Sitting of 28 March 2001

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

    Violent Crime
    Mr. Simon Hughes: What his policies are for reducing the level of violence in Northern Ireland. [154338]
    The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Dr. John Reid): The Government continue to support the efforts of the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary to reduce violence in Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Hughes: Against a background that is generally encouraging for the future of a peaceful Northern Ireland, will the Secretary of State confirm that the reduction of violence among young people will be a priority for him and his colleagues as well as the Chief Constable? I am talking not about paramilitary violence but about burglaries, violence against the person and sexual offences, which show an upward trend. Will he consider favourably organisations such as Regenerate? It has the advantage of providing for former paramilitaries to work with young people to teach them the evil of their ways. Such role models are a way forward for Northern Ireland and may set the crime figures on a downward trend.
    Dr. Reid: Yes; like all hon. Members I condemn and abhor crime, especially crimes that inflict damage on human beings. I take the hon. Gentleman's point. We shall continue to bear down on paramilitary and non-paramilitary violent crime and to support the Chief Constable as much as we can.
    Mr. Eddie McGrady: Does the Secretary of State agree that the people of Northern Ireland wake up to a daily diet of extreme violence, the manner of which is changing from the baseball bat to the gun again? Those crimes may be permitted or committed by paramilitaries, but will he undertake to set up a special
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    team in each locality in Northern Ireland to deal with drugs rackets and protection rackets for which organised crime or paramilitaries are responsible?
    Dr. Reid: Yes. We should make it clear that the perpetrators of violence have no legitimacy, mandate or support. They are abhorred by the vast majority of the ordinary people of Northern Ireland.
    We take seriously paramilitaries' wider crimes, which include racketeering, profiteering and sometimes drugs. We have therefore established a taskforce on organised crime, which the Minister of State oversees. We shall continue to do all in our power to tackle gangsterism and mafia-like activity from the paramilitaries.
    Mr. Cecil Walker: Is the Secretary of State aware of the current unacceptable violence in north Belfast? It reflects a lack of policing on the ground. Does he realise that some of the Patten recommendations have had an adverse effect on police morale, which has resulted in a high incidence of stress-related absenteeism? What are the Government's intentions for redressing the imbalance?
    Dr. Reid: I am aware of the activities in north Belfast. That is why the Royal Ulster Constabulary, supplemented by the Army, has put in extra effort with some success.
    It is a time of tremendous change for the RUC, and there is a great deal of stress on those who serve in the police service in Northern Ireland. The Chief Constable and the change management team are making every effort to ensure that that stress is alleviated.
    The new Police Service of Northern Ireland benefits the whole community, not only the nationalists. I hope that it will be acceptable to the whole community, and that the whole community will participate in it. It will be one of the key points that underpins a peace process that will ultimately reduce violence inside and outside the paramilitary groups.
    Mr. David Winnick: I acknowledge what my right hon. Friend has said. Has he estimated how many people are alive today in Northern Ireland and in Britain because of the Good Friday agreement? We should not forget that. If decommissioning immunity is extended beyond May, does he intend June to be the target date for some genuine decommissioning, which we all want to happen?
    Dr. Reid: Given the tragic losses for more than 3,600 families in the recent decades of the troubles, the peace process has been enormously beneficial despite our difficulties and challenges. The order that I tabled yesterday is technically necessary to ensure that immunity from prosecution for those involved in decommissioning weapons continues after 19 May, when it would otherwise expire. That does not affect the target date of June this year, which we and the Irish Government set last May for achieving the remaining steps necessary to secure full implementation of the Good Friday agreement.
    Rev. Ian Paisley: I am sure that the Minister will want to congratulate the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Walker), who was telling us recently in our newspapers that there was no point in coming here

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    because it was a waste of time. It is nice to know that, at the end of this Parliament, he has made his maiden speech. [Interruption.] When one throws a stone among dogs, the one that is hit the hardest barks the loudest.
    Will the Minister tell us what his attitude is to the fact that the Irish Republican Army members of staff list has been issued? Is he not alarmed that three Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Martin McGuinness, Gerard Adams and Patrick Doherty, are mentioned as members of the inner council of the IRA? Mr. Adams has declared that he is talking with Downing street every day. Does not the Minister realise how people who are sorrowing, and will always sorrow, for their loved ones feel about the Government being prepared to hold negotiations with such people? [Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. There is far too much noise on this side of the House.
    Dr. Reid: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There was a wee bit of noise on that side of the House as well.
    First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Walker) on the continued support that he has given to the peace process, which has been a boon to many families in Northern Ireland. Secondly, I think that the point raised by the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) was based on a newspaper report on an apparently leaked document based on an intelligence source. I think that that is what he was referring to. As I never respond to newspaper reports, leaked documents or intelligence sources, I am sure that he will understand why I shall not respond to him on that point.
    I shall say only that if we are to achieve a transition from the terrible tragedies of the past 30—indeed, many more—years and the loss of life involved, a lot of political decisions will have to be taken, and a lot of discussions will have to be entered into. They will be not only complex and challenging, but painful for everyone involved. The prize and the reward for the people of Northern Ireland is great enough for all of us to swallow our prejudices and try to recognise the views and histories of the side across from us. It is ultimately the people of Northern Ireland as a whole who will benefit from that.
    Mr. Kevin McNamara: My right hon. Friend will be well aware that confidence in the new police service will be a prime concern in the coming years. Will he, therefore, make a statement that, once Mrs. O'Loan has finished her inquiries into the Hamill affair, he will set up a public inquiry to look into all the circumstances surrounding that tragic death and its aftermath?
    Dr. Reid: Two inquiries are already going on into that case, and prosecutions might arise from either or both of them. Once those inquiries, and any prosecutions, have finished, and if there is still widespread concern, we have not ruled out any course of action.
    Mr. Andrew MacKay: Are the Secretary of State's commendable efforts to reduce violence likely to be helped by giving an amnesty to prisoners on the run? Does he agree that, because the Maze escapees have
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    been allowed to walk away free, they have been given the opportunity to benefit from their escape, which is quite wrong in a lawful society?
    Dr. Reid: With respect, I must correct the right hon. Gentleman: there is not an amnesty; those people are on licence. Secondly, this is not news; it has been known for some considerable time. Thirdly, it is part of an overall peace process. If he is asking me whether this is a constituent element of a process that will result in the diminution of violence and a better, fairer, more decent, prosperous and secure Northern Ireland, my answer is yes.
    Mr. MacKay: Inevitably, most people will consider that to be an amnesty. The Secretary of State is aware that the Prime Minister promised the people of Northern Ireland a parallel Process, which we strongly supported, that meant that terrorist prisoners would be released with all illegally held arms and explosives being decommissioned at the same time. The simple truth is that not one gun nor one ounce of Semtex has been handed in, but more than 400 terrorist prisoners are back on the streets. That is a serious breach of the Belfast agreement. Does he agree that it needs rectifying quickly?
    Dr. Reid: If the right hon. Gentleman is asking whether we want early decommissioning as part of the peace process, the answer is yes. We made our view known last year: we want to achieve substantial progress on all elements of the Good Friday agreement by June. We continue to press for that because we believe that moving forward with a new political institution in Northern Ireland in which all sides participate and forming a new police service in Northern Ireland will lead to normalisation and demilitarisation from the point of view of the British Government; of course, an additional element of that is decommissioning. We continue to press on it.

    Organised Crime
    Mr. Steve McCabe: If he will make a statement on measures being taken to combat organised crime in Northern Ireland. [154340]
    The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Adam Ingram): Last Friday, I launched the first-ever publicly available assessment of the threat to Northern Ireland from organised crime and the strategy for countering that threat. The threat assessment is the work of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the strategy is the work of the Northern Ireland organised crime taskforce, which was established in September last year.
    Mr. McCabe: Particularly in view of our present difficulties, does my right hon. Friend regard the organised smuggling of sheep and cattle as a serious criminal activity? What plans has he to deal with it?
    Mr. Ingram: Yes, I share that view. The foot and mouth outbreak is primarily a matter for the devolved Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. However, the organised crime taskforce takes livestock smuggling seriously and work is already under way to tackle that harmful threat. The recently launched threat assessment identifies at least two organised crime groups involved in

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    illegal movement across the land border with the Republic of Ireland, not to mention a number of individuals who are also involved. I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that the RUC and other law enforcement agencies, the devolved Administration and the Government are determined to take that on with full vigour.
    Mr. David TrimbleI am sure that the Minister has seen the welcome condemnation by the Irish agriculture Minister of the code of silence that has existed among the smugglers of South Armagh and Louth—the people who brought foot and mouth to Ireland. Although the measures that the Minister announced last Friday are welcome, does he agree that if we are to get on top of organised crime—in respect of which the smuggling of animals, fuel, tobacco and drugs is the most significant manifestation—we need to find ways to mobilise all society to change the culture of those areas so that people there realise that they cannot continue in the state of lawlessness that has marked them over the past few decades?
    Mr. Ingram: The right hon. Gentleman makes a good and valid point. Part of the reason for the law enforcement agencies being unable to achieve more success is that there is so much fear and intimidation in Northern Ireland. That makes it difficult to bring people to justice. Part of the strategy that we have launched, which he fully supports, is to try to create greater public awareness of the extent of the problem and the way in which it corrodes, eating into the very heart of the society of Northern Ireland. That relates to another issue that he raised—the cross jurisdictional effect. Crime knows no borders and no boundaries. Together, the Governments will look for ways in which we can further tackle the threat.
    Mr. John McFall: I congratulate the Minister on his latest initiative to crack down on the 400 paramilitary and non-paramilitary individuals who are involved in organised crime, but does he remember the comments of Danny Morrison, the IRA propagandist, who said:
    "It is hard to maintain the revolution when people have a colour TV in the living room and a car in the drive"?
    The Northern Ireland economy has been robust over the past few years and unemployment, on 1997 levels, is down by more than 40 per cent. What initiative does my right hon. Friend have to keep promoting that fall, getting young people into jobs and taking them away from the lure of the paramilitary organisations?
    Mr. Ingram: As the House knows, my hon. Friend served for a time as a Northern Ireland Minister, and followed me as Minister responsible for the economy. We can take some satisfaction from the way in which that economy is succeeding on the back of policies implemented by the present Government. The best message that could be sent from the House would be sent by the return of a Labour Government, by the continuation of policies that have been successful, and by that United Kingdom Government's working with the devolved Administration in Northern Ireland to increase prosperity
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    there. That can better be achieved when we eliminate organised crime from Northern Ireland society, and bring lasting peace to Northern Ireland.
    Several hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. May I appeal for quiet on both sides of the House? The noise that is being made is unfair to hon. Members who are listening to Northern Ireland questions.

    Real IRA
    Mr. Laurence Robertson: If he will make a statement on his Department's assessment of the relationship between the Real and the Provisional IRA. [154341]
    The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Adam Ingram): The Real IRA has its roots within the Provisional IRA, and evolved as a consequence of a breakaway of disaffected PIRA members over their organisation's support for the political/peace process. We believe that the Real IRA and the Provisional IRA are entirely separate organisations.
    Mr. Robertson: Does the Minister not think that the use of Semtex by the Real IRA might suggest at least some collusion between that organisation and at least some members of the Provisional IRA?
    Mr. Ingram: No, I do not, and there is no evidence that that is the case. What I do accept is that the Real IRA and the PIRA are linked by a common cause; they are also linked by a callous disregard for human life and the human rights of their fellow citizens.
    The IRA and PIRA want to achieve a united Ireland, but Sinn Fein and the IRA have signalled that they are engaged in a transition from conflict to the democratic process. They differ from the RIRA in that regard. There is no evidence to suggest that the Real IRA is acting as a surrogate organisation for the IRA.
    Mr. William Thompson: What information has the Minister requested or received from the Irish Government about a recent attempt by the Provisional IRA, using guns smuggled from Florida, to murder an alleged member of the Real IRA? It is argued that he stole IRA weapons. Does that event cause the Minister concern, and what impact does he expect it to have on the peace process?
    Mr. Ingram: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is only too well aware of the increasingly close co-operation that exists between the two Governments in tackling the real threat and menace posed by the Real IRA. It is manifest in the co-operation between the Garda Siochana and the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the other law enforcement agencies. That is the best way in which we can tackle the situation. The message that should be sent by the House—I know that it would be sent by the hon. Gentleman—is that anyone with information about the conduct of those

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    carrying out such acts, whatever the organisation to which they belong, should come forward to give evidence and help bring such people to justice.
    Mr. David Taylor: Given that the Real IRA has rejected the peace process and will not engage with the de Chastelain commission, should not the United States Government designate it as a proscribed organisation? What action has the Minister taken to bring that about?
    Mr. Ingram: The Government are determined to explore every option available to disrupt the activities of members of the Real IRA who continue to use violence. For that reason, the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland have made joint representations to the United States authorities for the Real IRA to be designated under US law. We have submitted information in support of that request.
    The decision to designate the Real IRA under anti-terrorist legislation is ultimately a matter for the US authorities, but they have been made aware of the two Governments' strong views.

    Police
    Mr. David Ruffley: What recent representations he has received regarding recruitment to the Royal Ulster Constabulary. [154342]
    The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Dr. John Reid): Recruiting to the Police Service of Northern Ireland began on 23 February. The level of interest has greatly exceeded expectations. About 20,000 inquiries have now been made, and by 26 March nearly 3,800 applications had been received. The closing date for applications is this Friday.
    Mr. Ruffley: I thank the Secretary of State for that reply. He will be aware that, in the past three years, the RUC's reserve and regular strength has decreased from 12,700 to 11,500. Will he detail the active steps that he will be taking to reverse that depressing trend?
    Dr. Reid: The hon. Gentleman did not mention the target of about 7,500 that was outlined in the Patten commission report and that has some relevance to his question. We are taking various measures to remedy the situation, not the least of which is our current recruitment. Not only have we had an overwhelming response to that, but it has been targeted on a 50–50 basis, so that both sides of the community and both traditions will be involved. We hope to have a police service that is more acceptable to the whole community. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am in constant touch with the Chief Constable to ensure that the operational capability of the RUC and of the future police service will not be diminished beneath the necessary levels.
    Mrs. Maria Fyfe: Does my right hon. Friend know how many of those applications have come from women applicants, and does he have any idea of whether the number of women recruited into the police
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    service is going up or reversing? Does he agree that the more women there are in senior positions, the more it will help to recruit women into the police service?
    Dr. Reid: I am afraid that I cannot as yet tell my hon. Friend the breakdown of the figures on grounds either of sex or of religion. That will come at a later stage. However, not only do we of course welcome equality of opportunity in Northern Ireland, but we have incorporated—probably to a greater degree than anywhere else in the United Kingdom or, indeed, in Europe—the principle of equality of opportunity.
    Mr. Lembit Öpik: Has the Social Democratic and Labour Party provided the Minister with an explanation of its apparent continuing unwillingness to give wholehearted support to the initiative to encourage more Catholics to apply to the police service? Does the Minister know why it has not yet nominated its representatives to the Policing Board?
    Dr. Reid: There have been many constructive discussions with the SDLP over many months. [Interruption.] When possible, the Government have moved to meet the SDLP's concerns, and I believe that the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 is better for that— [Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. There is far too much noise in the Chamber.
    Dr. Reid: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
    We hope very much that the SDLP will support recruitment—especially because of the figures that I have cited of no fewer than 20,000 inquiries and, so far, of about 3,800 applications to the new Police Service of Northern Ireland. I very much hope that, following the talks at Hillsborough led by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, the SDLP will see that the gap between us has narrowed and find its way to joining the new Policing Board.
    Mr. Ken Maginnis: Does the Secretary of State agree that we owe a tremendous debt to the RUC reserves? Does he also agree that, in giving that service, they have had the least security of tenure and least regard, but have made a huge sacrifice for society in Northern Ireland? Will he assure me that members of the RUC reserves who wish to join the new Police Service of Northern Ireland will be given every opportunity and encouragement to apply so that we can make use of their experience and dedication?
    Dr. Reid: I can assure my hon. Friend that they, with everyone else, will be welcome to join the new police service. I also have no hesitation in according to the RUC the accolade of the whole House for the sacrifices that it has made over very many years in fighting terrorism. Indeed, that was recognised by the award that was given to the RUC. I hope that the widows of RUC officers who died fighting terrorism before 1982 will feel that their sacrifice has been recognised in some small way by the grant that we made recently. That grant was made

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    available after representations from, among others, the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble), the leader of the Ulster Unionist party.
    Mr. John M. Taylor: Does the Secretary of State share our dismay that, despite the Patten reforms—some of which have caused great pain to the RUC—nationalist parties in Northern Ireland, the Irish Government and the Catholic Church still refuse to recommend that young Roman Catholic men and women join the police?
    Dr. Reid: The police service that we are creating in Northern Ireland is not merely a negotiating concession to the nationalist side. We are creating a service that will be accountable to, and respected by, the whole community, all of whom will participate in it. That will be of enormous benefit to the whole of Northern Ireland.
    Given the number of applications and inquiries that have been made with regard to the new police service, I hope that parties on the nationalist side will take the opportunity to join the Policing Board. I believe that the gap is narrowing among members of the SDLP, and I welcome the positive statements recently made by the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon).

  The Prime Minister was asked—
  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. John Wilkinson: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 28 March.
    The Prime Minister (Mr. Tony Blair): This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. Wilkinson: Does the Prime Minister remember the manifesto for London, which his party issued at the last general election and which bore his signature? In it, he said that his policies would make London a showcase for Britain. Can he imagine the untold misery that millions of commuters in the capital will suffer on the underground tomorrow, thanks to the failure of his policies? Is not it a fact that the unions, the Commissioner of Transport for London and the Mayor of London—whose job the Prime Minister created—all lack any confidence in the system? Does he agree with the commissioner that, if safety is to be ensured, the commissioner should have the right to decide the priorities in the capital spending programme—or will it all be left to the judges?
    The Prime Minister: First, a few facts. There is an extra £1 billion in investment under this Government, over and above the plans of the previous Government who were supported by the hon. Gentleman. Secondly, the public-private partnership will guarantee a substantial uplift in investment in the London underground. That money will come not only from the public sector,
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    but from the private sector, and it will be way over and above any investment made by the Conservative Government.
    Thirdly, with regard to plans for the tube, I remind the hon. Gentleman that until the Conservative party decided to change its position a few days ago, he and everyone else in his party supported the total privatisation of the London underground. That really would be a disaster for the underground.
    Finally, the hon. Gentleman is wrong in what he said about safety. Safety will remain in the public sector under the PPP.
    Mr. John Hume: Given that the Government and the Opposition parties accept that the most democratic electoral system for local government, Assembly and European elections in Northern Ireland is the proportional representation system, does not the Prime Minister think that that system should be introduced for elections to this House?
    The Prime Minister: The circumstances of Northern Ireland are very particular, and do not necessarily have implications for the rest of the United Kingdom.
    Mr. William Hague: In the past 48 hours of the foot and mouth crisis, it has become clear that the Government are contemplating what we all, on both sides of the House, previously regarded as unthinkable: a policy of widespread vaccination. The Opposition share the distress of many in the countryside that the crisis has reached this point, but we welcome the fact that contingency plans are being drawn up—in fact, we called for such plans—as a last resort. Will the Prime Minister clarify exactly what kind of vaccination policy is being considered? Is it the vaccination of a limited number of animals, which will then be slaughtered, or the vaccination of a far greater number? What are the implications of that for export resumption?
    The Prime Minister: It is correct, as I said to the right hon. Gentleman a few days ago, that we must consider the option of vaccination. It is being considered for particular areas where the disease has spread to many parts. Obviously, in other areas, the disease has been far more easily controlled and the number of cases is fewer. I think it best not to announce the precise details until we have discussed the matter with representatives of the National Farmers Union. Obviously, it is a contingency that we have to look at. I understand the huge resistance in parts of the farming community, because of the difficulties for the farming industry itself. Vaccination is no easy solution—that has to be said clearly. However, it is necessary to consider it because it has clearly emerged during the past few days, as more and more evidence has come through of the number of sheep movements prior to the detection and reporting of the disease—I think that I told the House a couple of weeks ago that there might have been as many as 2,000 sheep movements before the disease was detected, but now it is clear that that was an understatement—that probably about 1.35 million sheep were exported or moved during the month of February. Therefore, if the disease was incubating then, it has been far more widespread than hitherto thought. That is why in certain areas, where the disease is particularly strong,

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    we have to consider the option of vaccination, but we shall discuss that very carefully with people in the farming community before we announce the details.
    Mr. Hague: Clearly, the Government have been forced to consider a vaccination policy because the disease continues to spread at an alarming rate. I put it to the Prime Minister that there continues to be a serious lack of resources on the front line in particular areas. In a situation where every hour counts, many farmers report that it takes many hours to get through to MAFF on the telephone even to report a case of foot and mouth. The need for more vets remains, even though many more have been recruited.
    This morning, I received a letter from a Ministry vet of 40 years experience who retired at Christmas. He said:
    "Yesterday … I heard three times on radio and television that more vets are required … Last Friday … I phoned the MAFF offices at Exeter and Bristol … and offered my services. I was thanked for the offer of help … I have heard nothing since."
    Will the Prime Minister ensure that the whole government machine gets its act together to make the most of those resources?
    The Prime Minister: Obviously, I do not know about the particular case the right hon. Gentleman mentions. When I was in Worcester yesterday, I met retired vets who had been brought back into service. There are now about seven times the usual number of vets in the state veterinary service. We continue to recruit them from whatever source we possibly can.
    On the situation on the ground, of course it is extremely difficult—especially in areas such as Cumbria or Devon, where they have to deal with a large number of outbreaks. A huge logistical effort is required. Sometimes, the perception is of an outbreak on a farm with perhaps a few hundred cattle or sheep, and that that is easy to deal with—but some of those farms have several thousand livestock spread over a large distance. It is incredibly difficult for the people to deal with that. However, every resource they ask for we put in, as far as we possibly can. The key matter is to ensure that the report to slaughter time of 24 hours is maintained in every part of the country. In Cumbria, that is proving extremely difficult, but in most parts of the country that is now up and running.
    Mr. Hague: Clearly, the vets and soldiers involved in tackling this crisis are doing a tremendous job and are working extremely hard. However, in every way one looks at it at present, the crisis is getting worse. Yesterday, we had a record number of outbreaks, and three of the outbreaks in recent days have been in new areas— [Interruption.] We had 47 outbreaks, so if it is not a record, it is very near to a record. Three of the outbreaks in recent days have been in entirely new areas, including a further outbreak today. The backlog of infected animals awaiting slaughter has doubled in the past week to more than 250,000 and the number of carcases has reached 118,000. When does the Prime Minister think that this disease will truly be under control?
    The Prime Minister: Let me first correct some of the information that the right hon. Gentleman has given. There is an enormous effort on the ground. The Army
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    logistics team is doing a superb job, the vets are working every hour that they possibly can, and slaughtermen and contractors are being hired at a huge rate.
    In respect of the daily figures, we have to be cautious because they are revised day after day as fresh information comes in from different parts of the country. However, I can say that in the last week almost 200,000 animals have been slaughtered. That is getting on for double the figure for the week before. About 130,000 carcases have been disposed of in the last week, which is getting on for three times the figure for the week before. This information is being upgraded the entire time.
    The right hon. Gentleman asked me how we could be sure when the disease would end. The answer is that we cannot be sure at the present time, for the very reason that I gave a moment or two ago. If thousands of sheep movements did indeed take place before the disease was detected, it is important to realise that there will be certain parts of the country—Cumbria, very obviously—where it is extremely difficult to tackle the disease by the means originally contemplated. That is precisely why we have to look at issues like vaccination.
    However, in other areas of the country—about six or seven of them—there have been one or two outbreaks, and, thankfully, there have not been any more cases in the last week or two. Northern Ireland is an example of that, and the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development is now applying for disease-free status for Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland had a case early on, but that has not been followed by another case. Therefore, there are areas of the country where, at the present time—and I stress "present time"—we are managing to keep the disease under control and eradicate it. However, in some of these areas, especially in Cumbria but not limited to Cumbria, that is very difficult, for the reasons that I have given.
    Mr. Hague: We are entitled to ask when the right hon. Gentleman thinks that the disease will be under control—[Interruption.] We are entitled to ask, because the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said three weeks ago that it was under control, but the chief scientist said that it was not under control—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not expect the right hon. Gentleman to have to shout.
    Mr. Hague: There is a major crisis in this country, which some Labour Members wish to ignore. We are entitled to ask when the disease will be under control, because the Minister said that it was under control, the chief scientist said that it was not under control, and the Prime Minister said that it was on track to being under control. We are entitled to ask when the right hon. Gentleman thinks that it will be brought under control—that is terminology that the Government use.
    The Minister in charge of the rural taskforce said yesterday that this is an enormous crisis, in some ways unprecedented, and he is right. The Prime Minister rightly said yesterday that he would be straining every sinew to tackle the crisis, and we welcome that. "Every sinew" must mean every appropriate military resource, every available vet, and every ounce of the Prime Minister's

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    energy and attention. Does he agree that he will have to continue to strain every sinew until the disease is brought fully under control?
    The Prime Minister: Of course we must do everything that we can to ensure that the disease is brought under control and eradicated, but I think that the right hon. Gentleman is wrong to suggest that anyone is ignoring the seriousness of the problem. We all recognise how serious it is, which is precisely why we are taking the measures that we are.
    Having recently visited Devon, Cumbria and Worcestershire, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the people to whom I spoke realise that every resource that they require from the centre is being provided. However, the situation is difficult, particularly in those areas where the disease has taken hold.
    I would also point out to the right hon. Gentleman that we have already slaughtered more livestock in this outbreak than we did in the entirety of the 1967 outbreak, which continued for over eight months. Of course, the big difference between then and now is that there were far fewer movements of livestock then than there are now.
    I agree that we have to make every possible effort to control and eradicate the disease. I hope that everyone in this House understands that. All that I am saying to the right hon. Gentleman is that, at the Present time at least, we are able to look at some success in certain areas because the cases have not been repeated. However, in some areas there have been so many movements of sheep that the situation is difficult, and there is no point in pretending otherwise.
    Ms Claire Ward: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many of those farmers who are in the fortunate position of still being able to sell their livestock at market are facing reductions in prices—in some cases, for lambs, of up to £11 and perhaps even more? Will he take this opportunity first, to encourage the British public to continue to buy British meat and support our British farmers, and secondly, to ask our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to review whether our farmers and consumers are getting the best deal from the retailers, who do not appear to be passing on those reductions to the consumers?
    The Prime Minister: On the last point about prices, I know that that concern is often expressed, and we have discussed it with the retailers and the farming industry. On the first point, it is worth stressing that in addition to the £600 million agrimonetary compensation that we are paying out, there is an additional £150 million agrimonetary compensation and more than £150 million compensation for the animals slaughtered.
    In addition, the animal welfare scheme has now been substantially upgraded by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and we are making every effort to ensure that the proper processes are in place so that people can claim under the animal welfare scheme. Again, even with the best will in world, those farmers who have lost their stock face the problem of restocking, and then they face the problem of how, in the future, we devise the right sustainable and viable strategy for farming. That is something that we have
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    already committed ourselves to sit down and work out with the farming communities when the immediate spread of the disease is over.
    Mr. Charles Kennedy: Will the Prime Minister give the House an assurance that if any Labour Member uses racist language or language that invites racist instincts in this country, he will without hesitation, on principle and on the spot, withdraw the parliamentary Whip from such a Member?
    The Prime Minister: I have made it clear that it is entirely unacceptable for any Labour candidate to use language of a racist nature or language calculated to stir up racist feelings in this country. The right hon. Gentleman and I—and, indeed, all the main political parties—signed up to the Commission for Racial Equality statement. We will abide by that statement, as I am sure all political parties will.
    Mr. Kennedy: I welcome the Prime Minister's comments. I agree that all the main party leaders in this country signed the pledge from the Commission for Racial Equality. In particular, if we are in a pre-election mode in this country, is it not deeply important that we ensure that those words are worth more than the paper they are written on?
    The Prime Minister: It is generally accepted on both sides of the House that Britain benefits from being a multicultural, multiracial society and that many people, including many hon. Members, have backgrounds from other countries. I dare say that virtually all of us have in us some blood from other races and nations. In this modern day and age, surely it is not merely a principle that is morally right, but in our self-interest that anyone, irrespective of race or ethnic background, is a full and proper member of our society.
    Mrs. Claire Curtis-Thomas: When I arrived in the House in May 1997, I became acutely aware that many of us were suffering from a very serious medical condition. However, I subsequently realised that, for most of us, it is a selective condition—but for millions of people in the United Kingdom deafness is a real problem. I want to take this opportunity to thank those hon. Members who signed my early-day motion on testing for deafness in babies.
    Will my right hon. Friend be kind enough to ensure that that programme is extended to all regions of the United Kingdom, so that all babies can benefit from the test, which will undoubtedly improve their educational outcomes?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend draws attention to a very serious problem. Many children are perceived to have particular learning disabilities, whereas their true problem is one of deafness. The Government's neo-natal hearing screening scheme is now being piloted at some 20 sites across the country. Subject to the successful

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    piloting of the scheme, it is our intention to introduce it nationwide and to try to ensure that, for those children who have that disability, it is spotted early and dealt with.
    Mr. Tim Loughton: Mr. Speaker—[Interruption.] While Labour Members jeer, large parts of the country are living in seige conditions—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. We must hear the hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. Loughton: Labour Members may jeer, but as they do large parts of the country are living under siege conditions and many thousands of our countrymen face losing their livelihoods. Will the Prime Minister now give us his estimate for the number of dead livestock by May?
    The Prime Minister: The number of dead livestock obviously depends on the number of premises in which the disease is detected. What we have—[Interruption.] It is impossible for me to predict precisely the number of premises in which the disease will be detected in the coming two months. It is important, however, that where the disease is detected in any premises—in other words, they are infected premises—the animals are slaughtered within 24 hours. As I said, with the exception of Cumbria, where that is very difficult to do because of the spread of the disease, that is now happening in the vast majority of infected areas.
    Liz Blackman: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some private hospitals are charging different amounts for the same operation—a lower amount if patients pay cash up front and up to twice the amount if the operation is paid for by a private health insurer? To get round that problem, some private health insurers encourage their clients to pay in the first instance and to split the difference on the balance. Given that evidence, does he think that the whole area of private health and private health insurance needs to come with a Government health warning, particularly in the light of the Conservative party's policies?
    The Prime Minister: I was not aware of the practice to which my hon. Friend refers. However, many people believe that the national health service provides, and should provide, the best guarantee for them of good treatment. An enormous amount of change and investment is necessary, and it is this Government who are making the biggest substantial investment in the national health service since its creation.
    Mr. Tom King: Does the Prime Minister appreciate that, in the face of the worst crisis in my constituency and the south-west generally in my time as a Member of Parliament—the regional development agency has just assessed that, this year, it will cost the south-west £1 billion, with the cost to be borne by businesses of all sorts—and with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food virtually at breaking point and other Departments desperately trying to provide information, the role of an MP becomes absolutely critical? Therefore, I would find it inconceivable if my
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    constituents were suddenly to be unrepresented at the time of the greatest crisis that they have faced. This is a national emergency.
    Has the Prime Minister noticed the contribution that Brigadier Birtwhistle has made, and is he aware that there is a regional brigade commander in every region of this country? In the face of this national crisis, with the Prime Minister having recognised at last the contribution that the Army can make, can I encourage him to give it full responsibility in the regions?
    The Prime Minister: The Army has full responsibility for all logistical operations in its regions. Based on talks with people in the areas most affected, I think that the relationship between civil service officials and the military is working well. The position, however, is very difficult, particularly in areas such as Cumbria where the disease is at its height.
    There are two separate effects on business: the effect on the farming industry and the effect on the tourism industry. On tourism, it is important that both sides of the House send out the clear message that we want people to go into the countryside, but stay off the farmland. That is the right message to give to people. There are masses of things for people to do, and there is no reason for them to cancel their holidays. Although we can look and are looking at what Government help can be given, the single biggest support that we can give to the tourism industry is custom, trade and business.
    Mr. Nigel Beard: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the generous purposes of Government policies are often diminished by public administration and by long and complex forms, obscure language and protracted procedures? Will he champion a campaign in all Departments to base public administration on the minimum number of questions necessary, plain English and service with a smile?
    The Prime Minister: That has probably been the ambition of most Prime Ministers for a long period. It is right that the measures that have been taken for schools, hospitals and the police will reduce bureaucracy. It is important that we make those changes and reforms, but it is also important that we make the big investment in our schools, hospitals and police that the country needs. As a result of the investment already made, we have the best primary school results this country has ever seen, we now have 17,000 more nurses in the health service than a few years ago, and the latest police figures show that, in the past 14 months, numbers have risen by 1,400, which is the largest rise in well over a decade.
    Mr. Richard Livsey: Will the Prime Minister pay particular attention to foot and mouth in Powys, where Brecon and Radnor has 11 cases and Montgomery has 16? We are on a knife edge. The carcases are supposed to be buried within 24 hours of the disease being identified, but we have only 50 troops available in Wales. Their headquarters is in my constituency. Will the right hon. Gentleman use his good offices to get more of the Army involved in Wales?

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    Will he consider delaying the general election for one or two months so that he and his Ministers can concentrate on the issue?
    The Prime Minister: On the hon. Gentleman's last point, I have nothing to add to what I said on Monday. In respect of the Army, we sometimes hear that more troops are required on the ground and I will consider the situation in Powys. We have a sufficient number of contractors available to carry out the work. The problem is organising that and finding the burial sites that are needed. In the past week or so, as a result of the work by the Environment Agency and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, we have identified about 48 or 50 sites in different parts of the country, the most visible of which is in Cumbria, where a large site is being used for burial. We thought—I think rightly—that the priority was to achieve the policy of 24 hours from report of a case to slaughter. As I have said, disposal is happening more quickly as we open up burial sites. However, I shall consider the particular problem of Powys this afternoon.
    Mr. Denis MacShane: As our nation's hearts go out to farming communities, can we spare a thought for the families of the 6,000 steelworkers who face great misery without receiving a peep of sympathy from the Conservatives or their stringpullers in the press? Will my right hon. Friend welcome the announcement by Corus yesterday that it will work with trade unions on a package to retrain as many of those steelworkers as possible? Surely the way forward in the 21st century is to have a social partnership, with Corus joining the car and aerospace industries in working with employees to ensure their future. Will he put his authority behind the help that the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions have given? They are providing grants and advice on working with the European rules to ensure that the rescue package succeeds. The steel community, after 20 years of being butchered by the Conservatives, now has a Government on its side.
    The Prime Minister: We will certainly examine carefully the proposals by the trade unions and management on specific help with training. We also stand ready to help in any other way that we can with those several thousand people who unfortunately face losing their jobs. Again, I pay tribute to the way in which the trade unions have put together their package. They have
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    acted in a highly responsible and commercially sensitive way. I hope that the company listens to them; we certainly will.
    Sir Raymond Whitney: Last month, the International Monetary Fund warned that the Chancellor's spending plans risk damaging the economy. It said that the much-trumpeted golden rule is an inadequate guide to fiscal policy. Given that recent economic and financial developments have reinforced the criticism of the IMF, will the Prime Minister advise the Chancellor that his policies are heading towards boom and bust?
    The Prime Minister: No, I do not think that I can. The hon. Gentleman is wrong about the IMF. It said that the Chancellor should not relax his fiscal position and, of course, he did not, for the reasons that he gave in the Budget. I take it that the hon. Gentleman is against the extra investment that we are putting into schools, hospitals and crime. As ever, we have a somewhat confused message from the Conservatives about what their policies really are.
    The hon. Gentleman mentioned boom and bust, and I am glad that he did. It is right to remind the House of what happened when he and his party were last in power. In the early 1990s, more than a million jobs were lost, interest rates were at 15 per cent., output plummeted and thousands of homes were repossessed. Today, there are a million extra jobs, lower mortgages, better living standards and a Government who have got rid of boom and bust.
    Mr. Andrew Dismore: Last week, I met members of the Barnet senior citizens forum, who raised with me their concern about their perception of ageism in the NHS. I therefore welcome yesterday's announcement of the new NHS national service framework, which will ensure that services are provided on the basis of need, not age—[Interruption.] When does my right hon. Friend expect the new resources announced yesterday to make a real difference to pensioners in my constituency?
    The Prime Minister: We certainly welcome the NHS statement, which forms part of the changes we are making. In response to the comments shouted by Opposition Members at my hon. Friend, let me remind them that we will be going into the election promising the largest ever investment in the health service, with 17,000 more nurses, a new hospital building programme and extra GPs on the way, while they will be going into the election arguing for cuts in that investment. I think that we will be waving bye bye to them.

Points of Order
3.31 pm
Mr. Bernard Jenkin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. After four wasted years on the London underground, London commuters are preparing for the misery of yet another strike. At the same time, the Government's policy of co-operating with Transport for London and Mr. Kiley has totally collapsed. Where is the Deputy Prime Minister? Should he not be here to make a statement on the chaos of his policy, instead of running away from a proper debate on the subject?
Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order.
Mr. Alex Salmond: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have you had an intimation of a further statement from the Minister of Agriculture concerning the report in The Scotsman today, which suggests that vaccination is now an option for the Government as a result of a report from Dr. Keith Sumption? Does the Minister want to tell the House whether the report has been influential and, in particular, will he respond to the allegation in The Scotsman that the timing of the general election is impinging on the Government's policy to eradicate foot and mouth?
Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for the Chair.

BILL PRESENTED
  ELECTRICITY ACT 1989 (AMENDMENT)
  Mr. Simon Thomas, supported by Mr. Elfyn Llwyd, Mr. Richard Livsey, Mr. Dafydd Wigley and Mr. leuan Wyn Jones, presented a Bill to amend the Electricity Act 1989 to transfer from the Secretary of State to the National Assembly for Wales certain functions relating to the granting of consent for the construction of generating stations in Wales: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 6 April, and to be printed [Bill 76].

Bus Services (Provision of Information)
3.33 pm
Mr. Bill Rammell: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require operators of bus services to record, compile and publish certain information on the quality of their services; and for connected purposes.
Buses are the work force of our local transport system, with two thirds of public transport journeys being made by bus. Crudely put, if bus services do not work, public transport does not work. Bus services are certainly essential in giving people choice in how they travel throughout the country, but for far too long, and certainly in the 12 years until 1997, their development has been a story of abject failure.
It is well known that the previous Government deregulated bus services outside London and, as a result, bus usage fell by a staggering 24 per cent. As a consequence, private operators cut less profitable routes and the public found buses less reliable as routes and timetables were chopped and changed. That process of decline became self-perpetuating: as services were cut, fewer people used them, so there was less revenue available to reinvest in them.
In Harlow, an acute form of that problem has developed. The quality of our local service, which is predominantly provided by the Arriva bus company, has varied between the barely acceptable and the frankly disgraceful. In the past year alone, 400 of my constituents have contacted me about the failings of the service, of which I shall provide details. Too often, services run late—in some cases by up to 45 minutes—and on some routes that is a persistent and regularly occurring problem. Arriva has found it difficult to recruit drivers, so services have often been cut without adequate local consultation.
People who rely on the bus service to get to work, such as the postmen who have contacted me, are forced to take taxis or use their own car because they know that they cannot count on the bus to get them to work on time. Children who once used the bus service to get to school can no longer do so, so their parents use cars during the rush hour and thereby add to problems of congestion. Pensioners, many of whom regard the bus service as a lifeline, feel greatly let down as they stand in the cold and the rain waiting for a bus. To give some scale to the local problems, in the run up to Christmas the lost mileage rate peaked at 13.5 per cent. Bus services are now the second most important issue in my constituency postbag.
I do not want to give a wholly negative impression. Positive changes are beginning to improve the position. There has never before been the long-term commitment to increase investment that is embodied in the 10-year transport plan, whereby £59 billion will go to local transport schemes, targeted to achieve a 10 per cent. increase in bus usage. That is a massive and welcome shot in the arm. The establishment of the quality partnerships between local authorities and private bus operators envisaged under the Transport Act 2000 will certainly improve services. Especially helpful is the permission for local authorities to contract out whole routes to a single operator if that is judged to be in the public interest. The national target that no more than 0.5 per cent. of scheduled mileage should be lost for reasons that lie within operators' control represents a clear step forward,

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as does the Government's insistence that they want improvements in reliability and punctuality to be achieved in conjunction with increased usage.
Although improvements are being made, we have to do more. I have been lobbying and pressing Arriva locally on those issues for more than 18 months. Sometimes, the response has not been all that I expected: for example, I was given a commitment that no further changes to the timetable would be made without full local consultation, but that commitment was unilaterally breached by Arriva. Latterly, however, I have been persuaded that Arriva, whose national management have become engaged in resolving local problems, is determined to improve services.
I understand the company's difficulty in recruiting drivers at a time of very low unemployment, but Arriva is now developing strategies to overcome that problem. The lost mileage performance indicator has improved significantly, from the pre-Christmas peak of 13.5 per cent. to low single figures now. Especially welcome is the company's senior management's agreement to meet every three months in my constituency representatives of the district council, the county council, pensioners and me to review progress.
That brings me to my main reason for introducing the Bill. At our first meeting some weeks ago, I was surprised and concerned by Arriva' s attitude to the publication of its performance information. We were given performance information, some of which I have quoted today, but when I made a request—a reasonable one, I think—for it to be made publicly available every three months, I was told that that was not possible because the information was commercially confidential. I believe that that is, quite simply, wrong—and that applies to all bus operators, not only Arriva, that are protected by commercial confidentiality in that way.
The issue has broader ramifications. When drawing up my Bill, I was told by colleagues that they could not get two operators in their constituencies to sit down and discuss local services with them because of issues of commercial confidentiality. If we were talking about companies that sell cars, I could understand the problem, but we are talking about a public service. Organisations providing public services widely accept that performance can be enhanced through benchmarking and publicising performance against agreed criteria. Such a process can shame poor performers into action and be used positively as a motivational tool to achieve organisational change and improvement, which is why we have legislation requiring schools, rail operators, the Civil Aviation Authority, local councils and many others to publish their performance indicators. There is no such requirement on bus companies, which can plead commercial confidentiality.
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That strikes me as a glaring omission. It is not as though the information is not already being compiled. On local authority subsidised routes, operators are contractually obliged to provide electronic ticket machine data to the local authority to justify the subsidy. For all routes—not just those subsidised by the local authority—the traffic commissioner is charged with inspecting and ensuring that 95 per cent. of bus services arrive within a specified time frame in accordance with the timetable. If they do not, the traffic commissioner can levy penalties. That is currently undertaken randomly, but clearly it could be developed.
I know that there will be a host of objections to what I am proposing. They include complexity; the time taken to compile the information in an understandable form; and the need to rely on the honesty of drivers when compiling information, to name but a few. In principle, those are the same objections that every organisation uses initially to argue against performance indicators when it has a vested interest in not letting the public know how well it is performing.
Those objections should be rejected. With good will, it must be possible to devise an acceptable, simple and fair system for measuring the performance of bus operators. That change—allied to the extra investment now being made in our public transport system and increased regulation—is the only sure way to restore confidence in our bus services, which are important to local communities.
I strongly believe that change is long overdue; it is a change whose time has come. I therefore commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Bill Rammell, Ms Hazel Blears, Ms Karen Buck, Mr. Ivor Caplin, Mr. Jeff Ennis, Dr. Ian Gibson, Mr. Alan Hurst, Mr. Bob Russell, Angela Smith, Mr. Ian Stewart, Mr. Brian White and Mr. Anthony D. Wright.

BUS SERVICES (PROVISION OF INFORMATION)
Mr. Bill Rammell accordingly presented a Bill to require operators of bus services to record, compile and publish certain information on the quality of their services; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 15 June, and to be printed [Bill 77].

ELECTION PUBLICATIONS BILL [LORDS]
Ordered,
That—

(1) at the sitting on Thursday 29th March, the Speaker shall not adjourn the House until any Message from the Lords relating to the Election Publications Bill [Lords] shall have been received; and

(2) notices of Amendments, new Clauses and new Schedules in respect of the Bill may be accepted by the Clerks at the Table before the Bill has been read a second time.—[Mr. Dowd.]

Orders of the Day

  Private Security Industry Bill [Lords]
  Order for Second Reading read
  3.43 pm
  The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Charles Clarke): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The Bill forms part of the Government's commitment to reducing crime and disorder. It introduces statutory regulation to the private security industry to drive out criminals and drive up standards. It will assist the building of important crime reduction partnerships between police, the private security industry and others. It is a regulatory Bill, but it makes straightforward and sensible arrangements for the private security industry and is consistent with our general aim of keeping regulation to the minimum necessary.
  The private security industry is a thriving, diverse industry that has grown rapidly in recent years and is now part of daily life. We are all used to seeing private security personnel in shopping centres, department stores and office blocks; delivering cash to banks and building societies; and in many of our public service institutions. At present, there is no statutory regulation of the industry. I pay tribute to the industry for taking significant self-regulatory steps in recent years to raise its standards and image through trade associations and its training and inspectorate organisations.
  The Government believe, however, that voluntary self-regulation is not enough. It cannot deal with the criminal or unscrupulous elements in the industry. There are no effective controls to prevent such people from leaving one area or firm and setting up again elsewhere, which can seriously hamper the work of the police in dealing with them.
  Clients of the private security industry, by definition, give privileged access to those providing their security, and those providers are placed in particular positions of trust, with inside knowledge of their clients' weaknesses. That trust can be abused in ways that have damaging or even tragic consequences.
  A recent survey revealed that some 350,000 people were wholly or mainly employed in the private security industry—a large number of people. The industry has a total annual turnover of more than £2 billion, but despite its size and important role in the security of our communities, no proper regulation is in place.
  Jackie Ballard: The Minister mentioned the figure of 350,000. I expect that other hon. Members have different figures from other surveys, which suggests that there is some doubt about the number of people employed in the industry. Does the figure that he quoted include people employed, for example, by shops?
  Mr. Clarke: The figure that I quoted from the survey includes people employed in-house, which I think is the hon. Lady's point. She is right that the numbers vary between surveys. There is a large number of part-time workers, and there are definitional issues as well. I have previously used the figure of 250,000, but the latest advice
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  that I have is that 350,000 is an appropriate figure. It is not germane to the substance of the Bill, but it indicates the importance of the sector to all our lives. As I said, despite the sector's size and role, no proper regulation is in place.
  It is not surprising, therefore, that the public have severe reservations about the activities of those sectors of the industry that are prone to exploitation by rogue elements. That is why both the industry and the police have long sought statutory regulation. We believe that a statutory framework is the most effective way to drive out the undesirable elements and thus increase public confidence in the industry.
  Regulation has been long awaited. My right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), whom I am delighted to see in his place, tabled a private Member's Bill on the subject is long ago as 1977. I pay tribute to him, as he has played a long and distinguished role in trying to ensure that the House gives proper attention to this important issue He has consistently argued for that, and in preparations for the Bill we had a number of discussions about the right way to proceed.
  In 1995, the Select Committee on Home Affairs recommended a statutory licensing system. The Government of the day decided that statutory regulation was not the answer and that the industry should regulate itself. At the time, the Labour party said that that response did not go far enough, and we indicated our intention to regulate the industry on our return to office. That is the position that we have reached, and is why the Bill is before the House.
  After taking office, we undertook a consultation exercise with those most directly concerned: in particular, the industry, the police service, local authorities and the entertainment industry. As part of the exercise, we met many typical small to medium-sized security firms that saw regulation as a way of promoting confidence in the industry, as well as protecting the public. They were willing to be regulated even if that came at a cost, because they recognised that confidence in their services had to be their paramount concern.
  Following the consultations, we published a White Paper in March 1999 outlining our proposals and inviting further comments. The White Paper has been deposited in the Library as a background paper to the Bill. The key aspects of our proposals were, first, that it was essential to vet people working in the industry to exclude criminal elements; secondly, that companies providing a recognised standard of service should be recognised through a voluntary inspection scheme; and, thirdly, that regulation would help to raise standards in the industry, building on progress made through self-regulation. We received about 180 responses to the White Paper from a wide range of bodies, which were generally supportive of the proposals and strongly in favour of regulation.
  The Bill essentially reflects the proposals in the White Paper. It was carefully scrutinised in the other place, and a number of details have been improved in the light of the helpful arguments that were advanced, not least by Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members. As the House will know, I always hope to take account of the well-argued and constructive proposals that are made by all hon. Members during the passage of a Bill, in order to achieve as much consensus as possible.
  Mr. John Bercow: What assessment has the Minister made of the incidence of crime in the

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  private security industries of European Union member states that have systems of statutory regulation? What assessment has he made of the costs of those systems?
  Mr. Clarke: My right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South has done the most distinguished work on that subject, on which he has published one of his numerous monographs. I have read the monograph, which deals with the various issues to which the hon. Gentleman refers. We have considered regulatory systems, although the word "assessment" is perhaps too strong. We have not conducted a rigorous assessment of the security systems of every European country. In many countries, practices are entirely different, so it is difficult to achieve a base for international comparison, but we have considered the arrangements in other countries and sought to achieve a progressive element for ourselves. As my right hon. Friend points out in his private arguments and in that learned monograph—
  Mr. Bercow: And well thumbed.
  Mr. Clarke: Yes, it is well thumbed, and it shows that, in the experience of other countries, a powerful form of regulation can work in driving down a crime levels. The effectiveness of such regulation depends on the country and the culture to which it is applied, but such experience has been gained.
  Mr. Bruce George: I think that the success of such measures largely depends on how good the regulatory system is, how much the security industry is respected and the close relationship between private security and the police. If they trust each other, and the public trust those involved in private security, crime prevention is much more successful than when the police and the public are alienated from the industry. We have experienced that recipe for catastrophe for the past 20 or 30 years.
  Mr. Clarke: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, he speaks with knowledge that is gained from great experience in the field. The partnership approach that he advocates is precisely that which is set out in the Bill. That is why we welcome the fact that the industry, trade unions and police are all in favour of establishing a regulatory regime that can achieve the public confidence that he describes.
  The main proposal to achieve that aim is our over-arching provision to create a non-departmental public body called the Security Industry Authority, whose aim will be to regulate sectors of the industry in respect of which there is genuine public concern about the activities of criminals and cowboys. We do not propose to regulate for the sake of doing so when public concern does not justify action or when the regulatory burden might be disproportionate.
  That is why the SIA will be responsible for licensing individuals who are offering services under contract in designated sectors of the industry. It will also be responsible for regulating those involved in door supervision—bouncers—and in wheelclamping services, including people who offer services under contract to others and those who are employed in-house. In addition, it will inspect companies in response to voluntary applications and issue approved contractor status to those
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  meeting an acceptable standard. Finally, it will be responsible for setting and raising professional standards within the industry.
  The Bill extends to England and Wales and has been welcomed by the industry and the police service. It does not apply to Scotland, which is considering whether to make proposals to regulate the private security industry.
  The functions of the new authority are set out in clause 1. Essentially, it will license individuals and approve companies with the help of an inspections regime; keep the private security industry and the legislative framework within which it operates under general review—I shall return to that point, as a general evolution is needed over time—and set, approve and ratchet up standards. A key feature of the effectiveness of the SIA will be the calibre and independence of its members and senior officials. It will need to establish good working relations with the industry in order to keep itself properly informed of the realities of the sector that it is regulating, for the reasons set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South. There will be a place in its membership for the industry.
  The Government's overriding intention, which I want to emphasise, is to ensure that the authority and its officials are properly independent of the industry and are seen to be so. They must carry the confidence of everyone with a stake in the industry—the police, insurers, the public and others. If the Bill becomes law, I assure hon. Members of our determination to secure that independence and integrity, which will be critical to the success of the regime.
  Mr. Gerald Howarth: I am sorry for missing the Minister's earlier remarks. Will he ensure that those who serve on the authority not only understand the industry but are independent? That is important.
  Mr. Clarke: I apologise if I was not clear about that. At the beginning of my speech, I said that the Security Industry Authority will need to establish good working relations with the industry to keep properly informed of the realities of the sector that it will regulate. It is obviously important for some members of the authority to have direct personal experience of the industry. It is vital to reach a position whereby the independent agency carries such authority that its integrity is generally accepted.
  Sir Norman Fowler: I accept the Minister's comments about the authority, but the Bill will not cover people who install alarms. Why has that change from the proposals in the White Paper been made?
  Mr. Clarke: In summary, we made the change because the better regulation taskforce, which considers burdens on industry, examined the extent to which legislation was needed to tackle crime in the alarm installation industry. We concluded that the need to tackle criminality was not clear enough to justify the inclusion of such a provision in the Bill. I shall deal with the point in more detail later, but I emphasise that one of the key functions of the new authority is to keep the legislative framework under general review. Similar issues to that mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman might arise in future.
  Mr. Nick Hawkins: The Minister is dealing with specific matters and industries that the Bill

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  may cover. Have he or his officials considered whether paragraph 5 of schedule 2 covers those who are involved in computer programming, and the security aspects of such involvement? If he believes that the provision covers people in that important industry, will he consult more widely with the industry during the Bill's passage?
  Mr. Clarke: My officials and I have considered that carefully. I shall address the point in detail later; I believe that I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurances that he seeks. However, I was seduced by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) into going into a specific subject earlier than I intended.
  The employment status of the relevant individuals and the type of security services that they provide determine who is affected by the Bill. Clause 3 defines the employment status of those who will be caught by the regulatory framework. All individuals who provide security services directly, their supervisors and managers and the directors or partners of their company or firm will be required to have a licence. That also applies to those who supply services on an agency basis.
  Schedule 2 defines the sectors of the industry that are regulated. There are two main groups: first, those providing manned guarding services and, secondly, those engaged in immobilising vehicles—wheelclampers.
  Manned guarding is a diverse activity, but it has the common feature of guarding premises, property or people. The Bill proposes that individuals in the manned guarding sector should be licensed if they provide services under contract to a client. We do not generally propose to require them to have licences if they are employed in-house by companies. Those companies will already have satisfied themselves about their employees, and the Government do not intend to add an additional layer of checking where it is not necessary.
  The Government are fully aware of arguments in the industry and elsewhere that in-house staff should also be licensed. That relates to a point that the hon. Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) made earlier. We appreciate the weight of opinion behind those arguments. We were initially attracted to that idea, but, for the reasons that I gave the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield, we decided against it because we believed that it would be an additional bureaucratic burden on business.
  The Government are not closed to the arguments that have been made in favour of regulating in-house staff. We will bear them carefully in mind. The authority has a general duty to keep the operation of the industry and its parent legislation under review, and we will also have a formal review of all the arrangements after the authority has operated for three years. The Bill is flexible, and the Government can add or delete sectors of the industry by regulations. We will pay close attention to any recommendation from the authority that in-house manned guards should be brought into regulation.
  Mr. Bercow: The hon. Gentleman is right to be cautious about extending the burden of regulation, especially as it could affect large numbers of small businesses. He will be aware that the British Security Industry Association covers 70 per cent. of the sector,
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  including a number of large companies. Will he tell the House what proportion of the companies in the sector are small—that is, employing fewer than 50 people?
  Mr. Clarke: I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the figure that he requests. The thrust of his point is correct. The BSIA, with which we have worked closely, has been a strong advocate of the Bill. We are glad to have worked closely with it. However, it also has a commercial interest in strengthening the position of its members vis-a-vis some of the smaller operators in the field. That is why we have been concerned to see what the impact would be on those smaller of operators, and why, on the balance of judgment, we finally took the decisions that we have taken about those specific sectors, and about in-house staff.
  The provisions for the review and consideration of the process and its application will allow us to see whether we have been too bureaucratically heavy-handed in relation to some parts of the industry, or whether some parts of the industry—such as in-house staff—that are not within the remit of the Bill will need to be regulated. That is the judgment that we have made about the right way to proceed, but I am sorry that I do not have the figure that the hon. Gentleman requested.
  Door supervisors, or bouncers, form an important sub-set of the manned guarding sector regulated by the Bill. There are professional, reputable companies and operatives providing door supervisor services; but the fact that door supervisors operate most often at pubs and clubs, particularly at venues where young people are likely to gather, has meant that on too many occasions, disreputable and even criminal elements have infiltrated the sector.
  We know that some door supervisors have turned a blind eye to drug dealing on the premises that they are meant to be protecting. Worse still, we know of door supervisors who have used their position to deal in drugs themselves. We are also aware of bouncers committing physical assaults on members of the public. The Bill therefore requires all door supervisors to be licensed, whether they provide their services under contract to a client or are employed in-house by a pub or club. I shall come in a moment to the licensing regime and its relationship to the local authorities.
  I mentioned partnerships earlier. This will be an important area in which we can establish good partnerships between the police and local door supervisors in pubs and clubs. For example, in Manchester, 130,000 young people are in the city centre at 2 o'clock on Friday and Saturday mornings. That is an enormous number of people. Even in my own city of Norwich, between 10,000 and 13,000 young people are in the city centre on Friday and Saturday nights.
  Mr. Bercow: Not because of the MP?
  Mr. Clarke: The MP was out in the centre of Norwich with the police at that time of the morning a couple of weeks ago, and I think that the numbers were about 50 per cent. higher than they would otherwise have been because the word had got around that I was going to be there.
  There are serious points relating to this. For example, the city safe scheme in Manchester, which I commend, involves a radio system between all the bouncers and the

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  police to ensure that issues can be dealt with rapidly. That requires mutual confidence. In Norwich, there have recently been two tragic deaths of young people, and the question of how bouncers have operated has been important. We have a compact between the police, the local authority, the clubs and the bouncers to improve professional standards. That will be an important aspect of what we do.
  Wheelclampers form a second important sector regulated by the Bill. I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), whom I am delighted to see in her place today. She has been a strong, consistent campaigner for proper regulation of the industry, and, since being elected to the House, has taken an active, positive approach to the issue, which I want to place on record.
  We are addressing the issue of wheelclamping on private land—that is, land that is not a road to which the general public has access. Roads are separately regulated under the Road Traffic Acts. In our view, landowners must be able to take action against those who park on private land without permission, and wheelclamping—or at least the threat of it—may be an effective way to deal with irresponsible parking. However, it is crucial that such wheelclamping is carried out in a reasonable manner. To some extent, the law has already enshrined those principles. For example, in 1995, the Court of Appeal adjudged, in the case of Arthur and Arthur v. Anker, that clampers had acted legally as adequate warning signs had been displayed, the release fee was reasonable and there was a reasonable method of payment.
  The judgment provided useful guidelines, but only in broad terms, to courts faced with similar cases. The court did not define a general standard for the size of signs or what a "reasonable" release fee might be. That leaves the motorist who is aggrieved at having his or her car clamped on private land with only limited practical means of redress. Unless the behaviour of the clamper is outrageous, the motorist may well be uncertain of his or her rights and may also be dissuaded from going to court by the potential cost of legal fees.
  We believe that that gap in the law needs to be filled, which is why the Bill ensures that all wheelclamping on private land carried out as a business or as part of one's employment, or for a release fee, will be regulated by a licensing system. Each individual who provides wheelclamping services to others will therefore need a licence, as will his or her director or manager.
  We also considered whether the licensing regime needed to cover the wheelclamping by businesses of cars on their own land using their own employees, or in-house wheelclamping. We concluded that it did. Immobilising a car gives the damper such power over the car owner, with all the inherent danger of that power being abused, that we would leave the public open to the risk of further abuses were we not to legislate.
  However, in the example of in-house wheelclamping, the Bill allows the authority to avoid undue regulation by being able to require a licence only of the employer, if it is satisfied that the employer will vet employees to a suitable standard and also ensure their compliance with all the requirements and conditions of the licence.
  Finally, the Bill requires a private individual or anyone acting on behalf of that individual to be licensed if he or she wishes to engage in do-it-yourself wheelclamping that
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  involves charging a release fee. It also regulates three other sectors: private investigators, security consultants and keyholders. Those groups are much smaller in number than manned guards and wheelclampers and their activities give significantly less cause for public concern. None the less, such practitioners are in a special relationship of trust with regard to the security of their clients, and our White Paper proposals to take them into a statutory regulatory framework were welcomed.
  The Government believe that the public are justified in expecting those who offer such services under contract to be subject to regulation. However, that does not affect operatives in those sectors who are employed in-house by companies. Again, we believe that employers' own screening processes are sufficient.
  The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) asked about IT security consultants. I am happy to clarify a point relating to security consultants that has caused concern in some circles. Paragraph 5 of schedule 2, to which he referred, extends the provisions to security consultants whose activities are broadly defined in terms of giving advice about security precautions against any risk to property or the person.
  In keeping with the rest of Bill, that is a broad definition, accompanied by some clarificatory exemptions. Concern has been expressed about the position of the information security industry in relation to those definitions. Just as with tangible assets, there are real threats to the security of information and security advice, and precautions are needed to protect it.
  At present, there is no regulation of the information security industry. However, the Government are committed to regulating only where necessary. The Department of Trade and Industry will therefore consult the information security industry on the extent and effectiveness of existing precautions—protected measures—and whether further action is required. In the light of that, I am happy to make it clear that we do not currently intend to bring the information security industry within the scope of the new licensing regime established by the Bill.
  The Security Industry Authority, when established, will undertake full and detailed consultations about the discharge of the remits placed on it by the Bill. Nobody will be regulated by the Bill without their full knowledge and understanding. All relevant types of security consultant will be invited to participate in the authority's consultations at the appropriate time. I am happy to make those points clear and I hope that I have dealt with the confusion that arose.
  Mr. Hawkins: I am grateful to the Minister for his remarks, which are helpful to those involved in the information security sector of the IT industry, but is not he conscious of the fact that the broad wording of paragraph 5 of schedule 2 may accidentally catch some of those people, even if he does not intend that it should? Will he undertake further to consider that wording and whether it might be improved?
  Mr. Clarke: I am certainly prepared to look at the wording, but this is a historic Bill for which, as I have said, my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South has pressed for many years, and I am keen for its wording to take account of significant changes in the way in which security is offered. Over the past 20 years, for instance,

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  there have been considerable changes in the style of security, the approach to security and the technology that is used. That is why we have adopted a flexible stance in the Bill, requiring the Security Industry Authority to review the position and committing ourselves to consulting the industries concerned. I acknowledge that the wording of the Bill should relate to what we know now, in 2001, but in a broadly drafted context. That is our rationale, and that is why I have been able to give the commitments that I have given.
  All individual employees, supervisors, managers or directors in the sectors that I have described will be required to have licences. Let me return to the point made by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield. We are aware of the arguments in favour of taking other sectors into this regulatory framework, and particularly aware of the arguments relating to installers of alarm and security equipment. As with in-house manned guards, we were initially attracted to the idea of including them in regulation, but we were persuaded against that by the argument about the regulatory burden and, to a significant extent, by the lack of any substantial evidence of criminality. In the case of some sectors mentioned in the Bill, we have such evidence.
  We are not closed to arguments, but the Bill already gives the SIA a major task, and we do not want further to front-load its waiting list of people to license. We prefer to get the authority up and running with the duties given to it by the Bill in its present form, and then to listen to the voice of experience as it emerges. We will, of course, pay close attention to any recommendations from the authority.
  It will be an offence for anyone to engage in licensable conduct, as defined in the Bill, without a proper licence. It will also be an offence to employ an unlicensed person providing security services. As a result of a Government amendment in another place, the Bill also makes it an offence for an occupier of premises to permit unlicensed clamping of vehicles on those premises where such activities require a licence.
  A licence will be required for each designated security service provided. For example, if someone legitimately works as both a manned guard and a wheelclamper, he or she will need to be licensed for both activities. Exemptions from the need for a licence will be allowed when an individual is already subject to a type of vetting that affords protection for the public that is at least equivalent to that achieved by the criteria imposed by the authority.
  The authority will determine the criteria on which it will issue licences. The criteria will be published so that applicants and the public will know what the requirements are. There will be two types of criterion. First, the authority will check an individual's criminal record with the newly established Criminal Records Bureau. In the case of applicants in all but one of the regulated sectors, the authority will obtain a criminal record certificate showing both spent and unspent convictions. Because of particular concerns, door supervisors alone will be the subject of an enhanced criminal record certificate, showing spent and unspent convictions together with convictions for minor offences, and local police intelligence.
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  The Government believe that those exemptions from the provisions of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 are fully justified if private security operatives are to be licensed properly. That belief was shared by those who commented during our consultation period.
  It will be for the authority to determine what weight to give any criminal convictions revealed by the checks. It is unreasonable to say that any criminal conviction whatever should automatically prevent the granting of a licence—the authority will consider each application on its merits—but it is likely that certain serious offences relating to violence or drugs will bar an applicant from gaining a licence.
  The second type of criterion that the authority will take into account relates to skills and training. The authority will have an important role in setting and raising standards in the industry generally. I should say at this point that both the British Security Industry Association and the main trade union in the sector, the General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trades Union, have been active in promoting the case for proper training and development of staff, and the Government associate themselves strongly with those efforts.
  The Government will wish the authority to consider carefully how to ratchet up minimum quality thresholds. Any proposals will need to be discussed carefully with the industry.
  A number of current training and quality standards are relevant to the private security industry. Some of them are accepted as pretty good, but some are not so good. The SIA will need carefully to examine the range of quality of those standards before deciding on the standards that it wants to see in place. Although the authority will not want to reinvent the wheel, it may also not want to buy one off the shelf.
  As the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) said, in considering the type of quality standards that it wants to use, the authority will of course have to pay attention to standards in other European countries. I am clear that the authority should be thinking in terms of standards that are challenging for the industry. However, as with all training, it will also have to bear in mind what is practicable and achievable.
  The authority will be able to attach conditions to a licence, and it will be an offence to contravene them. The authority will also be able to refuse, modify, suspend or revoke a licence, and the criteria for doing so will be published. There will also be a standardised system of licence applications and procedures, and a standard licence format to help with public recognition and enable the licence holder to work anywhere in the country.
  Mr. Bercow: I am, as always, listening with interest to the hon. Gentleman's speech. He will be aware that the Government are furnishing themselves with the power to make regulations on exemptions from the licensing requirement and, for example, on arrangements for the grant of approvals. Detailed policy will be contained in those regulations. He will also know, from previous skirmishes, my interest in that subject. Can he assure me that those regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure, so that the House has a proper opportunity to debate them? If the answer is no and he proposes to opt instead for the negative procedure, will he at least

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  undertake, in the name of getting it right, to provide a draft of those regulations before the Bill is further considered?
  Mr. Clarke: We have discussed those two points at great and entertaining length. The fact is that Oppositions always ask for affirmative orders, whereas Governments are always inclined not to agree them. Occasionally, however, we have agreed them. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath may have been in a Committee that considered other legislation which has been passed when I accepted from Conservative Members an amendment for the affirmative procedure. Therefore, although our mind is not closed to proposals, we shall make practical decisions in each case.
  I am not sure that I can give the assurance that the hon. Member for Buckingham seeks that we shall be able to publish detailed draft regulations during the Bill's passage. I can, however, assure him that we shall do that as soon as we are able to do so.
  I also have an answer to the question on small companies that the hon. Member for Buckingham asked earlier. It is apparently the case that of 2,000 manned guarding companies in the United Kingdom, 1,600—four fifths, or 80 per cent.—had 50 or fewer employees.
  The authority will be able to charge a fee for licence applications. The fee should be the minimum necessary to allow the authority to be self-financing. I make it absolutely clear that it is not our intention to erect artificial financial barriers to employment in the industry. The exact fee will be determined by several factors, but we expect it to be about £35 to £40 for a licence that usually will last for three years. That is not a commitment to a specific figure, but an indication of the scale of charges that we envisage. We do not believe that that sum is extortionate. A fee of £40 for a three-year licence is equivalent to 25p a week. We do not believe that that should be a barrier to employment in the industry.
  We would hope that employers will want to reimburse employees for the cost of a licence. However, we do not believe that it is appropriate to shift the onus for payment from the individual to the employer, as the Bill correctly places responsibility for licensing at the level of the individual security operative. We believe that the fee must follow that responsibility. However the indications that I have had are that, in many industries, employers will reimburse employees for the cost. We hope that that will be general practice.
  There will be an avenue of appeal to the magistrates courts against a decision by the authority to refuse, modify or revoke a licence or a decision to impose conditions on a licence. That avenue of appeal reflects concerns expressed in another place and is a welcome improvement.
  Earlier, I mentioned delegation to local authorities. Although the Bill vests licensing powers centrally with the security industry authority, the Government are of course aware that many local author ties operate schemes to register door supervisors and wish to continue to have a role in licensing them.
  It is important that setting the licence criteria will remain the responsibility of the SIA, as we do not want to move away from a national standard in terms of licensing criteria. The Bill therefore makes no provision for local authorities to apply criteria other than those set out by the
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  authority. However, it envisages the possibility of local authorities undertaking the processes for the grant of licences to door supervisors—that is to say, receiving the applications, conducting the necessary checks, and deciding the eligibility for licences. As with decisions of the SIA, there are avenues of appeal to the magistrates courts against a local authority decision.
  Given local authorities' familiarity with the local scene, allowing them to conduct the necessary checks will clearly have some potential advantages. However, I should emphasise that delegation will take place only with the consent of the local authorities. There is no intention of simply foisting these duties on them against their will. We shall hold detailed discussions with the local authorities about the practicalities of delegation well in advance.
  Mr. Hawkins: The Minister will know from other debates of the Opposition's concern about the Government's propensity to place extra burdens on local authorities without providing the necessary funding. Will he undertake to ensure that the Government will provide the appropriate funding to allow local authorities to carry out this additional work?
  Mr. Clarke: I said that delegation would take place only with the consent of local authorities, and one consideration for the Government and the authorities would be the financial arrangements involved. I know that the previous Conservative Government at no time placed burdens on local authorities without paying for them, and I am therefore delighted with the integrity of the position adopted by the hon. Gentleman.
  The final element of the licensing system will be a public register listing every licensed person and the terms on which they have been licensed. The public and the police will thus be able to establish clearly whether an individual is properly licensed to engage in regulated security activities.
  The second main strand of the SIA's functions is the approved contractors scheme. The Bill establishes a system whereby providers of security services who meet certain standards can obtain recognition from the SIA. The Government are aware that some bodies in the industry and elsewhere favour making this a compulsory scheme. However, we have decided against that, at least for the present. We do not believe that a full and comprehensive case for imposing this additional burden across the board on the industry has yet been made. We believe that the majority of reputable companies will want to seek approval under the voluntary system.
  We are aware of arguments that the Government should set a lead by requiring that public contracts for security services will not be awarded to companies failing to meet the standards set by the SIA. I cannot give that absolute guarantee, but I can certainly say that we shall draw the virtues of the approved contractors register to the attention of the procurers of public service security contracts, and that we will make it clear to security companies that we are doing so. We believe that that will further increase the attractiveness of the scheme in the eyes of companies.
  The Bill contains provisions to convert the voluntary scheme into a compulsory one, if the authority and the Government of the day are convinced that that is the right thing to do. Once again, we will listen very carefully to what the SIA tells us about the operation of the voluntary scheme.

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  Providers of security services will be able to apply to the authority for approval against a set of published criteria. If the standards are met, the company will be able to advertise itself as approved.
  The supporting regime is similar to that for the licensing of individuals. The authority will draw up and publish its criteria; it can withhold or delay approval until the criteria are met; it may attach conditions to the grant of an approval; and it may charge a fee for processing the application.
  There will also be a right of appeal to the magistrates courts against any decision of the authority in this area, and there will be a public register of approved companies. It will be an offence falsely to claim approval under the scheme.
  It is important that the authority can actively police the licensing regimes that it establishes. The authority will therefore have powers of entry and inspection, but the powers contain a number of safeguards. For example, they are restricted to premises other than those solely used as domestic dwellings, and the purpose of the entry and inspection must be stated. These safeguards balance the rights of the individual with the need for the authority to have an effective enforcement mechanism.
  These additional safeguards were introduced and welcomed in another place in the light of concerns expressed in debate about the civil liberties implications of the powers.
  Sir Norman Fowler: Before the Minister finishes, will he say what he thinks the chances are of the admirable measures in the Bill reaching the statute book by the time the general election is called?
  Mr. Clarke: Very high. We shall have to see what Conservative Front-Bench Members and Liberal Democrat Members have to say about the matter, but my impression so far—subject to correction—is that there is a broad consensus, as there certainly was in the other place, as to the approach to be taken. There may be important points of detail to be debated—I do not want to trivialise that fact; but I believe that there is a general desire that we should respond to the wishes of the police and the security industry by getting legislation on to the statute book. I wait with interest to hear what will be said during this debate. I am confident that the Bill will receive Royal Assent by the time a general election is called—whenever that may be during the next year and a month.
  As I was saying before I was so politely interrupted, the Government believe that the benefits accruing from the Bill are several. The SIA will, for the first time, introduce a licensing regime that is universal, consistent and transparent. By licensing all door supervisors, the authority will drive down the incidence of violence and drug offences in pubs and clubs. By licensing all wheelclampers, the authority will deter the cowboys who prey on innocent motorists.
  The authority will also set about ratcheting up standards across the regulated sectors. It will play a central role in the future relationship between the private security industry, the police and the Government and the public whom we all serve; it will strengthen the partnerships that are so important.
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  It is important for the authority to work closely with the industry that it will regulate. However, it is also crucial that the authority is wholly independent of that industry. That will enable the public to have increased confidence in the industry, which, in turn, will, we hope and believe, be likely to lead to increased market opportunities for it.
  The Bill contains a comprehensive set of proposals and I hope that the House will agree that it deserves a Second Reading. I commend it to the House.
  4.26 pm
  Mr. Nick Hawkins: Unscrupulous and criminal activity by those who have been employed in the security industry has been of concern to Members on both sides of the House and in another place.
  In his opening remarks, the Minister paid tribute to the long-standing interest of the right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George). Similarly, I pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), who has also been interested in the matter for a long time. Sadly, as the Minister and hon. Members know, because foot and mouth is a serious problem in my right hon. Friend's constituency, he is unable to be with us. Had that not been the case, I have no doubt that he would have wanted to participate in the debate. As he was the Minister of State at the Home Office when the Select Committee on Home Affairs investigated the matter in 1994, I am sure that the present Minister will agree that my right hon. Friend's work was extremely useful in preparing the background for the measure.
  I pay tribute, too, to the former Member for Burton, Sir Ivan Lawrence, who was the Chairman of the Select Committee in 1994. He made a significant contribution to the Committee's report on the industry—as the Minister will confirm.
  The Opposition's Approach to the Bill is that it should not place unnecessary, overly complex, bureaucratic or burdensome regulations on the legitimate sector of the industry. I am sure that the House does not want the Bill to go further than is necessary or desirable. We must be especially careful not to hit the smallest people hardest. We do not want the Bill to impose a huge bureaucratic burden on small businesses; as we know, it is often easier—relatively—for big business to comply with Government regulations.
  A large company can afford to employ people in compliance and administrative departments to ensure that regulations are satisfied. However, for people legitimately trying to run a small company, who are working all the hours God sends to build up their business, extra bureaucratic regulation is a huge problem. Thus, in Committee, we shall want to spend a great deal of time considering how the legislation would operate—especially its effects on small companies. My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), who raised the matter in an earlier intervention, will be as keen as me to probe the Government carefully on that.
  The Minister described the proposed new security industry authority and how the Government envisage that it will operate. Conservative Members never feel comfortable with the creation of new quangos.
  When the Bill was in another place, it received not only quite a lot of attention from the Lords but a surprising amount of scrutiny from the national press. I was

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  particularly interested to read a description by one of our most distinguished parliamentary reporters of the debate in another place, in which he said that some called the new security industry authority "Ofbounce". He asked where, oh where was the libertarian voice that would scrutinise whether the authority was really necessary. I have a feeling that my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and I are in our current positions precisely to provide that libertarian voice and to ensure that there will be proper scrutiny. We do, however, recognise that there have been huge abuses throughout the country by so-called cowboy clampers.
  I want to pay personal tribute to Mr. Alan Franklin, editor of The Surrey-Hants Star, which covers not only my constituency but the constituencies of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), who intervened earlier, and my right hon. Friends the Members for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) and for Bracknell (Mr. MacKay). Over a period of not months but years, Mr. Franklin has highlighted many of the problems that my constituents and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends have had with particular clamping companies, especially a company that has been used by South West Trains.
  Some clamping companies, even those employed by large public limited companies, have frequently indulged in a thoroughly inappropriate approach to law-abiding members of the public. It is particularly worrying, as the Minister will acknowledge, when single ladies return late at night from their work in central London to a poorly lit station car park, where their car may be a great distance from a well-lit area, only to find that it has been clamped—perhaps because the signs about parking charges were obscured, as they have been in some of the cases that Mr. Franklin has highlighted—and then find it almost impossible to get someone from the clamping company to come out and release the car. Understandably, they then feel frightened and vulnerable.
  In those circumstances, it is not surprising that there is huge concern. The editors of local and regional papers, who have taken up this cause and tried to embarrass not only the clamping company but the public limited company that employed it into ensuring proper standards, are doing a very worthwhile job.
  Some of the cases that have been highlighted nationally have caused huge worry. In a case that was decided by the Court of Appeal in June 2000, a 61-year-old lady was clamped when driving home from hospital following a chemotherapy session—she had had to park her car in order to be sick. It was an appalling case. The clamping company had been employed by the local authority. I am glad to say that the lady concerned was supported by the Automobile Association, and that when it was explained to the Court of Appeal that the sign warning that illegal parkers would be clamped had been obscured in this instance by another vehicle parked in front of it, it ruled that the lady concerned could not reasonably have been expected to see the sign and ordered repayment of the fine imposed on her.
  There were, however, even more significant worries when, in February 2000, the Data Protection Registrar began making inquiries, following suggestions that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency had given motorists' names and addresses to conmen who were posing as
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  prosecuting or police authorities. Several drivers received what appeared to be official police penalty notices, but they were fakes, posted by wheelclamping companies.
  In that instance, it was reported in the national press that wheelclamping companies were persuading landowners to let them enforce parking restrictions on private land in return for a cut of the fines improperly collected. Instead of clamping cars, which would deter other drivers from parking, unscrupulous companies were photographing vehicles' registration plates and asking the DVLA to provide the registered keepers' details. Again, that is a matter of huge concern to hon. Members on both sides of the House.
  As a result of the wide reporting of such scandalous cases, we all recognise that the House probably needs to act. We shall want assurances from the Government that the provisions that will criminalise those who employ unlicensed operatives will be well publicised. For example, perfectly respectable businesses and individuals may wish to employ wheelclampers to stop the persistent, unauthorised use of their parking spaces.
  In another place, my noble Friend Lord Cope cited the example of a dentist who had to employ wheelclampers to deter those who improperly used his surgery car park when visiting nearby shops. He asked whether the dentist would need to be licensed by the new authority. We certainly understand that, under the Bill, the dentist would find himself liable to criminal penalties if he were to employ an unlicensed wheelclamper. However, what would happen if he applied the clamp to an illegally parked car, or instructed one of his employees to do so? We should be interested to hear, in the Minister's winding-up speech, whether in those further circumstances the dentist or a similar professional would be caught by the offence proposed in clause 6.
  Despite the limited defence to such a charge provided in clause 6(2), it would be helpful if the Minister could say how the Government intend to publicise the Bill's provisions to law-abiding people, not only those who will need to register with the new authority, but those who will use their services and the individuals who may, even on a limited and irregular basis, carry out such clamping. We want to know how the provisions will apply to people who voluntarily carry out the activities that will be regulated under the Bill. Will they be obliged to be licensed by the new authority?
  Under schedule 1, the Secretary of State will have the unfettered power to appoint the new authority's members and chairman. He can appoint as many members as he likes—the Bill contains no lower or upper limit; nor does it state who can be appointed. When challenged in another place, the Minister's noble Friend Lord Bassam let slip that the Home Office expected that the Association of Chief Police Officers would be invited to nominate a representative; but is that all? Will representatives of the Police Superintendents Association and the Police Federation also be appointed? Will a senior judge or senior magistrate be appointed?
  The Opposition think that that provision could be made much more specific. A more specific provision than that exists for, for example, the local probation boards established under the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000. I am sure that the debates in Committee will provide an opportunity to explore that important matter in more detail. The Secretary of State should not have an

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  unfettered power to appoint as many or as few people as he likes to the new authority, as well as appointing its chairman, and the Bill should state where those people can come from.
  Will the Minister comment on the decision to make the register of licensed persons open to public inspection? Given that the register will hold not only the names of licensed persons but their addresses, what safeguards does the Bill contain to prevent someone from obtaining the home address of a licensed doorman or wheelclamper against whom he or she may bear a grudge? If such a licensed person were self-employed and worked from his or her home address, even allowing that person to specify a business address would not suffice because, in those circumstances, the business and home address would be one and the same.
  Even if only work addresses were open to public view, there could be security implications. We are all aware of cases in which, sadly, private revenge attacks involve the arson of business premises—for example, fuel is poured through the letterbox and set on fire. Therefore, we shall wish to explore the need for further safeguards in that context.
  The Minister will be aware that concerns were raised about the register of political donations that was set up by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Section 69(4) of the Act specifically provides that home addresses shall not be made available to the public. Conservative Members think that those concerns apply equally powerfully to operatives engaged in what may be sensitive security work.
  We are aware of a number of complaints from police officers and others in sensitive positions about the potential for criminals to obtain home addresses from the electoral register. On a recent visit with the Solicitor-General, I was made aware that even senior people in the Crown Prosecution Service have been put at risk by the activities of serious and organised crime. People in the service felt that they and their families were being intimidated and threatened. That is a huge concern to those of us who are interested in the proper implementation of law and order and the administration of justice. The Government failed to act when such concerns were raised during the passage of the Representation of the People Act 2000. In enacting this Bill, it is important that we do not create similar problems, so we shall want to deal with that issue in detail in Committee.
  Some people have expressed the concern that the Bill is really an attempt to provide a statutory framework for the kind of private policing arrangements that the Government envisage in their so-called 10-year crime plan, so that they can attempt to minimise any fuss that that might create. I remind the Minister of the Home Secretary's comments to the Police Federation conference back in May 1995, when the right hon. Gentleman was in opposition. He said:
  "There must be restriction in any event on what the private security industry is allowed to do. It must not be allowed to replace our fine and long-established tradition of public service policing by constables, accountable to the community."
  Mr. Clarke: The words of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary stand today as they did when we were in
  984
  opposition. I have made it clear in several speeches, including one to the British Security Industry Association, that the office of constable sets a constable apart from the rest of British society. It is an important constitutional role. Nothing that we or any Government do should weaken or diminish the significance of that role. My right hon. Friend and I stick with the words that the hon. Gentleman quoted.
  Mr. Hawkins: That is helpful, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Since the Government came to power, many speeches have been made that suggest that the Home Secretary And the Home Office in general are moving towards a blurring of the distinction between police officers and private forces.
  Mr. Clarke: I do not want to develop this argument at length, but that is simply not the case. We are not seeking to blur the distinction it is very important. We are in favour of developing partnerships between the police and the private security industry, and the Bill will assist in that.
  Mr. Hawkins: I, too, do not want to prolong the debate on this issue unnecessarily, because we shall return to it. However, when Ian Blair, the former chief constable of Surrey, expressed his views about working closely with private uniformed forces, those views were warmly endorsed by the Home Secretary. The Minister knows that the police were greatly concerned about the way in which the distinction was being blurred. Perhaps the Home Secretary has learned better since then. However, we hear the Minister's comments and shall return to them.
  One reason we are worried about the Government changing their mind is because of the Bill's timing. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) highlighted the concern that the Government might not be seriously planning to enact the Bill before the general election. When the Home Secretary was in opposition, he attached huge importance and urgency to the measure, but he has introduced it late in this Parliament. In September 1996, as the then Opposition's spokesman on home affairs, he told the Police Superintendents Association conference
  "I regard statutory regulation of the industry as a priority."
  Indeed, the Official Report is littered with comments by the former Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), who repeatedly told the House throughout 1997 and 1998 that a Bill such as this would be introduced "as soon as possible." Given what the Labour party said before and after it came into government about the urgency of the measure, it is surprising that the Bill has been introduced at such a late stage.
  Mr. Clarke: Honestly, after 18 years of Conservative government, during which time no action was taken on the matter, it is a bit steep to be chided for not acting quickly enough.
  Mr. Hawkins: The Minister is remarkably sensitive. I have given him many examples of the Home Secretary referring to the matter as urgent. I was in the House several times when the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth said that the Government would act as soon as possible. Yet only at the last moment—if the rumours are to be believed—is legislation being introduced.

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  The distinguished parliamentary commentator Mr. Quentin Letts covered the proceedings in another place. The Minister rightly paid tribute to my noble Friend Lord Cope and his contribution towards improving the Bill. However, grave concerns were expressed about the Government's approach to the cost of licences. When they originally presented their White Paper, £22 was the best guess for the cost of the licence. By the time the Bill reached the other place, the cost had risen to between £35 and £40, which the Minister repeated today. We are worried that, once we create a quango or new authority with wide powers to increase charges, they will go up and up.
  Lord Bassam spoke of his desire to ratchet up standards. We fear a ratcheting up of costs and prices. We shall continue to ensure that there is proper scrutiny. Although the Bill has merits, we hope that the Government will not try to rush it through. We want to ensure that before it becomes law, there is proper protection, analysis and scrutiny, which the Government have denied other Home Office legislation.
  4.49 pm
  Mr. Doug Henderson: I want first to declare an interest as a member of the GMB union, which has many members in the industry, and as the union official responsible for much of the industry in the early 1980s.
  I welcome the Bill. As the Minister recognised, much has been written by my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) and others about the history of the security industry in this country. Originally, it employed many people from a military background and retired police officers. Much of the industry was born in wartime as a result of the need for additional security. During the 1960s and 1970s, the private sector business began to develop, servicing companies that wanted to improve their internal security.
  There are a great many reputable companies with which I have had contact over many years. Throughout that time, they have endeavoured to raise the credibility of the industry, to have honest contracts, to provide honest security, to employ honest people, and to do a good job for the people whom they serve. However, they have had difficulties in some sectors. Differentiation of services by reputable companies means that some sectors regulate themselves. I know that the cash-in-transit sector is included in the Bill, but the market has good control over much, although not all, of that sector, which raises standards. That is due to the endeavours of the traditional, larger companies in the industry.
  At the other end of the industry— the "man guarding" end—it has been an uphill task for those employers and employees who want to raise standards. There are two reasons for that. The first is the lack of wage regulation. It was difficult for a reputable company such as Securicor, Group 4 or Chubb to try to raise standards if a cowboy company said that instead of wanting £5 an hour as a contract price, it was prepared to do the job for £1.20 an hour. The consequences were that their staff were employed at 50p an hour—that is an accurate figure, as I am sure hon. Members will recognise—when the basic wage paid by a local authority was £1.75 or £1.80 an hour. That differential meant that reputable companies were continually being undercut.
  The second reason, which is the corollary of the first, is that companies were employing people so cheaply that their margins were too tight to enable even the reputable
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  ones among them to cover the on-costs of training or of vetting to keep out criminal infiltrators. Some of the companies would use the same uniform for two people on different shifts. At that time, the early 1980s, the reputable companies, the trade unions and the British Security Industry Association decided that something should be done.
  We now know that the wage problem has been at least partially resolved by the minimum wage legislation, which I welcome. The biggest impact that the legislation had on male employment was in the security industry, where it has done a great deal to raise wage levels and allow companies to compete on a fairer platform. However, there is still a problem to be solved, and I welcome the Bill because it attempts to lay down rules within which people will have to operate if they want to provide private security. It will hit the cowboy companies, some of whose practices are atrocious. Apart from making employees share uniforms, they intimidate customers into taking their security services to the exclusion of those offered by other companies. They deliberately employ known criminals to case the joint so that others can come in later and make merry. Health and safety considerations are unknown to such companies.
  When I was a union official, a shop steward came to me and said, "I really have to complain about this." I told him that I had heard all the complaints before. He told me, "We are trying to provide a decent service, but I've just been along to a site that we cover from Monday to Friday. When I left at 4 o'clock on Friday afternoon, I handed over the keys to a certain face, but when I came back at 6 o'clock on Monday morning, the same guy was still there and asked me 'Can I go home now, mister?' I told him he could." We checked it out and found that a contract security company covered the site at the weekend and that one person had been on duty from Friday afternoon right through to Monday morning.
  Incidentally, I do not think that the individual concerned would have been entitled to British citizenship. Some of the companies employing such people exploited the corruption in our immigration rules, and although I would not want to deny anyone employment, people should go through the proper procedures to enable themselves to be employed. That case convinced me that something had to be done about the industry.
  The Government are right to regulate. There is no argument to be made that we are intervening unnecessarily in the private sector. I am no believer in unnecessary intervention and regulation: if the market can deal with a situation, it should be left to do so, but if it cannot deal with a situation—I do not think that it can in this case—there is a need for state intervention. Winston Churchill said words to that effect in 1912 and I do not see why I should disagree with them today.
  The Government are also right to set up the Security Industry Authority. Again, I am not one to argue in favour of having more quangos if another way of addressing an issue can be found, but we need a body that is at arm's length from the Government. Here, I add my voice to a plea that has already been made to the Minister by constituents and union members to whom I am close. When appointing people to that body, please will he appoint someone who is credible, has experience,

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  is convincing, and will pull the industry forward? There is a fear that others will dance circles around someone who is not so qualified.
  Mr. Charles Clarke: I give my hon. Friend the assurance he seeks. I tried to emphasise that exceptionally important point in my speech and he is right to raise it again, as are others. Independence and integrity are critical to the whole system.
  Mr. Henderson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I shall be happy to give way to him at any time if he wants to comment in a similar vein. His response will be warmly welcomed by those concerned.
  The Government are right to concentrate on individual licences, but I am not sure about the cost. We are supposed to be encouraging welfare to work, to use the current phrase, but someone who wants to get off the dole and into a job will regard £40 as a high price to pay for a passport to that desirable end. Can the Minister be a little more innovative: for example, might it be possible to set up a special scheme or training programme—perhaps paid for by the levy—to help those who are out of work, or might the companies be persuaded to make a contribution?
  It is important that we reach a clear understanding about training, especially essential training. We are not talking about a four-year apprenticeship, but there is a need to be specific about the sort of training that is required. In addition, skills will have to be updated as conditions in the industry change and new technology is introduced. We all look forward to hearing the Minister's comments in that respect.
  The Government must think again about the regulation of companies. I understand the arguments that the key issue is ensuring that the individuals who actually provide the service are properly vetted and trained and that the market mechanism enables clients to decide which company can provide the best and most credible service. However, I think that the industry needs a bit of a fillip, which could be provided by ensuring that companies have to register. If there is a case for voluntary registration, why not go the whole way and have mandatory registration? That is the way to ensure that the high standards to which the Minister and others have referred are adhered to.
  If we do not have mandatory registration, criminals may set up a security company, insist that their employees go through a vetting process, and then use that information to conduct criminal activity. I may be wrong, but I do not think that that would be caught by the Bill. It would be better to put extra responsibilities on the directors. If they work as security officers, they are covered by the Bill, but, worryingly, if they are backseat directors running a criminal activity, they are not. I wonder how the police view the matter; I think that they would have reservations about that aspect of the Bill.
  We have regulation in the banking industry because the market did not take care of it. Too many people had too much inside information to be able to give objective financial advice, so it was decided that they should state their interests before giving financial advice. Essentially, that is what the regulatory authorities in the finance
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  industry are about. Financial institutions are asked to register so that people know where they are coming from and are aware of their asset bases. There is a parallel in the security industry as it, too, must combat crime. There is a strong argument that security companies should have to demonstrate their credentials and register them with the authority. That would not be a major incumbency on those companies—from the point of view of minimising regulation, one cannot argue that it would be an additional burden. It would be a fairly small administrative task which companies should be well able to undertake, considering that they have to regulate all their contracts with clients and make sure that everyone is in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing. That is a complicated business, but registering the basics would be different.
  Others have argued that there is a case for registering in-house security staff. I recognise the argument in favour of that, but, to be honest, I also recognise the argument that it should be left alone as the market can take care of it. People who employ staff directly can make decisions on their quality, how they should be vetted and so on. The jury is out on that one, and I would like to see how things develop before insisting on such registration. However, the question of registering companies needs a rethink, and the Minister may have an opportunity to do that in Committee.
  As I said, I very much welcome the Bill, which is long overdue. It addresses the genuine fears of people in all walks of life who are connected with the security industry, including the police, the companies themselves—whatever their size or shape—and, perhaps most importantly, those who work in the industry. Like other Members, I am concerned about the late introduction of the Bill and I am worried that it may not reach the statute book before the next Parliament. If it does not, I hope that it will be reintroduced. After 20 years or more of debate, there is more unity on the issue than there has ever been. I urge the House to agree to the Second Reading today and, if necessary, agree to that again in the next Parliament.
  5.3 pm
  Jackie Ballard: Unlike the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson), I do not have any interests to declare. Touch wood, I have not been wheelclamped yet and have not been bounced out of a nightclub. The Minister will be interested to hear that. In Committee, I usually divulge aspects of my life that engage him, and about which Conservative Members make notes for their leaflets.
  Mr. Bercow: Give us the details.
  Jackie Ballard: I said that I had not been bounced out of a nightclub. I am not going down that track.
  My party does not support unnecessary and over-bureaucratic regulation, but we welcome the Bill, which will regulate an important sector of private industry that directly affects the safety and security of the public. Lord Thomas of Gresford led for us in the other place and set out our generally supportive position on the Bill. However, he also raised several issues of concern, some of which the Government responded to in the other place, and others which we shall seek to address in Committee.

