engagement; getting more countries involved; greater legitimacy; and a proper interim Iraqi Government who are recognised as legitimate by the whole international community.
  That is the story. I and my Department made full preparations for the proper reconstruction of Iraq, but I am afraid that our country and Prime Minister did not stand up to the Americans when the Pentagon, in its full arrogance, brushed aside the preparations made in its own country through the State Department, and led us into the chaos that we now see.
  5.17 pm
  Mr. John Smith: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, albeit briefly. I intend to focus my comments on a small but none the less important part of defence policy that is often neglected—defence logistics—but first I should like to make a couple of general comments. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence on producing an intelligent White Paper that leads the way for future defence policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire) referred to the number of strategic reviews. Unfortunately, that is an indication of the times that we live in. The security environment is changing so rapidly that there will be an increasing number of reviews over time. I also congratulate the Secretary of State on securing from the Chancellor of the Exchequer a real-terms increase in the defence budget.
  I should also congratulate the shadow Defence Secretary on putting on such a brave face this afternoon, in the full knowledge of the impossibility of defending the policy that he will have to defend. I might disagree with him and his Front-Bench colleagues, but I recognise that they are committed to defence policy and to defending this country. I therefore understand the embarrassment that they must be experiencing, but it is not my intention to exploit it this afternoon.
  Mr. Blunt: Following the Chancellor's Budget statement, my noble Friend Lord King sought clarification from the Treasury concerning a real-terms increase in defence spending. However, he discovered no such undertaking, beyond what had already been announced in the previous comprehensive spending review. If that proves correct, I should imagine that the hon. Gentleman, like me, will regard it as something of a let-down.
  Mr. Smith: We await the Chancellor's statement with interest. My understanding is that a commitment to the defence of this country—something that I believe in strongly—has been given, and I look forward to hearing what the Chancellor says.
  I shall confine my remarks to defence logistics. It is often forgotten that nearly half the entire defence budget goes on logistics and not an awful lot of time is

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  spent debating the £15.2 billion—at 2003 out-turn prices—involved. About £11.4 billion of that expenditure is currently under review as part of an MOD end-to-end review of air and land logistics. I support that vital review, the general objective of which is to reduce the footprint of logistics to prevent duplication, to ensure faster response times and to secure the equipment and support where and when it is necessary.
  The National Audit Office report on Operation Telic identified the need to achieve those tasks and it concluded that the operation was a huge logistical success. It was the fastest deployment—within 10 weeks—of the largest British expeditionary force ever into a theatre, a very austere environment, nearly 4,000 miles away. There was even a change of location. We therefore deployed people even more quickly than the planning assumptions for the deployment would have suggested.
  The NAO rightly recognised some capability gaps within that deployment, but did not do so in respect of fixed-wing aircraft, which were deployed very successfully into the field. I am particularly interested in air support and the role of third-line reinforcement and support for operational aircraft that need to be put rapidly into the field and maintained there.
  Government policy in that respect has been incredibly innovative over the past few years and has created the so-called trading funds. The Defence Aviation Repair Agency whose headquarters are in my constituency is one example, and there are other bodies such as the Army Base Repair Organisation, ABRO, which play a vital strategic role in ensuring that we get our logistics act together.
  Ministers will be aware that yesterday's announcement of up to 550 redundancies at DARA at RAF St. Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan in the next 12 months was received with disappointment and dismay by my constituents and that work force. We should acknowledge the crucial role that these guys play in the logistical chain of depth air support. Indeed, they were somewhat taken aback. These are highly skilled workers, vital to support our front line—and I repeat that the NAO identified no faults whatever in the logistical support for our fixed-wing aircraft in Operation Telic in Iraq.
  About 360 of those jobs are to be lost as efficiency savings—that was the explanation given. The work force and I accept that some efficiency savings have to be made, but we do not agree that such a large loss of highly skilled workers is necessarily the best way of achieving them. Incidentally, the depletion of such an important skills base—in military aeronautical engineering—is a severe sting, especially given that the organisation will be expected, after 1 April this year, to compete in the marketplace with no vote money and not a penny from the taxpayer for its future work. Losing those skills is a worry.
  However, the second half of the decision is what worried me and many of the DARA workers at St. Athan. That was the announcement of 190 redundancies because the contract to upgrade the Harrier platform had been lost. The contract went to RAF Cottesmore, and that astonished many workers. They believed that the purpose behind the creation of
  1136
  DARA, the trading fund in the logistical chain of support, was to civilianise the crucial deep repair operations—the garage or depot operations inherent in the overhaul and maintenance of fighter aircraft.
  Civilianising that work, and taking it away from RAF personnel, was supposed to mean that it could be carried out in a commercial environment, and on a par with any player in the private sector. Workers were shocked to hear that the contract had gone back to the RAF because the work is now to be completed in-house, even though so much effort had gone into ensuring that DARA was competitive and in a strong position to enter the marketplace after 1 April.
  Another concern is the nature of the end-to-end review. I have said that it is important to carry out that review, as so much of defence expenditure goes on logistics. Freeing up some of that money would mean that it could go on front-line services. Our forces could then be released to do what they do best—war fighting, or preparing for war fighting or peacekeeping—and that they could perform those tasks unhindered.
  The suspicion at DARA about the end-to-end review has several causes. First, the trading funds were not originally included in the review. They were introduced after the review had begun, and it was not thought that they would be included in the MOD logistical chain, as a solution had been found. Creating a trading fund meant that the resulting commercial organisation could compete with other players in the market. Why has the work been returned to the MOD logistical chain? The people at DARA regard the decision as more or less an afterthought.