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  As other Members have said, there is a clear need to regulate the private security industry, which is a large, important sector that affects the public, often in their daily lives.
  It will come as a surprise to many people that the industry is not already regulated, and as a surprise to others that it has taken so long to regulate it. According to the Library briefing, there have been 17 private Members' Bills on the subject in the past 20 years, so the Opposition cannot claim that they were exactly hyperactive in ensuring that legislation was enacted during their 18 years in government.
  As the Minister said, some 350,000 people are employed in the industry, but the total number is not precisely known. That in itself is an argument for regulation. Many of the functions performed by the industry straddle the boundary between the private and the public sectors, so it is important that it is subject to regulation not only to ensure high standards, but that the limits of the powers of private security operators are clearly defined. The public need to have confidence in the system, and it is important that the industry and the people who work for it and with the public are subject to checks and balances.
  It has been widely reported, including in Home Office research studies, and as we have heard from other hon. Members, that there has been a relatively high level of criminality in certain sectors of the industry, particularly among door supervisors, or bouncers. That has been reduced considerably in recent years with the introduction of door safe schemes and proper training and supervision, which many local authorities have pioneered. However, as so often happens, it takes only a few rotten apples to give an entire sector a bad name. No doubt that is why so many companies involved in the business have welcomed regulation.
  In common with other hon. Members, I have had letters from companies that operate internationally, pointing out that the UK is one of the few countries in which they operate where there is no licensing system, and the only country in the EU other than Greece where the industry is still largely unregulated.
  Mr. Bercow: It was estimated in 1996 that approximately 2,600 crimes were being committed each year by people hiding behind the disguise of a security officer's uniform. The hon. Lady said that the position had improved in recent years. Has she any idea of what the figures were for last year?
  Jackie Ballard: No, but I am sure that with his encyclopaedic brain, the hon. Gentleman does. I note that in 1996, his party was in government, and I am surprised that it did not do anything to address the number of crimes attributed to the industry.
  The Select Committee on Home Affairs 1995 report stated that standards, particularly for training, in much of the sector were unsatisfactory and below the standard that the public needed and had a right to expect. That report was published during the time that the hon. Gentleman's party was in power. The Select Committee's comments applied particularly to the manned guarding sector, and the same sentiments are expressed by a large part of the industry. The Bill is therefore widely welcomed.
  The debate so far has concentrated on the personnel employed in the guarding sector. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North gave an example of the
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  exploitation of an employee. I recently spent a day with an inspector of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in my constituency. We were called to a site where a member of the public had reported that a dog was employed, so to speak, as a security guard. The person who made the report was concerned that no one had been seen coming to feed the dog. It was on a long chain, and no suitable shelter had been provided for it. I mention that in passing; the House may wish to take up the matter at a future date.
  I come to specific issues in the Bill. We welcome the setting up of the Security Industry Authority, although that entails the creation of another quango. It comes rather rich for the Conservative Opposition to criticise the Government for creating even more quangos, but I can safely criticise them. Both the other parties have created many quangos, but I can claim that my party has not, particularly in the past 90 years. When we are given the chance in a few weeks time, we will not do so either.
  Mr. Adrian Bailey: Does the hon. Lady concede that virtue comes easy to those with least attractions?
  Jackie Ballard: I think that I should be upset about that intervention. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to see me later.
  We welcome the establishment of a body that is responsible for regulating the industry through licensing, inspection and setting or approving standards, and for overseeing implementation of the Bill and making representations to the Secretary of State with regard to further legislation. However, we want further to examine the body's composition in Committee, because as the Bill stands, its membership is selected entirely at the discretion of the Home Secretary. There is an argument for its composition to be specified in legislation, in the same way as that of many other quangos. The Minister said that there would be a place on the authority for representatives of the industry. I understand also that the Government gave assurances in the other place that they would consult the industry on other appointments. However, we would like further clarification, so perhaps the Minister can provide that today.
  We welcome the introduction of mandatory licensing for people who are involved in the private security industry. That provision lies at the heart of the Bill's intentions, as it seeks to ensure that certain minimum standards are met. We also welcome the Government's clarification in the other place about who is subject to licensing and who is not.
  However, if the Bill is to ensure that the whole industry is subject to the same standards, I must reiterate the question that my noble Friend Lord Thomas asked in the other place: why are licences not required for in-house operatives? In reply to my intervention on the matter, the Minister said that the 350,000 figure included in-house operatives. The Government's White Paper said that members of the public should be encouraged to ask to see an individual's licence. How will the public know that they should not do that if the individual in question is an in-house operative? Such a discrepancy will lead to confusion. The White Paper also said that regulation would apply to the whole of the manned guarding sector and that the exclusion of in-house security personnel from

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  the scope of licensing would create an unacceptable loophole and reduce confidence in the system. Notwithstanding the Minister's remarks, we will pursue that issue in Committee.
  We also seek clarification on the Secretary of State's power to exempt particular individuals from the licensing requirement. In what circumstances is that power likely to be employed and what criteria will be used? We recognise the need for the authority to set licensing criteria, but there is no indication of what those criteria should be, beyond the requirement that the individual concerned must be
  "a fit and proper person"
  to be engaged in licensable conduct. The definition of that requirement and the specific criteria that stem from it are for the authority to decide. My noble Friend Lord Thomas said that the term "fit and proper" was a "chestnut of a definition". Case law suggests that considerable discretion is used in interpreting the term. According to Lord Thomas, it makes many barristers "happy chappies". Of course, if he wanted to be politically correct, he would have said "happy chappesses".
  We welcome the Government's amendment to the appeals provisions, especially with regard to licences. We also welcome the approved contractors scheme, which is an important way of ensuring high standards throughout the industry. However, I repeat the question that we asked in the other place: why is the scheme voluntary and not mandatory? That question is especially important if the Government are seeking to ensure high standards across the industry. We acknowledge their argument that there is provision for the Secretary of State to make the scheme mandatory if the conditions call for that to happen. We also accept that they do not want to overburden the authority or the industry in the early stages of regulation. However, it has been argued that there is a need for a more robust scheme, because that is the best way of ensuring effective regulation of the industry. That argument was well expressed by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North.
  We recognise that the powers of inspection and entry are a necessary measure of enforcement. However, I am sure that the Minister will not be surprised to learn that we will be concerned to ensure that those powers are not disproportionate and that individuals' privacy is properly respected, in the spirit as well as the letter of the Human Rights Act 1998. We welcome the amendments made by the Government in the other place to refine the authority's powers of inspection and entry. The amendments were tabled after my noble Friend Lord Thomas expressed concerns about the matter. We will reconsider the provisions, however, to satisfy ourselves that they do not unnecessarily impinge on civil liberties. In particular, we would like to ensure effective scrutiny of the guidelines adopted by the authority with regard to the powers.
  Two other issues have caused us some concern. First, I understand that on Report in the other place, the Government tabled amendments that sought to exempt from the licensing requirements accountancy firms that are engaged in activities that are included within the scope of the Bill. I am told that the amendments were tabled because of representations made by the accounting community, but I know that some sectors of the security
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  industry have expressed anxiety that such measures will lead to an uneven playing field between different types of consultancies that offer essentially identical services. Will the exemption give investigative services departments within accountancy firms an unfair competitive advantage over private sector investigation agencies?
  Secondly, other hon. Members have mentioned the need to keep an effective check on the operations of the industry, as well as to maintain standards. We are concerned to ensure that the security industry does not assume a more extensive public role. In other words, we should not allow licensed private vigilantes.
  The Minister began the debate by setting the Bill in the context of the Government's approach to crime and disorder. In the introduction to the White Paper, the Home Secretary stated that
  "there will be the opportunity for the private security industry to play a wider role in securing community safety."
  He went on to state:
  "It has also been suggested recently that the private security industry might be able to assist the police by providing a form of complementary patrol service. The Government is considering the issue and welcomes constructive debate in this area.
  In response to an intervention by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins), the Minister said that the Government were convinced of the importance of the office of constable and would do nothing to diminish it, but he said nothing about limiting or extending the tasks to be carried out exclusively or primarily by people holding that office. We are concerned about that. We believe that the patrol of private property by a private company is one thing, but that private patrolling of public property is quite another.
  Although we broadly welcome the Bill and believe that it deserves a Second Reading, I have flagged up a number of issues that we will want to consider very closely. We will seek to make improvements with a view to ensuring that the industry as a whole is required to meet minimum standards, not only some parts of it. We want the Bill to capitalise more fully on the White Paper, and we also see the need for safeguards in respect of the SIA's powers and any unnecessary extension of the Bill's provisions on inspection and entry of premises. We look forward to seeing improvements to the Bill in the weeks ahead and hope that it will be enacted before Parliament dissolves.
  5.17 pm
  Mr. Gordon Marsden: I welcome the Bill wholeheartedly. It is an important measure that builds on the Government's policies for security and law and order. The issues that it addresses are of particular importance to our seaside and coastal towns, one of which I represent. The provisions are not narrow, tidying-up measures for places such as Blackpool, as the Bill raises significant public order issues that relate to how seaside and coastal towns should promote a culture of quality and reliability, and an antipathy to the yob culture that too often disfigures them. They relate also to how we should prevent actions that will upset residents and tourists in such towns and damage their tourist image.
  My interest in those issues derives not only from a general interest in matters that affect seaside towns—I am president of the British Resorts Association and convenor of a Back-Bench group of MPs who represent seaside and coastal towns—but from the effects on my constituents of

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  many of the issues raised in the Bill, especially in relation to local private security and wheelclamping. In the light of public concern about no-go areas in seaside towns, the Bill provides an important balance and reassurance to people who are concerned that proposed modernisation of the licensing laws—and perhaps, dare I say it, of the casino laws—will have a negative impact on the character of their towns. The reassurance and regulation that the Bill offers are therefore important.
  The Bill is about securing comfortable public space and balancing rights. I wrote to the Home Secretary on 19 July and said that the activities of some of the private security and clamping businesses that attracted increasing numbers of local complaints were also beginning to have a negative impact on tourism, which is crucial to the economy of many seaside and coastal towns. Small and medium-sized businesses, which are central to generating prosperity in the leisure and tourism industry, are anxious for the Government's proposals on regulation, as outlined in White Paper, to be implemented as soon as possible.
  I was therefore delighted when the White Paper's proposals appeared in the Queen's Speech and later in the Bill. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister and the Home Office team for fighting the cause vigorously with Government business managers and giving us the opportunity to consider the measure today.
  I want to concentrate on wheelclamping and security, which the Bill regulates. Wheelclamping has long been a matter of dispute. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), who have eloquently and persistently spoken about the issue. The Library research paper reminded us that it has featured in private Members' Bills since 1969. It is therefore important to consider it properly, now that it has the advantage of inclusion in a Government Bill.
  It is perhaps instructive to quote the Automobile Association on cowboy clamping. It states:
  "One unsavoury practice of the cowboy clamper is that he will often lie in wait and target his victims—seeking out the elderly, disabled, young mothers with children and people who will pay up with little fuss."
  That is amply corroborated by examples from my constituency. The AA also states:
  "Cowboy clampers can rarely be traced as they mostly use mobile telephones and work from Post Office box addresses—people lucky enough to track down a clamper, who has acted illegally, can sometimes pursue them through the small claims court. However, they rarely respond to letters and telephone calls."
  After I sounded off about wheelclamping in the local paper, I received a visit at one of my advice centres from a large and burly representative of such a company. I am still here.
  I pay tribute to all those in my constituency who have raised the issue, especially Mr. Alan Smith, trading standards officer for Blackpool borough council. I also pay tribute to the local police, who were sympathetic if often frustrated that current law did not allow them to intervene more vigorously, to my local paper, The Gazette, which has run an effective campaign through detailing some of the activities of wheelclampers, and to my local hotelier group and others who have approached me on the subject.
  It is testimony to the continuing, diverse attractions of Blackpool that other hon. Members throughout the country gave me examples of the effects of rogue
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  wheelclampers on their constituents when they visited Blackpool. From memory, I can name my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan (Mr. Turner) and for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mrs. McKenna), and the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis).
  Perhaps the best example of rogue wheelclamping inflation that I have come across was described in a letter that I received in the first week of January from Mr. and Mrs. Salmon from Guisborough in Yorkshire. They had the misfortune to attend the new year's eve ball at Blackpool tower. I am sure that it was a great and elegant occasion, but when they returned to where they had parked their car—they believed that it was a perfectly proper parking place—it had been towed away by a private firm called Mac Security. In view of the large amounts of money that the gentlemen subsequently pocketed, I am tempted to call it "Big Mac".
  Mr. and Mrs. Salmon were given a mobile telephone number to ring, and told that the car would not be released until after 9 am on new year's day. Their letter states:
  "We were told to ring back in the morning and to have two hundred and fifty pounds in cash for the release fee … This resulted in us having to wait outside in the cold till 3 am until we were able to get a taxi (at a cost of twenty pounds) … We then had to pay a further twenty pounds for a taxi to return to Blackpool later that morning with two hundred and fifty pounds cash to get our car back."
  I could cite several other examples.
  The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) referred to the practice of targeting women. One of my constituents who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant was left in a Blackpool car park after finding that her car had disappeared. She had to pay £205. A deaf and dumb holidaymaker was stranded when his car was towed away. In nine months, police in Blackpool received approximately 131 complaints about clamping. The aforementioned gentleman who visited my surgery finished off his nine months by extracting from an elderly couple from Lytham in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) a sum equivalent to their weekly pension after a late-night confrontation with them.
  What do people receive for the money? In the last case that I cited, the people received a squiggly receipt for £250 in cash, written on a torn-out sheet from a plain invoice book. It contained no phone number or details of a registered company. There was no form of redress whatsoever.
  The Bill therefore tackles significant abuses, and I am delighted that our Government have picked up the torch. I was surprised that an element of the old Adam remained in some Opposition Members. That was shown by the amendments that Lord Cope tabled in another place to restrict the ability to license wheelclampers. Such a restriction would not have conveyed the right message. Although the matter must be kept under review, I hope that the Government will resist similar amendments.
  When, God willing, the Bill receives Royal Assent, it is important that the police use their initiative to pursue and control clampers in the period before the Bill is fully effected. I speak for several hon. Members who have been frustrated by the slow progress of police and local authorities in implementing anti-social behaviour orders. I hope that those problems do not occur when the Bill is enacted.
  I want to consider the second aspect that especially interests me and on which the Bill provides particular relief. Licensing security companies is a key issue in

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  Blackpool. We may not be able to compete with the figures that my hon. Friend the Minister provided for Manchester or his triumphant tour through Norwich, but it is not unusual for 30,000, 40,000 or 50,000 mainly young people to be in the pubs and clubs of Blackpool town centre between midnight and 2 am on a Friday or Saturday. As most people know, Blackpool attracts between 6 million and 8 million visitors a year, and there are no fewer than 58 clubs in the town centre. Clearly, in those circumstances, regulation of the behaviour of security staff—bouncers, as they are colloquially known—is of key importance, in terms not only of setting the tone for whether people have a good night out, but of preserving public security and public order.
  I pay tribute to the fact that much of the self-regulation in many clubs in my constituency and elsewhere has been proactive and responsible. However, as the Minister and the hon. Member for Surrey Heath made clear, there have, sadly, been too many cases in which it has not. In my constituency, I have been involved in issues that have convinced me of the need for regulation. I was involved in a campaign to get to the bottom of a particular case before I became a Member of Parliament, while I was a prospective parliamentary candidate. The case involved a young man of 17 who died after taking an overdose of ecstasy, having been admitted to a club in a condition that any reputable or sensible bouncer would never have permitted.
  On another occasion, I visited Wakefield prison, to talk to one of my constituents who was serving a sentence for murder. I do not want to comment on the specifics of that case, as it is still before the Criminal Cases Review Commission, but my conversations with him—along with other background information—revealed the hidden twilight world of drug dealing in which, all too often, relations between unlicensed bouncers played a significant part. In my constituency last year, there was also very sad case involving a young man—he was a doorman—who was savagely beaten almost to death outside one of our clubs in circumstances that underline the need for proper licensing of doormen.
  We need the controls that the Security Industry Authority will provide. It is sensible that there is to be a right of appeal locally, but I want to flag up a concern, which has been referred to already, about clause 4(1). There may be rightful concerns about the weaknesses involved in excluding in-house staff who are not bouncers from the remit of the Bill. In the other place, my noble Friend Lord Bassam, in outlining the reasons for that decision, said:
  "The Bill proposes that individuals in the manned guarding sector should be licensed if they are providing services under contract to a client. We do not propose to require them to have licences if they are employed in-house by companies. These companies will already have satisfied themselves about their employees, and the Government do not wish to foist onto them an additional layer of checking where it is not necessary."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 December 2000; Vol. 620, c. 576.]
  I applaud that spirit. Speaking as a Member of Parliament with a large number of small and medium-sized businesses in his constituency, I would not want those businesses to be overburdened with regulation.
  It is right that we should be concerned about bouncers and that the Government have addressed that issue in the Bill, but there are other security guards, especially in
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  seaside and coastal towns, about whom we should also be concerned. For example, there are security guards in amusement arcades, and in amusement areas where there might be private rides, most of which will be accessible by children not necessarily accompanied by an adult.
  In those circumstances, I hope that the Government will take full and considered account, in the review procedure that they have proposed for the operation of the legislation, of the need to protect children from any rogue elements among such security guards. I would like an assurance that any procedures to check whether those guards are registered on the sex offenders' register, or are involved in any other child protection issues, will be properly taken on board if, as the Bill proposes, they are not to be separately licensed and regulated.
  I welcome the Bi11 overall. It contains important provisions that will benefit my constituency specifically, and seaside and coastal towns in general. Those towns are doing a great deal to regenerate themselves with single regeneration budget money, town centre partnerships and community building. In a town such as Blackpool, in which history and geography have combined to pepper residents cheek by jowl in unprecedented numbers, it is particularly important that sensitive issues such as wheelclamping and security arrangements at places of leisure and tourism are properly regulated and give a sense of confidence.
  It is not only the quality of life inside people's homes that is important in those towns, but the quality of life on the street and in other public places as people go about enjoying the facilities that towns have to offer. That is why the Bill will make such a significant and important contribution to the quality of life in seaside and coastal towns, and why I give it my strongest support.
  5.36 pm
  Sir Norman Fowler: I agree with the hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) about the importance of seaside towns; he made that case extremely well. I also agreed with what he said about wheelclampers and with what the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) said about criminals employed in the security industry. He made the case for licensing in that area, and he was right.
  I was once a director of the private security firm Group 4, but I have not been so since 1993 and I have no other connections with the private security industry.
  This has been a long journey. In my view, the significant turning point came on 4 July 1973 when the Security Industry Licensing Bill was introduced in the House. I should make it clear that it was my Bill. It was one of the 16 or 17 Bills that have been introduced since 1969 on the subject. I said at that time:
  "My Bill is not a call for licensing for its own sake. It is a recognition that there are important issues at stake, issues involving public policy on crime and individual liberty and privacy. This industry is not one that can go entirely unregulated. The Bill would establish a licensing board on the lines of the Gaming Board. It would aim to ensure minimum standards throughout the industry and to eliminate the criminal element within the industry."— [Official Report, 4 July 1973; Vol. 859, c. 539.]
  Many of those aims are echoed in the present Bill.
  My Bill had the support of four formidable Conservative politicians of the time: Bill Deedes, Edward Gardner, David Walder and Michael McNair-Wilson.

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  Such was the force of our argument that the Bill passed without dissent, and the House moved on to an emergency debate on the railways—nothing changes much in the House. The only trouble was that it was a ten-minute Bill, and it has taken almost 30 years for the Home Office to catch up with the case that I was making.
  It would be churlish of me, therefore, not to welcome the Bill that has now been introduced, and I do so gladly. I have, incidentally, a range of other measures that the Government might like to adopt, such as the privatisation of the Post Office; the ending of the £5 billion a year pensions tax; and the cancellation of the absurd rules on annuities. Perhaps when the Minister of State continues his upward climb in the Government he will take that into account.
  I am afraid, however, that at this stage I can give the Bill only two cheers, because under the terms of the guillotine—which we call the programme motion and which we shall debate next—it stands a fair chance of going exactly the same way as my ten-minute Bill did in 1973. Under the guillotine, proceedings in the House are not planned to end until 1 May. A general election on 3 May would, therefore, kill the Bill stone dead. There would be no Act of Parliament, and no licensing system.
  I should be happy to receive an assurance from the Minister of State that a 3 May election is the very last thing that he or the Government want. I know that he is on the inside track to No. 10, so if he is likely to give me that assurance, I of course give way.
  Mr. Charles Clarke: I cannot give the right hon. Gentleman that assurance because I do not know what is in the mind of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. However, if an election were called for 3 May, is it the right hon. Gentleman's view that it would be helpful for the official Opposition to do what they can to secure the passage of the Bill during this Parliament?
  Sir Norman Fowler: That is probably the most significant intervention that I have heard from the Government side about a 3 May election. I have not previously heard it put to the Opposition that we should be in the business of co-operating should a 3 May election be called. Those who heard the Minister's intervention may conclude that a 3 May election is becoming more likely, not less, but I leave it to the commentators to think about that.
  The Bill is being debated on Second Reading, and although I am not in charge of Opposition affairs I think that it is a bit much to say to us that it should simply be ticked through. However, I listened to what the Minister said. I went on a deliberate fishing expedition, but I did not expect to land such a big catch.
  Incidentally, I happen to take the old-fashioned view that Governments are elected to govern. Only when they have got through a crisis should they think about elections, but I am not at all sure that that is entirely their current view. Indeed, the Minister made that clear. Therefore, in such circumstances, my speech is directed as much to my own Front Benchers as it is to the Government, so that they will pick up the Bill after the election.
  The case in principle for licensing private security remains the same as that outlined by me and others such as the right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George).
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  I pay tribute to what he has done over the years in consistently making the case on licensing, which we have put to Governments of both parties, and it is good to see the west midlands mafia working together in such a way.
  I was glad to hear the Minister talk about this thriving and successful industry. I welcome the words, but I must observe that they were not the ones that Labour Members used in opposition. The language of the Labour party has changed radically, but I welcome that conversion.
  In our crime debates, we tend to concentrate on detection. Obviously, detection rates are vital, but so too, self-evidently, is prevention. The first orders issued to the Metropolitan police said:
  "It should be understood at the outset that the principal object to be attained is the prevention of crime. To this great end every effort of the police is to be directed."
  As the years have passed, all European police services have been forced to give more priority to detecting crime, preserving public order and handling emergencies. Correspondingly, less police work has been devoted to preventing crime. One example makes the point.
  In the late 1950s and the 1960s, the British police were still able to provide police escort services for cash in transit, but by the 1960s the increase in criminal attacks on cash being transported produced a demand for police protection that forces were unable to meet. The result in the 1960s and 1970s and since was the development of cash-in-transit services by private companies.
  Such companies already offered guard services to protect offices and factories—the traditional role referred to by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North—but protecting cash in transit brought the private security industry face to face with the public, often for the first time. Not everybody liked what they saw.
  The public certainly wanted crime to be prevented. They wanted burglars to be prevented from burgling and robbers to be prevented from robbing and they accepted, I believe, that the private security industry was crucial in that, but they also wanted the confidence that companies and the people they employed were providing such services properly. Furthermore, they needed to have confidence in the integrity and honesty of those companies and employees.
  Of course, there is a civil liberties issue here. If we put a person in a uniform, put him in an armoured van and perhaps give him a stave to defend himself, to some extent we give him an authority that the ordinary citizen does not possess. Again, the public need to be reassured that that power, which is implicitly given to such people, will not be abused.
  An enormous concern has been that people with criminal records have been employed in the industry. Back in 1973, I gave the example of a Manchester company run by a man who admitted that he had twice been convicted of grievous bodily harm and who employed four or five staff with criminal records, including one who had served sentences of three and five years for burglary and receiving. Over the years, there have been countless examples of that.
  It is extraordinarily ironic that we have allowed that position to continue year after year. Given the intense struggle to establish an organised police force in this country, and given the special position that private

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  security companies hold in respect of the public, it is amazing that we have enabled anyone who wants to do so to set up such a company.
  The case for licensing has been pressed for many years and I pay tribute to Jorgen Philip Sorensen, head of Group 4, who has worked so hard since the 1960s to achieve licensing. Goodness knows, there are many examples from other European countries to show the way. Most European Union countries have a licensing system. Belgium, for example, issues licences to security companies, which are subject to renewal after two years. Each has to provide a list of shareholders to prevent criminals from controlling security companies while staff are officially checked as being free from criminal conviction. Such systems in Europe have stood for many years as a sensible way forward.
  I welcome most of the provisions. We have a private security industry that is probably bigger than the organised police force, so it is sensible to establish the Security Industry Authority, which will administer a compulsory licensing scheme for private security guards, door supervisors and the rest.
  Mr. Clarke: In no sense am I making a partisan point and I gladly pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman's efforts over his years in the House, but, given the powerful points that he has made, why did not the Conservative Government of which he was a member legislate on the subject?
  Sir Norman Fowler: It is nice of the Minister to say that I was a member of the Government, but I have not been a member of any Government since the 1980s. I was not a member of the previous Government; I was chairman of the Conservative party, outside the Government and a simple Back Bencher. However, it is common knowledge that I have pressed Ministers of both parties to get down to it and introduce a licensing system.
  The problem with the licensing system that is being introduced is not what is included, but what is excluded. I raised the issue of the regulation of alarm installers with the Minister and I heard what he said. Such regulation was an aim of my ten-minute Bill and I used the example of an alarm company employed by a firm to fit a window alarm. The alarm was so useless that when the very thing happened that it was supposed to guard against and a window was broken, it was not activated. Later tests showed that a whole troop of burglars could have processed through the window without the alarm system being activated or disturbed in any way whatsoever.
  The installation of alarms is a question not only of quality, but of reassuring the public. Furthermore, it is important not only that the quality of the alarm and of the installation are considered, but that the householder is given reassurance that the installer, who, by definition, has to have access to the house, is a man of some integrity.
  Burglar alarms no longer constitute an exceptional defence: we need only visit towns and cities to realise that. Years ago, in the 1980s—when I was a Minister—I toured a modest private estate in Liverpool. Every house had a burglar alarm.
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  I was reassured by what the Minister said. I gather that the Bill takes a first step, and that it will be possible to add to its provisions if problems arise. On that basis too, it deserves support. The "step by step" approach is surely sensible, from everyone's point of view. I have one important concern, however, which may sound strange coming from one who used to be on the board of a major private security company.
  I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) said towards the end of his speech. I feel that we should be concerned about the limits of private security. We have seen a massive extension of private security operations over the past 30 or 40 years: we now see private security companies dealing not just with cash in transit, but with prisoners in transit. The Minister challenged me about opposition and government. I recall that, in opposition, the Labour party said that the legislation governing the system of prisoners in transit would be repealed by an incoming Labour Government. I see no sign of that, but I welcome the conversion.
  What I do not support is the use of private security to patrol our streets. That I think, is where a line should be drawn. Such a use of private security would take us back to square one: after all, it was the breakdown of private patrols that led to the establishment of an organised police service in the first place. It is crucial to the continuance of good police public relations for the job to be done by trained police officers—trained men and women to whom the public can turn for help, and whom they can trust.
  Long ago, when traffic wardens were first introduced, it was optimistically said that they were there to help the motorist and to offer friendly guidance. I am not sure that many members of the public, especially motorists, see traffic wardens in that light today. Local authority parking attendants in particular do not come top of their list of the most helpful put lie servants whom they encounter. If anyone wants to verify that, I suggest that they drive around the streets of Westminster and try to park.
  We should bear it in mind that in terms of relations between police and public, Britain is probably better than any other European country. That is not to say that relations cannot be improved. Some of the defects were highlighted in the Macpherson report. The police have to win the respect of ethnic minorities, just as the original police force had to win in the respect of the public. I believe, however, that much of the rapport between police and public results from the fact that we have a largely unarmed police force patrolling the streets. That force is visible and approachable.
  I think that it would be fatal for those good relations if we gave such a role to private security—a move at which some have hinted. It is a highly skilled job that needs not just initial training but constant training throughout life, and is basic to the continuance of good relations in this country. I hope that, as well as performing a licensing role, the new authority will keep under review what private security should and should not do. That is surely a legitimate interest for it to have.
  While I welcome the Bill, I think it necessary to keep in mind the limits of private security as well as seeking a degree of regulation for its activity. I obviously regret the fact that the Bill has come so late that the prospect of its enactment is remote, but I hope it will be noted that there is now a consensus in the House in favour of proceeding

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  along the lines proposed. It has taken 30 years for us to reach this point; it would be a tragedy were we to let the opportunity slip.
  5.55 pm
  Ms Rosie Winterton: I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for his kind remarks, and congratulate him and his Department on the Bill. It is a credit to the Government that they have found time for it. As has been said, the last Conservative Government presented a Green Paper but failed to introduce any legislation to follow it up, despite pressure from Members of Parliament, motoring organisations such as the Royal Automobile Club and the Automobile Association and, incidentally, the media.
  The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) welcomed the Bill, but was a little less forthcoming about whether he supported any idea of encouraging Front Benchers to co-operate with the Government if a general election were called. Perhaps he might use his influence behind the scenes if necessary.
  Mr. Bercow: The hon. Lady is well aware that I am but a humble foot soldier. It is not for me to seek to intervene in these matters, which, of course, fall under the aegis of my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Cran) and others. Will she in passing, however, be as gracious as she ordinarily is and acknowledge that her hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) himself lamented the fact that the Government had been so dilatory in introducing the measure?
  Ms Winterton: I would not say that the Government were dilatory. I have campaigned for legislation such as this for a number of years, and I know that it has been important to get it right. There has been further consultation, in addition to that connected with the Green Paper. I also know that the Department has had to deal with other legislation. Let me add that after four years we have legislation, whereas after 18 years of Tory government we had none.
  It will come as no surprise to Members that I intend to talk about wheelclamping. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces who is not present: obviously, he has ministerial duties to perform. Under the last Government, when Labour was in opposition, he campaigned vigorously for the outlawing of cowboy wheelclampers, and he was very helpful to me when I took up the issue. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), who not only campaigned for such action in the last Parliament but ensured that it remained high on his agenda when he became a Home Office Minister. He was absolutely right to do so.
  The problem of cowboy wheelclampers may be localised, as we have heard today, but when it occurs it causes incredible misery and distress. We all know—motoring organisations, among others, would confirm this—that wheelclamping can be an extremely lucrative business for anyone with a mobile tell phone, a strong arm and £50 for their first clamp.
  Six years ago, the wheelclamping industry was estimated to be worth about £150 million annually. Until now, the lack of Government regulation has enabled
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  clampers to make plenty of money but provided clamped motorists with almost no protection. I do not think that anyone would argue that landowners should not have rights over their own property or be able to take action to deal with problem parking. However, we have to make it clear that when we talk about cowboy wheelclampers, we are talking not about proper parking control measures but simply about a money-making venture.
  Wheelclampers have little incentive to stop people parking in restricted areas—quite the opposite. They want people to park illegally, as they would see it, because that is precisely how they make their money. They want to get people on to a given piece of land so that they can make money from them. Very many ordinary people have suffered at the hands of cowboy wheelclampers who, with their clamp-and-deliver tactics, have been described as modern-day highway robbers. Actually, I am the one who so described them, but I thought that the description was probably worth repeating. I should like to give a few examples of how they have achieved that reputation.
  Only last week, I was contacted by a constituent named Jasmine Steers. She is a disabled woman who had parked outside a restaurant where she had often parked before. She had no idea that dampers were operating in the area, but was approached by some who demanded £70 in cash from her. In her letter to me, she said:
  "I needed to have my car as I am disabled and my children need picking up from school. I got my chequebook out to pay when the man turned around and stated he will only take cash …
  I had to walk to my bank—remember I am registered disabled and walking causes me great pain—to get the £70 that he demanded. I would have thought that any legitimate company would accept a cheque. When I got the receipt, I noted that the company operates out of a postal box address. This sent more warning flags up to the legitimacy of this firm. I quizzed the man on who his boss was and he still refused to answer my questions."
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) said, cowboy dampers tend to pick on elderly people, disabled people and women who are on their own or with young children.
  Another constituent of mine was clamped when she had her eight-month-old baby with her. She was extremely distressed by the circumstances, and said:
  "In effect I was being asked to hand over £70 to unidentified persons in the street, who got out of a private car and who claimed to be acting for a wheelclamping company on behalf of a property owner who they refused to identify."
  Only yesterday, I was contacted by the British Parking Association about a woman in Harrow who had suffered at the hands of wheelclampers. She was fined £240 when her car was towed 20 miles away, to what seemed to her to be a dump. She was asked to meet a man at a railway station to be driven there so that she could collect her car. She was extremely frightened and felt very threatened.
  Reputable wheelclamping companies have been pressing for the industry to be cleaned up. As the hon. Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) said, a few bad apples can give any industry a bad name, and that applies equally to the wheelclamping industry. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) mentioned the media's role in highlighting wheelclamping problems. I should like to acknowledge the role of the Yorkshire Post, the Doncaster Free Press, the Doncaster Star, the "Ed Doolan Show", BBC and ITV and everyone else who has raised the issue, drawn attention to it and helped in the campaign to get something done about it.

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  I am extremely pleased that the Government tabled and passed an amendment in the other place to ensure that landowners also take responsibility for what happens on their land. Very often, those who are clamped are told by the clampers that the landowner will receive no benefit from the fine. Landowners say that, as they make no money from clamping, they are not responsible for what happens and are simply trying to protect their property. People are, however, very suspicious about such declarations. Occasionally, when people are handing over cash to a clamper, they may feel that landowners sometimes rake off some of that money. It is sometimes difficult to avoid such conclusions.
  It is therefore important and welcome that the Government have introduced that amendment, to ensure that landowners have a responsibility for the way in which clampers operate on their land. The fact is that land does not move—unlike dampers, who can operate with nothing more than a mobile telephone and a PO box and who do move. The amendment will make it possible to hold landowners to account. I am grateful to the Government for listening to my concerns and those of the RAC on the issue.
  My only real concern with the Bill is that there will be delay in establishing the Security Industry Authority. I wonder whether there is some way to ensure that, once the authority is established, it will be able to consider complaints that are arising now. I know that organisations such as the RAC are keen to play a part in that type of arrangement. We have to send a message now to those people that this Bill will be coming into force and that these are the expectations that the authority will have of landowners and wheelclamping companies. I should like a record to be kept of current incidents involving outrageous behaviour, so that the authority can take those complaints into account when it starts considering to whom to award licences.
  My hon. Friend the Minister and his officials have listened very carefully to the concerns of the police and motoring organisations on the issue. I pay special tribute to him because he really has listened. I think that everyone has been incredibly impressed with the way he has responded to concerns and taken them on board. I know that colleagues in those organisations would like to join me in thanking him.
  I hope that, regardless of whether there is a general election in the near future, the Bill will be supported by Members on both sides of the House and that we ensure it is passed as quickly as possible. It is extremely important that we have consensus on the issue. Our ultimate aim is to send to cowboy wheelclampers the message that their bully-boy days are over.

DEFERRED DIVISION
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Sylvia Heal): I have now to announce the result of the Division deferred from a previous day. On the motion on Local Government, the Ayes were 362, the Noes were 134, so the motion was agreed to.
[The Division List is published at the end of today's debates.]
6.9 pm
Mr. Peter Luff: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton). She made a characteristically thoughtful and sensible speech. For the second time in a week, I am about to speak in a debate on a matter on which there is a large consensus, and that grieves me—although I hope to inject some controversy into my later remarks.
I do not know what my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) on the Front Bench is going to say, but he is looking uncomfortable at the degree of consensus about the Bill evident across the House. Consensus is not his natural style, to his great credit, but he will have to demonstrate a good deal of it this evening.
It is also a pleasure to speak after my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Goldfield (Sir N. Fowler). Subject to the Prime Minister's decision, my right hon. Friend may have made his last speech in the House. In many respects, I hope that I will be proved wrong, but it was wonderful to hear him bring to fulfilment a campaign that has characterised his political career. I am sure that he was delighted to be able to speak as he did today.
I wish to speak on the security industry aspects of the Bill, and on wheelclamping. Both topics flow from constituency interests. I am privileged to have the British headquarters of Group 4 in my constituency—at least, the front gates and the postal address are in my constituency, and many Group 4 staff employed at Broadway in Worcestershire are my constituents, but the company's head offices are in fact situated in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown). He and I therefore have an important constituency interest in Group 4. Incidentally, the British Security Industry Association has its headquarters in my home city of Worcester, which is not in my constituency.
The key message from Group 4, which should guide the House in its consideration of the Bill, is that the Bill contains no measure that a good company should not be pursuing already. If that is true, the Bill cannot be objected to in any real sense, and we should welcome it.
I am involved in a campaign—I hope that it lasts as long as that pursued by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield—to bring a solution to the vexed question of foxhunting. I am struck by the strong similarities between the Bill and the proposals of the Middle Way Group, of which I am joint chairman.
I do not want a make a party political point, but it amuses me that the Bill appears to have passed through the other place without causing any significant controversy. Some useful amendments were tabled, and the hon. Member for Doncaster, Central mentioned the one relating to wheelclamping and land. In contrast, my humble proposal to license foxhunting seemed to engender much anger in the House of Lords.
It seems to me proper that an activity that impinges on other people, as the operation of the private security industry clearly does, should be subject to some form of statutory regulation or licensing. There is nothing wrong in principle with that, but in saying so I have to grapple with the other part of my persona. My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham will wind up the debate, and no doubt will exhibit a real reluctance—which I share—to impose excessive regulation.

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I was not a member of the previous Government. I sat on the Government Benches and encouraged my colleagues, but they did not have the wisdom to include me in their ranks. I therefore cannot speak from inside knowledge, but I suspect that the reluctance to introduce regulation arose from the tension between an understanding that something had to be done to protect people—including employees—from a poorly run security industry, and an unwillingness to add to the bureaucratic burden borne by the private sector.
Therefore, if the Bill is granted a Committee stage, the House will have to consider how to strike the balance between those competing principles. It will also have to ensure that the Bill does not give advantages to the big operators and discriminate against the small ones—and I say that as Group 4's constituency MP.
The small operators are not always the cowboys in the industry. Group 4 is a role model for the industry rather than a cowboy, but some bigger firms' practices are also sometimes suspect. The balance between regulation and competitiveness is a difficult one to get right.
Group 4's position is straightforward. It has campaigned for 30 years for statutory regulation of the industry, so it is hardly surprising that it welcomes the Bill. Interestingly, the company states that the measure is a
"vital first step towards the fullest possible regulation of the industry … We are pleased that the Bill provides for the possibility of converting the system of inspection and approval of security providers from a voluntary to a compulsory one."
It adds that it firmly believes that only a mandatory system will free the industry from the unscrupulous operators who would undermine it. If the Bill is enacted, the Minister must consider that matter carefully when he implements it.
Under the Bill, everyone in the industry—from chief executives and headquarters staff up to the guards and uniformed operators who offer security services in public places—will have to have a licence. I attended the lunchtime reception held today by the Police Federation, where I was reminded that police officers undergo an intensive training programme and a two-year probation period, and that they continue their training on the job throughout their careers. The federation contrasted that experience unfavourably with the provisions in the Bill.
The better companies offer intensive training, which continues throughout their employees' careers with them. It is right that that should happen, and it is important to recognise that private security staff do not merely hang around Woolworths or shopping malls, keeping an eye out for the occasional shoplifter. Such staff can be engaged in extremely difficult and testing situations.
A recent tragic case involved a security guard who refused to pursue a shoplifter out of a shop. His judgment proved to be correct—the shop assistant who did pursue the shoplifter was subsequently stabbed to death. That is the sort of challenging situation that can arise.
Security officers deal with people in public places, so they necessarily are exposed regularly to people's more eccentric acts. On occasion, private security guards have had to deal with people attempting to commit suicide by burning themselves to death, or with people trying to jump off bridges or hang themselves.
Training is needed to handle such difficult and sensitive situations. The industry is concerned that the proposed Security Industry Authority may not insist on sufficiently
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adequate training when it issues licences. That is important, but the challenge that we must face is to ensure public safety while at the same time maintaining the right regulatory touch. If there is to be a Committee stage for the Bill, I hope that those of my hon. Friends who are selected for it will test the Government on what they anticipate will be the SIA' s action in that regard.
I emphasise that I am concerned about the lack of mandatory regulation for companies. I need to be reassured by the Government that they have done the right thing in not making the provisions of the Bill mandatory.
I said earlier that not all the cowboys are small operators: some are of quite a significant size, and can engage in some very off practices. At the moment, it is possible for people to be on the dole one hour, and in uniform and serving in very sensitive public places the next. I understand that that has happened in some prominent public buildings in London. The absence of a criminal record does not mean that a person is fit and proper to engage in sensitive public activities.
Companies must be well managed. Like the people whom they employ, they must also be fit and proper. The Government will have to consider that matter very carefully.
The independence and impartiality of the proposed S1A will be an important issue too. The SIA will have properly to reflect the interests of the different parties, both in the industry and among those who are served by it. Schedule 1 gives the Secretary of State power to appoint members of the SIA. Group 4 believes, and I am inclined to agree, that the framework for the composition of the SIA should be laid down in legislation. Group 4 also believes that the SIA should contain representatives from the industry, employees, customer groups and others. It suggests that the authority should have 12 members, and that that number should be set out in the Bill.
I believe that the Minister prefers a more flexible approach. That is another matter that needs to be tested in Committee.
Group 4 certainly believes that the Minister's proposal to leave wide discretionary powers with the Home Office will lead to uncertainty—to have a floating number of members is not practical. If the Government want flexibility, Group 4 thinks that it could be provided by allowing Parliament to consider the size and composition of the SIA at a later date, but for the time being to stipulate in the Bill what the size and composition are to be.
Mr. Bercow: My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. Does he agree that we require from the Government some practical reassurances in the Bill on the subject of the composition of the authority, in order to dispel any notion that either the present, or a subsequent, Home Secretary might try to use the power of appointment to the authority as an opportunity to offer somebody a bauble for loyal service in a wholly unrelated field?
Mr. Luff: As always, my hon. Friend makes an important point. The House is ill advised to give Ministers flexibility unless it is genuinely needed. Whatever Ministers' reasons for trying to distort the purposes for which they were given discretion in the first place, it is helpful if as much detail as possible is included in a Bill. At present, that is an unfashionable view; to be fair,

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it was not especially popular with the previous Government either, but it has become splendidly unpopular—Bills are now largely concerned with setting up order-making powers for Secretaries of State. That is not acceptable.
Group 4's suggestion meets the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend and me. It is that the authority should include two members from the industry's employers; two members from employees in the industry; one member from the police and criminal justice system; one member who represents local authorities; one representing insurance providers—an important group; and one member representing customer groups. The industry has some big customers who could easily supply an individual to fill that role. Finally, there should be a member to represent the public. That is a more difficult challenge—I always worry about the appointment of surrogates for the general public.
Mr. Charles Clarke: I understand the intelligent approach suggested by Group 4 and other companies in the field. However, how would the hon. Gentleman deal with the point that I made about the need to ensure that the authority is an independent organisation and not simply an agglomeration of special interests—however significant?
Mr. Luff: That is a philosophical debate. How can we guarantee independence if a Minister is given complete discretion to make appointments? With all due respect to the Minister, for whom I sincerely have a high personal regard, I do not trust him to behave independently in making appointments to a public body. I do not trust any Minister to do that. If Ministers have a framework in which to operate, the prospects of independence are enhanced. There is a debate to be had on that subject. The Minister smiles benignly; I am not sure whether that is from the knowledge that he has won the argument or because he suspects that there may be something in my argument. He nods to indicate the former. However, he needs to reflect on the matter.
The Minister should reflect especially on Group 4's point that there should be more than one representative from the industry. The industry is diverse, with companies of different sizes and scales of operation. At the very least, the authority should include a big fish and a small fish. It would be good if the Minister were to say that during this debate or in the Standing Committee.
I emphasise Group 4's excellent point about the desirability of including employees on the authority. The voice of employees needs to be heard loud and clear; they have often been the victims of badly run security companies.
The authority's powers are also of some concern. The Bill allows for the authority to establish minimum standards. Group 4's view is that minimum standards of training are needed and that they should be specified in the Bill. I made a similar point earlier, so I shall not labour it. Are Ministers really content that so much discretion should be allowed to them and to the authority in the formulation of proposals?
The subject of in-house security staff is contentious. Many people in the industry are worried about the exclusion of such staff from the Bill's provisions. Group 4
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and the British Security Industry Association share those concerns. They believe that a two-tier system of private security could develop, and that
"failure to regulate in-house staff may provide a loophole which could help unscrupulous people to find their way into the industry and undermine the very principles of the Bill."
The Minister of State, Home Office is currently not at the Dispatch Box, although he has been replaced by another Minister of State, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche), for whom I also have high personal regard.
I hope that Ministers will consider including provisions on in-house staff. The criminal justice White Paper provides for the extension of private sector work in policing; that is a powerful reason for arguing that case. The growing role of the private security industry in many aspects of the lives of local communities means that the industry must keep a watchful eye on the Human Rights Act 1998. We must be certain that the Government are right to exclude provisions on in-house providers.
The BSIA has concerns on that point:
"There are two main points to consider here, a) businesses may choose to revert to in-house security, as it could become cheaper than employing contractors, once the cost of regulation has been added to contract prices, and b) individuals who cannot obtain a licence may seek work within in-house operations. It will be interesting to see what form of vetting the Government recommends for in-house security. Will businesses be allowed to access enhanced criminal records to assess the suitability of their in-house staff? If so, why not include licensing for in-house officers as a legal obligation?"
That is a powerful case; the Government must answer it.
The burden of the cost of licensing must not fall on employees. I still have reservations about the minimum wage, despite everything that has happened. Recent increases in the rate will pose severe challenges for some businesses—not necessarily because they pay at that rate, but because of differentials. However, in the private security industry, the absence of a minimum wage often led to shabby treatment of employees. There is no doubt that scandalously love rates were paid, so in that particular industry, the minimum wage brought great benefits. The company should meet the cost of the licence and I hope that the Government will keep that firmly in mind.
I am slightly surprised that the Bill lists no exemptions. Group 4 suggests that the Act should not apply to
"a police officer … a prison officer … a member of Her Majesty's armed forces … a member of the Ministry of Defence Guard Service … an officer or employee of a Government department, government agency or non departmental government body … a person who in whatever capacity carries out any designated activities in relation to a public works or supply contract relating to the provision of prison escort, custody and immigration services."
They are, of course, already separately regulated.
It is strange that there are no exclusions. It is important that correct boundaries and delineations be set out in statute; the case for exemption seems strong.
There is some urgency on these issues, because the Government seem to be planning to make much greater use of the private security industry. Indeed, we seem to be going through privatisation by stealth. I suppose that I should welcome that, but I am somewhat surprised

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because when the White Paper on the industry was published in 1999, the Minister of State, Home Office, the right hon. Member for Brent, South ( Mr. Boateng), said:
"I have no plans for police patrol or any other police functions to be carried out by the private security industry, except that we have proposed that the escorting of certain abnormal loads should, in future, be carried out by the private sector Representatives of the police and other bodies have raised many matters in discussions, but neither I nor my Ministerial colleagues have proposed any changes to responsibility for police patrolling. No Ministerial committees or Working Groups are currently examining any such proposals.—[Official Report, 27 July 1999; Vol. 336, c. 263W.]
I found that answer difficult to reconcile with the White Paper "Criminal Justice: The Way Ahead", published last month. It seems to have a different vision of the future relationship of the private security industry with the police service. In the chapter on the police, we are told that one of the key measures is
"experimental accreditation of security or patrol staff from other organisations, working under police co-ordination to deliver improved community safety."
In a little less than two years, there seems to have been a huge shift in the Government's thinking.
The White Paper rightly notes:
"There has always been a wide range of people contributing to community safety in various forms. These include park keepers (some with constabulary powers), security guards in shopping centres, car park attendants, neighbourhood wardens, night club bouncers and the private security industry. The issue for policing is how these various activities can be co-ordinated to make the most effective contribution to making safer communities."
The paper talks about the Private Security Industry Bill and the Government believing that there is
"scope for some evaluated schemes to determine the effect on public reassurance of the police accrediting and co-ordinating a range of independent bodies to work in conjunction with them in delivering community safety."
It says that these activities could be co-ordinated with policing needs by an officer with an enhanced role as a community beat manager. That proposal represents a very significant shift in the Government's position.
Now here comes the more controversial part of my remarks—my more partisan remarks.
Mr. Bercowindicated assent.
Mr. Luff: I see that my hon. Friend is pleased to hear that.
I am afraid that I am a bit cynical about this because police numbers are down, and in my area, very sharply down. The very useful document "Police Service Strength", produced by the Library, shows that under each and every Conservative Government, police numbers in West Mercia rose, sometimes by—
Mr. David Lammy: Does the right hon. Gentleman not acknowledge that—
Mr. Bercow: The hon. Gentleman
Mr. Lammy: I am sorry. Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that between 1979 and 1997—for me, formative years—in constituencies such as Tottenham, crime increased by 166 per cent., and that the partnership approach that the Labour Government have put forward is what has begun to tackle that?
Mr. Luff: I am reluctant to be drawn too far into this argument, because I suspect that you would rule me out
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of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, but let me say this. Crime was falling at the end of the last Conservative Government, as a result of the measures that we introduced, and in recent years crime—especially violent crime—has been rising again, causing great distress to my constituents, so that kind of Millbank argument cuts no ice in Worcestershire. It is hardly surprising because in Worcestershire, police numbers have been falling for the first time in more than 20 years.
If the hon. Gentleman wants the figures for police numbers under the various Administrations, they increased by 9.9 per cent. in the first—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman was quite correct when he said that if he went too far down that path, I would call him to order.
Mr. Luff: I certainly have no intention of going down a primrose path that leads to being out of order, but there is an important point here. The Government plan to make increased use of the private security industry in partnership with the police, and my contention is that they are doing so because police numbers are falling and the Government need to cover up for that loss of numbers. The Minister of State, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green, looks puzzled. I have no wish to make you unduly anxious about the orderliness of our proceedings, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will simply say that police numbers in Worcestershire increased under every Conservative Government and have fallen by 7 per cent. under the present Government. That is the fact that I cannot get on to the public record because there is a conspiracy of silence—
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mrs. Barbara Roche): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Luff: With pleasure.
Mrs. Roche: I shall be extremely brief. The figures do not bear out what the hon. Gentleman says. If he looks at them, he will see that, during the Conservative years, police numbers were falling, and that it is only now, as a result of the resources that we have put in, that that picture is changing. That is the truth.
Mr. Luff: I am drawn into considerable difficulties here. I am glad to provoke the Minister, but she is simply wrong—as far as my constituency is concerned, at least.
In Lady Thatcher's first term, in West Mercia there was an increase of 9.9 per cent. In her second term, there was an increase of only 0.7 per cent. In the third term, under Lady Thatcher and my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), there was an increase of 5.4 per cent., and in the final term, under my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon, there was an increase of 0.3 per cent. There was an increase—sometimes big, sometimes modest—in each and every Parliament. However, under the present Administration, police numbers have fallen by nearly 7 per cent.
Those are figures from the document produced by the Library, confirmed by Home Office figures published last week. I am not surprised that the Minister does not like to be confronted with the truth, but it is the truth. I am afraid that is why I am so cynical about provisions designed to increase the role of the private security industry.

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I find it difficult to get this subject debated because, when I make these allegations, the BBC—not unreasonably—wishes to find someone to counter them, and there is a conspiracy of silence on the other side. No one will answer for those figures. They are a matter of fact and I am afraid that the Minister will have to accept it. I will happily give her a copy of this document after the debate. It is excellent; I commend it to her.
The use of the private security industry is a matter of some concern to the Police Federation. Fred Broughton, chairman of the staff association, has expressed his concerns. In a press release in 1998, he said:
"Mr. Blair's comments"—
not the comments of the Prime Minister but those of the chief constable of Surrey—
"show that chief officers do not appear to be able to guarantee effective patrolling strengths within their current budgets and are seeking ways around this … Our view is that"
the proposals by the chief constable of Surrey to make greater use of the private security industry three years ago
"will reduce standards with lesser calibre patrol officers with limited performance".
In a statement of the Police Federation's view on the proposal to use the private security industry more, which appears on its website at present, the federation says:
"Private policing would operate against the public interest and any proposals to hand over the existing responsibilities of the police to the private sector should be strongly resisted. We do not want a two-tier system of policing, where those who can afford to pay for protection do so and those who cannot, lose out."
I am not sure that I go all the way with the Police Federation, but its concerns need to be addressed.
The security industry already has an important role—that is why the licensing proposed in the Bill is so important—in shopping malls, in prison escorts and in privately funded public patrols. In Group 4's own village of Broadway, in my constituency, there is a privately funded public patrol, which brings great comfort to the residents.
As the Government are obviously trying to privatise the police through the back door and to use the private sector more intensively than before, it is entirely proper that the industry should be more effectively regulated. More opportunity for Group 4 and the other operators, provided by the Government, should be accompanied by more responsibility, and that is essential if the services provided by these companies are to be acceptable to the communities and organisations that they serve.
I suggest one thought to the Minister. I understand that the Government have shown considerable reluctance to commit themselves only to employing registered companies. Obviously, when the Bill becomes law and is put into effect, all individuals will be licensed, but companies will not. There may be something to be said for the Government at least considering sending a message that they will use only companies that register, and will not just rely on those that comply with the literal terms of the Act and have their individual members licensed.
I shall try not to make my final point too long, but it is important. It follows on from the comments by the hon. Member for Doncaster, Central about wheelclamping.
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She is right to say that there can be reputable wheelclamping: it does happen. I would like to have a wheelclamp for the cars that regularly park outside my flat, where they should not be. I have a notice that I run off from my word processor, which is fairly offensive and normally gets them moved, but it is nevertheless a problem.
The horror stories about wheelclamping are legion. Clampers in Doncaster threatened to hold a mother's three-year-old daughter to ransom until £60 was collected from a bank. Clampers in Sheffield demanded a woman's gold tooth as payment. One woman was asked for sex unless she came up with the release payment immediately. A hearse with a body in the back was clamped outside a church. Sixty-one year-old Marina Vine was clamped when, driving home from hospital following a chemotherapy session, she pulled over to be sick. This is the type of problem that we must deal with. There are real cowboys in the wheelclamping industry.
The British Parking Association, to its credit, has done its best to deal with this menace, but it has no powers. The code of conduct that it has drawn up contains some very welcome provisions. It says that
"release should be undertaken within 2 hours of payment, and where the circumstances dictate that de-clamp operatives receive the release fee on site, they should attend the clamped vehicle to accept the fee and release the vehicle within 2 hours of the intent to pay being stated";
and that
"enforcement staff shall be uniformed and carry photo identity cards";
and that
"the release fee shall not exceed that which would be paid if the vehicle had been clamped on-street in that area as determined by the DETR (currently this is £45 to £58 outside London and £75 to £85 within London)".
It is difficult to reconcile all these good intentions with the activities of the cowboys. I have a constituent who wishes to remain anonymous because he is fearful of recriminations from the parking company. I had a representation from him in January. What happened was as follows:
"My son was in my wife's car and he was stopping at the Copthorne Hotel in central Birmingham last Friday night. He was dropping off his suitcase at the hotel and was going straight out, he was unable to park at the hotel so he pulled his car onto some waste ground at the side of the hotel at 7.30pm."
My constituent admits that there were signs, although they were not very visible. He was actually doing something wrong.
"He returned to the car at 7.45pm and it had been towed away within 15 minutes, there was a contact telephone number but the voice message said the office was unmanned until 9am.
When he phoned the office in the morning he was told he had to pay £240.00 cash to get his car back."
From what I have heard from the hon. Members for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) and for Doncaster, Central, £240 to £250 seems to be the cowboy going rate at the moment. My constituent continues:
"When the 3 men arrived back with the car they wanted the £240 in cash and were not prepared to say who they were. As they were next to a police station, my son asked to have an address or a copy of the invoice so he could go into the police station to see if they were bona fide traders."

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That was a prudent step for him to take. The letter continues:
"This request was refused and the men drove off after a brief argument. Then when he phoned again the price to get the car back was £270.00."
The company involved is Parking Solutions (U.K.) Ltd, PO Box 7765, Halesowen, B64 6AY My constituent and his father have phoned Parking Solutions and the police, who said that it was a civil matter and there was nothing that they could do.
My constituent continued:
"in the end we had to give in and pay the £270.00"—
I have the receipt here. He goes on:
"To add to the saga damage has also been sustained on the rear bumper which they say is our problem (Seems there is a disclaimer on the notice board).
Since the weekend I have spoken to the police who say it is a civil matter, trading standards who say it does not fall in their area of responsibility. Birmingham Trading Standards advised me to check to see if they were a registered company and told me to contact the company Licensing Office".
All that work was done to try to deal with a cowboy contractor.
My constituent
"spoke to Parking Solutions asking for details of their insurance company which they refused to do on the phone. They said I had to write in for this information which means I have to disclose my home address which I am not happy about
I understand my constituent's concerns about disclosing his home address. He continued:
"I am now taking advice from Worcester trading standards who suggested I do the following which I have done:
Talk to the Tax Man and see if Parking Solutions declare the cash".
I hope that the hon. Lady will commend that course of action to her other hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench.
Mr. Bercow: I am shocked by the example that my hon. Friend cites. I wonder whether he might choose to refer that important issue to the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (Mrs. Heal).
Mr. Luff: I shall carefully consider that characteristic suggestion from my hon. Friend.
My constituent has sent an invoice for the repairs to the company, but he used the address of the Worcester trading standards office, rather than his own, for fear of recrimination. He says that Worcester trading standards office advised him to
"Send full details to my MP to raise in Parliament as they are also not happy with this practice."
It is a pleasure to be able to comply so comprehensively with a constituent's concerns.
Earlier this week, I received a very good reply from the Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), who is temporarily not present on the Treasury Bench, and my constituent will receive a copy of it tomorrow. I am pleased with what the hon. Gentleman says about the provisions on such incidents, but he adds:
"Among other provisions, the code lays down both a ceiling on charges and a complaints procedure. Although we cannot say at this stage exactly what provisions a code under the Authority would include, we certainly envisage it covering both those points."
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That returns me to my earlier points about the comprehensive nature of legislation. It is crucial that the code of conduct should include such matters, and I hope that it will. I would like the statute law to specify that the code should include such provisions.
For example, to return temporarily to foxhunting, we envisage that its codes of conduct will have statutory force and we specified some of the matters that should be included in those codes. I commend that course of action to the Minister. We should specify what the code of conduct should say about the greatest abuses. I am sure that the authority will take care of such matters, but we are here to act for constituents from whom we have heard horror stories.
Ms Rosie Winterton: We should consider the fact that if too much is laid down by Parliament, we may not be able to overcome some of the on-going problems. Some cowboy wheelclamping companies now adopt different methods, such as taking photographs of cars and sending out notices demanding penalties. It is important to be able to vary the code of conduct easily, without having to return the matter to Parliament.
Mr. Luff: The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I obviously was not explaining myself clearly, and I apologise to her. I am saying that certain matters so obviously need to be encompassed in the code that they should be specified. We must ensure that the authority imposes a ceiling on charges and a complaints procedure.
I am not a lawyer; I do not understand the provisions of the Human Rights Act, and so on, but I think it sensible to allow the authority to insist on certain provisions. I certainly do not suggest that we should draw up a complete list; I am saying that it should at least state that a code of conduct should be established, dealing with such issues as the authority thinks fit, but including X, Y and Z. There is a strong case for ensuring that such issues are included.
I have spoken for 35 minutes, which is longer than I intended to when I rose, but these issues are important not only for my constituents—as employers, employees and as victims of cowboy wheelclampers—but for the general public, who want the security industry to offer the level of competence and security that they have a right to expect, but which has not been offered until now. I am sorry that the Conservative Government did not get around to resolving their own internal conflicts, which I discussed at the beginning of my speech, and I am glad that this Government have done so. They have fewer qualms about regulation than we do, but I commend them on the Bill. I hope that they will consider the detailed issues that I and other right hon. and hon. Members have raised, and that the Bill will reach the statute book at a relatively early date—notwithstanding the guillotine motion, which we shall debate later.
6.45 pm
Mr. Kelvin Hopkins: Like my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson), I am member of the GMB, but that is not especially relevant to what I wish to say. I have not seen many of our wheelclamping colleagues at GMB branch meetings in Luton; it is possible that they are not even members of the GMB, so what I say will not offend fellow members.

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I commend the speech made by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler), especially the last part of it, in which he emphasised the importance of the police, who are unarmed and on the streets of Britain. We should be proud of them. Although there are always problems in policing and patrolling the streets of any country and any city, the police in Britain do a good job, often in difficult circumstances. They are often understaffed, and I shall deal with that in a moment.
The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) said that particular qualities are required in the security industry. Police officers possess exactly those qualities. That suggests that there might be a case for extending, rather than restricting, the areas in which the police operate. I should not wish to see a creeping privatisation of the police force. Indeed, my constituents would prefer their streets to be patrolled by police officers, who are accountable to the police authority and the Home Office, rather than by private sector organisations. People might expect a Labour Member to make those comments, and I shall continue to hold that view.
Mr. Luff: I commend pages 83 and 84 of "Criminal Justice: The Way Ahead", from which the hon. Gentleman will see that the Government have rather different plans.
Mr. Hopkins: I listened with interest when the hon. Gentleman was reading that document. My hon. Friends on the Front Bench will be aware that my constituents are keen to have more police on the beat and that, however the Government have done, we still need more, and they have a good case. There could be a little less trouble on the streets if we had a few more police. I shall certainly continue to write to my hon. Friends asking them to provide the resources so that we can have more police, especially in Luton, North, and, in equity, elsewhere in the country.
I very much welcome the Government's decision to regulate the private security industry and to take steps towards filling a gap that has existed for far too long. The Bill deals with a range of activities that we deride as "cowboy", but that is sometimes a slur on cowboys. I shall cite some examples from my constituency later.
I wish to focus specifically on wheelclamping and the impounding of vehicles parked illegally on private property. I have described what has been happening in my constituency in letters to Ministers, and I have described it publicly as "legalised mugging", because it seems tantamount to that. In my constituency at least, the charges imposed are extortionate—for example, £80 to release a wheelclamp, and £150 a day for an impounded car to be released.
There are many examples from all over the country, but in my constituency a middle-aged couple were delivering clothes to a garage at the back of a charity shop when wheelclampers pounced on them. The husband was sitting in the driving seat with the engine running while his wife quickly unloaded the car boot. His car was clamped while waiting, and he was surrounded by a gang of young men, demanding £80 to release the clamp. It is alleged that, at one point, one of the young men threatened to head butt the driver. By all accounts, the gang was very menacing indeed.
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In another case, wheelclampers marched an old-age pensioner to a cash machine and made her withdraw £80 from her account to pay them, despite the fact that she had a disabled person's sticker on her car. Those are just two examples, and I shall not waste time describing others, as we have heard some previously.
The Government are right to want to regulate activities on private as well as public land. In one area of my constituency, there is a small unadopted road next to a shopping centre. Wheelclampers wait in a van and pounce as soon as a car comes round the corner and parks even temporarily with the driver still in it. They leap out, clamp the car and demand £80. That has happened time and again.
My concern is that the Bill deals only with private wheelclampers, but I have written to Ministers on more than one occasion urging them to consider the possibility that the local authority could play a role in wheelclamping even on private land. Local authorities undertake some wheelclamping, and they have a right to do that. For example, my local authority employed a private wheelclamping firm to undertake wheelclamping on its behalf. However, the authority sacked the company because it misbehaved in the way that other wheelclampers misbehave. Thus even when a local authority was involved and employed a private sector organisation, the private organisation behaved badly and had to be dismissed.
Local authorities are now considering other ways to overcome the problem. They and the police wish to wheelclamp in many cases, but the small amount of wheelclamping that would take place on local authority land would not be sufficient to make it financially viable for local authorities to set up a system involving a pound and a wheelclamping team. However, if they were given responsibility for wheelclamping in general within their area—for example, they could act on behalf of the police in an agency capacity or on behalf of local residents—they would have more scope and their greater activity might enable them to set up a self-financing scheme. A reasonable charge to the owners of the clamped cars would pay for the service, and the authorities would not even have to charge the private property owner on whose land the car was parked.
I have personal experience of the problem. I live a mile or so from Luton Town football club and it is customary for visiting fans to park their cars in the road outside my house. I do not mind that; it is not a problem. However, on one occasion, a group of young males parked their car in the driveway of my house. They locked it up and quickly ran away, and I was not going to tangle with them. When they returned, they jumped into the car and drove off.
I did not know how to handle that situation, because I certainly was not going to remonstrate with four large male football fans who were rather more youthful than me. I thought that they had been a bit cheeky, to say the least, but I had no one to whom I could turn. The police would not bother with such a case; they have more important things to do. The local authority has no role, and I was not going to get in touch with a private wheelclamping firm. I might have found that they were friends of the football fans—who knows?
In that case, one would have liked the local authority to have had a role. I would have liked to have been able to ring up the council and say, "Someone has parked in

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my driveway. Can you bring your service round to deal with the problem?" The local authority would then have taken charge. People would not argue with it, because it would have the staff and the resources to deal with the problem. It would also have the police to back it up, should that be necessary. I would not have been happy to use a private firm, but I would have been happy to telephone the local authority. Therefore, we should consider giving local authorities a role in the future.
Everyone else in the Chamber seems to have an idea when the general election will take place. I do not, and the Government may be in office for the full five-year term. However, it is possible that the Bill will not reach the statute book before the election—whenever that may be. If it does not, I hope that a second-term Labour Government will reintroduce it and consider giving local authorities a role. They could permit and encourage—not compel or require—local authorities to play their part.
I have spoken informally to local government officers about the problem, and they have said that, provided that the scheme operated on a sufficiently large scale, they could operate it and would be happy to do so. Indeed, I know that some private citizens and firms have asked local authorities to impose restrictions on people parking illegally on private property. Local authorities cannot do that at present, but if a new Bill gave them the appropriate rights backed by law, they could certainly assist. That would work extremely well and everyone who faced the problem of illegal parking could telephone the local authority. To me, that looks like creeping municipal socialism, but I am not averse to that. I hope that the Government will, at least, consider that possibility in future.
6.55 pm
Mr. David Lammy: I welcome the proposal to regulate the private security industry to ensure that those employed in it can carry out their jobs professionally. I say that because in the summer of 1991 I was employed as a security guard to patrol a huge building in Fleet street that was to house a large accountancy firm. Therefore, I am delighted that, 10 years later, I have the opportunity to speak in the House on this subject.
I am sure that many Members recognise that the private security industry in London and the major conurbations employs many ethnic minority people. I was a student who needed work during the summer holidays and I know that many young men and women—both black and white—take up such employment primarily so that they can read their law or biology books while they are on night patrol, ensuring that buildings are kept safe and sound.
However, the industry also provides permanent employment because many people in communities such as mine in Tottenham are in lower socio-economic groups and take up much needed work in that sector. I was saddened, therefore, when I heard the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) challenge the minimum wage. Many people in the industry rely on it, and I am glad that the Government have recently increased it.
Many young people and those in lower socio-economic groups will welcome the fact that, to some extent, the industry will be professionalised, regulated and supervised. They do not want to work alongside people
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who have criminal convictions and they do not want to be vulnerable in the workplace. They want to be recognised for the service that they provide and the Bill will, at long last, give them security. I welcome that.
By definition, private security employees are entrusted with protecting people. Whether they are security guards, door supervisors, professional security investigators or, indeed, wheelclampers, it is in everyone's best interest that people employed in positions of such trust should meet required standards and be registered for all to recognise. The Bill will promote standards within the industry and serve the public interest.
I appreciate that the private security industry covers several activities, but the sector that springs to my mind, as the youngest Member of the House, is the door supervision sector, which is made up of people who are readily known as "bouncers". I am sure that my right hon. and hon. Friends have at one time—perhaps in the not too distant past—been under the so-called protection of bouncers and many will have children who frequent pubs and clubs. Such venues attract a large number of young people, often under the influence of alcohol—legitimate, of course—on a Friday or Saturday night.
Bouncers have unfortunately been a magnet for illegal drug dealing. We had a problem with a small underground club in my constituency. Drug dealing often stems from the people who are meant to protect our younger generation. Unfortunately, many of us have examples of bouncers who engage in criminal activity. In some London clubs, they take drugs off the dealers, kick them out and peddle the drugs themselves. I am delighted that the Bill will at last ensure that drug dealers and criminals will be unable to engage freely in that activity in our clubs. Many bouncers have also been too readily involved in physical assaults on people who have gone out to enjoy themselves on a Friday or Saturday night. There is no justification for that, as I am sure all hon. Members would agree.
Legislation is the only way to ensure that such problems do not occur and that no bouncer has a criminal background. It sends a clear message that inappropriate behaviour by those workers, who are entrusted with the care of the public, will result in their licences being revoked. All aspects of the private security industry will benefit from the promotion of standards that will result in regulation, and I hope that there will be a more creative use of private security workers.
I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister's announcement about extending neighbourhood warden schemes, especially in deprived areas. It must be clear from the outset that the use of private security guards to patrol housing estates, parks or other public areas should only complement the work of the police. I was saddened, if not surprised, to hear the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire challenge partnership schemes, which I think are the future of crime prevention.
Jackie Ballard: How does the hon. Gentleman envisage preventing private security operatives from substituting for the police rather than complementing their work?
Mr. Lammy: That is not a matter for me. However, partnership must be the way forward. In deprived areas such as mine, the police can never police on their own.

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They rely on the community, neighbourhood wardens, neighbourhood watch schemes and residents associations. All must play their part. The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire used the word "partnership", but he talked about privatising the police without recognising that my constituents need that partnership in order to police our estates. I welcome a Government who turn their back on paternalism and a top-down approach to crime. The input must also come from the bottom up.
There is no suggestion that security guards will act as a quasi police force. They will not be given powers of arrest that are any different from those available to the general public. I dare say that people who criticise proposals for neighbourhood wardens do not live on estates with repeated vandalism and aggression, which is often perpetrated by a small minority. A partnership approach is essential. The Bill has a role in the wider issue of crime prevention.
Jackie Ballard: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about partnerships and policing to create safer communities. However, does he not understand that there is a fundamental difference between paid-for private security operatives who are brought into a community and community-based volunteer neighbourhood watch schemes? They are completely different.
Mr. Lammy: The hon. Lady seems to suggest that paid-for private operatives have existed only for the past year. Estates in different parts of the country have for a number of years used private security firms to manage affairs in their buildings. Local authorities, including mine, have employed private companies to do that. If there is proper scrutiny, that sector has a role in working alongside the police and ordinary people in neighbourhoods that are worried about crime.
In my road in Tottenham, the neighbourhood watch scheme works closely with security people on the nearby estate and the police to ensure that our homes are no longer burgled. The number of burglaries is decreasing because of the partnership between the residents in the neighbourhood watch scheme, security on the estate at the top of the road and the police half a mile down the road in their local station. The use of private security firms has not come about in the past year; the arrangement has been in place for some time and the Government seek to cement it.
On wheelclamping, I should say that I do not drive. I believe that I am in good company in this place—my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) are Londoners who also do not drive. I have therefore not been a victim of overzealous clampers, but I rely on other people and friends to drive me. I have been horrified to see friends, many of whom are on low incomes, charged a stack load of money—usually £200-plus—to get their cars back. It is difficult for them to retrieve their cars or get the clamps removed. I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) about the need for greater involvement of local authorities in that exercise. I hope that the Government will consider that further.
I hope also that the Government will consider the position of local authorities that contract out services to private companies and then find that they are not reliable
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or as good at the job as they had expected. A constituent of mine, who had saved for a long time to go on holiday, returned to find that her car, which had been deemed by the private contractor to have been vandalised, had been towed away. Ultimately, it was revealed that wheelclampers had damaged the car, and the outcome was that my constituent was awarded some compensation. I hope that local authorities who contract out services will come under the auspices of the Bill, although I suspect that they do not. The matter needs closer attention.
I welcome the Bill. It will make my constituents very happy because it will help to prevent crime and foster the partnerships that are needed in areas such as mine. In addition, many ethnic minority people are employed in the sector, and they need the security of knowing that they are not joining organisations that employ criminals and that they are recognised by the Government as a professional body of people, with all the rights and obligations that come with that status.
7.12 pm
Mr. Adrian Bailey: I welcome the Bill, which addresses a number of problems in my constituency and in the neighbouring black country area which have been made known to me. I pay tribute to my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), who, as other Members have said, has done considerable research on this subject and is recognised as an authority on it. He has fought a long and lonely battle for the licensing of security operatives. I believe that he wants to contribute to the debate and I look forward to his comments with interest.
The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) rather sidetracked the House on policing. If, in their years in power and their subsequent years in opposition, Conservative Members had been as concerned about the security industry as they had been about the police, we might have had an even better record on crime prevention than this Government have managed so far. During their 18 years in power, the Conservatives showed little inclination to tackle security issues, which I know are of considerable significance to the public.
We must be clear that the industry is in many ways complementary to the police and law enforcement. I thought that the industry employed 300,000 people, but it was said earlier that the estimated figure is now 350,000. Many of those people are very underpaid, work extremely long hours and receive poor training. The Government have already tackled the first issue with the minimum wage, which will shortly go up to £4.20 an hour, but there remains a tranche of issues that are addressed in the Bill and on which action is long overdue.
Given that combination of adverse circumstances, it is not surprising that staff turnover in the industry is enormous. Consequently, any training that is given is of little benefit to the industry as a whole. In many areas, security work is regarded as not only low in pay but low in status, and it is unattractive to potential employees. That is ironic when one considers that given the industry's vital role in preventing crime, the level of responsibility is completely unrecognised and inconsistent with the prevailing pay rates, public status and training.
It is hardly surprising that security work is in many ways regarded as a potential employment opportunity for crooks. I make it clear that I am all in favour of the

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rehabilitation of offenders. We want ex-criminals to go into full-time, rewarding employment and to contribute to society. However, I am highly suspicious when people with a track record of abusing the law suddenly demonstrate a totally uncharacteristic enthusiasm for applying for positions that involve upholding the law. In reality, the inside knowledge that many security operatives have when working for companies offers opportunities for rewards that are far greater than those to be gained by any honest employment.
The most conspicuous example that I have come across occurred in my constituency a few years ago, when an ex-criminal got a job as a security guard and was then made a supervisor in the same company. Unfortunately, he had been imprisoned following the murder by strangulation of a young woman in front of her child. Earlier, he had beaten up an old lady who subsequently died in hospital. In case any Conservative Members try to intervene, I might add that his release from jail took place under the previous Government.
The company had employed that man without knowledge of his history. Not surprisingly, when it was exposed the company went bust. One can only imagine the horror felt by other employees following the revelation of the criminal past of the man who had been supervising them as well as dealing with others as part of his work. That underlines the need for change. Under existing legislation, there is no access to criminal records. Happily, the Bill will change that, and it is about time too.
The issue of door supervisors is also of enormous significance in my constituency. We have heard talk about the importance of partnership arrangements between the police, licensees and the security industry in enforcing law and order in that context. I can advocate the benefits of good working partnership practices at local level. I can see those benefits even within my own family because I have an 18-year-old stepson who at weekends likes to go with his mates to a nightclub in West Bromwich, where they enjoy themselves dancing the night away.
When asked why he chose a nightclub in West Bromwich rather than one in a neighbouring police command unit and local authority, my stepson replied that he and his friends went to West Bromwich because they knew that if there was trouble in that nightclub, the bouncers would apprehend the troublemakers and keep hold of them until the local police arrived, arrested them and took them away, whereas troublemakers apprehended inside nightclubs in other areas tended to be thrown out on to the street, where they could continue to fight and engage in fisticuffs with any passers-by who caught their eye. That is a clear example of a company with a good working partnership with the police, benefiting not only the company's clientele, but the neighbourhood and the police. The Bill is designed to facilitate such partnerships.
A concern I share with other hon. Members focuses on the role of bouncers in drug peddling. I especially welcome the provisions that deal with the licensing of doormen and provide for the banning of those with inappropriate criminal convictions. My local police superintendent assures me that where drug problems exist in our area—happily, there are worse parts of the country for drug problems than West Bromwich—they are often
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directly related to door operatives who use the atmosphere generated by alcohol, music or peer group pressure among young people to peddle drugs.
Mr. Hawkins: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I entirely agree with him about the activities of doormen, but does he not feel somewhat embarrassed that, only about a month ago, in the Committee on the Criminal Justice and Police Bill, he allowed himself to be persuaded by his Whips to vote down a Conservative amendment that would have introduced into that Bill provisions that were designed precisely to stop drug dealing by bouncers on nightclub doors?
Mr. Bailey: I am confident that the measures taken by the Government to curb drug dealing mark a considerable improvement on those taken by the previous Government and that they are likely to be more effective. It takes some nerve for a member of a party that had 18 years in government to pass such legislation to talk about embarrassment now.
Much has been said in the debate about wheelclamping, and some of the tales related by other Members make my personal experience pale by comparison. None the less, I shall spend a few minutes describing an experience of friends of mine and exploring the issues that arise from it, which I hope will be addressed by the code of practice for wheelclampers under the Bill.
Two friends of mine—highly respectable, law-abiding school teachers—went on a bank holiday Monday to drop off their daughter at a bus station in the centre of Birmingham. Unable to find a public car park, they saw what they thought was a private car park with no vehicles in it and parked their car there while they saw their daughter off. They returned within 15 minutes to find a white van, a wheelclamp on their car, and two very large and intimidating males demanding £85 for the release of their car. They did not have £85 on them and they were told that a cheque would not suffice, so they had to find a bank cashpoint. It should be borne in mind that that can present difficulties on a bank holiday: not only are banks not open, but sometimes the cash machines run out of cash. Had my friends not been fit, able-bodied people, obtaining that £85 to secure their car's release would have presented considerable difficulties. Afterwards, they described their emotions as suppressed anger, fear and fury at the fact that people could behave in such a manner.
Compared with one or two of the cases about which I have heard today, my friends' experience was not too bad. None the less, their case raises a range of issues that I hope the Bill will address. First, it is obvious that wheelclamping companies must be registered and the areas in which they operate clearly identified. Secondly, there should be a locally determined scale of fines that are considered acceptable and support the logic of the local neighbourhood parking scheme. Thirdly, people who transgress and have their car clamped should have the right to pay in a way that does not compromise their personal safety. Fourthly, they should be given a receipt bearing the company name. Finally, if they are not satisfied with their treatment, there should be a mechanism whereby they can make a formal complaint.
I note that the Bill allows considerable flexibility—some have criticised that—regarding the power given to the Secretary of State and the Security Industry Authority.

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There are many areas in which the Bill lays down no prescriptions, but instead leaves the matters for later prescription. I welcome the Minister's comment that the operation of the legislation will be continuously reviewed with a view to improving aspects that are not felt to be working appropriately. I should like to single out one such aspect: the inspectorate.
If we are to develop an effective licensing process, the inspectorate must carry out its job with appropriate sensitivity. The existing regime of inspectors has been too close to those elements within the security industry that have opposed the regulation of their industry. When the Bill is passed, a new inspectorate must be established with inspectors recruited who are appropriately qualified and directly accountable to the Security Industry Authority.
I conclude with one caveat: we look to the Minister and the authority continuously to review the process, make amendments where necessary and fill in gaps left by the basic legislation. None the less, we welcome the Bill. A properly regulated security industry will enhance the status of the profession, reassure the public and be of enormous benefit in the fight against crime. I am proud that it is a Labour Government who have, at last, acted.
7.29 pm
Mr. Bruce George: First, I must apologise for my sudden absence from the Chamber, which was not due to a lack of enthusiasm. As Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence, I was meeting the Secretary of State for Defence in what may be our very last meeting. I am afraid that the task of juggling two of my major interests in this place could be done only by listening to half of the Minister's speech, rattling through the Defence Committee in an hour and a half—the speediest session we have ever had, despite the complexity and sensitivity of European defence and security—and returning to listen to my colleagues.
I shall save my colleagues from a speech of Brezhnevian proportions, although I could give one. The introduction of the Bill in the Commons makes today memorable. It is perhaps a little premature to express the aspiration that the Bill will soon become law, given the complex political situation that we are in, but we may be close to seeing legislation. I heard the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy), in which he said that he had been a security guard. I was almost a security guard; I introduced my first private Member's Bill in 1977, and sought to show how simple it was to get a job in a security firm. I went to Iver in Buckinghamshire and was asked some penetrating questions by the managing director of the firm, such as "Are you frightened of the dark?", "Can you read?", and "How quickly can you start?" He asked for names of people whom he could contact. I gave the name of my father and my then secretary, neither of whom were approached. Bingo! I was offered the job, as long as the company could get a uniform large enough to fit me, which was probably its biggest task.
It was and is simple to get a job with a security company. When I asked the managing director what training I would get, he almost fell off his chair laughing because there was none. In many ways, our debate is 25 years late. The security industry should have had the
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intelligence—the self-interest even—to realise that going up the blind alley of self-regulation would be a disaster. It chose that course, in collusion with the previous Government, because it fitted in with the Conservatives' anti-bureaucratic activities and their alleged hostility to regulation. Apparently, when the former Deputy Prime Minister was approached to support regulation, he refused, as he was in the business of deregulating, not regulating.
Most other countries in—dare I say it—the advanced world regulate private security and, indeed, are in their third generation of legislation. Having learned the lessons of the past 25 to 30 years, at long last we are doing what others have done. I would have liked more evidence of experience derived from many of those countries, but the Bill is curiously British and suffers as a result. This is an important day both for me and the private security industry, which, at last, is on the verge of a major breakthrough. Along with other factors that I shall mention later, the Bill will provide it, its employees and those who hire security with a very different type of private security industry, which is more professional, competent, accountable and acceptable to the police and the population as the whole.
Perhaps the industry will rue the day when it saw me as the enemy of the private security industry. The position is quite the reverse: with others, including the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler)—who led the way in the House by introducing an early private Member's Bill in 1973—I made helpful suggestions, but I am afraid that the security industry chose to ignore them.
In my home, I have a plaque that says:
"To Bruce George, in appreciation of his dedication to the task of regulating the private security industry."
That plaque has been hanging on a wall in my house since 1978. When my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham said that he was the youngest Member of the House, I was tempted to say, "I was almost the youngest Member of the House when I first took an interest in the private security industry." One should not draw too many conclusions about the ageing process, but I have waited a long time. A good friend of mine, Peter Heims, once asked at a public meeting whether I was another flash in the pan; he asked whether I was another Member of Parliament getting quick publicity from introducing a ten-minute Bill, then disappearing. Well, Peter Heims, I proved not to be a flash in the pan.
The security industry is enormous, and the number of people it employs goes up almost daily. It has been said that it employs 350,000 people, but I can argue with some justification that it employs even more than that. It depends on how one defines private security. If one defines it in its broadest sense, I am certain that the figure is much higher than 350,000, dwarfing the Home Office and non-Home Office police forces.
The industry comprises manned guarding, both contract and in-house; cash in transit; private investigators, who come in many guises; security consultants; close protection; VIP protection; bodyguards; door supervisors or bouncers; private sector detention services; and manufacturers, designers, installers and maintainers of alarms, locks, safes and security equipment. That equipment includes safes, vaults and security containers; satellite tracking; closed circuit television and other electronic monitoring devices or surveillance equipment;

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intrusion detection; access control; bomb protection; fire detection; metal detection; X-ray detection; telephone security equipment; computer security; security storage; security shredding; barriers, shutters, fences and security glass. The industry also comprises staff at places of entertainment, such as pop concerts—the list goes on indefinitely.
There are also products and services on the margins of private security, such as those in employment agencies that specialise in private security; credit check agencies; porters; receptionists; risk managers; museum curators; park rangers; computer operating staff; caretakers in colleges, schools and universities; car park attendants, who have a security function; managers; gamekeepers; and hospital porters. I could go on.
The industry is extremely large and, for a long time, it has been subject to public criticism. It is not a new industry; it goes back three or four millennia. There were locksmiths in the ancient world, as well as bodyguards, watchmen and craftsmen making security grilles.
According to modern detective writers such as Ellis Peters and Lindsey Davis, most monks were engaged in private investigation in one form or another.
Some people believe that the private security industry is a new industry that has supplanted the police. I shall not bore the House with historical evidence, but for most of the past 1,000 years policing and security work has been done by private individuals, groups engaged in self-protection, vigilantes, posses and amateur constables who usually transferred their responsibilities to others by paying them a fee. The role of the state was very limited. There was no police force in modern guise until the beginning of the 19th century. The process of creating the Peel police—the new police—took place over half a century.
The private security industry that existed previously was not expunged by the emergence of the police—the private security sector increased, along with the growth of the police. In many ways, nothing much has changed. Policing and security have been the responsibility of the state, but not exclusively. Neither the industry nor its relationship with the police is new, but that relationship will be on a much better footing after the passage of the Bill.
The modern contract security industry dates from Allan Pinkerton in the United States and the corps of commissionaires in the 1850s. Although the private security industry in its modern form began in Germany, Austria, the United States and Scandinavia, it developed in the United Kingdom only 50 years later. When it did develop, it was subject to enormous criticism and was alleged to be a private army. The idea of the massed ranks of Securicor or Group 4 marching down Whitehall to capture the seat of government stretches the imagination, but in the 1960s and 1970s there was a fear that a group of self-interested organisations was threatening the security of the state.
The image in the 1960s and 1970s, which has persisted, was of an industry with low pay poor efficiency, an enormous turnover of staff and low public esteem. The industry was seen as disreputable. It was the object of contempt and derision and the butt of endless jokes. I and others tried hard, working alongside, the more far-sighted members of the security industry, to put it on a different footing, but the attitude of the industry and the Government ranged from indifferent to hostile.
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The Government post-1979 were decidedly unhelpful. In 1991 the Home Office produced a document that stated:
"Inevitably, users of the industry get what they pay for. The Government considers that issues such as training and wages are fundamentally matters for the industry and its customers. It is ultimately for users to ensure that the company they choose is competent and reliable."
I am afraid that that was not the case.
There were several milestones in the progress towards regulation. Eventually, the Select Committee on Home Affairs took an interest in 1995 and produced an excellent report. A document written by the chief constable of north Wales was leaked. There were parliamentary debates. There were those in the industry who struggled hard to swim against the tide. Now we are at the point of regulation.
I am delighted that in 1997 my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced to the British Security Industry Association that regulation was to be introduced. A consultation paper was issued in 1999 and the Bill was introduced in the House of Lords. Sadly, it reached the House of Lords first, but I suppose that that was the decision of the business managers, who had a great deal of legislation to cram into a limited parliamentary timetable.
Many have asked why private security is necessary, and whether it undermines the police. The exponential growth in private security was deliberately fostered by Lady Thatcher for the same reasons as were attributed to the present Government by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff). Lady Thatcher wanted more people engaged in protection in support of the police. Many of the functions performed by the police as a monopoly for a century were taken away from them.
I believe that that was the right decision, although the police did not always like it. The private security industry is the best job creation scheme yet devised for retired military personnel and retired police officers at any level. Although they might whinge about it when they are serving officers or members of the Police Federation, their hostility sometimes changes to enthusiasm when they realise that there is life after leaving the police force. The Police Federation and the police force recognise that a properly regulated private security industry is not a threat, but a complement to the police force.
There is enough crime to go around; one should not try to hog it all. One should try to transfer many of the responsibilities at present held by the police to the private sector, as long as that does not compromise the primacy of the Home Department police forces. Now that the security industry is about to be legitimised by legislation, I expect that the police and the public need have no fears that they are handing over to the private sector tasks for which it is singularly incompetent.
When I was in Sweden a couple of years ago, I was told that the private sector was guarding the king's sons and nuclear establishments. At that time, the idea of some British private security company having bestowed on it tasks for which it was clearly ill-equipped would have been so laughable as to be almost criminal. I recall that the Select Committee on Defence—we took more interest in private security than did the Home Affairs Committee—regularly said that the Ministry of Defence should not give any further contracts to private security unless the industry was regulated. We are approaching a

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period in which the rules of policing and security will have changed while new regulation is being properly implemented. I suspect that most people will say that those changes are for the better.
Mr. John Hayes: I am most interested in the case that the right hon. Gentleman makes, with which I am broadly sympathetic. Will he comment on the interface between the police and the public? One of the problems with policing is that people see fewer and fewer policemen and do not have enough non-adversarial contact with them. The Bill will have a strong impact on the police time that is available to deal with the public directly and to develop that relationship in order to build the trust between the public and the police that we all want.
Mr. George: A report published some time ago by the Police Foundation and Policy Studies Institute made the radical suggestion that the police should give up their basic patrolling functions to the private sector. It argued that that would allow them to concentrate on the detection of murder, rape and so on. It would have been a mistake to implement such a proposal, however, as the strength of our police must lie in their umbilical link with the public.
Under the previous and current Governments, the private sector has been increasingly present in public places. In some cases, it is even patrolling them. My late father was a copper for 29 years. During the last 15 years of his tenure in the Glamorgan constabulary, he was paid by the National Coal Board. That is a 1960s practice that could almost be called the privatisation of policing. My father had patrol duties and eventually became head of security of the Coal Board in Wales. I might add that he would not have much to do in that job if he were alive today. His salary as a policeman was paid by the Coal Board to Glamorgan, which then paid it to him. It is wrong, therefore, to suggest that the public-private relationship has changed only recently, although far more such practices now exist.
The police must have more presence on the street, even though everyone says that that is a less efficient form of policing. Thanks to the Home Office under the current and previous Governments, there is now magnificent funding for closed circuit television. I hope that a couple more of the bids that have been made in my constituency will be successful. Monitoring is carried out through closed circuit television cameras that were produced by the private sector, but paid for by the Government. The cameras are providing eyes and ears for the private sector to enable it to work with the police.
Community wardens will soon be walking around instead of policemen. People will be happy to see a uniform, even though it might not be the one that they want to see. If community wardens can communicate swiftly with the police, they will be a sort of municipal security guard on the beat, even if they cannot be bobbies on the beat. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 ensures that local authorities have more policing and security functions, so it takes a change of mindset to realise that the days are gone in which the coppers in blue uniforms and funny hats were dominant, although that is not necessarily for the worse.
Mr. Hayes: I entirely accept what the right hon. Gentleman says. Those days may be gone, but they have
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gone for good practical reasons. He is right to draw attention to partnership, however, because if the police were to withdraw completely from such roles, it would be injurious to the relationship that I described in my previous intervention. There is a need for a balance of partnership. Finally, he may be very lucky with closed circuit television, but the Government have turned down Spalding's bid for CCTV—a disgraceful decision that provides no comfort for people in my constituency. [Interruption.] Instead of chuntering on the Front Bench, the Minister should take some responsibility for the matter, as he is not very popular in Spalding at the moment.
Mr. George: My hon. Friend the Minister is popular in other areas. I suspect that crime in many inner urban areas is excessive even by rural standards.
Many things are changing for the better. We now have a partnership that will have an enormous effect on crime prevention and detection. There is very little that the private sector cannot do. Most of the functions of which the police are capable of performing can and are being performed by the private sector. As public forensic laboratories are overstretched, much forensic work is being farmed out to private laboratories. More investigators are probably attached to central Government Departments and to the private sector than to the police force. Technology has monopolised the private sector's expansion. It does not want police powers, as it does not want to be seen to be seeking to usurp the police. However, intelligent members of the police force, such as John Stevens, the Commissioner, and officers in my area, recognise that a new relationship must be forged.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I revert to the valid point that my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) made. If we allow our private security industry to play too great a role in policing domestic estates, is there not a danger of creating a two-tier justice system comprising those who can afford to employ such firms and those who cannot? Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on the differences between the powers of the police, who can arrest on suspicion, and those of private security firms, which can make only a citizen's arrest?
Mr. George: That will remain the case. I hope that Home Office funding will increase and that the accusation that only those who live in expensive areas can afford private security will thus disappear. In my constituency, the likelihood of imposing a levy on householders to pay for enhanced security is small. However, I recognise, as do the intelligent sectors of the private security industry, that community wardens do not want to be perceived as the protectors only of those who have the fattest wallets.
The private security industry has grown throughout the world for roughly the same reasons: increasing experience of crime and the fear of it. I visited Finland, which has a thriving security industry but hardly any crime. I asked where the perception of crime originated; it came not from Finland but from watching "Starsky and Hutch" and "The Bill". Such programmes give the private security industry a fillip. American and British television gave the Finns a greater fear of crime than reality dictated.
Private security has grown because it is a good industry to enter for people who want to make a profit. The increase in terrorism and environmental protest,

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the demands of insurance companies, the Government's commitment to privatisation, Governments' failures adequately to fund the police, the growth of mass ownership of property that is "worth nicking", the role of advertising, changes in technology and the deregulated nature of the market are all contributory factors.
Let us consider good legislation. My former assistant and I have studied more than 100 measures from around the world. We devised a method of comparing different regulatory regimes, and we placed them in the following categories: non-interventionist, which pertains in this country; minimum narrow; minimum wide; comprehensive narrow and comprehensive wide. I shall not bore hon. Members with details, but I believe that the best category is broad. A broad regulatory system covers all the sectors of the private security industry.
I do not support a shallow system of regulation, which means only access to criminal records. I want the Bill to establish broad and deep regulation. I am in favour of heavier regulation; Conservative Members may not agree.
Mr. Bercow: I am listening to the right hon. Gentleman's speech with interest and respect, but given the length of time for which he has campaigned for a statutory regulation system, does he not agree that it should be visible, explicit and clear? Does that not lead him to be mildly suspicious of, if not unhappy about, the Bill's scope for secondary legislation? Would it not help if as much as possible were incorporated in the measure?
Mr. George: I shall deal with that point shortly. Before the hon. Gentleman gets too excited about my response, I emphasise that I would have loved to be subcontracted by the Minister to draft the Bill. I have drafted four measures, all of which—especially the first—were at least as good as the one that we are considering this evening. However, the four attempts that I made all met with miserable rejection by the hon. Gentleman's colleagues who were in government at the time.
I would like to have seen a more comprehensive Bill that filled in the gaps and met the criteria that I believe are critical. There is a problem with the Bill, as I have said clearly to the Minister, whom I deeply respect and admire. I am not saying that in an attempt to influence him—well, yes, I am. Forgive my earlier remark, Mr. Deputy Speaker; I apologise fat lying to the House.
I am not quite certain what we are voting for. We shall be supporting a Bill that is quite exciting, because we do not know exactly what is in it. Even if the Bill is not as detailed as I would like, there is a great deal in it that offers the opportunity to deliver what I want to see. There is great flexibility in its provisions. However, that same Bill is capable of delivering a form of regulation that will be only marginally superior to what we have now. My dilemma is that, because we could be only weeks from a general election and days from the prorogation of Parliament, I, or anyone else with an interest in the subject, will hardly have ample time to table an enormous number of amendments or to consider them effectively.
I hope that the very thing that the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) thinks is a weakness in the Bill might be to its advantage. The Minister can see the near unanimity not only in the House but in the security industry, which is delighted that the Bill is being introduced, but it does not go far enough. There have been
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few cases in the recent history of legislation of an industry begging the Government to dump more responsibilities on it. There are those who say, "Ah, but we don't want to burden industry." In my view, the security industry is quite prepared to have additional costs imposed on it, if the legislation will do the trick. I therefore look forward, in the next few weeks or days, to seeing a little more detail of what the Minister intends to do.
I recall that, when I gave evidence to the Select Committee on Home Affairs five years ago, the then Chairman, Sir Ivan Lawrence, said, "Aren't you, Mr. George, rather too heavy in your model of regulation? Don't you prefer the lighter touch, the model of regulation that is not heavy? What do you think about Oftel, Ofwat and Ofgas? Why not Of-sec-ind?" I said, "Mr. Chairman, my reply to you would certainly contain the word "off"." I was not, therefore, at all enthusiastic about the light model of regulation.
Mr. Bercow: It is the sophistication that takes one aback.
Mr. George: Indeed. Sir Ivan Lawrence could see what I was getting at, because he had defended and prosecuted many people with a wide, or, indeed, a narrow vocabulary, including the Kray twins—a case that I was delighted he lost miserably.
It is important that the legislation should do the trick, and in many ways it does. The fact that it exists is a step forward. It will establish greater accountability. At the moment, who has heard of the British Security Industry Association, unless they belong to it? Not many companies do, out of the totality. To whom does one complain if one's burglar alarm turns out to be duff? To whom does one complain if the private investigator whom one hires does not find the person he is looking for—and does not even try—but charges a vast amount for doing nothing?
The regulatory authority will represent consumers, trade unions and employers, large and small, and I hope that it has a chairman who is genuinely independent of the industry. The Bill will lead to greater efficiency, greater accountability and greater transparency, so I do not want my criticisms to be considered as outweighing the positive elements.
The Bill will deal more effectively with crooks. How much longer can the industry tolerate being considered to be the repository of crooked coppers who set up private security companies after being thrown out of the Met or West Midlands police? How long can it endure people"s taunts? I recall watching Inspector Frost discuss with his sergeant the culprit for a series of rapes. Suspicion turned to two security guards in a nearby factory. The sergeant said to Frost, "Those guys over there—have they got form?" Frost replied, "Course they have. They"re security guards, aren't they?"
Such perceptions are partly the fault of the private security industry, because it has taken that route and not got close to the Government. Nor has there been legal access to criminal records. I know of endless examples of crimes being committed, but the Bill has a wider aim. I would not want the Government to think that the Bill's main purpose is to deal with crime, and I am sure that they do not—it is more to do with efficiency, accountability and professionalism, which is singularly lacking in many sectors of the industry.

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The hon. Member for Buckingham tried to get me to criticise the Government; well, I shall make some criticisms. The Bill's prime weakness is its lack of width—it is focused too closely on manned guarding. As I said early in my speech, a vast sector of the private security industry is, for the moment, outside the scope of regulation. If one enters a major City bank, however, one can consider the security industry's penetration of such a building. There is closed circuit television, access control, security shredding and security lighting. It will have been designed by an architect specialising in security, and computer security is also involved. Every aspect of private security is there, but the only people who will be regulated are the two guys on the door, and they will not be regulated if they are in-house employees. It would be better to call this the "part of the private security industry" Bill.
Ample scope has been built into the Bill to allow the Security Industry Authority and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to enlarge the focus. Although that is right, I do not like the way in which it has been done, as the regulatory authority could not cope with 350,000 people suddenly appearing before it to demand approval to operate. Perhaps it is right to deal with manned guarding and bouncers subcontracted to local authorities first, after which we can regulate the other sectors. I hope that my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Minister tell us how much of the security industry will be regulated, because it genuinely wants regulation.
My next major concern—the exclusion of in-house security operatives—is linked to the previous one. Initially, in-house operatives were in the consultative paper, then they were out. Who nobbled the Home Office? As the press say, step forward the better regulation taskforce and those members of the security industry who are recidivist opposers of reform. In my view, they clearly nobbled members of the better regulation taskforce, who then put the screws on whoever advised the Minister. Out went in-house security, because, somehow, regulation would impose too many burdens on it: cobblers—absolute cobblers. I am not certain whether that word is acceptable in this permissive age, but the first one that came to mind would have had to be withdrawn.
Mr. Bercow: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. George: May I continue for just one sentence? I am sorry, but as I have waited for 25 years, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will continue to be indulgent. After all, I will not have a chance to speak in the Standing Committee if one is not established.
Let us consider the example of a factory whose security arrangements are a mixture of private and contract. Part of its security force is subject to regulation and standards, while the rest is not. Let us imagine a shopping mall in which some shops are guarded by in-house personnel, while others are guarded by contract personnel. The security staff will all wear the same sort of uniforms, and the register may state who is licensed and who is not; nevertheless, the system is nonsensical.
I promise to give way to the hon. Member for Buckingham in a moment, but there is another big problem. There are some excellent security companies in
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this country—world-class companies—but we have more rubbish companies than almost any other country, and they will find smart lawyers. A company hiring staff will say, "Why should we go to a contract security firm? It will have education and training standards, which will cost us. All the guards will now have to apply for licences, and that cost will be passed on to us. We do not want all the problems associated with improved standards; we will hire in-house staff."
That company—unless it is a good company—will say, "We will not train those staff. We will not pay them more than the minimum wage. We will duck and dive to do the minimum that will ensure that our insurance company is prepared to accept what we are doing." Alternatively, it may find a crooked private security company which, by some legal dodge, can masquerade as in-house security. I think that providing for in-house personnel not to have to be licensed defeats the Bill's objectives.
Now I give way to the hon. Member for Buckingham.
Mr. Bercow: I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He has nothing for which to apologise: I am listening to his speech with rapt attention, and my appetite for it is insatiable. I hope, however, that he will tell us—on the strength of his experience and knowledge, which I respect—something about what happens in other European Union countries. I mentioned this in an earlier intervention on the Minister.
Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us something about the trends, in terms of the incidence of crime, in the private security industries of EU member states where there are statutory regulation systems, and also something about the costs of some of those systems?
Mr. George: The costs of a proper regulatory system are by no means excessive. Good companies such as Group 4, Securicor and Securitas, which is a Swedish firm now operating in the UK, work in regulated environments, and very profitably.
If I were asked, "Who is the biggest villain of the piece? Is it the Home Office, is it the private security industry, or is it someone else?", I would say, "If I must identify a single cause of the malaise in the industry, it is this: the public who hire want good security without being prepared to pay for it." In a properly regulated private security industry, men and women will not undergo the ridiculous two-day period of training with no examination and one day of on-the-job training that currently passes for proper training in this country.
Companies should pay people a decent wage. They should not necessarily recruit from the bottom of the employment pile, because they will generally get what they pay for. They should provide proper facilities, proper communications and decent uniforms. They should encourage the men and women whom they employ to feel a sense of pride in belonging to the security industry, rather than feeling embarrassed to admit that they are door supervisors, burglar alarm installers or security guards. It will cost—it will really cost—but we are demonstrating the price to be paid by those who do not pay a decent price. The price that we are paying is a low-status industry that has high personnel turnover and does not work with the police, which perhaps contributes to increased crime.
I had long thought chat any legislation was better than no legislation, but I was wrong. With no legislation, we have at least the possibility of decent legislation being introduced eventually.

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There is no federal responsibility for the issue in the United States, for example, but some states have very good regulatory systems. I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member for Buckingham, but some of those states very definitely have a free-enterprise culture. Florida, which is not known for its great enthusiasm for central intervention, has one of the best regulatory systems that I have seen. It is an excellent system. I visited the regulatory authority in Orlando and its head office in Tallahassee and was enormously impressed. British Columbia, most of the other Canadian provinces and most of the Australian states also have excellent regulation.
I am delighted to say that, in the European Union, the French and the Germans are no better than we are on the issue. Undoubtedly the best regulatory systems in Europe are in Scandinavia, principally in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. Spain also has an excellent regulatory system although it is a little too detailed. I really do not think that the design of women's tights should necessarily be the responsibility of the Interior Ministry and the subject of statutory instruments. That is going too far. I could willingly send the Minister diagrams of those instruments of torture. Russia also has an excellent regulatory system.
Currently, we are with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and some countries in Africa and in Latin America in having no regulation whatsoever. I want us to create the type of system that I have seen in numerous other countries. When people see security guards in the United Kingdom, I want them to say, "They look almost as good as police. They are paid almost as well as police. They are alert, helpful and professional. Just look at how they are dressed—clean shoes and nice uniforms. They are proud of their job."
Conversely, in the 1970s, in Wolverhampton, a firm called Shield used to recruit by going round the Salvation Army on Fridays and Saturdays. It found the down-and-outs and offered them a weekend's kip in a private security guard's uniform. It would take them to a site at 8 pm on a Friday and pick them up again at 8 am on a Monday. Not many companies operate like that now, thank goodness, but too many still do.
I have described my vision, which may sound a bit apocalyptic, of how the industry should operate, and I can genuinely see the way forward. We now have a minimum wage and stipulations on how companies should operate, some of which are based on European initiatives. Technological growth will force many companies to choose between employing better technology or more people. As labour becomes ever more expensive, the greater the pressure will be on those companies to strike a balance in how they operate. I can certainly see the industry evolving into something that is very different from what it is today.
I should like other provisions to be included in legislation. Intruder alarm designers and installers, for example, should be covered by legislation. Some dreadful companies are operating in that sector. Although there is not the same incidence of crime among those who install intruder alarms, I believe that, for the sake of efficiency, the sector should be regulated.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: A moment ago, in his excellent speech, the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the need for the public to be reassured by private security guards. I am
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sure that he will know the Bill backwards. I am wondering whether the public have any way of distinguishing security guards who are licensed under the Bill from those who are not. Paragraph 2 of schedule 2 deals with the duties of manned guarding. However, none of the six sub-paragraphs in that paragraph deals in any way with the issue of identification. Does he think that it would be a good idea if security guards employed by firms that are licensed under the Bill had somewhere on their uniform an insignia showing that they are so licensed?
Mr. George: My private Member's Bills in 1977, 1984, 1987 and 1994 offered models for regulation. They addressed that problem, but I suspect that the Home Office believes that primary legislation does not need to go into such minute detail. My Spanish friends can describe exactly the size, weight and shape of a badge, but it is more important to strengthen existing legislation to ensure that no uniform can be confused with that of other, public, services.
It is very important that staff wear a badge that can be easily seen, and readily inspected by any appointed person. I am worried that the regulated sector will be given different privileges from the non-regulated sector. How will people distinguish between security guards who are in-house and unregulated and those who are regulated and under contract?
The better regulation task force looked into fit-person criteria and produced a scintillating piece of nonsense. I mean no disrespect to plumbers and cleaners, but to compare their roles with those of alarm installers and locksmiths displays a degree of unreality. It is necessary to regulate the people who set up security apparatus in other people's homes. Why should home owners not know that those people have been well trained and that they have not just come out of the slammer? Their job is not comparable to a plumber's, who is entrusted with a different set of tasks.
A further criticism—or suggestion—that I would offer has to do with a matter on which the Bill remains flexible. The Bill, rightly, will require individuals to be licensed, but it proposes only a voluntary code for companies. There is ample precedent in other industries—such as financial services, gaming, gas supply, insurance, meat processing, telecommunications, television and radio broadcasting, water and aviation—of companies being subject to standards and having to prove certain matters to the licensing authority before being awarded a licence to operate.
In my Private Security (Registration) Bill of 1994, I went into some detail about what companies should be required to present by way of information. It specified that information should be given about the characters and backgrounds of directors and officers of the firm, and about their criminal records. It also specified information about the financial records of the firm, its directors and officers, and information about the character of the private security services that the firm proposed to provide. That 1994 Bill also specified that a proposed firm should have adequate insurance, and that its premises should be adequate.
The latter point is very important. My 1994 Bill said that a proposed private security firm should operate from premises considered to be "suitable for the purpose". In my model, a licence could not be given to a company

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offering, say, a central monitoring station for the intruder alarm industry if that station is not strongly protected. That protection must be able to deter a person from taking over the premises and thus allowing burglar alarms to ring without response. I hope that companies will be subject to compulsory standards.
The part of the Bill devoted to training standards is an element that has the potential to be developed in a way that I would consider appropriate. However, the drafting leaves me with no idea whether that will happen. If the Minister has already covered that matter during my absence, I apologise—I shall check in Hansard tomorrow.
We could carry on with the present BSIA system of two days' formal training, plus one day on the job and no examination. However, I should much prefer the Home Secretary to issue stronger instructions—not mere guidelines—to the SIA to the effect that he does not want to maintain the current arrangements, which amount almost to an absence of training.
Perhaps the following account of training in other countries will scare some people. In Belgium, security officers receive 120 hours' training; within eight months they must pass a test. Additional specialist training of 40 hours for weapons is given—that will not apply to us—as well as 75 hours on the protection of people and 16 hours on guard dogs. Incidentally, I was invited to speak at a conference on guard dogs in Barking—the organisers did not know why I was helpless with laughter when they telephoned me.
In Belgium, an extra 65 hours' training is given for people who are responsible for cash in transit. Managers receive an extra 70 hours. Why not? Why should training be confined to the poor infantry? Why should not there be training for non-commissioned officers and the officer corps?
In Denmark, the training period is 120 hours; there is no examination. In Finland, it is 40 hours. In Germany, the situation is almost as bad as it is in this country. In the Netherlands, three weeks' basic training is required, with additional training leading to a basic security diploma that must be passed within 12 months. In Spain, 200 hours of training is set and supervised by the police, and an examination must be passed. Thereafter, training of 75 hours a year is required. In Sweden, security officers need 217 hours of training before they are accredited. The mother of all security training schemes operates in Hungary, where 350 hours are imposed. In a British university, that would probably lead to the award of a master's degree.
Mr. Bercow: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House what assessment he has made of the merits of the Security Industry Training Organisation? It was founded about 10 years ago and is known for its independence. It operates not only in this country but internationally. Can he also offer the House a pearl of wisdom on the merits of ISO 9000 and of the proportion of private security industry operators in this country who conform to it?
Mr. George: I suspect that most of them have never heard of it. In the absence of standards set by the Government, the many privately established standards—
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on the ISO model—are better than nothing. I should like a system such as that proposed in my Bill, which stated that:
"The Council shall make rules specifying the training to be received by all private security agents, which may include … a basic training course …a minimum period of pre-assignment training … refresher training … further training, including management training; and … professional qualifications approved by the Council.
The Council may recognise as satisfactory and efficient training programmes, including training programmes established by or under the auspices of registered firms or associations of registered firms or persons engaged in the private security industry.
The Secretary of State may designate as efficient such courses, offered by academic institutions, which appear to him to provide appropriate training, of to lead to appropriate qualifications, including National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ)."
Things have moved on since then.
Each sector of the industry will have its own specific training requirements. Obviously, it will take longer to train a locksmith than a security guard, so I hope that the Home Office will instruct the SIA to work with the industry to lay down the standards for each sector.
They should be sufficiently challenging to ensure that the people who emerge from the training programme, at the end of an examination, can do the job.
I recall my assistant applying for a job with a reputable American company, now Swedish owned. The two-day training programme that he undertook had no examination at the end of it and was not part of the company's training programme. If he successfully completed the two-day training programme—that is, if he was still alive, had not expired and still wished to be a security guard—he would be offered a job. That is not the way to proceed.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman is criticising the British Security Industry Association. I am sure that he is aware that the BSIA covers about 70 per cent. of the existing security operations in this country. It covers closed circuit television, access control, manned security, grilles, safes, secure transport, and alarm manufacture, distribution and installation. The association therefore covers a very wide field in its ISO 9000 qualification, and in that qualification it regularly works with representatives in Europe to ensure that its standards are compatible. Is he saying that he criticises the BSIA for those standards, or does he think that the Bill should build on them?
Mr. George: I have no objections to the BSIA as a trade association. My objections to the BSIA are limited to when it purports to be a regulatory authority, because I do not believe that a trade association should have undertaken the task of regulation.
As a result of criticism from people like me, the BSIA took its inspectorate out of its Worcester building and sent it 25 miles down the road. To my mind, that mileage did not separate its licensing authority—its inspectorate—from the industry.
There must be a proper inspectorate. I mentioned several countries with great legislation, but great legislation is a waste of time unless there is a decent inspectorate. One of the nonsenses in the House of Lords a couple of days ago was the statement that the inspectorate may inspect during reasonable hours only.

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The time to catch people cheating is in unreasonable hours, and I do not know why the Under-Secretary, Lord Bassam, acquiesced in that nonsense.
The Security Industry Training Organisation, a very good organisation, may be part of the framework but must be extricated from its links with the BSIA. The inspectorate should use the expertise obtained in BSIA and its inspectorate, and in the National Approval Council for Security Systems—the intruder alarm inspectorate. Both those organisations are closely linked either to the security industry or to insurance.
I hope that the Minister, in his wisdom, will say that we need a strong inspectorate, that that inspectorate may take in people from the good existing inspectorates, wherever they may be, but that those people will be part of a Home Office inspectorate and it will not be a case of the Home Office subcontracting to an inspectorate closely linked to industry and telling it to get on with the job. The inspectorate and the legislation will seem compromised if it is seen that the big boys, who have obstructed regulation for 30 years, are to be the beneficiaries of something to which they objected so strongly.
Mr. Hayes: The Home Affairs Committee, in the report to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, explicitly concluded that the current standards, particularly standards of training, in much of the private security industry were unsatisfactory and
"below the level the public need and have a right to expect."
In the light of that, does he believe that the Bill goes far enough? I detect in his remarks an implication that he thinks that it does not.
Mr. George: The Bill as it stands is in part a mystery. It will depend on whom the Home Secretary appoints as chief executive, as chairman, and on who the members of the board are. I would not want them to be toadies directly responsible to the Home Secretary or the Minister of State, seeking permission from them before they blow their noses. Nor do I want the members of the board simply to come from the private security industry and from those companies that still object to regulation.
Can hon. Members believe that two large security companies would still love to see the Bill simply fade away? One of the crucial issues, therefore, is: who will be appointed to the board? I hope that the chairman will be not an establishment figure but an established figure, with a track record of impartiality, who does not come from the private security industry and is seen not as taking his or her orders from Worcester and the BSIA, but as basing the general framework of his or her operations on orders from the Home Office.
I hope that, in the days ahead, the Ministers of State will say, "We were a bit vague in the section on training. We will tell the SIA and its chief executive and chairman that the training must be serious." We do not want the current training to prevail; it must be more on the lines of that in Spain or Sweden, where the training is conducive to establishing a professional guard, not a half-trained or untrained guard.
Even if people with PhDs were instructed, it would be difficult to convey what is required. Spain has a good system that involves an examination, but the trainers will not even be regulated under the proposals. Proper training
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is important, and the trainers must be able to convince the Home Secretary that they, too, are competent to be licensed.
Mr. Hayes: My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) mentioned the auditing process and analysis involved in ISO 9000. Is it not the case that, in the typical circumstances that exist in most other industries, part of that process involves the accreditation and careful assessment of trainers to ensure that they do their job properly? If the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting that that will not obtain under the Bill, it represents a glaring omission.
Mr. George: The ISO standards series is voluntary and the percentage of people who have adopted it is, regrettably, too low. I want the training and standards to be compulsory. Perhaps we can use the various rules or models laid down for security storage, cash in transit or central stations. That is a good basis on which to find out how other people think security companies should operate.
Having gained that expertise and having consulted the industry, the SIA will, I hope, draft its own standards. I hope that the SIA will tell those who want to provide guarding services that they must meet certain requirements, that their men and women must undertake certain training and that, if they cannot do so, they will not be given a licence.
Mr. Bercow: I understand the right hon. Gentleman's concern about the fact that the authority should not be a prisoner of the private security industry, but that, of course, does not mean that it is incapable of learning from and being inspired by it. I do not know whether he was meeting the Secretary of State for Defence at the time, but I wonder whether I can refer to the point that I made earlier. I hope that he will agree that the Secretary of State's discretion should be properly circumscribed so that it is not unfettered and so that he does not have the opportunity simply to throw baubles at people as a reward for loyal service in unrelated fields. Does he agree that the authority's composition should draw in the expertise of the industry, the police force and others in related sectors?
Mr. George: From conversations that I have had with Ministers, I am sure that they have that in mind. My Private Security (Registration) Bill stated:
"The Council shall consist of twelve persons nominated by the Secretary of State … The Secretary of State in making nominations to the Council shall have due regard to the desirability of securing that the Council includes persons representative of or, as the case may be, who have experience of, armoured car and courier services, guard and patrol services, private investigation services, installers and manufacturers of locks, safes, alarms and other security equipment, the police service, the insurance industry, the consumer interest and the Home Department and of all parts of the United Kingdom."
I wanted a balance and, in fairness, I am satisfied that that will be achieved under the Bill. There will be sub-committees and sub-committees of sub-committees, and people who are not on the main board can serve on them. It is right that the private security industry is well represented, but that should not just mean the big boys and the major companies. The body should include members from the small and medium-sized companies—

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the alarm installers and contract guards—but a significant number on the body should come from outside the industry.
Initially, I thought that there should be a balance between the two, but I now think that the majority should be made up of those from outside the industry. The chairman should also come from outside the industry and should not be linked to a private security company. That will ensure the legitimacy of—and the respect for the organisation.
I again offer my profuse apologies for the length of my speech, but with one book and three more on the way, 150 articles and hundreds and hundreds of meetings, mostly involving bashing my head against a brick wall, I know that the industry has a potential that has not been remotely realised. Regulation by itself will not be a panacea. The industry will still require ingenuity, good investment, good people and the use of universities and teaching courses in security. Regulation can, however, make a significant contribution despite the Bill's imperfections and omissions.
The hon. Member for Buckingham thinks that the Bill's timing is malevolent; as I said, it should have been introduced 25 years ago. Unless the general election is in November, there is no way the Bill will receive the proper scrutiny that amendments deserve. However, I hope that the Bill will receive its Second Reading and that Ministers will say that the permissive powers provide us with a clue as to what they have in mind. I hope that it is not the minimalist approach of hardly any training, or the maximalist approach either, because I would not want to destroy the security industry by imposing the idea that a guard should receive 150 hours training. However, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and his colleagues will give us a greater clue as to what will be available.
Mr. Simon Hughes: The right hon. Gentleman is far more knowledgeable about the subject than me and many others, and I bow to his knowledge. This is a serious question, but given the political situation that we are in, does he advise that we should have a canter round the course now, but not seek to rush the Bill through before a possible early election? Or is it better to have the debate on Second Reading, benefit from the deliberations of the Lords and then return to the Bill in the early days of the next Parliament, whoever are in government? Liberal Democrats certainly make the commitment that we shall expedite its passage as long as it receives proper scrutiny in the next Parliament.
Mr. George: The hon. Gentleman missed most of my speech, but he has hit the bull's eye. In an ideal world, I hope that we would give the matter the adequate scrutiny that would allow a better Bill to emerge than the one that is before us.
The security industry faces the same choice as I do. After 1,000 years—or the 25 years I have wanted to do something about the issue—we have a Bill. Will we accept it with its imperfections, or will we say that it is not good enough and ask the Government to introduce a better Bill in the next Parliament? The latter is an
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attractive option. However, most of us are realists. There is no guarantee that when the Prime Minister and his Cabinet decide on the legislative programme, they will say, "Ah well, old Bruce George was hoping there would be a new security B ill, so let's have one." I merely hope that the Bill is flexible enough to deal with most of the industry's anxieties and expectations.
I shall not rattle off the organisations and companies that have called for stronger legislation. I hope that the consultative process has made the Minister realise that the Bill is pitched at a level that is lower than the industry would accept. However, if he is able, without imposing outrageous costs and standards, to advise the chairman of the new authority about the parameters within which he wants him to operate in the short term, it will have been worth it. The Bill could almost be as good as the best legislation. However, if that opportunity is not taken and the Bill satisfies the better regulation taskforce and the minimalists, I will look back at the past few weeks with despair.
Mr. Hughes: I am seeking the right hon. Gentleman's advice as much as anything. If there is no chance to amend the Bill, is it worth having as it stands?
Mr. George: I was not here for half the Minister's speech, so I do not know what promises he gave. If he sets out how we are to proceed with training, which is not mentioned in the Bill, that will help. He said that the chairman will be independent, so I am satisfied on that count. I will be happy if he assures us that the Bill's flexibility will allow this Government and their successor to say to the new authority, "You don't have carte blanche. Parliament has supported the Bill and it wants something a little stronger."
Mr. Bercow: I do not wish to dampen or quell the right hon. Gentleman's optimism, but I have a constitutional point to make. He must be aware that no Government are in a position to bind their successors. No Minister of State, no matter how senior, important, respected, or influential, and no matter how full his diary is—as in the case of the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke)—is in a position to say what his successor would do. The right hon. Gentleman should not be bought off too easily.
Mr. George: People do not always proceed according to what is constitutionally available. I recognise the hon. Gentleman's point, but l hope that the Home Secretary or the Minister will put some flesh on the Bill in a speech over the next week or two. I realise that whoever becomes Home Secretary or Minister of State may not be constitutionally bound to accept this Government's policies. Perhaps the Home Secretary will take over the role of Foreign Secretary and the Minister will deservedly be promoted to the Cabinet, perhaps as Minister of Defence. However, a word in the ear of the Minister of the day, with an offer that cannot be refused, would transmit the views of this Administration to the next.
This is not a great Bill, but it is a potentially good one. If the gaps are filled in, I suspect that most of the industry and most hon. Members present would be reasonably satisfied. After the election, we shall see what Administration we have, and hopefully the words of the Minister of State will influence his successor so that when the regulatory authority is established, the guidelines will

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be stronger and will not give the new SIA carte blanche to allow the old nonsense that has bedevilled the industry for the past 25 years to continue.
We do not want the SIA simply to be a gatekeeper, regulating who comes into the industry. We want it to be a catalyst for progressive change in an industry that has underperformed over the years. We are now setting the framework for an industry of which we can be proud, not to, of, or about which we can be hostile, critical and ambivalent. I will support the Bill, in the hope that it will deliver more than a rather negative view of it might lead us to conclude it will.
8.51 pm
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I am delighted to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I am even more delighted to follow the right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), one of the leading experts on the subject in the country, if not the world. His speech was one of the most effective that I have heard in my nine years as a Member of Parliament.
Mr. Charles Clarke: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Clifton-Brown: If the Minister is patient, I shall give way in a minute. I want to pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Walsall, South because his speech was statesmanlike. I hope that in the light of the right hon. Gentleman's great experience on the subject, the Minister listened carefully to what he had to say.
I want to quote from the right hon. Gentleman's book, which he wrote last year with Mark Button, because he summed up the private security industry admirably. He said:
"The term 'private security industry' is a generic term used to describe an amalgam of distinct industries and professions bound together by a number of functions, including crime prevention, order maintenance, loss reduction and protection; but these functions are neither common nor exclusive to all the activities of the private security industry, though the more that apply to a particular activity the more clearly it can be considered as private security."
I agree with that definition entirely. I now give way to the Minister.
Mr. Clarke: Why did the hon. Gentleman wait five hours before seeking to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker? Why was he not here for the first four hours of the debate?
Mr. Clifton-Brown: That is a rather churlish point. The Minister knows perfectly well that hon. Members have other duties in the House. Any Member is entitled to attend a debate and to speak in the House, provided that we can catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and hopefully to achieve some benefit by doing so. The House may conceivably derive some benefit from the speech.
Mr. Bercow: May I put it on the record that my hon. Friend and I have previously discussed this matter, that I thought it entirely possible that he might wish to speak on the important issues appertaining to the private security industry and that I, for one, am delighted that he is now contributing to the debate? Will my hon. Friend take it from me that I am delighted to be here to wind up the debate, and to wait right up to the last speech before
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the Minister's, in the approach to 10 o'clock if necessary? [Interruption.] The Minister is chuntering inanely from a sedentary position, expressing his disapproval of anybody else's entitlement to speak.
Does my hon. Friend accept that the Minister's attitude is simply due to the fact that he is gradually becoming a bit too big for his boots? He thinks that he is important and superior, and that he should be somewhere else; he cannot really be bothered and he does not want to listen. That is arrogance, and he deserves to be kicked out of office as soon as possible.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is absolutely right—the Minister has a bullying, hectoring style. He is part of an overbearing Executive who would rather put legislation through the House with no debate at all, so of course he does not want Members to speak on the matter, to debate it thoroughly and to explore all the points that need to be made.
Mr. Clarke rose—
Mr. Clifton-Brown: If the Minister is going to make the sort of intervention that he made before, I shall not give way, but if it is to be a sensible, constructive intervention, I will. Does he wish to intervene?
Mr. Clarke indicated dissent.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: No, he does not, so his intervention was not to be sensible and constructive. That says volumes about the Minister of State.
Let us return to the real debate before you call us all to order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Member for Walsall, South helpfully listed the sorts of activity that are covered by the private security industry. It is worth examining their scope, as the industry covers an extremely wide field. It covers manned security services, including static guarding, cash in transit, door supervision, stewardship, close protection, detention services, security storage and shredding; professional security services, including security consultants and professional investigators; and security products, including intruder alarms, closed circuit television, access control, electronic article surveillance equipment, detection equipment, locks, safes, vaults, security storage, barriers, shutters, fences, security glass windows and armoured vehicles. It can be seen that the industry's scope is very wide.
The Minister of State asked why I wanted to participate in the debate. Had he been a little more patient and listened to my speech a little longer before intervening, he would have learned that it so happens that the offices of the Group 4 security firm are located in my constituency.
Mr. Clarke: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I shall in a little while, but only if the Minister's intervention is going to be sensible and constructive.
During my years as a Member of Parliament, the director of Group 4, David Dickinson, has become a good friend. He is an extremely sensible person whom I last met when I went to see the potential asylum seekers from

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the hijacked Afghan aircraft, who were temporarily housed at the fire service college in my constituency. He was personally supervising the guarding operation for them and we renewed our friendship on that occasion. He has said of the Bill:
"Self-regulation has failed. There are too many horror stories around and too many people who are engaging in criminality under the cloak of the private security industry."
Most of us would say amen to that.
Mr. Clarke: I wondered whether the hon. Gentleman was aware that the fact that he represents part of that company has already been discussed at some length by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff), who also made many of the points that the hon. Gentleman is now making. However, as he was not present, he would not know that.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I have spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) and discussed with him the points that he made. I do not think that he made the points that I have already made, and I believe that in the rest of my speech I shall not make precisely the same points as he made. Again, the Minister of State's intervention has been churlish and not very constructive, so I shall now continue with my speech and hope not to have to give way to him too many more times. However, I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes).
Mr. Hayes: I simply wanted to say that the Minister is doing his reputation no good with those foolish interventions. He would do well to remember the words of Mark Twain, who said that it was better to remain seated in silence and be suspected of being stupid than to rise to one's feet and speak, and remove all doubt.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I shall not pursue my hon. Friend's line. He has made his point in his own way. Suffice it to say that the Minister is extremely able on occasion, and he demeans himself when he makes the sort of intervention that he has made during my speech. I hope that we can now proceed in a constructive manner.
The chairman of the Association of Security Consultants, who has also welcomed the Bill, said:
"I am pleased to see that 'Regulation' will be in a Bill before Parliament in the next session".
On the whole, the Bill has received a welcome in general terms. However, I agree with the right hon. Member for Walsall, South that it does not go far enough and that it is insufficiently comprehensive, so I issue a small challenge: if the Bill is not passed before the general election, perhaps there will be time during the recess for him to compose some useful amendments and addendums to the Bill. The Minister of State then might—in a constructive manner, I hope—consider those amendments and addendums before reintroducing the Bill in the new Parliament, if that is the intention. We would all benefit from that advice and information.
The Bill has had a quite a long genesis. I do not want to go into its full history; suffice it to say that much of that genesis occurred under the previous Conservative Government. A consultation paper was issued in
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December 1986, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), who was then a Home Office Minister, said:
"We want to get at the one man and his dog, the cowboy, the guy who has stayed out of Wormwood Scrubs and is trying to work as a security guard the next day."
That is precisely the type of person whom we want to eliminate. It has recently been estimated that 2,600 crimes a year are committed by people hiding behind the apparent legitimacy of a security guard's uniform. As I said, such people should be banned from employment.
I made a few points in response to the right hon. Member for Walsall, South, including the fact that it is essential—this should be covered in primary legislation—that the public have legitimate means of knowing who security guards are and whether they are licensed by the Security Industry Authority or are employed by firms licensed by the SIA. I hope that the Minister will deal with that in his winding-up speech.
The British Security Industry Association is the main professional trade association for the security industry. As I said in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Walsall, South, 70 per cent. of the security business in the United Kingdom is covered by its members. Although it has largely welcomed the Bill, in line with the right hon. Gentleman's criticisms it has issued a number of strictures and reservations about it. It is worth briefly going through the aspects with which it is unhappy, including the lack of mandatory inspection for security companies. We would probably all like that to be covered by the Bill. If there is no mandatory inspection, how can we be sure that the inspection regime operating properly?
The association has reservations about the absence of licensing for in-house officers. If officers running such firms are not properly licensed, how do we know that they are running them properly? The association also mentions in-house CCTV monitoring personnel and alarm installers. There is a very good CCTV scheme in Cirencester in my constituency. It was one of the first in the country, was grant-aided by the previous Conservative Government and works incredibly effectively, covering the centre of Cirencester and a wider area—some security cameras are on a high building and can scan a long way. When it was first introduced, there were civil liberties concerns but, as time has passed, people have got used to it and feel safer in the centre of Cirencester. A number of serious criminals have been apprehended through the CCTV scheme. Although it is often manned by civilians, there are strict rules on how long the pictures can be stored for recall. Basically, they can be stored for more than 24 hours if there is a suspicion of a crime. It is precisely those issues that need to be discussed; the private security industry must follow similarly strict guidelines.
The association also says that a fair and efficient system of retrospective licensing is needed so that companies are not disadvantaged. Clearly, there needs to be a reasonable period after the Bill comes into operation to allow security firms—not just the big two or three firms, but the little firms that want to do a good job—to meet its requirements. Little firms are not all cowboys. Many of them want to do a decent job and to be employed by bigger companies to carry out guarding activities. We should allow them to come up to the standards of training and efficiency that the Bill requires, so there should be a reasonable phase-in period.

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The BSIA seeks clarification as to whether cash-in-transit personnel are included in the provisions. I endorse that. Operations involving cash in transit run by Group 4 have been well run, but there is scope for all sorts of things to go wrong for firms that are not quite up to the mark in this respect.
Finally, there is the high estimated cost of the licence—an old theme of mine. When a non-departmental public body is created, it should be cost-effective. It should charge the minimum necessary to cover its costs, and it should not be riddled with excessive bureaucracy.
I know that others want to speak, so I shall deal with just one or two of the more important matters that I intended to discuss tonight. Training is an important aspect of the Bill. As I mentioned to the right hon. Member for Walsall, South in an intervention, the BSIA carries out training, and has long experience of doing that. By training up to the standard of ISO 9000 and co-operating with and consulting various European security organisations, it has acquired huge knowledge of the subject. Although it should not be the sole provider of training, that bank of knowledge about how to train security guards and firms should be used. I hope that the Minister will comment on that.
On the licensing regime, I have said that it should not cost any more or be more bureaucratic than is strictly necessary. As a non-departmental body, it will still be subject to ministerial direction and subject to audit, as though it were a Government Department. I urge the Minister to ensure that it is not excessively expensive or bureaucratic.
It is important that there is a proper appeals mechanism for firms and individuals who are not granted a licence. No one wants to allow cowboys to operate, but regulation could become draconian. We could end up with a cosy little club, with only the elite in the security industry getting a licence. We need to be fair to smaller operations.
A licence will be required for a firm to engage in manned guarding, including overseeing property and premises. That impinges on the wheelclamping issue. We have all heard horror stories about innocent people being beaten up after straying on to private premises. We have heard of cowboys wheelclamping cars that were parked on private premises by mistake, not releasing those cars for several days and demanding huge ransoms before the wheelclamps are removed. Such activity should not be tolerated in a free society. Yes, under proper licence, wheelclamping is an effective deterrent to illegal parking on private property, but there should be good reason for it.
Mr. Bercow: My hon. Friend makes an important point. Can he confirm, for the benefit of the House, that no cowboy wheelclamping takes place on his estate?
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I can confirm that absolutely. Not only does wheelclamping not take place, but I have never employed a wheelclamper, be he cowboy or any other type, in my life. I hope that I shall never need to do so. In Norfolk, we are a relatively law-abiding community. Although fly tipping and the dumping of old cars are an increasing local menace, I hope that they will never necessitate wheelclamping.
A licence will also be required for the work done by a private investigator in undertaking surveillance and investigations to obtain information about another person.
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Those are especially sensitive matters. We all know about private investigators. Before my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) bobs up to ask me whether I have ever employed one, I assure him that I have never done so. Indeed, I hope that I shall never need to do so, but we all know that some individuals need to employ investigators for various commercial and personal reasons. That is understandable, but investigators must be required to adhere to a carefully defined legislative licence regime. Nobody wants private investigators to go around breaking the law.
The House of Lords agreed to an amendment that exempted all private domestic dwellings from the remit of security firms operating under the terms of the Bill. That must be right. Nobody wants to encourage anybody, whether or not he or she is a private investigator, to break into a private dwelling without the permission of its owner or occupier. Of course, the giving of advice about security devices and precautions will also have to be subject to licensing. Many people use bugging and surveillance devices, especially when they work in investigation, but such devices should be covered by strict rules and a licensing procedure.
Finally, in respect of keyholders, I assume that the Bill covers only professional firms. I have a private friend who acts as a keyholder for the alarm system on my house, so I hope that he will not be categorised as doing the job specified in the Bill. The Bill should, however, cover the professional security firm that installed and maintained my alarm, as it is also a keyholder.
Other hon. Members want to speak, so I shall conclude my remarks. I broadly welcome the Bill and I hope that the Government will give it the serious consideration that it deserves. If they call a premature election on 3 May, it might be one of the casualties of the final sort-out. I have no idea whether that will happen, as I will not be a party to the relevant negotiations. If the Bill is dropped, however, it will have to be reintroduced in the next Parliament. If that happens, I hope that the Government will think carefully about what has been said tonight. I hope especially that they will take the advice of the right hon. Member for Walsall, South, but I ask them to listen also to all the other comments that have been made. For once, let us see whether we can produce through genuine parliamentary debate a better Bill than the one first published by the Government.
9.13 pm
Mr. John Hayes: I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this debate. I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), who always brings to our deliberations the energy of a terrier and the charm of a spaniel. I am pleased also to follow the right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), whose experience in these matters is legendary. Any even cursory examination of the subject with which the Bill deals leaves one with the impression that deliberations on such matters have been peppered for more than 15 years with references to him and to his comments.
The history of private security is a long one. Indeed, it might be said that it extends back into pre history. In bed last night, I was reading "The Golden Bough" by Frazer, and I was reminded of the kingdom in the part of southern Europe that is now Italy where murder was the normal

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means of succession for the monarch, as the person who murdered him took his place. Consequently, monarchs spent most of their time running around a tree, looking for potential murderers and jumping at shadows. I suppose that that was an example of personal private security. If we trace law enforcement and personal security through the ages, we find that it has largely been conducted privately. Public security is a relatively modern phenomenon, and the notion of putting law enforcement into the hands of a publicly funded police force is recent.
Should there be regulation? The case has been well made in tonight's discussions, but it is worth considering the conclusions of the 1995 report of the Select Committee on Home Affairs on the private security industry. Several hon. Members have already referred to it. The right hon. Member for Walsall, South will be familiar with it because he gave evidence to that inquiry. The conclusions did not concur with his recommendations, but they paid tribute to the pertinence of his contribution. The report concluded:
"We conclude that current standards, particularly standards of training, in much of the private security industry are unsatisfactory and below the level the public need and have a right to expect. We note that it is in the manned guarding sector of the industry that most of the worst examples are to be found. We are particularly concerned about the evidence that there is a growing problem of totally unregulated private local patrolling operations, often preying on the fears of vulnerable people, and we conclude that this needs to be tackled firmly."
The subject of private patrolling organisations will permeate much of my speech. We must strike a balance between law enforcement in the private and public sectors. The right hon. Member for Walsall, South referred to that. Such a balance is vital to maintain public confidence in the proper enforcement of law; it could be jeopardised unless we take the right action in the Bill and elsewhere.
Because I want to dwell briefly on the constitutional issues that are associated with the relationship between the public and law enforcement, as would be expected, I immediately searched for my copy of "The English Police—A Political and Social History" by Clive Emsley. Chapter 5 refers to a case in 1893 when the Home Secretary was asked about an English woman, a member of the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, who was allegedly treated with "rudeness and even violence" by a member of the Metropolitan police. The police denied the charge and Mr. Asquith, who was Home Secretary at the time, said:
"I do not see any reason for doubting the accuracy of the police statement."
Mr. Emsley concludes:
"The Bobby was now firmly established as a part of the model British Constitution."
The publicly funded police forces of the United Kingdom are indeed perceived as an intrinsic part of the constitution. We need to consider the balance between private and public law enforcement in that context.
I want to refer to a second study, which covers public perception of the constitutional aspect of policing. "The Force Inside the Police", by Robert Chesshyre, firmly makes the case for the positive perception of the police force. The public has a different perception of and relationship with the private security industry. In that
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respect, I slightly disagreed with the right hon. Member for Walsall, South, as he may have inferred from my intervention.
We discussed people who wear badges, uniforms and caps and whether they were the equivalent of policemen. Mr. Robert Chesshyre states in his book that when a policeman turns up, he is merely a policeman and has a degree of anonymity. Chapter 7 states:
"But that anonymity does not mean that we are neutral towards the unknown officer, as we are towards others who wear uniforms, such as postmen, ticket collectors or gasmen, civilians like ourselves merely masquerading in fancy dress while they go about their business. Every policeman is a representative of the force: the sight of him may move us to feelings of relief, security and trust; or fear, hatred and contempt. He is the 'law', he is authority."
That authority vested in the police force is critical to the public perception of the police, and we must tread carefully and warily when we advocate the use of private security forces if we believe that they will in any way jeopardise or impinge on that relationship, that perception and that understanding of the police force by the public.
I would like to speak for a great deal longer, as I have a great deal more to say. However, I shall end by talking about the ethical dimensions of law enforcement. I want to refer to "Power and Restraint, the Moral Dimension of Police Work" by Cohen and Feldberg. I shall list the things that seem important in that respect, and then I shall sit down.
Mr. Cohen and Mr. Feldberg tell us:
"There are five ethical standards against which police work can be judged."
I think that, to some degree, this applies also to the private security industry. They go on to list those standards.
"Standard I: Fair Access. As a social resource, police must provide fair access to their services.
Standard II: Public Trust, Citizens, having limited their right to enforce their own rights, have made police work a public trust."
That also applies to the private security industry.
"Standard III: Safety and Security. Police must undertake law enforcement within tie framework of maintaining safety and security.
Standard IV: Teamwork. Police are part of a system that includes legislators, other law enforcers,"—
this is the partnership that I am talking about—
"prosecutors and judges, so their behaviour must meet the tests of teamwork: coordination, communication and cooperation.
"Standard V: Objectivity. Police work is a social role that often requires the officer to set personality and feelings aside, and demonstrate objectivity "
Those studies are useful and apposite in considering the matters before us tonight. Unless the private security industry can, through the Bill and other measures that the House might introduce, conform to the constitutional role of the police that I have described, maintain the public trust that I have illustrated, and—vitally—ensure that those ethical standards for law enforcement are maintained, I believe that we are heading towards a dangerous abyss, into which no Member of the House, of whatever party, would wish us to tumble.
9.22 pm
Mr. John Bercow: This has been an excellent debate, to which, thus far, no fewer than 14 right hon. and hon. Members have contributed. The level of interest in the subject reflects its importance.

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The Minister of State, Home Office, the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke), set out the context of our debate on Second Reading at the outset of his speech. There are approximately 8,000 firms in the private security industry sector. Estimates differ as to the number of people whom they employ, but it seems that the most recent is about 350,000. The industry enjoys a turnover of about £2 billion a year.
The Minister was right to say that the industry is, on the whole, successful. It has a good track record and is delivering much that we can celebrate. I could not help but be a trifle amused by the entirely appropriate chiding of the Minister by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler), who pointed out that the Minister's cheery acknowledgement of the success of the industry was in marked and hasty contrast to what he and his right hon. and hon. Friends had been saying in opposition. At that time, they were happy to conjure up an impression of a largely ineffectual, thoroughly corrupt and almost totally discredited industry. None of those charges is true. I am grateful that the Minister has now experienced an apostolic conversion and is prepared to concede that the sector contributes much that we can welcome.
The Minister was a little weak on some of the facts. I was surprised at that, because I have often drawn attention to his seriousness and, in particular, to the seriousness with which he regards himself. He is an ambitious fellow. He is very busy, very influential, very senior, very respected, and very important. He has many ambitions, many commitments, and certainly a very full diary. I was a little disappointed, in the circumstances, that he did not seem to appreciate the significance of the point about small businesses in the sector, and the proportion of the totality of the sector for which those businesses account.
I think that I am right in saying that approximately 80 per cent. of the sector is represented by companies employing fewer than 50 people. That fact, which is critical to our exchanges, is fundamental to the issue of regulation, the extent of that regulation, the costs that it will necessarily impose and, therefore, the need to be judicious and as restrained as possible in the new but justifiable impositions. At any rate, the Minister believes that we now need a statutory framework. He is able to adduce evidence from the private sector that that is what many companies—probably most—want to achieve. Although he skated over the improvements that have been made thus far through more effective self-regulation, he was entitled to point out that the vast majority of European Union member states have a statutory regulatory system.
I simply make the point that in our perhaps understandable impatience to legislate to remedy or mitigate an identifiable evil, it is important to take care not to over-egg the pudding. I am entitled to say to the Minister, who has an army of civil servants to advise him, that we need to take account of what the record shows in other countries. Okay, they have regulatory systems, and those systems have statutory force. They entail, among other things, imposing charges and levying fees. What, in practical terms, do they achieve to reduce or diminish the incidence of crime, and at what cost?
Of course, there is always a balance to be considered, and an opportunity cost is involved as well. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) referred to small companies and the burdens that they might
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face. It is important to emphasise that not all small companies want permanently to remain small. If they are to have the opportunity to grow legitimately and constructively, it is important that we minimise the legislative and regulatory burden on them.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: My hon. Friend has referred to the financial aspects of the need to keep bureaucracy low so that the costs of licensing are low and reasonable for small firms. Does he also accept that the regime itself needs to be reasonable? It would be possible to promote a regime so exacting that it would be difficult for small firms to continue. They would be frozen out and that would produce a cosy club of big security firms.
Mr. Bercow: My hon. Friend is right. The affordability of the regulatory system and the extent to which it impacts on the bottom line is not the only issue—the psychological impact of the decision to legislate and to regulate is also important. I have often made the point, not least when I introduced a ten-minute Bill on 27 April 1999 about regulations on small firms, that, too often, they give up the unequal struggle against the regulatory leviathan. That is depressing, and it is our fault. Small firms do not necessarily go bankrupt; they simply decide that it is no longer worth the candle. I am grateful to him for pointing that out.
The debate was opened from these Benches in characteristically robust and eloquent fashion by my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins), who covered the broad canvas of issues that are relevant to the Bill. In particular, and like other Members to whom I shall refer in a moment, he mentioned the frankly evil practices of a great many of the cowboy wheelclampers across the country. I am glad that he did so, and the theme was echoed throughout the debate.
My hon. Friend also made a point about the scope of the Bill and the importance of ensuring that we know exactly to whom it applies. I share his concern that, for example, computer specialists engaged in sensitive work on behalf of their employers or, on a contractual basis, for clients, could find themselves inadvertently drawn into the embrace of the Bill. Ministers give us the impression that that would not be so, but we cannot be sure and we would welcome assurance on the point.
The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson), who, sadly, is not in his place, traced the evolution of the Bill. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is returning to his seat. He had much that was worthwhile and informative to say. I was, however, a little taken aback by one aspect of his speech. In the first part, he was at pains to emphasise that he was not keen on extensive and zealous regulation; in the second part, however, he lamented the inadequacy of the Bill's scope, and said that he wanted further regulation. Never mind: we shall try to square that circle at some stage. He speaks with experience and some authority, and the House accordingly listened to him with respect.
The hon. Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) welcomed the Bill in general, but drew attention to two important points. The first related to the independence of the Security Industry Authority, or what might more accurately be described as the current concern that it will not be as independent as it should be. She rightly dwelt on the power of appointment, and seemed to be keen—as

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we are—for ministerial discussion to be if not eliminated, at any rate properly circumscribed. She also—again, rightly—referred to the powers of entry and inspection. She will, I think, be aware that a number of us have made similar observations in relation to other recent legislation. It should be said, in fairness, that comments by Conservative Members on such matters were echoed by Liberal Democrats during, for example, our recent debates on the Vehicles (Crime) Bill. I therefore identify strongly with what she said today.
The hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) brought to bear the perspective of one representing a seaside constituency. He also spoke, with many examples in mind, of the adverse impact of wheelclampers.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield delivered a tour de force in what may prove to be his valedictory address to the House, more than 30 years after he first entered it. He rightly reminded us of the ten-minute Bill—the Security Industry Licensing Bill—that he presented in 1973. He was, if I may say so, relatively relaxed and insouciant about the fact that it had taken 28 years for his wise words and policy recommendations to be translated into practice.
My right hon. Friend made another important point. He said that in no sense should the gradual increase in the numbers and powers of private security industry employees be allowed effectively—perhaps even surreptitiously—to substitute for the legitimate, historic and proper role of the public service called the police. He made the practical point that the genesis of the police force that we now enjoy and wish to preserve was, in fact, the ending of private patrols. It was precisely because of the inadequacy of that system that we developed a more satisfactory arrangement.
The Minister has sought to assuage our concerns by indicating that the Government have no intention of substituting the private security industry for the police force. I hope that he will accept—if he does not, I am afraid reality will prove that he will be obliged to do so—that deeds matter more than words. It is important for us to ensure, in practice as well as in rhetoric, that there is a role for the private security industry, but that it does not seek to supplant or nudge out of the way the public service called the police force.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Does it not concern my hon. Friend that that is precisely what is happening? The police are expecting more and more people to employ private security firms and to use alarm systems, because, unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer police on the beat to guarantee the safe towns and safe countryside that people have taken for granted in the past.
Mr. Bercow: My hon. Friend is right. He knows the truth from bitter experience, not least in his Macclesfield constituency—but that experience is replicated, almost without exception, throughout the United Kingdom. Under this Government, who said that they would support the police, we have fewer police. They bear greater burdens, they are given less support, and they are constantly told that they must do more with less. My hon. Friend has encapsulated that point in his characteristically eloquent fashion.
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The hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton) made an excellent speech—it was witty, it was engaging, and it marked the culmination of a long-standing campaign by her to take proper action against wheelclampers. I am well aware that she has asked four parliamentary questions on the subject in this Parliament, between, I think, 7 July 1997—a date of particular significance to me—and 4 February 2000. I think that I was in the Chamber on the occasions on which she asked those questions. I therefore know the feeling with which she speaks on the subject, and I hope that she feels that she had a proper outing today.
The hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) lamented the phenomenon of the cowboy dampers. However, I suggest to him that, in a sense, what we are talking about are the "Del Boy" dampers. They are the dampers who give legitimate dampers a bad name.
The hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy)—only part of whose speech I was able to hear—apparently told the House of his experience as a security guard in, I think, 1991. He made the wider point that he saw quite a few students working part-time in a security capacity while also studying for their exams. I think that he underlined the importance of partnership between the private security industry and the police. However, the relationship must be one of partnership and not one of substitution.
The hon. Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey) gave us many examples from his own area. He seemed to be an enthusiastic, if belated advocate of the Bill's contents.
The right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George) made one of the fittest speeches that I have heard in this place since I was elected in May 1997. He had an effortless command of his subject and I listened to him attentively throughout. I hope that he is not too disappointed that the Government have not paid as much notice to what he has been saying as he had hoped. I am still a little suspicious of him in this matter because, at heart, he is a socialist and I am a Conservative. He believes in regulation and I am rather suspicious of it. Nevertheless, I listened to what he had to say with interest and respect.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold drew attention to a number of representations from the industry about the Bill's deficiencies.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) treated us to a combination of historical reminiscence and constitutional exegesis of a type to which we are fast becoming accustomed from him. It was high-calibre stuff and I much enjoyed it.
The truth of the matter is that the Government have made a case for the creation of the authority, the issue of licences and establishment of the new offence of operating without a licence or offering security services without a licence. However, it is very important indeed that we should have a proper debate on the Bill's contents.
The reality is that, ultimately, in the other place 23 amendments were made—three in Committee and a further 20 on Report, covering such diverse but important issues as licensing, the Bill's scope, exemptions from the Bill and the appeals procedure. As we know, there is scope within the Bill for the modification, revocation or suspension of a licence. It must be right to have, for example, the balancing mechanism of an appeals system that is credible and fair and that is seen to be credible and fair. In that relatively brief—I do not say cursory, because

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my noble Friend Lord Cope of Berkeley did the job extremely well—consideration of the issues in the other place, a goodly number of amendments were made to the Bill. It is important that we should have the chance to make amendments.
We have to be sure of the independence of the Security Industry Authority. We have to be certain that, in practice, the Bill's provisions will not be a queue for or staging post en route to the substitution of the private security industry for the legitimate and historically accepted functions of the police force. We have to guard against what Lord Cope rightly described in the other place as the "law of unintended consequences". That law operates in such a manner that sectors, companies and individuals who did not think that they fell within the Bill's ambit might subsequently discover that they do, with damage to their businesses, unanticipated costs and implications for employment.
There is also the very important issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath raised in his opening speech of the list of licensed persons. I hope that the Minister will have something to say today on that issue. There may be a good reply on the issue, but it is important that people should be aware of what the issue is. There is intended to be a publicly available list of licensed operators. My hon. Friend raised the legitimate concern that if the list is available, names and addresses will be known. That means that people operating in the sector could be subject to vengeful attacks by people who had fallen foul of them and who bore a grudge.
Little has been said of the related issue of the costs that flow from the Bill, which is accompanied by a frankly pitiful regulatory impact assessment The summary of the assessment consists of about two paragraphs of breathtaking complacency from the Government. From time to time, the most extraordinary parameters for possible costs are given. For example, we are told that costs for the voluntary scheme arising from the Bill could range from £1 million to £9 million a year. Another cost is put at £110,000—methinks it a trifle unlikely that that cost will be sustained.
One does not need to look into the crystal ball when one can read the book. We talk about fees and charges, but the Government have already increased their estimate of the licence cost from £22 to £40. That is dramatically above the inflation level, and the rise has happened in a very short space of time. Unless there is a more robust, credible and fully explained regulatory impact assessment, the concern must be that eventual costs will substantially outstrip those currently portended.
Important matters remain to be debated and considered thoroughly. Much detail has to be studied. I emphasise to the Minister that I have an on-going concern for which I make no apology. It is that the Government intend to do a good deal of their work in this sector by means of secondary legislation. I referred in an earlier intervention to some of the regulations that we will face. We should subject any regulations that the Government introduce to the affirmative procedure, so that a proper debate can be held. In the absence of such a procedure—for which the Minister has not given a proper justification—we should at least be granted the courtesy of advance sight of a draft copy of the intended regulations.
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We need to be assured also by the Minister that a proper period of consultation—of not less than three months—will be devoted to the regulations, and that there will be a similar period of notice of their required implementation. The Government's motives are sound, but we have to be clear that the detail will match the rhetoric.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) made an outstanding speech, in which he pointed out all the weaknesses in the Bill as it stands. He is a formidable performer and could happily have gone on for another hour if we had indulged him, and he only touched on—or skated over—some of his concerns about the measure.
I want to be reassured by the Minister. I hope that he will make a genuine attempt to do that. I own up to the fact that I err on the side of opposition and caution when it comes to regulation. I make no apology for that. I happen to believe that, on the whole, Walter Lipmann was right: in a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men and women, but rather it administers justice among men and women who conduct their own affairs.
We must be sure that we do not over-regulate. The Chancellor of the Exchequer wrote the foreword to "Equipping Britain for our Long-Term Future", Labour's business manifesto issued in April 1997. He stated that a Labour Government would not impose burdensome regulations on business because the Labour party understood that successful businesses had to keep costs down.
I am sorry to say that that pledge has not been honoured. There has been an explosion of regulation. The sea of regulation now facing businesses is greater than any with which they have had to contend previously. We must make sure that the regulations imposed by the Bill are necessary, proportionate and effective. They must be no more burdensome than is necessary.
9.44 pm
Mr. Charles Clarke: Until after the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), the debate was first class. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) opened excellently for the Opposition; he set out their position clearly and made a number of points to which I tried to respond. I shall deal with those to which I could not give an adequate response; for example, I shall try to give a constructive reply to his point on the computer industry.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) made an exceptionally informed speech, based on his experience as a GMB organiser. He knows about the industry and knows what is involved; he enlightened the debate. The hon. Member for Taunton (Jackie Ballard) put the position of her party clearly and articulately; her contribution added to the debate. She made raised a couple of important points to which I shall respond in a moment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) made an excellent speech on a slightly more profound aspect of the Bill—the attempt to change the culture in parts of the country such as his constituency—and noted that a properly regulated industry could lead to a better state of affairs in society. He made an extremely interesting and provocative speech.

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I agree with the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) made an outstanding speech, from his own experience and his campaigns on such matters. I shall address some of his points shortly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton) went through the arguments on wheelclamping with tremendous clarity and passion. I hope that the passage of the Bill will be a commendation for and vindication of the personal campaign that she has mounted, along with motoring organisations and others.
I apologise to the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) for having had to miss part of his speech. He put an excellent and constructive set of arguments based on his experience in industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) came dangerously close to creeping socialism as he put his argument for greater municipalisation; his remarks were powerful and important. My hon. Friends the Members for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy) and for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey) spoke extremely appropriately and from some personal experience of the importance of the position of the individual and of what might be done in that regard. They made excellent contributions.
The speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South was an outstanding tour d'horizon. He went through the whole issue. The first of my specific responses will deal with the points that he raised. His outstanding personal experience shone through his contribution and his conduct of the debate.
At the end of the debate, the hon. Member for Buckingham made an excellent statement of his party's position. He participated fully in the debate.
A couple of contributions were made towards the end of the debate by hon. Members who were dragged in to lose time, having missed the first four or five hours of our proceedings. I shall give no time to them.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South referred to the Swedish example—interestingly, as a Swedish manager has just ensured our important 3-1 win in Tirana. I tried to work closely with my right hon. Friend before and during preparations for the Bill, precisely because of his tremendous experience in the field. My opening speech addressed some of the points that he made, although I appreciate that he was unable to hear it because he was chairing the Select Committee on Defence.
I shall go quickly through the points made by my right hon. Friend. He referred to the nature of the Security Industry Authority. As I said earlier, we attach tremendous importance to the independence of the SIA. It must be genuinely independent and strong. That is why—to respond to a point raised by the hon. Member for Surrey Heath—we are not in favour, at present, of specifying exactly the range of interest groups that should be included on the body.
We want a genuinely independent, strong regulatory body—not one that is the lapdog of either the Home Secretary of the day or the industry—that will develop and use the powers set out in the Bill and thereby give my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South the assurance that he seeks: that the SIA will not be a quiet
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body that makes only a small shift from the status quo, but a serious organisation that will drive forward reform of the industry in the various sectors to which he referred. For that reason, its independence is important.
As my right hon. Friend and other hon. Members rightly said, it is also important that the SIA has a strong relationship and links with the industry: it must not be distant. I hope that I have given my right hon. Friend the assurance that he seeks.
On in-house provisions, which were also referred to by other hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North, I emphasise my earlier point that our minds are not closed to the arguments in favour of regulating in-house staff; we shall bear them closely iii mind. The authority has been given a general duty to keep operation of the industry under full review. We shall hold a formal review of all the arrangements after the authority has been in force for three years. The Bill is flexible, and the Government can add or delete sectors of the industry by regulation. We will pay very close attention to any recommendation from the authority that in-house manned guards should be brought within the scope of regulation. I acknowledge that that argument is being advanced not only by my right hon. Friend but by several organisations in the industry. It is likely, therefore, that that argument could have a good hearing at that point. I believe that the Bill allows for that.
On the "voluntary versus compulsory" point that my right hon. Friend and a number of other hon. Members have made, the Bill contains explicit provisions to convert the voluntary scheme into a compulsory one if the authority and the Government are convinced that that is the right thing to do. Once again, we will listen carefully to what the SIA tells us about the operation of the voluntary schemes and the extent to which they have or have not failed to deal with the issues that my right hon. Friend raised in his intervention. The Government are entirely open to that approach.
There was no conspiracy among the security industry on the "voluntary versus compulsory" point. The better regulation taskforce scrutinised the Bill very closely to check for burdens on industry—a serious issue that we took seriously. There was no plot within part of the security industry; we were concerned with the ideological position, if I may put it like that—the role of regulation in modern society and where it goes.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield raised the issue of width and alarm installers. We are very much open to arguments in that regard. As my right hon. Friend said, the Bill already gives the SIA a major task and we do not want further to front-load its waiting list of people to license.
Our aim is to get the authority up and running with the duties set out in the Bill as drafted, and then listen to the voice of experience. That applies very much to alarm installation. The key reason why alarm installers are not covered by the Bill is that when we went into detail about the criminality that could be demonstrated in relation to that industry, as opposed to the criminality that can patently be demonstrated in relation to, for example, the manned guarding industry, the evidence of such criminality from the police and others was significantly less, which was a significant factor. Of course, the evidence may change as new forms of criminality become

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evident, and such evidence would be decisive in getting both the authority and the Secretary of State of the day to address the issue very directly.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South and several of my hon. Friends spoke about the important matter of training; my right hon. Friend did so with particular force. I want to reinforce the provisions of the Bill. Under clause 1(2), it is a function of the authority
"to set or approve standards of conduct, training and levels of supervision for adoption by—"
those involved in the industry, and
"to make recommendations and proposals for the maintenance and improvement of standards in the … industry".
Those are very real statutory functions
I agree, and have said so publicly many times, that getting the training right—I am not subscribing to a list of particular functions—is a key element in raising the standard of the service. I can confirm that I have talked to many of the private sector industries that we are debating, and the associations, the trade unions and the current educational bodies, all of which are committed to raising training standards. The Government are absolutely committed to raising training standards. We believe that the power that I have set out for the SIA provides the way to address that, and to do so explicitly
In some of the remarks that I am making, I am repeating what I said in my opening speech. I am now trying to say as strongly as I can that if we have the option of an SIA that is relatively flimsy and does not bring us very far from where we are now, or an SIA that independently and authoritatively goes about the job of driving up standards in the industry, it is the latter that we shall go for.
Many other points were made in interventions. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North mentioned shadowy directors who may not need to be licensed under the Bill but who use employees for criminal purposes. The directors will need licences. If "Mr. Bigs" remain in the shadows, pulling the strings for criminal purposes, that is beyond the SIA's remit; it is a matter for the police. As discussed extensively in the other place, the Department of Trade and Industry has very extensive powers under the Companies Acts to close down companies that act inappropriately. The power to deal with the criminality of the Mr. Bigs that we are discussing lies with the police and company regulation.
The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire made a point about home addresses being made available on a public register, and it was reaffirmed by the hon. Member for Buckingham. The Bill will require the publication of addresses, but not necessarily home addresses. The publication of business addresses will be useful in regulating the industries. Some home addresses may be published if security operatives choose to operate their businesses from home, but in general the address given will be a matter for the individual concerned.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: Does not the Minister accept that Northern Ireland is a specific case, where it might not be advisable to publish even the names, because punishment beatings are continuing just as much as they did even before the Belfast agreement?
Mr. Clarke: I accept that Northern Ireland may be a specific case where that issue might be directly relevant,
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and we are certainly prepared to consider it in that context. Precisely that issue was considered in detail when we discussed the addresses of the directors of animal research companies during recent debates on the Criminal Justice and Police Bill.
The hon. Member for Taunton referred to the exemption from licensing for accountancy firms. She expressed concern about whether that exemption would lead to an uneven playing field. The Government accepted arguments in the other place that members of accountancy bodies, such as the Institute of Chartered Accountants, may be exempted from licensing. The relevant accountancy bodies are listed in clause 25. The Government did not, however, accept the arguments that employees of those accountancy companies should be exempt. The companies might be exempt, but not their employees, because we fully accept that that would lead to an uneven playing field, about which she expressed concern, where large accountancy firms have diversified into designated activities under the Bill. That provides the reassurance that she seeks.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, South referred to child protection and amusement arcades, and he gave other reasonable examples. Under the Bill, anyone providing security services who is licensable will be given a Criminal Records Bureau check. Therefore, those who act as security guards in areas open to children will be checked. Outwith the Bill, any member of staff with access to children is eligible for CRB checks as set out under the various processes that have been discussed.
On wheelclamping, in-house employees or people providing the service will need to be licensed, but not volunteers. If the dentist to whom reference was made were to engage in do-it-yourself wheelclamping, he would need to qualify for a licence.
I shall not embark on the police numbers debate. We have been right around the houses about that in the debate, but we have just announced the largest increase in police numbers for 12 years, and they are increasing across the country.
A serious point was made, first, by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield, and then by other hon. Members. He asked whether we intended to replace police with private security guards. We had an exchange on that, but I want to take this opportunity to say as clearly as I can that that is not the Government's policy. The Government's policy is, first, to increase police numbers in the way that we have set out, so that we shall have a record number of police in the history of this country by March 2003.
Secondly, our policy is to ensure that the office of constable, which police officers hold, is respected and operated throughout. Thirdly, it is to develop not competition but partnerships between the police and the private security industry so that they work together in all the ways that we have described. Absolutely no part of our policy involves replacing the police with private security companies, but we can argue about how such partnerships can be implemented.
Finally, in a spirit of inquiry, I asked the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield why he thought that previous Conservative Governments had not regulated the industry during their 18 years in power. The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire put his finger on it when he said there was an issue about the merits of regulation versus

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the merits of deregulation. He implied that, on balance, previous Conservative Governments had decided that they would not introduce a regulatory burden of any kind.
The hon. Member for Buckingham said very honestly at the end of his speech that that burden was right at the top of his concerns and doubts. I tell the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield in particular that if the Conservatives were to form a Government after the general election, there is absolutely no guarantee that they would put such legislation into effect. That did not happen for 18 years, and it would not happen now. That is why the Bill deserves its Second Reading, and I hope that the House will agree to it tonight.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 63 (Committal of Bills).

Private Security Industry Bill [Lords] (Programme)
9.59 pm
Mr. Charles Clarke: I beg to move,
That the following provisions shall apply to the Private Security Industry Bill [Lords]:

Standing Committee
1. The Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee.

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

3. Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 1st May 2001.

Consideration and Third Reading
4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at nine o'clock on the day on which those proceedings are commenced or, if that day is a Thursday, at six o'clock on that day.
5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at ten o'clock on the day on which those proceedings are commenced or, if that day is a Thursday, at seven o'clock on that day.
6. Sessional Order B (Programming Committees) made by the House on 7th November 2000 shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.

Lords messages
7. Paragraphs (6) and (7) of Sessional Order A (varying and supplementing programme motions) made by the House on 7th November 2000 shall not apply to proceedings on any motion to vary or supplement this order for the purpose of allocating time to proceedings on consideration of any messages from the Lords, and the question on any such motion shall be put forthwith
The motion proposes that the Committee stage should conclude by 1 May at the latest, with four days of double sittings. That seems to be an ample amount of time—eight sittings in all—to debate a medium-sized and uncontentious Bill such as this. Of course, the Programming Sub-Committee may decide that it is necessary for the Committee to sit more frequently than usual. Therefore, I give the assurance that I have given on previous occasions: if there is a need for more time, we are prepared to consider it through the process of the Programming Sub-Committee.
Mr. Quentin Davies: The Minister is a thoughtful and sensible Member of the House, but does he not think that it is a little pretentious of him to speak on behalf of the Government in presenting a Bill to the House and then presume to decide for himself how long the House of Commons may choose to take to consider his proposed legislation?
Mr. Clarke: The short answer is no, I do not think that. The procedure whereby the Government table a programme motion for debate is the right process. I know that the Programming Sub-Committee procedures are controversial and I know that there are arguments about them—I am sure that we shall have the familiar debate again—but all Members can participate in the process.

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I have been through the process on several occasions this Session and I emphasise that the order of business to be debated by the Committee is, in the Government's view, in the gift of the Opposition. If the Opposition want to order the debates in a certain way because they think that certain subjects deserve priority, we are open to their suggestions, and our inclination will be to agree to their propositions.
On the amount of time for the Bill's consideration, we are prepared to extend the time available when that becomes necessary. However, as we have seen from the arguments on the Criminal Justice and Police Bill—I will not repeat them now—we are not sympathetic to those who wish to delay discussion rather than debate the substantive issues.
Mr. Luff: The Minister said that the programme motion allows for four days of double sittings. By my reckoning, he must mean the sittings on 10 April, 24 April, 26 April and 1 May. Are those dates correct?
Mr. Clarke: I think that those are the dates that we are thinking of, but I shall double check before I confirm that.
Sir Patrick Cormack: Is the Minister absolutely confident that we will be sitting on those dates and does he genuinely believe that the Committee will complete its consideration on 1 May? Will he give the House a straight answer?
Mr. Clarke: Earlier, I had an entertaining exchange with the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) about this very matter. He thought that he had set a bait that I had eaten. However, I am not responsible for determining the date of the general election; I am not privy to the Prime Minister's thoughts on that. I read the newspapers and, like the whole House, I am aware that there is massive speculation about the possibility of a general election on 3 May. Massive issues surround the date—the Conservatives are afraid of it and we are keen on it—and many arguments is are being made. The Prime Minister will decide, as has been the case throughout our history. The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) is a great constitutional expert and he knows that that is the case. I cannot prejudge what will happen, but I am confident that the House will give the Bill the full consideration that it deserves.
The Bill has already received full scrutiny in the other place, as the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) generously acknowledged on Second Reading. The Government made 23 amendments to the Bill in 13 hours of full debate. He will correct me if I am being unfair, but I think that all the parties in the other place thought that the Bill had been scrutinised well and that the arguments had been fully heard. The Bill was improved by its passage through the other place. That is an important point.
The disagreement over the Bill's provisions generally relate to matters of comparative detail, and that became clear in the Second Reading debate. I do not suggest that they are unimportant points of detail, because it is appropriate to consider them. However, they are matters of comparative detail.
Mr. Douglas Hogg: Will the Minister be kind enough to help the House
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by giving a proper interpretation of paragraph 7? As I understand it, if we pass the programme motion, that paragraph will prevent us from debating any messages from the other place. Thus, if it produces dissenting amendments, we will not have an opportunity to discuss them. Am I right?
Mr. Clarke: I am loth to give a formal interpretation on the hoof to a man of such legal distinction. I remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman that the Bill has been debated fully in the other place. It would be different if the Bill had been introduced in this place and became part of the tit for tat that can arise. However, I will take advice and clarify the matter if I can.
As for the dates mentioned by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff), in case there is any doubt, we have in mind 10 April, 17 April, 24 April and 26 April—1 May is a stand-by date if we do not sit on 17 April.
Mr. Crispin Blunt: I am afraid that I am not as distinguished as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). I should be grateful if the Minister explained in simple language, so that I can understand, what paragraph 7 means.
Mr. Clarke: I can read the paragraph easily enough.
Mr. Blunt: I have done that.
Mr. Clarke: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has; he is a skilled reader. No doubt service in the Army helped him in that regard.
The paragraph ensures that in
"allocating time to proceedings on consideration of any messages from the Lords",
the Question should be put forthwith. That is a simple process, but I shall respond to the hon. Gentleman in more detail.
Mr. Bercow: Given that the Government published their White Paper on the subject in March 1999—exactly two years ago—and signalled their intention to legislate, will the Minister confirm that the Government have an idea of the intended regulations to give effect to parts of the Bill? If not, why not? If they do, why can we not have sight of the draft regulations?
Hon. Members: There they are.
Mr. Clarke: I am sorry to say that these are not the intended regulations.
The issue has been fully discussed and we have followed the same process, which I believe is correct, for other Bills. Before formally drafting regulations, it is appropriate for Parliament to consider the Bill, decide the framework of secondary legislation and consult across the industry. The hon. Gentleman, in his usual courteous way, is right to say that we have a good idea what we are talking about because substantial consultation has taken

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place and the debate has been wide ranging. However, I do not think it is right to publish draft regulations before the House is clear about how it intends to legislate.
Sir Patrick Cormack: If the Government have a clear idea of what they intend to include in the regulations, would it not help the House in general and the Committee in particular to see them?
Mr. Clarke: I can give the hon. Gentleman the same commitment that I gave the hon. Member for Buckingham. I will do my best to ensure that draft regulations are available as early as possible. I am happy to do that because it is appropriate.
I understand that paragraph 7 uses the standard form of wording. The process is established. However, hon. Members on both sides of the House are aware of the issues that surround the way in which it operates and the concerns of the Programming Sub-Committee. I think we all agree that the Modernisation Committee will need to consider how it has worked. There are issues of principle concerning the idea of a guillotine and practical issues about whether it is used in the right way. I can say firmly on behalf of the Government that we are ready to listen to suggestions.
Mr. John Gummer: The Minister is extremely courteous in giving way. In the same spirit, I say to him that there is no deep, fundamental argument about the Bill. It has been extremely well discussed in the other place. Is it not exactly the kind of Bill for which, in reasonable circumstances, the Government would not need to use a guillotine but would allow the House to take the necessary time? It is obviously not a Bill on which anybody would create difficulties, but there are points that hon. Members want to work on. Is this not precisely the occasion when the Government might have said to the House that they will not impose a guillotine?
Mr. Clarke: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, but he knows very well the difficulty that the Government have had over the past few months. I do not seek to make an adversarial point, but we lack confidence in the Opposition's ability to undertake the rational consideration of Bills to which he referred. I think that such consideration is the right way to go about things, but some hon. Members have not been prepared to do that. They want to use the procedures of the House for reasons that have nothing to do with the substance of any particular Bill, but because of the overall process, to make general arguments about the allegedly dictatorial Government.
I am not making a point now about the Criminal Justice and Police Bill, about which there was some toing and froing earlier. [Interruption.] No, I will not dilate on that. I am often asked by the hon. Member for Buckingham to do things that I do not particularly want to do, but he will be glad to hear that I am strong-minded enough to resist his blandishments. I am sure that my very good friend, Mark Seddon, the editor of Tribune, will also be able to withstand his blandishments when he takes him on in any general election that is to come. He will knock the hon. Gentleman into a substantial cocked hat in Buckingham.
Mr. Luff: Following the Minister's generous comments earlier about my speech during the main debate, I shall put
1064
my point as charitably as I can. There may be a misunderstanding between him and Conservative Members about what paragraph 7 does. I think that he understands it, but he has not succeeded in explaining it to us. Will he do that now?
I think that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) is wrong in his assessment; I think that paragraph 7 refers only to the guillotine, or timetable motion, on Lords messages, and not the debate on the Lords messages themselves. Will the Minister confirm that it means only that any Question on a timetable motion for Lords messages will be put forthwith, and that then there will be a debate on those messages?
Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman has understood the situation correctly. I must plead guilty to some extent here because I had assumed, and was subsequently advised correctly, that that is the standard form of wording and it means exactly what he said. Earlier interventions led me down a path that I should perhaps not have taken.
The programme motion gives the Opposition ample time to focus on aspects of the Bill which may be of special concern to them, and I hope that the House will agree to it.
10.13 pm
Mr. Hawkins: When my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) was responding to an earlier programme motion tabled by the Government, on Monday, she commenced her excellent remarks with a comment about the sense of unreality with which the House was approaching programme motions in these circumstances. I would go further and say that we are in an "Alice in Wonderland" world tonight, where a word means what the Minister says it means, and does not have its ordinary and natural meaning. Given the fevered speculation about the Government's general election plans, it seems somewhat bizarre to be discussing debates in April and May for the programme motion.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) has just said, there is no justification for any guillotining or programming of such a Bill. Much earlier this afternoon, at the beginning of the Second Reading debate, the Minister gave the game away in answer to an intervention by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler), when he dropped the heaviest of hints that there was very little prospect of the Bill's reaching the statute book because of what he knows the Prime Minister is likely to do.
Mr. Charles Clarke rose—
Mr. Hawkins: Before I give way to the Minister, let me say that if these were normal times and we were dealing with a normal Government and normal Ministers who believed in democracy, scrutiny and debate and who did not want to programme and guillotine every single measure, we might be able to accept the Minister's assurances; but I am afraid that, in the light of our recent experiences on the Criminal Justice and Police Bill, when the Minister made statements at the Dispatch Box about when motions would be progressed and how many

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Committee sittings there would be but those promises were repeatedly broken, the House and especially the Opposition cannot accept that Minister's assurances.
Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman is, of course, entitled to say that. However, I want to place on the record the fact that I did not drop the heaviest of hints about the election date. I do not know the Prime Minister's mind. I responded directly to the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler), and any Opposition politician will know that, however senior they may have been, they did not know their Prime Minister's mind about election dates any better than anyone else. It would be good of the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) to withdraw the suggestion that I dropped a hint about the election date, or that I know the Prime Minister's mind.
Mr. Hawkins: The record will show what the Minister said. However, the reaction of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield to the Minister's hint was quintessentially one of satisfaction: he said that he had made a bold cast and not expected to land such a big fish.
Mr. Gummer: Will my hon. Friend return to the guillotine motion and explain to the Government that our objection to the guillotine is that it stops Oppositions properly using the time and processes of the House to ensure that their voice is heard? Attacking the Opposition for doing what Oppositions have done in democratic Houses for the past 300 years is to misunderstand what the House is supposed to be about.
Mr. Hawkins: My right hon. Friend's extensive experience means that he knows that all too well. The current Government have already developed an extremely bad reputation for curtailing debate and ignoring democracy. They regularly behave as an elective dictatorship.
Let me give my right hon. Friend some recent examples of that behaviour. There were 118 amendments to the Bill that became the Freedom of Information Act 2000, 77 of which were not debated in the House. There were 268 amendments to the Bill that became the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, 47 of which were not debated here. There were 666 amendments to the Bill that became the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, 522 of which were not debated here. Then one comes to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Bill, which is a substantial Bill—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is going wide of the programme motion. It is much more narrow than that.
Mr. Hawkins: I was responding to my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, who rightly pointed out how it is necessary repeatedly to emphasise to the current Government that they are supposed to allow proper scrutiny, because on Bill after Bill since they introduced the ridiculous procedure of programming and guillotining everything, the House has not had the opportunity to do its proper job of scrutiny. Most recently and worst of all, the Criminal Justice and Police Bill—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I would allow the hon. Gentleman to say something in passing, but he seems to want to go into the detail of every Bill. That is not allowed in a debate on a programme motion.
Mr. Hawkins: I simply wanted to draw attention to the fact that we face the same problems on the current Bill as we have faced on all recent legislation. It was the Minister in his opening remarks who referred to the Criminal Justice and Police Bill and our debates on it.
Mr. Hogg: Perhaps I might help my hon. Friend. What I think he is saying is this: the Minister of State has given it as his opinion that we have sufficient time to debate the Bill, but that sort of observation has been made on previous occasions in respect of other Bills and we have not had time to consider those Bills. Is it not therefore right that we should not place any weight on what the Minister has just said?
Mr. Hawkins: My right hon. and learned Friend is right—that is precisely the point. The worst example of that was on the Criminal Justice and Police Bill. The Private Security Industry Bill runs to 30 pages; it has 26 clauses and 10 pages of detailed schedules. The importance of the issues and the reason why the programme motion is wholly inappropriate were demonstrated by the Minister's right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), who thought the Bill sufficiently important to speak for no less than one hour and 21 minutes. I do not know whether he will serve on the Committee; we shall have to wait and see. If, on Second Reading, he was sufficiently doubtful about whether the Bill was in a proper form to speak to the House for an hour and 21 minutes, may I strongly suggest that the artificial timetable proposed by the Minister is wholly inadequate?
On Second Reading, there was much discussion of the valuable contributions of the British Security Industry Association. However, less attention was paid to the concerns of the Joint Security Industry Council, which is the voice of the private security industry and represents a large number of professional bodies, ranging from the Association of British Insurers to the Defence Manufacturers Association, the Guild of Security Controllers, the Security Institute, the Master Locksmiths Association and the Security Industry Training Organisation mentioned in debate. The concerns of those constituent bodies, as well as of the JSIC and its chief executive Mr. Mike Welply—with whom I had a meeting yesterday—must be debated properly in Committee.
The Committee must also debate properly the concerns of the group of leading corporate investigation consultancies, which represents a number of significant companies, including Control Risks and the Armor Group. The right hon. Member for Walsall, South—speaking, I remind the Minister, from the Government Benches—concluded that the Bill was a mystery, reminding me that Winston Churchill said that Russia was
"a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
I hope that I have got that quotation right. When a senior Member of Parliament who is an undoubted expert on the industry is so dissatisfied with the Government's proposals as to say that the Bill is a mystery, we must have serious concerns about proposing so few Committee sittings under the guillotine. Conservative Members disapprove of guillotines and programme motions on principle.
Mr. Michael Jack: Before my hon. Friend moves on, is he aware that consideration of the longest

1067
Finance Bill ever presented to the House was conducted by means of a thorough debate, with no programme motion? There were as many, if not more, submissions from representative bodies to consider as those which he has enumerated. All that was done in the old-fashioned way, but everything was considered thoroughly.
Mr. Hawkins: My right hon. Friend is right. He may remember that, when we were in government, we passed the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 during the last Parliament. It was the longest criminal justice measure then on the statute book, and we debated it for 240 hours in Committee under the old system whereby everything was scrutinised. Many Members of the then Opposition, who are now Government Members, wanted to have their say in full.
In conclusion, I feel strongly that the programme motion is entirely inappropriate. The Government should be ashamed of themselves; their own senior Members, such as the right hon. Member for Walsall, South, said that the Bill is not in an adequate form. Although we are in an artificial situation and in pre-election mode, we cannot allow the programme motion to be accepted by default.
10.24 pm
Mr. Paul Tyler: Brevity is the soul of wit. Whenever dissolution takes place, I hope that this will be the shortest speech of this Parliament. I refer Members to column 920 of yesterday's Hansard and just say, "Ditto".
10.25 pm
Mr. Doug Henderson: I have spoken to the House once or twice on procedural matters, and I do so tonight because I have an interest in the substantive issue. Previously, I have had an interest in my own timetable, rather than in the issue before the House. I support the timetable motion. We have a terrible tendency towards ritual in this place. We go through the same ritual night after night, after Second Readings. The House needs to re-examine our procedures, but I would be straying from the subject of the motion if I started to deal with that this evening.
The programme motion is a little artificial. Most of us do not know when the general election will take place. We can all speculate and work out whether there will be time between now and the general election to do justice to the Bill, which I hope will end up on the statute book. There are parts of the Bill that I would seek to modify, and I hope that the Government will take on board some of my suggestions on Second Reading. My hon. Friend the Minister is nodding; he knows the issues to which I refer. I am merely mouthing what many of the interest groups are saying, both on the employers' side and on the workers' side, and representing the police.
The alternative to the programme motion is to go through the nonsense that we have watched happening over the past two or three years. I do not blame the Opposition; we have all got ourselves into the mess. I do not accept that democracy is the issue, as was said from the Opposition Benches. Democracy is about putting proposals to the electorate and having a system of bringing about the execution of those proposals,
1068
with modification. I agree that that requires time for discussion, and the present issue is the efficiency of our debate. I do not condone my hon. Friends speaking longer than necessary, but until there is proper self-discipline, we need the protection of the timetable motion.
Mr. Blunt: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Although the issue may not be democracy in the terms in which he defines it, the debate is about scrutiny, which is surely one of the primary functions of a legislature.
Mr. Henderson: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I want adequate time to be allocated for debate. I remember when I came to the conclusion that, because of the way in which Parliament had developed, we could not continue to operate as we have done in the 14 years I have been in Parliament. I reached that conclusion after we had spent hour after hour debating what ice cream salesmen do in St. James's park across the road, rather than debating real issues that affect the constituents of hon. Members on both sides of the House. I am not saying that that matter should not have been debated, but it did not warrant the extensive filibustering that took place. That convinced me that we needed to change our procedures. If we want the Bill to see the light of day—although events beyond our control may prevent that—we must support the Minister's proposal.
Mr. Hayes: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but he seems to be labouring under an illusion. The people of this country elect a Parliament. It is for Parliament to scnitinise and pass Bills, and to ensure that they are effective and that the people's views are represented in the consideration of those Bills. We elect a Parliament, not just a Government. He should revise his perception of democracy.
Mr. Henderson: Of course I accept that. I do not know about the hon. Gentleman's constituents, but my constituents want things done that affect their lives. They want Parliament to act effectively. When they watch some of the goings-on in this place, they ridicule them. Unless we modernise our procedures in the way that is recommended by the programme motion—I wish that we did not need it—we will bring further discredit on this place. I ask Opposition Members to think about that. I have said my piece, and I am happy to allow others to follow in the debate.
10.29 pm
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Not for the first time during my service in this House, I intend to express a personal point of view. I do so as a member of the Modernisation Committee, to which the Minister referred. I am optimistic that the Committee will provide further guidance to the House on dealing with programming and programme motions. I think that the Minister alluded to that guidance, and I hope that the report that contains it will help the House.
I am not unsupportive of the Government, although I may pass through the other Lobby at the end of the debate. Of course, that happens in the House from time to time. I think that the House has not heeded one of the Minister's assurances. He said that the Bill would come out of Standing Committee on 1 May. I think that he said also

1069
that there would be eight sittings. However, he told us that if the Programming Sub-Committee thought it necessary to schedule additional sittings in the light of progress made in the Standing Committee, it could do so. I have sought such an assurance in previous debates on programme motions.
Mr. Hogg: I heard the Minister's assurance, but I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me for making a different point about it. The premise is that any decision will depend on whether the Minister thinks that more time is necessary. What matters, however, is whether the Committee and the House think, after speaking freely, that more time is needed. Whether or not the Government think that more time is needed does not address the fundamental problem.
Mr. Winterton: That was not my interpretation of what the Minister said. I believe that he said that if the Programming Sub-Committee felt that additional sittings were necessary, the Government would not oppose its decision. I say to the House and to my hon. Friends that I believe that we should take that assurance—perhaps I can also use the word "concession" —very seriously. It gives much reassurance to the Opposition that there will be more time for debate, if such time: proves necessary.
Mr. Hawkins: I wish that I could share my hon. Friend's optimism. However, my experience and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) with regard to the Committee that considered the Criminal Justice and Police Bill, and our knowledge of the way in which the Programming Sub-Committee operated in respect of that Bill, tell us that one cannot accept the assurances given by this Government and by this Minister in particular. Such assurances were repeatedly given and repeatedly broken. In his capacity as a member of the Modernisation Committee, my hon. Friend should undoubtedly take that on board.
Mr. Winterton: I take my hon. Friend's strictures very seriously, but I have to say that I do not agree with them. I am prepared to take the Minister's assurance seriously. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) said that he was not prepared to do so, but I can only say that hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed concern about the fact that the programme motion has been considered so soon, immediately after Second Reading. I believe that this particular system will be altered.
Mr. Blunt: Like me, my hon. Friend has had an overt respect for the Minister and his word. The trouble is that the Minister told us during consideration of a programme motion on the Criminal Justice and Police Bill that there would be 16 Committee sittings. That number was then changed to 14. He told us that the motion would be tabled on a Monday, but it was then tabled on a Friday.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The House is debating the programme motion on the Order Paper, not another one.
Mr. Winterton: Again, I take my hon. Friend's view extremely seriously, but I have been in this place for a few years and I believe that we must use our time well. I believe also that there must be an element of trust
1070
between the Government and the Opposition in this House. Perhaps I am alone among Conservative Members, but I have been here long enough.
Mr. David Taylor rose—
Mr. Tyler rose—
Mr. Winterton: I shall give way first to the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor), who is also a member of the Modernisation Committee.
Mr. Taylor: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the bequests that the Modernisation Committee wants to leave to the new Parliament is a refinement of the process that we discussed today? It will mean that such debates, which most people find futile, meandering and otiose, will no longer be a feature of the parliamentary scene.
Mr. Winterton: I am not prepared to divulge the contents of a report that has not yet been published. However, hon. Members, whatever their party, who represent the interests of the House are trying to create a system that is acceptable to the Government and to the Opposition.
To respond to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt), the Programming Sub-Committee, under the chairmanship of a member of your Chairmen's Panel, Mr. Speaker, and not the Government will decide whether there will be one or more additional sittings in Committee. I believe that those who serve on the Chairmen's Panel are impartial and will try to represent the best interests of the House and all the parties in it.
Mr. Tyler: I hope that I will not embarrass the hon. Gentleman further by coming to his aid. Both he and I are in some difficulty because we cannot disclose the recommendations of the Modernisation Committee, but does he accept that the role of the Chairman of the Standing Committee and that of the Programming Sub-Committee will be critical to the success of our improvements? Ensuring that they work effectively gives new opportunities to Opposition parties to make sure that everything is properly discussed. One further point—
Sir Patrick Cormack: The hon. Gentleman's intervention is longer than his speech.
Mr. Tyler: Indeed, it is. If the Government table many amendments, it will be open to the Programming Sub-Committee to recommend a later end date for consideration.
Mr. Winterton: The hon. Gentleman is right. The new proposals will be a great opportunity for the House, and give considerable authority to the Opposition. I hope that when they come before the House, perhaps in the next Parliament, they will be welcomed.
Mr. Hogg: Not by me.
Mr. Winterton: My right hon. and learned Friend is a distinguished former Minister and respected Member of Parliament. However, I hope that he will give me credit

1071
for standing up for the independent voice in the years that I have been here, and that he will also acknowledge that I work in the best interests of the House. I say in front of you, Mr. Speaker, that I believe that the role of the Standing Committee Chairman will be important and influential, and can help the House to do a better job. He or she will be in an important position.
I want to express one reservation. I have said that I believe that the time allocated to the Standing Committee is adequate, but I remain anxious that the time for Report and Third Reading may prove insufficient. I repeat the argument that I have put before: Report is the only stage during which Back Benchers who were not able to speak on Second Reading and were not appointed to the Standing Committee can speak on behalf of constituents or organisations that have made representations to them. With that reservation, I thank the Minister for his concession, which I warmly welcome.
10.39 pm
Sir Patrick Cormack: It is said that as we get older, the arteries harden. I wonder whether that has happened to my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), who seems to be overflowing with the milk of human kindness in his charitable regard for the Government. Whatever he says, the proposals that we have not yet had the opportunity to discuss are proposals that we do not know about. We are discussing a programme motion this evening that is tabled under motions that we know about.
If ever a Bill was tailor-made for a Special Standing Committee, followed by a proper Standing Committee, it is this one. It is not politically contentious in a partisan sense, but it is nevertheless fairly meaty. It deals with important subjects and affects the livelihoods of many people. We have already heard, in interventions, that a number of specialist groups and associations have made representations on the Bill.
If the Government intend to proceed—as the Minister honestly and genuinely does—on the assumption that this Parliament has some 14 months left to run, they should put forward a sensible and thorough proposal to ensure that the Bill is properly and thoroughly discussed. The Minister should have moved that the Bill be committed to a Special Standing Committee. That Standing Committee would have had the opportunity to take evidence and listen to witnesses. We should then have moved on to a proper, clause-by-clause discussion of the Bill and considered it on its merits. That is what the Minister should have proposed this evening.
Of all Bills, this is the last one that should be put in a parliamentary straitjacket. Over the past few months, because the Government appear to have worked out a foreshortened timetable for this Parliament, every Bill—I shall not dilate on any others, Mr. Speaker, because you would rightly call me to order—has been subject to a programme motion that has had little regard to its nature and complexity.
Mr. Gummer: Does my hon. Friend agree that the House is being afflicted by a dangerous disease called neatness? We are seeking to make neat the system of parliamentary scrutiny, whereas the Government ought to
1072
be concerned about having a bit of biodiversity. They should be determined to enable people to put forward the points that they wish to, rather than trying to box us in to a neat pattern.
Sir Patrick Cormack: I agree with my right hon. Friend, who is a great expert on biodiversity in all its aspects. Neatness and scrutiny make uncomfortable bedfellows. If we are to scrutinise a Bill, we should not be pulled up short by a timetable that pays no regard to its extent or complexity.
Speaking as someone who had 14 years' experience on the Chairmen's Panel, I think that it is perfectly possible that this Bill could be dealt with—after the Special Standing Committee procedure—in about eight sittings. It may well be that that is a reasonably realistic allocation of time. However, what is important is the quality of the legislation that comes out at the end. What is not important is precisely how many hours and minutes are taken to accomplish that task. As the Minister is nodding at what I am saying, he must feel a mite embarrassed, if not rather ashamed, that he has had to stand at the Dispatch Box and propose something that he knows—
It being forty-five minutes after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, MR. SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order [7 November 2000].
The House divided: Ayes 259, Noes 139.

Division No. 168]

[10.44 pm

AYES

Ainger, Nick

Clark, Paul (Gillingham)

Ainsworth, Robert (Cov?try NE)

Clarke, Charles (Norwich S)

Allen, Graham

Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

Anderson, Rt Hon Donald (Swansea E)

Clarke, Rt Hon Tom (Coatbridge)

Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)

Armstrong, Rt Hon Ms Hilary

Clwyd, Ann

Ashton, Joe

Coaker, Vernon

Austin, John

Coffey, Ms Ann

Bailey, Adrian

Cohen, Harry

Barnes, Harry

Coleman, Iain

Barron, Kevin

Colman, Tony

Battle, John

Connarty, Michael

Bayley, Hugh

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Beard, Nigel

Corbyn, Jeremy

Beckett, Rt Hon Mrs Margaret

Cousins, Jim

Begg, Miss Anne

Cox, Tom

Benn, Hilary (Leeds C)

Cranston, Ross

Bennett, Andrew F

Crausby, David

Benton, Joe

Cryer, John (Hornchurch)

Best, Harold

Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try S)

Betts, Clive

Darvill, Keith

Blears, Ms Hazel

Davey, Valerie (Bristol W)

Blizzard, Bob

Davidson, Ian

Blunkett, Rt Hon David

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

Boateng. Rt Hon Paul

Davis, Rt Hon Terry (B'ham Hodge H)

Borrow, David

Bradley, Peter (The Wrekin)

Denham, Rt Hon John

Bradshaw, Ben

Dismore, Andrew

Brinton, Mrs Helen

Dobbin, Jim

Buck, Ms Karen

Dobson, Rt Hon Frank

Burden, Richard

Donohoe, Brian H

Campbell, Alan (Tynemouth)

Doran, Frank

Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

Eagle, Angela (Wallasey)

Campbell—Savours, Dale

Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston)

Cann, Jamie

Edwards, Huw

Caton, Martin

Ellman, Mrs Louise

Cawsey, Ian

Ennis, Jeff

Chapman, Ben (Wirral S)

Field, Rt Hon Frank

Clapham, Michael

Fitzpatrick, Jim

Clark, Rt Hon Dr David (S Shields)

Flint,Caroline

1073

Flynn, Paul

McWalter, Tony

Foster, Rt Hon Derek

McWilliam, John

Foster, Michael Jabez (Hastings)

Mahon, Mrs Alice

Foster, Michael J (Worcester)

Mallaber, Judy

Foulkes, George

Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S)

Fyfe, Maria

Marsden, Paul (Shrewsbury)

Galloway, George

Marshall, David (Shettleston)

Gapes, Mike

Martlew, Eric

George, Rt Hon Bruce (Walsall S)

Maxton, John

Gerrard, Neil

Meale, Alan

Gibson, Dr Ian

Merron, Gillian

Gilroy, Mrs Linda

Michael, Rt Hon Alun

Godsiff, Roger

Michie, Bill (Shef?ld Heeley)

Goggins, Paul

Milburn, Rt Hon Alan

Golding, Mrs Llin

Miller, Andrew

Gordon, Mrs Eileen

Moffatt, Laura

Griffiths, Jane (Reading E)

Moonie, Dr Lewis

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Morgan, Alasdair (Galloway)

Grogan, John

Morley, Elliot

Hain, Peter

Morris, Rt Hon Ms Estelle (B'ham Yardley)

Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale)

Hamilton. Fabian (Leeds NE)

Mudie, George

Hanson, David

Mullin, Chris

Healey, John

Murphy, Rt Hon Paul (Torfaen

Henderson, Doug (Newcastle N)

Naysmith Dr Doug

Henderson, Ivan (Harwich)

Norris, Dan

Hendrick, Mark

O'Brien, Bill (Normanton)

Hepburn, Stephen

Olner, Bill

Heppell, John

Palmer, Dr Nick

Hodge, Ms Margaret

Pearson, Ian

Hood, Jimmy

Perham, Ms Linda

Hoon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

Pickthall, Colin

Hope, Phil

Pike, Peter L

Hopkins, Kelvin

Plaskitt, James

Howarth, Rt Hon Alan (Newport E)

Pope, Greg

Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E)

Howells, Dr Kim

Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

Hoyle, Lindsay

Prescott, Rt Hon John

Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

Primarolo, Dawn

Humble, Mrs Joan

Prosser, Gwyn

Hutton, John

Purchase, Ken

Iddon, Dr Brian

Quinn, Lawrie

Illsley, Eric

Rapson, Syd

Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough)

Raynsford, Nick

Jones, Rt Hon Barry (Alyn)

Reed, Andrew (Loughborough)

Jones, Mrs Fiona (Newark)

Reid, Rt Hon Dr John (Hamilton N)

Jones, Helen (Warrington N)

Robertson, John (Glasgow Anniesland)

Jones, Dr Lynne (Selly Oak)

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S)

Roche, Mrs Barbara

Jowell, Rt Hon Ms Tessa

Rooney, Terry

Joyce, Eric

Rowlands, Ted

Keen, Alan (Feltham & Heston)

Roy, Frank

Keen, Ann (Brentford & Isleworth)

Ruddock, Joan

Khabra, Piara S

Russell, Ms Christine (Chester)

Kidney, David

Salter, Martin

Kilfoyle, Peter

Sarwar, Mohammad

Lammy, David

Savidge Malcolm

Laxton, Bob

Sawford Phil

Lepper, David

Sheerman, Barry

Leslie, Christopher

Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S)

Levitt, Tom

Skinner, Dennis

Lewis, Ivan (Bury S)

Smith. Rt Hon Andrew (Oxford E)

Lewis, Terry (Worsley)

Smith, Angela (Basildon)

Linton, Martin

Smith, Rt Hon Chris (Islington S)

Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C)

Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)

Lock, David

Smith, John (Glamorgan)

McCabe, Steve

Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

McDonagh, Siobhain

Soley, Clive

McDonnell, John

Southworth, Ms Helen

McFall, John

Spellar, John

McGuire, Mrs Anne

Squire, Ms Rachel

McIsaac, Shona

Starkey Dr Phyllis

McKenna, Mrs Rosemary

Stewart David (Inverness E)

Mackinlay, Andrew

Stewart Ian (Eccles)

McNamara, Kevin

Stoate, Dr Howard

McNulty, Tony

Stringer Graham

1074

Stuart, Ms Gisela

Wareing, Robert N

Sutcliffe, Gerry

Watts, David

Taylor, Rt Hon Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

White, Brian

Wicks, Malcolm

Taylor, Ms Dari (Stockton S)

Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W)

Taylor, David (NW Leics)

Thomas, Gareth R (Harrow W)

Williams, Mrs Betty (Conwy)

Timms, Stephen

Wills, Michael

Tipping, Paddy

Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C)

Touhig, Don

Wood, Mike

Trickett, Jon

Woodward, Shaun

Truswell, Paul

Woolas, Phil

Turner, Dr Desmond (Kemptown)

Worthington, Tony

Turner, Neil (Wigan)

Wright, Anthony D (Gt Yarmouth)

Twigg, Derek (Halton)

Wright, Tony (Cannock)

Tynan, Bill

Tellers for the Ayes:

Walley, Ms Joan

Mr. David Jamieson and

Ward, Ms Claire

Mr. Jim Dowd.