  The second cause of nervousness about the end-to-end review is that, although its team leader has a distinguished record in the armed forces, he is not noted for his support or sympathy for the newly created trading fund and its role in providing air support for the RAF. Another consideration is that the specialist teams that decide the contracts are predominantly made up of military representatives from the forces. There is therefore a belief that there could be a bias in the decision-making process. I do not say that I subscribe to that belief, but I have heard that view expressed by workers at DARA, where there is the prospect that 550 jobs will be lost.
  In future, there will be competition for major contracts, such as that for the Tornado GR9 structures. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister of State will not be able to say how that will turn out, as the review is still under way and the decision has not been taken. However, I want to be able to reassure the highly skilled workers at DARA, who play an absolutely vital role in providing logistical support, that future contract allocations will be transparent. In that way, wherever a contract is eventually placed, those workers will be able to see whether the bid that they put in was strong and economical, or weak. That will be the difference between winning and losing any such contracts.
  The House will accept that we must not lose the skills that I am talking about, so it is possible that there could be a strategic reason to maintain them at military bases as a second-line reinforcement. If that is the case, a transparent contract allocation process would allow workers to understand the reasoning behind decisions. It is vital that any future decisions be transparent and seen to be transparent.

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  If decisions are made on that basis, the Defence Aviation Repair Agency, which has shed half its work force in the past four to five years without a single compulsory redundancy, and is virtually doing the same volume of work with half the work force, will be fit, lean, mean and capable to compete successfully in the marketplace with any organisation in the world on military aviation. Given all that it has achieved, and in recent years it has jumped through hoops to become efficient and competitive, it needs those assurances. Finally, it would also like to know why it did not win the Harrier platform contract that was announced yesterday.
  5.31 pm
  Mr. Gerald Howarth: First I thank all the hon. and right hon. Members who have paid tribute to my late noble and gallant Friend Lord Vivian. He was a very splendid man indeed and the tributes paid to him today fully reflect that. I intend to send his widow a copy of today'sHansard, so that she may read for herself the tributes paid to him in this House.
  We have had a typically robust and interesting debate, sadly not as well attended as we would have wished. The usual groupies are here. We give a special welcome to the one or two new Friends who have joined us, and hope that they will come back and join us again. I say that much as they do at services in church on a Sunday. I hope that those who have not participated so enthusiastically in the past will come back. In particular I welcome the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short), the former Secretary of State for International Development. I do not always agree with her, but I have found her to be a personable friend across the Floor and it was interesting to hear from her.
  Time is marching on, so if the House will forgive me I will not go through all the speeches that were made. I put it on record once again that the deliberations of the Defence Committee have done credit to that Committee, to the House and to the parliamentary system. It was an extremely well-informed report that contributed significantly to all our understanding of the conduct of the Iraq war.
  A number of people, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack), remarked on the lack of detail in the White Paper. My right hon. Friend rightly described it as a menu without prices. Like him, I too have a major BAE Systems operation in my constituency and my constituents are concerned about the uncertainties surrounding a number of programmes. The reasons for publishing the White Paper are encapsulated in supporting essay 2. Paragraph 2.9 states:
  "Since SDR our Armed Forces have conducted operations that have been more complex and greater in number than we had envisaged. We have effectively been conducting continual concurrent operations, deploying further afield, to more places, more frequently and with a greater variety of missions than set out in the SDR planning assumptions. We expect to see a similar pattern of operations in the future."
  1138
  In other words, the Government expect multiple, concurrent, small to medium-scale operations such as counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation operations and enduring peace support operations well beyond the assumptions of the strategic defence review to be the norm, without creating overstretch.
  The White Paper also recognises the need to retain the ability to undertake a large-scale operation such as Operation Telic, although in his statement to the House in December the Secretary of State accepted that expeditionary operations on that scale can be conducted effectively only if United States forces are engaged. That leads to the further essential requirement set out in the White Paper, of inter-operability with the United States.
  The blunt message of that policy was summed up by Bronwen Maddox in The Times:

  "Britain will never again fight a big war on its own, as it did in the Falklands."
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) said, it is a matter of betting the shop on the United States.
  Notwithstanding that brutal assessment, the Government's ambitions are markedly greater than in 1998, and the White Paper must be judged against the revised range of assumptions. We have no reason to disagree with the threat assessments. We believe that the United Kingdom should be prepared to play an important role in the less stable, post-cold war world—but if the UK wants to play in that league, there is a price tag. We are not convinced that the solutions proposed meet the challenge that the Government have set themselves. Nor do we believe that the Government are prepared to pay the price that goes with effective application of the policy. Like the Chief of the Defence Staff, we look forward to the Chancellor's detailed announcements on spending in July.
  A widespread view shared at senior military level is that the strategic defence review was underfunded. The White Paper proposes an even more ambitious military posture, yet—despite the Chancellor's rhetoric—the additional resources do not meet the increased ambition.
  Taken together with the acceptance that high technology in the form of network-enabled capability must be an essential component of the new scenario, the Government's enhanced ambitions have put the screws on our conventional forces—the reason for talk of platform numbers being less relevant. If we are to be prepared for the envisaged increase in operations, something has to give. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames), who was in such good form today, said in December:
  "We are concerned that a whole raft of decisions on cuts in both manpower and equipment will start to leach out later."—[Official Report, 11 December 2003; Vol. 414, c. 1213.]