NOES

Amess, David

Hammond, Philip

Arbuthnot, Rt Hon James

Hancock, Mike

Atkinson. David (Bour'mth E)

Harvey, Nick

Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

Hawkins, Nick

Baldry, Tony

Hayes, John

Ballard, Jackie

Heald, Oliver

Beggs, Roy

Heathcoat—Amory, Rt Hon David

Bercow, John

Hogg, Rt Hon Douglas

Beresford, Sir Paul

Horam, John

Blunt, Crispin

Howard, Rt Hon Michael

Body, Sir Richard

Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot)

Boswell, Tim

Jack, Rt Hon Michael

Brady, Graham

Jackson. Robert (Wantage)

Brazier, Julian

Jenkin, Bernard

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Key, Robert

Browning, Mrs Angela

King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

Kirkbride, Miss Julie

Burnett, John

Kirkwood, Archy

Burns, Simon

Lait, Mrs Jacqui

Butterfill, John

Leigh, Edward

Cash, William

Letwin, Oliver

Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet)

Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E)

Lidington, David

Clappison, James

Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

Clark, Dr Michael (Rayleigh)

Livsey, Richard

Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

Lloyd, Rt Hon Sir Peter (Fareham)

Loughton, Tim

Collins, Tim

Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

Cormack, Sir Patrick

MacGregor, Rt Hon John

Cran, James

McIntosh, Miss Anne

Davies, Quentin (Grantham)

MacKay, Rt Hon Andrew

Davis, Rt Hon David (Haltemprice)

McLoughlin, Patrick

Donaldson, Jeffrey

Madel, Sir David

Dorrell, Rt Hon Stephen

Maples, John

Duncan, Alan

Mates, Michael

Duncan Smith, Iain

Mawhinney, Rt Hon Sir Brian

Evans, Nigel

May, Mrs Theresa

Fabricant, Michael

Nicholls, Patrick

Fallon, Michael

O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)

Flight, Howard

Ottaway, Richard

Forth, Rt Hon Eric

Page, Richard

Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

Paice, James

Fox, Dr Liam

Paisley. Rev Ian

Fraser, Christopher

Paterson, Owen

Garnier, Edward

Pickles, Eric

George, Andrew (St Ives)

Redwood. Rt Hon John

Gibb, Nick

Rendel, David

Gill, Christopher

Robathan, Andrew

Gillan, Mrs Cheryl

Robertson, Laurence (Tewk'b'ry)

Gorman, Mrs Teresa

Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

Gray, James

Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)

Green, Damian

Ruffley, David

Grieve, Dominic

Russell, Bob (Colchester)

Gummer, Rt Hon John

Sayeed, Jonathan

Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie

Shepherd, Richard

1075

Simpson, Keith (Mid-Norfolk)

Tyrie, Andrew

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

Viggers, Peter

Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

Waiter, Robert

Spelman, Mrs Caroline

Waterson, Nigel

Spicer, Sir Michael

Wells, Bowen

Spring, Richard

Whitney, Sir Raymond

Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

Whittingdale, John

Streeter, Gary

Widdecombe, Rt Hon Miss Ann

Stunell, Andrew

Willetts, David

Swayne, Desmond

Willis, Phil

Syms, Robert

Wilshire, David

Taylor, Ian (Esher & Walton)

Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield)

Taylor, Sir Teddy

Young, Rt Hon Sir George

Tredinnick, David

Tellers for the Noes:

Trend, Michael

Mr. Peter Luff and

Tyler, Paul

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown.

Question accordingly agreed to.
Ordered,
That the following provisions shall apply to the Private Security Industry Bill [Lords]:

Standing Committee
1. The Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee.

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

3. Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 1st May 2001.

Consideration and Third Reading
4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at nine o'clock on the day on which those proceedings are commenced or, if that day is a Thursday, at six o'clock on that day.
5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at ten o'clock on the day on which those proceedings are commenced or, if that day is a Thursday, at seven o'clock on that day.
6. Sessional Order B (Programming Committees) made by the House on 7th November 2000 shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.

Lords messages
7. Paragraphs (6) and (7) of Sessional Order A (varying and supplementing programme motions) made by the House on 7th November 2000 shall not apply to proceedings on any motion to vary or supplement this order for the purpose of allocating time to proceedings on consideration of any messages from the Lords, and the question on any such motion shall be put forthwith.

PRIVATE SECURITY INDUSTRY BILL [LORDS] [MONEY]
Queen's recommendation having been signified—
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a), (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with bills),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Private Security Industry Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise—
(a) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State for or in connection with the carrying out of his functions under that Act; and
(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable into the Consolidated Fund.—[Mr. Mike Hall.]
Question agreed to

LIAISON COMMITTEE (SUB-COMMITTEE)
Motion made,
That Standing Order No. 145 (Liaison Committee) be amended as follows:
Line 31, at end add—
`( ) The committee shall have power to appoint a sub-committee, which shall have power to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, and to report to the committee from time to time.
( ) The committee shall have power to report from time to time the minutes of evidence taken before the sub-committee.
( ) The quorum of the sub-committee shall be three.'.—[Mr. Mike Hall.]
Hon. Members: Object.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE
Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [31 January],
That the Select Committee on Science and Technology shall have leave to meet concurrently with any committee of the Lords on science and technology or any sub-committee thereof, for the purpose of deliberating or taking evidence, and to communicate to any such committee its evidence or any other documents relating to matters of common interest— [Mr. Mike Hall.]
Hon. Members: Object.

SELECT COMMITTEES (JOINT MEETINGS)
Motion made,
That Standing Order No. 152 (Select committees related to government departments) be amended as follows:
Line 40, before the word 'European' insert the words "Environmental Audit Committee or with the'.
Line 50, before the word 'European' insert the words 'Environmental Audit Committee or with the'.
Line 52, at the end insert the words:—
'(4A) notwithstanding paragraphs (2) and (4) above, where more than two committees or sub-committees appointed under this order meet concurrently in accordance with paragraph (4)(e) above, the quorum of each such committee or sub-committee shall be two.'.—[Mr. Mike Hall.]

Hon. Members: Object.

PETITION

  Planning Application (Shrewsbury)
  10.57 pm
  Mr. Paul Marsden: I present this petition with my wholehearted support as it is vital for the local economy and Shrewsbury Town football club that they have a new purpose-built, modern stadium with community sports facilities. In four years as an hon. Member, this is largest petition that I have presented to the House; it is signed by 2,281 people.
  The petition states:
  "To the House of Commons
  The petition of
  The people of Shrewsbury and beyond
  Declares that
  They totally support the proposed New Meadow scheme for Shrewsbury Town Football Club, which is urgently required to ensure the financial survival of the Club and to improve community sports facilities.
  The petitioners therefore request
  That the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions and Shrewsbury & Atcham Borough Council to back the planning application offering Shrewsbury Town FC a fresh vision for the millennium.
  To lie upon the Table.

  Travellers' Camps (Skegness)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Jamieson.]
  10.59 pm
  Sir Richard Body: I applied for this Adjournment debate because, after I had arranged an appointment with the Minister to receive a civic deputation from Lincolnshire, I received a message that the meeting was to be cancelled, as the Minister had something more important to do, or words to that effect. I regret that no offer of an alternative date was made.
  I was put in some difficulty because, when I had to report the news to the deputation, I was asked, not unnaturally, what other date was going to be offered. I have known cancellations before, and of course all hon. Members understand that they happen—however, I will have been in the House for 40 years in October, and I have never encountered such treatment from a Minister before. I had to tell the deputation that the matter was unfortunate, and that I would have to seek some other way to make representations to the Minister on behalf of Lincolnshire. That is the reason for this Adjournment debate.
  I understand that I am far from being the first Conservative Member in this Parliament to suffer a cancellation such as that. Indeed, the most recent occasion was only a few days ago: a deputation was on its way to the Minister and had to be cancelled while it was making the journey. If that is how we are to be treated, so be it, but I regret it very much.
  The Minister knows the reason for the debate. East Lindsey district council, at the request of the Lincolnshire police, has applied for an exclusion order for Skegness for four days over Easter. Information has been received that there may be a return visit of the travellers who came to Skegness over the Christmas and new year holiday.
  I do not know whether the Minister knows Skegness. I hope that he does: he does not live far away, although on the wrong side of the Wash. However, if he has not visited the town already, I hope that he will one day. He is not eligible to be counted as one of the elderly people who enjoy their holidays there, nor as one of the young families with children who come to the town.
  Skegness caters especially for those two types of visitor, and it has a number of distinctive features. Apart from the bracing air, it has the largest and most popular of all the Butlins holiday camps. It also has the second largest and most popular theme park in the country. It has the largest concentration of caravans in Europe: indeed, were it not for the one in California that slightly outstrips it, it would have the largest caravan concentration in the world.
  There are more than 20,000 caravans in the area. They are used for holidays and weekends and they cater specifically for young people. A further several thousand caravans are permanently sited as homes for people who have come to live in Skegness. Thousands of people, such as retired miners and steelworkers from Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and elsewhere, have come to Skegness to retire.
  That is a short word picture of the type of people who come to Skegness. The area has many thousands of visitors at Christmas and the new year, and I hope that

  1079
  the Minister will understand the effect on the town when 600 travellers descended in a long cavalcade of caravans. They broke through the barriers to the car parks and immediately began a course of behaviour in the town such that the police had to go to all the licensed premises—the hotels, restaurants, cafes and other places of entertainment—to warn them that, with great regret, they could not guarantee people's safety.
  Within a short time of their arrival, a group of about 10 travellers descended on a public house. Their obscenities and intimidating behaviour were such that the police were called; but, of course, the police could not attend all the incidents. It is not surprising that all those establishments closed from the Saturday evening before Christmas until after the new year.
  The effect was to turn Skegness into a ghost town. The Embassy—a major entertainment centre—had to cancel all its events during that period. The caravans were so packed around the centre that the emergency services begged for the cancellation of the events. The centre did so without a qualm, because it would have been quite impossible for the emergency services to reach it. Sadly, because the hotels had to warn people about what had happened and had to close their doors and turn people away, they suffered considerably.
  Over the years, Skegness has succeeded in becoming a place that people visit for short breaks throughout the year. That is important for employment. As the Minister may know, in other holiday resorts, hotels often close down at the end of the season; they dismiss their staff, perhaps re-engaging them in the spring. That is not the policy in Skegness. Hotels try to keep open so as to retain their staff and give them full-time work all year round. By doing so, they tend to lose money in the winter months. However, they can make good that loss—just—if they do a reasonable trade over Christmas and the new year. Sadly, a serious loss was incurred. They will have to reconsider their policy unless steps are taken to prevent a recurrence of those events.
  As for the public houses, almost all of them closed on the advice of the police. The police obviously did not say that the public houses had to close, but they gave strong advice that was accepted by the licensed trade. The loss has yet to be quantified, but it runs to hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds—perhaps millions. That has a serious effect on a comparatively small town.
  Furthermore, people living in the town were put in fear. People stayed at home. I hope that the Minister can understand that elderly people did not wish to go out, as they were fearful about what was happening. I am sure that he will understand that parents with young children did not wish to go out and encounter such behaviour, so they stayed at home. The holiday period was ruined for many, many thousands of people—not fewer than 50,000 and probably more—by appalling behaviour. In addition, East Lindsey district council had to pay out about £10,000 to clear up the mess from the caravans.
  An application for an order has been made and I understand that the Minister will consider it on Monday or Tuesday—I hope that he will do so sympathetically.
  I appreciate that this is an issue of civil liberties, and that it is a serious matter to say even to 600 people that their freedom of movement should be curtailed and they
  1080
  should not be allowed to visit the town of their choice. However, I hope that the Minister will understand that many other thousands of people have a freedom too, or should have a freedom—that some 50,000 people should have the freedom to visit the town of their choice and enjoy a holiday, that their children should not be put in fear, and that elderly people should be able to visit licensed premises without being intimidated.
  I hope that when the Minister weighs in the balance the freedom of the 600 to descend on Skegness, he also bears in mind the freedom of all those many thousands—no fewer than 50,000—to enjoy their Easter holiday. If these travellers return and behave as they behaved when they came at Christmas, the effect on Skegness could be catastrophic.
  The Minister knows, because he is a man of Norfolk, the effect that the travellers' visit had on Yarmouth. An order was made to protect Yarmouth for last Christmas. Indeed, it was because of that order that the travellers came to Skegness. I hope that he will not be prejudiced against Lincolnshire and say, "We have got them out of Norfolk; they can go to Lincolnshire again." I am sure that he will not take that view. I hope that he will consider the application sympathetically and appreciate that a serious financial loss has already been incurred, that a great deal of unhappiness has been caused and that there are great anxieties about what may happen to the town at Easter if, on Monday or Tuesday—which is when I understand a decision will be taken—he does not make an order to protect so many thousands of people.
  11.12 pm
  The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Charles Clarke): I congratulate the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Sir R. Body) on securing the debate and apologise to him for some of the matters that he raised at the beginning. I certainly did, as I thought, postpone the meeting that I was to have with him and his constituents, and I did so at late notice. My normal practice is to offer alternative dates, and I am sorry if that did not happen this time. I know, for example, that I have postponed a couple of meetings with a group of Members of Parliament for Dorset and the chief constable of Dorset to discuss the situation in Dorset, and I know that that meeting is in my diary for next week, so I am not quite sure what happened in this instance, but I apologise for any discourtesy and am very happy to debate the issue now.
  It is my practice—I have observed it a great deal since I have been a Minister at the Department for Education and Employment and at the Home Office—to meet delegations led by Members of Parliament because I believe that to be an important part of a Minister's job. I am therefore particularly upset that what happened on this occasion caused distress.
  Unfortunately, I have never been to Skegness—it is a shaming apology to have to make. I have been to the other side of the Wash on many occasions, but I have not been to Skegness. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that I have much experience of the consequences of such a traveller invasion, because over the new year 2000 a similar invasion happened in Yarmouth. It had exactly the effects that he described at Skegness. It led not only to expense—at one level that is trivial, but not in reality—but to fear and an extretnely unpleasant and damaging atmosphere in the town.

  1081
  Yarmouth district council and Norfolk police applied for orders, which were agreed by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, to prevent travellers from massing in Great Yarmouth over Easter and Christmas last year. I am in some difficulty tonight because we have heard today that East Lindsey district council has issued a press release, saying that because of intelligence indicating that a large number of travellers are coming to Skegness over Easter, an application for an order under section 14A of the Public Order Act 1986, prohibiting trespassory assemblies in that area, has been sent to the Home Office.
  The hon. Gentleman will understand that I cannot prejudge my right hon. Friend's decision, but I can give an assurance that he will take that decision extremely rapidly so that action can be taken on the basis of it. I can also assure the hon. Gentleman—if he was making the remark in anything other than a mischievous spirit—that there is no suggestion of decanting travellers from Norfolk to other places on the east coast. The issue will be considered entirely on its merits, which is how it should be. I will ensure that the hon. Gentleman receives information about my right hon. Friend's decision immediately after he takes it.
  The powers are necessary for the reasons that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. There is concern about large numbers of travellers descending on a town in the manner that he described. I understand that the encampment, although on the whole peaceful, produced a number of the results that he described, such as antisocial behaviour and other offences. The Government are clear that no criminal activity should be tolerated in respect of travellers and that they should be treated just like anyone else. There should be no sense that traveller communities are outside the law of the land; they are dealt with by the law in very precise ways. Indeed, the Home Office recently issued joint guidance with the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, making it absolutely clear, beyond peradventure, that that was the case.
  The law should be enforced for travellers as for all other sections of the community. It is for the police to ensure that any offence is properly investigated and that the law is enforced, but the police and local authorities have powers to direct trespassers to leave land when certain statutory conditions are met. It is an operational matter for the police to decide when and whether to use those powers. Perhaps it would be helpful in informing the debate if I were to explain some of the background.
  Under section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, the police have the power to remove people who are trespassing with intent to take up residence, and who have been asked to leave by the landowner. That is a serious power, which can be used when certain conditions are met: when the trespassers have more than six vehicles on the land or when they have caused damage, or used threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour towards the landowner or person acting for him. The police and local authority powers to direct trespassers to leave land under the 1994 Act are discretionary.
  The power included in the 1994 Act under section 14A of the Public Order Act 1986 has been used on a number of occasions. I have mentioned the Norfolk police examples, but Wiltshire police gained an order on several
  1082
  occasions to prohibit trespassory assemblies in the Stonehenge area during the summer solstice celebrations—a different type of event from that to which the hon. Gentleman refers. Kent police have gained an order prohibiting trespassory assemblies in Horsmonden to prevent a horse fair, and there are a few other examples of the police using such powers.
  Section 14A of the 1986 Act can be used where the chief officer of police believes that an assembly is intended to be held in any district at a place on land to which the public have no right of access or only a limited right of access and that the assembly, first, is likely to be held without the permission of the occupier of the land, or to conduct itself in such a way as to exceed the limits of any permission that he has given or the limits of the public's right of access; and, secondly, may result in serious disruption to the life of the community—which may be the sort of issue to which the hon. Gentleman refers—or where the land, or a building or monument on it is of historical, architectural or scientific importance, if significant damage to the land, building or monument may result. Those are the basic conditions under which the provisions of 1986 Act can be operated.
  I cannot prejudge my right hon. Friend's decision on the application, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we shall address the situation very effectively. I understand that Lincolnshire police have agreed with a number of other east coast forces to form a joint operation, which would pool resources and apply the same robust approach to incursions anywhere in the joint area using available legislation and intelligence, so that traveller movements can be better anticipated in future.
  I wish to say a word about intelligence. It has been difficult to predict where groups of travellers will assemble on significant occasions, such as Easter and new year, and we are actively considering ways of improving our capacity to do that. The Lincolnshire police initiative is one example of that. I do not accept that the decision of Yarmouth and Norfolk police necessarily led to the travellers being decanted to Skegness in the way that has been suggested. However, an approach that simply leads to the problem moving from one place to another is not an appropriate way of proceeding. That is why we welcome the joint approach in which Lincolnshire police and other forces are engaged. We shall support that approach in whatever way we can.
  I think that I have said what I can say about the issue tonight. I reaffirm that we shall take a decision as rapidly as we conceivably can and that we shall take full account of the context of the application made by the police and East Lindsey district council. We will also take account of the points that the hon. Gentleman has made in the debate and we will communicate with him as soon as we take a decision, whatever that decision may be.
  I hope that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I am not able to prejudge what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will decide when he receives the application, but I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that the matter will be dealt with expeditiously.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at twenty-one minutes past Eleven o'clock.

Deferred Divisions

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT
  That the draft Local Authorities (Alternative Arrangements) (England) Regulations 2001, which were laid before this House on 15th March, be approved.
  The House divided: Ayes 362, Noes 134.

  Division No. 167]

  AYES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Clarke, Charles (Norwich S)

  Ainger, Nick

  Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)

  Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)

  Clarke, Rt Hon Tom (Coatbridge)

  Alexander, Douglas

  Clarke, Tony (Northampton S)

  Allan, Richard

  Clelland, David

  Allen, Graham

  Clwyd, Ann

  Anderson, Rt Hon Donald (Swansea E)

  Coaker, Vernon

  Coffey, Ms Ann

  Armstrong, Rt Hon Ms Hilary

  Coleman, Iain

  Ashton, Joe

  Colman, Tony

  Austin, John

  Connarty, Michael

  Bailey, Adrian

  Cook, Rt Hon Robin (Livingston)

  Ballard, Jackie

  Cooper, Yvette

  Banks, Tony

  Corbett, Robin

  Barnes, Harry

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Battle, John

  Cousins, Jim

  Bayley, Hugh

  Cranston, Ross

  Beard, Nigel

  Crausby, David

  Beckett, Rt Hon Mrs Margaret

  Cryer, Mrs Ann (Keighley)

  Begg, Miss Anne

  Cryer, John (Hornchurch)

  Beggs, Roy

  Cummings, John

  Bell, Stuart (Middlesbrough)

  Cunningham, Rt Hon Dr Jack (Copeland)

  Benn, Hilary (Leeds C)

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony (Chesterfield)

  Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try S)

  Bennett, Andrew F

  Curtis—Thomas, Mrs Claire

  Benton, Joe

  Dalyell, Tam

  Best, Harold

  Darling, Rt Hon Alistair

  Blackman, Liz

  Darvill, Keith

  Blears, Ms Hazel

  Davey, Edward (Kingston)

  Blizzard, Bob

  Davey, Valerie (Bristol W)

  Blunkett, Rt Hon David

  Davidson, Ian

  Borrow, David

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Bradley, Keith (Withington)

  Davis, Rt Hon Terry (B'ham Hodge H)

  Bradley, Peter (The Wrekin)

  Brake, Tom

  Denham, Rt Hon John

  Breed, Colin

  Dismore, Andrew

  Brinton, Mrs Helen

  Dobbin, Jim

  Brown, Rt Hon Nick (Newcastle E)

  Donaldson, Jeffrey

  Brown, Russell (Dumfries)

  Donohoe, Brian H

  Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

  Doran, Frank

  Buck, Ms Karen

  Dowd, Jim

  Burden, Richard

  Drown, Ms Julia

  Burnett, John

  Eagle, Angela (Wallasey)

  Burstow, Paul

  Eagle, Maria (L'pool Garston)

  Byers, Rt Hon Stephen

  Edwards, Huw

  Cable, Dr Vincent

  Efford, Clive

  Caborn, Rt Hon Richard

  Ellman, Mrs Louise

  Campbell, Alan (Tynemouth)

  Ennis, Jeff

  Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)

  Feam, Ronnie

  Campbell, Rt Hon Menzies (NE Fife)

  Field, Rt Hon Frank

  Fitzpatrick, Jim

  Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)

  Fitzsimons, Mrs Lorna

  Campbell—Savours, Dale

  Flint, Caroline

  Cann, Jamie

  Flynn, Paul

  Caplin, Ivor

  Foster, Rt Hon Derek

  Caton, Martin

  Foster, Don (Bath)

  Cawsey, Ian

  Foster, Michael J (Worcester)

  Chapman, Ben (Wirral S)

  Foulkes, George

  Chidgey, David

  Fyfe, Maria

  Clapham, Michael

  Galloway, George

  Clark, Rt Hon Dr David (S Shields)

  George, Andrew (St Ives)

  Clark, Dr Lynda (Edinburgh Pentlands)

  George, Rt Hon Bruce (Walsall S)

  Gerrard, Neil

  Clark, Paul (Gillingham)

  Gibson, Dr Ian

  1084

  Gidley, Sandra

  Liddell, Rt Hon Mrs Helen

  Gilroy, Mrs Linda

  Linton, Martin

  Godsiff, Roger

  Livsey, Richard

  Goggins, Paul

  Lloyd, Tony (Manchester C)

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Lock, David

  Gordon, Mrs Eileen

  Love, Andrew

  Griffiths, Jane (Reading E)

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  McCabe, Steve

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  McCafferty, Ms Chris

  Grocott, Bruce

  McCartney, Rt Hon Ian (Makerfield)

  Grogan, John

  Gunnell, John

  McCartney, Robert (N Down)

  Hain, Peter

  McCrea, Dr William

  Hall, Mike (Weaver Vale)

  McDonagh, Siobhain

  Hall, Patrick (Bedford)

  McFall, John

  Hamilton, Fabian (Leeds NE)

  McGrady, Eddie

  Hancock, Mike

  McIsaac, Shona

  Hanson, David

  McKenna, Mrs Rosemary

  Harman, Rt Hon Ms Harriet

  Maclennan, Rt Hon Robert

  Harris, Dr Evan

  McNamara, Kevin

  Healey, John

  McNulty, Tony

  Heath, David (Somerton & Frome)

  MacShane, Denis

  Henderson, Ivan (Harwich)

  Mactaggart, Fiona

  Hendrick, Mark

  McWalter, Tony

  Hepburn, Stephen

  McWilliam, John

  Heppell, John

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Hill, Keith

  Mallaber, Judy

  Hinchliffe, David

  Mandelson, Rt Hon Peter

  Hodge, Ms Margaret

  Marsden, Gordon (Blackpool S)

  Hoey, Kate

  Marsden, Paul (Shrewsbury)

  Hood, Jimmy

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Hoon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Hope, Phil

  Martlew, Eric

  Hopkins, Kelvin

  Maxton, John

  Howarth, Rt Hon Alan (Newport E)

  Merron, Gillian

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Michael, Rt Hon Alun

  Howells, Dr Kim

  Michie, Bill (Shef?ld Heeley)

  Hoyle, Lindsay

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Argyll & Bute)

  Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)

  Milburn, Rt Hon Alan

  Humble, Mrs Joan

  Moffatt, Laura

  Hutton, John

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Iddon, Dr Brian

  Morley, Elliot

  Illsley, Eric

  Morris, Rt Hon Ms Estelle (B?ham Yardley)

  Ingram, Rt Hon Adam

  Jackson, Ms Glenda (Hampstead)

  Morris, Rt Hon Sir John (Aberavon)

  Jackson, Helen (Hillsborough)

  Jamieson, David

  Mountford, Kali

  Jenkins, Brian

  Mowlam, Rt Hon Marjorie

  Johnson, Alan (Hull W & Hessle)

  Mudie, George

  Johnson, Miss Melanie (Welwyn Hatfield)

  Mullin, Chris

  Murphy, Denis (Wansbeck)

  Jones, Rt Hon Barry (Alyn)

  Murphy, Jim (Eastwood)

  Jones, Mrs Fiona (Newark)

  Murphy, Rt Hon Paul (Torfaen)

  Jones, Helen (Warrington N)

  Naysmith, Dr Doug

  Jones, Dr Lynne (Selly Oak)

  Norris, Dan

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S)

  Oaten, Mark

  Jowell, Rt Hon Ms Tessa

  Olner, Bill

  Joyce, Eric

  Öpik, Lembit

  Keen, Alan (Feltham & Heston)

  Paisley, Rev Ian

  Keen, Ann (Brentford & Isleworth)

  Palmer, Dr Nick

  Kelly, Ms Ruth

  Pearson, Ian

  Kennedy, Jane (Wavertree)

  Perham, Ms Linda

  Khabra, Piara S

  Pickthall, Colin

  Kidney, David

  Pike, Peter L

  King, Andy (Rugby & Kenilworth)

  Plaskitt, James

  King, Ms Oona (Bethnal Green)

  Pond, Chris

  Kingham, Ms Tess

  Pope, Greg

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Pound, Stephen

  Kumar, Dr Ashok

  Prentice, Ms Bridget (Lewisham E)

  Lammy, David

  Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)

  Laxton, Bob

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Lepper, David

  Prosser, Gwyn

  Leslie, Christopher

  Purchase, Ken

  Levitt, Tom

  Quin, Rt Hon Ms Joyce

  Lewis, Ivan (Bury S)

  Quinn, Lawrie

  Lewis, Terry (Worsley)

  Rammell, Bill

  1085

  Rapson, Syd

  Stunell, Andrew

  Raynsford, Nick

  Sutcliffe, Gerry

  Reed, Andrew (Loughborough)

  Taylor, Rt Hon Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Rendel, David

  Robertson, John (Glasgow Anniesland)

  Taylor, Ms Dari (Stockton S)

  Taylor, David (NW Leics)

  Robinson, Geoffrey (Cov'try NW)

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Robinson, Peter (Belfast E)

  Temple—Morris, Peter

  Roche, Mrs Barbara

  Thomas, Gareth R (Harrow W)

  Rooker, Rt Hon Jeff

  Thomas, Simon (Ceredigion)

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Thompson, William

  Roy, Frank

  Timms, Stephen

  Ruddock, Joan

  Tipping, Paddy

  Russell, Bob (Colchester)

  Todd, Mark

  Russell, Ms Christine (Chester)

  Tonge, Dr Jenny

  Salter, Martin

  Touhig, Don

  Sanders, Adrian

  Trickett, Jon

  Sarwar, Adrian

  Trimble, Rt Hon David

  Sarwar, Mohammad

  Truswell, Paul

  Sawford, Phil

  Turner, Dennis (Wolverh?ton SE)

  Shaw Jonathan

  Turner, Dr Desmond (Kemptown)

  Sheerman Barry

  Turner, Dr George (NW Norfolk)

  Short, Rt Hon Clare

  Turner, Neil (Wigan)

  Simpson, Alan (Nottingham S)

  Twigg, Derek (Halton)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Twigg, Stephen (Enfield)

  Smith, Rt Hon Andrew (Oxford E)

  Tyler, Paul

  Smith, Angela (Basildon)

  Tynan, Bill

  Smith, Jacqui (Redditch)

  Vis, Dr Rudi

  Smith, John (Glamorgan)

  Walker, Cecil

  Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)

  Walley, Ms Joan

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

  Ward, Ms Claire

  Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

  Wareing, Robert N

  Soley, Clive

  Watts, David

  Southworth, Ms Helen

  Webb, Steve

  Speller, John

  White, Brian

  Squire, Ms Rachel

  Wicks, Malcolm

  Starkey, Dr Phyllis

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan (Swansea W)

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Stevenson, George

  William, Mrs Betty (Conwy)

  Stewart, David (Inverness E)

  Winnick, David

  Stewart, Ian (Eccles)

  Winterton, Ms Rosie (Doncaster C)

  Stinchcombe, Paul

  Wood, Mike

  Stoate, Dr Howard

  Woodward, Shaun

  Strang, Rt Hon Dr Gavin

  Woolas Phil

  Straw, Rt Hon Jack

  Worthington, Tony

  Stringer, Graham

  Wright, Tony (Cannock)

  Stuart, Ms Gisela

  Wyatt, Derek

  NOES

  Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey)

  Bottomey, Rt Hon Mrs Virginia

  Amess, David

  Brady, Graham

  Ancram, Rt Hon Michael

  Brazier, Julian

  Arbuthnot, Rt Hon James

  Brooke Rt Hon Peter

  Atkinson, David (Bour'mth E)

  Browning, Mrs Angela

  Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

  Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

  Bell, Martin (Tatton)

  Burns, Simon

  Beresford, Sir Paul

  Butterfill, John

  Blunt, Crispin

  Cash, William

  Body, Sir Richard

  Chapman, Sir Sydney (Chipping Barnet)

  Boswell, Tim

  Bottomley, Peter (Worthing W)

  Chope, Christopher

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  Clark, Dr Michael (Rayleigh)

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  McIntosh, Miss Anne

  MacKay, Rt Hon Andrew

  Clifton—Brown, Geoffrey

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Collins, Tim

  Madel, Sir David

  Cormack, Sir Patrick

  Major, Rt Hon John

  Cran, James

  Malins, Humfrey

  Curry, Rt Hon David

  Mates, Michael

  Davies, Quentin (Grantham)

  Maude, Rt Hon Francis

  Davis, Rt Hon David (Haltemprice)

  Mawhinney, Rt Hon Sir Brian

  Day, Stephen

  May, Mrs Theresa

  Duncan, Alan

  Norman, Archie

  Duncan Smith, Iain

  O'Brien, Stephen (Eddisbury)

  Evans, Nigel

  Ottaway, Richard

  Fabricant, Michael

  Page, Richard

  Fallon, Michael

  Paice, James

  Flight, Howard

  Paterson, Owen

  Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

  Pickles, Eric

  Fox, Dr Liam

  Portillo, Rt Hon Michael

  Fraser, Christopher

  Prior, David

  Garnier, Edward

  Randall, John

  Gibb, Nick

  Robathan, Andrew

  Gill, Christopher

  Robertson, Laurence (Tewk'b'ry)

  Gillan, Mrs Cherly

  Roe, Mrs Marion (Broxbourne)

  Gray, James

  Ross, William (E Lond'y)

  Green, Damian

  Rowe, Andrew (Faversham)

  Grieve, Dominic

  Ruffley, David

  Gummer, Rt Hon John

  St Aubyn, Nick

  Hague, Rt Hon William

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Sir Archie

  Shepherd, Richard

  Hammond, Philip

  Simpson, Keith (Mid-Norfolk)

  Hawkins, Nick

  Soames, Nicholas

  Hayes John

  Spelman, Mrs Caroline

  Heald Oliver

  Spicer, Sir Michael

  Heath, Rt Hon Sir Edward

  Spring, Richard

  Heathcoat—Amory, Rt Hon David

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Horam, John

  Steen, Anthony

  Howard, Rt Hon Michael

  Streeter, Gary

  Howarth, Gerald (Aldershot)

  Swayne, Desmond

  Jack, Rt Hon Michael

  Syms, Robert

  Jackson, Robert (Wantage)

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Jenkin, Bernard

  Taylor, Ian (Esher & Walton)

  Key, Robert

  Taylor, John M (Solihull)

  King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

  Tredinnick, David

  Kirkbride, Miss Julie

  Trend, Michael

  Laing, Mrs Eleanor

  Tyrie, Andrew

  Lait, Mrs Jacqui

  Walter, Robert

  Lansley, Andrew

  Waterson, Nigel

  Letwin, Oliver

  Wells, Bowen

  Lewis, Dr Julian (New Forest E)

  Whitney, Sir Raymond

  Lidington, David

  Whittingdale, John

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Wilkinson, John

  Llwyd, Elfyn

  Willetts, David

  Loughton, Tim

  Wilshire, David

  Luff, Peter

  Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesfield)

  Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  Young, Rt Hon Sir George

  Question accordingly agreed to.

Preamble
[SIR ALAN HASELHURST in the Chair]

Steel Industry
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned. —[Mrs. McGuire]
9.30 am
Mr. Paul Flynn: Thank you, and good morning. It is fortuitous that we are meeting this morning to discuss the steel industry I shall not give the speech that I had in mind last week, given the serious change of attitude by Corus and the dialogue between Corus and the unions, the Government and politicians in the past 24 hours. To put it mildly, the atmosphere during that dialogue was poisonous. Yesterday, a package was put to Corus and discussion took place about which we can express at least a bat squeak of hope.
The last thing we should do is to raise false hopes among those who work in the steel industry, who are anxious about the future. That would be unreasonable. We should be making a case for manufacturing industry and for steel, not talking about a crisis in the steel industry. Steel is a vital part of Welsh industry, as it represents 6 per cent. of Welsh gross domestic product. Manufacturing industry in Wales is the biggest component of Welsh GDP at 27 per cent. Steel is an industry of the future. It is constantly seen as part of the past—it is often described as a smoke-stack industry, and many other pejorative terms are used—but it is nothing of the sort. The modern steel industry is high-tech, and has received huge investment. It is a sustainable industry, with 40 per cent. of steel being recycled, which is good for the environment as it reduces the energy take enormously.
If my hon. Friends will forgive me, I shall concentrate on the Welsh steel industry and what I know of it in my constituency. I am delighted to be joined by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Mr. Howarth) in whose constituency the Llanwern steelworks is situated. Unfortunately, because of his duties as a Minister and the conventions of the House, he is not able to make a speech, which we would have liked to hear, but he makes an effective contribution elsewhere in his tireless fight to save jobs at Llanwern.
Many of my constituents work at Llanwern. The Whitehead steel company in my constituency, in association with another company has threatened the loss of 35 jobs. We all want to ensure that the case is made for the steel manufacturing industry in Wales, and that it is heard loud and clear.
Yesterday, this Room was full of people rightly seeking solutions to the nightmare crisis in agriculture. Many suggested that public funds should be made available not only to the agricultural industry but to tourism, which has never happened before. Even fly fishing was mentioned—I shall try to catch the eye of the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd)—as an activity that is in financial trouble and
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worthy of public support. We are breaking new ground in suggesting that public money should be used to support the tourism industry. I am not making a case for or against it, but it has not happened before. We had crises in the 1980s when there were bombs in London and policemen with guns at Heathrow airport. Those pictures went around the world, and the tourism industry suffered a great slump, especially in London, but no call was made then for public subsidy, public support or compensation.
The attitude towards Government intervention in such circumstances is changing. Governments have traditionally intervened to help the farming industry—public subsidies have been paid for the past 50 years. However, if we are—as we seem to be—entering a new world of compensation, and if the worst happens in the steel industry, there is a strong case for paying compensation to steelworkers. If they ultimately suffer the loss of their jobs, and if their skills are thrown away and they become useless, they should be at the head of the queue for any compensation that is on offer.
Mr. Barry Jones: My hon. Friend fights hard for his steelworkers, as does my right hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Mr. Howarth). If any steelworkers, such as those at Shotton, were to lose their jobs, they would lose a salary of around £20,000 a year, and their incomes would suddenly plummet from a fair wage to virtually nothing. The steelworkers who would lose their jobs are young, with young families and big mortgages. Does my hon. Friend agree that, in any proposed scheme, the Government should help to bridge the gap? Something must be done in that sphere.
Mr. Flynn: My right hon. Friend makes a strong point. We know that the British steelworker is in an unfair position compared with many of his counterparts on the continent. Dutch steel companies send e-mails explaining workers' likely benefits, which are up to five times greater than those that a British steelworker could expect if the worst should happen.
I take my right hon. Friend's point. I have had many conversations, phone calls and meetings with friends old and new. I started working in the Llanwern steelworks in 1963, before any steel or iron was made there. The people I was working with then were fresh-faced apprentices, but they are now candidates for early retirement. It is extraordinarily moving knowing what those people, who were friends and neighbours of mine for so long, now faced and what they have been through.
There has been an almost permanent crisis in the steel industry, because it is cyclical. About every five years there has been a threat of closure. Things go from feast to famine very rapidly. That is the nature of the industry—it has always been like that. The sacrifices made by steelworkers throughout the land have been extraordinary. Plants have been slimmed down—they have been anorexic—as staffing has been reduced. Steelworkers have increased their skills, and have been very innovative in their approach to changing methods of production.
It was a great pleasure to go back to the steelworks, which I had not visited for some years, and to see how extraordinarily efficient it is. The galvanising plant now

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has wonderful kit, and it would be impossible to find a more energy efficient or productive set-up. The industry is a marvellous success story in every possible way.
What is the position in the rest of Europe? We know that the steel industry is doing very well throughout Europe, even in the smaller European Union countries such as Austria, Luxembourg, Sweden and outside the EU in countries such as Ukraine, Argentina and Brazil. There is overcapacity throughout the world, but that does not prevent other countries in the EU from improving their productivity and their sales. The Iron and Steel Trades Confederation suggested that in 2000, for the first time ever, Spain would produce more steel than the UK. It is quite shocking, considering the embryonic state of its industry over many years, that it has now overtaken our own.
However, productivity in Britain is very high—the highest in the world at Llanwern. That is freely admitted by Corus. It is acknowledged that the British steel industry is the most efficient in the world, so why on earth is this threat being made?
This debate has been informed by two splendid Select Committee reports. The first came from the Science and Technology Committee, which reported on Corus plc research and development, and the second was the report on steel by the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, which was published earlier this month. We should pay tribute to the Select Committees for their work in compiling those reports. They are splendid examples of the work of Select Committees in probing the often self-serving claims made by the industry. They expose its weaknesses and suggest practical ways in which to strengthen the steel industry in Britain, and identify the means to restore and strengthen our manufacturing base.
It is an extraordinary statistic that the amount contributed by the steel industry to the Welsh economy is 60 times that contributed by farming. We know that farming is in crisis, with all kinds of troubles, and that other elements are involved in that statistic, but that is the raw figure. The manufacturing industry contributes 270 times the amount contributed by the agricultural industry. So wherever we are—Wales, Newport or the United Kingdom—if we want a firm economic base for our children and grandchildren, we cannot discount the enormous contribution that manufacturing industry is making and will make in the future, if we protect it.
Mr. Richard Livsey: The hon. Gentleman's analysis is correct. However, does he agree that farming and the steel industry are in the same situation because of the currency fluctuations with which we have to contend? Neither can now sell a product at a profit. Does he agree that had the Government been more fleet of foot in their attitude to the euro, we would not be having this debate, and nor would there have been a debate on farming yesterday?
Mr. Flynn: I am grateful for that intervention. All those who wear pound badges should visit steelworkers and explain to them that the choice in many industries in this country, including farming, is often "euro or your job". The main crisis that has hit the steel industry is not
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a crisis of productivity or efficiency, but of the value of the product. The effect of the weakness of the euro and the strength of the pound is that the steelworkers' product is artificially expensive when exported to Europe, while that produced in euroland is artificially cheap when sucked in here. That is the reason for the crisis.
Corus has, understandably, taken a line on this. It is an international company with roots in several countries, mainly the UK and Holland, but all its decisions are informed by the need to survive, to be prosperous and to pay handsome dividends to shareholders, and are not influenced by the national interest. We have all experienced that in the bruising meetings that we have had with the head of the steel company, who is difficult to contact and to relate to. We found those meetings—unlike the one yesterday, which I shall come to—anything but productive.
The Trade and Industry Committee urged Corus and all companies to consider the long-term damage that would result from the loss of experienced staff and their ability to carry out effective research and development. The cuts in Corus involved restructuring research and development, which meant that the research and development staff and resources that would go to the Netherlands would be disproportionate, to the great loss of this country. The Committee also made a point about the difficulties that the euro has caused.
I happened to be present when the Select Committee on Trade and Industry interviewed Sir Brian Moffat and his comrades. In its report, the Committee described in graphic detail how it saw Corus and its role, and it asked the company to reconsider its decision. Great damage is likely to occur if Corus goes ahead with its proposals. We know about the heartbreaking loss of jobs, the families involved and the damage to people who face the insult of redundancy, knowing that their skills are no longer required. Many of them will never work again due to their age. However, the damage to our economy will result in a loss of capacity. If things go ahead as planned, a blast furnace may be lying on its back come the summer. That loss of capacity is irreplaceable and cannot be rebuilt. It will do enormous damage to the future prosperity of Wales and the rest of the country. The Trade and Industry Committee laid heavy emphasis on that in its report.
Dr. Ashok Kumar: I shall quote from the report. On Sir Brian Moffat and Corus, the Committee concluded:
"Nothing we heard from Sir Brian Moffat has led us to believe that the cuts announced on 1 February are part of a long-term strategy for the company's survival".
The company has no long-term strategy, so how can anyone have faith in the future of the industry? As my hon. Friend mentioned, we are living with feast and famine. That is the crux of the matter.
Mr. Flynn: My hon. Friend is quoting from the recommendations of the report. Some of us have been familiar with the ups and downs of the steel industry for a long time. My work in the industry began before Llanwern was open, and I can remember at least four or five crises in my 31 years in the industry. Armageddon was regularly on the horizon due to problems with

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Brazil, Asia or some other country. Nightmare scenarios always came up, but shortly afterwards we found that handsome profits had been made, like the £1 billion a year made by Corus.
The Committee also said:
"We regret that Corus felt unable to take Ministers more fully into their confidence.while they were preparing the proposals announced".
That has been another great difficulty, as Corus has behaved differently from other industries. The Minister has told us, and may tell us again this morning, that when there is openness—when the books are open and companies take the Government into their confidence—good will can be generated and solut ions can be sought, if not always found. Instead of co-operating, Corus created a great wall of secrecy and was not open with politicians.
Some of my hon. Friends want to speak at length, and I am aware that I am taking up time, so I shall make a final point. I am optimistic about what happened yesterday in the meetings between all the principal trade unions and Corus. A bold plan was presented, which I believe is groundbreaking, as I have never heard of one like it before. It is a £90 million plan that would involve payments to Corus. The package would pay half the wages of the steelworkers for a year. During that period, there would be an intensive training programme to allow the workers to prepare for the worst—although they would hope that it would not happen. They could at least benefit from active preparation in re-skilling and re-training for high-tech industries. That is a practical way to fill lives instead of waiting for the blow to fall.
The other part of the package is of great benefit, as it would protect the capacity. There would be no change in the configuration of Llanwern and t he other sites. They would not be destroyed, so could be rebuilt. The package would involve money from the trade unions, Europe and the Government. It has been informed by a distinguished and well-connected barrister, and seems an entirely new way to build a bridge between the hell of closure and redundancy and a practical way of getting out of the present position.
Without wanting to raise false hopes, we can say that the atmosphere on both sides seems different. A working party will meet in the next few weeks and report in a month's time in an attempt to rescue jobs. Both sides are clear about the reality. There is overcapacity in the industry and losses are sadly inevitable. However, there is hope of them working together not with antagonism but in a spirit of co-operation. We can to at least hope that there has been a change since the period of trench war.
The unions and the work force are grateful, even to us, the politicians-or perhaps I should say, especially to us and why not? I pay tribute to my right hon. and hon. Friends, from the Prime Minister upwards to the Back Benchers. We have all been di stressed about what has been in prospect. There is now the energy that is needed to take matters forward. Gratitude is due to the Dutch trade unions that have refused to take work from Llanwern. They said that if asset stripping from Llanwern and other steel plants was under way, they would not do the work.
New international solutions must be found to meet the challenges from multinational companies. It does no good for lone trade unions to argue with companies that
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can play them off against the trade unions of other countries. Trade unions must work together internationally. It does no good for one Government to try to deal alone with such a company. Governments will have to combine in pursuit of shared interests. To do that, we need new structures.
A bold, innovative plan has been produced. It deserves to work and breaks new ground. Perhaps what has happened will not after all result in the dreaded amputation of part of a steelworks. Perhaps that approach will be replaced by delicate surgery—the rescue of the hopes and jobs of many people who have given their all to the steel industry for years, and who deserve better than redundancy and the raw deal that Corus had prepared for them.
9.52 am
Mr. Elfyn Llwyd: I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) on securing this important debate. All of us across the political spectrum agree that there is a crisis in the steel industry in Wales, and we support any measure that will alleviate the problem.
When Corus announced the prospective job losses in February it was a shock. After it made losses of £1 billion last year, for whatever reason, the alarm bells should have rung. Manufacturing is probably in a worse state in Wales than in other parts of the United Kingdom, as 20,000 jobs have been lost. The hon. Gentleman spoke about worldwide overcapacity, but as he pointed out the industry is cyclical. The package that was reported in the Western Mail today seems encouraging. I hope to be optimistic, but I do not want to be complacent.
Sir Brian Moffat said in evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee that the Ebbw Vale and Llanwern workers were too productive. That is not a criticism that one hears too often from bosses. His comment fills me with dismay.
The strength of the pound has had an effect: it has had an undue impact on agriculture and manufacturing, and probably on tourism. Wales is highly dependent on exporting to the so-called euro zone. According to a report in the Financial Times a couple of weeks ago, 72 per cent. of Wales's exports go there. The figure is approximately 58 per cent. for England and about 50 per cent. for London. Wales, and particularly manufacturing in Wales, is more sensitive to the strength of the pound. The Financial Times article concluded:
"Labour's heartland areas are the biggest exporters to the EU and consequently the most exposed to substantial currency swings, which would be eradicated by membership of the Euro."
Mr. Llew Smith: Corus cannot agree on its position and on what the effect of the euro has been, and possibly will be, on its ability to export. A couple of months ago, it was blaming the euro for all the problems of the steel industry. A little later, one of its Dutch chief executives said that the problems had nothing to do with the euro. The day before the most recent announcement, Corus again said that the problems related to the euro, but 24 hours after that announcement, the Financial Times reported that the

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problems had nothing to do with the euro. I suspect that they have little to do with the euro and much to do with asset stripping.
Mr. Llwyd: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and he obviously knows the story as well as anyone. I also refer to what the hon. Member for Newport, West said earlier about the chairman of Corus being a rather difficult gentleman to deal with. However, I do not want to scupper any negotiations, so I only make that point in passing. I know that the euro has been mentioned many times, and then put lower down the list of perceived problems.
There is a need for a regional economic policy—in other words, for a different view of the manufacturing industry in Wales and our over-dependence on the euro zone. I hope, as we all do, that Corus will play its part in keeping jobs, whether or not that is through the package reported today in the Western Mail. We do not know what the future holds. As has already been mentioned, the Select Committee concluded that there has not been much forward planning. That fills me with dread.
Dr. Kumar: When the redundancies were first announced, the chairman of Corus told us that he had not come to a conclusion about the figure until the night before. That shows what a shambolic approach has been taken towards the industry.
Mr. Llwyd: When he gave evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee, the chairman did not know whether one plant to which we referred was making a profit or a loss, which did not give us the impression that he was in control.
I want to ask the Minister one specific question. I am not being defeatist, but in case it turns out that today's reports are over-optimistic and Corus goes ahead with the cuts, I refer the Minister to Council directive 98/59 EC of 28 July on collective redundancies and the way forward. Will the Government consider putting judicial and administrative procedures in place for the enforcement of that regulation, if it is necessary? I am reluctant to spring that on the Minister today, but it may be important as a back stop, and it may encourage Corus to be even more co-operative than today's newspaper article suggests.
Various steps can be taken to secure jobs. I hope that a regional policy will be developed. Some parts of the UK are doing extremely well while others are not doing at all well. It behoves the Government to be creative with their regional policies, by cutting corporation tax in some areas or by cutting employers' national insurance contributions. In a recent speech, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry suggested that we need to take a different approach to various parts of manufacturing industry in the UK. Therefore, operating aids could legitimately be used, and I hope that they will be.
The impression that I received from Sir Brian Moffat was not helpful. Various reasons have been given—some of them conflicting—about what is going on. Some relate to the cost of labour, others, somewhat illogically, relate to over-production. However, let us not scupper any possible negotiations. When
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representatives of the unions gave evidence, they were forthright and on the ball. They had taken proper advice and the package that they presented was not fanciful. Corus now realises that they mean business; the package is surely worthy of proper and mature consideration.
We know that the Chancellor is sitting on a healthy surplus. He could, if necessary, introduce a rescue package for the area I hope that the report will bear fruit and that something will happen. Having looked at the figures, I do not think that more than about £200 million would be necessary to ensure the future of those communities, which have been devastated by the announcements. If Ebbw Vale and Bryngwyn were closed, the land would have to be prepared and decontaminated at a cost of about £100,000 per hectare at 2001 prices. That would total about £10 million. I also urge the Government urgently to consider new technologies such as broadband communication, at a cost of about £5 mil lion, the restoration of a passenger rail service from Blaenau Gwent to Newport and Cardiff, at a cost of about £35 million and, of course, direct compensation—I fully agree with the hon. Member for Newport, West about that. Why should not those people be properly compensated?
Even at the 11th hour, we hope that common sense will prevail? I suspect that, 12 months hence, steel will be needed, and if the plants have been decommissioned, the decision will be seen to have been shambolic and made with no view to the future or acknowledgement of what everyone knows, which is that steel is a cyclical industry.
I urge Ministers to engage with Corus in any way that they can, to assist the unions in their discussions and to prepare aid packages as necessary—including assisting the package reported today. The amount of money required is not large, and could make all the difference. I hope that, even at the 11th hour, Corus will think again about how it has acted. If not, I hope that the Government will act urgently and will properly fund any rescue package and/or retraining package as necessary. I thank the hon. Member for Newport, West for the opportunity to make those points.
10.2 am
Mr. Denis MacShane: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mi. Flynn) on obtaining this debate, and on the extraordinary persistence with which he has dealt with the problems of the steel industry on behalf not just of his constituency but of the wider steel community and the public. As always in a debate such as this, I refer to my declaration in the Register of Members' Interests.
This is also a British and a wider European and international problem. There was a whiff of Welshness, if I may say so, about the contribution of the hon. Member for Meirio nydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd). If the Welsh steel industry is to export around the world and to the rest of Britain, we must consider the matter from a United Kingdom perspective, not from the more parochial south Wales position of the Welsh nationalists, who have so little to contribute to the debate.
That also applies to the Conservative party, because the fundamental problem for steel remains the triple whammy of, first, the decline in steel consumption in the

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1990s and before, which was unmatched in any other country and was the direct responsibility of the anti-manufacturing politics of the Conservative party. That is why no steel community, no steelworker and, I suspect, not even Sir Brian Moffat, will ever contemplate voting Conservative again. [Interruption.] I do not want to go into the details of his political affiliation. Those of us who have met him hope that even a sinner at the last moment of his job may repent.
The second problem handed to the steel industry by that wretched Government concerned Europe—"euro or your job." In 1996, the pound was trading at DM2.15 and steel was making money. In May 1997, the pound had risen to DM2.70 and steel was losing money, and has been losing money on exports ever since.
The third problem was the decadent privatisation of the electricity industry, which resulted in excessively higher prices for our steel companies than those in the rest of Europe. We are the only European nation that has seen a decline in electric arc furnace steel manufacturing: all other European countries have seen an increase. That was another wicked inheritance from that wretched Tory party. I should be surprised if a Tory spokesman even dared to speak in the debate.
Dr. Kumar: Has my hon. Friend observed that the steel industry is obviously not an important issue for Conservative Back Benchers, given that so few of them are present for this debate?
Mr. MacShane:: The "City Slicker" column in The Daily Telegraph today depressed me, because it said that Llanwern should be closed and asked who cares about a fading industry such as steel. Newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, and the Conservative party, should pay the same attention to the thousands of families who are facing misery and ruin as is being paid to the farmers, who also face a terrible plight
There is a difficult world problem. Recently, I was in America where 11 companies are either in chapter 11 or facing bankruptcy. In the past six months, 16,000 American steelworkers have lost their jobs. The response to the United Steelworkers Union—a good friend of mine—was to favour a complete import moratorium. As I said to the union in Pittsburg, that was not the right approach. We need a managed approach to the world economy in steel. Mergers in Europe will also lead to job losses. It is not wholly accurate to claim that the European picture is rosy.
What can we do? I could do a lot of name calling, but I am not in that mode today. I want to be reasonably polite about the managers of our steel industry, because we shall have to deal with them in the future. I also want to be reasonably polite about my hon. Friend the Minister who is to reply to the debate, because I hope that we shall deal with him in the future. However, Corus has taken a deplorable approach to the problem. It showed great discourtesy—I shall put it no more strongly than that. The chairman of Corus was not willing to tell the democratically elected Prime Minister of our nation which plants were to be closed and how many men would lose their jobs, even though everyone in the industry had known since the beginning of
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December, after the dismissal of the joint chief executives, that the death sentence had already been pronounced.
Mr. Llew Smith: I accept my hon. Friend's point about the lack of consultation and the fact that not even the Prime Minister was informed of plant closures. However, even worse than that was the fact that the workers were not told what was to happen, when they had devoted their lives to the industry and had built it up to be the most efficient in the world. They and their families are most important, and they should have been consulted first.
Mr. MacShane: The lack of effective partnership in the steel industry, despite the best efforts of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and the other steel unions, undoubtedly contributed to the problems that we are facing. I have on file letters to Sir Brian Moffat dating back six years, when I was elected to the House, pleading with him to join the steel community MPs, trade unions and others to debate the future of the industry. Steel is not like Primark or Matalan: it is not a tee-shirt factory or a virtual industry. Steel requires constant interface with the Government, whether on currency, trade, investment, public infrastructure, energy costs, antidumping or its relationship with Europe. Government decisions in all nations profoundly affect steel. That is why the US Treasury Secretary, Mr. Paul O'Neill, is one of the great steelmaker leaders of America
In Sir Brian Moffat, we have an accountant who worked in the nationalised British steel industry when it was run like a municipal outfit for many years. He was lucky to keep his job when the industry was privatised. He has an accountant's mentality—when in doubt, shut it down; when there are problems, axe workers; when unions say consult, tell them to get lost; and when the City says jump, say, "How high?" Over the past four or five years, we have seen the City's blind worship of financial markets, not steel engineering. Let us have no more of those ad hominem remarks. The deplorable Corus press briefings constantly chip away at and attack the Government. That is not worthy of a great international company. Let us move forward.
As a constituency Member, I directly represent steelworkers in Rotherham who are deeply concerned. This is a British issue that affects many different parts of the United Kingdom. I welcome yesterday's agreement to establish a joint working party—we have been asking for that for months. Regrettably, the announcement comes late in the day. As Members of Parliament, we must be honest and admit that a joint working party will not alter the disastrous world problem of overcapacity that steel faces—a tonne of basic steel costs as much on the world markets as a tonne of raspberry jam. However, we should look forward and consider what can be done to save the threatened jobs. As hon. Members have said, it is important to maintain capacity, because if public investment in infrastructure comes through and companies such as Nissan and others invest in the car manufacturing sector in the United Kingdom, we will be able to supply British steel.
The Government must also lend their direct support. I have taken delegation after delegation to the Department of Trade and Industry to discuss antidumping and regional aid policies, and have come away

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empty-handed. I hope that the Prime Minister's new commitment will be conveyed down the Whitehall feeding chain and will persuade officials in the DTI—not my hon. Friend the Minister, who is a great spokesman for the working class and industrial manufacturing—to approach matters with new vigour and vision. Germany, France and Spain have no problem backing their steel industries in compliance with European Union rules.
We have new investment in Rotherham. Boeing is coming in next week, and I have the pleasure of accompanying the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to open a new factory, Toyada Gosei, which is a major Japanese manufacturing investment in Rotherham. Corus is investing, along with Boeing, in a new technology centre in Rotherham.
The Government must take the issue forward. We need a new approach after the election to back a thing-making economy. Britain cannot be a nation of call centres, Starbucks cafes and financial analysts. We consume more goods than ever, and many of them contain steel. That steel can and must be made in our nation. I invite the Minister to be positive in his reply, to build on the partnership programme approach agreed yesterday, to support the steel industry and to give it a positive future.
10.13 am
Dr. Ashok Kumar: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) on securing a timely debate on an important subject. I agree with other hon. Members that his contribution in fighting on behalf of steelworkers is exemplary. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) said that the debate was parochial and about only Wales, but I have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West championing steel on behalf of the whole country, not just Wales, although I would understand it if he were parochial.
As a Teesside man, our Deputy Speaker—my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook)—will surely concur with what I am about to say. Although you are not able to take part in the debate because of your duties, Mr. Deputy Speaker, we have shared many meetings with steel managers and directors of companies regarding the future of the steel industry.
Before I came to the House, I was a steelworker. Like my hon. Friend, I worked in research and development on Teesside, at the Teesside technology centre, which, unfortunately, will soon be closed down, thanks to the vision of Sir Brian Moffat and the board of Corus. My views are supported by friends and colleagues who work in the steel industry, for the time being, many of whom have given a lifetime of service. They have done everything that was asked of them—total quality performance, quality management and other changes to the steel industry.
Managers and middle managers, who were asked to introduce changes in the 1980s, now find that they will be made redundant. I see them on Teesside, I meet them in shopping centres, and they come to see me at my surgery. My comments are echoed in the communities that I represent, which cannot understand why Sir Brian Moffat is taking such action.
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One of the mills to be closed down on Teesside is the Coil Plate mill, which is one of the best and most advanced in the world. It is profitable and successful, but it is going to be closed. The argument advanced is that it is because of over-capacity. Beyond that, however, we do not know the reasons. I have been told that preparations are being made to close the mill in mid May. Yesterday, Corus created the impression that it is in negotiation with the DETR, its joint working task force and the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation. If so—and I believe that Sir Brian Moffat and the board are honourable—why are they preparing for closures? The secret is leaked out in today's edition of The Guardian. A spokesperson for Corus is quoted as saying:
"We have agreed to keep the door open to any schemes but that has always been there. We have heard nothing that changes our mind about the size of the cutbacks nor the timescale"
That is the real truth. They are window dressing. If I am wrong, and I hope that I am, I shall be happy to apologise, but that is the secret. If those involved were genuinely discussing the matter, they would not have made such statements.
Mr. Flynn: Corus always said that there was no alternative and no way to help the steel industry that would abide by European Union competition rules. The unions, the Government and others have put together a package, which, we ere advised, is practical and would abide by the competition rules. That is the great change. Corns always said that that was not possible. It did not test whether it was possible, and it had to agree yesterday that the proposals could be achieved.
Dr. Kumar: I thank my hon. Friend for those observations. I am happy that we are at least making some progress. I could see none before. I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham. I remain pessimistic, but I hope that I am wrong. I can only become more optimistic as time goes on. I know the approach of Sir Brian Moffat and Corus. I know from the time when he was British Steel chairman that once he makes up his mind, there is no return. He does not make up his mind lightly. I say that in all honesty. If he were to change his mind, it would do him great credit, but I cannot see that happening. I hope that I am wrong.
I welcome the union initiative. A great deal of work has been done on the proposals. I also want to give great credit to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and his Department. Every time that there are difficulties in relation to steel, I and other hon. Members representing Teesside go to see him. Last year, he set up a task force, which is a great credit to him. I know that the Minister recognises the contribution of the Teesside steel industry.
We should examine the steel industry in general, but we should give particular attention to its research and development aspects . A recent report by the Select Committee on Science and Technology, of which I am a member, expressed concern about the imbalance of redundancies between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, and about the apparent downgrading of Corus's commitment to research and development in our country.
The Government believe in research and development, and in innovation, but closure of the laboratory will leave a huge vacuum in research and

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development on Teesside. The Minister supports the chemical industry's efforts to create clusters of employment, but the area that I represent faces huge job losses. Young people are being encouraged to study science and to pursue careers as physicists and chemists, so that they can contribute to research and development, yet one of the biggest employers in my area is closing one of its research institutions. That sends the wrong signal to the youngsters who will become graduates and go on to make a great contribution to research and development.
I am passionate about this matter, and I want the Minister's full support. There will be 1,000 redundancies, but that will cause 6,000 to 7,000 job losses in my community and others. Unemployment is falling in our constituencies, but it is rising in some parts of them. That trend must be reversed Representations should be made to Sir Brian Moffat to impress on him the concerns that I have expressed, and to remind him of his responsibilities and obligations to the communities that have given his company such great service.
10.21 am
Mr. Llew Smith: My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) has shown that he is an authority not only on the steel industry, but on matters as diverse as raspberry jam and toffee. It is difficult to follow such speakers. However, although my contribution will be modest and brief, the points raised will be important, because the Ebbw Vale plant is in my constituency, and it faces closure unless it receives a last-minute reprieve.
I have occasionally disagreed with the Government, and voted against them. However, it would be wrong to criticise them now, and it would do a disservice to the work force. I have consistently criticised Corus's actions and decisions. In the past few months, the company has not acknowledged that the Government might have a role—except, perhaps, in clearing up the mess, in terms of the environment and job losses, after it leaves town. I am critical of the previous Government who privatised the steel industry. Subsequent events have informed us about the negative effects of privatisation.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar) that there was a lack of consultation. It is bad management not to involve the work force. The people in my constituency who are employed in the steel industry have devoted their lives to their work. They know the industry inside out. They might not have long lists of letters after their names, but they are the true experts, and they should have been involved in the consultation process. If those experts are ignored and treated with disdain, the wrong decisions are often made. I hope that the plan to set up a joint working party is not window dressing, but a serious attempt to involve the experts who have devoted their lives to the steel industry. If that is done, the industry will be far better off. If those experts had been involved in years gone by, they would not have been involved in the asset stripping that has taken place.
As I have said before, on the day that Corus was formed, it handed over approximately £700 million to the shareholders. It appropriated £900 million from the
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workers' pension fund. It wasted £135 million buying up companies abroad. It spent millions compensating former chief executives whom it obviously regarded as incompetent, and it handed out massive pay increases to the former Dutch management. All that money amounts almost exactly to the debt that Corus seems to be facing—in the region of £1.75 billion. If the asset stripping had not taken place and the money had instead been invested in the industry, Corus would not face the sort of debts that it now faces.
On the Ebbw Vale plant, no matter what happens with the joint working party, we shall still have to deal with 300 redundancies resulting from a previous decision. The work force have formulated their plans, and within the restrictions within which they have been operating, they have calculated that, following those 300 redundancies, the Ebbw Vale plant will be in profit. Under the plans that they have proposed, which I hope will be considered, the plant will be very much in profit. It is daft to consider closing a plant that is not only one of the most efficient in the world but will make substantial profits
We welcome yesterday's decision to set up a joint working party. Much is at stake, especially for communities in Blaenau Gwent, as no other jobs are available. I am not trying to be emotional or to whip up emotion. I am describing the reality of the circumstances, as the Government's statistics show. The jobs available are for security officer on a few pounds an hour. The Government's statistics on wage rates show that Blaenau Gwent has some of the lowest wage levels not only in Wales—I accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said about it being a UK problem—but in the UK.
I remember the day that Corus was formed. As I have said before in Parliament, at approximately 8 to 8.30 in the morning, the managing director, Mr. Tony Vickers, rang me at home and said, "Mr. Smith, there is no threat to jobs; there is no threat to the steel industry; and there is no threat to the plant in Ebbw Vale as a result of the amalgamation or the takeover." That was not true, because since Mr. Vickers made that statement and since Corus was formed, we have lost in the region of 300 jobs in Ebbw Vale. If the plans proceed, we shall lose the plant. That cannot be right. We are losing not the 700, 800 or 900 jobs that the press has suggested but in the region of 1,250 jobs, because in the past year or so jobs have been outsourced.
No one doubts the problems that farming and tourism face, and no one doubts that those industries should receive all the support possible. However, what is aggravating is that my community is in danger of being wiped out, but we are not the No. 1 item on the news night in, night out. We are not the subject of special reports. We do not receive the attention that others receive. If the plans proceed, 7,000 steelworkers will lose their jobs, and 7,000 families will lose their wage earner. They deserve as much attention and support as those who are receiving those things from the media because of their involvement in tourism and farming.
10.30 am
Mr. Richard Livsey: It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Smith). As an agriculturist, I agree entirely with his

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comments. His community will be absolutely devastated unless the closure programme can be stopped in its tracks. Ebbw Vale is on the boundary of my constituency, and my family has in the past included ironworkers in south Wales, so I know a bit about the matter. However, he is in the thick of it, and his community encounters people on the street in despair every day. We must work together to try to crack the problems. There is no doubt that there must be a crash programme in places such as Ebbw Vale, which must receive compensation and be given special status for aid. Vision is required to rescue the steel communities. If necessary, the activities of multi national companies must be forensically examined on a worldwide scale, and international agreements should be made to control the exploitation of the labour force across the world.
The hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent was right that Corus's losses of £1.75 billion and the payout of funds—from plundering the steelworkers' pension funds to pay off people such as executives—amount to almost the same. The crisis is large. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) on securing the debate, and I hope that he was correct in his analysis that the rescue package is meaningful. As we know, the steel industry is cyclical, and 12 months is a long time in steelmaking and the steel industry. The package gives breathing space, and I am glad to see that it has been won.
I am familiar with many places in Yorkshire and Teesside, which are in just as bad a state because of the closure of parts of plants and people who have been made redundant. It is a complete and utter carve-up. It is interesting to note that although the plant at Ijmuiden in Holland is not as productive as UK plants, particularly the Welsh plants, it will remain open. Corus exports more than half its production to Europe, and owns substantial German and Dutch steel operations. Commodity steel prices are at a 20-year low.
Mr. Ken Purchase: Does the hon. Gentleman share my feeling that part of the reason why the Dutch plant remains open is that it would be difficult to close it in comparison with the ease with which British plants can be closed?
Mr. Livsey: I agree, and, if I have time, I shall address that point.
Corus, like every British quoted company is, even now, exposed to a takeover because of the organisation of our stock market and the way in which ownership responsibilities are discharged. That makes the company vulnerable, and it is trying to put a gloss on its results—or non—results as they may be at the moment — to try to make it appear more attractive. The skilled steelworkers, who have achieved record production outputs, are the victims of that. We live in a crazy world, in which less productive plants in Holland recruit more steelworkers, while more productive UK workers are being sacked. That is the law of the jungle.
British workers need help from the law. UK employment law protects British workers inadequately in comparison with continental laws. The Government
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must introduce legislation to give British workers the same protection as their European counterparts. They would not be as vulnerable if that were the case. An error of judgment was made when the Department of Trade and Industry allowed the amalgamation with British Steel, which was not done with a great deal of thought. We must reverse the anti-manufacturing policy embedded in our policy-making structure, which was left by the previous Government. We have not sufficiently put that policy aside.
Until the Government make clear the time frame for entry into the euro, the long-term stability of manufacturing that investors require will not be certain. Many aspects of the Corus cutback and the redundancies in the steel industry mean that little, if any, investment is being made and job numbers are declining. We should be asking how much money Corus will invest in the United Kingdom, in line with the rescue package. In Sir Brian Moffat s previous statements, the answer to that question was "nothing". We must extract promises from Corus.
Given the scale of redundancies, the Government should reverse their blocking of the European directive that aims to introduce information and consultation rights to most of the United Kingdom work force. Several things can be done to improve the situation in the steel industry. I agree with the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd). We should give special status to certain areas and special regional economic assistance, as was done in the 1930s and 1940s by Governments who invested in specific parts of the United Kingdom. We might vary corporation tax and give assistance through a reduction in national insurance, or perhaps even abolish it in areas where the state of affairs is as bad as it is in Ebbw Vale. Operating aids could also be introduced, and special assisted area status for some of the crisis areas where the work force can be retrained.
Industry can be made more profitable through Government intervention. Those policies should be combined with a clear programme for when we join the euro. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) was right to say that it is a case of "the euro or your job." In many parts of the United Kingdom, that is the situation. Imaginative investment should be made into steel-using manufacturing. Why not put a state of the art car production plant alongside the steelworks? That would be easy in some parts of the United Kingdom, especially on the south Wales coast—
Mr. MacShane: And Rotherham!
Mr. Livsey: And in Rotherham—we must not forget that. It is all about competition. The steel industry is not competitive because of the euro and neither are car plants, if they are not efficient enough. Great investment must be made into manufacturing and steel-using manufacturing to stimulate demand in the industry, but that steel must be competitive on world markets or there will be imports and we will be undercut in the marketplace.
I am irritated by some of Sir Brian Moffat's statements. He is anti-competition; when asked whether he would sell his plant to the work force or to a management-work force buy-out, he said that he would

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not, because the buyers would compete against him, which would put an end to his nice co y monopoly. That situation must be bust open—we must get it by the scruff of the neck. If Sir Brian Moffat is not committed to providing work for British steelworkers, whether on Teesside, in Yorkshire or in south Wales, he should leave it to the management and work force to show him the way to producing profitable steel that is competitive on world markets and provides work for the areas that he is trying to do down.
10.39 am
Mr. Richard Page: I, too, would like to thank the hon. Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) for bringing this matter before us; it should be kept constantly in the public eye. I say that because other areas of manufacturing, such as the textile industry, are steadily disappearing from the scene, but they do not appear to be areas of worry and concern for the Government. The textile industry is a prime example. Although I, too, am concerned about the loss of jobs in the steel industry, more jobs have been lost every year for the past four years in the textile industry and, sadly, 1 believe that the situation is getting worse. John Edmonds of the General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trades Union said that some 96,000 manufacturing jobs were lost year, and he shares my concerns. In 2001, some 10,000 manufacturing jobs will be lost every month. That is not my view, but that of John Monks, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress.
This is the third debate on steel that I have attended, and the first at which there has been a glimmer of hope that something might come out of this serious situation. I understand that hon. Members who are faced with disastrous job losses in their constituencies want to try to reverse the situation. I can also understand their lashing out against those whom they believe have caused the problem. However, in many cases, the target of their wrath has been misplaced and their energies misdirected. Constantly blaming Corus might be politically smart but I do not believe that the facts endorse the positions taken by many hon. Members.
In 1997, British Steel made a profit of about £1 million a day. The line on the graph then goes straight down, and Corus is now losing a fortune every day. That position is not sustainable, and it cannot be allowed to continue. Something must be done . I have enormous sympathy with steel industry workers who are caught up in a nightmare that is not of their making. I endorse what the hon. Member for Newport, West said about efficiency. It is unusual for me to quote the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, but in his recent announcement on this sad affair, he said that the productivity of UK steel workers now 571 tonnes a year per man—a staggering figure that makes ours one of the most efficient and productive steel operations in Europe.
I come from a manufacturing background and, for several years, I was the Member of Parliament for Workington. At that time, the blast furnace at Workington required 14 man hours for every tonne
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produced, but over the past 20 years, productivity has risen by 5 per cent. a year, which is 3 per cent. more than the figure for general manufacturing industry.
Dr. Kumar: On the criticisms of the chairman of Corus, we recognise the bitter reality that he faces, but we are greatly concerned about how he has achieved his objectives and the approach that he has adopted towards the Government, Members of Parliament and the communities affected.
Mr. Page: I accept what the hon. Gentleman says, but I understand that because the Department of Trade and Industry is one of the most leaky Departments—the Vauxhall debacle resulted from information being leaked to the press in advance of the announcement—management at Corus has held things back. However, I shall not defend or attack the Corus management because I am not fully au fait with the facts.
We have touched on only some of the problems, many of which, I believe, have been caused by the change in the balance of trade resulting from the strength of sterling. The volume of steel used in imported goods now balances that produced in and for the UK. As a result of sterling's appreciation against the euro, the average price of a tonne of steel exported to the European Union has fallen by a quarter since 1996.
I shall not follow up the rather myopic contribution of the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane). I suggest that he tries to cast the mote from his eye—or, perhaps, from the Government's eye—and looks to see who ticked the box to allow the formation of Corus, which has been blamed for so much of what we now face.
Mr. MacShane: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Page: No. I am sorry, but if I do the Minister will not have time for his thruppence-worth, and I want to hear what he has to say about the joint statement.
The hon. Member for Newport, West spoke about Europe, and said that we must look to the future. The United Kingdom and Europe must face the fact that a number of industries have such a high volume of activity that if they get into difficulties, one Government alone will not be able to prop them up and keep them going. The hon. Gentleman's little package of measures would be a drop in the ocean against the losses and costs that would face companies such as Corus. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, which is unusual, but that is a debate for another day. It should take place soon.
Time is not on our side. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the developments of the past 24 hours. I, too, have received a copy of the joint statement from Corus and the trade unions. It offers a first glimmer of hope. The hon. Gentleman was right to say that we must not raise false hopes, but it is good to have something positive to look forward to. The working party's application to the EU should be submitted as soon as possible. What will the Department of Trade and Industry do to promote and support that application? The DTI does not usually push EU applications speedily. On behalf of all involved, the Minister should urge the Department to get its skates on and act quickly.
10.46 am
The Minister for Competitiveness (Mr. Alan Johnson): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) on securing this debate. He said that he would make a different speech to that which he had originally envisaged, and I shall give a different reply, because of recent and important developments.
I know that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have a deep personal interest in the matter, and the concern felt by hon. Members across the House is shown by the attendance here, although it is felt not only by those who contributed to the debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Mr. Howarth), was here earlier; he has taken pains to argue behind the scenes on behalf of his constituents at every opportunity, despite the fact that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West pointed out, his ministerial responsibilities place him in a difficult position. Also here are my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) and my hon. Friends the Members for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands), for Corby (Mr. Hope) and for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase). They have all expressed their concern about the future of the steel industry.
This is a crucial time. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West said, we must not raise false expectations; neither must we suggest that these are simple problems with simple solutions. They are complex matters, caused by difficult international trading conditions. We speak of globalisation affecting industry, but globalisation has a bigger impact on steel than on any other industry. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) pointed out, the problems do not affect jobs only in the UK; he told us of similar problems in the United States. Overcapacity, weak prices and low profit margins have long been a problem.
The important thing about yesterday's developments is what I might call social partnership. All unions, especially the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, which has a particular connection with the steel industry, have been extremely constructive over many years. From yesterday's developments, it seems that it has been recognised at last that talks with those who represent the work force and have expertise in the industry can produce solutions to complex problems.
Mr. Phil Hope: Does my hon. Friend recall the experience in Corby in the 1980s, when thousands of men were thrown out of work? The town had 30 per cent. unemployment, and it has taken us 20 years to recover. Yesterday's announcement shows a different way in which to operate. It gives hope to other communities under threat of experiences similar to that of Corby when the Tories dumped it in the 1980s.
Mr. Johnson: My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have been round that course a few times in debates on steel.
I have little time and want to respond to the constructive contributions made. That might mean that I miss out the contribution from the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Page). Frankly, I had heard it all before. This country had 20 wasted years in which not only were the work force attacked, but the
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only people who could stand up to defend them were excluded at every turn through spiteful pieces of anti-union legislation. If we had only created a climate of social partnership in that period, we might be much further forward with employment relations and the tackling of such issues.
Evidence of the work force's constructive approach is highlighted by the fact that productivity per employee in the industry has risen by 10 per cent. a year for the past quarter of a century. That cannot be said often enough. In 1999, the year in which the Corus merger took place, productivity was 571 tonnes per employee, higher than Germany at 543 tonnes per employee and France at 534 tonnes per employes . That is an amazing success record, and one can understand the feeling of steelworkers and their communities about last year's announcement.
I want to speak specifically about yesterday's developments, but I shall first pick up on some of the points made. The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd ) mentioned operating aids, which are tightly restricted under the European Coal and Steel Community treaty. From the start of the exercise—not only from 1 February when the announcement was made, but from December when the two chief executives left Corus, which gave us an idea of what was to come—the Government and the Welsh Assembly have worked hard to find packages of assistance for the industry. That does not mean only operating aid, but whatever aid we can produce to meet the strict and rigorous terms of the treaty. No stone has been left unturned. The developments yesterday demonstrated some of our thinking on the issue.
We all hope that the initiative leads to a lack of job losses such as those announced recently. Nevertheless, we will ensure that Corus understands its obligation to clean up the sites that it might leave behind. That important environmental issue was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West in various debates last year, and we have worked hard on it in the interim.
If my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham did not indulge in name calling today, I would hate to hear him when he did. He rightly pointed to some of the complex international issues, and talked about the lack of effective partnership. That will be a big issue. If we can glean the support of the electorate for a second term of Labour government, I hope that we can develop the idea of social partnership. My hon. Friend has a great track record on such issues.
In another passionate speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and Cleveland, East (Dr. Kumar) epitomised the views of people in the affected communities. He referred to research and development and the report of the Trade and Industry Committee, which we have studied closely. Our understanding of the rationale behind Corus's approach to research and development is that it wants to avoid inefficient duplication of research resources following the merger, by establishing one research and development centre in the Netherlands and one in the United Kingdom. Each operation will focus its attention on the areas where the equipment and expertise of its personnel are best placed to be effective in their research effort We have made it clear that, wherever in this country Corus decides to site its research and development centre, the DTI is ready to

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assist: it will provide advice and will pursue policies to help the company to increase its competitiveness by maintaining a significant level of research and development effort in the United Kingdom. We shall pay close attention to the matter in the coming months.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Smith) mentioned lack of consultation and made some fair criticisms of Corus's past approach. I want to concentrate my remarks on what a constructive approach could produce.
The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Livsey) said that British workers want the same protection as other European workers. We have initiated a review of the entire information and consultation process in this country under various pieces of legislation, from the acquired rights directive, through the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981, to the redundancy legislation. We are conscious of the criticism that it is easier to sack British workers than any others in Europe and we do not think that that is a good thing. Perhaps the Opposition do.
We are pleased at our record levels of inward investment last year. None of our analysis suggests that that had anything to do with more lax labour laws. It was related to other issues—productivity and skills, and the fact that our economy is so marvellous at the moment. The review that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced last month will be of use in this context. We want to analyse the facts and discover whether it is true that it is easier to dismiss British workers. It is not necessarily true; the issue is more complex than it appears. If we find that it is easier, we shall decide what to do about it.
We had a debate about the single currency in December. Many manufacturers told me that things would be much better if the exchange rate for the deutschmark was around 3.10. It is about that now, and Corus has made it clear that the single currency was not the sole reason for its announcements. The point about the single currency is in many ways a red herring.
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We were all pleased about developments following the meeting involving Corus and the trade unions yesterday. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made it clear to the unions and to Corus that he is willing to approach the European Commission and other member states to ask for their approval for a scheme, under article 95 of the European Coal and Steel Community treaty, to assist Corus. We understand that to comply with the treaty any scheme would need to contain a significant retraining component. We believe that to be a central feature of the Union's proposals, although we have not yet seen the full details of the submission. It is an imaginative approach to providing in-work training while the work force pick up their normal wages. It would make it possible to buy some time and to improve workers' skills for their local labour market.
Officials of the Department of Trade and Industry are happy to participate and to play a key role, alongside the company and union officers, in a small working party to help to develop such a scheme. I hope that we can soon work up the outline of a scheme to enable us quickly to make an initial approach to the Commission. That approach would not, as I understand it, be affected by any purdah that might descend on us from any quarter in future. After seeking permission we would need to ask for the approval of other member states. Unanimous approval is needed. A process must be undergone, and the timetable will be tight. Corus has told us that it is willing to work with the Government and trade unions to develop a scheme, as it sees the obvious benefits to all concerned, but has asked us to seek the European Commission's consent by the end of April. That is what we shall do.
The initiative is important and we should be optimistic that a chink of light has appeared. The steel industry remains a major part of United Kingdom manufacturing industry and a significant contributor to the economy and employment. The Government will continue to work closely with all parts of the steel sector to try to ensure its long-term competitiveness.

Tourism (South-West)
11 am
Mr. Matthew Taylor: In the context of the present foot and mouth crisis, this an extremely important debate. I know that a large number of hon. Members will be hoping to catch your eye or to intervene, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hope that that will show the cross-party concern that exists about the impact of foot and mouth on the wider economy in the south-west and other parts of the country.
There have been many statements and debates on the matter in the House. Yesterday, much of the debate focused on the impact on the farming community. That is why today I am raising the subject of the tourism industry, but that does not reflect any lack of concern for the farming industry, which is being devastated. The disease is no less devastating for the surrounding rural communities, especially in its effect on related businesses and tourism. I am not taking the opportunity to make any party points. We all understand that we need to find solutions to the crisis. Any Government would be struggling to cope with the scale of it. That is not to say that I have not had criticisms and suggestions to make.
As regards tourism in the south-west, there have been cancelled accommodation bookings; restricted access to accommodation and attractions; forced closure of environmental and animal-based attractions in urban as well as rural areas; a dramatic fall in inquiries about holidays and breaks; perhaps a tarnished image that will last for some time, at least overseas, if not in the United Kingdom; and a perception that the region is currently closed for business.
Mr. Lembit Öpik: I have listened to my hon. Friend's list. Does he accept that every single one of those problems also exists in rural Wales and, I imagine, across the United Kingdom? Does he agree that one of the reasons for that is that internationally, people do not understand that foot and mouth poses no danger whatever to human health?
Mr. Taylor: My hon. Friend is right. A huge communications exercise needs to be conducted. I shall return to the matter later.
Mr. Richard Livsey: Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. Öpik), the Welsh Assembly has produced a charter for responsible tourism, which sets out clearly what people can and cannot do during the foot and mouth outbreak. I commend it to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and St. Austell (Mr. Taylor) as a way forward for the south-west.
Mr. Taylor: I thank my hon. Friend. I will take the opportunity to discuss some of the positive measures that have been undertaken in the south-west.
For many years, I have fought against the perception that because the south-west is an area of sunshine, sand and sea, it is a comfortable place to be. In many parts of the south-west, there is severe poverty, and no more so than in my area in Cornwall, with high levels of
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unemployment, seasonal jobs, very low wages and problems of access to local transport. Much of the south-west is classified as a rural priority area. Cornwall has objective 1 status, because we have some of the highest levels of need anywhere in the European Union.
The foot and mouth crisis is impacting on an already poor area that is highly dependent on the tourism industry. The outbreak could not have come at a worse time, following the BSE crisis; swine fever last year; the strength of the pound, which has hit tourism hard, as well as hitting farming and exporting industries; and appalling disruption to rail services in most of the southwest. I have not been able to use the train regularly for months—it simply is not running down to my part of the world. [Interruption] It is a disgrace, as the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw) says. On top of all that, we have had the wettest weather for more than 130 years and possibly In recorded history.
The crisis comes at a time of the year when cash is at a minimum in tourism-related businesses. Most of them survive on their income from the Easter period through to the end of the summer. During the winter and early spring, they invest in improvements to accommodation and in advertising so at this time of the year their resources are at a minimum. In the rural communities most significantly Affected, tourism makes up 30 per cent.—a third—of local income, compared to 10 per cent. from farming
The combined impact of all those factors represents an economic catastrophe facing the area. The regional development agency estimates that the total net loss to the south-west could easily be £1 billion or more, with tourism bearing the brunt. The industry in the southwest is larger than in Scotland and Wales together. In 1999, more than 12 million people took holidays in and trips to the region, which were worth almost £2.5 billion and accounted for 100,000 jobs. Other estimates put losses as a result of foot and mouth as high as £2 billion. In the most seriously affected areas, 30 per cent. of gross domestic product could be affected.
There is also an incidental impact on the farming community—as if I had not suffered enough as a direct result of the disease. In Cornwall particularly, and in much of the south-west, farms are reliant on diversification and their role in the tourism industry. Many farmers generate more than half their income from that.
Mr. Ian Bruce: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for initiating the debate and allowing me to intervene. In Dorset, we have tended to close all the farmland and all the paths, yet the Government are telling us to make sure that everyone can go to the beaches. Unfortunately, they often need to cross farmland to get to the beach. Is that a problem in the hon. Gentleman's, constituency, and how has it been dealt with?
Mr. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman is right. The problem is serious throughout the south-west. Access was closed on a blanket basis on MAFF advice at the start of the outbreak. In Cornwall, there is no access to more than 90 per cent. of the coast. Although some of the routes cross lard used by livestock, some could be opened. The matter is under review, but the process is

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extraordinarily slow. That impacts on the costs borne by local authorities and others. I shall ask the Minister what scope there is for help to be given to local authorities. We have spoken at length in the House, rightly, about the impact on business, but local authorities must devote huge resources to get the footpaths opened as quickly as possible and make sure that the right advice is given.
Mr. Ben Bradshaw: The hon. Gentleman has identified the factor that may be doing more damage than anything else: the blanket closure of all our footpaths, whether or not they go anywhere near livestock. I hope that when my hon. friend the Minister replies, she will say what exactly the dangers are. There are those who say that the danger posed by people walking on footpaths has been greatly exaggerated. If that is the case, should we not be moving much more quickly to open some of our beautiful and very important footpaths?
Mr. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman is right. The impact is huge, and we need to find ways to make rapid progress to open up access where it is safe to do so. However, the first priority must be to contain the spread of the disease. If anything is done that puts that at risk, it will ultimately be worse not just for the farmers but for the tourism industry as well. That is why tourism organisations and all those who are dealing with the outbreak have said that their first priority is to support the containment of foot and mouth disease and to back the farming community on which it directly impacts.
The second priority must be to safeguard the long-term interests of the tourism industry and the related small businesses that are being hit. Such businesses are characteristic of the rural community, but they do not have large amounts of money to help them to survive the crisis. Most of them—I hope that they will not take this wrongly—have a pretty hand-to-mouth business existence and do not make huge profits. They work very hard and they employ local people, but all that is falling down around them.
That is why the third priority must be to limit long—term damage. These problems are not merely short-term; if such businesses close, many of them will never reopen.
Mr. Anthony Steen: The problem in Devon is that nobody knows what is closed and what is open. Last week, we heard the Minister for the Environment say that it was business as usual in Devon and the west country and that everything was open. However, I have just been phoned from Dartmoor by my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), who said that everything was closed. People who want to walk across fields in Devon do not know whether it is legal to do so. The situation has been muddled because the county council has not made clear statements and MAFF has not given clear directions.
Mr. Taylor: The provision of proper information at the right time is a huge issue, which I want to emphasise in this debate.
I should like to give some examples of how foot and mouth is hitting the region, as they will help to show what must be done. An enormous number of
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accommodation bookings have been cancelled, not only in farm accommodation, but in seaside towns. Although coastal towns are not directly affected by foot and mouth, their bookings are disappearing because of the belief both here and abroad that they are closed down. The Best Western hotel in Newquay, which specialises in student holidays from other parts of Europe, has had £50,000-worth of bookings cancelled. So far, the cancellations extend into June and are due mostly to the closure of coastal footpaths and the Pentire headland, as well as the negative pictures of burning animals in the region.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders) has seen exactly the same thing in Torquay. Indeed, the situation there is arguably worse, as Devon appears as just one big red splodge on the maps that are shown on the evening news. One would think that the whole place was covered in yellow "do not pass" lines.
It is crucial that locations are reopened as soon as possible, but the right campaigning is also needed to promote the opportunities that are available in the affected communities. As hon. Members can imagine, many people have asked me to raise their concerns in this debate. The problem is hitting not only areas that have foot and mouth, on whatever scale. One person from Exmoor stated:
"There are no outbreaks of Foot and Mouth on Exmoor at the moment, (and I hope it stays that way) but the tourism industry is suffering just as badly as the other areas are suffering.
My wife and I run a small Bed and Breakfast business … We take up to eighteen guests. and normally in March/April and onwards we are very busy. For the last four weeks we have had no guests at all, and it does not look as if we will have any in the foreseeable future. We have had to date £15,000-worth of business cancelled. Enquiries for the summer and autumn have also stopped coming in.",
Mr. John Butterfill: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. I should like to endorse his remarks, as the problems that he describes are seriously affecting towns such as Bournemouth. There is no foot and mouth in and around Bournemouth, but all the local attractions have been severely affected. The New Forest is closed, as well as Studland in the Isle of Purbeck, which is closed partly because deer graze on the dunes. Hengistbury head is closed because there are some sheep there. My area is just as affected as those to which the hon. Gentleman refers, and the letters that I am receiving from my hoteliers bear out everything that he says.
Mr. Taylor: The hon. Gentleman is right, although he will agree that we should concentrate also on the huge number of attractions and hotels that are still open.
I should like to give another example from my constituency. As I said, we do not currently have foot and mouth, and I hope that it stays that way. However, the Rosevine hotel says that the footpath along the coast into Portscatho, the local village, is closed. The path is 400 yards long, but the alternative route is a car journey of three and a half miles. The path has never been grazed by livestock in living memory and it provides no access into livestock areas, but it remains closed. The hotel has lost 84 per cent. of its bookings, and has already lost a total of £19,000.
Mr. Andrew George (St. Ives): Does my hon. Friend share my concern about a parallel outbreak involving a

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contagious human disease? I refer to the spread of benefit-of-hindsight disease, whose symptoms are brass neck and severe memory loss. The human race is also being affected by the disease of panic, which is out of place. As my hon. Friend points out, there are no outbreaks in Cornwall, so we should establish ourselves as a livestock island and a disinfected route through which humans can make their visits and enjoy their holidays. Cornwall is open for business, and we must shout that out loud from this place. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing us the opportunity to do so.
Mr. Taylor: I agree with all that my hon. Friend says.
I should like to give a further example of how badly businesses are affected. I have received a fax from somebody in Dartmoor,who says:
"Our last customer was on the 27th of February. The bunkhouse has been shut since then thus its income is zero. We are no longer operating courses and holidays on the moor, we have managed to run a couple of groups in Sussex and in South Devon but we have no more bookings. We would normally bring about 1500 people to Dartmoor each year—this year it is likely to be less than 200 and they will be at the end of the year.
If this crisis is not brought under control very soon we are going to lose the summer bookings. It is doubtful whether we can survive until September without an income but if we did and we lost all summer income we are unlikely to survive the winter!"
This problem is destroying tourist businesses and we need urgently to shout from the rooftops the opportunities that are available.
Several hon. Members rose
Mr. Taylor: I shall continue to give way to hon. Members. I hope that they will bear in mind the fact that their interventions will extend the length of my speech, but I am aware that it is helpful to allow everyone to make their points.
Mr. John Burnett: I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate at such a crucial time. Does he agree that decisions about which locations stay open and which stay closed rely on detailed scientific advice? Local authorities and councils do not have the necessary expert scientists, so will he confirm that central Government must concentrate on the matter and give authorities the most detailed possible advice and guidance about what should and should not stay open? Furthermore, does he accept that emergency powers should be given to councils, to enable them to move stock from small areas of common land, whether or not it is infected, so that such areas can be opened and stay open?
Mr. Taylor: My hon. Friend represents an area which has been hit hard by the outbreak, so he has direct experience of the positive efforts that have been made and also of the difficulties that are dragging us back. I agree absolutely that the Government have a key role to play in providing resources, back-up and information to the local authorities and to other emergency planning groups. That is largely why I sought to initiate this debate. In my county, an extremely good group is working out of county hall to bring together all the
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relevant services. I think that that is happening in most other areas. The group is struggling, however, as it does not have the necessary expertise. It is under-resourced, as the problem is costing a lot of money—a point on which I shall comment further in a moment.
There is some good news. For example, the National Trust is now reopening properties in Cornwall. It is concentrating on car parks that provide access to beaches, provided that they are located within non-risk areas.
The hugely successful Eden project is in Cornwall. Many people are visiting it, but they are mostly local because those outside the county wrongly believe that Cornwall is closed. Newquay zoo has reopened, but the enforced three-week closure has cost it £40,000. Only seven years ago, the current owner won the national small business award for turning a failing business around. Like other attractions, the zoo has been closed for the winter and relies on the income stream that begins to flow at this time of year. It is terrified of the impact of the adverse publicity.
Foot and mouth disease is affecting not only holiday businesses but businesses linked to them. For example, Millmans coaches, which is based in Dartmoor and has 16 coaches, has asked me to raise its case. Millmans usually take schoolchildren from the midlands and the south-east to residential centres on the moors. That cannot currently happen because the moors are closed. Devon county council has cancelled all extra-curricular activities and agriculture colleges are cancelling field trips. The company's bookings have inevitably been cancelled. It has lost some £20,000 and it is in serious danger because of cash-flow problems.
Mr. Nick Harvey: My hon. Friend made the point that some small tourist businesses have just come through the winter months when they have almost no income. They are reflecting on the prospect of earning little if any income in the next few months. Does my hon. Friend agree that the benefits system is too inflexible to respond to those dire circumstances? Other hon. Members and I have fought cases in the past on behalf of constituents who have no money in the winter but are told that the income must be averaged over the year for benefit purposes. If they have no cash at the end of the winter period and will not now receive any, it is essential to fine-tune the benefits system to help them through these terrible times.
Mr. Taylor: It has long been a problem in the tourist industry that work comes in relatively short blocks, whereas the benefits system assumes that people are either in full-time, permanent, long-term work or not in work. That needs to be changed. I pressed the previous Government to change the system, and I hope that the current crisis will spark some rapid action at least on some temporary measures. It is not only businesses that are affected but those who are employed by them. Many people in my constituency depend on summer business in the local hotel or restaurant. Most of them find that they are not being taken on or that they are being laid off.
As I said earlier, Cornwall is largely unaffected by the infection, but Carbeil caravan and camping park stated in a letter to me:

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"Enquiries for information and literature for our Park and Cornwall in general have become non existent".
That refers to future bookings. The letter continues:
"No bookings are being received. These should start to come through now, not just for now but for the whole of the Summer months.
Coastal Paths are closed; this is our main source of income at this early start of the season".
That is a key point. At this time of year, walking holidays maintain the business. The 1etter goes on to say that the proprietors
"Desperately need Easter trade but need money to finance advertising".
They cannot advertise to try to deal with the problem because, as they say in their letter:
"If we are spending what little money we have on advertising will the enquiries/bookings arrive? A difficult question in normal pre-season incentives".
They simply do not know what to do.
My office has received distressing phone calls from people in genuine personal need. They do not knock the Government; some try to cast blame, but all are desperately anxious about their future. My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. Õpik) referred to our negative image abroad. The impression is given that the country is closed and that people cannot visit it. The British Tourist Authority hr s highlighted the problem, but I do not believe that it has the resources to overcome it.
Let me cite a couple of examples from colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) has been contacted by the City of Bath further education college, which received a fax cancelling a visit of a group of German students. The fax states:
"Much to our regret we have to cancel our stay at your college from 28th March to 12th April 2001 because of foot and mouth disease. The Ministry of Agriculture"
that is the German Ministry of Agriculture—
"has given advice to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs to stop all trips to England within the near future."
It is no wonder that we have a serious problem if such advice passes between German Departments and filters down to affect bookings.
My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) had his attention drawn to the position of a coach company in Wincanton in his constituency. It has been forced to cancel a trip for students from Sexey's school in Bruton and King Arthur's school in Wincanton to Lahnau, their twin town in Germany. The coach company has therefore lost business. The mayor of Lahnau told the students that, on the basis of advice from his regional government, they must not come to Germany. Some extreme and incorrect information is being spread abroad. National American television is telling people that it is their duty as citizens not to travel to the United Kingdom.
The problem is currently being tackled by newspaper advertisements, which resemble the sort of information that was published in 1950s and told people to wrap themselves in brown paper and hide under the stairs in the event of a nuclear alert. Not many people will be attracted to sunny Devon and Cornwall by such adverts. Of course, accurate information must be provided. All
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parties have connections with major advertising companies, which are doing all sorts of work, in some cases free of charge. Surely the Government can do better than the full-page. black-and-white adverts.
I appreciate that the tourist associations, with Government support, are planning advertising campaigns in due course to overcome the negative impressions that may remain when the crisis ends, but we need positive advertising now to persuade people to go ahead with bookings and to explain the time scale. We should promote success stories—for example, Torquay and Newquay, which are as open as they have ever been, and new, vibrant attractions such as the Eden project. There is no reason why people should not visit them.
We desperately need to provide the back-up, resources and information to help the opening of the coastal footpaths and to promote other attractions that can be visited safely. The bridleways, cycleways and footpaths in Cornwall total 25,000 miles. They comprise 6,000 paths including 300 miles of coastal path. There are nearly 1 million annual visitors, and walkers bring in £10 million to Cornish tourism. However, almost all the paths are closed and the county is struggling to find the resources to reopen them.
South West Tourism provides regular updates and distributes supplements in the region's daily newspaper, the Western Morning News, which covers Cornwall and Devon. The supplements explain what is open and what people can do. However, they do not reach people from other areas. Only the Government can properly tackle that problem. It is fantastic that so many local organisations, businesses and others are pulling together to get through the crisis, but they cannot do it alone.
Let us consider compensation. The Government have made some announcements, but they are too limited and they affect only the smallest communities. They do not cover all the businesses that are being hit; frankly, they are insufficient. I appreciate that the Government are considering further action, but let me make one suggestion. There is an urgent need to make money available to affected businesses. The Government could cover the cost of the interest. They should be flexible about evidence, but if businesses can show that their problems are related to the crisis, money should be made available. The Government could pay the loan costs and the banks could administer the scheme. Although the banks claim that they are being helpful, they have to operate under commercial constraints. Only the Government can intervene to take the matter further.
The Minister should take a hand in sorting out the diabolical problems with rail services to the south-west. We have suffered a double blow. Not only are direct routes to much of Devon and Cornwall closed, but much of the rolling stock has been transferred to Wales to provide a more frequent service there. That has meant the loss of modern inter-city high-speed trains in and out of Cornwall. That causes further delay and does nothing for the image of access to the county. People believe not only that the countryside is closed but that when it is open they will have to travel on a 40-year-old train. That is unacceptable. Great Western Railways, with Government encouragement, could do something about that now. A bit of good news would be extremely welcome at the moment.