  Since then, the press has been awash with speculation that whole aircraft types will be taken out of service, regiments axed and the maritime fleet reduced in size. The Government have already drunk the Territorial Army well dry, thanks to their ridiculous policy of cutting the TA down to about 18,000. Fortunately, the cut is not as much as the Secretary of State envisaged, and he was relieved—and said so publicly.

  1139
  We know that the Ministry of Defence is undertaking studies in 14 so-called work strands with a view to meeting the cost savings demanded by the Treasury. We were assisted by the Minister of State in the other place yesterday:
  "To manage the in-year pressures, we have had to scale back cash expenditure across the department, in particular in the Defence Logistics Organisation and the Defence Procurement Agency … It is clear that during both next year and the year after we shall continue to face financial pressures. We are conducting an assessment of where reductions in planned expenditure can be made in each of those years so that we can continue to live within our means…So I am not in a position to be able to tell noble and gallant Lords and the House generally what figures are being bandied about but I think that I have been fairly frank with the House in going as far as I have."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 March 2004; Vol. 659, c. 743–744.]
  The Minister, by admitting serious financial pressures, was probably too frank for some of his colleagues. For all the attacks directed at us, the Government are struggling to maintain their existing commitments—let alone the increased commitments envisaged in the White Paper.
  If our forces are to undertake the range of operations foreseen in the White Paper, platform numbers and boots on the ground will matter. The Government are engaged in a series of gambles in a desperate attempt to square the circle. They have taken a gamble with the early withdrawal of the Sea Harrier starting next week, thereby removing Britain's independent maritime air defence capability. On present projections, that capability gap will be at least six years—longer if the new carrier programme is delayed. We may be looking at 10 years without full fleet air defence. The Minister ought to say whether he agrees that aircraft could remain in service until 2012 without an engine upgrade.
  It has been reported that the Government are to cut the number of Type 45 destroyers from 12 to as few as nine or eight, vastly reducing Britain's maritime capability and reach. Numbers do count, as the Minister will understand when he recalls that the frigate deployed to Sierra Leone a few years ago was also on standby for the Falklands and the Caribbean. For those without a map, those areas are several thousand miles apart. Will the Government clarify their position on the Type 45s? Do they intend to procure the 12 vessels originally envisaged or will we have to wait until those work strands have reported?
  On the future rapid effects system—FRES—the Government are gambling on a programme that is central to achieving the aims set out in the White Paper. FRES is a clear example of the fact that the development of a medium-weight capability is essential to the expeditionary role envisaged in the White Paper. That was reflected in the early in-service date and high-priority status afforded to it. However, the Government have not yet even decided what they want from the programme, let alone how to procure it. By putting it out to a systems house, the Government could have added anything up to a year to the process, kicking a final decision ever further into the long grass and making the prospect of FRES reaching its early in-service date remote.
  There are other examples, with which Ministers will be only too familiar. Two of the six Astute submarines are said to be on the chopping block, which would reduce our maritime capability still further and deal
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  another blow to the Ministry's favourite contractor, BAE Systems. Up to 40 Challenger tanks may be mothballed, curtailing capabilities further. Ark Royal is to go into some kind of mothballing and the joint strike fighter—now called the joint combat aircraft—could be cut from 150 to 110. It is a key component for the carriers and it would helpful if Ministers could answer some of the concerns that have been expressed on both sides of the House about those programmes today.
  On a note of agreement, I can say that we support the carriers. The carrier programme that the Government have developed will be essential to the concept of expeditionary warfare that they advocate. I welcome the fact that the drumbeats in the jungle suggest that the carrier size has gone back up to 60,000 tonnes. That will result in serious carriers that are capable of delivering what we all want to see. However, there is uncertainty about the programme. We have heard reports that the MOD wants to take control of the programme, instead of making BAE Systems the prime contractor, or to hand it over to AMEC. Despite having the excellent Syd Gillibrand as its leading light, that company has not had great experience in running such a programme.
  The Government are also ransacking the cupboard for other savings. Earlier this week, the Under-Secretary smuggled out a written statement, blandly called Estate Rationalisation: Presentation Strategy, the key sentence of which reads:
  "The work now underway is looking at consolidating defence activity at a smaller number of more densely utilised locations in order to achieve the optimum use of land and facilities…it will take into account existing relocation studies that have already been announced."
  As the Member of Parliament for Aldershot, I hope that the Minister can tell me whether the review will apply to Aldershot and Tidworth, which are currently the subject of Project Connaught, which will see more than 25 per cent. of the Aldershot garrison sold for housing. If there is to be a further fire sale of military assets, where will the Government house the 8,000 troops they will bring back from Northern Ireland under that peace dividend? Where will the 20,000 troops presently in Germany be stationed if they are pulled back—as they will be at some point? Will not a policy of super garrisons substantially reduce the military footprint in the UK?
  The White Paper sets out the Government's projections for the next 15 years. Admittedly, the last White Paper lasted only six years, but it is still a basis for today's discussions. The projections anticipate a level of military action similar to the recent pattern, which is well in excess of the level envisaged by the SDR just six years ago, and they do not fully quantify the effect of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism on our country. The truth is that manpower has been cut, increasing pressure on young service families. Training has been cut. The TA is running out of people to support the regulars. Numbers of aircraft, ships and armour are being reduced and assets are being sold.
  Despite the dangerously uncertain world that we have entered, Ministers are taking gambles that capability gaps will not be exposed. They have failed to order essential battlefield equipment in time. The defence industrial policy, about which my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde spoke so comprehensively, is, to quote a senior industrialist, a shambles. We have

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  received no tangible dividend for the Prime Minister's support for the United States. As my right hon. Friend said, there should at least be a technical access agreement on the joint strike fighter. Where is that? What answer can the Minister give us about control of the British defence industrial base if that control is moving inexorably into the hands of the Americans? As we know, they have done us no favours in the commercial field. Political correctness inhibits training and the development of risk awareness.
  All those points were summed up in the brutally frank admission made yesterday by the Prime Minister's personal adviser on defence, the Chief of the Defence Staff: the Army has been stretched to breaking point and cannot mount another Iraq-scale war for five years.
  Let us hope our enemies are not listening.
  5.46 pm
  The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence: In opening the debate, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State drew the attention of the House to the key security challenges that we face. The hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) recognised that, and I think that he echoed both the analysis and some of the conclusions of the White Paper. The hon. Gentleman could not be in the Chamber for the wind-ups as he had a speaking engagement. My best guess is that he is speaking to the shadow Chancellor to try to find out some of the answers that he failed to give in response to contributions from the Labour Benches.
  The challenge that we face on defence is ensuring that we have the right military capabilities to meet the threats we are likely to face. The 1998 strategic defence review and the new chapter that we published in 2002 undoubtedly moved our armed forces in the right direction. But as others have recognised—in the debate and elsewhere—the world does not stand still; nor should our response.
  The Defence White Paper, Delivering Security in a Changing World sets out the case for the development of more flexible and agile armed forces, which are structured and equipped to deploy rapidly in the most likely small and medium-scale operations, from war fighting to giving enduring peace support. Much of the White Paper presages change for the armed forces and for defence. Painful as it may be, we must not shirk from making tough choices. As the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) indicated, my noble Friend the Minister for Defence Procurement made that clear in his contribution to a debate in the other place yesterday.
  Mr. Blunt: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Ingram: I have to reply to a large number of contributions, but if there is time later, I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman.
  In the last spending review, we announced the largest sustained increase in planned defence spending for about 20 years, yet, however great the increase in the budget, we cannot do everything to the nth degree. Some contributions to the debate seemed to ask for everything; nothing should go, and nothing should be
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  given in return. Those are not useful contributions to such a heavyweight and important debate. It is easy to ask for things, but it is vital to have balance in our thinking on investment in running the Ministry of Defence, as it is for every spending Department.
  When the Conservatives were in power, they had to make changes and choices that were similar to those that face us now. That had to be done in 1995, and I think that it was the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex who said that the Conservatives got some of those decisions wrong. He did not enumerate the decisions or point out where the Conservatives had gone wrong. I could certainly list a good number of things; we have had to recover from many of those decisions and find solutions.
  Mr. Blunt: In fact, I made those remarks. The errors that I identified were in recruiting and the Defence Medical Services.
  In a mature debate about defence, everyone must accept that tough choices have to be made. A better approach for the Ministry of Defence would be to ensure that the debate was much more transparent and that there was much more information. My experience was that Front Line First was a much more open exercise; it was much easier to manage politically because it was transparent. I hope that the Ministry of Defence will take that advice.
  Mr. Ingram: It is tempting to think in that way. However, as we know from some of the speculation that abounds, which is immediately latched on to by hon. Members and others, such arguments are not balanced. Those who use them simply consider one aspect and say, This is nonsense and cannot be sustained. Of course, something will not necessarily go simply because it has been part of the consideration. Military personnel themselves are the best analysts of all this, as the hon. Gentleman will know from his background as adviser to Malcolm Rifkind, the then Secretary of State for Defence. Some tough choices must be made, but the quality of their advice is very high. They know that judgments have to be made. They advise Ministers, and they respect Ministers when we stand our ground on some issues. It is tempting to say that the necessary debate must be open and transparent, but I am not sure whether that would add to the quality of the judgment that must be made; we would chase a lot of hares unnecessarily.
  We have a commitment to ensure that the quality of judgments taken is properly bottomed out and scrutinised. We then have to stand accountable for those judgments. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has shown time and again that he is more than prepared to take many of those tough decisions and to see them through against some strong criticism. We must ensure that we direct our finite resources at those capabilities that are best able to deliver the full range of military effects that we require. In doing so, we must be rigorous in dispensing with those capabilities that do not fit our requirements—to do otherwise is simply not an option.
  I shall deal with some of the various issues that right hon. and hon. Members have raised. I welcome all the contributions made by the hon. Members for Mid-Sussex, for Hereford (Mr. Keetch), for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) and for Aldershot and the right hon. Member for

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  Fylde (Mr. Jack), as well as those made by my hon. Friends the Members for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire), for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes), for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard), for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon), for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Clare Short). I do not agree with all the contributions that have been made, and I do not know whether I can deal with all of them in the time available.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax asked about the status of troops injured in the incidents on Monday. Fourteen troops were hospitalised. Four may have to be returned to the United Kingdom, but the injuries were not as severe as the images suggest. The quality of the equipment that we use in dealing with such riot-control situations is high grade, and our troops are highly trained. Again, the images sometimes belie the reality on the ground. All hon. Members would wish those who have been injured a full recovery. We wish them well.
  Let me deal with the points made by the hon. Member for Mid-Sussex. I want to be kind to him. In a sense, he set out a shopping list: more expenditure on training, equipment and service personnel generally. He believes that deeply, but he has to match his dreams with reality. He had to do so when he held the job that I now hold. He had to make some tough choices, and we now have to recover from those very same choices. I believe that he is in denial about the Conservative party's expenditure planning. No one has rebutted the fact that there would be a £1.5 billion cut in defence spending. That is the implication of what the shadow Chancellor has said. He must face up to that realistically. He called for many things, but he has to set that against what his own party is saying about expenditure.