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I wanted to raise the issue of the local authorities and their problems, and I hope that the Minister has taken those points on board. Many local authorities are now spending large sums of money. Cornwall has just authorised £61,000 for the schemes in which it is involved so far; it has authorised £25,000 a week for further work during the crisis; and £250,000 has been set aside since the middle of March. The local authority does not even know whether the Bellwin scheme or some other scheme will help to provide compensation for those costs. It needs to know what funds it can make available, as that will make a difference to what can be done. It has other responsibilities such as education and social services, and it needs to know how to balance its spending.
I have given a large number of hon. Members the opportunity to intervene, and I know that others would like to speak. I understand that it is not easy to come up with quick answers, but I must say to the Minister that quick answers are what those businesses urgently need. Better adverts would at least make a start in showing that the Government understand that those businesses are open and that they want customers. Customers can safely come to the south-west, but the businesses need a bit of help to win those customers back.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Frank Cook): Order. It might be helpful if I advise the House that the convention is to start the Front-Bench contributions 30 minutes before the termination of the debate, in this case at 12 o'clock. That gives us 29 minutes in which to hear from six hon. Members. Many hon. Members have already made interventions, and I ask everyone, please, to bear in mind the constraints under which we operate here, so that all hon. Members who wish to can make a contribution.
11.32 am
Ms Julia Drown: I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Mr. Taylor) on securing this debate, and I echo his concerns for the farmers. Although I do not want to detract from that, I want to concentrate on tourism and the impact that the foot and mouth crisis has had on Swindon. It is important to focus on the positive side of this issue, because there is still a great deal for tourists to enjoy. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the region being closed for business, but we should not use that term, because there is so much in it that is definitely open. That is certainly true for tourists in Swindon.
I see Swindon as the gateway to the south-west: it is sometimes described as the place where the Cotswolds meet the west country. We undoubtedly have some problems because of foot and mouth. Our wonderful country parks are closed. Lydiard park—in which one could normally learn about the chequered history of the Bolingbroke family in one of the finest small historic houses in the country—is closed at the moment. Coate water, where people who are mobility impaired and others can take beautiful walks, is also closed because of foot and mouth. So, too, are the farmers' centre, and Broome Manor golf course, where international golf champions have trained.
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Although we have those problems, Swindon is definitely not closed for tourism. I want to emphasise that today, because Swindon's tourism trade has grown magnificently over the years and we are keen for that to continue. Indeed, we have an ambition to be the fastest-growing tourist destination in Britain. That may raise some eyebrows here, because Swindon has been well known as a boom town and the fastest-growing town in Britain—it is sometimes cited as the fastest-growing town in Europe—but we now want to share that success with tourists from Britain and abroad. We are being very successful in doing so. Last year, we raised about £216 million from the tourist trade, an increase of 73 per cent. since 1997. Tourism is now the second-largest employer in the borough, supporting about 6 per cent. of jobs; it is very important to us.
Many people do not know about the attractions of Swindon. We are not as good at advertising as some places. We have one of the best collections of 20th-century art and ceramics outside London, thanks to the work of the borough council. After the war, Swindon was the first local authority to build a purpose-built art gallery, and it is one of only a handful of local authorities to have collected a nationally significant contemporary art collection, to which it is still adding and which is one of the most important collections outside London.
That foresight is reflected in many areas of the borough council's work. It was the first local authority to adopt a percentage for art policy, and the first to establish and finance an arts centre. It is the only local authority to run a national dance agency, and many of the dance organisations in this country have their roots in the work started in Swindon. We have our own Billy Elliots now: people who came in off the streets of Swindon, never having danced before, now dance in the west end and on Broadway, with companies such as Rambert and others. That facility is in Swindon for people to enjoy.
Swindon has a world-class railway museum, well funded by the national lottery, that has been cited Wiltshire's family attraction of the year by the "Good Britain Guide". The McArthur Glen designer outlet at Great Western village was given two regional tourist board attraction of the year awards. These are all very much open to the public. For younger people, the Brunel rooms, where Billie Piper first performed, is just one of the many venues providing a good evening's entertainment in and around Swindon.
We are aware of the bigger issues involved with travelling to Swindon, and there are some problems with the railways, although the situation has improved recently. We do not have the on-going problems that areas further into the west country are experiencing. We are keen to continue to support the tourism trade, for the reasons that I have outlined. It represents an increasing success in the town.
I want to ask the Minister to comment on a couple of issues that could help tourism in Swindon and across the south-west. First, there is the big issue of getting information out about the foot and mouth problem. Even when that problem did not exist, there was a problem with information. The national helpline was set up for people to call. but sometimes that is tricky because it does not have the information that people on the ground have. If queries could be put through to the

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local tourist information centres, that would be the best thing. Our centre in Swindon helps about 180,000 people a year, and it has detailed, on-the-ground knowledge.
Secondly, different people are running websites, and Swindon, too, is launching its own tourism website—it might even be up and running today.The English tourist board and the British Tourist Authority both run websites. If all that information could be co-ordinated across the country, it would be helpful.
Swindon is often the butt of criticism, but I have just given the House a flavour of the rich cultural activities that it has to offer. I invite all hon. Members to come and visit us as soon as possible and if anyone is free on 3 May, our literature festival will be running then. Hon. Members might want to come and hear a very good poet, Jenny Joseph, who is the author of the award-winning poem, "When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple". There will be culture throughout, and Swindon is open. Please come and visit us.
11.39 am
Mr. Anthony Steen: The hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Mr. Taylor) has done a great service to the House. I agree with everything that he said, and I should like to thank him for putting it so succinctly. I have cut my speech by at least 50 per cent., as I do whenever I speak. My speeches are always improved as a result.
The Minister for the Environment recognised the gravity of the situation in his statement on 20 March. I liked that statement because it represented a step in the right direction. However, it was a very small step. The seriousness of the situation in South Hams and the part of Torbay that is in my constituency, which the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders) will tell me is about one third—
Mr. Adrian Sanders: A quarter.
Mr. Steen: The hon. Gentleman says it is a quarter. The seriousness of the situation can only be guessed at. I am worried stiff about the business prospects in my area. Easter will be a watershed. I fear that media sensationalism has given people the misconception that vast areas of Devon are no-go areas full of mass burial sites and closed footpaths. People need the facts, not the latest culling figures. If they do not come to Devon for its countryside and seascape, they certainly do not come for its night clubs.
Let me give an example of how crazy the situation is. In Torbay, a footpath on Churston common, which is on one side of a road, is closed. Immediately on the other side is a massive golf course, which is open for business. That is sheer madness—people do not know what they can do. One of my councillors who was walking on a footpath with his dog was told that that was illegal. Dartmoor is allegedly open to the public, but my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) has just rung me from there to say that it is closed. He cannot stop his car. He cannot go into the car parks. He cannot go walking.
In spite of the whole of south Devon, including South Hams, Teignbridge, Torbay, Plymouth and Exeter, being free of foot and mouth, I believe that Devon
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county council has closed all the footpaths, although nobody knows. People are not coming to Devon, and understandably so. The Minister for the Environment said in his statement last week that the countryside is open for business and that tourists should go there, but that is no good if those who go to the countryside are told that they cannot stop, cannot go into car parks and cannot go walking. Tourists do not know where they can go walking, but they can play golf. Golfers are very welcome, but if people walk across a footpath with a dog, they are not welcome. That is sheer madness—it has to be put right, and the Minister could do it.
Let us consider two hotels in my constituency. The Thurlestone has four stars and 67 rooms—it is one of the best in the area. It has been in the same family since the 1890s, is highly regarded and has every possible facility, including a golf course where people can play. It has a swimming pool and people can swim there. It has grass and greenery and people can walk there, but if they go outside the hotel they cannot walk on the footpaths. The Royal Castle hotel in Dartmouth has three stars and 25 en suite rooms—it is one of the oldest in my constituency. I gather that its figures are down by between 12 and 15 per cent. on this time last year. Much more worryingly, it has noticed a 50 per cent. decline in bookings compared with the same period last year. My view is that seasonal staff will suffer as they will bear the brunt. Also, where will students go when they want jobs this summer?
Health and safety regulations cost a fortune to enforce. Why can they not be relaxed? If I may say so, since they were introduced, the instance of food poisoning has increased. If we got rid of or relaxed health and safety regulations, we could be sure that food poisoning would decrease.
Hotels are braced for a meagre season and they have enormous overheads to sustain. The hotels in a tourist area are intrinsically immersed in the whole rural community and even though south Devon is clear of foot and mouth, the disease pervades the very fabric of the community. Everyone feels affected: the roads are empty in South Hams, the caravan sites are deserted and Devon is like Britain on a Sunday in the 1960s—very little is moving.
Woodlands leisure park is usually visited by 400,000 people each year. The owners are already very worried men—they are all former farmers—and they have closed the park for a month. Pennywell farm, which is another tourist attraction, cannot understand why MAFF has sent out a directive saying that schools in Devon should not arrange visits to farms or farm attractions. Pennywell is deserted and its owners bereft because MAFF has told schools that they must not visit their farm.
Can the Minister please put that right? Can she please make sure that MAFF corrects that message and does not send out any more? If Devon county council has closed footpaths, people should know which ones and there should be clear information as to why. Most people believe that closing footpaths makes not the slightest difference to foot and mouth, which is mostly a wind-borne virus. People who have not gone near an affected area are perfectly safe to walk on those footpaths, are they not?

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The problem is that we are relying on the public to have common sense. I suggest to the Minister that a lot could be done to relax those draconian measures, which should not apply to footpaths away from livestock. People should be able to walk on a public footpath on one side of a road and play golf on the other without having to draw a distinction between the two.
Besides advice from MAFF, the Government could do a number of things to help. If prudent and responsible action has been taken to prevent the spread of disease and attractions have closed voluntarily, the Government could underwrite a business interruption insurance. They could help with committed costs such as feed and business expenses and veterinary and medical bills incurred by farms and tourist attractions. They could suspend all business rates until the emergency is over.
The Government could also contribute the equivalent of jobseeker's allowance to affected companies while they are closed. That would prevent the loss of trained and experienced staff. On marketing funds, they could help to relaunch Devon in 2001. There is also the VAT problem, which could be alleviated by immediate suspension of VAT on entry tickets to tourist attractions until the end of October.
Have those measures been thought about? The Government have to take action, because my area is bleeding to death—not because it has to, but because of totally false and conflicting information that people do not understand and cannot grasp. The Government may not be responsible for this appalling disease, but they are responsible for not clearly stating what the situation is.
I ask the Minister to make perfectly plain in her winding-up speech exactly what the Government are doing to make people understand that south Devon is not closed for business, that the tourist attractions and hotels are open and that people can walk in the countryside without fear of prosecution or of encountering the problems associated with spreading foot and mouth. The Government have a responsibility to make a clear statement, but they have not done so.
11.47 am
Mrs. Linda Gilroy: I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Mr. Taylor) on initiating a debate on a matter that is crucial to all our constituencies in the south-west. Reference has been made to Cornwall, the South Hams and Torbay being disease free. That is true for the bulk of the end of the far south-west peninsula, including my constituency.
I want to make some brief points about the role of cities in the south-west in re-establishing confidence in tourism in a way that helps the countryside. Often, town is set against country, but nothing could better illustrate the way in which each relies on the other for a thriving economy than the current circumstances. The hon. Gentleman emphasised the scale of the tourism industry in the south-west, which is second to none in the United Kingdom in its importance to the economy.
The health of the economies of cities such as Plymouth depends on a thriving economy in the surrounding area. An example that came to my
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attention over the weekend was featured in our regional BBC television programme "Spotlight on Westminster". A fishing tackle business in Exeter street has just been decimated by the impact of the crisis on fishing in the surrounding area. There will be many more such examples unless we can get some confidence back in our tourism industry, but there is every reason to expect that we can achieve that, and the historic cities of the south-west have a key role to play.
Disease-free areas such as those to which hon. Members have referred can become bases from which tourists can undertake visits with confidence and we must provide imaginative, up-to-date signposts to the other facilities that are open for business in affected areas. I recommend that my hon. Friend the Minister work with all the people who, I know, are beavering away on the local taskforce to emphasise that ours is not a can't-do peninsula, but a can-do peninsula. I often refer to Plymouth as a can-do city and I shall give brief examples to illustrate that.
I believe that the Minister visited our area recently, and is aware of the importance of the national marine aquarium. The aquarium, which attracts some 400,000 visitors a year, demonstrates more than any other attraction in our city the magnificent experience that can be had. On 7 April there will be a presentation entitled "The Jewels of Plymouth Sound", showing some of the creatures that can be seen on the shores of the west country—octopus, cuttlefish and, I understand, a fish called "Tom Pot blenny". The aquarium was featured in last Monday's edition of, The Daily Telegraph.
Opposite the aquarium is Dartington Glass, which provides an important industry in the constituency of the hon. Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Burnett).
I want the Minister to realise that such tourist attractions can be promoted in an upbeat way. They can serve as can-do signposts, encouraging people to visit Plymouth and Cornwall with confidence. Perhaps there could even be a twinning arrangement between industries and tourist attractions that are open for business, and others that are not so evidently in that position. Perhaps the aquarium and Dartington Glass, for instance, could signpost that Buckland Monochorum is very definitely open. It is a beautiful garden centre with one of the United Kingdom's finest gardens, which will be featured throughout the country on gardening programmes this summer.
Plymouth also offers much in the way of water sports, and, in the evenings, one of the country's pre-eminent regional theatres, the Theatre Royal. We should make much more use of such amenities. People often try to set town against country, but in the present circumstances we can help each other by being imaginative in promoting our area. The same is probably true of all our cities. The hon. Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) said that hers had much to offer, but so have Bath, Bristol—with its splendid millennium projects—and Wells.
Let me make a final suggestion, which arises from an experience that I had. Earlier, someone referred to the advice that is given abroad. When I visited Turkey at about this time last year, I met members of the Turkish tourist industry. They were extremely concerned about information that we had posted on our Foreign Office

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site describing the state of tourism in Istanbul, and mentioning the dangers of mugging and theft on the streets. They were at pains to demonstrate that that simply was not true.
I hope that the Minister can reassure us that not only our own sites and advice, but all web and internet information that is available across the world, are being monitored to identify both inaccurate information and opportunities to promote the can-do approach that we must make every effort to implement in the south-west peninsula in the next few days and weeks.
11.54 am
Mr. David Atkinson: I too congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Mr. Taylor). The debate could not be more timely.
My constituency—along with that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill), and those of my hon. Friends the Members for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) and for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mr. Fraser), who are also present—is well known to Members. We welcome the conferences of all three political parties nearly every year: we appreciate their business, and look forward to their return.
We in Bournemouth and Dorset have the greatest sympathy for our colleagues in tourism and farming in the south-west, who face devastation. No amount of compensation can make up for the trauma and loss that the rural economy is experiencing. Dorset has been fortunate so far, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West has said, we know from those who run smaller hotels and guest houses in Bournemouth that they are being hard hit by the closure of the New Forest, Hengistbury Head and the nature reserves along the River Stour.
I fear that the entire tourist industry will soon be hit as this national crisis develops. Given last year's fuel crisis, foot and mouth could not have come at a worse time for British tourism. Visitors to Britain are already in decline: there were 2 per cent. fewer last year than the year before, while the number continued to rise in Europe and throughout the world, by 6 and 7 per cent. respectively. Much of that is due to the strong pound, which I accept we can do little about. "You cannot buck the market," as someone once said. But the problem is also due to our high VAT, compared with the competition. We can do something about that, by doing what the French do and offering lower VAT rates for smaller hotels.
Having the most expensive petrol in the European Union does not help much either. The Government are, of course, entirely responsible for that.
Mr. Christopher Fraser: Does my hon. Friend agree that the application of the minimum wage and the working-hours directive have had a very detrimental effect on small and medium-sized businesses in the south-west, compounding the problems that he has mentioned?
Mr. Atkinson: My hon. Friend is right. When faced with the national minimum wage, small businesses—especially those that the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell described as leading .a hand-to-mouth existence—may choose to employ fewer staff, or even to go out of business.
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It is clear that if British tourism is to maintain its vital contribution to the British economy, this Government and the next must restore our competitiveness with the rest of the world. During the present crisis, every little helps—for example, the "business as usual" and "the countryside is open" campaigns. However, as with farming, no quick fix can restore British tourism once the crisis is over. We shall need massive new investment, private as well as public.
The British Tourist Authority and the English Tourism Council, fully backed by the Government, need to plan now to re-promote tourism to Britain—especially in America and Europe, but also among our own people—as soon as the crisis is over. Those plans must not apply just to the areas that are hardest hit, or to those that have been in decline for many years, deserving as they are. Instead of assisting particular areas on the basis of European Union criteria, we should be helping particular industries in their entirety. Tourism, like farming, is one such industry.
A common tourism policy that does not discriminate between areas should not only invest in the regeneration of areas that have run down; it must invest in success, by which I mean resorts such as Bournemouth. To date, Bournemouth has done well to maintain investment from its own resources without major public funding or European Union assistance, but it remains a struggle. It is frustrating, given Bournemouth's courageous investment nearly 20 years ago in an international centre to encourage year-round conference and exhibition trade, to see Birmingham—along with Blackpool and other resorts —making similar investment with the help of considerable public and European funding. We in Bournemouth suffer as a result of unfair competition from subsidised competitors.
This year's standard spending assessment of nearly 6 per cent. for Brighton, compared with Bournemouth's 3.8 per cent.–which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West pointed out at Prime Minister's Question Time on 7 March, is responsible for an increase of nearly 10 per cent. in our council tax—encourages us to conclude that we are suffering from not just unfair competition, but political discrimination.
Mr. Butterfill: Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact that we have the second-lowest police grant in the United Kingdom has forced our council tax payers to subsidise the police? That, too, has pushed up our council tax.
Mr. Atkinson: My hon. Friend is right, and I hope that his comments will be noted by council tax payers as another way in which this Government are discriminating against us.
Bournemouth is making the case to the Government for its development as Britain's world-class resort, based on its diverse range of markets and quality products that continue to receive so many national and international awards. I believe that the Minister was present, last month, when that campaign was launched. She will know that not only does Bournemouth have world-class potential, but that its surrounding sub-region includes the New Forest national park and the Dorset Jurassic coast—which is located in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset and is short-listed

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as a world heritage site. As we all know, beyond Dorset lie the undoubted attractions of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.
My appeal to the Minister is to use the opportunity of the crisis facing tourism as well as agriculture to begin to lay the foundations for a tourism strategy for England and Wales that is fair, does not discriminate, backs winners as well as losers and invests in success as well as failure, and to recognise the potential of Bournemouth not only by words and praise, but by deeds and funds.
12.1 pm
Mr. Adrian Sanders: Tourism in the United Kingdom is worth about £61 billion. It is a growing industry, although it is not growing as fast here as it is in other countries. We always refer to it as a great growth industry, but the fact is that parts of the industry are in decline and have been for some time.
It is important to make it clear that there is a real difference between seaside resorts and rural tourism. Seaside resorts have been in decline for some time. On 4 December 1998, I was lucky enough to initiate an Adjournment debate on the problems facing seaside towns. The situation that I described in that debate has not changed. Seaside towns still have to contend with competition from package tours. They are end-of-the line towns to which people go because there is something to visit and not simply because they want to go somewhere. They also have 180-degree economies, unlike market towns, which have 360-degree economies, and tend to be in peripheral parts of the United Kingdom. They have poor transport links and tend to have local government that has been underfunded for years.
Since that debate, various reports, studies and action plans have been published. However, we have seen little action. We have certainly not seen any money.
The tourist resorts themselves have done a great deal to try to diversify away from dependence on tourism. They have moved into the care homes sector, where they have experienced problems with social services funding. They have also moved into the language school sector. The schools have been a great success in many tourist resorts, but they have been hit hard by the foot and mouth crisis.
Seaside resorts have even become involved in high-tech industries. However, in the past five weeks, in my constituency and in that of the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen), 1,400 manufacturing jobs have been lost. On top of that has come foot and mouth, creating a sense of crisis. Indeed, with our football team at the bottom of the league, we are at rock-bottom.
The serious point is that we have had an urban White Paper and a rural White Paper and that we should now like to have a seaside resort White Paper. At last we have a Government who have recognised that seaside resorts have a problem and tweaked the lottery criteria to try to help. However, that is all they have done. We need more action—a need fuelled by the foot and mouth crisis.
There has been much investment in new tourism markets, but that investment irks many people from seaside towns. They do not object to the development of
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new farm-tourism markets or investment in attractions such as the national aquarium, which the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mrs. Gilroy) mentioned, or in other inner-city developments, but they do object to the fact that investment is being made in new markets in new tourism areas while the areas with experience in tourism are not receiving the same investment. For many of our seaside resorts, the difference in investment levels is making a bad situation worse. I believe that investment should match the level of tourism expertise.
The foot and mouth crisis has created some new problems. Other hon. Members have already mentioned the misrepresentation of the crisis in the south-west. As people cannot get to poor old Cornwall without going through Devon, Cornwall will have no chance at all if people are put off going to Devon. However, large parts of Devon are open for business. It is important that we concentrate on what is open, not on what is closed. Torbay is very much open for business, as are all the seaside resorts around the country.
There are various problems in respect of how rural tourism and seaside tourism are treated. For example, it has been acknowledged that rural tourism has problems, and the Government have said that they will provide assistance to deal with them. Additionally, the banks have said that they will help rural businesses, although we shall have to wait and see whether that happens. Moreover, this morning, South Western Electricity said that it will help farmers and farming businesses. Our regional newspaper is even running a "green welly day" campaign to help rural areas.
It is right for organisations to take such action. However, when a hotel loses a booking, there is no compensation. When a guest house goes out of business, there is no Government support. There is no "yellow flip-flop day" for landladies and other people working in tourism in my constituency, but perhaps there should be. There has to be some recognition that we are all in this together and that the assistance that is available should extend well beyond the rural areas and into the seaside areas.
We have to advertise and inform people about the real situation. Today,I spoke to a publisher and was told that, for about £ 1.5 million, he could produce and distribute to every one of the United Kingdom's 23 million households a four-page newspaper to get the message to everyone that they should come to the seaside resorts—particularly, I should hope, to Devon and Torbay. I believe that £1.5 million is nothing compared with the sums that are being lost. It is estimated that foot and mouth is costing my constituency about £3 million to £4 million per week in lost tourism revenue. As the Minister said, across the south-west, £17 million is being lost each week.
We need immediate cash flow assistance, as is being provided in rural areas. In the medium term, we need a major marketing relaunch of the British tourism industry and particularly of the seaside tourism industry. In the long term, we must examine the infrastructure—rail, road and air links—of our tourism resorts, particularly the coastal resorts. We should also build on the expertise and tradition of the industry in areas that have welcomed visitors down the ages. If we are to expand into new markets, let us have the same

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investment levels in the established areas and not leave them out on a limb. Tourism is all that some areas have, and tourism is in serious trouble.
12.7 pm
Mr. John Greenway: I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Mr. Taylor) on securing this timely debate. He and other hon. Members have given examples of the problems is that they have experienced in their south-west constituencies. They have also used the widest definition of the south-west that we could have hoped for. The south-west is a massive tourist area. Recently, South West Tourism produced figures stating that, in the south-west, the industry is estimated to be worth about £6 billion annually. Additionally—I had not appreciated this—about 25 per cent. of United Kingdom domestic tourism spending is spent in the south-west.
It is therefore not surprising that hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have said that. in the past four or five weeks, as the foot and mouth crisis has taken hold, tourism businesses in their constituencies have been devastated by the cancellation of bookings and the loss of visitors who may have planned on staying for a day, an evening or a short break. The crisis has put off visitors both from within Britain and from overseas. Many of the businesses affected are small and medium-sized, and they cannot withstand they difficulties with cash flow that they are experiencing.
The Minister could not attend the British travel trade fair seminar last week, as she was promoting Britain in the United States, although her Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed), was there. The interesting point was made that many charities are also affected, especially the Youth Hostels Association.
I remember many happy days spent youth hostelling in the south-west, in the constituencies of some of the hon. Members present for this debate. I travelled by bicycle—I am sure that there is a story in that that the media might like to take up—but the point is that charities, too, are in financial difficulties. The problem is widespread.
Mr. Paul Tyler: I should declare a non-pecuniary interest, in that I am a vice-president of the Youth Hostels Association. The hon. Gentleman's analysis is spot-on. Does he accept that the rates relief being given to businesses is of no use to charities? That is a particular problem in the south-west.
Mr. Greenway: I agree: the charities already get that relief. The hon. Gentleman will know that the YHA already has a capital structure plan in place, and I hope that it will be possible to find other ways to help it and similar charities. The effects of the crisis will be devastating. We want young people to get out into the open air, which is what I enjoyed when I was young. I hope that the Minister will take that on board.
South West Tourism has made it clear that the losses are cataclysmic. It estimates losses for March alone at between £70 million and £80 million, and this month's losses are likely to be as much as £125 million. As my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) said, Easter will be a watershed for many businesses.
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However, all the hon. Members who have contributed to the debate have emphasised that there remains a lot for people to see and do in the west country. Much of the coast is not affected, and the numbers of visitors going to attractions make the point graphically. For example, the Roman baths and pump room in Bath normally get 905,000 visitors a year. Although not quite in the million club, the attraction draws a staggering number of people.
Other attractions, such as Crealy Country in Exeter, Flambards theme park, and the Woodlands leisure park in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes, also draw huge numbers of people. The national marine aquarium in Plymouth gets more than a third of a million visitors every year, and almost a quarter of a million people visit Bristol's museum and art gallery. Those examples demonstrate that there are places for people to visit that are unaffected by foot and mouth, and we should promote them.
I was also favourably surprised to learn that the Tate gallery in St. Ives—which I do not think is in the constituency of the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler)—gets 180,000 visitors a year. There are no problems at all with foot and mouth in that part of the world.
Mr. Steen: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister has a serious obligation to the House and the country to make a clear and unequivocal statement about what land can be walked on and where people can go? Is not the present muddle inexcusable?
Mr. Greenway: I agree, and I shall speak about that in a moment, but first I wish to touch on zoos, a matter in which I have a constituency interest. The west country has several zoos of national importance—at Bristol, Paignton and Newquay—and it also contains the Combe Martin wildlife park, and Longleat, with its famous lions. There is a similar zoo and theme park in my constituency: Flamingo Land draws more than a million visitors a year.
Some zoos have closed voluntarily, while others have been closed for the winter period. Flamingo Land is due to reopen on Sunday 1 April, but it has received no advice from MAFF about what to do. Farmers with property surrounding zoos are petrified that people will bring foot and mouth and that their animals will be affected. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will help zoos and wildlife parks throughout the south-west. Will she ensure that the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is aware of the problems that those attractions face? They need urgent advice and action on their behalf.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) made a significant contribution to the debate. I enjoyed meeting the tourism people in Bournemouth last autumn, and I hope that he will let me know how the area's world-class destination campaign is progressing. I was greatly attracted by what the local tourism industry was trying to do.
We welcome the Government's announcement of a business rates scheme, although it is limited and will not greatly help the major attractions, which have rateable values way in excess of £12,000. This morning, I was surprised to discover that the rateable value of Flamingo

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Land is £363,000—up by 51 per cent. this year. I dare say that attractions in the south-west area are similarly affected.
We welcome the rates announcement, but the Government need to go further. They should support businesses with cash flow problems with interest-free loans, as proposed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. The hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell in effect supported that suggestion in his opening remarks. We would expect a reasonable ceiling to be fixed, perhaps of £10,000. Our calculations suggest that a loan scheme would require an outlay of around £500 million, although only the interest-free element would cost the Exchequer in the long run. Such a scheme would make a huge difference to many small concerns.
The Minister for the Environment has suggested that help would be given with regard to postponing value-added tax, national insurance and pay-as-you-earn payments, but the anecdotal evidence is that that help is not being given. One person apparently told his local Customs and Excise office that he had been informed that he did not have to pay his VAT bill, only to receive the response that the office had not heard anything about the scheme. Clear instructions must be issued in that regard.
We welcome what the Prime Minister has said today, but the message must be clear that visitors must keep away from livestock. An element of confusion is still apparent in the message being given out by the Government. The problem is not confined to areas that have foot and mouth, as areas without the disease are also affected. Cornwall, Dorset and south Devon do not have cases of foot and mouth, and they do not want it.
The key is to keep people away from livestock while promoting those attractions that people can attend. For example, local education authorities must stop cancelling school visits and Government Departments must stop cancelling conferences.
I shall conclude with the four requirements that I believe that the Government must meet above all else. First, they must eradicate foot and mouth disease, as the tourism industry knows better than anyone. Secondly, the Government need to open up rural assets such as the coastal paths as soon as it is safe to do so. Thirdly, they must give more funding to the English Tourism Council, and to the regional and sub-regional tourism organisations. Finally, the British Tourist Authority must have a budget and a plan—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East said—to re-promote and re-brand Britain when the crisis is over.
12.18 pm
The Minister for Tourism, Film and Broadcasting (Janet Anderson): I too congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Mr. Taylor) on securing this debate, which could not be more apt. The presence of so many hon. Members shows that the House is very concerned about the situation in the tourism industry.
I shall not refer by name to every hon. Member who contributed, as there is not much time left and there are many important matters to deal with. However, I reassure all hon. Members that I came to this debate from a meeting with my right hon. Friend the Prime
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Minister at No. 10 Downing street; he understands clearly—as do we all—the impact on the tourism industry. We want to do what we can to help.
The first priority, of course, has to be to get foot and mouth under control—whatever it takes. That is not only in the interest of the farming industry; we are now aware that it is in the interest of many people. As Tourism Minister, I am sad that the importance of the tourism industry to the local, regional and national economies should have been brought to the fore in this way. However, I am glad that it has been brought to the fore, because now people understand. Rural tourism is worth £12 billion a year; nationally, tourism is worth £64 billion and employs almost 2 million people. It is the fastest growing industry in the world and, perhaps most important, we estimate that one in four of all new jobs created during the past 10 years were in tourism, hospitality and related activities. I reassure everyone that we understand the importance of the industry. I shall deal with what must be the main priorities—what people want most of all.
When I went to Devon, I visited the constituency of the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) and went to the tourist information centre. I visited a hotel on the edge of the national park. There was no reason why people should not go to it, but, because they were confused, it had been empty for two weeks and the proprietor estimated that she had lost about £50,000. It is clear that better and more accurate information has to go out to people.
Today, my Department is issuing clearer guidance as to what can and cannot be done. We have set up a website to co-ordinate all the websites; my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) mentioned the need for that, and "www.co-ordination.gov.uk" does so. If it does not, please let me know so that we can look at it again. There is a helpline—0845 607 1071—to give people information about what they can and cannot do. The regional tourist boards and information centres will help as well.
Mr. Ian Bruce: In effect, everyone is being told, "Keep off the grass" because there might be animals nearby, yet almost all my tourism businesses rely on holiday camps and campsites that have often been grazed by sheep, but where there is no foot and mouth. Is the Minister saying that once livestock have been moved from such land, it is safe to go there and that we should encourage people to do so?
Janet Anderson:The short answer is "Yes, it is", although I shall have to check. One of the problems with tourism is that so, many issues and policies that impact on it are matters for other Departments—although I do not make that point as a cop-out—so my understanding is that the advice being issued by MAFF is
"Don't go on farmland or open country or walk dogs, even on a lead, unless you are sure that the land isn't used by cows, pigs, sheep, goats or deer."
I think that once the livestock have been moved off the land, there is less of a problem.
Many hon. Members referred to footpaths. I am pleased that, as they may know, the current restrictions on rural rights of way expire on 31 March. Today, Suffolk and North Lincolnshire announced the

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reopening of some of their footpaths. My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment, who heads the rural taskforce established by the Prime Minister, has ordered a ring round of all county councils to ask them which footpaths are open and which paths they can open and to make a health risk assessment because we want more paths open. We very much want the message that Britain is open for business to go out. I understand—not least from my visit to Devon—how important the coastal footpaths are.
We are pleased that the National Trust has announced that it has already opened 160 of its properties. English Heritage will open 200 on 1 April. British Waterways is considering what it can do. We are putting the emphasis on the fact that Britain is open for business.
The hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) mentioned that I could not be at Birmingham last week. I am sorry about that, but I had taken it upon myself to make a two-day visit to the United States. We went to New York; we held media interviews back-to-back; we talked to the travel trade press and tie tour operators. I am very glad that we did so, because they were obviously under a misapprehension. The United States is so important to us—it is our most important market. Last year, 4 million visitors came from it to the UK; they spent £2.5 billion.
One problem is that people in the United States confuse foot and mouth—or hoof and mouth, as they call it—with BSE or mad cow disease . They thought that they could not eat our food or drink our water. At a lunch with the travel trade press, I listed all the places that are still open and told them, "There are all sorts of things you can still do in Devon and Cornwall." There are numerous examples, such as the Eden project or the national marine aquarium, which I have visited, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mrs. Gilroy).
I referred to several cities that American tourists like to visit and pointed out that they were all open for business. A journalist said, "Yes, but how do you get from one to the other?" I replied that our roads are not closed and that our public transport system is still working—[Interruption.] It may come as a surprise to hon. Members to learn that people in the United States like our public transport system; they think that it is better than theirs.
I had to reassure people that there is not a funeral pyre of animals in every field and that we are talking about only a small percentage of our livestock. I hope that that message has got across.
Hon. Members referred to school visits. We have made an approach to colleagues in he Department for Education and Employment pointing out that clearer information is needed. I am told that the DFEE has issued advice to local education authorities and schools that they must take decisions in the light of local situations, taking into account advice from the MAFF chief vet on visiting the countryside. Perhaps clearer advice is needed, so I shall see whether that can be provided.
In the short time remaining, I want to deal specifically with the south-west, which is one of the country's most important tourist regions. It follows that tourism is one
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of the most important sectors in that area. The hon. Member for Ryedale cited the relevant figures, so I shall not repeat them.
There is no doubt that the foot and mouth outbreak has hit the rural tourism industry in England hard. South West Tourism estimates that losses are running at about £20 million a week. When the debate finishes, I shall visit Cornwall where I shall stay until tomorrow afternoon to see the situation for myself.
Mr. Steen: Do not go by train.
Janet Anderson: I am flying to Newquay. Mr. Steen: That is much better.
Janet Anderson: I am pleased to hear that.
Mr. Matthew Taylor: There are two key issues that would make an immediate difference. The first is to sort out the advertising campaign; as I said, words—the black and white method—do not do the job. Secondly, as the Minister is flying to Cornwall, she will avoid the problems on First Great Western, but perhaps she could ask her team to do something to tackle the appalling situation on the railways. Not only do trains not run into Cornwall, but even when they do, they are old ones.
Janet Anderson: I know what the hon. Gentleman means, because I have travelled on those trains. His example is good. I cannot go anywhere to talk about tourism without someone raising the transport issue. That is why one of the most important initiatives taken by the Department, since I have held my current position, is to set up an annual tourism summit with Ministers from every Department. Two summits have been held—the most recent was on 6 March. They are tightly-knit meetings that enable my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and me to tell our ministerial colleagues that when they take decisions about transport, planning or employment law—to which the hon. Member for Mid—Dorset and North Poole (Mr. Fraser) referred—they should remember the impact on tourism.
Hon. Members will be aware that the Prime Minister has set up the rural taskforce, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment, which is meeting as we speak. My right hon. Friend has announced to Parliament a preliminary package of measures for which businesses that have been badly hit by the foot and mouth outbreak will be able to apply. Of course, that does not mean that we are not continuing to monitor the situation to see whether more needs to be done. We are in no doubt about the cash flow problems faced by such businesses because there is no income. We want to do all that we can to get the visitors back. I shall visit the Lake district to help with that.
Mr. Steen: What a nice job.
Janet Anderson: It is a nice job. Usually, we do not have crises in my job, although when they arise we get to grips with them. I reassure the hon. Gentleman on that point.

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The package announced by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment includes help through the rates system, including enhanced discretionary and mandatory rate relief, although I take on board the comments of the hon. Member for Ryedale on visitor attractions. There will be help through the tax system, including the offer to defer payment of taxes and national insurance contributions and the measures on VAT. If that message has not got through to Customs and Excise, we need to ensure that it does. I thank him for raising that issue. With the Small Business Service. we are working on a national helpline to give advice to small businesses.
We are trying to make procedures in the Department of Social Security as fast and flexible as possible. We are increasing Government support for the rural stress network and matching donations made by the voluntary sector.
I will take up the point that the Youth Hostels Association is a charity to see whether we can do anything more about that.
In government, we shall do all that we can to continue to monitor the situation and to help the businesses that are affected and, ultimately, to get visitors back to the areas where it is safe for them to go—to give out the message that Britain is still open for business.

Fire Stations (Wirral)
12.30 pm
Mr. Ben Chapman: I should first express my appreciation of the opportunity to debate this issue, as. among the many public services, that provided by the fire service must rank as one of the most important, with its major roles of dealing with fires and other emergencies, such as road traffic accidents; advising on fire prevention measures and encouraging their implementation; and carrying out inspections for fire safety certification. Those services are provided by trained personnel and paid for through the public purse.
As a service funded by the public, it is only right and proper that the responsible statutory body, the fire service authority, includes representatives of the public as well as representatives of the professionals who provide the service. In principle, that should ensure that the service provided meets with public approval and professional agreement.
My reason for asking the Minister to look at the role played by the fire service authorities, and particularly by the Merseyside fire authority, is that I believe that the checks and balances built into the system of representation may be insufficiently robust, with the result that an authority may take decisions that satisfy neither the public nor a substantial number of the professionals in the service—the firefighters. That is the situation that has arisen on Merseyside as a result of the representatives of the public on the fire authority possibly being out of touch with public opinion, and the opinions of the senior professionals perhaps being unduly weighted by factors removed from the primary purpose of saving lives and property.
Because the Merseyside fire authority has reached a decision that is greatly at variance with public opinion in my local community, I hope to persuade the Minister that it must be carefully considered and, I hope. reversed. The decision that has prompted my raising this matter is the fire authority's decision to reduce the manning of fire stations in the Wirral from 24-hour cover to daytime cover, with night-time cover being based on fire crews on call. One of those stations is in Heswall, in my constituency, where I live.
First, I shall set out the main arguments, as I see them, of the fire authority in favour of its proposal, together with some comments of my own. Before I start, we should all be clear in our minds that, whatever rationalisation is presented for the changes, the underlying motive should not be merely to save money.
To put the main argument baldly, cutting out 24-hour manning reduces staffing costs substantially. The authority argues that the resulting savings in the running costs of the two stations will allow it to shift the emphasis from firefighting to fire prevention. It proposes to fit, without charge, smoke alarms in all the houses throughout the area for which it is responsible. It believes that that provides better value for money. If that argument were reduced to absurdity, we would have masses of smoke alarms, wonderful value for money and no fire stations.
I, of course, have no objection to the devoting of more effort to fire prevention; indeed, I welcome it. But fitting fire alarms does not of itself prevent fires. It merely

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reduces the risk of catastrophic consequences should a fire break out. In any case, although fire alarms reduce the risk of loss of life in the event of fire, they require regular maintenance.
For example, and obviously, batteries must be fitted at regular intervals—a task which is unlikely to be undertaken by the fire service. That may sound like a trivial point, but if the authority seriously believes that fitting fire alarms is a significant contribution to safety and will reduce the need for call-out of firefighters, it must recognise that installation of fire alarms is not a one-off process. It, or someone, must ensure that the alarms remain fully operational. I have not yet heard from the authority its long-term plans on this matter, or the costs that will be involved; but, above all, whatever the arguments on detail, the point remains that fire prevention is complementary to firefighting, not an alternative to it.
What causes public concern is, of course, the closure of the fire stations at night, particularly as Merseyside, according to a statistic supplied by the fire authority, has the highest rate of fire deaths in the United Kingdom: 20 a year. Whatever the relative differences in fire statistics as between night and daytime. what are not the same are the consequences of an emergency particularly in the case of a property fire. People are not around to see a fire in its early stages, and people are often asleep, so the fire gets a strong hold before the emergency services can be alerted.
The authority argues that emergency cover will still be available at night as the firefighters will be required to live within four minutes of the station and be ready to turn out should the need arise. That seems a rather theoretical notion. First, will firefighters be able to find affordable housing within four minutes' access time, by moving house if necessary? Heswall is a relatively expensive place to live. There is a real danger of arriving at the ludicrous situation of losing experienced staff and gaining inexperienced ones, merely as a result of that condition of employment.
Secondly, will firefighters really be able to get up in the middle of the night, get dressed and be at the station within four minutes of the alert, whatever they might have been able to do under ideal practice conditions? I am assured that firefighters are will used to that, but what happens if they get up to find their car windows covered in ice or if they have to drive to the station in thick fog or have some other unforeseen problem? At best, the procedure will add four minutes to the interval between receiving the alert and arrival at the emergency—four minutes that could mean the difference between life and death, or between minor and permanent injury. The latter reservation is shared by those at the coal face: the firefighters.
However, it would not be fair if I did not refer to what some people would regard as a powerful argument in favour of the proposal—the fact that many stations throughout the country operate the proposed manning system. In many cases, however, purpose-built housing is available for firefighters in the immediate vicinity of the station, so that the time taken to respond to an emergency is less of an issue.
My counter-argument is to ask, why degrade an excellent service to save money when the public support the expenditure? Moreover, I understand that the
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normal daytime crewing hours in other stations on daytime manning elsewhere are 9 am to 6 pm. Those hours do not fit the peak hours for call-outs at Heswall, which are 9 am to 11 pm.
Many would argue that the proposed changes to manning would result in fire cover arrangements below the national standard. Moreover, the performance of Merseyside fire service was, in my view, already deteriorating. From April 1999 to March 2000 inclusive, there were in Merseyside increases of 37.7 per cent. over the previous year in the number of fires, of more than 12 per cent. in other emergency incidents, of 11.3 per cent. in dwelling fires, and of 14.6 per cent. in the average time taken to carry out inspections for the issue of fire safety certificates.
In addition, the inspectorate, in the principal inspection report of 9 June 2000, sent a clear message in respect of its
"reservations over the intention to review individual station areas rather than discrete functions/services".
Section 2.8 of the executive summary drew attention to the
"difficulty in validating the Brigade personnel data, which added to the problem of determining the current establishment as approved by the Secretary of State following a number of Section 19 applications over recent years".
Crystal clear guidance is contained in the statement:
"There are opportunities to reduce the 'ridership factor', which could result in considerable savings without changing crewing policies or the current number of appliances".
In other words, there is ample scope to improve efficiency without shifting to day manning, by looking at other areas. The inspectorate's views on that could not be more explicit.
I have also been told, albeit indirectly, that some members of the fire authority have said that, had they been informed of the substantial decrease in the yearly target in respect of fire cover from the national average of 96 per cent. to 90 per cent. by October 2000, they would have voted against the decision taken in November 2000 to close Heswall fire station at night. Comparing like with like on a variety of counts, Merseyside can be seen as the worst performing fire authority in a metropolitan conurbation, so why seek to make it worse, as would happen under the proposals?
I shall now deal with the consultation process. Under section 19 of the Fire Services Act 1947, there must be adequate consultation before final decisions are taken. In fact, I understand that the Home Secretary considers it desirable that the fire authority should not only consult as appropriate, but consider any representation that it receives. A local meeting, convened by the Heswall and District Business Association in conjunction with the Heswall Society, was held at Heswall in October of last year; the fire authority was represented, together with the Merseyside branch of the Fire Brigades Union and, of course, many members of the general public.
It is fair to say that, at that meeting, the fire authority representatives merely reiterated their case, claiming that the proposed changes would not lead to an inferior service. The record of that meeting shows that none of the many members of the public present were convinced by the arguments produced and agreed unanimously to

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oppose the plans to downgrade the status of Heswall fire station. The fire authority also organised meetings at which the tenor of the argument was the same.
Lest it be thought that those meetings were in some way unrepresentative of the local view, let me remind the Minister that I have already presented to the House a petition, signed by more than 2,000 residents—there could have been many more—who object to the proposal. I have yet to meet anyone in Heswall who favours it. I have heard of someone with such a view, but I have not met that person. I have received numerous letters expressing objections to the proposal. Wirral metropolitan borough council has reservations and has expressed its concern that the fire authority is unable to guarantee that all the smoke alarms would be installed before the changeover in shift pattern took place, if it took place.
I feel bound to mention another issue, given that it has been raised by several Heswall residents. Many of them think it unfair that the Heswall station should be downgraded to release money to fund fire prevention throughout Merseyside. As substantial contributors, as council tax payers, to the local council's finances and, through precepts, to the other statutory bodies on Merseyside, they often already feel that they do not get their fair share of the benefits. They question the validity of losing a valuable amenity—the 24-hour manning of their local fire service—so as to provide alarms elsewhere. Others may not wholly agree with that view, but many people hold it strongly.
The Minister will recall that the fire authority should not only consult as appropriate, but consider any representation that it receives. I hope that I have made it clear that there is no sign that the fire authority has taken any account of local residents' views. The consultation process is regarded locally as a sham and as having been predetermined; the conclusion was fixed in some of the circulars that were issued in advance. None of the points made at the meetings or elsewhere have been met, or apparently even genuinely considered. The fire authority's decision-making process is thus flawed. When the representatives of the public do not represent the public view, and when the points made in consultations are ignored, the whole process is fundamentally unsound.
I shall summarise my views. The proposal to downgrade Heswall fire station is based on far too many dubious propositions. The consultation process has revealed that the fire authority has already decided to proceed with the proposal, so the consultation was not at all genuine. The decisions reached by the fire authority have taken no account of local residents' fears. We, in Heswall, have a particularly high preponderance of people aged over 60. So I ask the Home Office and the Minister to reiterate, as I have been told previously, that they are still open to receive representations. The Minister has agreed to meet me and my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hesford), together with the Heswall Society and Heswall and District Business Association; I look forward to that meeting and to advancing further arguments.
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I ask the Minister also to reflect on the points that I have made today and, I hope, having done so, to support my plea for that local issue to be referred back to the fire authority for further consideration; especially, I hope that he will insist that the authority do more to meet the wishes of local residents. I also ask him to look at the wider issue to consider how we might ensure that more weight is given to local opinion when such decisions, which directly affect their communities, are taken in future.
12.46 pm
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Charles Clarke): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Chapman) on securing this debate on the staffing hours at fire stations in the Wirral.
I apologise for the fact that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), cannot be here today because of a long-standing prior commitment. I am happy to stand in for him. I shall pass the full text of the debate to him for his attention, and I shall discuss it with him. He has asked me to confirm that my hon. Friend is right; he has agreed to discuss the situation further and in more detail with a delegation of the type that my hon. Friend mentions. So I hope that further clarification of the issues discussed in this debate will be given at that meeting.
I fully understand the concern that my hon. Friend has expressed today about the proposal by the Merseyside fire and civil defence authority to change the crewing arrangements at Heswall and West Kirby fire stations from whole-time to day crewing, but, before I respond in detail, I should like to set the issue in context.
We have good reason to be proud of the fire service in this country, because it achieves consistently high standards of performance, often in difficult and hazardous circumstances. The fire service's high level of performance in responding to fire calls has been confirmed year after year by the Audit Commission. The latest figures published by the commission show that, in 1999–2000, the fire service nationally met attendance standards in responding to fire calls on 96 per cent. of occasions. In Merseyside, the standards were met on 96.4 per cent. of occasions—slightly above the average.
The inspectorate of fire services is considering, with the Merseyside fire authority, how it proposes to address the issues raised in the inspection report about attendance standards, such as those mentioned by my hon. Friend. I confirm that the ability to meet attendance standards in Heswall and West Kirby is one of the key issues on which the inspectorate will provide advice to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary in relation to the authority's application under section 19 of the Fire Services Act 1947.
In general, the fire service is to be commended for the range of community-based initiatives it undertakes across the country to promote fire safety in the home. With the full support of fire service interests, we are seeking to make a commitment to prevention as the first line of defence against fire, to develop a clearer vision for the service and to set out a clear strategy with targets for improvement.
We want progress to be measured against that commitment. We have therefore publicly set a target of reducing the average number of accidental house fire

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deaths by 20 per cent. over five years. We believe that the current strategy is paying dividends and we are seeing a pleasing reduction in the number of people being killed and injured in fires in the home.
I confirm that my hon. Friend's remarks about fire prevention being complementary, not an alternative to fire safety, are absolutely correct, and represent the Government's position. He refers to the absurdity of having smoke alarms and no fire star ions, but that is not our aspiration; the two must go side by side. We should not undervalue the important role that community fire safety can play in our approach. In particular, the Merseyside fire and civil defence authority has an excellent programme of activity that is designed to reduce the number of preventable dwelling fires and the deaths and injuries that they can cause.
I now turn to the case of the Heswall and West Kirby fire stations that my hon. Friend raised. In November last year, the authority submitted an application under section 19 of the Fire Services Act 1917 seeking approval to change the crewing arrangements at Heswall and West Kirby fire stations from whole-time to day crewing. The application was made following a special meeting of the Merseyside fire and civil defence authority on 6 November at which responses to a consultation begun on 7 August were considered in detail.
I can confirm that Merseyside fire and civil defence authority is defined as a best value authority under the Local Government Act 1999. It therefore has a duty to secure continuous improvement to the way in which it exercises its functions, having regal d to a combination of economy, efficiency and effectiveness.
As I said, the application was made following a meeting of the authority on 6 November and, under section 19(4) of the Fire Service; Act 1947, a fire authority cannot reduce the number of fire stations, fire appliances or firefighting posts without the express consent of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. The authority's proposed change of crewing arrangements at Heswall and West Kirby fire stations would result in a net loss of 14 posts at each station and the proposal therefore requires such consent.
My right hon. Friend has a specific role in considering section 19 applications. He can grant approval only if he is satisfied that the proposals have been sufficiently widely publicised, and in appropriate detail and with adequate time to enable any interested party to make representations; that the representations have been considered by the authority; and that Her Majesty's inspectorate of fire services advise s that the national standards of fire cover will be maint, Lined. My right hon. Friend has to take those three rigid requirements into account, and two of them relate to the nature of the consultation process.
The point about national standards of fire cover was specifically addressed in my hon. Friend's speech, and it is for the chief fire officer to put in place such crewing arrangements as, in his professional judgment, will best meet the authority's statutory responsibility to provide effective fire cover in Merseyside, in line with the national standards.
Day crewing means that professional firefighters are based at the fire station during the, day and the same firefighters then provide cover from their homes at other
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times. To do so, they are linked by pager and they must be able to reach the fire station within four minutes. The four minutes period represents the actual travelling time between home and station, and it is fully tested by timed runs. This arrangement is used by many brigades without difficulty, and has been used for many years in many parts of the country where my hon. Friend's points about the weather and other issues are taken into consideration. However, I am happy to assure him that I shall pass on his remarks about the potential difficulties of the four-minute period to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and, through him, to the inspectorate. They will then be able to address the concerns that have been raised in the debate.
Whether day crewing is appropriate for Heswall and West Kirby is one of the issues to which Her Majesty's inspectorate of fire services will give careful consideration when advising on the section 19 application. The other fire stations in the Wirral—Birkenhead, Wallasey, Upton and Bromborough—are crewed on a whole-time basis and will continue to be so.
On the consultation process, there is no statutory requirement on the authority to consult, but my right hon. Friend considers it important—he has said so on several occasions—that proper consultations be undertaken, so that he can be sure that his first duty, which is to ensure that the proposals have been sufficiently widely publicised, can properly be met.
I appreciate that the section 19 application submitted by Merseyside fire and civil defence authority regarding Heswall and West Kirby fire stations has raised considerable concern locally among residents and the business community. Concern has also been raised, in particular by my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hesford), that the consultation process undertaken in Heswall and West Kirby by the authority has differed from the one in Formby for a separate but similar section 19 application. That application was approved earlier this month after lengthy consideration.
An inspector from Her Majesty's inspectorate of fire services visited the brigade in February to examine the consultation process in detail. His conclusion, at that stage, was that appropriate consultation had been undertaken and that sufficient opportunity had been given for representations to be made. However, once a section 19 application is made, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will also take into account representations that are made directly. As I said at the beginning of my speech, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has indicated his willingness to meet my hon. Friends the Members for Wirral, South and for Wirral, West to take account of their representations as well as the points that have been made in the debate.
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary's primary concern is the maintenance of the national fire cover standards—that is the principal issue. Successive Secretaries of State have interpreted the duty to provide an efficient fire service against those standards. I can give an absolute assurance to my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend and the Home Office will not approve any proposal unless we are entirely satisfied that national fire cover standards will be maintained.
All fire authorities are obliged to review regularly the fire risks in their area against the national standards to ensure that the brigade's deployment of resources is

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updated in the light of changing circumstances. It is important to emphasise that the standards are not just nationally recommended, but are nationally agreed in the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council for England and Wales and in the Scottish Fire Brigades Advisory Council—both constituted under the Fire Services Act 1947 to represent fire service interests in advising the Secretary of State.
The standards dictate the initial attendance to a fire in terms of number of appliances and speed of response. They rest on four main standards of service, according to the risk category of the area, and they assume for each category that a predetermined number of firefighting appliances should attend within a certain time.
The areas currently served by Heswall and West Kirby fire stations are a mixture of C risk, which includes suburbs of large towns and built-up areas of small towns, and D risk, which is mostly rural. The national standards provide that, in normal circumstances, a fire authority should respond to a fire call in a C risk area by sending one pumping appliance to reach the incident within 10 minutes, and, in a D risk area, by sending one pumping appliance to reach it within 20 minutes.
I understand that it is, in fact, the Merseyside brigade's policy to send a minimum of two appliances to all property fires regardless of risk category, so it is ahead of the national standards. That policy will be unaffected by the proposed change of crewing arrangements at Heswall and West Kirby. Obviously, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will want to be assured that that point is clarified by Her Majesty's inspectorate of fire services, and its report will assess whether the area covered by the two fire stations has been correctly categorised for risk and whether the brigade will continue to be able to meet the standards of fire cover.
As I have said, I fully understand the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South and his constituents have about the quality of their local fire service and about whether it will be affected by the authority's application to change the crewing arrangements at the two fire stations. We shall seek advice from Her Majesty's inspectorate and we shall take full account of representations, together with the points that have been made in this debate.
My hon. Friend's driving commitment is to ensure that national standards of fire cover are appropriately maintained, and I assure him that they will be. It is our intention, policy goal and ambition to achieve that side by side with improving significantly the ability to prevent fire in the first place, and to take the steps that he described that would enable us to achieve that aim. The two arms of our policy will work in parallel, without one being carried out at the expense of the other. The most effective way to reduce the number of fire accidents and fatalities is to have both arms of the policy working together, and that is the overall context in which we approach the problem.
I have tried to cover the points that my hon. Friend has made in the debate. As I have said, he will have the opportunity to discuss them directly with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary at an appropriate time.

Hospital Transport (Gloucestershire)
12.59 pm
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I am grateful to have an Opportunity to debate the problems of hospital transport in Gloucestershire. I am also grateful to the Minister for being here to reply.
The provision of hospital transport for patients in my constituency is inadequate. I have received a flood of complaints from constituents who rely heavily on the provision of tram port to and from hospital for appointments for in-patient and out-patient treatment. I shall focus on key aspects of the system that are letting patients down. I want to question the national and local criteria for assessing the patients who receive national health service-provided transport and I am concerned about the funding settlement for Gloucestershire health authority, which has had to divert money from the provision of transport to meet other Government health targets. I shall cite several constituency cases to illustrate the problem and explain that current criteria are incorrect because decisions are taken on a patient's medical condition, not on his or her capacity to travel.
I have corresponded many times with the Department of Health about the problem. It says that if a patient has a medical need for transport, it should be provided free of charge as part of NHS treatment. No one would disagree with that. It also states that medical need depends on the medical condition of a patient, the availability of pub is and private transport and the distance travelled. However, the principle that should apply is that each patient should be able to reach hospital in a reasonable time and in reasonable comfort without detriment to their medical condition. My examples make it clear that that is not the case. I will name only one person because others who have corresponded with me are elderly and worried about their names being divulged.
Mrs. Jackson is 83 years old. I have been in touch with her regularly in recent months. She had to go into hospital for an eye operation and also suffers from angina, but, because she is not in a wheelchair, she does not come within the C2 category for provision of free transport. A 67-year-old patient was sent to Cheltenham general hospital when she cut her leg badly. The hospital refused to provide transport home despite the fact that she suffers from a varicose ulcer on her other leg and is in great pain when she walks. The size of my constituency means that taxi fares are expensive. I met an 89-year-old lady who was forced to pay a £45 taxi fare to and from hospital. One constituent is crippled with arthritis and could not afford to pay the fares. Her daughter had to take her to and from hospital and, on her last visit, had to wait from 8 am to 5 pm to bring her home.
Those cases graphically illustrate the way in which our elderly patients are being treated by the NHS. According to the Department of Health:
"if a patient has a medical need for transport, then transport should be provided free of charge as part of NHS treatment".
How does that square with my constituency cases? The Minister needs to take urgent action to address that shameful problem. The health authority cites funding as the main problem and it is the Minister's responsibility to address that.

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Gloucestershire health authority has introduced a new set of criteria for assessing w nether people need transport. It provides transport for walking patients under the C1 category in four circumstances: first, if a patient is registered blind or partially sighted; secondly, if he or she has a combination of poor sight and total hearing loss; thirdly, if the individual is undertaking oncology treatment; or, fourthly, if he or she is receiving peritoneal dialysis treatment.
Under the separate C2 category, transport will be provided only for patients who are unable to walk and require the assistance of two people from their home to get them to the vehicle and back. Transport will also be provided for patients who are confined to their wheelchair and must be transported in it. The final category includes patients on stretchers who must be transported completely or mainly lying down.
In other words, Gloucestershire health authority is able to provide transport only for hose who are deaf, blind or a combination of both, on a stretcher or receiving oncology treatment or treatment for coronary heart disease. We know that many sick people have serious conditions but do not fulfil hose criteria. They, too, should be eligible for transport.
As a result of those restrictive criteria and the need to redirect funding, patients are not being treated with respect. The criteria unacceptably exclude many patients who desperately need hospital transport. Gloucestershire cannot provide that service because it is obliged to meet national targets that unfortunately do not recognise rural sparsity and the transport infrastructure of the area. Them is little value in diverting money to meet national targets if that undermines other essential services that the NHS was set up to deliver. Hospital transport is an essential service for patients in my sparsely populated rural constituency. The Minister must recognise that they rely on it. There is often no suitable public transport for rural villages.
The Government have increasingly prescribed the way in which health funds can be spent by local health authorities. The problem is that the more that policies are prescribed, the less discretion the health authority has to meet the needs of patients in its area. Thus, spending on initiatives, however worthy, such as the waiting list initiative, ignores the clinical needs of health authorities and prevents them from having the freedom to spend money on local priorities, including hospital transport in Gloucestershire.
The Gloucestershire health authority has revealed that it cut funding for the provision of transport to meet other national targets. In September, the chairman of the health authority wrote to min stating that NHS resources have been made available to meet national priorities, such as improving services for people who suffer from coronary heart disease and mental illness and reducing waiting list times. I accept that those are laudable targets, but the health authority has had to adjust the criteria that determine whether patients in Gloucestershire receive hospital transport free of charge. The changes have saved £170,000 and NHS patient journeys have dropped from 200,000 in 1998–99 to approximately 135,000 in 1999–2000. I am all for saving money and for people providing their own transport when they can, but the criteria are too restrictive.
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Health authorities with a market forces factor of 117 or higher are eligible to receive additional funding, especially for the recruitment and retention of nurses and doctors. The problem of funding Gloucestershire health authority has been a matter of extreme concern to me over several years and its solution is essential for the provision of hospital transport. Gloucestershire receives a lower weighting than it should because it is not considered to be an urban authority. That is because Gloucester and Cheltenham are six miles apart, but they have a high proportion of the council's population, so the authority is not considered to be rural. From a funding point of view, we are neither urban nor rural, so we get a poor deal from discretionary funding because of the market forces factor.
I represent 10 market towns covering almost 1,000 square miles of Gloucestershire, which at the extreme could be 30 miles from the district general hospital in Cheltenham. I say to the Minister in what I hope is nonpartisan way that it is essential that, whoever is elected at the general election, the inequality of Gloucestershire's funding is addressed.
We should broaden the assessment criteria so that when a patient needs transport they will get it. The criteria must be based on the principle of the patient's capacity to travel and not just on their textbook medical condition. Funding should recognise the great distances that patients have to travel in rural areas and the poorer transport infrastructure in those areas. I make no political point about that; it is a fact of life that people in villages have little or no public transport to and from the local hospital.
Often, if there is transport, it does not operate at a convenient time to get people to their appointment, and if the appointment is delayed, it may not be available to take them back home. That is why the emphasis must be on capacity to travel and not just on medical condition. Common sense needs to be applied so that patients are not let down and harrowing cases such as those that I have cited do not happen in future, as I am sure everyone listening to the debate agrees.
I re-emphasise the point that we must treat elderly patients with dignity. According to Age Concern, almost one in three people in my constituency are pensioners, which is among the highest proportions in the country. The elderly can be very confused when they go to and from hospital. It is a stressful time, and it should be a fundamental principle of a decent society that we offer them the basic courtesy and respect of providing comprehensive hospital transport services. I hope that the Minister will recognise that human problem, and I look forward to her positive response.
1.12 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ms Gisela Stuart): I congratulate the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) on securing the time to debate a topic that is clearly of considerable, long-standing concern to him. I note that, last year alone, he wrote to me on the subject and asked questions of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health.
Before I deal with the patient transport service in Gloucestershire, I should like to explain a little about the Government's national policy. Although I do not

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wish to be partisan or to score party political points, I point out that the guidelines were introduced in 1991 and have not been changed since, but there is the question of how they are implemented locally.
The NHS has a responsibility, which it has recognised, to provide transport to get patients to and from hospital if it is considered that their medical condition makes it necessary. That decision is made by a doctor or other health professional who decides whether there is a medical need for transport to be provided free of charge, as part of the patient's NHS treatment. In arriving at the decision, doctors or other health professionals must take into account the availability of private or public transport and the distance to be travelled by the patient. The transport infrastructure therefore informs that decision.
The principle that should apply is that patients should be able to reach hospital in reasonable time, in reasonable comfort and without detriment to their medical condition. The availability and suitability of alternative forms of transport vary from area to area and it is important that local arrangements cater for local circumstances. As a Member of Parliament for an urban area, I am aware that distances that appear small on a map may be terribly difficult to travel. Over the past decade, a wide variety of social, health and similar specialist transport schemes have been set up for different purposes.
There is no intention to undermine such services, but I believe that now may be the time to examine that provision. I strongly encourage all those providing transport for patients in the NHS, social services, local authorities and the voluntary and private sectors to take this opportunity to review their services together to ensure that people can access the range of services they require, that we can make the best use of health and other facilities and that all transport resources can be used most efficiently and effectively.
Having set the national scene within which the Gloucestershire patient transport service operates, I turn now to the service itself. It is important to point out that the service in Gloucestershire fully meets the standards that apply to the NHS throughout England. This debate is not about the quality of the service provided by the trust, but rather about who should receive that service. I see the hon. Gentleman nodding, so we agree on that point.
The patient transport service is too often seen as merely providing a bus service to hospitals, but it is an extremely important service which complements the emergency services of the ambulance trusts, and that additional role is often overlooked. The staff who provide the service are all trained in first aid. They provide care and possible intervention to patients whose medical condition is such that they need transport by the NHS. They also provide help and support to patients at a time when they are understandably anxious about their treatment and are feeling vulnerable.
The Gloucestershire Ambulance Service NHS trust considers the patient transport services vital to the operational needs of the service, particularly when dealing with major incidents such as train or coach crashes. The patient transport service can be called on in
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those circumstances to transport large numbers of walking wounded to hospital, allowing paramedics to concentrate on the treatment and care of the more seriously injured.
In addition, in of their normal duties, staff in the patient transport service are often the first on the scene of an accident where they can provide basic first aid, help and assistance until the paramedic crews arrive. A number of patient transport ambulances within Gloucestershire are equipped with defibrillation gear, which enables staff t treat suspected victims of cardiac arrest within the critical time. Patient transport staff may provide a first response to other life-threatening calls and help to stabilise patients before they are transported to the nearest accident and emergency department.
I stress that the patient transport service is not an add-on to the ambulance service; it plays an integral part in that service and we take it very seriously, as I know Gloucestershire does. Working in the service provides good experience and grounding to staff who wish to train to undertake accident and emergency ambulance duties in the future. I t gives them a good opportunity to improve their driving skills, to gain experience in the handling and lifting of patients, to develop communication skills with patients, relatives and carers and to widen their knowledge of the care and treatment of a wide range of medical conditions.
As the hon. Gentleman stated, a review of patient transport services was undertaken in Gloucestershire in 1999. Its main finding was that there was considerable over-use of the service by patients who did not meet the criteria that apply to the NHS for access to patient transport services. The hon. Gentleman quoted reductions in some o1 the figures. In developing the NHS plan last year, we found huge variations in the delivery of services. We have to establish a common base, so Gloucestershire, rightly, reviewed its transport services.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I do not disagree with the hon. Lady's point that hospital transport was being provided to people who did not need it. However, does she accept that cases such as those that I have cited today are unacceptable? Does she accept also that if there is discretion in the system, as there should be, it should be applied favourably to elderly people, first, because they are likely to be confused and anxious when they go to hospital, and secondly because there is a lack of rural transport in my big constituency?
Ms Stuart: I shall respond to those points.
The national guidelines call for the NHS to provide transport for those patients who have a medical need for such transport. In Gloucestershire, a considerable number of patients who had no medical need for transport to and from hospital received that transport none the less. Changes to the criteria have released £169,000 in the first full year of their operation; that money is now being used to provide health care for Gloucestershire.
I accept the hon. Gentleman's point about conflicting priorities: money is also being spent on reducing waiting lists and improving services. However, it is a matter of ensuring that all those things happen. To put it at its most extreme, it would be no good improving transport

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services if hospital services were not improved at the same time. A balance has to be struck, part of which is to ensure that the right people get tote right service.
I am advised that the local health economy has kept the criteria under continuous review and has already updated the policy to ensure that vulnerable groups, including the mentally ill and frequent attendees at hospital, such as patients having renal dialysis and cancer treatment, continue to receive NHS transport. Other exemptions are made on a case-by-case basis. If the hon. Gentleman believes that any of his constituents who should receive patient transport have not done so, I recommend that he contacts the trust involved and asks for a review of the individual cases. From my knowledge of some of the cases that he has raised with Ministers, I know that he has done that in the past. The system allows discretion to be exercised. but if that does not happen in certain cases, it must be investigated.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am grateful to the Minister for her suggestion. I have indeed drawn cases to the attention of trusts. The problem is that, by the time a case has arisen, it is too late. Is she prepared to write to the trusts today, stating that I have brought the issue to her attention and expressing the Department's hope that in cases involving that discretion, the elderly in particular will in future be treated sympathetically?
Ms Stuart: I have found that., even when debates on such issues are sparsely attended here, all the health professionals concerned keenly read Hansard afterwards. In addition, I shall ensure that they are sent a copy of today's debate, so I am sure that the words uttered in the Chamber today will not go unnoticed in Gloucestershire.
To help to tackle specific cases, each trust in the county has appointed an officer who can permit exemptions to the usual criteria.An example of that exception would be a frail elderly person who encounters difficulty in using public transport or has no family support. The cases highlighted by the hon. Gentleman—those of Mrs. Jacksot and the 67-year-old patient with a leg injury—appear on the face of it to be the sort that should be taken up.
I appreciate that, after the implementation of the new guidelines in 1999. there was some concern about the impact of the measures on voluntary transport providers, who play an important role. Local trusts are currently discussing future opportunities with the South Cotswold volunteer service and Gloucestershire county council.
The hon. Gentleman expressed concern about the perceived poor allocation to his local health authority. I should explain that the Department of Health uses a national weighted capitation formula as the basis for allocating hospital and community health services revenue to individual health authorities. The underlying principle of the formula is to distribute resources as equitably as possible based on the health care needs of the local population. Under the current weighted capitation formula, Gloucestershire health authority should receive £377 million next year. However, the Government are allocating nearly £394 million for next year—a real-terms increase of 5.7 per cent. and more than £161 million more than the health authority received in 1997 under the previous Administration.
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In addition to those allocations. Gloucestershire health authority has benefited from a number of initiatives under the Government's investment in modernisation. Those include £100,000 to identify and implement service changes that will improve cataract services for local patients; £103,000 to help to reduce waiting lists; £407,000 for booked admissions projects—which will in themselves make it easier for patients to plan their journey; and more than £2 million to modernise the accident and emergency departments in the area. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman welcomes those investments and the many others that benefit his constituents.
The hon. Gentleman made clear his belief that the formula needs to be changed because it fails adequately to cover the costs of providing health care in rural areas. In November 1998, we announced a wide-ranging review of the formula used to make cash allocations to health authorities and primary care groups and trusts under the auspices of the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation. The aim is to produce a new and fairer formula that reflects the way in which the new NHS is managed and uses its resource.
The review includes assessment of the health care needs of rural populations and identification of any unavoidable extra costs associated with providing health services in rural areas. Although there can be no guarantees about the outcome of the review, I am aware that this is not the first Adjournment debate in which Members of Parliament representing rural areas have expressed their view that the way in which resources are allocated should be changed.
We know that the announcement of large and complicated reviews can cause a period of uncertainty; therefore, at the time that we announced the review, the Government announced a freeze on further changes to the existing formula. That will help to maximise stability and certainty for health authorities and primary care groups, while allowing the wide-ranging review to take place.
The hon. Gentleman also touched on the subject of the poor public transport infrastructure serving his constituents. All of us know that that problem did not start in 1997; it is rooted in the more distant past. I trust that he welcomes the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister of considerable increases in funding for rural bus services, from £90 million over the past three years to £136 million over the next three. This year, Gloucestershire received nearly £800,000 to help to provide 36 new and enhanced services in Gloucestershire. Next year, there will be an increase of more than 20 per cent. in the rural bus subsidy grant for Gloucestershire, taking it to more than £1 million; that will be followed by a further 15 per cent. increase the following year.
Not all rural areas are alike, and traditional transport solutions are not always appropriate in some of the most remote areas. The rural White Paper also announced our intention that smaller communities should benefit from a new £15 million special parish fund. Parishes will be able to apply direct for up to £10,000 for small-scale projects such as buying a minibus, setting up a social car scheme or a car or moped pool, or paying a bus company to divert a route. through an outlying village,

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which I know has been most helpful in some areas. That will give them more freedom to decide on the sort of help that they need.
I understand the hon. Gentleman's concerns about patient transport, which is a matter that we take seriously. However, the hon. Gentleman raised the question of medical needs and their assessment. We have to draw a distinction between vulnerable groups and patients who really need hospital transport so that their condition does not deteriorate, and cases in which the problem is inability to pay. Therefore, I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the hospital travel costs scheme, which supports low-income patients and allows some reimbursement of such costs.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: It might not be strictly relevant to today's debate, but, in connection with funding, will the Minister take into account the fact that her Department has recently altered the coverage criteria for the southeast living allowance to include Bristol and Swindon? That is causing great problems with recruitment of nurses and doctors in Gloucestershire because in many areas, including the Cotswolds, the cost of living is higher than in Swindon and the rest of Gloucestershire. When a formula is changed, problems always arise at the margin, and that is what has happened as a result of the changes to that allowance. Will the Minister consider whether anything can be done to solve that problem?
Ms Stuart: That problem has been raised in this Chamber before. We continuously examine those matters, because we know that wherever a line is drawn, some people are left on the other side.
In addition to expressing specific concerns about patient transport in his constituency, the hon. Gentleman has stated his belief that we must give the elderly the respect that they deserve and must treat them properly. In that context, I hope that he welcomes yesterday's launch of the national service framework for care for older people. It is designed to provide a blueprint for care and to tackle problems of age discrimination throughout the NHS.
Everyone has a right to first-class treatment in the NHS. In every part of the service, whether in urban or rural areas, we need to identify and meet the needs of those who may be vulnerable. I hope that today's debate will enable the hon. Gentleman to take up individual cases involving decisions that he believes were wrong, although I believe that the overall framework is the right one.

Unemployment (Jarrow)
1.30 pm
Mr. Stephen Hepburn: My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will be pleased to hear that the content of my address will not he as negative as the title of the debate implies. If we practised joined-up government—rather than just talking about it in government—and got down to grass roots to deliver it, the Department of Trade and Industry would have a far easier job in creating wealth in the northern region.
Since we were elected in 1997, a lot has been done and there is much to be proud of in the northern region, especially in my Jarrow constituency. We certainly picked up a poisoned chalice from the Tories. When I see the farmers' present plight, I can do nothing but sympathise with them and hope that they get over their problems quickly. What they are going through is certainly nothing that we have not experienced in my constituency. When the previous Government were in power in the 1980s,lost the mining industry, the steel industry and the shipyards—and that was only in my Jarrow constituency. Decent men were thrown on the scrap heap and forgotten.
I do not remember Prince Charles packing in his holiday and saying, "I'll not go on holiday and I'll not go skiing; I'll stay in the country and look after this tragedy." I do not remember anyone saying that we should have emergency daily Cabinet meetings to sort out the unemployment problems in Jarrow, when all those great industries collapsed through Government inaction. As I said, I hope that the farmers get over their problems; certainly, they have our sympathy because we have been through similar problems.
When I got into Parliament, I was nagged by the question of how we were getting on creating manufacturing job in my Jarrow constituency. Obviously, I am talking about manufacturing jobs, but that is not to demean other areas of the economy. None the less, manufacturing jobs are important in Jarrow, as they are in Tyneside Tyneside communities and towns in my constituency were built on the back of manufacturing, and that will always be the case. When I asked the Chancellor how many manufacturing jobs had been created since the election—given concerns about the running-down of the industry in the past—I was careful to take into account manufacturing jobs that had been lost in the same period. I was pleased that there was a net gain of more than 800 manufacturing jobs in Jarrow; that shows that the manufacturing sector in my constituency, which reflects the rest of Tyneside, is picking up.
In the same period, thanks mainly to the new deal, youth unemployment has dropped in Jarrow by a massive 75 per cent., and long-term unemployment has fallen by an impressive 63 per cent. I am wary of using percentages in talking about unemployment because, even if there is only l per cent. unemployment, people within that percentage are 100 per cent. unemployed. However, I use those figures showing a massive decrease in unemployment to give an indication of where the Government are going and how they are tackling unemployment.
We are delighted at the way in which all sectors in the north have taken up the Government's challenge to work in partnership. Of course, that is not a new

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initiative. It was started by the Tories;, but the difference is that we want it to work. If it is to do so, every part of the partnership, whether the private sector, the Government sector, Government agencies or trade unions, have got to have an input, and feel that they are valued and being listened to. Above all, they must feel that they have made a contribution. Under the previous Government, the only sector that got to make a contribution was the private sector, so partnerships did not work. I am pleased to say that partnerships are now working on the Tyne, and there have been some landmark agreements between employers and trade unions in ship-related industries.
Employers, trades unions and politicians formed a unique group called the Tyne Mantime Group under the chairmanship of Kevin Cup ran, the regional secretary of the GMB, and a north-east member. A charter has been agreed with each Tyne company that is involved, which addresses basic but important issues such as health and safety, labour agreements and training. It also deals with contracts between companies—if one company is quiet another will help it out—and exchange of labour during boom times in the industry.
The Tyne Maritime Group will play an even greater role in promoting Tyneside as a cluster of shipbuilding expertise. It is the first time that employers, trade unions and Government agencies have worked together to promote that great Tyne industry, which made our communities what they are. Employers are not doing that from benevolence, but because I hey know that if the Tyne is working and there is shipbuilding and ship repair on the Tyne, the rest of Tyneside is working. Tyneside was built on the shipyards; it will survive and, indeed, prosper through them in future. We are therefore making marvellous progress.
I do not want to create the impression that everything in the garden is rosy, however—it i not. We have done a lot, but we have much more to do The average age of a skilled worker on the Tyne is new 50, owing to the running-down of the shipyards in the 1980s, which I have already mentioned. A whole generation between the ages of 25 and 40 has been lost. We must address that urgently if we are to benefit from the skills of the 50 year-olds, which need to be passed to young apprentices to make the Tyne prosper. If we do not do that immediately, the Tyne's maritime industry will go, with the loss of lots of jobs, signalling the end of Tyneside as we know it.
That is the main issue addressed by the Tyne Maritime Group, whose members are working together and promoting the area. However, they can only succeed with Government help. I shall come to that point later. The Tyne is doing well it present and is the envy of the country. For example, Swan Hunter has orders totalling £130 million for Ministry of Defence supply vessels, and Cammell Laird has placed a bid to build £340 million-worth of cruise vessels. We are still waiting for clarification of the Cammell Laird contract from the DTI, and I hope that the Minister will deal with that today. There is an order to build a floating production and storage vessel at Aker McNulty's and, of course, last week the Prime Minister made a great announcement of 2,000 jobs that would be created by AMEC in a massive contract for Shell, again for production and storage vessels.
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Basically, a lot of work is going on, but we have skills crisis which, I hope, is being addressed. There is a contract with the MOD on the horizon for a £1 billion aircraft carrier, but to build that we need a skills base. What was a sunset industry under the Conservatives has become a sunrise industry under Labour, and the orders that I have mentioned have given us a much-needed boost.
However, I cannot let this opportunity pass without mentioning the disappointment that I share with all of Tyneside at the MOD's decision to give a contract for the construction of roll on/roll off ferries to Germany. I see from the newspapers that the MOD has been experiencing difficulties with the Weir consortiums on commercial issues. It has taken control of part of that order and has placed the construction of two ferries directly in Belfast. I only hope that it sees the light, has the guts to take over the rest of the order and gives it to Merseyside and Tyneside. That would create an extra 1,500 jobs, and another 1,000 jobs would be created in local businesses and suppliers; it would inject £650,000 of workers' money into the local economy. We cannot ignore that. That is what joined-up government is about. The DTI is doing much to create wealth and jobs in the area, but what on earth can it do when the MOD turns round and stabs it in the back?
I shall finish my contribution by saying something about the public sector and its role in job creation and joined-up government. Again, I believe that the DTI has been let down by other parts of the Government in its efforts to create jobs and wealth in the northern region. In the past, Governments have had the nationalised industries in the north through which to regulate employment levels. If they wanted to create jobs, they would put in more investment, the number of apprentices would go up and output would increase. Now, of course, we do not have the nationalised industries. They have gone, but we have the public sector, which is in an ideal position to take over the role of boosting the economy in the northern region. It is already one of the largest employers in the region.
Over the border in Scotland, there is a vastly better grant allocation system, owing to the Barnett formula. In the north-east, we are told about the million-pound divide—
Mr. Ronnie Campbell: I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He just touched on an important point. My daughter lives in Sussex, and me and the wife were down there with her at the weekend. It is a lovely little village and we went to the local pub and had a drink on Sunday night. Some people were playing cards in the corner, and someone came in and asked, "Have you sold all your shares? Did you panic and sell your shares?" Someone else said, "No, no, I have kept my shares." The conversation among everyone was about shares. The barman said, "I was buying when you were selling, because I was buying cheap." Imagine that conversation back home, in a pub in my constituency or that of my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn). It would more likely be, "Hello, Joe. When do you get your giro? Did it come on Saturday?" and the reply would be, "No, no, I had my incapacity benefit."

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That would be the conversation. That is the difference between the north and the south—and to some extent, with Barnett, even Scotland.
Mr. Hepburn: My hon. Friend is right, and Ministers must grasp the difference. We need extra investment in the north. We need extra public investment, and that can be done through a Barnett formula 2. The conversation in the south is about which shares people have. In the north, the situation is vastly different. We have struggled in the past, and the only way that we will drag it round is by means of a Barnett formula 2. If it were the same formula as in Scotland, that would put an extra £1 billion into Tyne and Wear, £100 million on to the budgets of South Tyneside councils and 50 per cent. on to Gateshead council's budget.
The DTI has been let down. It is promoting regional development and the concept of One NorthEast, but how can One NorthEast compete with the Scottish Development Agency, which is working under an entirely different funding regime and a vastly better one than in the north-east? I am not suggesting that Scotland should come down to our level—rather that we should go up to Scotland's level, to allow us to compete for jobs and promote our area.
I heard—or read in the newspaper—with pleasure that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor had said that, after the election, millions of pounds would flow from the south towards the north. I assume that that is an indication that they plan to tackle the Barnett formula, to the benefit of the north-east.
We have come a long way since those dark days when the only announcements in Jarrow were about another closure or further lay-offs, but with 2,492 people still unemployed, I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will agree that we have a long way to go. If we are to achieve the Chancellor's goal of full employment—a dream that we never had in the past, in the dark days of the 1980s when lay-off followed lay-off—we need to achieve the goal of joined-up government. Until we achieve that, with the MOD and the Treasury working with and helping the DTI, we ain't going to get there. I have great hope for the next Parliament and for a new Labour Government who will address the problems that I have outlined.
1.45 pm
Dr. David Clark: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn) on obtaining the debate. I intervene briefly, as his constituency and mine are inextricably linked. Ours are the two authorities in the South Tyneside local authority. My hon. Friend spoke about partnership, which is a matter that I want to raise with the Minister.
We have done extremely well over the past few years under the Labour Government. We had the unenviable reputation of having the worst unemployment record in England. Currently, the level for South Tyneside is 11 per cent. out of work. The two constituencies are neck and neck, although in South Shields the official figure for male unemployment is still 18.1 per cent. One in five men is currently out of work.
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As I said, we have made great progress. We are well on the way, but I urge the Minister to start drawing up plans to take our progress further under the next Labour Government. The new deal has been a success. In South Shields, 2,000 people entered the scheme, and 900 of those young people have entered full-time employment. That is a great tribute to the Government, but we take the responsibility on ourselves, as well. It is our responsibility to pull ourselves up by our own bootlaces.
I hope that we will have every assistance from the Minister, working across government. If we speak of worthwhile jobs in the future, we are speaking of highly skilled jobs—jobs requiring high educational attainment. I am delighted that in the key stages examinations in English, there has been an 11 per cent. improvement over the past four years, and we are almost up to the national average. In mathematics, there has been a 21 per cent. improvement in attainment, and we are better than the national average.
I make that point because I want to get across to the Government the fact that we recognise that that is the result of a partnership not only between Government Departments, but between the people of South Tyneside—the people of Jarrow and South Shields—and the Government. If the Government continue to give us the tools to help ourselves, we will deliver in South Tyneside. That is my message. We have made tremendous improvements and tremendous progress, and I am very optimistic that, after the next general election, when we have a new Labour Government, we can move forward tnd reduce those horrific levels of overall unemployment from 11 per cent. to the national average.
1.46 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Al in Johnson): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn) on securing the debate on issues that are obviously close to his heart, and close to the hearts of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark), whose point about the Labour Government continuing to promote social progress and attack social exclusion is well made, and of my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell), who was helping to bring civilisation to Sussex at the weekend. I can well imagine a similar conversation taking place in a pub in West Hull. I hope that he sympathises, though, because, although there are many good things about living in Sussex, you also have to drink the beer. That is a very big difference between our constituencies and the constituencies in Sussex.
I am well aware of the excellence that exists at Tyne shipyards and of the important role that they play in the local economy. I am also aware that those shipyards, like shipyards throughout the UK, face difficult challenges. However as my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow said, the situation has been transformed under this Government. There have been considerable improvements in the prospects for Tyneside yards in recent months. It is worth elaborating on some of my hon. Friend's points about the success of Tyneside companies involved in both shipbuilding and the related offshore fabrication sector.
Swan Hunter at Wallsend has secured a major contract to build two troop landing ships for the Royal Navy, which will create up to 2,000 new jobs at the yard.

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In addition, it has secured a contract from Kerr McGee to build an FPSO—a floating production, storage and offloading facility—which will create a further 800 jobs. Between them, those contracts are worth almost £300 million.
On Cammell Laird, before I deal with my hon. Friend's question, I can tell him that the UK's largest ship repair and conversion company recently completed a passenger ferry for a Norwegian owner at its Hebburn facility. That was the first ship to be built on Tyneside for seven years. The UK's other major ship repair and conversion company,
A & P, remains a major presence on the Tyne.
With regard to Cammell Laird, there is the prospect of building the first cruise liner in this country for many years. At this delicate stage of negotiations, when we are continuing to talk to Cammell Laird and to Luxus, I can say nothing more helpful than that he DTI has gone to extraordinary lengths. We have made an exceptional and unprecedented offer aimed a helping Luxus to attract a commercial lender to share the risk, so that the project can proceed. We are continuing to talk to the companies about the proposal. We share my hon. Friend's concern that we should leave no stone unturned in our efforts to assist in any way du t we can. That work is still in progress. It would be wrong to go into further detail, however, as sensitive negotiations are under way. Along the river from my hon. Friend's constituency, Aker McNulty has had success in the FPSO field. The most recent good news is the award to Amec by Shell of the Bonga contract, which will create 1,000 jobs in Wallsend and another 3,000 in the UK, many of which will be in the north-east.
Such contracts are not won easily. Neither my hon. Friends nor I are complacent about the difficulty of sustaining that level of activity on the river. The developments show, however, that the industry is alive and well on Tyneside and that we have companies and a work force with the skills, technology, ability and determination that are necessary to succeed in a competitive global market.
The key challenge facing tin UK shipbuilding industry is to improve its competitive performance. We recently published a White Paper entitled "Enterprise, Skills and Innovation: Opportunity for all in a world of change", which developed some of the themes raised in this debate. It deals particularly with education, skills and training, which are especially important for the future. It is for a second Labour Government to take those forward, providing that we receive the electorate's support. The White Paper also explained how we are helping British businesses to respond to challenges in five key areas: developing a more highly skilled work force; building prosperous regions and communities; investing for innovation; fostering enterprise; and ensuring that markets operate effectively and fairly.
We are working closely with the shipbuilding industry to help it to improve its competitiveness. As my hon. Friend said, we have established the shipbuilding forum to facilitate that process: for the first time in the history of this maritime nation the shipbuilding industry, its work force and the Government are sitting down around the same table to discuss the industry's problems. The forum was established thanks to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle), who introduced the initiative.
322WH
The shipbuilding forum has taken forward a great deal of work, and my Department is committing substantial funds to competitiveness projects. For example, we are contributing £2.8 million to the link research project, which is led by the Shipbuilders and Shiprepairers Association, to help the industry to identify where improvements are necessary. We are providing grants of £176,000-50 per cent. of total costs—towards a three-year marketing project that is aimed at generating new orders to match the increased production that the link project is expected to generate. We are also introducing an idea that was developed by the trade union movement to improve skills and training. Indeed, an initiative is currently under way in my constituency to advance that aspect of the forum's work. We are also considering creating a pilot training scheme within a selected area. That proposal is based on the excellent training initiatives that are already under way on the Tyne.
There are concerns in shipbuilding about Korean competition. I know that my hon. Friend is aware of those anxieties, as we had a meeting about them recently. The Government are still aware of the matter and we are considering carefully whether to support World Trade Organisation action. Our preferred option was a bilateral agreement between the Commission and Korea, but Korea has recently been extremely unwilling to restart the talks that began last year, so we may not have any alternative but to pursue WTO action. That would be time-consuming and bureaucratic, but it might be the only course open to us.
Before I deal with some of my hon. Friend's other points, I should like to comment briefly on the marine export partnership, which my Department launched earlier this month. The initiative seeks to strengthen the promotion of British marine industries, including the shipbuilding, conversion and repair industries, to overseas markets. It is supported by Trade Partners UK and brings together the trade promotion work of the DTI and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which are trying very hard to achieve the sort of joined-up government to which my hon. Friend referred. People often use platitudes when they speak about joined-up government, but I know from experience that it is difficult and complicated to achieve. The marine export partnership is another attempt to achieve joined-up government, and we are providing it with support of more than £100,000 during the next 18 months.
The shipbuilding market remains difficult. I am encouraged by recent developments on the Tyne. Few shipbuilding regions in the UK can match the range of new building, conversion and repair capabilities that the Tyne yards now possess, building on their proud history. I assure my hon. Friends that the Government will continue to work closely with those yards further to enhance their competitiveness and to help them to win new and vital orders. In particular, we want to help them to deal with the problem of a work force who are dedicated and skilled, but who are ageing, like many of us in this Chamber. We must tackle that problem, which is probably the most serious challenge that the industry faces. My hon. Friend's point about that was well made.
My hon. Friend spoke about the wider problems in his constituency. Unemployment is a huge concern to us all and was one of the major challenges that faced us when we took office. This month, we took great comfort

323WH
from the announcement that the number of people who are unemployed has dropped below I million for the first time since 1975. At the same time. we have the lowest long-term interest rate since England won the world cup and the lowest inflation for 25 years. Prices are rising at the lowest rate since 1973 and the economy has grown by 2.7 per cent. per year since the election, in contrast with the abysmal performance of the previous Government, who presided over the worst growth record since the second world war of any country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—and we were told that the Conservative party was the party which could run the economy.
Reducing unemployment in the context of that stable economic platform is a tremendous achievement, but I agree with my hon. Friend that somebody who is unemployed is 100 per cent. unemployed. We have to work towards the target of full employment—a goal which was announced recently by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.
Mr. Ronnie Campbell: I was wondering about the Barnett formula, which my hon. Friend has not mentioned, even though my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn) did so. Scotland was given the Barnett formula all those years ago in the 1960s because it had high unemployment, and because shipyards were closing on the Clyde and in other such places. As we have made clear, our area is now in the same position, so why can we not devise a Barnett formula for the north-east? We get blanket replies to that question. I can see that my hon. Friend is trying to avoid it, but I am trying to get him on the right track and to get some words out of him.
Mr. Johnson: I was rather hoping to avoid the Barnett formula, but I accept my hon. Friend's point. I am not equipped to speak about any plans for the Barnett formula, but I can say that the initiative announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who knows a thing or two about Tyneside, is geared towards the need to ensure that the prosperity that is created from our fine economic record does not leave people out in particular areas, such as my constituency and those represented by my hon. Friends.
324WH
Perhaps this assurance will not solve the Barnett formula problem, but I can say that the funds that are being generated and distributed through the regional development agencies are directed at tackling those very problems. Such assistance seeks also to deal with earnings problems and the traditional earnings gap between the north and south. Thanks to the minimum wage and many other initiatives, that gap narrowed considerably this year. From memory, I think that earnings have increased by 4.7 per cent. in the past year, whereas in London and the south-east, they increased by about 1.2 per cent That is the first indication for many years that some of these problems are being tackled. Unfortunately, however, we may have to wait for another debate before questions about the Barnett formula can be given a more lucid and comprehensive reply.
Mr. Ronnie Campbell: I feel an Adjournment debate coming on.
Mr. Johnson: I hope that I will not be the Minister who responds.
Economic stability is helping UK areas to prosper, but my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow makes a valid point. Unemployment has fallen in his constituency and in the north-east. Spectacular gains have been made, although they are lower than the national average. In his constituency, the reductions are lower than the average in the north-east in general. It is, however, worth repeating that unemployment in the north-east has fallen by 27 per cent. and by 39 per cent. in the UK since 1997. As my hon. Friend rightly said, long-term unemployment has fallen by 63 per cent. throughout the country.
I should like to return briefly to the recent successes on the Tyne. The projects were not won because of hidden subsidies or state intervention, but because the best of our businesses and work force are truly world class and can compete with all corners. Having created a stable economy, our next challenge is to ensure that all our businesses, regions and work force benefit from that stability. It will not be easy, but that objective can be achieved if Government, business, education, trade unions and Members of Parliament work together.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at one minute to Two o'clock.

DEFENCE

  Ro-ro Ferries
  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn) of 28 February 2001,Official Report, column 665W, if the British seafarers referred to by the Chief of Defence Procurement are required to be sponsored reserves; [155391]

  (2) how much his Department intends to charge AWSR Shipping Ltd. for managing the subcontract with Harland and Wolff for two ro-ro ferries; and what safeguards his Department has put in place to ensure that when on his Department's business all six ro-ro ferries are manned by British seamen. [155317]

  Mr. Hoon
  AWSR Shipping Ltd. will manage the shipbuilding contract with Harland and Wolff on the MOD's behalf until the ships are delivered to the company. Negotiations continue with AWSR for the PFI service contract, which we expect to be signed within the next few months. The terms will reflect the cost of the shipbuilding contract management service to the Ministry of Defence.

  AWSR Shipping Ltd. have bid, and will be required under contract, to provide British seafarers eligible to be called out as sponsored reserves to crew all six ships when on Ministry of Defence business.

  HMS Albion
  Mr. Hancock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the total cost is of the building of HMS Albion; if she is on schedule and to budget; what the expected in-service date is; and if he will make a statement. [155806]

  Dr. Moonie
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: The unit production cost of HMS Albion including its Landing Craft and the Integrated Communications System is approximately £385 million. This is within the approved budget. The expected in-service date of the vessel is March 2003, as announced on 13 December 1999, Official Report, column 26W.

  Armoured Vehicle Training
  Mr. Hancock
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the costs of basic training of the crews of armoured vehicles are; what the costs were in each of the last three years; how many people Were trained in each of the last three years; how many staff were employed to do this training; and if he will make a statement. [155805]

  Dr. Moonie
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: Basic and advanced training of armoured fighting vehicle crewmen is undertaken at Armour Centre, Bovington by
  620W
  a combination of military, Ministry of Defence civilian and contractor's staff. Neither numbers of staff nor costs can be broken down between these categories; the following information is therefore provided.