  I have always taken the view that the role of Her Majesty's loyal Opposition is to do one thing only: to train to become Her Majesty's Government. So the Opposition have to face up to the consequences of what they say. Our years in opposition certainly allowed the Labour party to go through that process. I wish the Conservative party a longer time in opposition because they have clearly not begun to deal with some of the hard issues that they must face.
  The hon. Member for Mid-Sussex asked about the capacity to deal with the terrorist threats facing this country. General Jackson, the Chief of the General Staff, outlined to the Defence Committee yesterday the arrangements for the forces to exercise with the emergency services. We must increasingly consider that issue and take into account what can be done in relation to the public's perception. Training and exercise does not necessarily mean that the scenario envisaged will happen the next day. We have to manage all this, and there is a strong commitment between the emergency services and MOD personnel to work through many of the difficult scenarios that we may have to face.
  The hon. Member for Mid-Sussex also alleged that there had been a 50 per cent. cut in combined arms training. Those claims are without foundation. We fully recognise the importance of combined arms training. An important element of recuperating and sustaining military capability rests on getting that right and ensuring that we are investing in that area. Let me give the assurance that we shall, of course, ensure that the issue is accorded the right priority in our future plans.
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  My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan is right that I made an announcement yesterday that had an effect on the Defence Aviation Repair Agency, which is in his constituency. I shall explain the background to that. I agreed that the Harrier air depth maintenance support work should roll forward to RAF Cottesmore as a centre of gravity for logistic support for the Harrier platform. This decision has been taken at this point, because of the need to protect the critical operation in-service date for the Harrier GR9. The decision is likely to affect, as my hon. Friend said, a further 190 posts in addition to those proposed as part of the Red Dragon efficiencies.
  The solution at RAF Cottesmore offered the best value for money for defence, providing savings of more than £30 million through the life of the programme. Any delay in the decision would also have cost £800,000 a month. That is the problem that I faced, alongside the other developments that were taking place relative to the ongoing end-to-end review. I do not accept my hon. Friend's view that the inclusion of DARA and ABRO's trading funds in the end-to-end review was an afterthought. They cannot be anywhere other than in that review.
  I make a commitment about Red Dragon and the review work. DARA has a future, but a future that is based on MOD expenditure and, increasingly and importantly, on what it can win in the private sector in terms of commercial business. That is the opportunity that the Red Dragon project affords DARA. There were those who said that we should not go ahead with that £70 million-plus investment. I made the decision because it gave the work force at DARA in St. Athan the best opportunity. I hear what my hon. Friend said about the other issues, but I am only too willing to meet him and local trade union representatives to talk the issue through to try to ease their fears. I am sure that he will welcome that invitation.
  As ever, my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West made a thoughtful contribution. She is fierce in her role as a constituency Member of Parliament and is similar to my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan. She never fails to mention Rosyth in the same way as he never fails to mention St. Athan. I recognise that Rosyth is important to her constituency, and I point out that Rosyth is mentioned in the future aircraft programme as one of the yards that will play a possible part in the process. However, it has to win its part of the contract. Free gifts are not being given to the shipyards. We must get best value and best price, so we say to all the yards that their future is also about winning the commercial business that is potentially out there for the British shipyard industry. The MOD's elements of that future are important, but the yards cannot survive on MOD work alone even with the largest warship-building programme for a generation.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West also asked about recruitment. The whole Army's trained strength—
  It being Six o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

SOCIAL SECURITY
That the draft Employment Zones (Allocation to Contractors) Pilot Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 16th March, be approved.—[Mr. Kemp.]
Question agreed to.

PETITION

  Flooding
  6 pm
  Mr. John Greenway: I wish to seek leave to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Pickering in north Yorkshire. It was organised by the Yorkshire Evening Press and local flood campaigners following the decision by the Yorkshire regional flood defence committee not to pursue a flood defence scheme in Pickering for the present time, which it is felt is likely to mean that no flood defences will be built. The petition states:
  To the House of Commons
  The Petition of the Residents of Pickering, North Yorkshire
  Declares that the town of Pickering experienced severe flooding on no less than three occasions in recent years, in March 1999, October 2000, and August 2002 with a devastating impact on residents, businesses and tourism; that following the October 2000 flood the Department of Environment. Food and Rural Affairs agreed with the Environment Agency and the Yorkshire Regional Flood Defence Committee that a flood alleviation scheme for Pickering should be given priority; notes with concern and disappointment that such a scheme has not been developed and that the priority status of Pickering will expire on 31st March;
  The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to agree to extend the priority status of a Pickering flood alleviation scheme for a further two years and to request that the Regional Environment Agency for Yorkshire and the Humber and the Yorkshire Flood Defence Committee draw up revised plans for a flood alleviation scheme for Pickering without delay.
  And the petitioners remain.
  To lie upon the Table.

Economic Situation (Strangford)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Kemp.]
6.2 pm
Mrs. Iris Robinson: I should like first to place on record my utter condemnation of the mindless thugs who were responsible for an arson attack in my constituency, which totally destroyed three businesses and left approximately 30 local people out of work. I am sure that the Minister will share my relief that no one was injured, encourage the shopkeepers to open their businesses again, and appeal to the public to come forward with any information that could assist the police in apprehending those vandals.
I am grateful for having had the opportunity to secure this Adjournment debate. I thank Ministers for their attendance in the Chamber. I want to touch on a number of points that will highlight my concerns for the future economic prospects of my Strangford constituency, although I cannot divorce that from the impact of closures of factories in East Belfast, which abuts my constituency.