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  2000–011

  Personnel trained

  Basic trainees (Phase 2)

  709

  847

  823

  Advanced trainees (Phase 3)

  1,671

  1,897

  1,842

  Staff employed

  Military staff

  279

  270

  310

  MOD civilian staff

  139

  139

  137

  Contractor's staff

  circa 300

  circa 300

  circa 300

  Total running costs (£ million)

  25.047

  25.219

  27.451

  1Projected for financial year 2000–01

  MESAR Radar Trials
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the contracts awarded since 1 May 1997 under the MESAR radar trials letter of offer and acceptance concluded under the 1985 strategic defence initiative memorandum of understanding, along with the name of the contractor and the date of the award. [154795]

  Mr. Hoon
  Two contracts have been awarded since May 1997 under the relevant letter of offer and acceptance. A contract was let with BAE Systems dated 16 February 1999 and another with Roke Manor Research dated 3 March 1999.

  Armed Services Units (Members' Visits)
  Mr. MacShane
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list alphabetically by constituency those hon. Members who have been on visits organised by his Department outside the United Kingdom to armed services units based or deployed abroad in the last three years. [154770]

  Dr. Moonie
  [holding answer 26 March 2001]: The information requested is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Whenever possible, visits by Members of Parliament to armed forces units based or deployed overseas are accommodated dependent on operational commitments at the time.

  Armed Forces Training
  Mr. Edward Davey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence in which countries members of the British armed forces have been deployed to train(a) overseas Government military personnel and (b) military personnel of organisations opposing an overseas Government since 1971. [155961]

  Mr. Spellar
  This information is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  Veterans
  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list the members of the(a) Veterans Forum and (b) Veterans Task Force. [155319]
  621W
  Dr. Moonie
  We will not take a final decision on the membership of the Veterans Forum and the Veterans Task Force until their shape, role and agenda have been discussed in more detail with the range of interested parties, including the main veterans' representative groups. However, we currently expect the Task Force, under my own Chairmanship to include Ministers from the Department of Health, the Department of Social Security, the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, and the Department for Employment and Education, as well as the relevant Scottish and Welsh Departments, the Northern Ireland Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Lord Chancellor's Department. I will also chair the Veterans Forum which will include members from the major veterans' representative groups. We will ensure that the smaller representative groups are able to present their views and concerns to the Forum.

  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what(a) new money and (b) new manpower his Department has allocated to the handling of veterans affairs. [155320]

  Dr. Moonie
  The Veterans initiative will be supported by three new executive staff, together with the budget and support staff required for their effective working. We cannot at this stage predict what new measures might come out of the work of the Veterans Task Force and Forum. We will be commissioning early research into veterans issues and their handling, in addition to that already planned within current departmental programmes. The funding of new measures will be addressed as they are identified.

  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence for what reasons responsibility for veterans affairs has been reduced from Minister of State to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State level. [155327]

  Dr. Moonie
  The appointment of a designated Veterans Minister, with responsibility across Government Departments for ensuring that veterans' concerns are understood and addressed in a holistic manner, represents a clear enhancement rather than a reduction in commitment. This change, together with the establishment of a dedicated Ministerial Task Force, reflects the Government's determination that veterans' issues should be handled in a co-ordinated way to ensure a properly integrated approach to veterans and their concerns.

  Service Personnel (Commemoration)
  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what progress has been made on the establishment of a memorial to commemorate the service personnel killed on duty by terrorist attack since 1945. [155321]

  Dr. Moonie
  A project team has been established to take this proposal forward. At this early stage, no criteria have yet been established to determine who would or would not be included on the memorial. This will be carried out by a scoping study in consultation with ex-service organisations and other interested bodies. Further information will become available in due course.
  622W

  Deployed Forces Facilities
  Mr. Key
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will list(a) current and (b) proposed NAAFI retail facilities in (i) Bosnia and (ii) Kosovo. [155325]

  Mr. Spellar
  Current NAAFI retail facilities located in Bosnia are:

  Butmir—one shop

  Sipovo—one shop

  Mrkonjic Grad—one shop

  Sanski Most—one shop

  Glamoc—one shop

  Banja Luka—one shop

  Current NAAFI retail facilities located in Kosovo are:

  Pristina—six shops

  Podjevo—one shop

  NAAFI has just finished an extensive programme of providing new, and refurbishing existing, facilities in the Balkans. No further retail facilities are currently planned.

HOUSE OF COMMONS

  Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards
  Mr. Peter Bottomley
  To ask the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), representing the House of Commons Commission, on how many occasions since May 1997 the staff inspector has reported on staffing levels in the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. [155347]

  Mr. Kirkwood
  Since May 1997 the staff inspector has reported on staffing issues in the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards on three occasions:

  1. August 1997, job evaluation review of the post of Personal Assistant to the Commissioner.

  2. July 1998, upgrading of the post of Personal Assistant to the Commissioner following introduction of new pay and grading structures.

  3. September 2000, review of workload.

  Parliamentary Works Directorate
  Sir Sydney Chapman
  To ask the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), representing the House of Commons Commission, if he will make a statement on the changes in the structure and practices of the Parliamentary Works Directorate. [155229]

  Mr. Kirkwood
  I understand that, in accordance with the Braithwaite Review of the Serjeant at Arms' Department, the Parliamentary Works Directorate is currently being divided. By 1 April 2001, the Works organisation, which serves both Houses of Parliament, will consist of an Estates Director concerned with strategy, long-term planning, property management and heritage and curatorial matters, while a Directorate of Works Services will be responsible for the delivery of in-year projects, the placing of contracts, maintenance and the management of capital projects.
  623W
  Further information on these arrangements will be available to hon. Members in the future edition of the Members' Handbook. The Works Helpdesk will remain available for contact by hon. Members on extension 4747.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

  Local Authorities
  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what action her Department is taking to encourage British local authorities to share their expertise with counterparts in developing countries. [155672]

  Clare Short
  DFID supports the Commonwealth Local Government Forum's Good Practice Scheme. The scheme brings together local government authorities, so far mainly in the UK and Africa, to exchange best practice on local government management and services. I have recently approved a UK contribution of £2 million covering the next five years of the scheme.

  Disability Issues
  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what action her Department is taking to share British expertise in handling disability issues with the Governments and peoples of developing countries. [155671]

  Clare Short
  The Department for International Development is currently supporting more than 40 projects and programmes around the world with a focus on the rights and needs of people with disabilities. In the past year we have approved nearly £40 million of new funding for work in this area. The global drive to reduce poverty will also bring many benefits, in reducing some of the key causes of disability and improving the quality of life and opportunities for people with disabilities.

  DFID' s strategy on disability is set out in an issues paper published last year, called "Disability, poverty and development". We work closely with Governments, the voluntary and private sectors, and the bilateral and multilateral donor communities, to ensure that disability is addressed in the context of the fight against poverty and the realisation of human rights for all.

  Sudan
  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what assessment she has made of the Sudanese Government's commitment to promoting poverty eradication and development; and what her estimate is of the amount spent by the Sudanese Government on(a) health, (b) education and (c) the armed forces in the last 12 months. [155143]

  Clare Short
  The Sudanese Government's draft Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper will provide an opportunity to consider poverty reducing social and economic programmes. We do not have reliable estimates of the amount spent on health and education although indications suggest that allocations for social sector spending by the central Government are increasing.
  624W

  Palestinian Authority
  Mr. Dismore
  To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how much. economic aid has been given to the Palestinian Authority by the United Kingdom in each of the last six years. [155619]

  Clare Short
  The UK provides bilateral development assistance to the Palestinian Authority and, more broadly, assists Palestinians through our contributions to the EC and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Our programme with the Palestinian Authority supports sustainable economic and social development that benefits the poor. We do this by seeking to support the Middle East Peace Process and improve Palestinian health care, education, access to water and sanitation, gender equality, integration into the global economy and the effectiveness and accountability of the Palestinian Authority. We provide technical assistance rather than direct funding to the Palestinian Authority.

  The breakdown of our assistance for the last six years is as follows:

  UK bilateral assistance (£ million)

  UK multilateral assistance (EC and UNRWA)

  1994–95

  5.4

  120.6

  1995–96

  3.5

  18.0

  1996–97

  6.1

  21.1

  1997–98

  6.1

  22.7

  1998–99

  5.1

  20.9

  1999–2000

  8.0

  2—

  11994 calendar year

  2Not yet available

PRIME MINISTER

  Intelligence and Security Committee
  Ms Kelly
  To ask the Prime Minister when he will lay the Intelligence and Security Committee's Interim Report before Parliament. [156139]

  The Prime Minister
  I have today laid the Intelligence and Security Committee's Report before Parliament. Following consultation with them over matters which could not be published without prejudice to the continued discharge of the functions of the intelligence and security agencies and in accordance with the Intelligence Services Act 1994, I have excluded the Confidential Annexe.

  Opinion Polling
  Mr. St. Aubyn
  To ask the Prime Minister what(a) quantitative and (b) qualitative analytical work his Office has commissioned from GGC/NOP since 1 May 1997; and what was (i) the cost of the contract and (ii) the specific nature of the work commissioned. [155670]

  The Prime Minister
  None.

  Jonathan Powell
  Mr. Baker
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his policy in respect of Jonathan Powell appearing before Select Committees. [155473]

  The Prime Minister
  Civil Servants attend select committees where appropriate.
  625W

  Cancer Consultants
  Mr. Hammond
  To ask the Prime Minister what responsibility he had for determining the target figure in the NHS Plan for additional non-surgical cancer consultants. [155409]

  The Prime Minister
  I agreed the overall targets in the NHS Plan in discussions with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health.

CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT

  Opinion Polling
  Mr. St. Aubyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what(a) quantitative and (b) qualitative analytical work his Department has commissioned from GGC/NOP since 1 May 1997; and what was (i) the cost of the contract and (ii) the specific nature of the work commissioned. [155665]

  Mr. Chris Smith
  The only work commissioned from GGC/NOP since 1 May 1997 has been to conduct a sample of charities. The cost of the work was £293.

  Colin Martin
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if Colin Martin complied with the terms of the licence granted by his Department to work on the wreck of the Hanover; and what the duration of the licence is. [155956]

  Mr. Alan Howarth
  To the Department's knowledge Mr. Martin has complied with the terms of the licence granted to him to excavate the wreck site of the Hanover. The licence issued to Mr. Martin in August 1997 does not have a time limit.

  Jockeys (Compensation)
  Mr. Rendel
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if he will take steps to compensate self-employed jockeys who have lost income as a result of the suspension of races during the foot and mouth outbreak. [155440]

  Kate Hoey
  [holding answer 26 March 2001]: My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment has the lead responsibility for the Rural Task Force which was set up as a direct result of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. No Governments have paid compensation in such circumstances. We are however offering a package of measures to help those adversely affected by the outbreak which my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment announced to the House on 20 March 2001, Official Report, column 191. The Rural Task Force will be continuing its work and further measures will be announced as appropriate.

  Concessionary Television Licences
  Mr. Willetts
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what specific information the BBC collects on applications for the concessionary television licence scheme. [155419]
  626W
  Janet Anderson
  TV Licensing administer the free licence scheme as agent for the BBC. They collect the information necessary to check the entitlement of applicants to the concession; to manage the concession within the general television licensing system; to satisfy the Department of Social Security and the National Audit Office that the sums claimed by the BBC represent free licences and refunds properly issued and legitimate administrative expenses; and to demonstrate the efficiency and value for money of the administrative arrangements.

  Applicants for the free over-75 licence are requested to provide their name, address, date of birth and national insurance number. The first two pieces of information are required to run the television licensing database; the third and fourth are used to check entitlement to the concession by comparison with the information provided for that purpose by the Department of Social Security.

  Digital Satellite
  Mr. Hilary Benn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what steps he has taken to ensure that domestic satellite receivers are able to pick up unscrambled digital satellite channels. [155266]

  Janet Anderson
  All domestic satellite receivers are capable of picking up unscrambled satellite channels. However, as satellite services are receivable across international frontiers, all digital satellite channels, including the UK free-to-air services available on digital satellite, are scrambled for copyright reasons.

  Ministerial Meetings
  Mr. Randall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how many ministerial meetings with hon. Members have been cancelled by Ministers since 1 January. [155244]

  Mr. Chris Smith
  No ministerial meetings with hon. Members have been cancelled during this period, but a small number of meetings have had to be postponed or rearranged in response to other pressures.

  Disabled Access
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what steps his Department is taking to ensure the hotel industry meets the requirements of disability legislation. [155460]

  Janet Anderson
  We are committed to widening access to tourism opportunities for all, including disabled people. We are encouraging the hotel sector to recognise the importance of meeting the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 not only because it is a legal requirement but also because it makes sound business sense. For example last year my Department organised a Disability Conference, "Towards 2004", where we engaged with our sectors, including tourism, concentrating on the requirements and implications of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. In additional, the English Tourism Council have recently published "Accessible Britain 2000—01" which is an official guide for disabled people to Quality Assured National Accessible Scheme accommodation.
  627W
  We are also drawing the hotel sector's attention to the wide range of publications produced by the Disability Rights Commission, including information to service providers and owners of small business on the implications of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and showing ways in which they can respond positively to the needs of disabled customers.

  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what percentage of hotels in the United Kingdom have adequate accessibility for the disabled to(a) buildings, (b) restaurants and (c) showers and baths. [155463]

  Janet Anderson
  We do not have this information. However, all businesses which provide a service to the public, including hotels, have a duty placed on them under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Since 1 October 1999 service providers have had to make "reasonable adjustments" for disabled people in the way they provide their services. From 2004 they will also have to make "reasonable adjustments" to the physical feature of their premises to overcome physical barriers to access.

  City of Westminster

  £

  Nature of funding (examples include:)

  1997–98

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  2000–01

  2001–02

  Estate Action—Lisson Green Estate

  6,000,000

  2,060,000

  1,701,400

  2,201,400

  4,227,600

  Estate Action—Mozart Estate

  3,055,000

  3,600,000

  600,000

  485,400

  0

  Housing Investment Programme (HIP)

  10,275,000

  7,554,000

  8,385,000

  25,535,000

  17,346,000

  Basic Credit Approvals (HRA element)1

  1,872,000

  2,372,000

  3,655,000

  17,483,000

  2 —

  Major Repairs Allowance

  3 —

  3 —

  3 —

  3 —

  11,580,932

  Capital Receipts Initiative

  2,039,000

  6,618,000

  7,176,000

  0

  0

  Total

  23,241,000

  22,204,000

  21,517,400

  45,704,800

  33,154,532

  1 The amount of Basic Credit Approvals (IIR A element) for 2001–02 is not available at this time.

  2 Not available.

  3Grant introduced from 1 April 2001.

  With the exception of Estate Action funding, it is for the local authority to decide where, within its boundaries, these resources are invested.

  Royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea

  £

  Nature of funding (examples include)

  1997—98

  1998—99

  1999—2000

  2000—01

  2001—02

  Housing Investment Programme (HIP)

  6,358,000

  5,723,000

  6,306,000

  16,395,000

  12,910,000

  Basic Credit Approvals (HRA element)1

  2,921,000

  2,210,000

  2,968,000

  7,444,000

  2 —

  Major Repairs Allowance

  3—

  3—

  3—

  3 —

  11,580,932

  Capital Receipts Initiative

  1,095,000

  3,119,400

  4,319,000

  0

  0

  Total

  10,374,000

  11,052,000

  13,593,000

  23,839,000

  24,490,932

  1 The amount of Basic Credit Approvals (HRA element) for 2001–02 is not available at this time.

  2 Not available.

  3 Grant introduced from 1 April 2001.

  Note:

  No current Estate Action Funding

  The Royal borough received Round 6 Single Regeneration Budget funding for the "Raising the Dalgarno" scheme. However the allocation is used for community capacity building with other funding elements utilised in the 'bricks and mortar' part of the scheme. For the programmes listed it is for the authority to decide where, within its boundaries, these resources are invested.
  628W
  The English Tourism Council (ETC) have published "Accessible Britain 2000–01" which is an official guide for disabled people to Quality Assured National Accessible Scheme accommodation. The ETC are currently reviewing the expanding the National Accessibility Standards to ensure that they are in keeping with the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

ENVIRONMENT, TRANSPORT AND THE REGIONS

  Housing Capital Improvement
  Ms Buck
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will list each housing capital improvement in(a) Westminster and (b) Kensington and Chelsea since May 1997. [155350]

  Mr. Raynsford
  The following housing capital improvement schemes have been allocated funding from the Department in the City of Westminster and the Royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea since 1 May 1997:

  Housing (Battersea)
  Mr. Linton
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will list each housing capital improvement project financed by his Department in Battersea since 1 May 1997. [155126]
  629W
  Mr. Raynsford
  The following housing capital improvements schemes have been allocated funding from

  £

  Nature of funding (examples include):

  1997–98

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  2000–01

  2001–02

  Housing Investment Programme (HIP)

  10,147,000

  8,249,000

  8,484,000

  20,832,000

  13,123,000

  Basic Credit Approvals (HRA element)

  2,368,000

  0

  535,000

  12,728,000

  1 —

  Major Repairs Allowance

  2—

  2—

  2—

  2—

  14,772,563

  Capital Receipts Initiative

  2,741,341

  8,722,000

  7,716,000

  0

  0

  Total

  15,256,341

  16,971,000

  16,735,000

  33,560.000

  27,895,563

  1Not available

  2Grant introduced from I April 2001

  For the programmes listed above, it is not possible to determine how much of this money has been spent on Battersea. It is for the local authority to decide where, within its boundaries, these resources are invested.

  The amount of Basic Credit Approvals (HRA Element) for 2001–02 is not available at this time.

  In addition to the programmes listed, the London Borough of Wandsworth has received Single Regeneration Budget funding in respect of improvements to the Arndale Estate:

  £

  Nature of funding (examples include):

  Single Regeneration Budget (round 3)

  1997 –98

  51,000

  1998 –99

  65,000

  1999 –2000

  297,000

  2000 –01

  906,000

  2001 –02

  3,043,000

  Sellafield MOX Plant
  Mr. Llew Smith
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, pursuant to his reply on the Sellafield MOX plant, 18 January 2001,Official Report, column 296W, if he will place in the Library a copy of the revised economic case for the MOX plant prepared by BNFL. [148659]

  Mr. Meacher
  My Department and the Department of Health have today published a consultation paper inviting public comments on BNFL's proposals for operating the Sellafield MOX plant. This includes a copy of BNFL's latest evaluation of the economic case for the plant.

  The DETR and MAFF invited public comments on the company's plans in 1999 and the further consideration of the case needed to take into account the consequences of the data falsification incident at BNFL's MOX demonstration facility. BNFL have now submitted a revised economic case and it is right to give people a further opportunity to comment.

  Independent consultants are also being appointed as a parallel procedure to evaluate the economic case put forward by BNFL. The consultation will last eight weeks and consultants will report in around 10 weeks. The consultees will not therefore see the consultants' report but the consultants will take account of the responses to the consultation exercise in reporting back to the Departments.
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  the Department in the London Borough of Wandsworth since 1 May 1997.

  When the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the Secretary of State for Health have considered all relevant information, including the consultant's report and the responses today's consultation, they NA ill then decide whether the MOX manufacture, which it is proposed should be carried out at the Sellafield MOX plant, is justified.

  The DETR and DoH are inviting comments until 23 May, and hope that people will take advantage of the opportunity to comment on this important proposal.

  Ribble Estuary (Radiation)
  Mr. Borrow
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what impact the construction of the Ribble Link between the Lancaster Canal and the River Ribble will have on radiation levels in the Ribble estuary [155230]

  Mr. Meacher
  Plans for the construction of the Ribble Link have included environmental assessments of the potential impact on radioactivity levels in the estuary and associated areas. These assessments indicate that the impact on the river and the estuary will be very low. The estimated increases in the levels of radioactivity are 3 per cent. and 0.2 per cent. respectively. The assessments also indicate that the radiation dose impact of the work to members of the public will be insignificant. The dose to those most likely to be affected—Ribble netsmen and consumers of local fish—is calculated to be less than 2 microSieverts a year. This is 2 per cent. of the relevant public dose limit trom man-made sources of 1,000 microSieverts. (The average dose from background radiation is 2,200 microSieverts a year.) The estimated dose levels are below the levels of regulatory concern set in the relevant legislation.

  The Environment Agency will continue to undertake its own independent environmental radioactivity monitoring programme of the River Ribble and the estuary area and will publish the results in its annual report.

  Wrecks
  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (1) what recent representations he has received concerning the damage caused to wrecks by divers; [155156]

  what plans he has to introduce legislation controlling diving around wrecks; [155150]

  Mr. Hill
  There have been no representations that my Department has been able to identify.
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  My Department has no plans for legislation with regard to non-military wrecks. However, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence issued a consultation document on 14 February 2001 concerning the enactment of the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986. A copy of the consultation document is in the Libraries of the House.

  London Boroughs (Grants)
  Ms Buck
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will list(a) each category of grant and (b) the amount of each grant paid by his Department to each London borough in (i) 1997–98, (ii) 1998–1999, (iii) 1999–2000 and (iv) 2000–01; and what the projected figure is for 2001–02. [155427]

  Ms Armstrong
  The data requested by my hon. Friend are not readily available and will take some time to compile. I will therefore write to my hon. Friend with the information and place a copy of the letter in the Libraries of the House.

  Rail Renationalisation
  Mrs. Anne Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will estimate the cost of renationalising the rail network and train operating companies. [155598]

  Mr. Hill
  It is not possible to produce an accurate estimate of the cost of renationalising the rail network and train companies. However, Railtrack's market capitalisation, based on its current share price, is some £4 billion. The cost of renationalising Railtrack would be significantly more than that because, for example, all Railtrack's spending would be a charge to public expenditure.

  Housing Associations (Severance Payments)
  Mrs. Ellman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what arrangements are in place for the supervision of housing associations in relation to severance payments to staff; and if he will make a statement in respect of the Liver Housing Association in Liverpool. [155547]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  The Housing Act 1996 prohibits registered social landlords from making payments or providing benefits to their staff which are non-contractual without the consent of the Housing Corporation.

  Liver Housing Association has been the subject of a statutory inquiry by the Housing Corporation. The inquiry was prompted by Liver's plan to make severance payments to three senior directors worth over £1.7 million as part of a proposed merger with Grosvenor Housing Association. The Corporation's inquiry found that certain members of Liver's Board had been responsible for mismanagement in handling the construction of redundancy, retirement and severance policies and in the
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  application of those policies to the three directors. The Corporation has used its powers to make three new appointments to strengthen Liver's Board. The proposed merger between Liver and Grosvenor will require the approval of the Corporation.

  Canal Closures
  Mr. Luff
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what discussions he has had with British Waterways about the level of charges for hire boat licences they will impose this year on operators affected by canal closures. [155251]

  Mr. Meacher
  [holding answer 23 March 2001]: Decisions on the level of charges for hire boat licences are an operational matter for British Waterways. They recognise that canal closures have presented difficulties for waterway businesses and have agreed to defer the date for payments of hire boat licences from 1 April 2001 to 1 June 2001. This arrangement applies to both those who pay by instalments and those who pay in a single payment.

  I refer the hon. Member to my statement to the House on 20 March 2001, Official Report, columns 191–210, when I reported on the work of the Rural Taskforce. We are developing a package of measures to alleviate the immediate financial hardship of small businesses in rural areas which have been hit by the sudden drop in visitors and other knock-on effects of foot and mouth disease. The taskforce will continue its work and we will want to consider any further Government response in light of the latest developments.

  Cycling
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what steps he is taking to encourage people to cycle more. [155464]

  Mr. Hill
  The Government are committed to tripling the number of cycling trips from a 2000 base by 2010 and quadrupling them from a 1996 base by 2012. £8.4 billion of Government funding has been provided to local authorities in the recent local transport settlement. This will help to promote sustainable transport measures, including cycling. The cycling strategies included in the authorities' local transport plans should identify gaps in the local cycle network and result in improvements to the cycling infrastructure. Initial monitoring suggests that the strategies will result in considerable additional provision for cycling.

  We are also actively marketing the main message of the National Cycling Strategy. Early outcomes are the launch of an NCS website and production of a promotional video. We are also currently running a series of cycling seminars throughout England aimed at local authorities, major employers and health and education practitioners.

  Abandoned Coal Mines
  Mr. Stunell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what estimate he has made of the annual tonnages of methane discharged into the atmosphere from abandoned coal mines in England and Wales; and if he will make a statement. [155580]
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  Mr. Meacher
  In 1994, the Watt Committee on Energy estimated that the net flow of methane from abandoned coal mines was likely to be negligible. Recognising the great uncertainties involved, and the extent of mine closures, my Department has sponsored a study of information currently available with a view to including this source in the UK greenhouse gas inventory. This indicates that emissions from abandoned coal mines constitute a declining source and could currently be in the range 20,000 to 300,000 tonnes of methane per year, or between 0.05 per cent. and 0.8 per cent. of total UK greenhouse gas emissions in 1990. We do not have separate estimates fro England and Wales.

  Climate Change
  Dr. Gibson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what discussions he has had with the construction industry on adapting for climatic change. [155616]

  Mr. Raynsford
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has had no specific discussions with the construction industry on the subject of climate change. However my Department is in regular contact with the construction industry on a wide range of environmental issues, including those specifically related to climate change. Since I launched our strategy for more sustainable construction: "Building a Better Quality of Life" a year ago, my colleagues and I have been encouraging the industry and its clients to address the issues set out in that strategy, including the reduction of greenhouse gases, by eliminating wasteful and polluting practices which contribute to climate change.

  My Department supports research aimed at raising awareness within the construction industry on the implications of climate change. We have recently commissioned a study jointly with the Scottish Executive, the Environment Agency and others to prepare guidance on the flood proofing of buildings and to look at what further research needs to be done in this area. We support the UK Climate Impacts Programme at the University of Oxford to help organisations assess their vulnerability to climate change. We have also invited the Construction Research and Innovation Strategy Panel to consider what research the construction industry needs on climate change.

  I commend the recent report from the Foundation for the Built Environment on "Potential Implications of Climate Change on the Built Environment" which sets out ways in which the construction industry can adapt to meet these challenges.

  Incinerators
  Mr. Brake
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions which firms have provided testing of(a) ash residues and (b) air emissions at the Byker, Edmonton, SELCHP, Tyseley and Teesside incinerators since 1996. [155336]
  634W
  Mr. Meacher
  [holding answer 26 March 2001]: The information is as follows:

  Tyseley

  (a)The firm that has provided testing of ash residues is EUS Ltd.

  (b)The firms that have provided testing of air emissions are:

  CRE Group Ltd. for the Environment Agency

  EUS Laboratories Ltd. for Tyseley Waste Disposal (the operator) and during commissioning for Birwelco (the construction engineers)

  AEA Technology for Birwelco during commissioning

  Byker

  (a) The firm that has provided testing of ash residues from is Energy Supplies Lid. Analysis was carried out by the former Warren Springs Laboratories.

  Ash analyses have also been carried out by the Environment Agency's own laboratories as part of the Agency's prosecution investigation (court date adjourned to 1 May).

  (b) The firms that have provided testing of air emissions are:

  NIFES Ltd., Altrineham 1992–93

  EUS Laboratories Ltd., Manchester 1994–95

  EMCO Ltd., Reading 1996 to present.

  In 1995 HM Inspectorate of Pollution engaged ENTEC, Newcastle, to carry out stack monitoring as a check against the operator's own compliance monitoring.

  SELCHP

  (a)The firms that have provided testing of ash residues are:

  WRc/Rechem

  AEA Technology

  (b)The firms that have provided testing of air emissions are:

  AEA Technology

  EUS Laboratories Ltd.

  CRE Group Ltd.

  Edmonton

  (a) The firms that have provided testing of ash residues are:

  BCRA

  CRE Group Ltd.

  (b)The firms that have provided testing of air emissions are:

  Symonds Travis Morgan

  EUS Laboratories Ltd.

  Resources Environmental Consultants Ltd

  CRE Group Ltd.

  Teesside

  (a) The firms that have provided testing of ash residues are:

  Analytical and Environment Services Ltd. (AES Ltd.)

  EUS Laboratories Ltd.

  (b)The firm that has provided testing of air emissions is AES Ltd.

  Department Policies (North Devon)
  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will set out, including statistical information relating as directly as possible to the North Devon constituency, the effects on North Devon of his Department's policies and actions since 2 May 1997. [155907]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  The principal funding that this Department has provided to North Devon and Mid Devon District Councils and to Devon County Council in the years 1997–98 to 2001–02 is shown in the table. These include grants and borrowing approvals for revenue and capital expenditure
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  It is not possible to determine how much of this money has been spent on North Devon constituency. It is for the

  £million

  Nature of funding

  1997–98

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  2000–01

  2001–021

  North Devon District Council

  Revenue Support Grant2

  3.811

  3.352

  3.315

  3.250

  3.559

  Income from National Non-Domestic Rates2

  2.718

  2.765

  2.988

  3.317

  3.294

  Housing Investment Programme

  30.840

  0.858

  0.980

  42.035

  50.900

  Housing Revenue Account Subsidy

  1.770

  1.585

  0.927

  60

  —

  Capital Receipts Initiative

  0.177

  0.577

  0.541

  n/a

  n/a

  Cash Incentive Scheme

  0.047

  0.025

  0

  n/a

  n/a

  Loan Charges Defective Housing

  0.016

  0.016

  0.016

  70.016

  70.01

  Capital Challenge8

  0.004

  0.013

  0.380

  0

  0

  Mid Devon District Council

  Revenue Support Grant2

  1.917

  1.842

  1.769

  1.695

  1.894

  Income from National Non-Domestic Rates. 2

  2.096

  2.118

  2.286

  2.567

  2.547

  Housing Investment Programme

  30.744

  0.667

  0.747

  41.772

  52.554

  Housing Revenue Account Subsidy

  0.570

  0.324

  0.182

  90.191

  —

  Capital Receipts Initiative

  0.171

  0.581

  0.538

  n/a

  n/a

  Cash Incentive Scheme

  0.100

  0.080

  0

  n/a

  n/a

  Loan Charges Defective Housing

  0.047

  0.047

  0.047

  70.047

  70.047

  Capital Challenge8

  0.120

  0.880

  0

  0

  0

  Devon County Council

  Revenue Support Grant2

  10266.389

  155.634

  158.924

  150.930

  166.866

  Income from National Non-Domestic Rates2

  10205.912

  138.460

  151.558

  173.050

  170.054

  Local Government Reorganisation Supplementary Credit Approval

  1.812

  0.765

  0

  0

  0

  Transport Supplementary Grant

  1.738

  1.238

  1.861

  0

  0

  Transport Annual Capital Guideline

  1.738

  1.238

  1.861

  0

  0

  Transport Block Supplementary Credit Approval

  2.560

  1.214

  2.842

  10.281

  20.703

  Rural Bus Challenge Grant11

  0

  0

  0.640

  0.300

  12—

  Rural Bus Subsidy Grant

  0

  1.409

  1.409

  1.409

  1.799

  Capital Challenge8

  2.694

  2.257

  1.554

  0

  0

  1Where known

  2The amounts of Revenue Support Grant and Income from National Non-Domestic Rates shown for 1997–98 and 1998–99 are the revised amounts allocated under "The Location Government Finance Report (England) 1997–98 Amending Report 1999" and "The Local Government Finance Report (England) 1998–99 Amending Report 2000" respectively

  3 1997–98 HIP allocation inherited from the previous Government's spending plans. Present Government introduced CRI from 1997–98

  4Single Housing Pot introduced from 2000–01 resulting in CRI being merged with HIP

  5 Resource accounting has resulted in a change to the way capital resources are allocated for 2001–02 with the introduction of a new Major Repairs Allowance (MRA) to cover the cost of maintaining local authority housing in a sound condition. Mid Devon's MRA allocation for 2001–02 is £1.712 million and, for comparison purposes, is included in the 2001–02 HIP allocation above. North Devon's MRA allocation for 2001–02 is £0 million

  6 North Devon District Council was not eligible for Housing Revenue Account subsidy in 2000–01 as it held no properties in its HRA

  7Estimated

  8Supplementary Credit and Basic Credit Approvals

  9Provisional

  10 Devon was subject to a Structural Change Order on 1 April 1998. The figures for Revenue Support Grant and National Non-Domestic Rates quoted for Devon County Council for 1997–98 include an amount for the areas covered by The City of Plymouth and The Borough of Torbay. The figures for 1998–99, 1999–2000, 2000–01 and 2001–02 exclude the amount for the areas covered by The City of Plymouth and The Borough of Torbay

  11 Rural Bus Challenge figures represent awards—actual spend profiles for schemes may cover more than one year

  12N/K

  Single Regeneration Budget (SRB)

  Parts of the constituency are included in two SRB schemes. Funding provided for these schemes since 1997–98 is included in the table.

  £ million

  SRB scheme

  1997–98

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  2000–01

  12001–02

  VISIONS

  0.099

  0.217

  0 233

  n/a

  n/a

  Forches

  n/a

  0.018

  0 033

  0.076

  n/a

  1Where known

  European Funding

  Parts of North Devon Constituency were included in the South West Objective 5b programme that closed for new applications at the end of 1999. North Devon District
  636W
  local authority to decide where within its boundary these resources are applied.

  in the constituency is included in the designated South West Objective 2 area which stands to benefit from £108 million of European Funds over the next seven years.

  Rural Taskforce
  Mr. Rendel
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what discussions the Rural Taskforce has had on support for the racing industry during the foot and mouth outbreak. [155441]

  Mr. Meacher
  [holding answer 26 March 2001]: The Rural Taskforce has discussed measures to alleviate the impact of foot and mouth on all affected rural businesses

  637W
  including the racing industry. The Taskforce welcomes constructive suggestions. I announced to the House on 20 March 2001, Official Report, columns 191–210, a preliminary package of measures which the Taskforce had discussed earlier that day.

  Supported Housing Places
  Joan Ruddock
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions how many supported housing places will be needed to meet the 2003 target set for the Government's Teenage Pregnancy Programme; how many such places have already been and are in the process of being provided; how many applications to provide new places have been received; and how many have been funded. [155786]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  Although precise data are not available, we estimate that around 1,500 units of supported accommodation will be needed to meet the Government target that by 2003 all teenage lone parents under 18 who cannot live with their family or partner should be placed in supervised semi-independent housing with support rather than in an independent tenancy.

  An audit of existing provision of supported accommodation for housing teenage parents undertaken by local authorities as part of the 2000 Housing Investment Programme identified between 4,000 and 5,000 units of accommodation as available for lone parents with onsite or floating support, of which around two thirds (2,749 units) was available for teenage parents under 18 years of age. However, it is doubtful whether all of this accommodation is located in line with need or is of sufficient quality to meet the support requirements of teenage parents.

  Local authorities are responsible for assessing the need for additional accommodation for teenage parents within their areas. Currently 128 new units of accommodation for teenage parents are being funded through the Housing Corporation's Approved Development Programme (ADP). Next year's Approved Development Programme includes 205 new units of accommodation. In addition under the new Safer Communities Supported Housing Fund, £4 million has been allocated to provide 134 new units of accommodation for teenage parents and bids have been received to provide floating support for nearly 200 units of accommodation. The Housing Corporation will be announcing shortly the number of floating support bids, which it will be approving for funding in 2001–02.

  Encams
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what performance targets have been set for Encams for waste awareness as a condition of funding. [155763]

  Mr. Meacher
  Encams' flagship waste awareness initiative is the Waste Theme Month that it co-ordinates each October. This year DETR grant of £30,000 funded its entire costs: promotional activity that included leaflets, newspapers, a theme month pack and a national seminar, all of which Encams evaluated through a questionnaire.
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  The programme met all three targets set for it in the 2000–01 Corporate Plan agreed with DETR Ministers, which were:

  (i) to increase the action generated by 10 per cent. on that for the previous year;

  (ii) to distribute information to 500 organisations; and

  (iii) to have 25 per cent. of evaluation questionnaires returned.

  Waste and litter awareness and action feature across a range of Encams' grant funded activities, notably the Just Bin It campaign (formerly called National Spring Clean), and People and Places programme and the Seaside Awards. We are currently negotiating a Corporate Plan with Encams Ltd. which will set out performance targets for all its 2001–02 grant-aided work, including work to promote waste awareness. When we agree this Plan later in the year I will deposit a copy in the Libraries of the House.

  Recycling
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (1) if the "Are you doing your bit" and "Use it: Recycle it" campaigns are active; [155917]

  (2) if he will make a statement on the impact of the "Are you doing your bit" and "Use it: Recycle it" campaigns. [155766]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  The "Are you doing your bit" campaign, which promotes water conservation, waste reduction, energy efficiency and transport messages, has been running since 1998. My hon. Friend also mentions "Use it: Recycle it", which is a reference to the "Are you doing your bit" campaign's "Use it again" waste and recycling website.

  Research into awareness, motivation and actions by individuals, has been commissioned to assess the campaign's impact and inform its strategic approach.

  Research conducted in December 2000, a month after the most recent advertising, showed high levels of campaign recognition: nine out of 10 people recognised the campaign; seven out of 10 said that the advertising made them think they should be doing their bit; over six out of 10 say they had started or increased campaign actions in the last 12 months.

  The campaign's success in 2000–01 also included more than 48,000 visitors to the interactive roadshow in 24 locations and approximately 1,060 pieces of media coverage generated on campaign messages. In addition, there have been almost 70,000 visitors to the campaign websites www.doingyourbit.org.uk and www.useitagain.org.uk since their launch in May 1999 and April 2000 respectively.

  National Waste Strategy
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what funding sources will be used in order to deliver the National Waste Strategy. [155765]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  In the National Waste Strategy, the Government have set out their objectives for sustainable waste management over the next 20 years. The Spending Review 2000 provided substantial extra
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  resources for waste and recycling over the next three years to begin to deliver these objectives, as set out in the reply to the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) on 14 December 2000, Official Report, column 200W.

  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions how much his Department estimates it will cost to deliver the National Waste Strategy. [155767]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  The Government's Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) for the National Waste Strategy is set out in "Waste Strategy 2000" (Cm 4693–2, Annexe C). The RIA models differing assumptions about the growth in waste arisings and the development of different waste treatments over this period and suggests additional costs ranging from £3.4 to £7.7 billion (present value of costs from 2000 to 2020).

  Trunk Road Improvements
  Dr. Ladyman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what plans he has to add to the targeted programme of trunk road improvements. [156106]

  Mr. Hill
  The regional planning bodies brought forward proposals for 30 schemes which could be separately progressed from the Multi Modal Studies (which are currently looking at solutions to problems within main trunk road corridors). These schemes have been assessed using the New Approach to Appraisal (NATA) and I have arranged for copies of the appraisal summary tables to be placed in the Library. We have also sought the views of the Government's statutory advisers (English Nature, the Countryside Agency, English Heritage and the Environment Agency) on the proposed schemes. Having considered the NATA appraisals and comments from the statutory advisers we have decided to add the following schemes to the targeted programme of improvements:

  M62 Junction 6 Improvement

  Al Peterborough—Blyth Grade Separated Junctions

  A14 Haughley New St.—Stowmarket Improvement

  A38 Dobwalls Bypass

  A46 Newark—Widmerpool Improvement

  A595 Parton—Lillyhall Improvement

  These schemes will now be taken forward by the Highways Agency in consultation with the statutory advisory bodies to ensure that any concerns which they might have are properly addressed in developing detailed designs for the schemes. Every effort will be made to minimise impacts on sensitive sites.

  In addition, I am also able to announce today that, after further studies undertaken since the 1998 Roads Review, the following schemes are being added to the targeted programme of improvements:

  A3 Hindhead Improvement

  A30 Bodmin-Indian Queens Improvement.

  We believe these eight major schemes will be widely welcomed. They will benefit road users by reducing congestion and improving safety, create safer and healthier environments for local communities by the removal of through traffic and, in some cases, contribute
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  to regeneration initiatives. Close co-operation with the statutory advisory bodies in developing scheme designs will ensure that important sensitive sites are protected.

  The Highways Agency will also take forward the following smaller schemes recommended by the regional planning bodies as part of the recent consultation exercise and costing less than £5 million as part of their programme of local network management schemes.

  M40/A404 Handy Cross Junction Improvement

  A l (M) Junction 60–62 Improvement

  A66 Long Newton Grade Separated Junction.

  We are informing the regional planning bodies about our decisions.

  Light Rail Schemes
  Mr. Laxton
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will make a statement about light rail schemes. [156078]

  Mr. Hill
  I am today announcing decisions on three schemes, as follows:

  Leeds Supertram

  Following completion of our appraisal of the proposed Leeds Supertram system of three light rail lines, we are satisfied that the project passes the test for Government funding to be made available and that it should be taken forward as a single scheme. We have also agreed a funding package with the promoters which includes a local contribution towards scheme costs.

  Orders have been made under the Transport and Works Act 1992 giving powers for the scheme. However, these cannot come into force until a special parliamentary procedure has been completed, because the orders authorise the compulsory purchase of open space, for which no land is to be given in exchange. Funding approval is given on the assumption that this process is completed satisfactorily.

  South Hampshire Rapid Transit

  Following completion of our appraisal of the South Hampshire Rapid Transit project, we are satisfied that the project passes the tests for Government funding to be made available. Subject to the scheme receiving Transport and Works Act (TWA) powers and no material change to the scheme as submitted, we intend to provide funding and have agreed a package with the promoters which would include a local contribution towards scheme costs.

  This decision is given solely in respect of the economic appraisal of the scheme as submitted to us and the associated funding arrangements. It does not in any way indicate any view that I may take on the TWA application that is currently being considered on its own merits, having regard to the Inspector's report of the inquiry.

  Bristol and South Gloucester Rapid Transit

  In accordance with the policy set out in my Department's Guidance on Local Transport Plans, Bristol City Council and South Gloucestershire Council sought a provisional view on the economic appraisal for the Bristol and South Gloucester Rapid Transit scheme, prior to seeking the necessary powers under the Transport and Works Act (TWA). I am aware that the authorities are continuing to work on some aspects of the proposed scheme. However, I am satisfied that, on the basis of the available information, were the current proposals and their

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  appraisal to be confirmed by the authorities following that further work they would pass our economic appraisal tests for deciding eligibility for funding.

  This provisional view is given solely in respect of the economic appraisal, and does not in any way indicate any view that I may take on any subsequent TWA application. Any such application would be determined entirely on its merits in the light of all the relevant considerations, and only after all interested persons had been given a full opportunity to state their views.

  Should TWA powers be obtained, final approval of the project for funding would depend both on whether an updated economic appraisal, reflecting any changes to the scheme as a result of the TWA process or any other developments, demonstrates that the project still represents good value for money and on conclusions of a satisfactory agreement on funding.

  South East England Development Agency
  Mr. Fallon
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will set out the business experience of each member of the South East England Development Agency. [155957]

  Ms Armstrong
  Short biographies of each of the board members of the South East England Development Agency have been placed in the Libraries of the House. These are also available on DETR's website at www.detr.gov.uk and SEEDA's website at: www.seeda.co.uk.

  Greenock Semi-Conductor Plant
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions when he expects to receive a copy of the report of the Health and Safety Executive's study of employees' health at the National Semi-Conductor plant in Greenock; and if he will make a statement. [155259]

  Mr. Meacher
  This study is being taken forward by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as a matter of priority. Work to trace members of the work force is nearing completion. HSE will then link this to information on deaths and cancer registrations to determine which workers have suffered cancer. The final report is currently expected to be published in late summer 2001.

  Planning Permission
  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what plans he has to speed up the action taken against businesses which operate without planning permission. [155947]

  Mr. Raynsford
  Local planning authorities have a wide range of discretionary enforcement powers to enable them to deal swiftly and effectively with unauthorised development that is harming amenity in the neighbourhood. Last August we announced improvements to enforcement appeal procedures which will increase their speed and efficiency. We are now preparing the necessary statutory instruments and guidance to implement the changes.

  Planning Appeals
  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what plans he 642W
  has to allow people who protest against a planning decision to appeal against favourable decisions by local councils. [155948]

  Mr. Raynsford
  Local people already have the opportunity to make their views known on development proposals before local planning authorities determine planning applications. There is also the right to challenge the grant of planning permission by a local planning authority by seeking judicial review. We have no current plans to introduce a third party right of appeal against authorities' decisions to grant planning permission.

  Rent Service
  Kali Mountford
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what performance targets he has set the Rent Service for 2001–02. [156138]

  Mr. Robert Ainsworth
  Key targets have been agreed for the Agency. They are included in the Agency's Business Plan, which includes management objectives, performance indicators and key tasks. Copies of the Business Plan will be placed in the Library in due course.

  The key targets for The Rent Service are:
  to deliver Statutory performance targets in 95 per cent. of cases;
  to achieve the following customer service targets against Housing Benefit applications:
  process 80 per cent of Determinations Without an inspection within three working days;
  process 80 per cent. of Determinations With an inspection within 15 working days;
  process 85 per cent. of Pre-Tenancy Determinations within four working days;
  process 70 per cent. of Redeterminations within 15 working days.
  to complete 80 per cent. of Fair Rent Determinations within 40 working days;
  to increase the number of cases determined per employee by a minimum of 5 per cent. per year whilst reducing the cost per case by a minimum of 5 per cent. per year in real terms, with no reduction in the quality of service provided.

  A21
  Mr. Jim Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he has decided to agree to the National Trust's proposals for a bridge across the A21 Lamberhurst Bypass at Scotney. [156140]

  Mr. Hill
  I am pleased to say that following discussion with the Trust over the last few months. I have asked the Highways Agency to develop proposals to maintain the existing access to Scotney Castle and remove the severance caused by the bypass. Further development work will now be undertaken leading to the publication of those proposals in the summer.

  Maritinu, and Coastguard Agency
  Maria Eagle
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions when he will announce the key tai gets for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency for 2001–02,. [156141]
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  Mr. Hill
  I will shortly lay in the House library a copy of the Agency's Business Plan which includes its key targets for 2001–02. The key targets are:to complete the review of the statutory safety regime for fishing vessels of 12–24 metres and to prepare a Code of Practice for these vessels by January 2002.
  to implement the internationally agreed revisions to Chapter V (Safety of Navigation) of the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention in time for the implementation date of 1 July 2002;
  to achieve full implementation of the International Convention on Standards of Training. Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW95) by 1 February 2002;
  to complete at least 95 per cent. of the agreed programme of vessel inspections;
  to decide on the search and rescue response to accidents and life-threatening situations, and initiate action if necessary, within five minutes of being alerted in at least 95 per cent. of cases;
  to implement the agreed recommendations of the UK SAR (Search and Rescue) Helicopter coverage and provision review by 31 March 2002;
  to implement the agreed recommendations of the Emergency Towing Vessel (ETV) review by 31 Match 2002;
  to establish measurable efficiency indicators covering: search and rescue activities; the survey and inspection service; and Agency management, by 31 July 2001;
  to undertake customer surveys to assess the level of customer satisfaction with the work carried out by MCA, with particular emphasis on the operational side of the business, and to establish benchmarks for future surveys, by 31 March 2002.

  Planning Inspectorate
  Ms Rosie Winterton
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what performance targets he proposed to set the Planning Inspectorate agency for 2001–02. [156323]

  Mr. Raynsford
  The Planning Inspectorate continues to play a key role in improving the efficiency and certainty with which the planning system delivers quality services to business and other users 1 have therefore set demanding key performance targets for the Inspectorate for 2001–02. These include tougher targets for handling planning appeals in line with our Public Service Agreement targets.

  The tougher appeals targets I am setting the Inspectorate to continue improving its service to customers makes it essential that all parties to the appeals process play their part by cooperating with the Inspectorate in meeting deadlines and agreeing dates offered for inquiries.

  The targets for 2001–02 are as follows:

  Timeliness

  80 per cent. of all planning appeals decided by written representations to be determined within 16 weeks;
  80 per cent. of all planning appeals decided by hearings to be determined within 22 weeks;
  80 per cent. of all planning appeals decided by inquiries to be determined within 30 weeks;
  to provide an Inspector for development plan inquiries in at least 90 per cent. of cases on the date requested by the local authority, provided that the objection period has ended and at least six months' notice has been given;
  to deliver 90 per cent. of Inspectors' reports on development plan inquiries to local authorities according to timescales agreed under service agreements.

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  The table shows the Planning Inspectorate's performance against its timeliness targets for 1998–99 to 2000–01.

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  2000–01

  80 per cent. of all planning appeals should be decided within the following number of weeks:

  Target

  Written representation

  18

  18

  17

  Hearings

  24

  24

  23

  Inquiries

  36

  36

  33

  Achieved

  Written representation

  17

  18

  17

  Hearings

  27

  22

  20

  Inquiries

  41

  34

  31

  Efficiency
  To generate a 3 per cent. improvement in the use of running costs compared to 2000–01.

  Quality
  To satisfy the Advisory Panel on Standards, and thus the Secretary of State and the National Assembly for Wales, annually and following rigorous monitoring, that the quality of all the Inspectorate's work is being maintained at a high standard, with 99 per cent. of its casework free from justified complaint.

  Information and Guidance
  To survey customer satisfaction with the Inspectorate's performance in handling rights of way cases and to act upon the results.

  Housing PFI Schemes
  Mr. Mudie
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions when he will announce the outcome of the second round of applications for housing private finance initiative schemes. [156324]

  Mr. Raynsford
  I am announcing today the names of 12 local authorities with whom my Department will work on the development of a second round of housing PFI schemes.

  The authorities are: Ashford borough council, the London borough of Camden, the London borough of Islington, the London borough of Hackney, Leeds City council, The London borough of Lewisham, Manchester City council, The London borough of Newham, North East Derbyshire district council, Oldham metropolitan borough council, Rochdale metropolitan borough council, and Sandwell metropolitan borough council.

  Whether schemes ultimately proceed will depend on authorities working up business cases which satisfy the scrutiny of the inter-Departmental Project Review Group (PRG), which considers all local government PFI schemes seeking central government support. Endorsement by PRG is essential before schemes can proceed to EU competition.

  These projects are all aimed at tackling the backlog of renovation and repairs in existing council housing and many include wider estate regeneration proposals. They form an important element in authorities' wider housing and regeneration strategies.
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  PFI credits worth £760 million are available to support housing PFI schemes in the current spending review period. There will be a further opportunity for authorities to apply for support later this year.

  Exclusion Zone Footpaths
  Miss McIntosh
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what guidance he plans to give relating to the use of footpaths in exclusion zones; and if he will make a statement. [155271]

  Mr. Morley
  I have been asked to reply.

  Government published advice to the general public on countryside activities and visits, based on guidance from the Chief Veterinary Officer, on 16 March. Further guidance for local authorities on use of footpaths will be issued shortly.

TREASURY

  Census 2001
  Mr. McNamara
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will break down the publicity budget for publicising the 2001 census; what the timetable is for the publicity campaign; what its objectives are; what initiatives are being taken to target specific ethnic groups and regions; what are the objectives of each; and what initiatives are being prepared to make children aware of the census. [146679]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  [holding answer 23 January 2001]: The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician. I have asked him to reply.

  Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Kevin McNamara, dated 28 March 2001:

  As National Statistician and Registrar General for England and Wales I have been asked to reply to your question asking for a breakdown of the publicity budget for the 2001 Census and other matters related to the publicity of the Census (146679).

  The breakdown of the paid publicity budget for the period 2000/01 to 2001/02 is:

  Main advertising campaign: £4,728,000

  Other publicity activities: £933,000

  A carefully planned calendar of public relations events has been organised enabling Census Area Managers to run successful local, yet nationally coherent, campaigns.

  The objectives of the overall publicity campaign are to establish the necessary level of advance awareness of the Census across the population and to build up public confidence in the Census as a socially worthwhile exercise that is undertaken in the strictest confidence. The banner logo 'Count Mc In' aims to encourage universal self-inclusion in the Census.

  The campaign encompasses both paid and free media with the latter being instigated at local level by Census Area Managers working to a centrally co-ordinated PR calendar. Local PR in England has also benefited greatly through a strategic partnership with BBC Local Radio.

  The full range of ethnic titles will be used to advertise the Census to ethnic minorities as a component within the main campaign designed to address these communities in a sympathetic and appropriate way.

  The Census form questions and the information leaflet have been translated into 24 commonly used foreign languages—in addition to Welsh in Wales—and will be available from April 1, as will the
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  dedicated Language Helpline which can offer help in 12 languages. In addition, an ethnic version of the promotional video has been produced using an Asian celebrity, which we hope to place in unused air-time on Asian cable TV.

  Customised press notices associated with all the main PR events will be disseminated to all ethnic minority media outlets. For our Recruitment Blitz the Press notice directed at ethnic minority media carried a supporting quote from Civil Service Commissioner Karamjit Singh CBE, and we specifically targeted metropolitan areas at 14 sites around the country where there would be good links with local TV and radio as well as a high concentration of ethnic minority populations. Our partnership with BBC Local Radio has gained us influence over the BBC's Asian Language Network, which has already run a number of Census promotions.

  These several activities complement the Community Liaison Programmes pursued at local level by Census Area Managers with the overall aim of raising general public awareness about the census, facilitating the enumeration to ensure the fullest possible coverage and helping to provide a source of potential field staff.

  The Census2001 Count Me In website contains a wealth of material about the Census in general including a number of factsheets as well as covering specific areas such as recruitment.

  There are two major initiative to make children and teachers aware of the Census:

  CensusAtSchool is au outline census for schoolchildren asking questions with youth appeal (covering topics such as mobile phone/pet ownership; football team; height of children compared with 1830s). There are on-line classroom activities that will enable the findings to be analysed using statistical techniques. The results from CensusAtSchool attracted major national and regional press coverage when released in February. The national findings are available on the website www.censusatschool.ntu.ac.uk for schools to make comparisons of local and national trends.

  Census In School is an educational package for teachers containing modules cleating with the use of Census information which is mapped to the National Curriculum. A CD-ROM version is attached to each pack, and these have been distributed to both junior and secondary schools.

  Minimum Wage
  Mr. Alexander
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimates he has made of the number of workers in Scotland who have benefited from the introduction of the statutory minimum wage, broken down by employment sector. [1557771

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician. I have asked him to reply.

  Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Douglas Alexander, dated 28 March 2001:

  As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent question about the number of people in Scotland who have benefited from the National Minimum Wage (NMW) by employment sector (155777).

  The Office for National Statistics has published estimates of the number of jobs paid at less than NMW rates for 1998, 1999 and 2000. These estimates are based on an improved methodology using data from the New Earnings Survey (NES) and Labour Force Survey (LFS). This methodology provides the best estimates for the number of jobs in the UK paid below low hourly rate thresholds. Estimates for the United Kingdom and Government Office Regions, including Scotland, are posted on the National Statistics website at: www.statistics.gov.uk/nsbase/ themes/labour_market/nmw_lowpay_tables.asp

  The new methodology has been developed to overcome the deficiencies inherent in the two surveys, the NFS and LFS, in measuring low pay. Estimates based on this methodology are not available for the number of jobs paid below NMW rates in Scotland broken down by employment sector.
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  Red Diesel
  Mr. Chaytor
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the annual savings to the(a) quarry, (b) aviation, (c) farming, (d) manufacturing and (e) other industries arising from the rebated rates of duty on red diesel. [154699]

  Mr. Timms
  Data on payments of duty on rebated gas oil do not indicate the end-use; therefore no estimate has been made of the annual savings to different industries resulting from the rebated rates of duty on red diesel.

  Mr. Chaytor
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the annual savings to industry from using red diesel instead of ultra low sulphur diesel. [154700]

  Mr. Timms
  Rebated gas oil, also known as red diesel, is liable for duty at the rate of 3.13 pence per litre and is used in excepted vehicles and as a heating and industrial fuel. Assuming the current level of use, raising the rate of duty on gas oil to the rate applying to Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel would raise additional duty revenues of around £3 billion. In practice the additional revenue would be significantly less than this because a fourteenfold increase in the duty rate would reduce the demand for rebated gas oil.

  Business Costs (Wales)
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer (1) how much the Treasury estimates that small and medium enterprises in Wales will have to pay under the climate change levy; [154554]

  (2) by how much he estimates that costs to small and medium enterprises in Wales will decrease as a consequence of the reduction in employers' National Insurance Contributions. [154556]

  Mr. Timms
  The climate change levy will be revenue neutral overall, and broadly neutral between services and manufacturing. The levy will raise an estimated £1 billion in its first year, all of which will be recycled back to business via a 0.3 percentage point cut in employers' National Insurance Contributions and through support for business energy efficiency. The effect on any specific business sector or area will depend on a number of factors, including their future energy consumption, their levels of employment, eligibility for discounts, use of exempt renewable energy or combined heat and power, and the extent to which they take up energy efficiency advice and the enhanced capital allowances for energy saving investments.

  Banks
  Dr. Cable
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps he has taken in the year since the publication of the Cruickshank report to reduce the excess profits being earned by the leading clearing banks identified by the report. [155594]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  I refer the hon. Gentleman to the Government's response to the Cruickshank report, which was published on the 4 August 2000, and to Chapter Three of the Economic and Fiscal Strategy Report, which was published on 7 March 2001.
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  Dr. Cable
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what change has taken place in the share of the four leading clearing banks in the current account market since the publication of the Cruickshank report. [155597]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  As I told the Treasury Select Committee on 30 January (ref: para. 452) the share of the four leading clearing banks in the current account market when the Cruickshank report was published was around 68 per cent. It is now around 70 per cent.

  Performance Information
  Mr. Russell Brown
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what progress has been made on the recommendation in the Performance and Innovation Unit report "Wiring it Up" to develop a strategy for performance information. [156221]

  Mr. Andrew Smith
  A strategy for performance information "Improving Performance Information"—setting out the initiatives the Government have put in place to improve performance information—was published today.

  As part of the strategy a guide to performance information: "Choosing the right FABRIC: a Framework for Performance Information" has also been published.

  This document is published jointly by the Treasury, the Cabinet Office, the National Audit Office, the Audit Commission, and the Office for National Statistics and contains principles behind performance information.

  I am placing a copy of both documents in the Libraries of both Houses. The documents can also be found on the Treasury website at www.hm-treasury.gsi.gov.uk/ perform_info.

  Economic and Monetary Union
  Mr. Ian Stewart
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what the outcome was of the most recent meeting of the Standing Committee on preparations for EMU. [156222]

  Miss Melanie Johnson
  The most recent meeting of the Standing Committee took place on 22 January 2001. I have arranged for copies of the minutes to be placed in the Library of the House.

  Smuggling
  Mr. Chope
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimates Her Majesty's Customs and Excise has made of the extent of excise duty lost in the smuggling of fuel; and what targets he has set for the reduction of smuggling of tobacco, alcohol and fuel. [155944]

  Dawn Primarolo
  Customs have made no estimates relating specifically to excise duty lost from the smuggling of fuel into the UK.

  Customs' targets for reducing tobacco smuggling and cross-Channel alcohol smuggling are set out in the "Tackling Tobacco Smuggling" document published on 22 March 2000, a copy of which is available in the Library. There is no specific target for fuel.
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TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Bell Canada (Madagascar)
  Mr. Ian Bruce
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what investigations(a) he and (b) Oftel have carried out into incidences of a UK-licensed telecommunications operator short-terminating calls in the UK between Bell Canada customers and Madagascar. [155835]

  Ms Hewitt
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: Neither the Government nor Oftel have received any representations about the short termination of calls between Bell Canada customers and Madagascar, and no investigations have been carried out. Oftel will investigate any complaints made to them that an operator licensed under the Telecommunications Act might be acting in breach of its licence.

  Nuclear Power
  Dr. Cable
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what representations he has received from British Energy regarding the future of new nuclear power plant development in(a) Scotland and (b) the rest of the UK. [155848]

  Mr. Hain
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: None.

  Strategic Export Controls
  Mr. Menzies Campbell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1) what provision will be made for parliamentary scrutiny of lists of acceptable destinations for exports under the framework agreement concerning measures to facilitate the restructuring and operation of the European defence industry; [155487]

  (2) if exports with significant United Kingdom participation, agreed under the framework agreement concerning measures to facilitate the restructuring and operation of the European defence industry, and exported from and licensed by another of the parties to the agreement, will be included in the United Kingdom annual report on strategic export controls; [155489]

  (3) what process will be used to draw up a list of acceptable destinations for exports under the framework agreement concerning measures to facilitate the restructuring and operation of the European defence industry; and what role industry will play in this process; [155486]

  (4) if the (a) range, (b) quantity of items and (c) eventual end-users covered by a global project licence will be clearly identified in the annual report on strategic export controls under the framework agreement concerning measures to facilitate the restructuring and operation of the European defence industry. [155488]

  Dr. Howells
  The annual report on strategic export controls will provide details of all export licences issued by the UK relating to framework agreement projects in a similar way to current reporting.

  The process to draw up lists of acceptable destinations or White Lists is set out in Article 13(3) of the framework agreement. The Ministry of Defence, with support from both DTI and FCO is continuing discussions with other participating countries on the modalities of the operation
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  and maintenance of the White Lists. Industry will continue to be consulted on these discussions as proposals are developed. These White Lists will represent declarations of interest in potential export opportunities by the company involved and as such are commercially sensitive. It would not therefore be appropriate to publish these lists. The lists themselves will not function as export licences and exporters will still have to apply for export licences from the country from which the final export will take place. The UK will continue to apply high levels of transparency through our annual reports on strategic export controls to such licensing decisions and will encourage other countries, including other participating countries, who are all signatories to the EU Code of Conduct, to be equally open.

  The publication of this information will mean there will be no reduction in the level of Parliamentary scrutiny of these export licensing decisions.

  Reprocessed Uranium
  Mr. Chaytor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what quantities of reprocessed uranium have been sold by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. and for what purposes in each of the last three years. [154420]

  Mr. Hain
  [holding answer 26 March 2001]: Details of BNFL's commercial transactions—including its trade in uranium products—are a matter for BNFL and its customers.

  Departmental Policies (North Devon)
  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will set out, including statistical information relating as directly as possible to the North Devon constituency, the effects on North Devon of his Department's policies and actions since 2 May 1997. [155902]

  Mr. Caborn
  The Department has provided the following support for businesses in North Devon Constituency since May 1997.

  Regional Selective Assistance (RSA)

  RSA is a capital investment grant linked to the creation or safeguarding of jobs in designated areas of need (the Assisted Areas). Five RSA grant offers totalling £0.574 million have been made to businesses in the North Devon Constituency, to support projects with a total capital expenditure of £3.5 million, and to create and safeguard a total of 344 jobs.

  Enterprise Grants

  The Enterprise Grants scheme is a simplified scheme that was introduced in April 2000 to help small firms undertake fi iced capital investment projects. One application for £0.012 million in the North Devon Constituency is currently being appraised.

  Business Link

  PROSPER Business Link has provided services to small businesses in the North Devon Constituency since 1997. These include general and specialised advice to help businesses grow, export development counselling, Information and Communications Technology advice, and a full range of specialist information. From April 2001 these services will be provided by the Small Business Service operating through a franchise awarded to a

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  PROSPER-led partnership. This new service will be more customer focused ensuring that services are driven by local need.

  Central Railway
  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1) who from(a) regional development agencies, (b) regional assemblies and (c) other organisations was invited by the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn), to attend his meeting with Central Railway plc on 28 February; who attended the meeting; and if he will make a statement; [155825]

  (2) by what date the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Central, asked regional development agencies and regional assemblies to report their views on the Central Railway project following the meeting of 28 February; [155822]

  (3) what were the conclusions of the meeting of February between the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Central, representatives of Central Railway plc and regional representatives; [155823]

  (4) what contacts there have been between (a) the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Central and (b) other Ministers in his Department and representatives of Central Railway since 1 January; [155824]

  (5) what was the purpose of the meeting on 28 February between the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Central and representatives of Central Railway plc. [155826]

  Mr. Caborn
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: I have had a number of private meetings with representatives of Central Railways in my capacity as Member for Sheffield, Central.

  Post Offices
  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many(a) sub and (b) main post offices there were in the Romsey constituency in (i) 1992, (ii) 1997 and (iii) 2001. [155855]

  Mr. Alan Johnson
  I understand from the Post Office that data on the post office network are not held on a parliamentary constituency basis.

  Miners (Compensation)
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many ex-miner claims for compensation for respiratory disease there were(a) as at 30 October 2000 and (b) at present. [155643]

  Mr. Hain
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: At 29 October 2000, IRISC, the Department's claims handlers, had registered 124,376 claims in respect of respiratory disease. To date, the number of claims initiated is 141,158 and, on average, 1,000 new claims continue to be registered each week.

  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what is the average settlement figure for those ex-miners who have settled their claims under the fast-track procedure. [155644]

  Mr. Hain
  Before September last year, expedited offers of between £1,050 and £5,750 were made to claimants in full and final settlement following spirometry (the first stage of the medical process). As a result of the fast-track 652W
  initiative in September, these offers were increased to between £2,050 and £14,500, the offer being dependent on spirometry results and underground working history with British Coal. In addition, eligibility was broadened to include some claimants who were previously ineligible for an expedited offer. Those who had offers made under the old tariffs received a top-up in line with the new awards. The average settlement figure is £4,700.

  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what the time-scale is for processing claims for compensation from ex-miners and their families in each of the centres in Wales; and what the target date is for the completion of this work for existing cases in each such location. [154839]

  Mr. Hain
  It is difficult to say how long it will take before the last claim is assessed in Wales. New claims can still be made and nationally there are about 1000 new claims each week. We aim to assess the remainder of the most injured and eldest miners and widows by spring 2002.

  MAP resources within South Wales are being increased. We recently opened a new centre in Ammanford, and I will be attending the opening of a further new centre in Ystrad Mynach on 30 March. In North Wales, as the right hon. Member is aware, Healthcall have been asked to cease assessments in May at the centre in Wrexham. They are, however, investigating alternative sites in the area for the Portakabin modular unit with the help of the local council. In addition, Healthcall are in the process of equipping mobile testing units to be used as and when the need arises. With these changes in prospect it is difficult to set targets now for handling the existing claims.

  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what estimate he has made of the number of claims for compensation for(a) chronic bronchitis and emphysema and (b) asthma his Department will receive from ex-miners and their families in Wales in the next 12 months. [154819]

  Mr. Hain
  It is difficult to forecast the number of further claims of compensation for respiratory disease, including those with chronic bronchitis and emphysema, expected in Wales. Nationwide, there are currently around 1,000 new claims initiated in respect of respiratory disease each week. The number of claims is currently about 140,000.

  As to claims for asthma, this is not a condition for which British Coal were found liable and it is therefore not compensable under the British Coal
  Respiratory Disease Litigation.

  Electronic Signatures
  Kali Mountford
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement on how the Government propose to implement the EU' s framework directive on electronic signatures. [156223]

  Mr. Byers
  I have today issued a consultation document on how this Directive should be implemented in the UK. Copies of the document have been placed in the Library of the House and are available on the DTI web site.
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  Late Payments
  Mr. Page
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many payments were made by his Department in each of the last five years to suppliers in which compensation was paid due to late payment. [R] [155791]

  Dr. Howells
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: This information is not held centrally and could therefore be answered only at disproportionate cost.

  Mr. Page
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps his Department has taken to improve its late payment record. [R] [155789]

  Ms Hewitt
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: The Department has put in place tighter controls in order to improve its performance on the prompt payment of invoices.

  Departmental Policies (Newbury)
  Mr. Rendel
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will set out, including statistical information relating as directly as possible to the Newbury constituency, the effects on Newbury and west Berkshire of his Department's policies and actions since 2 May 1997. [154576]

  Mr. Caborn
  [holding answer 20 March 2001]: West Berkshire has benefited from a broad range of initiatives that have been implemented since May 1997.

  The Thames Valley Business Link

  The Thames Valley Business Link receives funding from the Department to assist businesses at all stages of development. The Business Link also has an independent income stream. The Business Link covers both Berkshire and Buckinghamshire. Initiatives are aimed to reach groups of businesses that have shown a need for a more direct approach. It would not be possible to dis-aggregate the benefit for west Berkshire and the figures shown are for the whole region covered by the Business Link.

  The Business Link's services are widely marketed and include the following initiatives.

  DTI Funding for Business Link

  Financial year

  £000

  1997–98

  2,288

  1998–99

  2,108

  1999–2000

  2,938

  2000–01

  n/a

  Diagnostic Consultancy Service—This scheme is aimed at businesses to help them find and rectify problems within the company.

  Farmer's Advisory Service—This scheme supports farmers to develop and manage their businesses. The rural nature of west Berkshire has led that area in particular to benefit from this initiative.

  Business Advisory Service

  The Business Advisory Service gives easy access to a wide range of quality business services, initial business diagnosis at no extra cost, impartial expert advice on business issues, and practical value-for-money support tailored to make the most of individual business potential.
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  Export Counselling Services—This was a scheme initiated in 1997 to aid local businesses to develop an export market. (Funds were in addition to those given.)

  Financial year

  £

  1997–98

  52,500

  1998–99

  50,000

  1999–2000

  25,000

  Other initiatives include:

  British Trade International—a separately funded unit dealing with expanding the export and raising the profile of British goods abroad.

  SMART awards—four west Berkshire businesses have been awarded funds to develop innovative technological ideas to improve their business.

  The Berkshire Small Business Service

  The Small Business Service will take over from the current Business Link in April 2001 and will deliver a sharper and more focused service by acting as a gateway to the wide range of services available to local businesses.

  Export Licences
  Mr. Laurence Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what plans he has to speed up the granting of Export licences; and if he will make a statement. [155637]

  Dr. Howells
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: Licences to export arms and other goods whose export is controlled for strategic reasons are issued by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry acting through the DTI's Export Control Organisation (ECO). All relevant individual licence applications are circulated by the DTI to other Government Departments with an interest as determined by those Departments in line with their policy responsibilities. These include FCO, MOD and DfID. There ate regular meetings between officials in these Departments to identify specific ways of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the export licensing system, as well as to discuss particular licence applications.

  The Government take very seriously their responsibilities for exercising effective export controls. All relevant export licence applications to export strategic goods are rigorously assessed on a case-by-case basis against the consolidated EU and national arms export licensing criteria.

  The Government, are working hard to reduce processing times for export licence applications. We have set demanding targets for processing Standard Individual Export Licence (SIEL) applications. The aim is to provide a substantive response to such applications within 20 working days. The targets are set out in a Service and Performance Code published by the ECO, and information on performance against these targets is set out in the Government's Annual Reports on Strategic Export Controls. However, these targets do not apply to applications concerning Iran, Iraq or to applications for licences to export goods which are subject to control

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  solely because of UN Sanctions. This is because there are special licensing procedures for those destinations, which reflect the Government's concerns.

  Strategic export licensing is and must be a joined-up process. All applications are processed expeditiously and with care. However, some cases raise particularly difficult issues and these may take longer to process. But, where cases are outstanding with other departments for longer than the relevant target period the ECO systematically monitors and reminds them so that cases are resolved as quickly as possible.

  Mr. Laurence Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what plans he has to review the list of products which must obtain licences for export; and if he will make a statement. [155638]

  Dr. Howells [holding answer 27 March 2001]
  The lists of goods which are subject to export control are continuously under review as part of the UK's obligations under the various International Proliferation and Arms Control Conventions and Regimes. These organisations conduct periodic or continuous reviews of their lists and changes are negotiated, and agreed, as necessary.

  The UK's implementation of these changes is carried out by means of amendments to national secondary legislation (the Export of Goods (Control) Order and the Dual Use Items (Export Control) Regulations 2000) or amendments to EC Council Regulations.

  Mr. Laurence Robertson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when he will make decisions on export licence application numbers 19065, 19460. 19856 and 19679, submitted by P.W. Allen and Company, Tewkesbury. [155636]

  Dr. Howells
  [holding answer, 27 March 2001]: Licences to export arms and other goods whose export is controlled for strategic reasons are issued by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade, and Industry acting through the DTI's Export Control Organisation (ECO). A decision has been reached on application 19065, and the company was informed of that decision by the ECO on 2 March 2001.

  A decision has not yet been reached on the other three applications. Decisions will be taken as quickly as possible consistent with the need to give full consideration to the issues involved.

  Fireworks
  Mr. Ruane
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will list the local authorities with the worst record for(a) injuries and (b) death due to fireworks in the UK. [155994]

  Dr. Howells
  Information on firework injuries and deaths is broken down by NHS Trust area rather than local authority area. As such, therefore, it is not possible to identify local authorities in the way my hon. Friend requests.

  Statistical surveys commissioned from NOP since 1 May 1997

  Title

  Date originated

  Name of contractor

  Business Information Security Survey 1998

  13 October 1997

  NOP Business>

  Benchmarking Development of the Information Age

  29 September 1998

  NOP/Spectrum Strategy Consultants

  Business Information Security Survey

  11 October 1999

  NOP

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  Details of 1999 injuries (there were no deaths) have been placed in the Library of the House and can be interrogated on the DTI website http://www2.dti.gov.uk/. Figures for 2000 should be available shortly.

  Renewable Energy
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what steps he is taking to promote energy from offshore wind. [155762]

  Mr. Hain
  [holding answer 26 March 2001]: The Government are taking a number of steps to promote the development of offshore wind. We believe that this technology will have an important role to play in helping us to meet our renewables targets.

  Offshore wind will be eligible for the new Renewables Obligation that the Government are proposing to introduce in October this year. In addition, in view of the early stage of development of offshore wind, the Government are planning to provide capital grants to support its development. Of the £250 million allocated for renewables support over the next three years, at least £49 million has been allocated specifically for offshore wind and further sums may be allocated in the light of the recommendations of the Performance and Innovation Unit, due to be published later this year.

  The grants will be used to fund a number of early demonstration projects for offshore wind. The aim is that these will reduce the costs involved to a more acceptable level, and provide those involved with a bank of knowledge and experience to enable them to pursue more ambitious projects on a commercial basis.

  The Government are also determined to provide a more streamlined consents process for offshore wind. The existing arrangements are fragmented and the proposal is for DTI to act as a "one-stop-shop" for planning and consents. I launched a consultation paper of 20 February and views are sought by 23 April.

  Opinion Polling
  Mr. St. Aubyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what(a) quantitative and (b) qualitative analytical work his Department has commissioned from GGC/NOP since 1 May 1997; and what was (i) the cost of the contract and (ii) the specific nature of the work commissioned. [155663]

  Dr. Howells
  Our records show that the Department, since 1 May 1997, has commissioned no statistical surveys from GGC/NOP. However, the following table lists all statistical surveys that the Department has commissioned from NOP and partnerships since 1 May 1997. The table provides the nature of the work commissioned and the date of origin but excludes contractual costs as a matter of commercial confidence between parties under Exemption 13 of the code of Practice on Access to Public Information.
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  BNFL
  Mr. Stunell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on what dates regulatory approval was given for the reprocessing of irradiated MOX fuel by BNFL at Sellafield; and if he will make a statement. [155549]

  Mr. Hain
  BNFL has not sought regulatory approval to reprocess irradiated MOX at Sellafield.

  Mr. Stunell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how much irradiated MOX fuel has been transported to Sellafield from each of BNFL's foreign customers in each of the last 10 years; and if he will make a statement. [155554]

  Mr. Hain
  Irradiated MOX has been received by BNFL at Sellafield from BNFL customers in Switzerland and Germany. Details of the quantities involved and the timing of these deliveries are a commercial matter for BNFL and its customers.

  Better Regulation Task Force
  Mr. Bruce George
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what representations the Better Regulation Task Force has received regarding the consultation paper on the Government's proposals for regulation of the private security industry in England and Wales opposing the(a) regulation of in-house employees, (b) regulation of security system installers and (c) security companies; and if he will list the organisations making representations in each case. [155465]

  Mr. Stringer
  I have been asked to reply.

  The Better Regulation Task Force in its report, `Fit Person Criteria', which was published in May 1999, made recommendations on the regulation of the private security industry.

  Organisations contacted by the Better Regulation Task Force, as part of its study, are listed in Annexe F of the report, a copy of which is in the Library of the House.

  Subsequent to publishing the report, the Task Force received one letter referring to the Government's consultation paper on the regulation of the private security industry. It came from the Association of Chief Police Officers Intruders Alarm Group and it supported the Government's proposals.

LORD CHANCELLOR'S DEPARTMENT

  Magistrates Courts
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department how many employees of the Magistrates Courts Service have(a) had their salaries cut and (b) been downgraded as a consequence of his reorganisation of the magistrates courts. [155456]

  Jane Kennedy
  The Department does not collect data on either aspect of this question. The staffing arrangements for magistrates courts are for individual magistrates courts committees.

  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what the longest distance is that an accused person is expected to travel to attend a658W
  magistrates court; and what this distance will be under the new administrative arrangements being considered by her Department. [155455]

  Jane Kennedy
  I am not considering any "new administrative an arrangements". I understand West Yorkshire Magistrates Courts Service have consulted on possible changes to Petty Sessions Areas within the county. The consultation period is now closed and the magistrates courts committee (MCC) met yesterday to discuss the outcome.

  There is no set distance someone is expected to travel to attend a magistrates court. The concept of "local justice" will differ depending on the MCC area concerned. As a locally managed service, each magistrates courts committee is responsible for providing an efficient and effective service to court users. It is for the committee to decide whether its number and location of courthouses meet its needs as it has the best knowledge of the local area.

  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what representations she has had from the Magistrates Association and other groups involved in the civil justice system expressing concern over plans to rationalise the court areas of the magistracy. [155454]

  Jane Kennedy
  The Lord Chancellor's Department has not received any representations from either the Magistrates Association or other groups involved in the civil justice system expressing concern over plans to rationalise the court areas of the magistracy either in West Yorkshire magistrates courts committee area or any other magistrates courts committee area.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Police
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what recent representations he has received concerning the implementation of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000. [154343]

  Mr. Ingram
  The most significant recent exchange on this issue was at Hillsborough on 8 March when the two Governments met all pro-Agreement parties on this and other matters.

  Mr. David Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he will announce the Government's plans ill relation to compensation for pre-1982 police widows and their families. [154344]

  Dr. Reid
  On 21 March I was pleased to announce that the Government had decided to double the amount of the lump sum payments recommended in the Steele Report to be made to the pre-November 1982 police widows.

  Mr. Spring
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland it he will make a statement on the reforms of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. [154347]

  Mr. Ingram
  The Government are committed to the implementation of the recommendations of the Patten report on policing in Northern Ireland. A major programme of change is under way, and I want to pay tribute to the commitment with which the police service
  659W
  is taking it forward. As the joint statement issued by the British and Irish Governments on 8 March said, we hope that discussions with political parties will result in agreement on remaining issues in June.

  Mr. Connarty
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what progress he has made in implementing reform of the Northern Ireland Police Authority. [154350]

  Mr. Ingram
  The Government are grateful to members of the Police Authority for Northern Ireland for agreeing to stay on for a short period. This will ensure police accountability while we continue discussions before establishing the new Policing Board.

  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what steps he is taking to promote exchanges between the police service in Northern Ireland and the Garda Siochana. [154353]

  Mr. Ingram
  The issue of exchanges will be addressed through the framework of a formal Agreement on policing co-operation between the British and Irish Governments.

  Matters of North-South co-operation on policing covered by the Patten Report have already been discussed in a number of meetings with the Irish Government.

  Mr. McWalter
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on progress on recruitment to the new police service in Northern Ireland. [154363]

  Mr. Ingram
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland gave earlier to the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Ruffley).

  Paramilitary Violence
  Mr. Robathan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make statement on violent incidents related to paramilitary groups in the last four weeks. [154345]

  Mr. Ingram
  During the period 15 February until 15 March there have been two deaths, 26 shooting incidents and nine bombing incidents relating to the security situation. During the same period there have been 18 paramilitary style shootings, nine attributed to Loyalist and nine attributed to Republican groups. Twenty-six paramilitary assaults have taken place, 16 attributed to Loyalist groups and 10 attributed to Republican groups.

  Mr. Wilkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will list the incidents of terrorist violence which have taken place so far this month. [154354]

  Mr. Ingram
  The following tables provide the information requested.

  Security situation statistics from 1 March 2001 to 15 March 2001

  Number

  Deaths

  1

  Shooting incidents

  16

  Bombing incidents

  4

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  Shootings

  The following types of incidents are included:

  Shots fired by terrorists

  Shots fired by the security forces

  Paramilitary style attacks involving shootings

  Shots heard (and later confirmed)

  Other violent incidents where shots are fired (e.g. armed robbery)

  Bombings

  An individual bombing incident may involve one or more explosive devices. Incidents recorded include explosions and defusings. Incidents involving hoax devices, petrol bombings or incendiaries are excluded.

  Casualties as a result of paramilitary style attacks

  By Loyalist

  By Republican

  Shootings

  6

  6

  Assaults

  9

  8

  Note:

  Figures for 2000–01 are provisional and may be subject to minor adjustment.

  Peace Process
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the peace process. [154346]

  Mr. Pound
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the implementation of the Good Friday agreement. [154348]

  14. Dr. Palmer
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the peace process in Northern Ireland. [154352]

  Mr. Bill O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the peace process. [154360]

  Dr. George Turner
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on progress on the peace process. [154364]

  Dr. Reid
  Substantial progress has been made in implementing the Belfast Agreement. There remain several outstanding issues to be resolved if the institutions are to flourish as we wish, principally policing reform, decommissioning and the normalisation of security arrangements. The constructive all-party discussions at Hillsborough on 8 March provided a basis on which I believe that these issues can be addressed and resolved in the coming months.

  Judy Mallaber
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what assessment he has made of the impact on the peace process of a stable economy in Northern Ireland. [154365]

  Dr. Reid
  The strength and stability of the Northern Ireland economy in recent years has been an important factor in creating the right conditions for advancing the peace process. Political progress has in turn had a positive effect on the economy, bringing tangible benefits to everyone and so helping to encourage support for further progress.
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  Decommissioning
  Mr. Day
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what progress has been made on the decommissioning of illegally held arms and explosives in Northern Ireland. [154349]

  Mr. Jim Murphy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement about the decommissioning of illegally held weapons in Northern Ireland. [154351]

  Mr. David Stewart
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the prospects for removing illegally-held weapons in Northern Ireland. [154355]

  Mr. Tredinnick
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what progress has been made on the decommissioning of illegally held arms and explosives in Northern Ireland. [154357]

  Mr. Randall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many illegally held arms and explosives have been decommissioned in Northern Ireland since 10 April 1998. [154361]

  Mr. Ingram
  I welcome the report issued by the Decommissioning Commission last week announcing its re-engagement with the IRA and I see this renewed contact as the basis for further progress. Discussion can now move forwards, away from talking about whether decommissioning will happen to how it will happen. It is vital that all the paramilitary groups on ceasefire engage fully and actively with the Commission so that the issue of illegally held arms can be resolved once and for all, and I look forward to early and positive reports from the Decommissioning Commission that progress is being made. I am confident that with the steps the Government are taking to implement all of the outstanding elements of the Belfast Agreement, we are creating the right context for such progress to be made.

  Mr. Clifton-Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many illegally held arms and explosives have been decommissioned in Northern Ireland since 10 April 1998. [154358]

  Mr. Ingram
  Since the signing of the Belfast Agreement on 10 April 1998, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning has reported carrying out one decommissioning event.

  Nine weapons were included in the list of items belonging to the Loyalist Volunteer Force that was decommissioned in accordance with Commission procedures on 18 December 1998.

  Also included was a quantity of ammunition, five detonators, two pipe bombs, two weapons stocks, and assorted magazines.

  Foot and Mouth
  Rev. Martin Smyth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the First Minister regarding compensation for non-farm enterprises affected by the foot and mouth outbreak. [154356]
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  Dr. Reid
  I have discussed a range of issues relating to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease with Cabinet colleagues, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and with Northern Ireland Ministers, including the First Minister and Deputy First Minister and the Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development.

  The Northern Ireland Executive is fully involved in the Government's Rural Task Force, which has been set up to consider the wider economic impact of the current foot and mouth outbreak. The Minister for the Environment announced a package of measures on 20 March and the Executive will be considering how that package will apply in Northern Ireland.

  Security Situation
  Mr. Fabricant
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the current security situation. [154359]

  Mr. Ingram
  The main paramilitary groups are maintaining their ceasefires; however, there remains a continued threat from dissident paramilitaries as evidenced by the recent 1,100 lb bomb discovered in South Armagh and recent attacks on the Belfast to Dublin railway line. The security forces continue to thwart the attempts of these groups to destroy the peace process.

  Mr. Fraser
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what his policy is regarding the normalisation of security in Northern Ireland. [154362]

  Mr. St. Aubyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what his policy is regarding the normalisation of security in Northern Ireland. [154366]

  Mr. Ingram
  Government remain committed to normalisation of security as quickly as the threat allows. Major progress has already been made. Since the ceasefire 42 military bases have been demolished, closed or vacated. There are currently under 13,500 troops in Northern Ireland, the lowest level since 1970. Over 3,000 troops have left the Province since the current ceasefires were declared.

  In the longer term, the number of army bases will reduce to no more than 20, to include sites in Londonderry, Belfast, Coleraine and Dungannon. However, these further measures will very much depend on the removal of the threat from dissident republicans and continued progress towards a normal civil society.

  Robert Hamill
  Mr. Corbyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what further investigations have been undertaken into the death of Robert Hamill. [154367]

  Mr. Ingram
  The Royal Ulster Constabulary is conducting an ongoing investigation, under the supervision of the Office of the Police Ombudsman, into the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr. Hamill.

CABINET OFFICE

  Opinion Polling
  Mr. St. Aubyn
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what(a) quantitative and (b) qualitative analytical

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  work her Department has commissioned from GGC/NOP since 1 May 1997; and what was (i) the cost of the contract and (ii) the specific nature of the work commissioned. [155667]

  Marjorie Mowlam
  The Cabinet Office has not commissioned any such work from CGC/NOP.

  Ministerial Meetings
  Mr. Randall
  To ask the Minister fur the Cabinet Office how many ministerial meetings with hon. Members have been cancelled by Ministers since 1 January. [155246]

  Marjorie Mowlam
  Meetings between Ministers and hon. Members are sometimes postponed, but they are rarely cancelled.

  Since 1 January this year we have no record of any Cabinet Office Minister cancelling a bilateral meeting with an hon. Member.

  Modernising Government
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what the Government's policy is towards incorporating public feedback via the internet into the process of policy formation and the taking of decisions; and if she will make a statement. [155318]

  Mr. Ian McCartney
  In line with our published Code of Practice on written consultations, it is our policy that from January 2001 all written consultations are published online and that responses can be made via
  email. A register of all consultations is published on ukonline.gov.uk.

  In addition to online written consultations, ukonline.gov.uk also provides a number of discussion forums on a range of issues. Registered users of ukonline.gov.uk may submit their opinions to these discussion groups and comment on the other opinions published online.

  We are currently considering how best to make use of the internet in terms of broadening and deepening participation in the democratic process. We will be consulting widely on our policy in this area, including via the internet, as it develops.

SCOTLAND

  Carpet Manufacturing
  Mr. Alexander
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what discussions she has had with(a) industry and (b) others about the future of Scottish carpet manufacturing. [153578]

  Mrs. Liddell
  I meet with a wide range of organisations to discuss Scottish industry in general including the future of the manufacturing sector. Financial support for specific industries is primarily the responsibility of the Scottish Executive.

  The carpet manufacturing industry is of great importance to the Scottish economy and therefore has been granted the maximum level of support allowed under State Aid rules. I understand further financial support may, however, be available in the next financial year.
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  I remain available for any further discussion that may be valuable to the industry.

  Foot and Mouth
  Mr. Peter Ainsworth
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if she will list the meetings and conferences organised by her Department and agencies of her Department which have been(a) cancelled and (b) postponed owing to foot and mouth disease; and if she will make a statement. [155369]

  Mrs. Liddell
  [holding answer 23 March 2001]: No work of my Department has been adversely affected by foot and mouth disease.

  Opinion Polling
  Mr. St. Aubyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what(a) quantitative and (b) qualitative analytical work her Department has commissioned from GGC/NOP since 1 May 1997; and what was (i) the cost of the contract and (ii) the specific nature of the work commissioned. [155668]

  Mrs. Liddell
  No work has been commissioned from GGC/NOP.

HEALTH

  Surgical Instruments (Sterilisation Techniques)
  Mr. Worthington
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he expects to receive the results of the research he commissioned into the effective sterilisation of surgical instruments by alkaline hydrolysis at elevated temperature. [147865]

  Mr. Denham
  [holding answer 30 January 2001]: The results of our research into the effects of alkaline hydrolysis at elevated temperatures on the sterilisation of surgical instruments are expected this summer.

  "Don't Give up Giving up" Campaign
  Siobhain McDonagh
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of the extent to which the "Don't Give up Giving up" campaign has achieved its objectives. [148855]

  Yvette Cooper
  Quarterly surveys of smoking attitudes and awareness of the campaign are being carried out and results indicate that the "Don't Give up Giving up" campaign is well recalled and is communicating effectively with the target audience.

  In the period before the advertising was resumed (1 June 2000 to 20 August 2000) calls to the NHS smoking helpline averaged 4,497 per month. Since advertising began again on 21 August 2000 the monthly call average has been 16,600.

  The website "givingupsmoking.co.uk" has had over 39,000 distinct individual visitors since its launch in December 1999. More than 7,000 of these were in January of this year.

  This information is shared regularly with those working in tobacco control and cessation through regular campaign updates.
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  Preliminary results of the general household survey of smoking prevalence in 2000 will be available later this year.

  Our tobacco education campaign, launched in December 1999, is aimed at persuading smokers to give up and non-smokers, particularly children, not to start. As part of the broader campaign we are planning dedicated sub-campaigns aimed at pregnant women, ethnic minorities etc.

  Retained Organs Commission
  Mr. Wilshire
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the delay in the publication by the Retained Organs Commission of national guidance; and when he expects hospitals to be able to answer the inquiries being made by next of kin. [151566]

  Mr. Denham
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) on 26 February 2001,Official Report, column 452W. The guidance referred to was published on 9 March and details are available on the Commission's website at www.nhs.uk/ retainedorgans.

  NHS Dentists
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many dentists were employed by the National Health Service in each of the last three years in(a) the United Kingdom and (b) Devon. [153737]

  Mr. Hutton
  [holding answer 14 March 2001]: The number of dentists employed by the National Health Service at 30 September in each of the years 1998 to 2000 is given in table 1 for each of the dental services for England and Devon. Issues relating to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are matters for the devolved authorities.

  Table 1: Number of dentists (head count) at 30 September each year

  1998

  1999

  2000

  England

  Hospital Dental Service1

  2,220

  2,250

  2,190

  Community Dental Service1

  1,380

  1,370

  1,340

  Personal Dental Service2

  0

  148

  326

  Salaried Service

  186

  137

  131

  Total1.3

  3,800

  3,900

  3,990

  Devon

  Hospital Dental Service1.4

  40

  30

  40

  Community Dental Service1

  20

  30

  20

  Personal Dental Service2

  0

  0

  0

  Salaried Service

  18

  18

  17

  Total1.3.4

  80

  80

  80

  1Figures rounded to the nearest ten

  2Includes some self-employed dentists and their dentist employees

  3Some dentists work in several services and are counted in each service

  4Clinical assistants are excluded from the Devon figures. They are employed on a sessional basis and generally work less than one day a week

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  Dentists providing dental services in the General Dental Services are not employees of the NHS. The number of principal dentists who were on health authority lists to provide dental services and their assistants and vocational dental practitioners are shown in table 2.

  Table 2: Number of General Dental Service dentists (head count) at 30 September each year

  1998

  1999

  2000

  England

  17.247

  17,721

  18,049

  Devon

  397

  424

  445

  Cancer Centre (Yorkshire)
  Miss McIntosh
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations he has received on the selection of York is an intermediate frequency cancer centre; and if he will make a statement. [154705]

  Yvette Cooper
  I understand the Department has received representations at a local level which are currently being considered and will be responded to accordingly.

  The National Health Service guidance for upper gastrointestinal cancer was published in January 2001. It recommends, in line with previous guidance for breast, colorectal, lung and gynaecological cancer, that care should be delivered by specialist multidisciplinary teams. Recommendations about the appropriate catchment population for services for individual cancers are in line with their incidence

  The Yorkshire cancer network is currently reviewing the implications of the implementation of the national guidance across the county. York is a cancer unit which provides diagnostic and treatment services for the more common cancers to the local population.

  The network wishes to ensure that the high level of surgical expertise available in cancer units such as York are harnessed within the specialist multidisciplinary teams. While it is probable that all surgery for the rarer sites such as cancer of the pancreas will be undertaken in the cancer centre in Leeds, the recommendations for the configuration of services for upper gastrointestinal cancer have still to be agreed by the network.

  Miss McIntosh
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health which intermediate frequency cancer centre will be intended for use by patients living in north Yorkshire. [154706]

  Yvette Cooper
  Access to cancer centre services is based upon the area of residence for individual patients. Residents of Hambleton and Richmondshire are served by the Middlesbrough cancer centre. Residents in the eastern coast area of north Yorkshire are served by the Hull cancer centre and residents for the remainder of north Yorkshire are served by the Leeds cancer centre.

  Modernisation Fund
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much is in the Modernisation Fund; how it is proposed that local health organisations can access it; and if he will make a statement. [155108]
  667W
  Mr. Denham
  The modernisation fund was set up following the comprehensive spending review in 1998. Since then, investment in the National Health Service under the modernisation fund has totalled almost £4 billion.

  The modernisation fund has been superseded by the additional funding secured as part of the spending review 2000 for investment in the delivery of the NHS Plan.

  NHS Shared Services Project
  Mr. Cohen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much has been allocated to the NHS shared services project; how much has been top-sliced from allocations to health authorities to pay for it; what this project comprises of; if he will indicate the cost of each component; and if he will make a statement. [155110]

  Mr. Denham
  For the financial year 2001–02, £31.5 million has been allocated to the shared services in the National Health Service project. This sum was transferred out of health authority allocations. The project comprises two elements. Firstly, the establishment of two shared service centre pilots, and secondly the procurement of a national integrated human resources and payroll system. The shared service centre pilots are expected to cost £8.5 million and the national integrated human resources and payroll system £23 million in 2001–02. The benefits to the NHS of a shared services approach will be better, more relevant and more timely information, with resources being released for frontline care. Shared services is an important platform it the modernisation programme for the NHS.

  Non-residential Services
  Mr. Linton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he will issue the statutory guidance on charges for non-residential services; and if he will publish the non-residential charges for services for the elderly applied by London boroughs. [155125]

  Mr. Hutton
  We plan to issue thy: statutory guidance on charges for home care and other non-residential social services later this summer. Publication of a local council's charges policy for non-residential social services is a matter for the council concerned.

  Multiple Sclerosis Nurses
  Mr. Gordon Prentice
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on his policy on the employment by the NHS of MS nurses whose salaries are paid by drugs companies. [155248]

  Mr. Denham
  Employers have to satisfy themselves that sponsorship arrangements are properly conducted and are in the best interests of the National Health Service. Guidance entitled "Commercial Sponsorship: Ethical Standards for the NHS" was issued by the Department in November 2000. This guidance supplemented and updated "Health Service Guidance 1993(5) Standards of Business Conduct for NHS Staff" which was issued in January 1993.

  Copies of the "Commercial Sponsorship: Ethical Standards for the NHS" guidance are being placed in the Library—a copy of HSG 1993(5) is already there.

  NHS Staff Registration
  Dr. Stoate
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will extend the state registration period for NHS staff beyond one year to allow NHS staff from overseas to obtain work permits valid for over a year. [155275]

  Mr. Denham
  Registration periods for health professionals are a matter for the relevant regulatory bodies. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment informs me that work permits are issued for the length of the contract of employment, up to a maximum of five years.

  Clinical Educators
  Dr. Stoate
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has to(a) increase the number of supervisory allowances for NHS clinical educators and (b) invest in additional post-graduate training for educators and locum cover for their existing caseload. [155274]

  Mr. Denham
  National Health Service staff participate in education and training as clinical educators as part of their overall duties. Separate fees are not therefore payable but some staff are employed for additional sessions to enable them to cover duties associated with training. General practitioners receive a trainers grant where they undertake training responsibilities. This will increase to £6,100 per year from 1 April.