During the past five years, the constituency of Strangford has witnessed a colossal downturn in its indigenous manufacturing industries. The peace that was promised over five years ago has not been delivered, while the peace dividend, which was hyped up, has never really materialised. Industries and businesses, which have formed the foundation of the local economy, are now declining and disappearing at an alarming rate. If one takes into consideration the repercussions of the demise of Harland and Wolff and the huge losses from Bombardier-Shorts alone, the number of manufacturing jobs that have been lost to my constituents easily runs into tens of thousands. In the past 18 months, in excess of 5,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in the Strangford-East Belfast area, while the past 12 months show the figure of 1,500 for Strangford alone.
For ease of reference, I shall break up the constituency into the three council areas that cover Strangford. The Ards borough council district of my constituency has witnessed a constant decline in manufacturing in recent years. The loss of major employers such as the Crepe Weavers and the Lee factory means that the textile presence in the area has almost died out. Last year, Carpets International went to the wall, with the loss of 144 jobs at its Killinchy plant.
Through the fleet at Portavogie, we have witnessed the extreme problems faced by the fishing industry. In the past 10 years, the Northern Ireland fleet has shrunk by 30 per cent.; 84 vessels have been decommissioned since 1994. I am wholly convinced that our continued participation in the common fisheries policy will result in the industry's decline to a point from which it will be unable to recover. Only when the Faroese and Icelandic models are properly investigated and when this country once again commands authority over its national waters can we hope to see the resurgence of the fishing industry. In the meantime, fishermen participating in the voluntary tie-up scheme have failed to receive their compensation, despite being five weeks into this year's cod-recovery programme.

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There are two major plans in the pipeline that will be of huge economic benefit to the Newtownards area. The first is the multi-million pound Castlebawn development, which will bring hundreds of new jobs and much-needed economic investment to the area. In addition, as part of its planning approval, the development will extend the local road network and alleviate the traffic congestion in and around the town. The other major plan, which has not yet been approved, is in connection with the location of a B&Q superstore on the site of the former Scrabo high school. The scheme will bring approximately 250 jobs to the Ards area. The proposal is tied up at the planning stage; last week, along with retail unit officials, I had a meeting with the chief executive of the Department of the Environment planning service to try to resolve a number of outstanding issues. I urge the Minister of the Environment in Northern Ireland to look sympathetically on the application and to take account of the cross-party support that it enjoys, not least because of the 250 jobs that it will create.
One indirect measure that could be taken to assist the local economy is the provision of an adequate roads infrastructure. I thank the Department for Regional Development, under its former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson), for the completion of phase 2 of the Comber bypass, which has gone some way to easing the traffic burden on the town, which actively dissuaded inward investment. The priority now for Comber is the provision of phase 3 of its bypass. Completion of phase 3 will greatly improve Comber's ability to attract much needed investment to the area.
The latest jobs blow to the dwindling manufacturing base in the Down district council area of Strangford has brought the total number of lay-offs in the area to almost 400 in just five months. International Leathers, based outside Killyleagh, says that job losses are the result of a major slow-down in the worldwide leather market. Since Christmas 2003, the company has laid off 37 workers, and the remaining 20 employees are on short time.
Also in the Down district council area, Saintfield Yarns, with 20 years' experience in textiles, was regarded as a modern, progressive, forward-thinking company in which working conditions were so positive that there was no need for union involvement on the site. The company had been experiencing increasing financial difficulties owing to the rise in energy costs, but it was the failure of the insurance sector to provide adequate cover that sounded the death knell, leading to the firm's closure and the loss of 250 jobs. Other companies in the area, such as Northern Ireland Plastics and McCleery's Yarns have been hard-pressed to remain financially viable and have had to implement severe rationalising programmes within their company structures to remain in business.
The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Dudley, South (Mr. Pearson) will understand my shock and despair when I learned that the Department of the Environment planning service had refused permission for the exciting and imaginative Gocean development in Killyleagh. The developer would inject £35 million of investment into the area, and would ensure the town's economic future well into the 21st century.
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For decades, there has been a slow but constant decline in the manufacturing industries on which local communities depend, and Killyleagh is one such place. Industry prompted settlement in the area, but little has been done to attract new investment. The economic revitalisation of Killyleagh and its hinterland depends on the completion of the Gocean development. Construction jobs on the development would be assured for approximately nine years. The plan outlines a unique mix of social and private housing, as there is an overwhelming demand among local people to remain in Killyleagh. The proposed nursing home would provide about 100 jobs for the town, and the marine, restaurant and chandlery would attract the tourist interest that Killyleagh deserves.
The development has the backing of the overwhelming majority of people in Killyleagh, all political parties and all Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. It also has my unreserved support as the Member of Parliament representing the constituency. The developer has spent considerable time and effort appealing against the decision to refuse permission, and the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Basildon (Angela Smith), who has ministerial responsibility for the environment, has now—I believe—passed the matter to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for a ruling. I appeal to him for a positive response in his deliberations. I cannot overemphasise the importance of the proposal to the future economic and social well-being of the Killyleagh area; it is fair to say that the Government will not invest £35 million over a number of years.
The people of Castlereagh borough have always been intimately connected to the industries of East Belfast. They have suffered equally from the demise of Harland and Wolff, which once employed 30,000 people. More recently, the downturn in fortunes at Bombardier-Shorts has resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs over the past few years. The latest bombshell came only a few weeks ago, when TK-ECC, the constituency's largest private employer, announced that it was closing, with the loss of almost 1,000 jobs in its final year. That has had a truly devastating effect on the wider community. In many cases, more than one member of the same family was employed at TK-ECC, and in one instance five members of a single extended family were affected.
Some TK-ECC employees came from industries that had closed down. Every time a factory closes, opportunities for employment decline, and if action is not taken to address the situation, our local manufacturing industry may simply disappear. To compound the trauma of redundancy, over a few weeks it has come to light that there is a £32 million hole in the TK-ECC pension fund, which only rubs salt into the wounds of a loyal and committed work force.
TK-ECC did not go bankrupt; it was simply axed by its parent company, Takata, which is now offering a paltry £6 million towards the deficit. There are major concerns about the disposal of land then owned by the industrial development board. In 1995, TK-ECC purchased 23 acres adjacent to its factory in Dundonald for £1.5 million on a freehold lease. In February 1996, that land was sold to a Netherlands-based sister company, TREK-VB, for the princely sum of £2.25

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million. Investigations by independent sources suggest that, with planning permission, that land is worth about £20 million.
A company has therefore come to Northern Ireland, taken advantage of generous Government grants and been sold 23 acres of Government land on the premise that it was for business development. It has then sold the land for a profit of £750,000 to a company in the same group, which has abandoned its Dundonald work force and is free to sell the land for its own financial gain. It is alleged that Takata will fulfil its pension obligations only if the land is re-zoned and sold for residential development.
So if we retain that precious land for future industrial use, 550 people will be robbed of their full pension entitlements. Alternatively, if it is re-zoned for housing development, the industrial land bank in Dundonald will disappear and there will be no prospect of attracting new industries to the area. That is astounding, and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment must accept full responsibility for selling the land without any conditions or limitations on its future use. The onus is on the DETI to sort out the mess.
There is equal concern about the provision of industrial land throughout my constituency. Although I acknowledge the expansion that is due to take place at the Ballyharry business park in Newtownards, the Strangford constituency, not least in Castlereagh, has little land zoned for industrial use. That must be addressed if we are serious about encouraging inward investment.
Energy costs are another cause of major concern for Northern Ireland industry. A report carried out last year by the CBI confirmed that on average Northern Ireland business is paying 50 per cent. more than its mainland counterparts. For some companies the figure is more than 90 per cent. Reducing electricity prices to industry must be a priority and urgent action must be taken by Government to address the issue. Public service obligation and system security charges must therefore be minimised to ensure that Northern Ireland pays similar unit costs to mainland business. A transparent and pro-competitive restructuring of current long-term contracts must be completed urgently, and be assisted by Government finance to help deliver competitive indigenous generation. A review of how the costs of the Moyle interconnector are recovered must be undertaken to ensure that expenditure remains reasonable.
I challenge the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment to explain why the remit of the integrated development fund has been restricted to West Belfast and Londonderry. To date, the DETI has shown little interest in pursuing any sort of strategic approach to the matter, or in exploring new innovative avenues to address the decline in Strangford. Neither the Minister nor his departmental officials displays any sense of urgency on addressing the decline of our manufacturing industry and the loss of so many thousands of jobs.
If 5,000 jobs had been lost in, say, West Belfast, Strabane or Londonderry, there would be a markedly different response from the DETI. Instead, there seems to be a fundamental unwillingness to develop a strategic approach to the crisis. The Department seems more
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concerned with re-routing investment to nationalist areas of the Province, at the continued expense of areas such as Strangford. I wish to make it clear that I have no difficulty with nationalist areas attracting new investment, but I do object to an uneven playing field and the needs of my constituency being ignored continually. One wonders what must happen in the area before the DETI sits up, takes notice and acts to deal with the crisis. The inherent danger associated with the continuing decline of our traditional industries is that we are not only losing jobs but witnessing the removal of opportunities for future employment and skills development and retention.
In conclusion, taking into account the extra financial burdens placed on Northern Ireland's manufacturing industry in comparison with the rest of the UK in areas such as insurance and energy costs, it is crucial that the Government adopt a long-term strategic view on these matters. I therefore take this opportunity to call for the development and implementation of a specialised Department-led initiative to tackle the crisis in the sector. If we fail to take action now, there is a real danger that the areas skills base will decline to the point where the local manufacturing industry could implode.
6.20 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Ian Pearson): I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Mrs Robinson) on securing this Adjournment debate. At the outset, I join her in condemning the arson attack in her constituency and the killing that took place in Newtownards yesterday.
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her comments and for raising her concerns about the current economic situation in her constituency, and it is important that I respond to a number of those points. Although I accept that there have been a number of regrettable job losses in her constituency over the past few years—she mentioned some of them—I would not want her or anyone else in Northern Ireland to think for a moment that the Government do not care about them, and I reject entirely her view that the playing field is uneven. Invest Northern Ireland is active in her constituency, and, in the time available, I should like to explain some of the positive things that the Government are doing to help her constituents.
The hon. Lady mentions last month's announcement that TK-ECC is to close its Dundonald operation with the loss of 550 jobs. That is regrettable, and I share the hon. Lady's concerns about the effects on those who are losing their jobs and the impact on their families and the wider community. The difficulties facing the company had been evident for some time, and Invest Northern Ireland had worked closely with management to try to find a way to resolve those issues. However, despite that approach and the hard work done by the local management team and the work force to make TK-ECC more competitive, all those considerable efforts were not enough to prevent the German parent company deciding to close its Dundonald subsidiary and transfer production to Romania.