  We have invested £3 million over the past two years in providing training for trainers in medicine. We are working with key stakeholders to support trainers for all health professionals.

  Employers arrange locum cover where they feel it is necessary.

  Nurses
  Dr. Stoate
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make ward allowance awards available to out-patient department and rehabilitation/clinical unit nurses. [155276]

  Mr. Denham
  Ward Environment Budgets were introduced on 1 October last year. Each budget will be worth a minimum of £5,000 in 2001–02. The budgets can be spent on whatever the ward sisters and charge nurses who manage the ward consider will best enhance and humanise patient care or improve the working lives of staff.

  All wards can have a budget. No types of ward are excluded. In the vast majority of cases it will be clear which units within a hospital are a ward. At the margins there may however be some doubt whether a particular unit constitutes a ward for the purposes of these budgets. Where there is doubt, the hospital managers will decide how a ward is defined within their hospital with a view to delivering the spirit of this initiative.

  NHS Training
  Dr. Stoate
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has to use recently retired senior clinical NHS staff to assist in the training of new NHS recruits. [155277]
  669W
  Mr. Denham
  We shall continue to ensure that new staff/students have appropriate, high quality support and are taught by those with practical and recent experience of their professions. National Health Service trusts have been asked to establish "keep in touch" schemes whereby a register is kept of retiring staff willing to do casual work or assist with the mentoring of students.

  Dr. Stoate
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what resources he plans to allocate to employ locum cover for NHS staff undertaking development training. [155273]

  Mr. Denham
  The allocation of resources to employ locum cover for NHS staff undertaking development training is a matter for NHS employers to determine in the light of local service priorities.

  Osteopaths Act
  Mr. David Atkinson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what progress his Department is making in its investigation of the General Osteopathic Council; and if he will make a statement on the implementation of the Osteopaths Act 1993. [155423]

  Yvette Cooper
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Roger Gale) on 26 March 2001,Official Report, column 451W.

  General Practitioners
  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the dates of the meetings between the Department of Health and the National Assembly for Wales where the knock-on effects of providing additional funding to each general practitioner practice in England for(a) doctors' pay and (b) extra doctors in Wales were discussed. [155630]

  Mr. Denham
  Ministers and officials meet representatives of the National Assembly for Wales and of the other devolved Administrations routinely to liaise on devolved policy matters.

  NHS (St. Ives)
  Mr. Andrew George
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many NHS registered dentists there were in the St. Ives constituency in(a) 1992, (b) 1997 and (c) 2001. [155745]

  Ms Stuart
  This information is not held centrally and has been provided by Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Health Authority.

  The table shows the numbers of dentists employed in the St. Ives and Carbis Bay area of Cornwall:

  St. Ives and Carbis Bay

  Year

  Dentists employed

  1992

  5

  1997

  5

  2001

  6

  Mr. Andrew George
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many(a) private and (b) public sector residential nursing homes there were in the St. Ives constituency in (a) 1992, (b) 1997 and (c) 2001. [155747]
  670W
  Mr. Hutton
  The table shows the number of private nursing homes for the health authority of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Health Authority at 31 March in each of the years 1992, 1997 and 2000. Information is not available at constituency level and is not yet available for 2001. There are no public sector nursing homes.

  Number of private t nursing homes in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Health Authority, 1992, 1997 and 2000—as at 31 March

  Year

  Number

  1992

  81

  1997

  82

  2000

  73

  Source

  RH(N) Form A 2000, K036 form 1992 and 1997

  Mr. Andrew George
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how n any patients there were per general practitioner in the St. Ives constituency in(a)(b) 1992, (c) 1997 and (d) 2001. [155746]

  Ms Stuart
  The information requested is in the table.

  Unrestricted Principals and Equivalents (UPEs)1 in Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Health Authority (HA)2—average list size

  UPEs

  Patients

  Average list size

  1987

  264

  473,231

  1,793

  1992

  298

  481,625

  1,616

  1997

  306

  489,202

  1,599

  20003

  312

  497,968

  1,596

  1UPEs include Unrestricted Principals, Personal Medical Services (PMS), contracted General Practitioners (GPs) and PMS salaried GPs.

  2Data relate to Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Family Practitioner Committee for 1987, Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Family Health Services Authority for 1992 arid Cornwall and Isles of Scilly HA for 1997 and 2000. The HA boundaries between 1987 and 1992 may not be coterminous.

  3Latest available data. Data for 2000 relate to 30 September; earlier years relate to 1 October.

  Mr. Andrew George
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many vacancies for general practitioners there were in the St. Ives constituency in(a) 1992, (b) 1997 and (c) 2001. [1557421

  Ms Stuart
  This information is not held centrally and has been provided by Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Health Authority.

  There have been no unfilled vacancies in St. Ives during the past 10 years.

  Primary Care Trusts
  Mr. Brady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many appointees to the boards of primary care trusts have declared political activity for(a) the Labour Party, (b) the Conservative Party, (c) the Liberal Democrats and (d) other parties; and in each case what percentage this represents of the total number of appointments made [155812]

  Ms Stuart
  [holiling answer 27 March 2001]: The number of people who have accepted appointment as a chair or non-officer member of the 164 primary care trusts that will be operational from April 2001 and who have declared political activity is given in the table.
  671W

  Political Party

  Number of appointees

  Percentage of total number of appointees

  None declared

  391

  66.72

  Conservative

  35

  5.97

  Independent

  7

  1.19

  Labour

  119

  20.31

  Liberal Democrat

  28

  4.78

  Other

  6

  1.02

  Doctors' Performance Monitoring (Racial Bias)
  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent representations he has received regarding allegations of racial bias in the investigation of performance of doctors; and if he will make a statement. [155922]

  Mr. Denham
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: I am only aware of the independent report by the Policy Studies Institute, commissioned by the Genet al Medical Council (GMC) and published in July 2000. This concluded that there was no evidence of overt or covert racial discrimination or bias in the actions of individual members of staff. However there were some criticisms on some aspects of GMC processes particularly on consistency and transparency.

  The GMC are currently considering this, as part of their proposals to reform its procedures.

  Mobility Product
  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has to introduce a statutory code of practice governing the sale of mobility products for elderly people; and if he will make a statement. [155880]

  Mr. Hutton
  We have no plans to Introduce a statutory code of practice. However, the British Healthcare Trades Association, which represents most organisations involved in manufacturing or selling disability equipment,

  General and Personal Dental Service: Number of dentists by health authority at 30 September each year

  Health authority

  General Dental Service1

  Personal Dental Service2

  Total

  1992

  Hampshire FHSA

  512

  —

  512

  1997

  North and Mid Hampshire HA

  181

  —

  181

  Portsmouth and South East Hampshire HA

  166

  —

  166

  Southampton and South West Hampshire F A

  185

  —

  185

  Total

  532

  —

  532

  2000

  North and Mid Hampshire HA

  201

  —

  201

  Portsmouth and South East Hampshire HA

  187

  —

  187

  Southampton and South West Hampshire IHA

  202

  20

  222

  Total

  590

  20

  610

  1The General Dental Service (GDS) includes principals on a HA list, assistants and vocational dental practitioners.

  2The Personal Dental Service (PDS) cover; dentists working in the PDS who are not working in the GDS.

  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients there were per GP in the Romsey constituency in(a) 1987, (b) 1992, (c) 1997 and (d) 2001. [155854]
  672W
  recently launched a voluntary registration scheme for those working in this field. We have given our strong endorsement to this scheme.

  Health Services (Romsey)
  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many nursing homes there were in the Romsey constituency in(a) 1992, (b) 1997 and (c) 2001. [155859]

  Mr. Hutton
  The table shows the number of private nursing homes for the Southampton and South West Hampshire Health Authority at 31 March in each of the years 1992, 1997 and 2000.

  Information is not available for the Romsey constituency and is not yet available for 2001.

  Private nursing homes in Southampton and South West Hampshire health authority, 1992, 1997 and 2000 — as at 31 March

  Year

  Number

  1992

  40

  1997

  50

  2000

  47

  Source:

  RH(N) Form A 2000, K036 form 1992 and 1997

  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many NHS dentists there were in the Romsey constituency in(a) 1992, (b) 1997 and (c) 2001. [155853]

  Ms Stuart
  Information on the number of dentists is available by health authority rather than by constituency.

  Romsey constituency was located in Hampshire Family Health Service Authority (FHSA) at September 1992. From April 1996 Hampshire FHSA split into three health authorities, and Romsey is now included in Southampton and South West Hampshire Health Authority.

  The number of dentists in the General Dental Services and Personal Dental Services at 30 September is shown in the table for Hampshire FHSA for 1992 and for the three successor HAs for 1997 and 2000.

  Ms Stuart
  Data at a constituency level are not available. Data have been provided for Southampton and South West Hampshire Health Authority.
  673W

  Unrestricted principals and equivalents (UPEs)1 in Southampton and South West Hampshire HA2 — average list size

  UPEs

  Patients

  Average list size

  1987

  293

  563,799

  1,924

  1992

  309

  557,011

  1,803

  1997

  316

  563,446

  1,783

  20003

  329

  571,286

  1,736

  1UPEs includes unrestricted principals, personal medical service contracted general practitioners and PMS salaried GPs.

  2Data relate to Hampshire FPC for 1987, Hampshire FHSA for 1992 and Southampton and South West Hampshire HA for 1997 and 2000. The HA boundaries between 1987 and 1992 may not be coterminous.

  3Latest available data. Data for 2000 relate to 30 September; earlier years relate to 1 October.

  Social Services (Hampshire)
  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the standard spending assessment allocation for social services and the expenditure per head of population in Hampshire was for each year from 1996—97 to date. [155857]

  Mr. Hutton
  Hampshire's social services standard spending assessment allocations for 1996–97 to 2001–02 are:

  £million

  1996–97

  189.430

  1997–98

  137.052

  1998–99

  140.713

  1999–2000

  145.063

  2000–01

  153.051

  2001–02

  160.724

  The gross expenditure on social services by Hampshire per head of population from 1996–97 to 1999–2000 is:

  £

  1996–97

  145.61

  1997–98

  138.87

  1998–99

  147.47

  1999–20001

  160.25

  1Provisional

  Portsmouth and Southampton became unitary authorities in April 1997 and while the 1996–97 figures in the tables include their allocations and expenditure the figures for subsequent years exclude them.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Foot and Mouth
  Mr. Hoyle
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what plans he has to ensure that sheep within the exclusion zones can be moved for lambing purposes. [153187]

  Mr. Morley
  [holding answer 12 March 2001]: Sheep in infected areas can be moved under the various schemes we have introduced over the last two weeks, provided that such moves are justified on welfare grounds and not
  674W
  assessed to be a disease risk. If moves are not possible, then farmers can make use of the Animal Welfare Disposal Scheme.

  Mr. Llwyd
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what representations he has received from the tourist industry on the losses due to the restrictions imposed as a result of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease; and if he will make a statement. [154181]

  Mr. Meacher
  I have been asked to reply.

  Members of the tourist industry have made representations about the severe losses their industry is facing as a result of foot and mouth disease. We estimate that the current loss of revenue to the tourist industry in England is of the order of £100 million a week but it could rise to as much as £250 million a week.

  Sand Eels
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. pursuant to his answer of 21 March 2001,Official Report, column 259W, concerning industrial fishing for sand eels, how many industrial fishing vessels are allowed to fish for sand eels in the spawning cod close I areas; how frequently such vessels are inspected while fishing these grounds; and if he will make a statement. [155881]

  Mr. Morley
  As with pelagic fishing in the closed areas, there is no limit on the number of vessels which may fish for sand eels. However, observers must be on board for at least 50 vessel trips per member state. Their responsibilities are set out in Article 3 of Commission Regulation 259/2001.

EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT

  Education Information
  Mr. Willis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many(a) consultation documents, (b) regulations, (c) revised or corrected regulations,(d) guidance notes, (e) requests for statistical information in addition to form 618G and form 7 and (f) letters from Ministers, have been sent to local education authorities by his Department since May 1997. [153489]

  Jacqui Smith
  Since May 1997 this Department has sent local education authorities communications on the following topics. Very few of these items were sent to schools.

  1997

  1998

  1999

  2000

  2001

  Consultation documents

  Topic

  Early Years

  1

  6

  3

  0

  0

  Further and Higher Education:

  17

  16

  20

  2

  1

  Literacy and Numeracy

  1

  1

  3

  0

  0

  Primary schools

  2

  3

  3

  1

  0

  Secondary Schools

  6

  6

  5

  5

  0

  School Curriculum

  5

  1

  5

  1

  0

  School Discipline

  4

  6

  3

  1

  0

  School Finance

  9

  14

  17

  7

  0

  School Governance

  2

  5

  4

  3

  1

  School Health and Safety

  1

  3

  2

  5

  0

  School — Miscellaneous

  4

  10

  18

  5

  1

  School Organisation

  1

  3

  5

  2

  0

  School Premises

  0

  1

  7

  2

  1

  675W

  1997

  1998

  1999

  2000

  2001

  School Standards

  6

  3

  4

  0

  0

  Special Education

  5

  1

  5

  —

  1

  Teaching Profession

  9

  ll

  7

  13

  1

  Regulations

  35

  132

  191

  57

  6

  Guidance

  Topic

  Early Years

  1

  4

  11

  19

  5

  Further and Higher Education

  13

  12

  22

  9

  5

  Literacy and Numeracy

  0

  4

  19

  17

  1

  Primary schools

  2

  8

  11

  7

  0

  Secondary Schools

  9

  9

  17

  8

  1

  School Curriculum

  0

  2

  3

  13

  5

  School Discipline

  0

  2

  4

  4

  0

  School Finance

  5

  15

  33

  18

  5

  School Governance

  1

  4

  11

  4

  2

  School Health and Safety

  0

  2

  6

  6

  4

  School—Miscellaneous

  3

  3

  9

  32

  0

  School Organisation

  0

  7

  12

  3

  0

  School Premises

  5

  4

  8

  5

  3

  School Standards

  3

  9

  26

  1

  1

  Special Education

  6

  3

  7

  9

  2

  Teaching Profession

  7

  17

  11

  23

  7

  Data collection

  Topic

  Early Years

  0

  3

  3

  6

  1

  Further and Higher Education

  4

  4

  28

  8

  0

  Literacy and Numeracy

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  Primary schools

  1

  1

  2

  0

  0

  Secondary Schools

  2

  4

  1

  4

  0

  School Curriculum

  0

  0

  0

  0

  0

  School Discipline

  0

  0

  2

  6

  0

  School Finance

  1

  0

  3

  8

  3

  School—General

  4

  8

  15

  10

  1

  School Premises

  0

  0

  0

  2

  0

  School Standards

  0

  0

  0

  1

  0

  Special Education

  1

  1

  1

  1

  0

  Teaching Profession

  1

  4

  5

  8

  0

  Letters front Ministers

  1

  2

  4

  6

  2

  Modern Apprentices hips
  Mr. Gorrie
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will take steps to encourage headteachers and careers and guidance staff to become more involved in placing suitable young people in modern apprenticeships. [154401]

  Mr. Wicks
  The Government are determined to ensure that all young people receive high quality, impartial advice about all the learning opportunities available to them. To deliver this we are setting up the new Connexions Service starting in 12 areas in England from April this year, which will ensure that young people who could benefit are actively encouraged to consider vocational options, including Modurn Apprenticeships. Connexions Personal Advisers will provide careers advice to all young people about their learning options. Those Personal Advisers based in schools still work as part of a team under the management of headreachers.

  Further Education Students (London)
  Ms Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many people in each London borough were in further and higher education(a) in 1996 and (b) at the latest date for which figures are available. [155003]
  676W
  Mr. Wicks
  [holding answer 26 March 2001]: Information on the numbers of students from London who were enrolled in Higher Education institutions is not available in the form requested. In the 1999–2000 academic year, there were 267,200 full and part-time students from the Greater London area who were registered at Higher Education Institutions in the United Kingdom. This compares with a figure of 206,500 for the 1995–96 academic year.

  Information on the numbers of students from London who were registered at Further Education institutions in the United Kingdom during the 1996–97 and 1999–2000 academic years is shown in the following table.

  Student numbers1 in further education institutions by London local education authorities (LEAs) 1996 – 97 and 1999 – 2000 academic years

  1996–97

  1999–2000

  LEA

  all students

  all students

  City of London

  487

  478

  Camden

  12,265

  15,478

  Greenwich

  12,256

  18,195

  Hackney

  16,266

  17,790

  Hammersmith and Fulham

  8,420

  10,774

  Islington

  12,721

  15,531

  Kensington and Chelsea

  8,006

  12,169

  Lambeth

  20,437

  25,696

  Lewisham

  17,491

  20,042

  Southwark

  17,562

  22,196

  Tower Hamlets

  15,613

  12,327

  Wandsworth

  14,544

  15,833

  Westminster

  11,488

  14,390

  Barking and Dagenham

  7,647

  8,521

  Barnet

  20,058

  22,122

  Bexley

  11,896

  12,323

  Brent

  20,390

  23,674

  Bromley

  14,516

  13,654

  Croydon

  21,511

  22,037

  Ealing

  18,367

  20,521

  Enfield

  15,920

  18,176

  Haringey

  14,707

  19,487

  Harrow

  15,024

  15,886

  Havering

  13,637

  14,326

  Hillingdon

  11,552

  12,367

  Hounslow

  14,593

  14,630

  Kingston-upon-Thames

  6,823

  6,893

  Merton

  10,191

  10,292

  Newham

  17,626

  23,127

  Redbridge

  13,874

  14,053

  Richmond-upon-Thames

  9,907

  11,609

  Sutton

  10,108

  10,545

  Waltham Forest

  17,498

  19,260

  Total London LEAs

  453,401

  514,402

  1Includes data for FEFC funded and non-funded FEFC funded students in FE sector colleges and FEFC funded students in external Institutions (EIs) and in Specially Designated Institutions (SDIs).

  Note:

  FEFC funded students in higher education institutions (HEIs) are not included.

  Ms Harman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what percentage of households have children in further and higher education in each London borough who do not have to pay full fees. [155004]
  677W
  Mr. Wicks
  [holding answer 26 March 2001]: The information requested is not available.

  In England and Wales, students on undergraduate courses and their families are expected to make a contribution towards their tuition fees only if they can afford to do so.

  In academic year 1998–99, the latest year for which data are available, for Inner London as a whole, the proportion of higher education students who are dependent on their parents and are liable for fees under the Education (Student Support) Regulations and who do not have to pay full fees is estimated to be 81 per cent. Of these, an estimated 66 per cent. were assessed to make no contribution towards fees and an estimated 15 per cent. made a partial contribution towards fees.

  These students were also eligible for maintenance support, around 25 per cent. of which was subject to income assessment.

  1996

  2000

  Day nurseries

  Playgroups

  Day nurseries

  Playgroups

  Providers

  Places

  Providers

  Places

  Providers

  Places

  Providers

  Places

  North East

  136

  4,554

  380

  9,275

  189

  8,027

  482

  12,399

  Darlington1

  3—

  3—

  3—

  3—

  10

  439

  24

  580

  Durham

  29

  1,059

  145

  3,197

  32

  1,406

  81

  1,777

  Cleveland

  23

  677

  88

  2,761

  3—

  3—

  3—

  3—

  Gateshead

  15

  562

  39

  988

  21

  845

  32

  794

  Hartlepool2

  3—

  3—

  3—

  3—

  8

  358

  4

  103

  Middlesbrough2

  3—

  3—

  3—

  3—

  14

  585

  21

  532

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  22

  914

  65

  1,372

  25

  1,152

  57

  1,264

  North Tyneside

  6

  189

  4—

  4—

  19

  770

  29

  593

  Northumberland

  14

  376

  4—

  4—

  1

  78

  128

  2,909

  Redcar and Cleveland2

  3—

  3—

  3—

  3—

  11

  506

  15

  2,052

  South Tyneside

  5

  117

  13

  255

  7

  240

  32

  568

  Stockton-on-Tees2

  3—

  3—

  3—

  3—

  19

  853

  28

  671

  Sunderland

  22

  660

  30

  702

  22

  795

  31

  556

  1From 1 April 1997

  2From 1 April 1996

  3Not applicable

  4Not available

  Postal Status (Unemployed Claimants)
  Ms Roseanna Cunningham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many people were awarded postal status due to hardship incurred by travel expenses to sign on at the nearest job centre in the last five years, broken down by region. [155094]

  Ms Jowell
  [holding answer 26 March 2001]: Responsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service agency under its Chief Executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

  Letter from Clare Dodgson to Ms Roseanna Cunningham, dated 28 March 2001

  As the Employment Service is an Executive Agency, the Secretary of State has asked Leigh Lewis to reply to your question about the number of people awarded postal status due to hardship incurred in attending Jobcentres. This is something which falls within the responsibilities delegated to Mr Lewis as Chief Executive of the Agency. I am replying as Chief Operating Officer for the Employment Service.
  678W
  In further education, 16 to 18-year-olds are not required to pay fees. For those aged 19 and over, colleges charge or waive fees according to their own policies. However, there is full fee remission for disadvantaged groups including those on means-tested state benefits.

  Education Statistics (Northern Region)
  Mr. Kemp
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many(a) registered nursery and (b) playgroup places there were in the Northern Region in (i) 1996 and (ii) at the latest date for which figures are available. [155011]

  Ms Hodge
  The available information is contained in the following table. This includes information on day nurseries and playgroups for March 1996 and March 2000.

  Since September 1998 there has been a free part-time early education place for all four-year-olds, whose parents want one, and a steadily increasing number of free places for three-year-olds. From September 2004 all three-year-olds will be entitled to a free early education place.

  I am afraid it is not possible to provide a count of the number of people being awarded postal status due to hardship incurred by travel expenses to sign on at the nearest Jobcentre. People are required to attend the Jobcentre each fortnight as part of maintaining their claim for Jobseeker's Allowance. However, depending on circumstances, some people are allowed to maintain their claim by post—those who would have to spend an unreasonable amount of time travelling to the Jobcentre, and those who have a mental or physical disability which restricts their mobility.

  Postal status is not usually awarded on the basis of costs incurred for attending the Jobcentre. However, Jobcentre Managers do have some discretion in offering this facility if someone's journey would involve the use of a form of transport which they could not be expected to use on a regular basis, for example, a ferry.

  I hope this is helpful.

  Higher Education Funding
  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what response he has made to the final report from the Funding Options Review
  679W
  Group of Universities UK, with particular reference to their calculation of the funding requirements for higher education. [155164]

  Mr. Wicks
  [holding answer 23 March 2001]: The Government have welcomed the report from the Funding Options Review Group of Universities UK as a helpful contribution to the debate about the funding of higher education. The Government are increasing funding to universities and higher education colleges in England by £1.7 billion over the six years to 2003–04; funding per full-time equivalent student will increase in real terms in 2001–02 for the first time in over a decade. The funding shortfall identified in the Universities UK report is for 2003–04. The Government will address the funding needs of the sector from 2003–04 in the next Spending Review.

  Computers
  Mr. Jim Murphy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment when the Computers Within Reach programme will be introduced throughout the United Kingdom. [155249]

  Mr. Wills
  Computers Within Reach is a Capital Modernisation Fund (CMF) scheme. Such schemes are intended to provide funding for piloting new policy approaches and are not designed to fund full national schemes. It was therefore never intended that the existing CMF funds allocated, £15 million, would be rolled out as a national scheme. We are currently in phase 1 of the scheme working in certain areas of England. The scheme is an England-only rather than a UK pilot.

  We will be evaluating the impact of this, and other pilot CMF schemes such as "Wired. Up Communities", alongside our existing policies on "digital divide" issues before we make decisions on our next steps.

  Veterinary and Medical Students
  Mr. Borrow
  To ask the Secretary of. State for Education and Employment what his policy is on the number of choices of course made available to veterinary and medical students applying to higher education [155354]

  Mr. Wicks
  The admissions procedures for higher education courses are determined by the higher education institutions themselves and applied by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. Ministers are precluded by legislation from involvement in admissions although the number of medical places is set by the Government.

  Sure Start
  Helen Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment for what reasons Warrington was not included in the most recent round of Sure Start projects; and what assessment was made of the levels of deprivation in Warrington, North prior to the decision being taken. [155458]

  Yvette Cooper
  Sure Start districts are identified on the basis of levels of need and deprivation. Once a district has been selected by the Government, it is for a partnership of local stakeholders within the district to choose the precise catchment area. To date 260 Sure Start areas over four waves have now been identified and invited to develop programmes.Warrington was invited to develop a Sure Start programme as part of the third wave.
  680W
  In selecting districts for the fourth wave, an assessment of levels of deprivation and the number of existing Sure Start programmes in Warrington was made alongside assessments for other districts in England. Taking into account these factors, Warrington was not invited to develop a second programme at this stage.

  As a result of the 2000 Spending Review, the number of Sure Start programmes will be increased to 500 by 2003–04 and will reach at least a third of poor children under four in England. The next 240 areas, although not yet decided, will be identified using similar criteria to those used previously, namely levels of deprivation and poverty. There is a possibility that Warrington may be selected for a further programme at some time in the future.

  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how much Sure Start money has been allocated to the Romsey constituency. [155861]

  Yvette Cooper
  None. Sure Start targets children under four living in disadvantaged areas as part of the Government's drive to tackle poverty and social exclusion. Local authority districts are identified by the Government on the basis of their levels of need and deprivation and then invited to develop programmes. The Romsey constituency includes parts of the Test Valley, Eastleigh and Southampton districts. Test Valley and Eastleigh have not been selected for Sure Start. Southampton has been invited twice to develop Sure Start programmes, first in the Trailblazer wave and then, most recently, in the fourth wave. Following invitation, it is for local stakeholders within the district to choose the precise catchment area, and for both Southampton programmes the areas chosen are outside the Romsey constituency.

  As a result of the 2000 Spending Review, the number of Sure Start programmes will be increased to 500 by 2003–04 and will reach at least a third of poor children under four in England. The next 240 areas, although not yet decided, will be identified using similar criteria to those used previously ie. levels of deprivation and poverty. In addition, small pockets of deprivation in otherwise generally affluent areas may be targeted.

  School Funding
  Mrs. Humble
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will list the cash resources paid directly to Blackpool, North and Fleetwood schools, by sector, in each financial year since 2 May 1997, indicating the schools that benefited and the sum involved in each case. [155459]

  Ms Estelle Morris
  Most funding provided by the Department is distributed via local education authorities. Allocations for schools in the Blackpool, North and Fleetwood constituency between the years 1997–98 and 2000–01 under the New Deal for Schools scheme are set out in the table. The Department does not hold information on other support provided to Blackpool, North and Fleetwood schools since 2 May 1997. The Secretary of State wrote to my hon. Friend on 16 February setting out the total funding for her local education authorities (Blackpool and Lancashire) for the years 1996–97 to 2001–02.
  681W

  New Deal for Schools (NDS): Allocation for schools in the Blackpool, North and Fleetwood Constituency

  Year/School

  Project

  Grant awarded (£)

  1997–98

  1—

  1998–99

  May have been included in LEA wide project of 189 schools

  Installation of safety glazing

  2400,000

  May have been included in LEA wide project of 17 schools

  Replacement of deteriorating boiler systems

  2637,000

  May have been included in LEA wide project of 10 schools

  Repair or deteriorating roofs

  2622,000

  Anchorsholme Primary

  Treatment of flat felt roof surfaces with liquid plastics Decothane Gamma 15 system

  58,200

  Claremont Primary

  Re-roofing of ground floor teaching area

  21,500

  Moor Park Junior

  Completion of the over roofing

  21,500

  Norbreck Primary

  Upgrade outside toilets

  8,600

  Montgomery High

  Development of hard-standing on site

  50,410

  1999–2000

  Included within a 10 school package: Montgomery High

  Re-roofing project

  2367,500

  Included within a 14 school package: Great Arley Thornton-Cleveleys Burn Naze Primary Fleetwood Chaucer Community Primary

  Window repairs and replacement

  3516,000

  Included within a 13 school package: Thornton-Cleveleys Burn Naze Primary

  Roof works

  3549,700

  Included within a 25 school package: Thornton Cleveleys Sacred Heart Catholic Primary

  Playground repairs

  3300,000

  2000–01

  Included within a six school package: Cardinal Allen Catholic High

  Refurbishment of CDT

  31,502,992

  Included within a three school package: Montgomery High

  Replacement of temporary classrooms

  3570,688

  Included within a four school package: Montgomery High

  Replacement windows

  3220,000

  Included within a 13 school package: Great Arley

  Replacement windows

  3566,350

  1Nil allocation for schools within this constituency

  2Local education authorities (LEAs) were not required to specify individual schools include I within projects for phase 2 of the NDS programme, so the amount shown is the total project allocation to the LEA. Lancashire or Blackpool local education authorities hold project level information

  3Denotes total allocation made to package projects covering more than one school. Lancashire or Blackpool local education authorities will be able to advise the value of projects at schools which have benefited from these allocations.

  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what recent studies he has conducted into the impact of in-year changes in pupil numbers in the per capita funding of individual schools. 1155875]

  Ms Estelle Morris
  The Financing of Maintained Schools Regulations give local education authorities wide discretion as to the timing and extent of funding changes for in-year pupil number changes. The Regulations are kept under regular review in order to ensure that they enable schools' needs to be met; and furthermore my right hon. Friend has power to approve alternative arrangements if these are needed in particular circumstances. The Department has not conducted any specific studies of the working of in-year pupil number funding changes.

  Buildings (Climate Change)
  Dr. Gibson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what consideration he gives to the effects of climatic change on building new(a) school and (b) university buildings. [155617]
  682W
  Jacqui Smith
  The Department gives guidance on the environmental performance of new school buildings in Building Bulletin 87, "Guidelines for Environmental Design in Schools". This recommends a number of measures for conserving energy. It also contains targets for limiting the amount of carbon dioxide produced by new buildings for both primary and secondary schools, thereby limiting their environmental impact.

  The building or a adaptation of university buildings is a matter for each university. Universities are independent autonomous institutions who will take investment decisions based on longer term strategic objectives approved by the governing body of that institution. Where this may involve put lie funding, investment appraisal and business case review will be undertaken by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to ensure that the project is in line with established investment criteria. Each university has an estates strategy which fully considers environmental issue.
  683W

  Class Sizes
  Mr. Andrew George
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what the average class sizes for Key Stages(a) 1, (b) 2 and (c) 3 were in (i) 1992, (ii) 1997 and (iii) 2001 in the St. Ives constituency. [155744]

  Ms Estelle Morris
  The available information is shown in the table. Information on class sizes by parliamentary constituency is not available prior to 1997. The January class size data for the academic year 2000–01 are currently being analysed and provisional national estimates are expected to be published in April.

  Average class size—St. Ives parliamentary constituency

  January

  September

  1997

  2000

  2000

  Key Stage 1

  25.8

  24.3

  21.8

  Number of pupils in Key Stage 1 classes of size 31 or more

  978

  701

  34

  Key Stage 2

  27.9

  29.4

  n/a

  Pupils aged mainly under 14 in maintained secondary schools

  24.8

  26.4

  n/a

  Note:

  Classes taught by one teacher

  January 2000 saw a fall in the size of the average junior class in England; and a continuing fall in the size of the average primary class, after rising for a decade. The size of the average secondary class nationally, at 22.0, is still five below the average primary class. In 2001–02 secondary headteachers will receive an average of £70,000 and primary headteachers £24,000 in direct grant to spend as they choose, including on reducing class sizes if that is their priority.

  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what the average class size was for Key Stage(a) 1, (b) 2 and (c) 3 in (i) 1992, (ii) 1997 and (iii) 2001 in the Romsey constituency. [155852]

  Ms Estelle Morris
  The available information is shown in the table. Information on class sizes by parliamentary constituency is not available prior to 1997. The January class size data for the academic year 2000–01 are currently being analysed and provisional national estimates are expected to be published in April.

  Average class size—Romsey parliamentary constituency

  January

  September

  1997

  2000

  2000

  Key Stage 1

  27.7

  27.0

  24.5

  Number of pupils in Key Stage 1 classes of size 31 or more

  1,080

  487

  129

  Key Stage 2

  27.6

  29.2

  n/a

  Pupils aged mainly under 14 in maintained secondary schools

  22.7

  23.7

  n/a

  Note:

  Classes taught by one teacher

  January 2000 saw a fall in the size the average junior class in England; and a continuing fall in the size of the average primary class, after rising for a decade. The size of the average secondary class nationally, at 22.0, is still five below the average primary class. In 2001–02 secondary headteachers will receive an average of £70,000 and primary headteachers £2 4,000 in direct grant to spend as they choose, including on reducing class sizes if that is their priority.
  684W

  Prisons (Education and Training)
  Mr. Sheerman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what plans he has to extend provision of resources to HM prisons for the purposes of education and training. [155769]

  Mr. Wicks
  The Prison Service's budget for education and libraries is planned to increase from £50 million to at least £63 million by 2003–04, an increase of over 17 per cent. in real terms. This is on top of the resources being invested in vocational training by the Prison Service. From April 2001 the new Prisoners' Learning and Skills Unit will support DfEE and Home Office Ministers in the development of education and training for prisoners. The Unit will at an early stage review the delivery, funding and procurement of education and training in prisons as a basis for further development through the partnership.

  Music and Ballet Fees
  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if the proposed scale revisions for contributions to fees under the music and ballet scheme will lead to greater proportional changes in contributions from parents with children at day schools than at boarding schools; and what representations he has received on this. [155863]

  Ms Estelle Morris
  The revised parental contribution scale for day pupils under the music and ballet scheme will require greater contributions than at present from families whose annual income exceeds £25,000 in order to bring it into line with the scale for boarding pupils in terms of affordability and equity. Greater contributions will be required from the parents of boarding pupils where family income exceeds £45,000. However, the income threshold below which the parents of day pupils receive a free place will be higher, at £12,148 per annum, than that for boarding pupils, at £9,798 per annum, in recognition of the costs of keeping day pupils at home. Overall, about 85 per cent. of families using the music and ballet scheme will gain from the package of changes.

  We have received representatives from 15 families affected by the proposed changes, seven of which are families of pupils holding day places under the scheme.

  Careers Guidance
  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what assessment he has made of current recruitment to courses training careers guidance professionals. [155866]

  Mr. Wicks
  We are working with the Institute of Career Guidance to develop a new qualification, the Qualification in Careers Guidance for people moving into the careers guidance profession. This is currently being piloted and will be available nationally from autumn 2001.

  Information provided to us by the Institute of Career Guidance, the awarding body for the Diploma in Careers Guidance and the pilot Qualification in Careers Guidance shows that 303 students were registered for careers adviser initial training in 1999–2000 and currently 311 students are registered in 2000–01.
  685W
  In addition, we have made available funding in 2000–01 to support 46 students on the NVQ level 4 in Guidance.

  To support people moving into the guidance profession in 2000–01, we made available £745,000.

  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what action he is taking to ensure that careers guidance under his Connexions Strategy is given by advisers who have undergone full training in careers work. [155867]

  Mr. Wicks
  The Connexions Service will offer at least the same level of impartial careers information, advice and guidance for 13 to 19 year-olds as is currently provided by careers services. However, in order to remove the significant barriers to learning that many young people face, the range of information, advice and guidance provided by the Connexions Service will be extended to cover matters relating to, for example, housing and health.

  Personal Advisers will operate as multi-disciplinary teams and will include a range of people offering specialist support to young people. Personal Advisers providing careers guidance will have appropriate professional qualifications.

  Single Regeneration Budget
  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what amounts were made available in the last three years to education and business partnerships, under each of the six programmes of the Single Regeneration Budget; and what arrangements are being made to replace this funding. [155868]

  Mr. Wills
  On the first point, this information is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost. On the second, I refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my right hon. Friend, the Minister for Local Government and the Regions, 9 March 2001,Official Report, column 370W.

  Student Loans
  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if proposals for write-offs of student loans initiated by his Department(a) require extension to European students and (b) require approval by the European Union. [155871]

  Ms Estelle Morris
  Detailed proposals for the write-off of student loans are still being developed by my Department. We do not believe that they require European Union approval, but we will naturally take full account of relevant EU legislation.

  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if comparable incentives to the proposed write-offs of student loans for trainee teachers are planned for trainees without loan debt. [155869]

  Ms Estelle Morris
  No directly comparable incentives are planned for trainees without loan debt. Other measures to encourage more people into teaching, especially in shortage subjects, include improved pay and training, Golden Hellos, and our recently-announced Back To Work bonus for returners to teaching. The number of teachers in England and Wales has increased by 7,400 since 1998, and we hope that this rise will continue.
  686W

  Further and Higher Education Act
  Mr. Boswell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will make a statement on progress in implementing changes in funding for external qualifications consequent on the coming repeal of Schedule 2 to the Further and Higher Education Act 1999. [155876]

  Mr. Wicks
  Until 31 August 2001 the Learning and Skills Council will continue to consider as eligible for funding, qualifications currently funded by the Further Education Funding Council. On 29 December 2000, the Department published the first list, under section 96 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000, of external qualifications that will be approved for use from 1 September 2001 by those under 19. The LSC will draw on this list for those aged 19 or over until 2002–03 when a list under section 97 of the Act will be published.

  Departmental Policies (North Devon)
  Mr. Harvey
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will set out, including statistical information relating as directly as possible to the North Devon constituency, the effects on North Devon of his Department's policies and actions since 2 May 1997. [155903]

  Mr. Wills
  Outlined are details of the effects of a range of the Department's policies on the North Devon constituency and Devon LEA.

  Beacon Schools

  The Park Community School—awarded Beacon status from 1 September 1998 for working with the home to foster a positive approach to school—home school contracts, personal student development, mentoring and academic tutoring, special educational needs, initial teacher training, and continuous professional development.

  School Achievement Awards

  Eighteen schools in the constituency were among 108 in Devon to be allocated a total of £728,400 in March 2001. Staff at 16 of the 18 schools in the constituency received Improvement Awards because pupil performance in 2000 was substantially better than in 1997, or because schools had come out of special measures. The remaining two schools received Excellence Awards, because pupil performance in 2000 was better than most schools in similar circumstances. Awards were worth around £5,000 for a typical primary school and £25,000 for a typical secondary school.

  Classroom of the Future

  Devon LEA was awarded £900,000 as part of the above initiative in February 2001. The stated aim is, in the context of recent educational research, to provide life long learning opportunities that broaden experiences for pupils and the whole community. It will be an inclusive project that provides greater educational opportunities for those living in rural communities, so that social exclusion in isolated rural areas to longer exists. The proposal is to set up units in two primary schools and a community college within an existing cluster of schools, and to work with three technology colleges. The potential of information and communications technology is fully explored, in combination with sustainable design. Partners include Exeter and Plymouth Universities and the Timber Research and Development Association.
  687W

  Infant Class Sizes

  £000

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  2000–01

  Total

  Revenue Funding

  1,000

  1,831

  2,596

  5,427

  Capital Funding

  523

  732

  719

  1,974

  The September 2000 figures show that in Devon there are now 62 (0.3 per cent.) pupils remaining in infant classes of 31 or more. The figure in January 1998 was 5,639 (26 per cent.).

  Performance Indicators

  England averages include independent schools.

  Key Stage 2, percentage of pupils achieving level 4

  19971

  1998

  1999

  2000

  English

  LEA

  62

  66

  72

  75

  England

  63

  65

  71

  75

  Maths

  LEA

  62

  60

  70

  72

  England

  62

  59

  69

  72

  Science

  LEA

  67

  72

  80

  86

  England

  69

  69

  78

  85

  GCSE—percentage of pupils achieving: 5+A*-C grades

  LEA average

  44

  47

  48

  49

  England average

  45

  46

  48

  49

  Devon LEA Capital funding

  £000

  Credit approvals

  1997–98

  1998–99

  1999–2000

  2000–01

  2001–02

  Total

  ACG

  10,890

  6,788

  6,727

  9,467

  10,072

  43,944

  SCA

  2,771

  857

  1,200

  328

  1,400

  6,556

  Grants

  New Deal for Schools

  1,018

  2,397

  4,763

  7,536

  —

  15,714

  NDS Condition Funding

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1,520

  1,520

  National Grid for Learning

  —

  979

  1,213

  2,342

  3,620

  8,154

  Voluntary Aided Grant

  1,002

  187

  251

  387

  1,768

  3,595

  Devolved Formula Capital

  —

  —

  —

  5,013

  4,101

  9,114

  Science Labs

  —

  —

  —

  327

  327

  654

  Energy

  —

  175

  —

  —

  —

  175

  AMP Support

  —

  —

  108

  —

  —

  108

  SEED Challenge

  —

  —

  —

  341

  395

  736

  Class Size Initiative

  —

  247

  1,001

  664

  —

  1912

  Outside toilet removal

  —

  972

  —

  —

  —

  972

  Schools Security at 75 per cent.

  262

  219

  231

  233

  165

  1,110

  SSLU's

  —

  —

  —

  114

  99

  213

  Schools Access Initiative at 85 per cent.

  —

  —

  —

  22

  581

  603

  Total

  15,943

  12,821

  15,494

  26,774

  24,048

  95,080

  Further Education

  Student numbers at all FEFC funded institutions where home postcode is in the Local Authority District of North Devon.

  1996–97 to 1999–2000

  16–18

  Adult

  Full-time

  Part-time

  Full-time

  Part-time

  FEFC funded

  1996–97

  1,273

  268

  268

  5,378

  1997–98

  1,250

  298

  278

  5,520

  1998–99

  1,272

  295

  214

  4,985

  1999–2000

  1,318

  261

  225

  5,288

  688W

  Key Stage 2, percentage of pupils achieving level 4

  19971

  1998

  1999

  2000

  5+A*-G grades

  LEA average

  90

  91

  91

  91

  England average

  86

  88

  89

  89

  No passes

  LEA average

  5

  4

  4

  4

  England average

  8

  7

  6

  6

  Average point score

  LEA average

  N/A

  38.4

  38.7

  39.2

  England average

  N/A

  37.0

  38.1

  38.9

  1Results prior to 1998 include Plymouth and Torbay

  A/AS level and Advanced GNVQ

  Average points for 2 or more A/AS levels

  1998

  1999

  2000

  LEA average

  16.3

  17.3

  17.9

  England average

  17.8

  18.2

  18.5

  A/AS average per entry

  LEA average

  5.2

  5.5

  5.3

  England average

  5.4

  5.5

  5.5

  Average point score GNVQs

  LEA average

  10.5

  10.7

  10.6

  England average

  9.6

  9.9

  10.1

  Funding per pupil

  In Devon LEA, funding per pupil has increased by £240 in real terms between 1997 –98 and 2000 –01.

  1996–97 to 1999–2000

  16–18

  Adult

  Full-time

  Part-time

  Full-time

  Part-time

  Non–FEFC funded

  1996–97

  50

  172

  43

  929

  1997–98

  58

  154

  65

  955

  1998–99

  59

  207

  127

  1,370

  1999–2000

  57

  175

  1ll

  987

  Modern Apprenticeships

  Information on Modern Apprenticeships for all English constituencies will be placed in the Library by the end of March 2001.
  689W
  New Deal for Young People

  In the North Devon constituency, 786 young people have joined the New Deal to end December 2000. 450 have found jobs, 349 of which are sustained.

  Labour Market Statistics

  The working age employment rate in Devon in Autumn 2000 was 77.8 per cent., above the UK rate of 74.7 per cent. The rate in Autumn 1997 was 77.3 per cent.

  The claimant unemployment rate has fallen from 5.8 per cent. in February 1997 to 4.0 per cent. in February 2001 in the North Devon constituency.

  Learning and Skills Council
  Ms Blears
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment when the Learning and Skills Council will be operational; and if he will make a statement. [156061]

  Mr. Blunkett
  On 26 March, the LSC assumed the responsibilities it is taking over from the Training and Enterprise Councils, and from 1 April it will assume the full range of its initial responsibilities, including those which it is taking over from the Further Education Funding Council.

  I am today announcing a significant real terms increase in the Learning and Skills Council's budget for its third year of operation. The Council will have an additional £434 million in 2003–04 compared with 2002–03, an increase in real terms of 5 per cent., bringing planned resources available for 2003–04 to £6.4 billion (excluding funding for school sixth forms, which will from April 2002 flow through the Learning and Skills Council to local education authorities). The total including this money will come to over £7.4 billion.

  These increased resources, which are in addition to those already announced, will for 2003–04 include, compared with 2002–03:
  an additional £102 million to support further increases in participation by young people in Further Education;
  an additional £67 million to widen participation in learning and drive up basic skills levels among adults;
  a further step change in investment in Further Education infrastructure, with an increase of £52 million in FE capital spending.

  The 47 local arms of the Learning and Skills Council are today announcing the expenditure the Council will be investing in their local areas in 2001–02 to meet local learning and skills needs. I am writing to hon. Members with further details of these announcements.

  Further Education (Funding)
  Helen Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what funding he will make available to further education and sixth form colleges for pay; and if he will make a statement. [156060]

  Mr. Blunkett
  Last year I announced that £50 million would be available in 2001–02 and £100 million in 2002–03 for further education and sixth form colleges' pay, subject to satisfactory proposals coming forward from the sector. As testimony to the strength of the proposals that have now come forward, we have earmarked an additional £15 million for further education and sixth form college pay within the resources available
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  in 2001–02. £100 million will be available in 2002–03. In 2003–04, there will be a further increase to £135 million. Further education 2nd sixth form colleges will be able to implement their proposals from 1 April 2001.

  By 2003–04, the proposals will allow the majority of teachers in further education and sixth form colleges to qualify for increases in salary of up to £2,000, or the pro rata equivalent for part-time staff. Staff in all colleges will also have new Opportunities for further salary progression for good teaching. Further education colleges will have additional resources to improve the quality of work delivered by part-tine staff, particularly for basic skills.

  I will also ensure: that teachers of shortage subjects in further education and sixth form colleges will benefit from golden hellos comparable to those already available in schools, and from the arrangements we are piloting to help new entrants to the profession to pay off their student loans over a set period of time. Funding for these new recruitment and retention measures will be additional to the sums I have announced for further education pay.

  We are publishing today "Raising Standards: Teaching in Further Education", copies of which have been placed in the Library and are available from the Vote Office.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Zimbabwe
  Dr. Julian Lewis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what sanctions have been considered by(a) the UK Government and (b) the Commonwealth in respect of Zimbabwe; and if he will list those which have been adopted. [155022]

  Mr. Wilson
  In light of the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe, we imposed a national arms embargo last May. And we are withdrawing the British Military Advisory and Training Team at the end of this month. The Commonwealth acts by consensus. It is not for us to speak on behalf of the Commonwealth.

  Dr. Julian Lewis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what his policy is on the suspension of Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth. [155023]

  Mr. Wilson
  Zimbabwe is clearly in breach of the Harare Commonwealth Declaration, particularly in terms of respect for the rule of law and independence of the judiciary. But a country may be suspended from the Commonwealth only under certain narrowly-defined circumstances, namely the overthrow of an elected government. Such a decision is taken by consensus by all members. The UK is seeking as a member of the High Level Review Group on reform of the Commonwealth, to expand the remit of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) so that it can intervene before the breakdown of democracy, to promote adherence to Commonwealth core values.

  Dr. Julian Lewis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what action his Department has taken in respect of the murder of farmers and other civilians in Zimbabwe. [155024]
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  Mr. Wilson
  We have regularly urged the Government of Zimbabwe to take urgent action to restore the rule of law. We have also raised our concerns at the decline in law and order in Zimbabwe in international forums.

  Mr. Pickthall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to the Government of Zimbabwe on behalf of UK citizens whose Zimbabwean pensions have been frozen. [155882]

  Mr. Wilson
  We regularly remind the Zimbabwean authorities of their commitment to pay .pensions to eligible British nationals living outside Zimbabwe. A lack of foreign exchange is making it difficult for Zimbabwe to meet that commitment.

  Sudan
  Mr. Rowe
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the current resolution adopted on Sudan by the UN Commission on Human Rights with special reference to slavery. [154908]

  Mr. Wilson
  At last year's UN Commission on Human Rights, the EU sponsored a resolution on Sudan which set out its concerns about violations of human rights. In particular, the resolution addressed the distressing problem of abduction of women and children, an issue which remains high on our agenda It called on the Government of Sudan to continue to co-operate with the Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC), and to help facilitate the return of affected individuals.

  The CEAWC is working in close co-operation with UNICEF and Save the Children Fund UK) and has so far facilitated the return of over 550 abductees.

  Dr. Tonge
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on recent military activity around the oil concession areas of Sudan and the rate of civilian displacement and deaths in the last 12 months. [155146]

  Mr. Wilson
  There has been a great deal of forced displacement from the oil concession areas in south Sudan in the last year. We do not know how many civilian deaths there have been, but there have undoubtedly been many.

  All parties to the conflict are to blame in some measure for this. The continued fighting does not help matters. That is why achieving a lasting ceasefire and finding a solution to the conflict remains a priority for this Government.

  Africa (Franco-British Policy)
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he wil1 make a statement on joint Franco-British policy on Africa, as set out at St. Malo and Cahors, with special reference to(a) the visit of Robert Mugabe to Paris and (b ) French policy on Zimbabwe. [155555]

  Mr. Wilson
  We exchange information on African countries regularly with the French Government. They share our concerns on the situation in Zimbabwe, and took the opportunity of President Mugabe's visit to raise internal issues.

  Lebanon
  Mr. Ivan Lewis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the number of Syrian troops stationed in Lebanon. [155453]

  Mr. Wilson
  We believe that under the terms of the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Co-ordination signed by the Lebanese and Syrian Governments in May 1991, there are between 21,000 and 22,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon.

  Mr. Gareth R. Thomas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent discussions he has had with his European counterparts regarding the presence of Hezbullah in Southern Lebanon. [155759]

  Mr. Wilson
  We work closely with our EU partners on Middle East issues. We and the EU are in constant dialogue with the Lebanese Government calling on it to"assert its effective authority and maintain law and order throughout its territory up to the line identified by the United Nations"

  As stated in the UN Secretary General's report on the United Nations Interim force in Lebanon of 22 January 2001.

  Diplomatic Service
  Mr. Welsh
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what the average salary of a United Kingdom national employed in the Diplomatic Service and based in an overseas post is. [155085]

  Mr. Wilson
  [holding answer 23 March 2001]: Salaries of Diplomatic Service staff are based on a common set of pay ranges whether they are serving at home or overseas. The median average basic salary of all Diplomatic Service staff is £23,181. Diplomatic Service staff serving overseas are additionally paid varying rates of allowances to compensate for the additional costs of having to live and work abroad.

  "Spaces in Between" Project
  Mr. Bercow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what the(a) cost and (b) purpose of the "Spaces in Between" project of the British Council was; for what reason an asylum centre was targeted in this project; what UK asylum centres have been targeted; and if he will make a statement. [155556]

  Mr. Wilson
  This programme was the British Council's contribution to "Brussels 2000 European City of Culture", the focus of which was projects with long-term social benefits. One project targeted the children of displaced persons at an asylum centre in Brussels and took the form of three short residencies by British artists who worked in photography, garden-design and painting. The purpose was to demonstrate how such activities can alleviate the effects of displacement and post-conflict trauma among children.

  No UK asylum centres were involved: all activity took place in Belgium. The total budget was approximately £10,700.

  "Your Britain, Your Europe"
  Mr. Robathan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) of 31 January 2001,Official Report, column 247W, what further expenditure has been incurred on, and how many extra copies have been distributed of, the "Your Britain, Your Europe" publication. [154827]

  Mr. Vaz
  The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has distributed 17,000 copies of the "Your Britain, Your Europe" leaflet since November 1999. A number of the copies dispatched to Middlesbrough before my visit to the north-east on 1 February were, in the event, not deployed. We subsequently distributed these with several hundred copies of the winter edition of the "Your Britain, Your Europe" newsletter in early March. The total design and printing costs for the leaflet therefore remains at £3,862.51.

  General Affairs Council
  Mr. Hood
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what the outcome was of the General Affairs Council held in Brussels on 19 and 20 March; what the Government's voting record was at the Council; and if he will make a statement. [155101]

  Mr. Vaz
  The General Affairs Council (GAC) on 19–20 March adopted the 23 "A" points listed in document no. 7061/01. It also noted the resolutions, decisions and opinions adopted by the European Parliament in its sessions of 12–15 February in Strasbourg and of 28 February and 1 March 2001 in Brussels listed in document nos. 5793/01 and 5796/01 respectively. Copies of these documents have been placed in the House Libraries.

  1. Preparations for the Stockholm European Council: Internal

  The GAC reviewed the Commission's and Council's work on the Lisbon agenda since the Nice European Council. The Lisbon agenda aims to transform the Union into the most competitive and knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. The Presidency confirmed the agenda and ran through its aims for Stockholm

  2. Preparations for the Stockholm European Council: External

  The GAC agreed that discussions with Putin over lunch on 23 March would focus on economic issues, in particular the progress of Russia's reforms, World Trade Organisation accession and bilateral trade relations. Foreign Ministers would cover international issues in a separate meeting with FM Ivanov. The European Council would also discuss the Western Balkans, middle east and Korea that evening.

  3. European Security and Defence Policy

  The GAC took note of progress made so far to develop civilian crisis management capabilities, and looked forward to the 10 May police conference to assess progress towards achievement of the concrete target for international civilian policing capabilities set at the Feira European Council.

  4. Western Balkans

  The GAC expressed deep concern over the escalating violence in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and called on ethnic Albanian extremists to
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  cease their attacks immediately. The Council reiterated its strong attachment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of FYROM as a single, multi-ethnic state. It also invited the High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy (Javier Solana) and Commission to take forward urgently assistance aimed at promoting inter-ethnic relations and. improving border security.

  The GAC welcomed the signature of the ceasefire by Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY)/Serbian and ethnic-Albanian representatives. It also welcomed NATO's decision to authorise FRY forces to go back into the Ground Safety Zone (GSZ). The GAC also welcomed the decision of the High Representative for CFSP to substantially increase the number of monitors from the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) in south-east Serbia following assurances from NATO on the security arrangements for EUMM personnel.

  The GAC strongly supported the efforts of Wolfgang Petritsch, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), to ensure implementation of the Dayton/Paris Accords. It also stressed the urgent need for Bosnia to implement the steps set out in the EU Road Map which would permit a feasibility study to take place on a possible Stabilisation and Association Agreement. The GAC condemned the unilateral actions of the Croat National Congress (HDZ) of BiH which would disrupt the Dayton/Paris Accords.

  5. Human Rights: General

  The GAC unanimously agreed the Council Conclusions on Human Rights of 10 December 1998, endorsed by the Vienna European Council, which highlighted the importance of human rights as a corner stone of EU foreign policy. The GAC took stock of ongoing initiatives, notably the preparation of EU Guidelines against Torture, which will enhance EU actions aimed at the eradication of this abhorrent violation of human rights. The GAC also noted that the European Commission had prepared a Communication on electoral assistance and observation, on which the GAC will adopt conclusions shortly. Finally, the GAC highlighted the opening of the 57th session of tie Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on 19 Match. It noted the EU resolve to play an active role at the Commission on Human Rights, and to closely co-ordinate and co-operate with other participants with a view to contributing to its success.

  6. Human Rights: Dialogue with China

  The GAC agreed conclusions assessing the human rights situation it China and progress made in the EU/China human tights dialogue. The GAC also agreed, and made public the following common approach towards China at the 57th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights ( UNCHR):
  EU member states of UNCHR will vote in favour of the US tabled resolution if it is pug to a vote; but the EU will not co-sponsor it.
  EU member states of UNCHR will vote against a no-action motion, should one be presented, and the EU will actively encourage other CHR member states to do likewise.

  7. MEP

  Over lunch, the Presidency reported on the EU Troika visit to the middle east. Ministers agreed that the parties must break the spinal of violence and start new talks on security, as initial steps towards a renewed peace process. Ministers also discussed the humanitarian situation in the
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  Palestinian areas and renewed their call on Israel to end the closure policy and immediately transfer to the Palestinian Authority the tax revenues withheld.

  8. Kidnapping in Cabinda Province, Angola

  The GAC, over lunch, heard a report from the Portuguese Foreign Minister on the kidnapping of eight Portuguese citizens in the Angolan province of Cabinda. The Council expressed concern over the humanitarian situation of the Portuguese hostages, strongly condemned their abduction and called on those responsible to release all hostages immediately. The GAC recalled its condemnation of such practices and stressed the importance of the strict observance of the principles of humanitarian law.

  9. UK Voting Record

  No formal or informal votes were taken on any of the issues under discussion at the GAC The only issues requiring unanimous agreement, being subject to the Common Foreign and Security Policy, were the Council's conclusions on human rights and its human rights dialogue with China (as indicated).

  Iran
  Mr. Clappison
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he(a) has made and (b) plans to make regarding the imprisonment of members of the Jewish community and others from Shiraz; what plans he has to visit Iran; and if he will make a statement. [155474]

  Mr. Wilson
  [holding answer 26 March 2001]: We and our European partners have taken every opportunity to raise with Iran our concerns about the unsatisfactory nature of the case, and will continue to do so. My hon. Friend the Minister for Energy and Competitiveness in Europe most recently did so with the Iranian ambassador on 22 January. While noting the reductions in sentence on appeal, we continue to hope that the Iranian judiciary will show clemency. We understand that one of the accused is now due to be released following completion of his two-year sentence. The EU sponsored the 4 December General Assembly Resolution expressing concern about discrimination against people who belong to religious minorities and Iranian failure to comply with international standards on the administration of justice.

  When he last met his Iranian counterpart Dr. Kharrazi in New York in September, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary welcomed Dr. Kharrazi's invitation that he visit Iran in 2001. No date has yet been set.

  Pakistan
  Mr. Andy King
  To ask the secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1) what representations have been made to the Pakistani
  Government concerning the recent kidnap and gang rape of Naira Nadia; [155330]

  (2) what representations have been made to the Pakistani Government concerning the increase in violent attacks perpetrated upon Christian women by Muslim extremists in Pakistan. [155329]

  Mr. Wilson
  We raised our concerns about the reports of the recent kidnap and rape of Naira Nadia with the Pakistani authorities on 22 March. We called for a full
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  investigation into the reports. If they are substantiated, we look to the appropriate authorities in Pakistan to ensure that the perpetrators are swiftly brought to justice.

  We continue to monitor closely the position of religious minorities in Pakistan as well as the increasing infringements of women's human rights, and will continue to raise our concerns with the Pakistani authorities.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Disability Living Allowance
  Mr. Willetts
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what recent changes have been made to the rules affecting claims to Disability Living Allowance from people with mental health problems. [155415]

  Mr. Bayley
  There have been no recent changes to the rules for Disability Living Allowance specifically in respect of people with mental health problems.

  Chemical Warfare Experiments
  Mr. Matthew Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will send a team from the War Pensions Agency to the United States of America to evaluate the system under which the US Government provide pensions to former military personnel who have experienced illnesses as a result of taking part in chemical warfare experiments. [154764]

  Mr. Bayley
  There are no plans to send a team from the War Pensions Agency to the USA.

  Work/Pensions Ratio
  Mr. John M. Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what the ratio was between the number of people in work and the number of recipients of State Retirement Pension in(a) 1971, (b) 1981, (c) 1991 and (d) 2001; and what the projected ratio is for 2011. [155122]

  Mr. Rooker
  The information is not available in the format requested. Such information as is available is in the table.

  Number of people in work compared with number of recipients of State Retirement Pension: Great Britain

  People of working age in employment 1.2.3

  People in receipt of State Retirement Pension (RP)6.7.8.9

  Ratio between number of people in work and number receiving RP

  1971

  —

  7,647

  n/a

  19814

  22,767

  9,080

  2.5

  19914.5

  25,030

  9,991

  2.5

  2001

  —

  11,000

  n/a

  2011

  —

  12,370

  n/a

  1Source: ONS Labour Force Survey figures, taken in the spring of each year, not seasonally adjusted. 1971, 2001 and 2011 figures are not available.

  2 Men aged 16–64 and women aged 16–59.

  3People aged 16 or over who did some paid work in the reference week (whether as an employee or self-employed); and those who had a job they were temporarily away from (eg on holiday); those on Government-supported training and employment programmes (from spring 1983); and those doing unpaid family work (from spring 1992).

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  4Includes those whose status was not stated.

  5Includes those on Government-supported training and employment programmes.

  6Source: 1971, 1981 and 1991 RP figures from DSS ASD, and are December, June and March respectively, based on a 10 per cent. sample taken from the Pension Strategy Computer System 2001 and 2011 figures are GAD mix-tax year projections, and are consistent with December 2000/Budget 2001 PES estimates.

  7Historic RP figures have been rounded to the nearest thousand, projections (2001 and 2011) to the nearest ten thousand.

  8Includes Overseas RP Cases.

  9RP figures exclude Additional Pension only and Graduated Pension only cases—about 150,000 cases in 1981—except for 1971 figure, which includes such cases.

  Pensions
  Mr. Alexander
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what estimate he has made of the annual cost of(a) administering weekly payments in cash for State Pensions, including payments to the Post Office and (b) making payments of pensions to pensioners by Automated Credit Transfer. [153753]

  Mr. Rooker
  The information is not available in the format requested.

  From available information we are able to estimate that the total annual cost for 1999–2000 of the respective methods of payment for Retirement Pension and Widows Benefit customers (the relevant data are not collated separately) was as follows:

  £ million

  Automated Credit Transfer

  11

  Order Book

  167

  Giro

  1

  1 In the region of

  Mr. Burstow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will estimate the total annual cost to public funds if, on the death of a spouse, the surviving widow or widower were to receive their deceased spouse's full State Pension for a period of 90 days following bereavement. [155878]

  Mr. Rooker
  In 2001–02, widows and widowers of pensionable age will continue to be able to inherit both basic State Pension and gross additional pension (SERFS) at up to 100 per cent. of their deceased spouse's entitlement. The additional annual cost of paying inherited graduated Retirement Pension at 100 per cent. instead of 50 per cent. for 90 days following bereavement is estimated to be £3 million.

  Note:

  Estimates provided by the Government Actuary's Department and rounded to nearest £1 million.

  Grants (London Boroughs)
  Ms Buck
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will list(a) each category of grant and (b) the amount of each grant paid by his Department to each London borough in (i) 1997–98, (ii) 1998–99, (iii) 1999–2000 and (iv) 2000–01; and what the projected figure is for 2001–02. [155432]

  Mr. Rooker
  The Department pays a number of subsidies to local authorities. Information has been placed in the Library.

  Pension Credits
  Mr. Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) what legal advice his Department has received on the payment of pension credits to men and women at different ages; and if he will place that advice in the Library; [154818]

  (2) at what age the pension credit will be payable for (a) men and (b) women. [154775]

  Mr. Rooker
  In developing the detailed design of the Pension Credit consideration will be given to the treatment of men and women, with a view to ensuring that the rules taken comply with our obligations under the European Convent on of Human Rights and community law.

  NIRS2
  Mr. Gale
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security, pursuant to his answer of 6 March 2001,Official Report, columns 167–68W, on NIRS2, how many cases received by Benefit Agency offices from NIRS2 were awaiting review on 31 January. [153168]

  Mr. Rooker
  [holding answer 12 March 2001]: As at 31 January 2001, the Department had processed over 2.9 million of the total referrals (3 million) from NIRS2 since 19 April 1999. Our latest figures show that, as at 28 February, 74,739 cases remain under review.

  Carers (Shrewsbury and Atcham)
  Mr. Paul Marsden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many carers in Shrewsbury and Atcham will gain from the carer premium; and if he will make a statement. [154651]

  Mr. Bayley
  It is estimated that in around 2001–02 around 200 people will benefit from the increase in the carer premium in the income-related benefits in the Shrewsbury and Atcham constituency.

  Notes:

  I. The figures are based on data taken from the November 2000 5 per cent. scans of he Income Support computer systems, and from 1999 1 per cent. samples of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit claims.

  2. Due to the small sample sizes involved these figures are subject to a high degree of sampling error and should be used only as a guide.

  Opinion Polling
  Mr. St. Aubyn
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what(a) quantitative and (b) qualitative analytical work his Department has commissioned from GGC/NOP since 1 May 1997; and what was (i) the cost of the contract and (ii) the specific nature of the work commissioned. [155659]

  Angela Eagle
  Details of all social research commissioned by the Department, including costs, contractor and nature of the work commissioned are listed in the DSS Social Security Research Yearbook published annually. Copies ant available in the Library.
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  DSS Corporate Communications have commissioned the following research from NOP since 1 May 1997 at a total cost of around £100,000:

  Project Access: Targeting Benefits to the public;

  Project Access: Phase 2 Product Research;

  Project Access: Strategy Phase 2 Letters;

  Project Access: Consultation with customer representatives;

  New Deal 50plus: Advertising research.

  NOP were also commissioned to conduct the DSS Internal Communications Qualitative Research during 1999–2000 at a cost of £62,240.

  GGC is not an organisation with which the Department has had contact.

  Larynx Cancer
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has to classify cancer of the larynx as an industrial disease; an I if he will make a statement. [155443]

  Mr. Bayley
  We have no plans to prescribe cancer of the larynx as an industrial disease.

  Diseases are prescribed in relation. to the Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit scheme in respect of particular occupations where a causal link is established
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  between the occupation and an increased risk of contracting the disease. The Secretary of State is advised on such matters by the independent Industrial Injuries Advisory Council. If my hon. Friend has evidence which would suggest that the Council should consider this matter he may care to write with that evidence or details of his concerns to the Chairman of the Council, Professor Anthony Newman Taylor, Industrial Injuries Advisory Council, Room 605, The Adelphi, 1–11 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6HT.

  Lone Parents
  Mr. Goggins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what measures he is taking to help and encourage lone parents on Income Support into work. [156368]

  Angela Eagle
  From 30 April 2001 we are introducing Personal Adviser meetings for lone parents making claims to, or already receiving, Income Support. Personal Adviser meetings are an opportunity for lone parents to talk about their own circumstances, and find out about the help available to start or prepare for work through the New Deal for Lone Parents.

  Full information is contained in "Personal Adviser Meetings and the New Deal for Lone Parents: A Guide to Policy and Practice". Copies have been placed in the Library and are available on the internet at www.dss.gov.uk.
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HOME DEPARTMENT

  Border Controls
  Mr. Paul Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will respond to the Home Affairs Select Committee's report on border controls. [156063]

  Mrs. Roche
  The Government have submitted their response to the report to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee and a copy has been placed in the Library. I understand that the Home Affairs Committee has decided to publish this today as its fourth special report HC 375 and this will be available on the Home Affairs Committee website at www.parliament.uk/ commons/selcom/hmafhome.htm.

  Asylum Seekers
  Mr. Baker
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department for what reasons personal possessions are removed from young asylum seekers when they arrive in the United Kingdom. [155929]

  Mrs. Roche
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: An immigration officer may remove and detain a passport or other document establishing a person's nationality and identity until leave to enter is granted or leave is refused and the person removed. An immigration officer may also examine any documents relevant to a person's request for leave to enter.

  The possessions of young asylum seekers are not regarded differently to any other passenger. Where a young asylum seeker is subject to further examination it is possible that if, following a baggage examination, articles which could be used to harm them or others are found, these may be detained by immigration service contractors while the person remains at the port of entry.

  Mr. Coleman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will publish his Department's review into the voucher system for asylum seekers; and if he will make a statement. [155595]

  Mrs. Roche
  I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) on 8 January 2001,Official Report, column 413W.

  Press Officers
  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many vacancies exist for press officers in his Department on(a) the newsdesk and (b) the proactive press team; what the budgeted size of his Department's press office is; and if he will make a statement. [155818]

  Mr. Straw
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: The current number of vacancies is:

  (a) One—newsdesk

  (b) Two—proactive press teams

  The budget for the Home Office press office for the financial year 2000–01 is approximately £1.6 million based on staffing levels of: five Senior Information Officers, 20 Information Officers, three Assistant Information
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  Officer trainees, one Chief Immigration Officer, one Higher Executive Officer, seven administrative grades and three senior manages.

  Asylum Seekers (Scotland)
  Dr. Godman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will open a dedicated facility for asylum seekers in Scotland; and if he will make a statement. [155877]

  Mrs. Roche
  A new immigration detention centre at Dungavel, South Lanarkshire, will open in two phases. The first 90 places will be available in August 2001 and up to a further 60 places will be available from November 2001.

  Departmental Policies (Romsey)
  Sandra Gidley
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will set out, with statistical information relating as directly as possible to the Romsey constituency, the effects on Romsey of his Department's policies and actions since 2 May 1997. [155856]

  Mr. Charles Clarke
  The Home Office is working to build a safe, just and tolerant society in which the rights and responsibilities of individuals, families and communities are properly balanced, and the protection and security of the public are maintained. Detailed information on the impact of Home Office policies across the full range of responsibilities is set out in Home Office Annual Reports. A copy of the most recent report is available in the Library. Information on recorded crime and policing is also published: "Recorded Crime England and Wales, 12 months to September 2000" and "Police Service Strength England and Wales, 30 September 2000" can be found in the Library. The recorded crime statistics include information on recorded crime by Basic Command Unit and Crime and Disorder partnerships.

  The impact of Home Office policies and actions is not normally examined by constituency and the statistics which the Department collects, such as recorded crime, cannot be matched n the way requested although set out are examples relating to the Romsey constituency or the immediate locality:

  Youth Offending

  Romsey is part of the area covered by the South West Hampshire Youth Offending Team (YOT), which is one of seven teams that make up the Wessex YOT. Due to the rural nature of Romsey and the distance from the YOT office, work with young people who live in Romsey usually occurs in the home. Romsey is not a high crime area in terms of youth offending. Over the past year five young people have been worked with for offences of arson/criminal damage, theft/handling and a road traffic offence.

  The South West Hampshire YOT is a multi-agency team comprising staff from the probation service, social services, health authority, an education officer and a parent support co-ordinator. All young people who come to the attention of the YOT are assessed using the ASSET assessment tool and work is allocated on the basis of criminogenic need. This enables the team to identify specific needs for young people and concentrate on the particular area of concern for the individual, for example education. There are two specialist drug workers within

  703W
  the South West Hampshire YOT, which has been made possible due to close partnership working with the Drugs Advisory Service. An accredited Cognitive Behavioural Programme is run at the YOT office, and transport can be arranged for the young person to attend if required.

  In addition, a Motor Offending Programme is being run, which is specific to the South West Hampshire YOT. This has been achieved through links with the Crime and Disorder Partnership and identifying car crime as an area that needs targeting. One of the YOT officers has developed a 16 session programme which young offenders involved in car crime are required to attend.

  The YOT aims to give victims a consistently good service and places victim issues at the top of their working agenda. The team aims to make all young offenders responsible for the consequences of their actions and reparation takes place wherever possible. The YOT has formed a cohesive multi-agency approach which is making progress on tackling youth offending.

  More generally, all of the policies of the Home Office will impact on the residents of Romsey to a greater or lesser extent. For example:
  376 Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships have been established;
  racial harassment and racially motivated crimes have been made criminal offences by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998;
  the asylum backlog has been cut from 03,495 at the end of January 2000 to 66,195 by the end of December 2000; and
  good progress is being made in reducing the incidence of fire deaths in England and Wales. They have dropped from 605 in 1997 to 534 in 1999.

  Percentage

  Ethnicity

  White

  Mixed

  Asian or Asian British

  Black or Black British

  Chinese or Other ethnic group

  Not known

  London boroughs

  Barking and Dagenham

  76.00

  0.00

  0.00

  20.00

  0.00

  4.00

  Barnet

  90.91

  9.09

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Bexley

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Brent

  63.64

  0.00

  9.09

  27.27

  0.00

  0.00

  Bromley

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Camden

  52.38

  4.76

  0.00

  38.10

  4.76

  0.00

  Croydon

  60.00

  0.00

  5.00

  30.00

  5.00

  0.00

  Ealing

  65.52

  0.00

  0.00

  34.48

  0.00

  0.00

  Enfield

  75.00

  5.00

  0.00

  15.00

  5.00

  0.00

  Greenwich and Eltham

  65.0

  0.00

  0.00

  35.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Hackney

  42.86

  0.00

  0.00

  51.79

  0.00

  5.36

  Hammersmith and Fulham

  70.37

  7.41

  0.00

  22.22

  0.00

  0.00

  Haringey

  60.00

  0.00

  0.00

  40.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Harrow

  62.50

  0.00

  12.50

  18.75

  0.00

  6.25

  Havering

  85.71

  0.00

  0.00

  14.29

  0.00

  0.00

  Hillingdon

  70.59

  0.00

  17.65

  5.88

  0.00

  5.88

  Hounslow

  80.00

  0.00

  6.67

  13.33

  0.00

  0.00

  Islington

  73.33

  0.00

  0.00

  26.67

  0.00

  0.00

  Kensington and Chelsea

  50.00

  0.00

  0.00

  50.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Kingston upon Thames

  68.42

  0.00

  0.00

  10.53

  0.00

  21.05

  Lambeth

  41.67

  0.00

  0.00

  58.33

  0.00

  0.00

  Lewisham

  53.49

  13.95

  0.00

  18.18

  0.00

  0.00

  Merton

  66.67

  0.00

  0.00

  33.33

  0.00

  0.00

  Newham

  52.94

  0.00

  11.76

  35.29

  0.00

  0.00

  Redbridge

  66.67

  0.00

  16.67

  16.67

  0.00

  0.00

  Richmond upon Thames

  66.67

  0.00

  0.00

  33.33

  0.00

  0.00

  Southwark

  66.67

  0.00

  0.00

  33.33

  0.00

  0.00

  Sutton

  80.00

  0.00

  0.00

  20.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Tower Hamlets and City of London

  67.74

  0.00

  6.45

  25.81

  0.00

  0.00

  Waltham Forest

  64.86

  0.00

  0.00

  27.03

  0.00

  8.11

  704W
  Information on the Home Office and its policies is also published on its website www.homeoffice.gov.uk.

  Remand Prisoners
  Mr. Stinchcombe
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) how many females under 21 years of age were received on remand; and what percentage(a) did not subsequently receive a custodial sentence and (b) were subsequently acquitted in 2000; [154640]

  (2) how many (a) adult females (b) adult males and (c) under 21 year old males were received on remand; and what percentage of each category (i) did not subsequently receive a custodial sentence and (ii) were subsequently acquitted in 2000. [154652]

  Mr. Charles Clarke
  The available information is published in "Prison Statistics, England and Wales 1999" (Table 2.6 and Table 2.9 refer). A copy is in the Library.

  Information for 2000 is not yet available.

  Youth Offending Teams
  Jackie Ballard
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the ethnic origin breakdown of each youth offending team in England and Wales. [155154]

  Mr. Charles Clarke
  This information is set out in the table. It is based on Youth Offending Teams' annual plans for 1999–2000, as submitted to the Youth Justice Board.
  705W

  Percentage

  Ethnicity

  White

  Mixed

  Asian or Asian British

  Black or Black British

  Chines or Other ethnic group

  Not known

  Wandsworth

  68.35

  0.00

  6.33

  25.32

  0.00

  0.00

  Westminster

  78.26

  0.00

  0.00

  21.74

  0.00

  0.00

  Regional total

  68.32

  1.26

  2.88

  25.05

  0.46

  1.58

  South East

  Bracknell Forest

  80.00

  0.00

  10.00

  10.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Brighton and Hove

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Buckinghamshire

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Kent

  93.33

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  6.67

  Maidenhead and Windsor

  90.91

  0.00

  0.00

  9.09

  0.00

  0.00

  Medway

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Milton Keynes

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  West Berkshire/Newbury

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Oxfordshire

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Reading and Wokingham

  90.00

  0.00

  0.00

  10.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Slough

  60.00

  0.00

  4.00

  36.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Surrey

  90.91

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  9.09

  East Sussex

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  West Sussex

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Wessex

  97.71

  0.00

  0.00

  2.29

  0.00

  0.00

  Regional total

  93.52

  0.00

  0.93

  4.49

  0.00

  1.05

  Eastern region

  Bedfordshire

  77.78

  0.00

  7.41

  11.11

  0.00

  3.70

  Cambridgeshire

  90.32

  0.00

  0.00

  9.68

  0.00

  0.00

  Essex

  69.05

  2.38

  0.00

  4.76

  0.00

  23.81

  Hertfordshire

  93.94

  0.00

  0.00

  6.06

  0.00

  0.00

  Luton

  85.19

  0.00

  3.70

  11.11

  0.00

  0.00

  Norfolk

  57.14

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  42.86

  Peterborough

  80.00

  0.00

  5.00

  15.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Southend

  41.67

  8.33

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  50.00

  Suffolk

  94.29

  0.00

  0.00

  5.71

  0.00

  0.00

  Thurrock

  90.00

  0.00

  0.00

  10.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Regional total

  77.94

  1.07

  1.61

  7.34

  0.00

  12.04

  South West

  Bath and North East Somerset

  90.91

  9.09

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Bristol

  85.56

  3.61

  0.00

  10.83

  0.00

  0.00

  Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Devon

  79.43

  0.00

  0.00

  7.71

  12.85

  0.00

  Dorset

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Gloucestershire

  80.95

  4.76

  0.00

  7.14

  0.00

  0.00

  North Somerset

  83.33

  0.00

  0.00

  16.67

  0.00

  0.00

  Plymouth

  96.43

  3.57

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Poole and Bournemouth

  91.89

  0.00

  5.40

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Somerset

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Swindon

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  South Gloucestershire

  97.47

  0.00

  2.53

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Torbay

  91.67

  8.33

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Wiltshire

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Regional total

  92.69

  2.10

  0.57

  3.02

  0.92

  0.00

  West Midlands

  Birmingham

  52.54

  5.51

  8.05

  33.90

  0.00

  0.00

  Coventry

  81.82

  3.64

  3.64

  10.91

  0.00

  0.00

  Dudley

  72.73

  0.00

  0.00

  13.64

  0.00

  13.64

  Sandwell

  73.68

  10.53

  5.26

  10.53

  0.00

  0.00

  Solihull

  87.50

  0.00

  6.25

  6.25

  0.00

  0.00

  Staffordshire

  95.35

  0.00

  0.00

  4.65

  0.00

  0.00

  Stoke on Trent

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Wrekin and Shropshire

  90.63

  0.00

  0.00

  6.25

  0.00

  3.13

  Walsall

  96.67

  0.00

  0.00

  3.33

  0.00

  0.00

  Warwickshire

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Wolverhampton

  70.00

  0.00

  20.00

  10.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Worcestershire and Herefordshire

  97.06

  0.00

  0.00

  2.94

  0.00

  0.00

  Regional total

  84.83

  1.64

  3.60

  8.53

  0.00

  1.40

  706W 707W

  Percentage

  Ethnicity

  White

  Mixed

  Asian or Asian British

  Black or Black British

  Chinese or other ethnic group

  Not known

  East Midlands

  Derby City

  56.00

  0.00

  4.00

  12.00

  0.00

  28.00

  Derbyshire

  87.50

  12.50

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Leicestershire (+ Rutland 106510)

  61.54

  0.00

  23.08

  15.38

  0.00

  0.00

  Leicester City

  65.00

  2.50

  25.00

  7.50

  0.00

  0.00

  Lincolnshire

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Northamptonshire

  94.34

  1.89

  0.00

  3.77

  0.00

  0.00

  Nottinghamshire

  68.63

  0.00

  1.96

  0.00

  3.92

  25.49

  Nottingham City

  96.40

  1.63

  1.63

  4.90

  0.00

  0.00

  Regional total

  78.68

  2.31

  6.96

  5.44

  0.49

  6.69

  Yorkshire and Humberside

  Barnsley

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Bradford

  79.25

  0.00

  7.55

  0.00

  0.00

  13.21

  Calderdale

  89.29

  0.00

  3.57

  7.14

  0.00

  0.00

  Doncaster

  96.15

  0.00

  3.85

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  East Riding of Yorkshire

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Kingston upon Hull

  95.24

  0.00

  0.00

  4.76

  0.00

  0.00

  Kirklees

  91.67

  0.00

  5.56

  2.78

  0.00

  0.00

  Leeds

  91.38

  0.00

  1.72

  6.90

  0.00

  0.00

  North Lincolnshire

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  North East Lincolnshire

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  North Yorkshire

  92.86

  0.00

  7.14

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Rotherham

  91.30

  4.35

  0.00

  4.35

  0.00

  0.00

  Sheffield

  89.20

  0.00

  0.00

  10.80

  0.00

  0.00

  Wakefield

  96.67

  0.00

  0.00

  3.33

  0.00

  0.00

  York

  90.00

  0.00

  10.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Regional total

  93.53

  0.29

  2.63

  2.67

  0.00

  0.88

  North West

  Blackburn

  96.43

  0.00

  3.57

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Blackpool

  96.15

  3.85

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Bolton

  90.00

  0.00

  5.00

  5.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Bury

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Cheshire

  96.30

  0.00

  0.00

  3.70

  0.00

  0.00

  Cumbria

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Halton/Warrington

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Knowsley

  94.44

  0.00

  0.00

  5.56

  0.00

  0.00

  Lancashire

  91.55

  0.00

  0.00

  2.82

  5.63

  0.00

  Liverpool

  88.24

  0.00

  0.00

  9.80

  1.96

  0.00

  Manchester City Council

  65.96

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  34.04

  Oldham

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Rochdale

  83.61

  0.00

  0.00

  16.39

  0.00

  0.00

  Salford

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Sefton

  97.40

  0.00

  2.60

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Stockport

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  St. Helens

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Tameside

  93.75

  6.25

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Trafford

  86.67

  0.00

  6.67

  6.67

  0.00

  0.00

  Wigan

  87.07

  0.00

  0.00

  4.31

  0.00

  8.62

  Wirral

  94.59

  0.00

  0.00

  5.41

  0.00

  0.00

  Regional total

  93.44

  0.48

  0.85

  2.84

  0.36

  2.03

  North East

  Darlington

  88.24

  5.88

  0.00

  5.88

  0.00

  0.00

  Durham

  98.17

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  1.83

  0.00

  Gateshead

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Hartlepool

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland/South Tees

  1—

  1—

  1—

  1—

  1—

  1—

  Newcastle upon Tyne

  16.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  84.00

  North Tyneside

  55.26

  5.26

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  39.47

  Northumberland

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  South Tyneside

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Stockton

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Sunderland

  97.83

  2.17

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Regional total

  77.77

  1.21

  0.00

  0.53

  0.17

  11.22

  708W 709W

  Percentage

  Ethnicity

  White

  Mixed

  Asian or Asian British

  Black or Black British

  Chinese or Other ethnic group

  Not known

  Wales

  Bridgend

  91.67

  0.00

  0.00

  8.33

  0.00

  0.00

  Caerphilly and Blaunau Gwent

  96.00

  0.00

  0.00

  4.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Cardiff

  93.62

  2.13

  0.00

  4.26

  0.00

  0.00

  Carmarthen

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Ceredigion/Dyfed and Powys/Mid Wales

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Conwy and Denbighshire

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Flintshire and Wrexham

  96.15

  0.00

  10.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Gwynedd and Ynys Mön

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Merthyr

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Monmouthshire and Torfaen

  94.12

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  5.88

  Neath Port Talbot

  92.31

  0.00

  7.69

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Newport

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Pembrokeshire

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Rhondda Cynon Taff

  100.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  0.00

  Swansea

  73.33

  3.33

  3.33

  0.00

  0.00

  20.00

  Vale of Glamorgan

  91.67

  0.00

  0.00

  8.33

  0.00

  0.00

  Total for Wales

  95.55

  0.34

  1.31

  1.56

  0.00

  1.62

  1No information

  Private Security Industry
  Mr. Bruce George
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations have been received regarding the consultation paper on the Government's proposals for regulation of the private security industry in England and Wales opposing the(a) regulation of in-house employees, (b) regulation of security system installers and (c) security companies; and if he will list the organisations making representations in each category. [155466]

  Mr. Charles Clarke
  Around 180 responses were received to the White Paper "The Government's proposals for Regulation of the Private Security Industry in England and Wales" (CM 4254) published in March 1999. Those respondents opposed to the regulation of in-house employees were:

  Theatrical Management Association and Society of London Theatre

  Museums and Galleries Commission

  The National Trust

  Association of Leading Visitor Attractions

  A member of the public.

  The Theatrical Management Association and Society of London Theatre was also opposed to the regulation of security system installers. No respondents indicated that they were opposed to the regulation of security companies.

  HM Inspectors
  Mr. Linton
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department who will appoint the next HM Inspector of Prisons and HM Inspector of Probation. [155104]

  Mr. Boateng
  Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons is appointed by Her Majesty the Queen, who is advised on the appointment by the Home Secretary. Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Probation is appointed by the Home Secretary. We are following the guidelines of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments in recruiting for the two posts.
  710W
  Mr. Linton
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has revised the terms of reference of HM Inspector of Prisons to include the inspection of the Prison Service. [155105]

  Mr. Charles Clarke
  The remit of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons is fixed by statute. In summary it is to inspect prisons in England and Wales, reporting on the treatment of prisoners and conditions in prisons, and to report to the Home Secretary on related matters as the Home Secretary directs. The inspection of the Prison Service as a whole, including Prison Service Headquarters, falls outside the Chief Inspector's statutory remit. The proposed terms of reference for Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, which have been sent to the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee and other Members of this House, do however make clear that the Chief Inspector's responsibilities include reporting on the impact of management decisions within the Prison Service on prison conditions and the treatment of prisoners and, as the Home Secretary directs, on matters concerning Prison Service Headquarters which could impact on prison conditions.

  Ministerial Meetings
  Mr. Randall
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many ministerial meetings with hon. Members have been cancelled by Ministers since 1 January. [155240]

  Mr. Straw
  Ministerial meetings with hon. Members that I and Ministers in my Department have had to cancel since 1 January 2001 are as
  follows:

  Date

  Meeting

  9 January 2001

  Home Secretary meeting with John McDonnell MP, Alan Keen MP and Peter Bottomley MP

  1 February 2001

  Lord Bassam meeting with Gwyn Prosser MP

  26 February 2001

  Charles Clarke meeting with Dr. Julian Lewis MP

  27 February 2001

  Charles Clarke meeting with Sir Richard Body MP

  20 March 2001

  Mike O'Brien meeting with Gerry Steinberg MP

  711W
  Other meetings with hon. Members have had to be rescheduled from their original date but have subsequently taken place.

  Police Funding
  Ms Glenda Jackson
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list funding allocations from his Department to(a) the Metropolitan police and (b) the Borough of Camden for each year since May 1997. [150960]

  Mr. Charles Clarke [holding answer 26 February 2001]
  The Home Department has made, or for 2001–02 will make, the following funding to the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in each year singe April 1997:

  Home Office specific grant

  Financial year

  £

  1997–98

  900,344,546

  1998–99

  931,229,096

  1999–2000

  949,070,118

  2000–01

  956,094,652

  2000–02

  1,007,548,948

  In addition, Revenue Support Grant is paid by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR).

  Loan charge grant

  Financial year

  £

  1997–98

  6,049,591

  1998–99

  5,916,813

  1999–2000

  4,783,118

  2000–01

  4,331,583

  2001–02

  4,387,349

  Capital grant

  Financial year

  £

  1997–98

  24,774,000

  1998–99

  21,892,000

  1999–2000

  21,892,000

  2000–01

  22,554,000

  2001–02

  22,803,000

  Crime Fighting Fund

  Financial year

  £

  2000–01

  12,004,571

  2001–02

  37,365,685

  An allowance for training costs of £7,000 per new Metropolitan Police Service recruit is included in the figure for each year.

  Payments due in 2001–02 will change to reflect the actual pattern of recruitment, if it is different from the even distribution assumed for the put poses of the table. The Metropolitan Police Service is deferring 108 Crime Fighting Fund recruits from its 2000–01 allocation into 2001–02.
  712W

  Other Grants

  Date

  £

  24 August 1999

  Beacon scheme

  94.000

  3 October 2000

  Robbery grant

  9,100,000

  4 December 2000

  Execution of warrants1

  924,557

  1Responsibility for the execution of warrants was to transfer to the Lord Chancellor's Department in October 2000. The transfer was deferred until April 2001 and appropriate grant was distributed to all police authorities.

  Firearms Grant

  Date

  £

  1997–98

  133,128

  1998–99

  44,772

  Grants were paid to each force to help meet costs incurred in collection and destruction of handguns.

  Crime Reduction Programme

  Date

  £

  1999–2000 to 2001–02

  8,395,460

  This is the total allocation to the Metropolitan Police Service under the Reducing Burglary Initiative (£6.84 million) and the Targeted Policing Initiative (£1.55 million) rounds 1 and 2.

  Allocation of funds within the Metropolitan police area is a matter for the Commissioner. The Commissioner has informed me that the budget provided to the local commander for the borough of Camden is to help meet the priorities identified in the Metropolitan Police Service policing and performance plan such as the reduction of crime and disorder and diversity objectives.

  Camden borough Budgets

  Date

  £

  1997–98

  34,160,000

  1998–99

  34,140,000

  1999–2000

  35,342,000

  2000–01

  36,482,000

  The devolved budget for the borough of Camden in 2001–02 is not yet available.

  In addition, policing in Camden, and in all other boroughs, draws on a large number of specialist services and support controlled centrally such as scientific support, murder review, inspection and review, territorial policing support, public order, specialist search dogs and criminal justice.

  From the Crime Reduction Programme provision, several schemes are associated with the borough of Camden—the Camden Safety Net violence against women project (£275,000); Camden Town centre extension and centralised control room (£598,000); a further three reductions in burglary schemes (£1517,000). Camden will also benefit from a portion of £598,000 allocated to a multi-borough project covering Camden, Islington and Southwark under the Targeted Policing Initiative and from £287,000 allocated to a scheme of the Targeted Policing Initiative that will benefit all boroughs.
  713W

  S. P. Hinduja
  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people have benefited from the change in naturalisation policy announced in paragraph 10.7 of the White Paper, 'Fairer, Faster, Firmer: a Modern Approach to Immigration and Asylum'. [155820]

  Mrs. Roche
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: As I indicated in answer to questions from the hon. Member on 5 February 2001, Official Report, column 434W, the change of policy foreshadowed in paragraph 10.7 of the White Paper has yet to be introduced. No statistics are kept which would enable identification of any cases which might have benefited from anticipation of this change.
  714W
  Mr. Lidington
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will conduct an investigation into how Mr. S. P. Hinduja knew of the announcement on naturalisation policy in paragraph 10.7 of the White Paper, 'Fairer, Faster, Firmer: A Modern Approach to Immigration and Asylum' prior to the White Paper's publication, as set nit in paragraph 5.21 of the Hammond report (HC 287); if a Minister or official in his Department informed Mr. Hinduja of the announcement prior to publication; and if lie will make a statement. [155816]

  Mrs. Roche
  [holding answer 27 March 2001]: Sir Anthony Hammond has already carried out a thorough review of the issues surrounding the application for naturalisation of Mr. S. P. Hinduja. I do not think any further inquiry would be fruitful.

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Guildford.

The Lord Bishop of Peterborough
Ian Patrick Martyn, Lord Bishop of Peterborough—Was (in the usual manner) introduced between the Lord Bishop of Durham and the Lord Bishop of Guildford.

Nuclear Waste: Consultation Date
2.39 p.m.
Lord Tombs Lord Tombs asked Her Majesty's Government:
When they expect to publish the consultation paper, first promised for spring 2000, in response to the Science and Technology Committee's report, Management of Nuclear Waste (HL 41), published on 24th March 1999.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Lord Whitty): My Lords, as soon as possible; but this is a complex issue and the decisions involved will take many years to implement. We must get the public debate off to the right start in the right framework.
On 28th February, the Government announced proposals for the second stage of the quinquennial review of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. It identifies options for organisational change in managing nuclear liabilities. Our consultation paper will invite comments on possible organisational changes, so the review may have significant implications. We want people to be aware of them so that they have a proper opportunity to comment. The paper will be published once the review's implications are clearer.
Lord Tombs: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Is he aware that the Government have taken considerably longer not to produce a consultation paper than the Select Committee, with its slender resources, took to conduct the whole inquiry and publish its report? Will he enlighten us on the reasons for that delay, which puzzle me? It seems to me to come down to a choice between incompetence and lack of commitment. I should be grateful for his views. Finally, will he express a view—I hope that it will be a favourable one—on the extent to which the nuclear industry, environmentalists and society at large are awaiting progress on this important topic?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, neither of the reasons advanced by the noble Lord lies behind the delay. We are taking time because the issues are complex. We now have the additional complication that the review of the AEA has made recommendations and is likely to make further recommendations in its second stage that relate to organisational and institutional change, particularly in the management of liabilities and therefore in the management of waste. That will have implications. We are doing the job diligently. The proposals will take up to 50 years to implement. We need to ensure that we get the answer right, but we also need to be sure that we take public opinion with us. That is why we need a well focused public debate.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, am I correct in believing that the disposal of nuclear waste in Scotland and Wales is a matter for the national assemblies? If so, has that played any part in the delay?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, the answer, broadly speaking, is "yes" and "no".
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, why do the Government appear to give low priority to such reports when the United Kingdom is uniquely fortunate in having in its second Chamber Peers with enormous experience and outstanding records in science, technology and industry, such as the noble Lord, Lord Tombs, and other members of the Select Committee?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, the Government are not giving this matter low priority; they are giving it serious consideration and are taking into account all aspects, including future institutional changes. The report of the Select Committee was much appreciated by the Government, who have, of course, responded to it. However, part of the action arising from that will be the production of the consultation paper, which will lead the public debate. Therefore, we are taking very seriously the views of the Select Committee.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, perhaps I may return to the matter of transparency. I had assumed that the answer would probably be "yes" or "no". Can the Minister explain the "yes" part of it?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I am afraid that my enunciation may not be too clear. I said "yes" to the first part of the noble Lord's question; namely, that the devolved assemblies have responsibilities within this area, subject to international commitments, and so forth. The answer to the other part of his question is "no"; that is not the cause of the delay.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, why did Mr Michael Meacher, the Minister responsible in the

261
Commons for this area of policy, decline to accept the invitation from the Select Committee to explain the Government's policy to us?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I am not aware that a formal invitation has been issued since the inquiry took place. The Minister has indicated that he is prepared to explain the position to the committee. However, we are still drawing up the paper. The appropriate point would be when we are about to issue that paper. We have not yet reached that point.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the Select Committee's report contains some very well argued and reasoned proposals? Could those not have formed the basis for a consultation document which could have been issued some time ago?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I certainly agree that the report contains some very well based and well argued cases. That does not necessarily mean that the Government agree with all the conclusions or that those conclusions provide the only options that are open to us. We wanted to ensure a wide debate which considered all the options and examined the process for reaching further conclusions.
Lord Craig of Radley: My Lords, one of the recommendations of the Select Committee was that plans should be made for the establishment of a new low-level waste disposal facility which could be opened before Drigg closes. Bearing in mind that Drigg will be full well before the end of the 50-year period, can the Minister give the House an indication of what plans are in place for when Drigg is full?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, it will be some years before Drigg is closed. However, I can assure the House that alternative arrangements will be made at that point. The consultation is dealing primarily with high-level waste as opposed to all waste, but it will cover what action should be followed if Drigg becomes exhausted. To put the matter in perspective, Drigg should be large enough to hold all low-level waste produced until 2050. That is the time-scale involved.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, would it not have been helpful if the electorate and interested bodies had had some idea of the Government's thinking on this matter?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, we intend to give them ah idea of the Government's thinking, but we also intend to ensure that all the options are put before them. These decisions are important and difficult and will have long-term implications, some of which will arise from what is now the review of the AEA. Therefore, we believe that we should put the full, rather than a partial, picture to the electorate and other interested parties.