The Government's priority has been to provide immediate help and support to those being made redundant, and that facility is already providing a

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comprehensive range of advice and guidance to all those affected, including information on job vacancies, help in completing job applications and details of social security benefits. Comprehensive as that support structure is, however, it cannot substitute for actual jobs, and I assure the hon. Lady that everything possible is being done to assist TK-ECC's work force to find alternative employment.
The hon. Lady mentioned a number of specific issues, and she will know that a meeting has taken place. Officials in my Department are well aware of the pensions situation, and are in discussions with the trustees and the company, so it would be inappropriate for me to comment further.
On the disposal of the land, the hon. Lady knows that a decision was taken back in 1995 to sell the land. It was Government policy at that time to sell fully developed sites, which—I have checked the records—was done at fair market value. I have various criticisms of the previous Conservative Government, but they cannot be criticised for selling that property on the cheap.
Although that closure announcement and other closure announcements are a major blow, much positive progress has been made in the hon. Lady's constituency in recent years. In February 2004, unemployment in her constituency stood at 2.6 per cent. That is lower than the 3.2 per cent. average for Northern Ireland, and it ranks Strangford as the constituency with the joint-6th lowest claimant count rate out of Northern Ireland's 18 parliamentary constituencies.
Invest Northern Ireland is building on the growth that has taken place in the hon. Lady's constituency. The agency is very active, with around 110 client companies employing more than 5,000 people. Since it was set up in 2002, it has offered more than £3 million of assistance to companies in Strangford, which have brought forward projects with a total investment of more than £12 million. To date, it has assisted around 270 business start-ups in the area—an encouraging indication of the scope for supporting and developing a more entrepreneurial culture.
We have limited time in this debate, and it is not possible to refer to all the successful companies in Strangford, but let me single out one example to help to demonstrate the innovative and entrepreneurial culture that exists in the constituency. That company is Bridgedale Outdoor, which employs around 70 people in Newtownards. Bridgedale's innovative high-added-value technical socks for extreme sports have made the company a leading player in the outdoor clothing sector. Its products are sold across the world through a distribution network taking in more than 44 countries, from Australia to the Americas. The company is an excellent example of how a forward-thinking company can survive and thrive in the challenging textiles and clothing sector. Invest Northern Ireland has helped Bridgedale to become a key player in its field. The support that it offers to many companies in Strangford covers a broad range of measures aimed at helping businesses to increase their capability and to develop their international competitiveness.
Invest Northern Ireland's business improvement team helps companies in Strangford to enhance their competitiveness in the marketplace. The Compete programme provides support for innovative market-led
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products and manufacturing processes. Invest Northern Ireland actively works with councils in the constituency to help to achieve the most appropriate solutions for local needs. Its client companies in Strangford have recorded overall sales of £965 million over the past two years, of which £817 million represents external sales—goods sold outside Northern Ireland—and £512 million represents export goods sold outside the UK.
As a Government, we are directly enabling the provision of land for industrial development. Invest Northern Ireland's main holding is 4.6 acres at Newtownards, and around a further 24 acres are zoned for development at Comber. I assure the hon. Lady that the Government continue to be committed to the continuing economic development of the Strangford constituency, just as we are committed to the economic development and future prosperity of Northern Ireland as a region.
The hon. Lady raised several planning issues and mentioned roads in Comber. The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Angela Smith), will have heard her comments on planning matters, for which she has direct ministerial responsibility.
The hon. Lady mentioned high electricity prices in Northern Ireland. I have been extremely concerned about that issue during my time as a Northern Ireland Minister. Last year, I announced a proposal whereby electricity prices for non-domestic users will fall by 10 per cent. I am optimistic that we will be able to make progress on implementing that proposal. Northern Ireland Electricity recently announced a freeze in non-domestic prices. That is the first instalment of the Government's action.
The hon. Lady mentioned the fishing industry. I am aware of the problems that the industry has faced in Portavogie, Kilkeel and Ardglass in her constituency. Those areas have come under significant pressure, which involves not just the fishing community but the wider community at the southern end of the Ards peninsula. As she will recall, I established a taskforce in January 2003 to address the socio-economic effects of some of the changes taking place in the fishing industry. The hon. Lady mentioned the integrated development fund and she might, perhaps, have forgotten that that fund also applies to the fishing villages taskforce. I have already indicated that money from the fund—up to £5 million—will be made available for a package of measures to support the fishing communities of County Down, including Portavogie.
The hon. Lady also mentioned the proposed tie-up scheme, which I am confident will be launched shortly. Our proposals are with the European Commission, from which we are awaiting final approval. The scheme is designed to provide some compensation to fishermen denied the opportunity to catch cod and other white fish in the Irish sea during the closure period, and it will inject up to £1.5 million into the Northern Ireland fishing industry. I know that several of the hon. Lady's constituents will be among those able to take advantage of the scheme, and we will implement it as quickly as possible once we have approval. That scheme is in addition to the most recent fishing vessels

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decommissioning scheme, for which I was able to provide £5 million last year and which has enabled a significant number of fishermen to leave the industry with dignity.
The hon. Lady will also be aware of the Cabinet Office strategy unit report on the fishing industry published today, which I welcome. I want to discuss its findings with the industry, and I need some time to study it, but it is a positive development, which shows the Government's commitment to a sustainable fishing industry for the long term.
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The Government are committed to working in close partnership with local councils and other key stakeholders to promote the sustained economic development of the Strangford constituency. I welcome the hon. Lady's close interest in what the Government are doing to support jobs in her constituency, and I want to close by reassuring her that we will continue to work to promote economic prosperity in Strangford and—
The motion having been made after Six o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
Adjourned at twenty-eight minutes to Seven o'clock.