Telecommunications: Local Loop Unbundling
2.47 p.m.
The Earl of Northesk The Earl of Northesk asked Her Majesty's Government:
How they respond to the announcement of the intention of the European Commission to investigate the local loop unbundling process in member states, with particular reference to the European Commission campaign to have unbundled services up and running by January 2001.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the UK is not aware of any new investigation by the Commission into local loop unbundling. The Commission is actively monitoring the implementation of the regulation on unbundled access to the local loop, which came into force on 2nd January this year. We strongly support local loop unbundling as a further significant step in liberalising telecoms markets in Europe, and we are encouraging the Commission to secure effective implementation throughout the Community.
However, as well as unbundling, ADSL services, cable modems, optical fibre, broadband fixed wireless access and satellites all have the potential to offer broadband services. Our proposals for achieving the goal of having the most extensive and competitive broadband market in the G7 by 2005 was set out in the action plan, UK online: the broadband future, published on 13th February.
The Earl of Northesk: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. However, does he agree with the opinion put forward by the Trade and Industry Select Committee of another place that. thus far, the process of local loop unbundling in the UK has been "almost farcical"? In those circumstances, does he also accept that there is a need— some might even define it as urgent— for the Government to be involved more proactively with the process of local loop unbundling and, indeed, with the delivery of broadband generally?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the Trade and Industry Select Committee did not say that. It said that the process of the bow wave was in danger of becoming almost farcical. However, that process will be at an end as at the end of this month. British Telecom has abandoned its demand management process and is prepared to take orders for any exchanges. It is prepared to do so at the rate of 200 exchanges a month.
Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is enormous confusion as to the various broadband options that are available both to

263
the public and to businesses—that is, IDSL, ADSL, SDSL and even VDSL'? With the roll-out of ADSL being far slower than the Government had anticipated, do the Government have any figures relating to the number of ADSL customers and, in particular, non-BT customers?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the noble Lord forgot to mention HDSL and perhaps VDSL.
The figures as of this week—in other words, by the end of March—are that ADSL is available in 839 BT exchanges, which cover 50 per cent of the population and 11.5 million homes. There have been about 45,000 installations.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, would the noble Lord the Captain of the Yeoman of the Guard kindly explain to the less initiated of us exactly what we are talking about, and would he be kind enough to do so in English and without acronyms?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, would the noble Lord like the long version or the short version?
We are discussing the digital subscriber loop, which could be asymmetrical. That involves using twisted copper wires—in other words, ordinary telephone wires—for digital connections, which are very much faster than normal connections.
Lord Roberts of Conwy: My Lords, is it not a fact that there has been considerable delay in loop unbundling? What effect has that had on the Government's e-commerce strategy? Who is to blame—BT, Oftel, the e-envoy or perhaps the Government themselves?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I would not accept that there has been considerable delay. The European regulation came into force on 2nd January this year, as I have already said, but the necessary amendment to the BT licence took place on 8th August last year. If there is any delay at the moment, it is caused by commercial considerations rather than the failures of Oftel or BT; it is certainly not caused by the Government.
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, how would Her Majesty's Government view a decision by BT to float off the local loop into a separate company in order to provide transparent access to other telecom companies?
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, we have not been advised of any such intention but we would consider any such suggestion seriously.

social Security: Consolidation Bill
2.53 p.m.
Lord Brightman Lord Brightman asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether, having regard to the facts stated during the debate on the Motion that the Social Security Fraud Bill do now pass on 8th March, Part VI of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 ought to be the subject matter of a consolidation Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Baroness Hollis of Heigham): My Lords, I agree with the noble and learned Lord that Part VI of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 as subsequently amended is not an easy read. The department has been advised that consolidation is not yet necessary. We shall, of course, keep the matter under review.
Lord Brightman: My Lords, is it not astonishing to find that Part VI of the 1992 Act has been amended by no fewer than 15 Acts of Parliament over the past nine years, that Part VI has grown during that period from 12 to 26 sections, and that all the original sections have been, repealed or rewritten? Are there not existing plans for consolidation in those circumstances?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I accept that the Social Security Fraud Bill, which is currently going through the other place, is complicated, but there would be a real problem if each time a programme Bill or a policy Bill, if I may use that phrase, was enacted, it was followed by a consolidation Bill. For example, in 1995 about 54 pieces of legislation were enacted, of which about six were consolidating Bills and three were financial Bills. The remaining 41 pieces of legislation amended about 500 Acts. It is therefore very difficult to maintain a rolling programme of consolidation, especially in the field of social security, where virtually every piece of legislation adds to and builds on preceding administrative Acts.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, is it not a miracle of understatement for the Minister to say that this mess of an Act is not very easy reading? Is it not legislation for which perhaps a successive government should apologise and hasten to put right? What on earth is the point of the database for statute law if it cannot quickly clear up this mess?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, for most legislation—certainly for social security legislation—there are normally three audiences. The first audience is lawyers, who will have access to commercial productions, including Halsbury's statutes and Butterworths. The noble Lord was right to suggest that the development by the Lord Chancellor's Department of the statute law database should make that information available to parliamentarians. The second audience for DSS legislation includes DSS advisers and staff and CABs. They have access to the continuously updated blue books, of which there are

265
currently a dozen on social security legislation that are available to the public in libraries. They specify the current situation.
The third audience comprises people who are affected by the legislation. They will not normally want to read the law; they will want to respond to leaflets, the code of guidance, and so on. For instance, a piece of legislation may state:
"The claimant must satisfy the Secretary of State of any change of circumstances which he might reasonably be expected to know might reasonably affect the right to benefit, or to its receipt, as soon as reasonably practicable after its occurrence".
A leaflet to a claimant might say,
"If you start work, tell us straight away".
Earl Russell: My Lords, in light of the Minister's kindness in making a consolidated text available to those of us who followed the Bill in question, may I take it that she understands the case for doing what the noble and learned Lord asked her to do? Will she tell the House who would have the power to take the decision to do what the noble and learned Lord suggested, and what consultation process would have to be gone through in order to take it?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, as I understand it, consolidation Bills are normally carried out every 10 or 20 years. There were social security consolidation Bills in 1965, 1975 and 1992. The decision obviously involves negotiation but, basically, the department seeks advice from parliamentary counsel, who reflects and advises. I understand that the parliamentary counsel then reports to the Law Commission, which is under the scrutiny and supervision of, and ultimately accountable to, the Lord Chancellor. It is fair to say that the pivotal figure in terms of advice is the parliamentary counsel.
Lord Higgins: My Lords, is not the basic problem the increasing complexity of the Government's social security legislation? Compared with that, our exchanges on the previous Question were simple. Is it not the case that one should not have a rigid time-scale, or say that a consolidation has not been carried out for 10 years? The point is to establish how much legislation has taken place in the meantime and how much has been done by reference to earlier legislation. I hope that the Minister takes the point that was made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, very seriously and accepts that Part VI of the 1992 Act should be reconsidered.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I accept—I have not tried to suggest otherwise to the House—that tracking Bills through is a complex procedure, especially with regard to the Social Security Administration Act 1992, which was a consolidating Act. Every subsequent social security Act has built on it. I entirely accept that there is a difficulty but the suggestion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman, which was that one could peel off Part VI and consolidate it separately, would mean that one
266
would split the 1992 Act into two Acts. Each of those Acts would require its own subsequent amendments and need complicated reads across, and each would have a history of subsequent amendments ahead of it. That is not the right solution. We hope that the development of the statute law database will address most of the problems that noble Lords have raised this afternoon.
Lord Swinfen: My Lords, did the Government consider introducing a Keeling schedule into the Bill? That could well have solved the problem.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I understand that that was what we did.
Lord Elton: My Lords, there is a way to avoid getting into this mess. Each time a substantial amendment is made to part of another Act, the whole of that Act should be reprinted in the form in which it will subsequently be interpreted.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, perhaps I misled the noble Lord. I certainly took some trouble on Second Reading—gracefully acknowledged by the noble Earl, Lord Russell—to ensure that Members of your Lordships' House who were taking part in the debate had a copy of that section, as amended, so that they could "clear read" it, so to speak. In that sense, I hope that I addressed the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Elton. We did that in terms of transparency of reading as regards that section of the Bill at Second Reading. I am sorry that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brightman. was not a participant in the earlier stages of the Bill.
Lord Renton: My Lords, will the noble Baroness revise her opinion that consolidation is unnecessary? Consolidation reduces the costs of the administration of justice; it reduces the time taken in considering the legislation in the courts and is, therefore, in the interests of the people of this country.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, as I understand it, the consolidation of a Bill involves a major piece of parliamentary drafting. Therefore, it becomes an alternative to a programmed Bill. That is the advice given to me. That was a dilemma wrestled with by previous administrations, who only occasionally introduced consolidating legislation. If we were to proceed with a consolidation Bill, it would be at the expense of programme development. It would mean that all other Bills affected would need consolidation. The social security Bill that has just passed through this House amends some four other pieces of legislation. Is it the noble Lord's suggestion that they, too, should be amended? They in turn affect previous Bills. The problem is easy to identify; the

267
solution is extremely complex, given the knock-on effect. I suggest that the development of the electronic database is a more appropriate way forward.
Lord Swinfen: My Lords, did the Government consider introducing a Keeling schedule into the Bill? If not, why not?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, as I said in answer to a question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, we did indeed make available such a schedule to the Members of your Lordships' House who were taking part in the debate.

London Underground
3.2 p.m.
Lord Ezra Lord Ezra asked Her Majesty's Government:
What are their plans for the London Underground in the light of the reported failure of talks with Mr Bob Kiley, the Transport Commissioner for London.
The Minister of State, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Lord Macdonald of Tradeston): My Lords, my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister and Bob Kiley yesterday had a full exchange on the state of progress on the PPP negotiations. Mr. Kiley had earlier written to the Deputy Prime Minister following recent talks between the Government and Transport for London. The Deputy Prime Minister has now replied to Mr Kiley setting out the changes to the PPP which both parties had discussed and which the Government had been prepared to consider. They were offered these in an attempt to reach overall agreement on the PPP consistent with Mr Kiley's aim for unified management control. A copy of the Deputy Prime Minister's letter has been placed in the Library.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, the Minister's response suggests that there is still scope for agreement. Is he aware that the general tenor of press comment is that there has been a breakdown and that there is a possibility of judicial review proceedings being embarked upon, which would lead to longer delay, considerable cost and an uncertain solution to the Tube problem? Can the Minister indicate whether, even at this late stage, there might be an agreement as to how this issue could be resolved?
Lord Macdonald of Tradeston: My Lords, as I said, we wrote back to Mr Kiley. He promised to reply to that letter but in fact went off and called a press conference. We are aware that London Underground received correspondence from Transport for London solicitors regarding a possible judicial review and it is therefore not for my department to comment on that. We believe that in the almost 100 meetings between our negotiators we offered Bob Kiley real concessions, including leaving the maintenance of track and signalling with London Underground and long-term
268
Stable funding. We felt that we were close to agreement. I echoed last week what the mayor had said; that is, that he was optimistic and we were close to agreement. But then Mr Kiley went to the United States and came back with what we felt was a new set of demands and a hardened attitude. Therefore we await his reply.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My Lords, has the Minister seen reports in the press that the Mayor of London said that if the Government proceed with their plans for London Underground we may well be faced with a disaster scenario comparable to Hatfield? Will he join me in condemning those reports without reservation?
Lord Macdonald of Tradeston: My Lords, the London PPP offers a much more unified structure than that which exists in the national railway. The public sector London Underground will retain responsibility for the safety of the whole network. We offered Mr Kiley the ability to intervene with the infrastructure companies on any area of safety that was cause for concern in his view, and he also had complete control over London Underground's safety case. We should remember that we have a Health and Safety Executive which is rigorous in its enforcement of safety. Indeed, that rigour made London Underground one of the safest metros in the world. The latest figures show that our London Tube is safer than other comparable systems and much safer than the New York Subway, either when Mr Kiley was there or since.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, despite the failure of those talks, does not the Minister find it extraordinary that the Mayor of London has failed to condemn tomorrow's strike action, which will seriously inconvenience millions of people? Will the Minister join me in unreservedly condemning the strike action tomorrow?
Lord Macdonald of Tradeston: My Lords, I very much regret any disruption to the Underground and condemn this quite unnecessary strike. I hope that the mayor will join in that condemnation of the inconvenience caused to Londoners. It is not true that the strike is about safety; the RMT union demands for a safety forum have been met. Its other demands are about jobs for life and various other employment conditions. I therefore urge RMT members to follow the example of the ASLEF union and call off their strike.
Lord Clarke of Hampstead: My Lords, does my noble friend share my irritation at the media's obsession with the apparently miraculous capabilities of Mr Bob Kiley? Also, will he flesh out the comparison between the New York Subway and London Underground? Am I right in thinking that in the past decade there have been at least six incidents on

269
the New York Subway resulting in injury or loss of life, and in the same period there have been no such incidents on London Underground?
Lord Macdonald of Tradeston: My Lords, I developed an amicable working relationship with Mr Kiley and would not want to put that at risk by making any personal observations. However, I hope that we will be able in the future to work with the mayor and Mr Kiley as we press on through London Underground with the implementation of the PPP. I repeat, London Underground is one of the safest metros in the world. The latest figures show that our Tube has a major injury rate of only 0.11 per cent per million against New York Subway's injury rate of 4.34 per million in the 1990s. So a number of accidents have occurred in New York. I am sure there is justifiable admiration for what Mr Kiley achieved there. But please do not talk down the efforts of our Health and Safety Executive and the many good people who have been working in the London Tube to keep it safe.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, does the Minister agree that it will do nobody any good to try to rubbish Mr Kiley and his achievements? Further, will he agree that whenever one is acclaiming the safety record of any organisation in transport, it is just as well to have one's fingers crossed at the time? Will he explain to me what this dispute between Mr Kiley and the Government is all about? Have the Government learnt the lesson, which I hope my colleagues learnt, of the perils of any split in the authority and ownership of track and train? That was the error in the last government's privatisation of British Rail. Can Mr Kiley be assured that there will be, under the Government's proposals, absolutely no occasion on which his writ does not run through the whole of the organisation for which he will be taking responsibility?
Lord Macdonald of Tradeston: My Lords, I am happy to repeat my assurance that I do not join in any personal vituperation with regard to Mr Kiley. I also repeat what we have offered in terms of safety. I take the point that no form of transport is absolutely safe. I hope that I do not tempt fate by simply explaining London's record to date.
I repeat that in running London Underground Mr Kiley would have control of its safety case. He would have the right to appoint partnership directors to the infrastructure company boards and to approve their chief executive officers and directors of safety. If he believed that safety was at risk through the activities of the infrastructure companies, he would have the right to direct them. If he felt that they were failing in their duties in any area with problems of performance, he would have the right to step in and manage that infrastructure company.
In addition, we promised a stable funding regime for London Underground well in excess of what the previous administration put in or, indeed, what we have been able to put in in recent years. I believe that that is a comprehensive attempt to try to find a
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settlement with Mr Kiley. We remain ever hopeful that such a settlement can be reached if good sense and compromise prevail.

Liquor Advertising and Promotion Bill [H.L.]
3.11 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to control the advertising and promotion of liquor products; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Stoddart of Swindon.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and to be printed.

Business of the House: Debates, 29th March
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Jay of Paddington): My Lords, I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. Noble Lords will be delighted to hear that both today's Motions have been agreed by the usual channels.
The purpose of the first Motion is to enable the business tomorrow to be taken in the following order: first, the debate on NATS standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Macdonald of Tradeston; secondly, the debate on complementary and alternative medicines standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, and thirdly, the Financial Services Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2001 standing in the name of my noble friend Lord McIntosh of Haringey.
That is the order of business which has been agreed by the usual channels. However, it is necessary to suspend Standing Order 40 to enable the Motion standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, to be taken first.
Moved, That Standing Order 40 (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be dispensed with tomorrow to enable the Motion standing in the name of the Lord Macdonald of Tradeston to be taken immediately after the Motion relating to the 2nd Report of the Offices Committee.—(Baroness Jay of Paddington.)
On Question. Motion agreed to.

Business of the House: Election Publications Bill [H.L.]
Baroness Jay of PaddingtonMy Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. It may be for the convenience of the House if I explain the background to this matter. The Election Publications Bill was introduced in the House yesterday. It has been agreed by the usual channels that we shall have the Second Reading today and the

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remaining stages on Thursday. The purpose of the Bill is to rescind the commencement of certain provisions of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act relating to the imprint on election material which, with hindsight, was brought into force too soon.
We have introduced the Bill following representations from all three main political parties. We need to act quickly as the parties and their candidates have been preparing for—I emphasise—the local elections on 3rd May on the basis of the old imprint requirements. Such material will not comply with the new law. The proposed Bill would therefore enable the parties to work to the old requirements for a further period and so save enormous wastage. I hope that I have explained that satisfactorily.
Moved, That Standing Order 46 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with tomorrow to allow the Election Publications Bill [H.L.] to be taken through its remaining stages.—(Baroness Jay of Paddington.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Parliament Acts (Amendment) Bill [H.L.]
Read a third time, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill
3.14 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Smoking is the greatest single cause of preventable illness and premature death in the United Kingdom. For that reason the Government are introducing a Bill to ban tobacco advertising. Smoking kills 120,000 people in this country every year. A 35 year-old man who has never smoked can expect to live, on average, seven years longer than a contemporary who smokes cigarettes. Smoking costs the National Health Service an estimated £1.5 billion each year in England alone. As the Royal College of Physicians said in its report last year, Nicotine Addiction in Britain,
"Smoking is now recognised as the single largest avoidable cause of premature death and disability in Britain and in most other economically developed countries and probably the greatest avoidable threat to public health world-wide".
Our strategy aims to reduce the prevalence of smoking in Britain. We have put in place a wide range of measures that will help to achieve that. We are developing the most comprehensive smoking cessation programme in the world with zyban and, very soon, nicotine replacement therapy on prescription, and the development of specialist cessation support. We are also investing heavily in a tobacco education campaign.
The Government have a comprehensive programme to support smokers who wish to quit. So, why do we also need to legislate on tobacco advertising? There is
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clear evidence which suggests a link between a ban on advertising and reduced levels of tobacco consumption. There is a link between the promotion of cigarettes and the decisions of young people to start smoking. Any ban on tobacco advertising needs to be comprehensive to be effective.
An important piece of work is the Smee report, which was produced by the Department of Health's Chief Economic Adviser in 1992 at the request of the then government. Smee reviewed 19 studies, mainly from the UK and the United States, which for the most part analysed the effect of year- to-year fluctuations in advertising expenditure within those countries. While not all those studies found any statistically significant effect, Since was able to conclude that,
"The preponderance of positive results does indicate that advertising has a positive effect on consumption".
Professor Smee then went on to look at countries which had introduced comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising. The most significant of those were Norway and Finland where bans had been in place for over a decade at the time of the report. Smee concluded that,
"In each case the banning of advertising was followed by a fall in smoking on a scale which cannot reasonably be attributed to other factors".
Other recent work came to similar conclusions. The 1999 report from the World Bank entitled, Curbing the Epidemic, stated that,
"policymakers who were interested in controlling tobacco need to know whether cigarette advertising and promotion affect consumption. The answer is that they almost certainly do, although the data is not straightforward. The key conclusion is that bans on advertising and promotion prove effective, but only if they are comprehensive, covering all media and all uses of brand names and logos".
The World Bank suggests that implementation of EU Directive 98/43/EC, upon which the Bill is based, could have reduced cigarette consumption within the European Union by nearly 7 per cent.
Other recent evidence comes from American researchers, Saffer and Chaloupka, who studied data from 22 countries. They concluded:
"tobacco advertising increases tobacco consumption. The empirical research also shows that comprehensive advertising bans can reduce tobacco consumption, but that a limited set of advertising bans will have little or no effect. A limited set of advertising bans will not reduce the total level of advertising expenditure but will simply result in substitution to the remaining non-banned media. When more of the remaining media are eliminated, the options for substitution are also eliminated"
I turn to the effect of tobacco advertising on children. University of Manchester researchers in the mid-1990s found that,
"Awareness of certain brands of cigarette was linked to an increased risk of onset of smoking in 11-13 year olds, especially girls. Awareness of the most advertised brands was a strong predictor of smoking, while awareness of other brands, probably known from other sources, was a less likely predictor. Children appear to take in the messages of cigarette advertising and interpret them as generic to smoking rather than brand specific".
A study of adolescents in California between 1993 and 1996 found,

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"clear evidence that tobacco industry advertising and promotional activities can influence non susceptible never smokers to start the process of becoming addicted to cigarettes".
That is clear evidence of a link between tobacco consumption and advertising. Public health will benefit from a comprehensive ban as proposed in the Bill.
Quantification of the effects of such a ban is not an exact science, but I believe that we are about right in estimating that the provisions of the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill, if enacted, could lead to a 2.5 per cent reduction in smoking prevalence and in the longer term a similar fall in tobacco-related deaths, a saving of some 3,000 lives a year.
This is a comprehensive Bill. It will ban, with limited exceptions, tobacco advertising in the press, on billboards and by electronic means such as faxes and through the Internet. It will ban mailshots advertising tobacco products, except where the customer has expressly requested information. It will ban free distributions of tobacco products and coupon schemes and it will bring to an end sponsorship agreements which promote tobacco products. It will give the Government power to regulate the advertising of tobacco products in places where they are sold and to control brandsharing which is the use of non-tobacco products with a similar name or other features to those of tobacco products.
With the support of the devolved administrations and agreement from the Scottish Parliament, this Bill covers the whole of the United Kingdom, although it provides that certain regulation-making powers shall be exercised by Scottish Ministers for Scotland.
I should mention that the regulation-making powers in the Bill have been considered by your Lordships' Select Committee on Delegated Powers and Deregulation and the committee has not felt it necessary to draw the attention of the House to any of the Bill's provisions.
Clause 1 of the Bill defines a tobacco advertisement as an advertisement whose purpose or effect is to promote a tobacco product. It also defines a tobacco product as a product consisting partly or wholly of tobacco and intended to be smoked, sniffed, sucked or chewed. We do not intend to stop general comment on smoking, but only promotion of tobacco products. If a journalist writes about tobacco products in news stories and comment pieces, he will not be committing an offence under the Bill. A news story is not an advertisement, neither is it an opinion piece.
Furthermore, the Bill will prohibit advertising which promotes tobacco products not the advertising of businesses. It is clear from the wording that specialist tobacconists and others will be allowed to provide information and listings in publications such as Yellow Pages, but not to use this to promote tobacco products.
Clause 2 of the Bill makes it an offence to publish, print, devise or distribute a tobacco advertisement in the UK or to cause such an advertisement to be published, printed, devised or distributed. I should
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stress that an offence under the Bill can be committed only where the activity takes place in the course of a business. The Bill will not stop the public at large from commenting on tobacco products or recommending them to their friends and colleagues.
Clause 3 makes it clear that where a tobacco advertisement appears in a newspaper or periodical, anyone in the chain of publication or distribution is potentially guilty of an offence, from the proprietor or editor of the newspaper through to the newsagent who sells it to the public.
Clause 4 sets out the exceptions to the advertising ban. Clause 4(1)(a) makes clear that communications between people in the tobacco trade which do not reach the wider public are not caught. Clause 4(1)(b) excludes from the Bill any material sent in response to a request for information. However, that does not permit tobacco advertisements to be sent to all customers on a database; each customer must individually request that information on each and every occasion.
Clause 4(1)(c) exempts from the general ban publications whose principal market is not the United Kingdom, while Clause 4(1)(d) provides an exclusion for the in-flight magazines on non-United Kingdom airlines.
Clause 4(2) gives Ministers powers to make regulations regarding tobacco advertisements in shops and other places where tobacco products are offered for sale.
Clause 5 provides various defences. The principle is that people should be liable only where they either know or should have known that they are involved in the publication or distribution of a tobacco advertisement. So it would not be necessary for a newsagent to check through all his publications to see whether they contain a tobacco advertisement.
Clause 5(5) and (6) provide for the position of Internet service providers and other intermediaries in electronic transactions. Such intermediaries are handling a vast amount of information. The Bill provides that such parties will not be liable when they are unaware that they are handling a tobacco advertisement. This is a stronger defence than for intermediaries in the paper chain and is necessitated by the nature of electronic media. We believe that this provides the right measure of protection for the e-commerce sector and that it is compliant with the e-commerce directive.
Clause 6 makes arrangements for specialist tobacconists' shops. There are some 350 such shops in the country, many of them long-established, small family businesses. This clause will allow such shops to advertise cigars and pipe tobacco within their shops and on their shop fronts. This exemption will not apply to cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco and all shops will have to comply with regulations made under Clause 4(2) in respect of these products.
Clause 7 gives the Secretary of State powers to amend any provisions if it becomes necessary to do so in consequence of any developments in technology concerning publication or distribution by electronic

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means. We do not propose to treat advertising by electronic means either less or more favourably than other forms of advertising. However, the pace of technological change in this area makes it very difficult to predict what new means of publishing or distributing may emerge and we believe it is right to cater for potential developments in this way.
The Delegated Powers and Deregulation Committee has not objected to the clause either. I would stress that we have no immediate plans to make any order under this clause. If and when we feel it may be necessary to do so, the exercise of this power will be subject to parliamentary oversight by the affirmative resolution procedure.
Clause 8 gives Ministers the power to make regulations concerning the way tobacco products are displayed in places where they are offered for sale. We do not currently intend to exercise this power and the Government do not intend to change the broad status quo on the display of tobacco products for sale. We have no intention of unnecessarily increasing the burdens on small businesses, nor do we expect to change the way in which tobacco products are commonly displayed on gantries in corner shops, supermarkets and other places of sale. However, it is necessary to have a power to prevent future loopholes and abuses which may emerge.
Clause 9 will prevent the free distribution of products and coupons which promote tobacco products. These are potent marketing tools for the tobacco industry. We do not believe it is right to allow the industry to continue to give away a very wide range of non-tobacco products, such as lighters, clothes and sunglasses which clearly promote the continued consumption of tobacco products.
Similarly, we do not believe that it is right that companies should go on running coupon schemes which persuade smokers to continue smoking so they can accumulate enough coupons to claim gifts. If we allow those schemes to continue and new ones to be set up, we will be opening up a large loophole in the advertising ban.
Clause 10 prohibits anything done pursuant to a sponsorship agreement if the purpose or effect of what is done is to promote a tobacco product. I reiterate that tobacco sponsorship will end by October 2006 at the latest and that continuation of existing qualifying contracts will be subject to conditions laid out in regulations. It remains our intention to implement the policy and the timetable on sponsorship that we agreed with our European partners in 1998. Subject to consultation, that means that UK sports and events will have until July 2003 to find alternative sponsorship and that global sporting events will have until October 2006 to do the same, provided, first, that they do not sign new contracts with tobacco companies arid, secondly, that they reduce the current sponsorship that they receive between 2003 and 2006.
Clause 11 allows us to deal with so—called brand-sharing as part of our comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising. We know that the tobacco industry has in the past sought to evade restrictions on direct
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advertising by developing a strategy to use their brands on other products. This clause enables the Secretary of State to make regulations concerning the use by non-tobacco products of names, emblems and other features which are the same or similar to those used by tobacco products, or vice versa. Such regulations can apply only where their use is intended to promote a tobacco product, or has the effect of so doing.
Clause 12 makes clear that this Bill does not extend to those areas of broadcasting where existing legislation and codes of practice provide adequate safeguards to prevent tobacco advertising and promotion. This means that the BBC and most commercial television and radio services are outside the scope of the Bill. The Bill applies to those few broadcasting services which are not already regulated.
Clauses 13 to 15 deal with enforcement powers. Trading standards officers will be responsible in the main for enforcing this Bill, although Ministers will have the power to take over or institute proceedings when necessary. In general, we do not expect the enforcement burden to be very great; for example, we expect advertising on posters, billboards and in the press to be removed voluntarily.
Clause 16 deals with penalties. Alleged offences under the provisions of the Bill can be tried either summarily or on indictment. On summary conviction the maximum penalty is a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale (currently £5,000) or six months' imprisonment, or both. A person who is convicted on indictment will be liable to an unlimited fine or a maximum of two years' imprisonment, or both. The option of conviction on indictment opens up the possibility of unlimited fines, which we believe will deter corporate villains. At the other end of the scale, I envisage that first offences by, say, a retailer would normally attract relatively low fines—enough to remind everyone that the law exists and will be enforced.
A comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising is part of the jigsaw that we are putting together to help to reduce the level of smoking in this country and make a dent in the toll of death and ill health caused by tobacco use. Each year 120,000 of our fellow citizens die from smoking-related diseases. That causes heartache and misery for many, many more. The Government are determined to tackle this epidemic. I commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.)
3.32 p.m.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, I should at once inform the House that on the odd occasion I have accepted some hospitality from the tobacco industry by way of a day's clay-pigeon shooting. It did not improve my shooting and has made no difference whatever to my views on smoking. I do not like smoking. From my experiments—by the way, I have inhaled—it spoils the taste of food, even the next day, and makes curtains smell. My wife does not like it, nor do my dogs. The memory of my days as an airline pilot when

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occasionally my room was the rendezvous for after-flight drinks remains with me still. I recall the sheer horror of finding next morning under the bed a discarded fag-end in a half-empty glass of beer. It is not a habit which appeals to me.
I cannot convince myself that smoking is good for an individual's physical health, but I acknowledge that sometimes a cigarette may be an antidote to feelings of anxiety or rage. We have only to look back to the role played by cigarettes in the camaraderie of the trenches in the First World War and the songs which still bring those events to mind.
As to this Bill, I am concerned by the scope of Clause 7 in particular. I do not like giving the Secretary of State the right when he thinks fit, in the light of developments which none of us can foresee at the moment, simply to change the legislation by order. I believe that that is a very unhealthy development. I hope that if the Bill survives Committee stage it will emerge with that power, if not removed, at least very sharply curtailed.
My principal objection to the Bill is based on humbug. I am taxed, as we all are, to provide subsidy to the growing of tobacco. Yet here we have a Bill which is designed to prohibit the advertising of a product which we are taxed to grow. As far as I know, at Amsterdam, Nice, Stockholm, or anywhere else, the Prime Minister has not raised this as a serious issue within the European Union. If we are serious about reducing the consumption of tobacco, surely we should also reduce or eliminate the subsidy for its growth. I do not accept that this Government, or their predecessors, have done anything adequate on that front.
There is humbug galore beyond that. Based on the scale of spending, the Government must regard AIDS as an even greater threat to health than smoking. Smoking has never been held responsible for causing a net decrease in the population of any country, but we are told that AIDS may well decimate the populations of a number of sub-Saharan states. What is the Government's policy? The policy is not to discourage the practice of buggery, which is the principal means by which AIDS is spread, but to encourage it. The policy is not to prohibit the advertisement of anal intercourse but to remove the restraints upon education authorities which are so misguided as to publicise the practice—of course in a non-judgmental manner—in our schools.
Lord Rea: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will give way for one moment. The AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa is spread predominantly by heterosexual intercourse, in association with other sexually transmitted diseases, not homosexual intercourse.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for putting that point of view, which is contradicted by many who have long experience in
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Africa and know perfectly well that anal intercourse is extensively practised among the heterosexual population as a form of birth control.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, perhaps my noble friend will give way. The noble Lord opposite is partly right. AIDS occurs as a result of anal heterosexual intercourse. It is anal intercourse which the Government have encouraged.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, I do not want the debate to be side-tracked by a discussion about those matters. My point in introducing this matter is to support the charge of humbug against the Government. They proceed against smoking, and there are good reasons why. For example, I do not know how many members of the Cabinet smoke. Certainly, when it comes to votes perhaps the Government believe that smokers are now a small minority who can be treated rather harshly.
I recollect that in July 1999 I tabled two Questions for Written Answer. I asked whether it was the Government's view,
"that smoking by fictional characters in popular television soap operas such as Coronation Street and EastEnders is likely to cause young people to smoke".
I received a very robust reply from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, of the Department of Health:
"The Government believe that viewers, especially children, should be protected from broadcast material portraying smoking as a glamorous or attractive activity".—[Official Report, 5/7/99; col. WA 71.]
Note the words "should be protected".
Slightly mischievously, I asked a similar Question about the Government's view as to whether,
"acts of adultery, fornication, sex between juveniles, perverted sex. violence within marriage, theft, trespass, or use of drugs by fictional characters in [such] popular television soap operas…are likely to cause young people to emulate such behaviour".—[Official Report, 22/7/99; col. WA 128.]
I believe that that Question was answered by the Home Office through the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey. I seek not to criticise him; I think he is one of the nicest and most hard-working Ministers in the Government and is essentially called on to answer anything which is awkward. But his answer was rather different. He said:
"Successive governments have acknowledged the sensitivity of broadcast output and its possible adverse effect on young people… The Government believe that, in general, the current arrangements are working well".—[Official Report, 22/7/99; col. WA 128.]
In other words, there is a difference in standards: tobacco is the ultimate sin, smoking is awful and the Government think that something should be done about it; but, in other areas, "Oh, well, the arrangements are working pretty well, aren't they?". That is another part of the charge which I make of humbug.
I have offered some explanation for the difference in attitudes towards the cause of smoking-related diseases and towards AIDS. However, there is something else that concerns me about the Bill. It is

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another example of the criminalising of activities of which the Government do not approve. Yes, it can be argued—the Minister argued very effectively—that not only should smokers be protected from themselves, but that taxpayers at large pay a heavy cost, not least in the National Health Service, for the consequences of smoking, although, as I have said, that argument is not carried through into certain other areas.
I am not sure that the Minister gave us an estimate of what the loss of revenue would be as smoking falls by the amounts anticipated, or what the saving is to the public purse in terms of pensions and other costs in respect of those who die of smoking-related diseases perhaps seven years prematurely.
As the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, hinted before we started the debate, what about alcohol? is this like the decision to seek to prohibit hunting by hounds—a minority sport—but not fishing? There are too many votes to be lost on that issue, are there not? There would be too many votes lost on the prohibition of advertising of alcohol. So that will not be an issue. The Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, will not progress very far. So humbug it is, and that is why I shall not support the Bill.
3.42 p.m.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, some 60 years ago when I became a medical student, I and my colleagues were strongly advised by the then dean of medicine that we should smoke cigarettes in the dissecting room and in physiology demonstrations in order to overcome the effects of the smell. We did so. Indeed, shortly after the war when I served on a hospital ship we could buy 50 Senior Service for is 8d. I used to get through a can of 50 cigarettes in two days—25 a day.
At that time none of us recognised the serious health hazards associated with smoking. But, as the results of the seminal results by Sir Richard Doll and Professor Austin Bradford Hill and others became available, it soon became apparent to members of the medical profession that smoking was a serious issue in relation to its effect on health.
At first it seemed that to smoke a pipe was significantly less damaging. So, after a struggle, I gave up my cigarettes and moved on to my pipe, which was my constant companion for some time. Twenty-five years ago I eventually gave it up. This story is not totally unrelated to a comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit. When I went with my family on a skiing holiday in Switzerland, whenever I wished to smoke my pipe, I was banished outdoors in sub-zero temperatures because the family refused to have the smell of tobacco smoke within the apartment.
So. I managed to give up smoking 25 years ago. For a year or two I had the feeling—if one can misquote the speech of Lady Macbeth—"Is it a pipe I see before me, its handle towards my hand? Come let me clutch thee. I have thee not, but yet I see thee still". Happily that feeling eventually passed. For the past 20 or more years I have had no craving for tobacco of any kind.
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There is no denying that smoking is the single biggest cause of ill health and premature death in the UK. It is responsible for nearly one in five deaths. However, it is never too late to stop. About five years after giving up one's risk of cancer, stroke and other smoking-related illnesses is greatly reduced.
At present, about 12 million people in the UK are addicted to cigarettes, well over one-third of adult men and women. Each year around 120,000 smokers die as a result of their habit. Most of these deaths are clue to lung cancer and other chest diseases such as bronchitis and emphysema, but heart disease and stroke contribute to that number. Smoking increases the stickiness of certain blood cells called platelets. These in turn increase the risk of blood clots forming in major arteries to the brain and heart. Smoking also has a seriously adverse effect upon blood pressure, causing high blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for stroke.
Professor McVie of the Cancer Research Campaign believes, along with all his colleagues, that the Bill, as it stands, will encourage smokers to quit and will, above all, help young people not to start smoking in the first place. As they say,
"tobacco is the greatest single preventable cause of cancer death and we owe it to future generations to do all in our power to reduce this toll".
They believe, as the Minister said the Government do, that an advertising ban could reduce tobacco consumption in the long term by 2.5 per cent, thus saving an estimated 3,000 lives a year.
As the Minister said, the report of Dr Clive Smee, the Department of Health's economic adviser in 1.992, after a very comprehensive study, concluded:
"The balance of evidence thus supports the conclusion that advertising does have a positive effect on consumption".
In a detailed analysis of four countries, Smee concluded:
"In each case the banning of advertising was followed by a fall in smoking on a scale which cannot be reasonably attributed to other factors".
Four countries have banned tobacco advertising—Norway, Finland, New Zealand and France. Adult per capita consumption of cigarettes fell between 15 and 34 per cent after the implementation of the ban. There were other initiatives which may have played a part in reducing that consumption. Nevertheless, the study showed that tobacco advertising bans work best when they are implemented as part of a comprehensive tobacco control policy.
Like many other noble Lords, I received the interesting photograph from QUIT, the organisation helping smokers to give up smoking, showing a tobacco advert close to the entrance to a primary school. I have also received the letter from the Tobacco Manufacturers' Association indicating that that offending advertisement was soon removed under the voluntary agreement.
Nevertheless, I draw your Lordships' attention to a most important paper published in the British Medical Journal on 3rd March of this year. This article is based upon a very careful detailed study of the smoking

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habits and knowledge about smoking of young people in north-east England carried out by Lynn MacFadyen, and others, at the University of Strathclyde. I shall not go into detail about the nature of that study; I simply quote the conclusions:
"Teenagers are aware of, and are participating in, many forms of tobacco marketing, and both awareness and participation are associated with current smoking status. This suggests that the current voluntary regulations designed to protect young people from smoking are not working, and that statutory regulations are required".
I could not possibly agree more. We owe it to the country at large and to future generations to implement the Bill, to which I give my warm support.
3.49 p.m.
Lord Haskel: My Lords, I support the Bill for all the health reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Walton. I certainly agree that advertising affects consumption. But the Bill is not about the right to smoke or grow tobacco; it is not about humbug and it is not about sex. It is all about banning the advertising and promotion of tobacco products. It is an attempt to regulate tobacco advertising and promotion. I should like to address the single matter of regulation.
I remind your Lordships that we are firmly in deregulation mode. Noble Lords opposite are constantly criticising the Government for adding to the regulatory load—it worries the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit—and Ministers on this side of the House are constantly battling to keep regulation to a minimum. Indeed, each department has its own regulation Minister, who has to go through a Star Chamber where regulations are scrutinised. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be sympathetic to his departmental regulation Minister because business and industry constantly complain that regulation acts as a barrier to greater productivity and to increased competitiveness. The CBI, the Engineering Employers' Federation, the chambers of commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses have all recently raised the matter of red tape with the Government.
Yet in Clauses 4 and 5 of the Bill I see that there is to be discussion about regulating point of sale advertising, about regulating displays at the entrance to shops, about the responsibility of Internet Service Providers and about regulating extending the brand to other products. The decisions will be difficult because most shops selling cigarettes sell other products, and those are often attractive to children. That will mean detailed regulation and yet more hard work for the already hard working trading standards officers.
My noble friend can be sure that if there is anything other than a complete ban, the Government will immediately receive complaints of yet more regulation, perhaps even from the shopkeepers themselves. That is why the ban must be complete. It must include no point of sale advertising; no promotion through the Internet, so that the uncertain position of Internet Service Providers is not called into question, especially where websites are established outside UK jurisdiction; and no brand stretching to
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other products in order to limit all the marketing activities carried out in any modern economy. Anything other than a comprehensive ban on all marketing activities—the noble Lord, Lord Walton, gave us the medical reasons for a comprehensive ban—will require some kind of regulation or supervised voluntary arrangement that is no longer enforceable or acceptable in today's business environment.
I hope that my noble friend the Minister will bear that in mind when responding to the debate and reassure us that noble Lords will be saved the need to move amendments in Committee to secure a complete ban.
3.53 p.m.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, I welcome the Bill. I am delighted that the Government have at last set out to deal with this difficult problem. I do not disagree with my noble friend Lord Tebbit that a great deal of humbug surrounds the Bill, but humbug is an inevitable feature of anything to do with narcotics. The whole of our discussions on alcohol, tobacco, banned substances and even substances such as caffeine are inevitably attended by humbug: what a lot of people do, we can permit; what a few people do, we try to ban. It is just the way of the world, the way of politics, the way of the media, and we have to accept it.
I tend to look at the issue and ask, "Will the Bill do good?" My answer to that is that it will help to reduce tobacco consumption, and therefore the consequences of tobacco consumption, and so it is a good Bill. However, I shall oppose the Bill as currently drafted with all my heart and to the very limits of my power. I shall do so because the Bill reverses the burden of proof in a totally unacceptable way.
It is one of the fundamental tenets of our civilisation that someone is innocent until proven guilty. There are, of course, occasions when you can trespass on that and go the other way. You can go the other way, as was said in the debate on hunting, when you are totally clear about the offence. You have to prove that it was not you driving when you were snapped by a speed camera. It is clear what the offence is. There are no fuzzy edges.
I would not feel uncomfortable about trespassing on this territory when we are dealing with extremely serious and difficult crimes—major drug trafficking and so on. There is a proposal to bring forward legislation to provide that if someone has £20 million but cannot explain how he obtained it he should have to show how he obtained it, or risk the Government at least taxing it. I do not find that unacceptable. But I do find it unacceptable that ordinary citizens and ordinary businessmen should be subject to a reversal of the burden of proof for absolutely no good reason. That is what the Bill does in several places.
The offences under Clause 2 are all absolute offences. If you have engaged in publishing, printing or distributing a tobacco advertisement, you have committed an offence. You then have to prove that you did not know that it was a tobacco advertisement. You have to prove it. There is an obligation or burden

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on you to show that you did not know. In certain circumstances, that will be impossible. Under Clause 3(c), an offence includes a newsagent selling a magazine. If a newsagent sells a magazine that has in it a tobacco advertisement and he has displayed the magazine openly on his shelves, how on earth will he prove that he did not know that there was a tobacco advertisement in it? All he had to do was look at the magazine and read it. The fact that he has so many magazines that he cannot read them all is one thing, but how can he prove that he did not read the magazine and did not know that it contained a tobacco advertisement? How can you prove that no one told you that there was a tobacco advertisement in it?
When one considers the type of people who will be subject to Clause 3(c), it is entirely unreasonable to impose a burden on proof on them. They have taken no active role in promoting tobacco. They just happen to be part of a chain which ends up including a tobacco advertisement. Under those circumstances, I cannot see any justification for undermining one of our fundamental liberties. It will put ordinary people—ordinary newsagents—in an impossible position.
The principle can also reasonably be extended to people who run big, serious businesses—I have in mind editors and proprietors of newspapers—because, necessarily, the Bill is wide in its definition of what constitutes a tobacco advertisement. It includes advertisements whose effect may be to promote a tobacco product even though that is not at all obvious. One is aware of a good many tobacco advertisements that do not appear to feature a tobacco product except for the health warning at the bottom. If the tobacco industry chooses to advertise under the ban, it will do so in very subtle ways. Why should a newspaper proprietor have to prove that he did not know that a particular advertisement promoted tobacco? Under any reasonable circumstance, if the advertisement is clearly one that promotes tobacco, it is possible to prove that the proprietor knew or should have known. But the burden of proof should be on the prosecuting authorities.
Another dimension to the problem arises in the case of internet service providers. Last year we passed the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. It, too, included a reversal of proof provision that we managed to get struck out. Under the Act it is a criminal offence for an Internet service provider to know what is in the e-mails that go through its wires. The Government are now seeking to make it a criminal offence not to know what is going through its wires. The ISPs will be caught coming and caught going. I do not see why it is necessary to catch them in that way with a reversed burden of proof when we have already made it impossible for them legally to know what is going through.
I agree that when we know someone is sending out Spam e-mails about advertising tobacco products we should he able to make the ISPs do their very best to stop those going through. That is entirely reasonable. But if you are notifying an ISP that something is happening, but he does not do it and you prosecute him, then he knows. The first thing that happens is that
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he is told officially that there is a tobacco advertisement coming down the wires and that he must stop it. A reverse burden of proof is not needed because it has no function. Under any practical circumstances, the ISP has been told what is happening. The ISP should be attacked only when he knows what is happening and does nothing about it. Again, there is no reason to reverse the burden of proof.
These fundamental freedoms have to be guarded at every turn. Generally we do not lose them as the result of big events; we lose them through erosion, by precedent and by letting little holes appear in the dyke and then watching the water stream out gently, imagining that that will be the end of the matter certainly not, so far as concerns the reversal of the burden of proof. This has come up in three recent pieces of legislation. We saw it in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, we have it in the Hunting Bill and we see it again in the Bill before us. It is something which I believe ought to be taken extremely seriously because it disfigures what is otherwise an excellent Bill.
4 p.m.
Lord Tomlinson: My Lords, banning tobacco advertising was a Labour Party manifesto commitment. That commitment would have been effected by the implementation of European directive 98/43/EC which would have banned tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship. However, that directive was annulled on the decision of the European Court of Justice on the basis of it having been introduced on an incorrect treaty base. The Bill before us today, which I support, remedies domestically the decision of the European Court of Justice and enacts the Government's tobacco control strategy.
However, at page 10 the European Commission work programme for the year 2001 states:
"In the more general field of consumer protection and public health there are plans to introduce, among other things, new proposals on the advertising and sponsorship of tobacco products".
In the Government's explanatory memorandum to the Commission's work programme, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office states:
"The United Kingdom Government warmly welcomes the Commission's intention to propose a new directive relating to the advertising and promotion of tobacco products".
On behalf of the Government, Mr Vaz continues:
"The United Kingdom Government is committed to a ban on tobacco advertising—a commitment which. following the annulment last October of the previous EC directive banning advertising, is currently being pursued domestically through the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill. The Government supports the Commission in its initiative and would urge the Commission to take particular account of trans-national issues such as band-sharing and the Internet when drafting its proposals".
Like the Government's explanatory memorandum, I welcome the Commission's proposal for a new directive in 2001 in order to mitigate the effects of the ruling from the European Court of Justice.

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I also welcome this Bill, more as a token of the Government's commitment to an early European directive than as a national do-it-alone proposal. But such European action needs to be properly planned and internally consistent to avoid accusations of hypocrisy.
I am not a Euro-sceptic. I voted "Yes" in the 1975 referendum and for over a quarter of a century I have never wavered as one who believes that our membership of the European Union has been consistently of great benefit to this country and its people. Despite those views, however, I find myself in some agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, in the first part of his speech. This is, I think, the first time that I have publicly acknowledged such agreement and I suspect that it may well be the last. However, Europe cannot expect plaudits for its planned tobacco advertising directive without being subjected to criticism over policies which are counter-productive to a ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.
To propose a ban on the advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco on the one hand, while spending annually over 1 billion euros of taxpayers' money on subsidising the European growing of tobacco, as if it were a harmless agricultural pursuit, is clearly inconsistent at best and hypocritical at worst.
My concern is enhanced when, on looking further at the Commission work programme for 2001, I find listed under "New Measures", at Programme No. 2001/014, a proposal for a Council regulation on fixing the premium level and guaranteed thresholds in the tobacco sector. This regulation is being proposed for adoption by the Commission under a written procedure for the third quarter of 2001 and is subject only to consultation with the European Parliament, not to co-decision. One might ask: will this regulation increase or decrease the premium level? I think that the answer is self-evident and clear: it will, as it always does, increase the premium level. If that is the case, then I believe that Her Majesty's Government must oppose it. not only in the privacy of the Council meetings, but publicly—and vigorously.
If tobacco is so harmful—and I believe it is—that its advertising, promotion and sponsorship must be banned, then its European public subsidy must also be banned. The Government must not only say that they support changes to the common agricultural policy, but they must, in a high profile way, demonstrate their opposition—as a net contributor to the European budget—to its budgetary resources being disbursed to a cause which is not merely unworthy but in direct conflict with what is being seen as a public health imperative. The money saved by banning expenditure on the tobacco regime could help to support many of our sports governing bodies, which are currently finding it extremely difficult to secure alternative and continuing forms of sponsorship beyond 2003.
Perhaps I may raise another aspect of government commitment concerning action to reduce tobacco consumption. At present, the European Commission
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is engaged in a civil legal action in the United States against two American tobacco firms, R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris. This is a civil legal action seeking compensation amounting to 3 billion euros for lost European Union revenue arising from those companies being complicit in tobacco smuggling. The European Commission has invited the member states of the European Union to join in that civil action.
My noble friend Lord McIntosh of Haringey, in reply to a question that I directed to him on 8th February, stated:
"Customs and Excise is actively considering whether to join in the case. I am sure that Treasury officials will also wish to consider this matter.—[Official Report, 8/2/01: col. 1267.]
Treasury officials did consider the matter and, in a letter dated 2nd March 2001 to the European Union Select Committee, an official from the Treasury stated that,
"the United Kingdom had decided not to join in the action because, as there is no suggestion that the United Kingdom was the destination for the smuggled product, there is no direct United Kingdom revenue loss to seek to recover and therefore it is unlikely that the United Kingdom has valid reasons for joining this action".
I urge Her Majesty's Government to think again about that answer. The Treasury official is, I believe, guilty of a most specious form of argument. In so far as revenue is lost to the European Union budget, all member states suffer, especially those which, like the United Kingdom, are net contributors to the budget. Our interest is specific, direct and calculable. Smuggling costs money. We pay more, and we should join in the action to recover moneys lost. We should do that in defence of the interests of our taxpayers.
I do not apologise for focusing on these somewhat narrow European issues. I do so because I believe that the European directive will possibly supersede the Bill. I am content for that to be the case. Indeed, I believe that there are certain advantages in the matter being dealt with in that way. However, the advantages will be seriously undermined if the European Union continues simultaneously to be both a banner of advertising, promotion and sponsorship and a subsidiser of the growth of the offending product.
4.10 p.m.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Lords and Commons Pipe and Cigar Smokers Club. Indeed, I can see at least two other noble Lords who are equally proudly wearing that club's tie today.
I should like to take this opportunity—which is almost unique, as far as I am aware—of underbidding the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant. If I noted correctly, he said that he was tempted by 50 cigarettes at 1/8d. When I joined Her Majesty's Navy as an extremely junior junior some 45 years ago, I was offered and accepted 200 cigarettes for 2/4d. They were virtually unsmokeable; they were called Blue Line and were clearly the sweepings off the factory floor. Nevertheless, it was a carton of 200 cigarettes for 2/4d.

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I, too, dislike the Bill; I am against it. However, I am against it for slightly different reasons from my noble friend Lord Lucas. I am concerned about the Bill from the point of view of human rights. I notice that on the front page of the Bill—not page 1, but the front page—there is the absolutely standard claim or disclaim. I am not sure which word to use, from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I am very glad that I am not in the noble Lord's position. That claim or disclaim states that in his view—I paraphrase, of course, because it states "In my view"—that,
"the provisions of the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill are compatible with the Convention rights"—
that is, the Human Rights Act 1998. I think that the Minister will have problems in that respect. One could drill hole after hole in the Bill in that context. I do not intend to do so.
However, perhaps I may refer, as did the Minister, to Clause 4(1 )(b) and, in particular, to the Explanatory Notes to the Bill—which, interestingly, are two pages longer than the Bill itself. That may say something about the Bill. The clause and the Explanatory Notes refer to the exceptions; that is, where advertising is allowed. The notes go on to state in paragraph 17:
"However. this does not permit tobacco advertisements to be sent to all consumers on a database; each consumer must individually request that information on each and every occasion".
The Minister also quoted that passage. The paragraph goes on to state:
"A request for information cannot be considered as a request for further information in the future".
Clearly, the purpose, as I read it, is to prohibit manufacturers or sellers of tobacco products from generally communicating with smokers who are purchasers or potential purchasers of their brands, even if that communication is personal and private. This is despite the fact that the product itself is legal; that it is perfectly legal to manufacture and sell it and for adults to purchase it.
I have real problems with the conflict between a legal product—to which I shall return in a moment—on the one hand and a banning of advertising on the other. To be consistent—I hope that this does not happen—surely tobacco should be declared illegal. Then there would be some logic in the Bill and in the ban on advertising because, in that context, you would be banning advertising of an illegal product. Here you are banning advertising—or proposing to—of a legal product. I cannot get my mind around that.
I am advised by much better legal brains than mine—I am riot a lawyer—that, in their opinion, this seriously violates the fundamental freedom of speech and expression contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. This is where I have great sympathy with the Minister. The Bill bans virtually every possible means of bringing a tobacco product to the attention of smokers. The prohibition of any communication whatever, even a communication of a factual or informational nature, with regard to a product which is lawfully available—I come back to that word again—is a disproportionate restriction
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contrary to Articles 10 and 8 of the ECIIR. The Government should look at that issue extremely carefully.
I wish to raise only two other points. I have twice mentioned the question of legality. In another place, the Minister stated:
"We are relaxed about the way in which products and prices are ordinarily displayed, and we do not intend to restrict that. It is perfectly legitimate to have a certain amount of advertising at point of sale and for products to be displayed, with prices, so that they can be sold".
So far so good. The Minister continued:
"because after all tobacco is a legal product". —[Official Report, Commons, 13/2/01; col. 220.]
That brings me back to the same dilemma, but I shall not dwell on it further.
I believe that it was the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, who mentioned regulation. I totally agree with what he said. Certainly, Members of the House and many others outside the House are getting fed up with the amount of regulation. However, the problem lies in Clause 18 of the Bill. Subsections (1) and (2) of that clause are very frightening indeed. The clause states:

"(1) Powers to make regulations and orders under this Act are exercisable by statutory instrument.

(2) Regulations, and orders under Section 7. may make"—

my noble friend Lord Tebbit mentioned this—

"(a) different provision for different cases or circumstances, and

(b) any supplementary, consequential or transitional provision which the appropriate Minister (or Secretary of State) consider; necessary or desirable".

The industry does not know where it is; we do not know where it is. The Bill has holes driven right through it.
4.17 p.m.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, I very much welcome the Bill. I am aware from the statistics we have been given that, by the time I sit down in a few minutes from now, two to three more people in this country will have died as a result of smoking. That is a sombre thought. The Bill is part of a wider-ranging government strategy to tackle the problem of the large number of people in this country who die as a result of smoking. I welcome that strategy.
Looking at the history of anti-smoking measures over recent years, it is clear that raising the price of cigarettes and making them fairly expensive has proved to be one of the most effective deterrents to smoking. It discourages young people from starting and, indeed, it lessens the tendency for adults who have already started smoking to go on doing so, or they smoke fewer cigarettes.
I therefore find myself, as did my noble friend Lord Tomlinson, in agreement with the first part of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit. I am sure that his reputation will be totally damaged if speaker after speaker on these Benches praises something that he said, but the truth must stand.
I do not share the noble Lord's views about the European Union but I agree with him that it is unacceptable that the taxpayers of Europe—including

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the taxpayers of this country—should contribute money to encourage the production of a product which we are, in other senses, trying to discourage. That is unacceptable. I hope that the Minister will hear our call and that the Government will act accordingly in their discussions in Brussels.
In relation to European Union matters, a second element is worth mentioning. People take their cars and vans across the Channel to Calais, stock up with cigarettes at prices significantly lower than here, bring them into this country and either use them themselves or sell them on. I understand that the trade is significantly damaging Treasury revenue from tobacco duties. I am not sure whether my noble friend the Minister will have that information to hand. It is also undermining the sensible policy of successive governments of increasing the price of cigarettes as a deterrent to their consumption. The volume of cigarettes coming across the Channel is now large enough to damage the effectiveness of that policy.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me to intervene? I hope that it does not spoil the noble Lord's reputation to be caught agreeing with me. I hope that he will not place too much emphasis on the point that he has just made. After all, it is not only cigarettes that are in the vans and cars; it is also good, decent wine and other such products—and we do not want to get into that, do we?
Lord Dubs: My Lords, I do not disagree. Good wine comes into this country too. Although I do not buy it in Calais—I buy it in local off-licences—I understand what goes on. But, as I said, that trade undermines both Treasury policy and health policy as regards smoking, and I take exception to that. I wish our European partners had the same attitude to trying to reduce smoking as successive British governments have had. The problem would be solved if the French and other EU countries increased their tobacco taxes to the same level as ours.
That said, I am convinced that abolishing cigarette advertising would make a material difference to the number of cigarettes smoked. That is why I support the direct measures in the Bill. It is an elementary aspect of marketing that all those who sell products have to find new entrants to the market to make up for those who die—the more so when the product that they sell kills their consumers. Therefore, the danger in health terms is that young people are lured into smoking and are persuaded that it is acceptable as a result of visible advertising and sponsorship. Preventing that is the particular strength of this measure.
Perhaps I may ask my noble friend a couple of questions. I have been puzzling over the meaning of subsection (2) of Clause 10, which has the rubric "Prohibition of sponsorship":
"A sponsorship agreement is an agreement under which, in the course of a business, a party to it makes a contribution towards something".
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I am slightly puzzled as to the legislative basis for that form of wording. The Explanatory Notes seek to elaborate on the provision:
"For example. it is not intended to prevent a tobacco company supporting a theatrical production and being acknowledged for so doing, provided that the acknowledgement mentioned solely the name of the company and not any of its products. and did not involve any special treatment of the tobacco company".
I find that rather difficult. In the cigarette advertising that appears on billboards and elsewhere, frequently only the name of the company is featured. Given the explanation in the Explanatory Notes, the clause may allow the sponsorship of tobacco by mention of the company rather than of any specific product. That would be sufficient to undermine the purpose of the legislation. I hope that my noble friend will persuade me that I have got this wrong and that the Bill is more robust in that respect. I fear that that may not be the case.
I wish to raise two further points. One relates to airports and airlines. I have tried to follow the arrangements for in-flight magazines. As I understand it, cigarette advertising will not be permitted in magazines produced by foreign airlines based in this country whereas magazines produced by foreign airlines may contain such advertising. Have I got that right? My second point is a related one. What about advertising on the "air side" at British airports—when one has gone through passport control and Customs on one's way out of the country? Will the legislation apply to that element too? My noble friend nods. I hope so.
Finally, I turn to a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Geddes. I do not believe that there is an inconsistency in permitting a habit such as smoking and accepting that it is legal but saying that advertising promotion and sponsorship should not be legal. It would be quite wrong to make smoking illegal. It might be good for the health of people in this country, but it would be wrong in principle. But I see nothing wrong in doing everything possible to discourage young people from starting down that road. That is surely the supreme strength of this measure.
4.25 p.m.
The Viscount of Oxfuird: My Lords, I wonder whether the Bill will do all the things that it purports to do. I have the view that it is totally geared to today's television mentality. It simply fails to address anything other than that which is negative; and that is essentially lazy.
Where are all the provisions in the Bill to provide an inspiration to smokers to give up? That would be positive action. All that we have before us is a further banning order, which seems to be the only thought pattern that is currently available intellectually. Perversely, a ban on advertising will have a severe effect on the very source which is important: the health warning. It must surely be possible for us to have some indication as to whether the Government regard the warning advertisement as an effective tool in the overall programme of reducing the consumption of tobacco products among the young.

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It is sad to note that, since 1997, tobacco consumption has risen by 6.5 per cent, whereas in the previous 25 years there was a persistent decline in the consumption of tobacco products; a 37 per cent reduction was finally achieved. There was a reason for that: each year there was an increase in tobacco taxation. But tobacco remained affordable; the increase did not have the effect of promoting the criminal level of smuggling that we see today.
If we look at the current situation, we see a taxation level that promotes illegal smuggling at 34 per cent; namely, over a third of the total cigarette equivalent market is now non-UK duty paid. The total loss to the Exchequer is some £9,000 million. That figure of one-third in the period since 1997 must concentrate the mind of any serious anti-smoker. It represents a massive loss of revenue. It apparently equates to 3p in the pound on the standard rate of income tax.
I know from experience with my own children that the forbidden fruit of tobacco is tried at an early age. By the time young people reach 24 or 27, they are much more involved in life: they are involved in sport and activities which take over mentally from the desire to run behind the bike sheds or whatever encouraged them to smoke in their youth.
But what effect does the withdrawal of product advertising have on the very young? They choose the product that tastes best to them and, when forewarned by the health statement, they probably choose a product with a low-tar, low nicotine content. This information and choice will be denied to them, which could possibly even add to the health risk.
I believe that we would all recognise that the young are resourceful; their income is minimal, comparatively, and the power of "word of mouth" is great. It is therefore not surprising that they will find sources of supply which will conform to their budgets. The difference between a packet of cigarettes costing £2.50 and one costing £4.33 is a very considerable incentive to seek out the illegal supplier. It is also a temptation to buy in larger quantities if their budgets permit it.
It is therefore not surprising that the effect of advertising is negated when such a disorderly market exists. I ask again the question: why is it that the Government have not carried on with the original agreement between the tobacco industry and health Ministers where these issues were discussed and solutions found? The current agreement has not been modified since 1995. As we all know, marketing is part of the total management concept. It is part of the discipline. As I said at the beginning, if one wants something to happen one has to consider all the factors by involving all the interested parties. I am convinced that the solution to a reduction in the consumption of tobacco products by the young must rely on orderly market discipline and the removal of the smuggled products over which we have no control. Therefore, we must seek the professionalism of those people who have the experience. I cannot support the Bill as it stands at present, but I look forward to tabling amendments as soon as possible.
4.32 p.m.
Lord Harris of High Cross: My Lords, I hope that it is not necessary for me to say that my fundamental opposition to this Bill runs far wider and deeper than the narrow interest I declare as a lifelong pipe smoker and the chairman of FOREST, which is the premier European organisation that defends the rights of smokers to light up, I hope always with due courtesy and consideration.
It is not necessary to be a smoker to see that outright censorship of advertising, as the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, said, whether of tobacco or any other legal product, is the plainest denial of the prized freedom of individuals to have access to the information that they wish to have At a more mundane level, this Bill would violate the right of competing businesses, including corner shops, to communicate freely, as we have heard, with their own customers.
Such a far-reaching statutory prohibition, which is unprecedented in a free society in times of peace, would require some special explanation and justification. One does not have that special justification. In a moment I shall come to the conflicting evidence in surveys on smoking and advertising.
In my view what is almost as deplorable is that this Bill marks the abrupt departure of Her Majesty's Government from the civilised practice over decades of constructive discussion and voluntary accords with the tobacco industry which, without the sledgehammer of legislation in the past, have effectively delivered restraints on advertising messages, sampling, direct marketing and the rest. Again, without precedent, an industry which is among the leading British exporters is shunned as a pariah in a display of petty puritanical pique.
The Government's justification is their hope t hat the Bill will improve health. I regard that as being highly debatable and questionable. We had similar high-minded hopes from this Government in the recent past for education, the National Health Service, crime, transport and many other things. They are hardly promising precedents. Ministers claim that ending tobacco advertising will reduce consumption at some stage in the future by 2.5 per cent. It would be difficult to reconcile that with the fact that we have just heard of consumption now rising, after decades of gentle decline, without any stimulus whatever from increased advertising. That 2.5 per cent turns out to be the purest speculation with no attempt to establish a foundation in science or experience.
In the Minister's regulatory impact assessment, we have further statistical licence. On page three it puts the cost of so-called "smoking related diseases" to the National Health Service,
"in England alone up to £1.7 billion a year".
By page six that estimate falls to,
"around £1.5 billion and £1.8 billion"
for the whole for the United Kingdom. As an effort to show the cost of smoking to the community, all these figures are completely pointless because the arbitrary

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costings ignore entirely the fact that, until recently, £10 billion was gathered every year by the Exchequer from taxes on smoking. That was before over-taxation caused the revenue to fall from £10 billion to teetering around £7 billion a year. But that is still four times the presumed cost to the National Health Service of the so-called "smoking-related diseases".
Here the Government's simplistic aim runs into further trouble. Smuggling and the illegal importation of cheap European cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco have flooded many parts of the country with supplies at almost half the price of the corner shops, which brings a further unintended knock-on effect. By undermining retail tobacconists, who cannot legally sell to youngsters under the age of 16 years, cigarettes have become available on the streets at half-price with no questions asked.
Even this restless, reckless reforming Government should have learned some modesty from experience. Have they not learned already something about the laws of unintended consequences in education, drugs, crime and even now in the foot and mouth outbreak? At the very least they might now do themselves a favour by heeding rational arguments on the likelihood—I should say "the certainty"—that these good intentions will again be mocked by frustrating failure.
The analytical miscalculation at the heart of this Bill is the naïve assumption that advertising automatically increases the total market demand. As a serious student of advertising over many years, I say that that was the outcome in developing markets such as those for detergents, fridges, washing machines and television sets in the 1960s and 1970s. But when markets mature and approach saturation, advertising shifts to fighting over brand shares, including keeping out cheap foreign imports. Only a novice would expect that advertising a new soap, a soup or a cigarette would have us all buying more and increasing the total demand.
When one looks at these claims and counter-claims there is almost no end to it. I enjoyed the Independent, which I do not always read. It recently said that there is,
"no evidence that advertising encourages young people to smoke".
It went on to say that youngsters start smoking because it is considered "cool" among their peer group; because it helps them to lose weight; or because it is disapproved of by adults. More weighty is the report of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys on why children start smoking. It found that advertising had no significant effect. In 1996 the hardheaded KPMG consultants found,
"overwhelming evidence to support the proposition that advertising bans on tobacco products do not reduce consumption".
Private Eye went one better, as one might imagine. In January it carried a letter from Michael Stewart who reported on a study of 22 OECD countries which revealed that the six with advertising bans showed, on
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average, an increase in consumption, compared with the trend in countries without bans. That is to say, in countries without bans smoking diminished at a certain rate, but in the six countries with bans it did not diminish at a greater rate.
Since the 1970s there have been dozens of studies purporting to test whether advertising is a significant factor in the extent of smoking. In 1999, the IEA obligingly published a report entitled, Does Advertising Increase Smoking?, by Dr Hugh High of the University of Cape Town. He reviewed what he called the "voluminous literature" on the relationship between smoking and advertising. On any balanced assessment there is no comfort at all for the promoters of this Bill.
One of the more pretentious earlier reviews of evidence was the Smee committee report published by the Department of Health in 1992. After a showy parade of econometric and statistical analysis of 19 published studies, it concluded weakly that a majority showed a positive relationship between advertising and tobacco consumption. The snag was—when one looked deeper—that the studies varied widely in quality and most of them lacked statistical significance. If there were time, I could quote from the Smee report. It states, for example, that where advertising does have an effect on consumption, it is a transitory effect. Consumption responds initially but then falls back unless one keeps on increasing the advertising. A progressive increase in advertising is necessary to sustain a given initial increase in demand.
The weighty conclusion of the prestigious research group, Henley Marketing Dynamics, was bluntly that,
"the analysis undertaken in the Smee report does not justify its findings".
Indeed, Smee himself acknowledged weaknesses in its data, some of which was derived from the Norwegian equivalent of our own Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Hugh High's devastating evidence, summarised in Table 5, shows that following bans in Iceland, Norway, Finland, Italy and Portugal, introduced between 1971 and 1983, consumption fluctuated, but compared with the decline in countries without bans there was no additional reduction in smoking.
The commonsense conclusion is that the dominant influence on the general decline in smoking which we have witnessed has been the gruesome, and I believe exaggerated, counter-advertising of the health warnings. To the extent that banning advertising simultaneously reduces public exposure to these warnings, a long decline in smoking could slow down or even be reversed. As with fox hunting, I hope that the House will resist an authoritarian Bill which panders to political prejudice and yet would fail in its professed purpose.
4.43 p.m.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, I must first declare an interest; I am a pipe and cigar smoker. Indeed, I have smoked a pipe for the past 57 years. I also formed the Lords and Commons pipe club over 20

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years ago. We have about 100 members in both Houses. I am not happy about this Bill but I shall not oppose it. There is a health drive behind it which I appreciate.
I am not a member of FOREST, unlike my noble friend who has just addressed the House, but I do believe in the freedom and the right to enjoy tobacco. Freedom and tolerance towards smoker and anti-smoker should be the creed to follow—it would certainly help to lessen the feelings against each other.
To smoke a cigarette, cigar or a pipe is a person's choice, and whether smoking, drinking alcohol or smoking cannabis or pot, they are fully aware of the risks and, indeed, constantly advised of the dangers to health of pursuing their pleasure. But I stress that there should not be annoyance to others. I also believe that undue pressure is unwarranted. It does seem odd that those who drink alcohol, causing many horrible road deaths, death to themselves, illnesses and disease and a burden on the health service, do not receive the same waves of wrath as the tobacco smoker.
The tobacco smoker feels he is being told and controlled, and to him it is anathema in a democratic society. Tobacco is still a legal product and it has the legal right to be advertised. I know that tobacco companies argue that they are directing their advertisements not at young or potential customers but at the competition between competing brands. Well. be that as it may, the point is that they are being singled out for public and unfair chastisement. Now under this legislation so strictly to control their right to advertise and promote their products, banning their advertising and promotion to this extent is almost the final step to stop smokers being informed of their tobacco choice.
Seventeen million smokers will also feel aggrieved. But my main concern is the Chancellor's policy on tobacco taxation, which has been mentioned already by the noble Viscount, Lord Oxfuird, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross. But, first, I note that on 22nd January in another place the Minister, Alan Milburn, said,
"I believe that people have a right to choose to smoke. If that is what they want to do, they have a right to do it".—[Official Report, Commons, 22/1/01; col. 656.]
And then on 1st February my noble friend Lord Whitty in your Lordships' House said,
"It should be recognised that a significant minority of the population still smoke. The interests of that minority should he borne in mind, as well as those of everyone else … we need to take a proportionate approach to this".—[Official Report, 1/2/01: col. 880.]
Well said. There is no vendetta then. Well, why punish the smoker? Why are not these Ministers telling the Chancellor that there are 17 million smokers constantly being punished through his tobacco taxation policy? And where is the proportionate approach?
The Government's policy of constantly increasing taxes on cigarettes is self-defeating and has had quite the opposite effect to what was intended. Smoking is on the increase for the first time in 25 years and I believe that it is the increasing official price of tobacco
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that has brought this about. The tax on legally imported cigarettes is now so ridiculously high that it has created an enormous black market in untaxed smuggled cigarettes costing the Treasury between £2 billion and £3 billion a year. With cut price cigarettes and masses of cheap imports, more young people now find it easier to start smoking.
I know, of course, the measures that have been taken to curb this smuggling—1,000 extra Customs officials and a national network of x-ray scanners. Add that on to the Chancellor's lost revenue and it has still not stopped smuggling. I believe that the Chancellor's policy is wrong. It is expensive; it is an aid to smuggling and the crime that goes with it. It is a smuggler's charter, an inducement to crime, with smuggling gangs operating now in the clubs, the schools and the back streets of our towns. Add that to the cost of the Chancellor's tobacco taxation policy. I also believe that some of these illegal, cheap imported cigarettes have a higher tar content and are therefore more harmful to young smokers. Therefore his policy in that respect is dangerous too.
The Tobacco Manufacturers' Association—I have no connection with it—made it clear in its submission to the Chancellor that the UK tobacco tax is now the highest in the world and has created a situation where smuggling is spiralling out of control, law and order are being undermined, cigarette consumption is increasing and legitimate retailers are going out of business. Yet in spite of those dire warnings the Chancellor still increased the tobacco tax. A packet of Regal king size will now cost £4.28, compared with £1.47 in Spain. One in three smokers is now buying his cigarettes from illegal sources. Some evidence came from cigarette packets found on the terraces of football grounds. For example, last season 41 per cent of packets found at Ipswich after one match were non-duty packets.
The Government estimate that in 1999–2000 total cigarette consumption was around 76 billion of which 13.6 billion—18 per cent—were smuggled. Even by the Chancellor's own reckoning, the measures he has introduced to contain smuggling seemed to be designed to accept that 18 per cent to 20 per cent will be smuggled. And this Bill on advertising and promotion will not stop that.
Finally. I draw the House's attention to an Answer to a Written Question in another place given by the Paymaster General, Dawn Primarolo as recently as 7th March. At col. 229 of the Official Report, she said:
"As part of the 'Tackling Tobacco Smuggling' strategy. Customs are pursuing a target for 2000–01 of holding illicit market penetration to 21 per cent of the UK cigarette market. equating to £2.8 billion in lost revenues. Customs' assessment for the calendar year 2000 suggests that 22 per cent of the UK cigarette market is made up of smuggled cigarettes, equating to £2.9 billion in lost reserves".
What an admission! And how many hospitals could we have built?
I say to the Chancellor and to the Government: stop punishing the smoker. Is it not worth cutting the taxation on tobacco'? It might—I emphasise "might"—prompt a short-term increase in legal

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cigarette smoking but it would help to kill off the illegal trade, the smuggling crooks, crime in our urban districts and, after a little time, as before under the voluntary agreements, I believe that the reduction in smoking would then continue.
4.52 p.m.
Lord Naseby: My Lords, I have been involved in marketing all my life. At one time I confess that I was responsible for some years for the advertising of Senior Service, Park Drive, Hamlet, Old Holborn and a number of other old brands. I have never smoked in my life.
Like other noble Lords, I accept the medical evidence although I note in passing that the incidence of lung cancer rises steeply with age. According to Professor Thatcher of the Christie Hospital NHS Trust, Manchester, 82 per cent of patients are now over 65 and 47 per cent—that is, nearly half the patients—are over 75; so at least they have passed their three score years and ten. So perhaps the evidence is not quite as strong as everyone says traditionally.
There is no purity of principle as regards the Bill. It is just perceived to be politically correct. No one on either side of the Chamber has the guts to ban cigarettes. No government ever had the guts to ban smoking. We know that this Government are not good at coping with challenges.
The noble Lord, Lord Mason, told us about illegal smuggling. I do not need to add to what he said. The situation is not being coped with. We are flooded by cheap cigarettes. Why, therefore, do the Government persist in ignoring the importance of price? However, I take issue with the noble Lord on this matter. All the evidence in relation to smoking is that the lower the price of cigarettes, the greater the consumption. Even the Chancellor in his latest Budget did not increase the price of cigarettes by a great deal. I do not think that the Bill will work. However, if it were to succeed, the resources that the tobacco manufacturers spend on promotion will now be available to reduce the price of cigarettes. Your Lordships will know that there is fair latitude from the profit margins of cigarette companies to reduce the price of cigarettes.
If one wants further evidence, let us consider eastern Europe. Cigarettes are cheap in eastern Europe and consumption is high. If all promotion or communication is removed, the resources that would have gone into that factor will now go into reducing the price, and consumption will increase.
It is clear that the Bill will not work. It will not reduce consumption. On Clause 2, the Explanatory Notes state:
"It is not intended that the public at large, journalists etc should be prevented from commenting on tobacco products or that the representation of smoking and tobacco products by those engaged in creative or artistic pursuits (actors, painters, products etc) should be prohibited".
So lifestyle promotion will continue. Only commercial brand communication is to be constrained.
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The Explanatory Notes continue:
"Subsection (4) exempts persons who do not carry on business in the United Kingdom".
Why are we supporting overseas companies? There seems to be a huge hole there.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, commented on in-flight magazines. UK airlines do not carry only passengers from the UK. I think that British Airways would be somewhat offended if it were told that the majority of its passengers were UK citizens. They are not. Why should it be constrained?
My noble friend Lord Tebbit commented on Clause 7. I do not believe that a single Member of this House can allow Clause 7 to be agreed to. It gives the Secretary of State an all-enveloping power: that because there may be some developments in technology he or she may have the right to introduce an amendment to the Bill without debate.
Clause 9 refers to free samples of allied products. The Minister referred to sunglasses, umbrellas, windcheaters and so on. The Explanatory Notes state:
"For example, branded clothing might be sold for two thirds or more off the usual price".
What is the usual price? Is it the Gucci price? Is it the Marks & Spencer price? Is it the Asda price? Is it the market trader's price? What happens if they are last year's goods? Can one not have sale prices? How many noble Lords have visited retail parks where prices are cut to the margins? The clause will not work. The poor trading standards officer has to assess whether the price is right or wrong. It is an impossible job. The power will not work.
I know a little about brand-sharing. I feel somewhat sorry for Branson. Presumably he cannot have Virgin cigarettes because he already has an airline and a host of other dimensions. But he will not be allowed to have Virgin cigarettes because they would share the brand name. The provision will remove the whole of the own-label business. No supermarket can have an own-label cigarette. Sainsbury, Asda, Tesco and so on will be denied it. That is an interference with their trade.
We know that attempts at a passing-off action fail. The Government must have that knowledge—but perhaps not the Department of Health. The DTI certainly has such knowledge.
With regard to enforcement, I feel extraordinarily sorry for the trading standards officers. In Northamptonshire a few years ago, one saw the genuine pressure under which they worked regarding the problems of counterfeit and unsafe products. Are we really saying that, as a priority, they must check the displays of the corner tobacconists and newsagents to ensure that they are not offending the provisions of the Bill?
The Bill is riddled with dangerous precedents. I hope that the Minister will take seriously the words of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and his experience of advertising, which I totally concur with from my own experience. The Bill interferes in the legitimate communication between a business and its known customers. It gives unfair advantage to foreign

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companies. It flies in the face of all economic experience. Clause 7 is totally unacceptable. To ban the promotion and communication by any means of a product that is legally manufactured, sold and bought is totally wrong and unprecedented in peacetime.
5 p.m.
Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen: My Lords, I begin by expressing my support for the aims of the Bill. As my noble friend Lord Tomlinson said, it is another election manifesto promise that is being kept. I particularly welcome the ending of tobacco advertising in sport. I shall be pleased to attend a football match or watch it on television—hopefully a match that involves Ipswich Town, whom I have followed for many years—and no longer have to see advertisements for smoking, which are currently difficult to avoid.
I recognise that since 1995 there has been a voluntary agreement relating to advertising and tobacco promotion, which the Tobacco Manufacturers' Association has tried to monitor. However, there have been a number of examples of adverts being placed close to schools or hospitals. Although some of them have eventually been removed, they can encourage smoking by children and by others who are already ill, however briefly they appear. I therefore believe that the Bill is needed.
I shall raise two particular issues on which the Bill may cause consequential problems. The first is a question of employment. I have spoken before in your Lordships' House about smoking and declared an interest as a former senior official of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union, of which the tobacco workers' section is a proud part. I am aware that the Bill may not directly affect employment, but presumably tobacco companies do not spend millions of pounds on advertising for fun. I understood from them last week that they believe that advertisements promote tobacco and smoking. If so, it surely follows that lack of advertisements may deter smoking, which in turn will threaten the jobs of those in the tobacco industry.
Additionally, such extra regulation may make tobacco manufacturers think twice about continuing their business in the UK. I have already been told personally by one large tobacco company that it cannot diversify any more than it has done already and that in any case it believes that there is an anti-tobacco attitude in the UK, which means that future investment must be made abroad. One of the companies that provides filters for cigarettes has told me that its machinery has been tailor-made for such filters and is no use for manufacturing other products. If the machinery cannot be used to make filters, it will have to be scrapped, the factory closed and the workforce dispensed with.
I do not know whether those companies are bluffing, but if they are not, jobs would appear to be under threat. Under those circumstances, I ask my noble friend the Minister and other Ministers, when
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dealing with issues relating to tobacco manufacture, to remember the need for alternative forms of employment for any workers threatened.
Thanks to efforts of the tobacco workers' union over the years, we are talking not about poorly paid, part-time jobs, but about skilled, well paid posts for men and women. Just as I have argued in the past for alternative employment for miners, steelworkers and those in the rural communities, I argue that those working in the tobacco industry—many of whom, ironically, are non-smokers—have a right to the same consideration.
My second worry has already been touched on by a number of noble Lords. It concerns the possibility of increased smuggling of cigarettes into this country. It is very helpful that the Government are encouraging smokers to stop smoking by the use of patches and other methods. I greatly welcome that. However, some people will continue to smoke despite those incentives being placed in their way. It often follows that the cheaper the cigarette, the more they will smoke. Despite increased surveillance, we know that criminal elements in other countries are targeting the UK as a country into which cigarettes can be smuggled. Those smuggled cigarettes may well be stronger than some and may come from countries with little or no health protection provision relating to tobacco products.
Last year the UK manufacturers claimed to control 93 per cent of the UK cigarette market, but they now fear that that percentage may decrease rapidly. Already a number of previously unheard of cigarette brands and counterfeit produce of dubious quality are smuggled into the UK market. I understand that they come from as far afield as China. I also understand that smuggled cigarettes are being sold from ice-cream vans, thus targeting children and young people.
Clause 2(4) says:
"It is not an offence … for a person who does not carry on a business in the United Kingdom to publish or cause to be published a tobacco advertisement by means of a website which is accessed in the United Kingdom".
Does that mean that the world-wide web can be used for the advertisement of cheaper and smuggled cigarettes? Can the sales outlets from which they can be obtained also be advertised? I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to reassure me on those points.
I look forward to my noble friend's responses on those two important issues of jobs and the smuggling of tobacco products. I reiterate that overall I am in favour of the Bill.
5.7 p.m.
The Earl of Liverpool: My Lords, the first thing that strikes me about the Bill is that it is by any standards a draconian measure. Tobacco is a recognised legal product, the manufacture and distribution of which employs around 60,000 people in this country and, it is estimated, more than 100 million world-wide.
The Bill would introduce a comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship by any company in the sector going about its legal business and trying

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to protect its market share. That is a drastic step. What is the reasoning for it? The Minister has said that it is hoped that it will reduce consumption by 2.5 per cent. He prayed in aid the Smee report, but there is other empirical evidence on the subject and even the Smee report cannot prove that that 2.5 per cent reduction would be achieved. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, quoted the 1996 KPMG report. At the risk of testing your Lordships' patience, I shall repeat its conclusion. It said:
"There is overwhelming evidence to support the proposition that advertising bans on tobacco do not reduce tobacco consumption".
The 1990 report by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys found that advertising had no significant influence on why children start smoking. The Macdonald surveys of 1993 came to the same conclusion, stating:
"There is no evidence in any of the studies to suggest that if advertising were banned it would make the least difference to the propensity of children to smoke".
Therefore, noble Lords may take their pick, but the Smee report is by no means the only report to which we should pay attention.
Perhaps there is another reason why the Government are pressing ahead with this legislation. Certainly it was in their manifesto, but my personal view is that it has more to do with demonstrating to the country at large that the nanny state under new Labour is very much alive and well. Whatever the reasons, I believe that the Government are misguided.
Furthermore, I believe that their tobacco policy is confused and contradictory. On the one hand, they have committed increased resources to education and smoking-cessation programmes, which are to he commended; on the other hand, they have pursued an excessive tobacco tax policy which has had the predicted perverse consequence of encouraging smuggling on a massive scale. Many noble Lords have already referred to that.
The resultant countrywide availability of low-price, black-market products has led inevitably to increased total consumption. Since this Government came to power in 1997, it is estimated, as has already been stated by my noble friend Lord Oxfuird, that UK tobacco consumption has increased by 6.5 per cent. That follows a period of 25 years of persistent decline.
It must be said that the one thing that this Bill will not do is reduce the upward trend of tobacco consumption that we have seen since the Government took office. The reason is that, without brand advertising or promotion, the prime means at the disposal of manufacturers will be to compete on price. It does not take a genius to work out that, with smuggling unabated and a general downward pressure on UK retail prices, consumption will continue to rise.
As we have already been told, the revenue lost to the Exchequer as a result of the excessive tax increases imposed since 1997 totals almost £9 billion. That is an enormous sum of money. During the same period, consumption has increased, and that has had three
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major adverse and unwelcome effects on the country. The first is that children have gained wider and easier access to tobacco products through indiscriminate selling by illicit traders.
The second effect is the increased level of criminality in the population. It is estimated that 5 million people in the UK are now involved in smuggling, or illicitly selling or buying tobacco on the black market. This is big business for the hardened criminals, who employ tactics of intimidation and violence.
Thirdly, thousands of legitimate retail businesses have been seriously affected financially. Some have even been put out of business. Something must be seriously wrong when one can buy a packet of cigarettes on the black market for £2.50 while the retail price, as we have already heard, is £4.33 or thereabouts. That represents a saving of 42 per cent, or almost £2, per packet. Therefore, of course people will be tempted to buy smuggled products. Indeed, even the Paymaster General admits that in the year 2000 22 per cent of all cigarettes smoked in this country were smuggled. That equates to 18 billion smuggled cigarettes—quite a heady figure—and a loss to the Revenue, again, as we have already heard, of almost £3 billion a year.
In my view, by far the worst smuggling statistic is in relation to the hand-rolling tobacco sector. It is reliably estimated that 80 per cent of all hand-rolling tobacco in this country is non-UK duty paid. That is a staggering figure. It is very difficult to try to rationalise that the ban on advertising and sponsorship proposed in the Bill will have any effect on reducing that figure or, indeed, overall consumption.
If a manifesto pledge is found to be misguided because of the consequences that its implementation would have, I believe that other more appropriate means of achieving the Government's objective should be found. It is possible that the Government have come to the same conclusion. The timing of the introduction of this Bill into your Lordships' House means that it will be almost impossible for it to pass into law if an election is held in May this year.
I want to touch briefly on the health implications. It is undoubtedly true that smoking cannot be regarded as good for one's health. One of the reasons cited for the introduction of this Bill is that it is believed that it will reduce consumption by 2.5 per cent. Quite apart from the fact that such a reduction in consumption cannot he convincingly argued against the facts, that says something very serious about the interference in our lives by this Government and about their lack of consistency.
If noble Lords are considering drugs that damage health, they should take, as an example, drink. It is, if one likes, another legal drug. Let us consider the burden that patients hospitalised as a result of excessive consumption has on the National Health Service. The Royal College of Physicians estimates that drink-related health problems could account for up to 12 per cent of total NHS spending—that is, approximately £3 billion a year. Will the next step of this Government be to introduce a similar ban on

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drink advertising and sponsorship, saying confidently that that will free up so many thousand National Health Service hospital beds? If they do, in my view the case will be equally unproven and equally unfair.
Where does that sort of approach end? Why not ban car advertising? I am not being terribly serious in asking that question but, after all, cars kill children and cause many thousands of deaths and injuries every year. We are beginning to witness an increasingly regulated state interventionist mindset which runs counter to what this Government profess to aspire to; namely, joined-up thinking, less legislative burden and the reduction of red tape.
In the context of legislative burden and red tape, I want to touch on Clause 7, to which my noble friend Lord Tebbit and others—sthe noble Lord, Lord Naseby, in particular—referred. I regard it as a Henry VIII clause. I have been in this House long enough to know that the one thing that can be guaranteed to antagonise your Lordships and arouse suspicion is the insertion into a Bill of a Henry VIII clause. Therefore, I shall strongly oppose that clause in Committee.
As currently drafted, the Bill gives incredibly wide-ranging powers to the Secretary of State. Clause 7 is one example; there are others. The power which it confers is aimed at Internet and electronic promotion of tobacco. It would, I believe, be wholly wrong to allow such powers to stay in the Bill. This is a very complicated area which will require proper parliamentary scrutiny if for no other reason than to avoid the law of unexpected consequences. The electronic aspect and the attempt to cover that in the Bill are, frankly, a minefield.
Quite apart from that, but no less serious, are the powers of entry into premises, as set out in Clause 14. That clause gives an enforcement authority rights to enter premises by force. Such premises could include private homes where part of the home is used as an office or where the occupant or company is under suspicion.
Then we come to the absurd aspect under Clause 4, which states that apparently no offence is committed if tobacco advertising appears in a magazine whose principal market is not the United Kingdom and which has been published on the Internet. This is the Alice in Wonderland aspect of the Bill. We all know that the Internet knows no international boundaries, as is graphically illustrated by the fact that another way of describing it is "the world-wide web". Therefore, it will be very difficult, or even impossible, to say where the principal market is aimed.
There are so many loose ends in the Bill. To what extent this Government can legislate on such matters in Scotland, as they set out to do in Clause 13, is just one more matter that I should like to question—never mind the question of whether this legislation would fall outside the Treaty of Rome and EC legislation on free trade practices. In his opening remarks, the Minister made a point of saying that European Council Directive 98/43/EC is the very legislation on which this Bill is based. However, it was annulled on 5th October 2000 following a legal challenge.
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The Bill is misconceived and presents a very dangerous precedent. It is unfair for an industry that is going about its lawful and legal business to be discriminated against in this way. The voluntary agreements that are in place between the industry and government have worked well over the years and have, until the recent draconian tax increases, achieved a year-on-year reduction in consumption.
If the Government are serious about their objective, they should dispense with the Bill, reduce excise duty to more sensible levels and continue to have a dialogue with the industry through voluntary agreements.
5.20 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, perhaps I should start by mentioning that I am a supporter of FOREST—wholly unpaid, of course—although I am not sure that that is relevant to the Bill, which relates to an advertising ban, not to a smoking ban.
No government in a free society should create yet another criminal offence or extend the scope of censorship—both of which the Bill will do—without a very good excuse. I submit that in this case the Government have not got that justification. In this country, as in all democratic countries, smoking has always been a perfectly legal activity. It has normally been taxed quite heavily for health, social and revenue reasons, in the same way as alcohol is heavily taxed. However, fiscal "dissuasion", so to speak, is one thing, but criminalisation is a very different matter. The latter is particularly inappropriate with regard to tobacco advertising because it is clear that no adult will be induced to smoke more or to take up smoking for the first time in consequence of seeing an advertisement. Indeed, with regard to adults, social pressures nowadays are all in the other direction, especially in Britain and the United States.
The Government may argue with reason—they have not yet advanced this argument—that libertarian principles sometimes have to be subordinated to the protection of minors and that that is their main aim in the Bill. Were they to do so, I should suggest that that argument would carry more weight if the Government had not recently devoted massive efforts, including the use—or possible misuse—of the Parliament Act, to ensure that 16 and 17 year-old boys and girls can legally be subjected to a practice that is far more harmful to their health than smoking a cigarette will ever be. The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, made a point along the same lines.
It is not advertising that tempts young people into smoking, as the Independent said in an excellent leading article on 9th December last year, an article mentioned by my noble friend Lord Harris of High Cross. "Epater la bourgeoisie"; "Thumb your nose at your elders"; "Taste the forbidden fruit"; such have always been the natural inclinations of young people throughout the western world. If smoking were made compulsory, we could be certain that the young would give it up as soon as they could.
One might add to the inducements that young people face to take up smoking the example set in southern Europe, where smoking is still chic,

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particularly among women. Are we going to ban young people from travelling to Italy or Spain? Although I am afraid that I have only rarely seen the television soaps that were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, what should we do about old films that are shown on television and in which the handsome hero and ravishing heroine play every scene with cigarettes firmly clamped between their lips? Will the BBC and ITV be ordered to censor those films in the same way in which politically correct zealots in the United States have managed to airbrush out of photographs of Franklin Delano Roosevelt the cigarette that was permanently in his hand?
One suspects that the Government and the antismoking lobby would like tobacconists to resemble the betting shops of old. Noble Lords will remember that previous governments tried to make them as austere and forbidding as possible in order to discourage people from gambling. That did not work, and now betting shop proprietors have been allowed to brighten up their premises and make them more consumer friendly.
One also reads today that the drive against cannabis is being relaxed in practice if not in law. So much for consistency!
How will the proposed draconian restrictions help anyone? The Government make half-hearted murmurs about the prospect of a 2.5 per cent reduction in smoking. As several noble Lords have pointed out, that figure has been plucked out of thin air and is not supported by any evidence; it is simply a "guesstimate". Despite the comments of my noble friend Lord Walton of Detchant, the evidence regarding Norway is ambiguous. Although tobacco advertising has been banned for a long time, consumption has risen by 41 per cent over 20 years. I do not know whether that is to do with the prosperity that resulted from the oil boom, but it is a fact. Moreover, consumption in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg—there is a ban in none of those countries—has fallen more sharply than it has done in many countries in which a ban is in place.
Smuggling has not been taken into account. Throughout history, punitively high taxes have led to smuggling. Smuggling is viable when distances are short, as they are between France and Britain, and when population densities are high, as they are in this country: it would not be particularly viable to smuggle to Norway. Since the price of smuggled cigarettes is lower overall than highly taxed cigarettes, consumption will increase, as was pointed out by the noble Earl, Lord Liverpool, the noble Viscount, Lord Oxfuird, and the noble Lord, Lord Naseby.
What does an advertising ban mean? It means that manufacturers will be able to compete not on quality but only on price. Unless I have misunderstood the Bill and the Minister's opening speech, manufacturers will not be able effectively to inform the consumer that brand A contains less tar and nicotine than brand B; they will not be able to encourage customers to experiment (for example) with cigarettes that are made
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from air-dried tobacco, which contains less tar than flue-dried tobacco; and they will not be able to encourage people to experiment with cigars and cigarillos, both of which, I understand, contain less tar than cigarettes, or even with snuff, the advertising of which is inexplicably going to be banned although medical opinion deems it to be virtually harmless.
Quality—or at least the possibility of quality—will be replaced by cheaper quantity, whether legal or illegal. I have smoked enough awful state-monopoly tobacco in post-World War II Europe to know what I am talking about.
Such an illiberal Bill obviously needs much detailed scrutiny in Committee and probably during its later stages as well. Theoretically, there are 13 months of this Parliament left to run. There can clearly be no question of the Opposition agreeing to curtail debate and to agree to the Bill virtually on the nod should the Government decide to call an election 12 months earlier than they are obliged to do.
5.28 p.m.
Lord Hardy of Wath: My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest. I am a smoker and member of the club to which noble Lords have referred. I have enjoyed its hospitality, although I have no financial interest. From time to time I have also enjoyed hospitality from the establishment that came into my constituency at a time when unemployment had reached unimaginable heights. It created more jobs than we had seen for some years previously—and, indeed, subsequently. That establishment held the packaging material and tobacco of a major company. I did not and do not smoke the products of that company.
That reminded me of the concerns about the protection of brands. The tobacco industry says that it is keen to advertise in order to protect brands. If advertising is prevented, especially if the illegally imported trade is to continue, the danger of a reduction in British production in favour of overseas production will not do this country very much good. It is for that reason that I hope the Minister will pay particular attention to that argument.
In relation to smuggling, I take the historic view that the smuggler is popular. The smugglers in Napoleonic times were among the most popular people in the country, although they were providing considerable assistance to the French economy. Our concern may be rather more widely distributed throughout Europe if we consider the attitude of those countries within the EU which grow tobacco.
My anxiety relates to whether the statistical base of the Government's argument is correct. My noble friend quite properly referred to the World Bank and the research in that regard. He suggested that it was almost certainly correct. I do not disagree. My concern is that this Bill may well encourage and provide ammunition for the maintenance of the assault on smokers which those of us who smoke have witnessed with increasing frequency in recent years.
I have been smoking since my early teens. I was smoking when I was a schoolmaster—I referred to this in a recent debate in the House—and was left with a

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class of over 40 children and no classroom. I had decided to stop smoking at that time but found it increasingly necessary mid-morning and midafternoon to have a quick cigarette in the staff room. I could not do that now and therefore would probably have been subject to the term "stress", which I do not believe we encountered before 1970. I would have been able to sue my local authority for several hundred thousand pounds and regret, perhaps, that I was not a policeman in London.
Those of us who smoke fear that we will be increasingly badly treated. For example, after a great deal of effort we persuaded the last government to accept the scheme for the compensation of miners with bronchitis and emphysema. But they included a rather nasty little condition. If a miner was seen to have been a smoker, then the benefit he could receive was significantly reduced. A miner who was born in the middle of the 1920s and started working down the pit in the middle or late 1930s, at which time he probably started smoking, would have been smoking for at least a score of years before there was any clear medical evidence that it was harmful to him. Yet now we penalise him for starting to smoke in the 1930s. It suggests that the last government were as anti-smoker as are the present government.
My other anxiety is that this Bill will reinforce those who are opposed to smoking per se, and who often use the passive smoking argument quite violently. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, was right to say that although the medical evidence of the harm caused by direct smoking is clear, neither the Government nor anyone else have been clear about the dangers of passive smoking. For example, I understand the World Health Organisation sponsored significant research into passive smoking carried out by seven centres in 12 countries and found no clear evidence. The department has not been clear in that regard and was not clear under the last government.
Let me give an illustration. In 1995–96 a number of my constituents were complaining to me about a ban imposed on smoking by the Rotherham Hospital Trust. It told the employees that there would be no smoking within the hospital and outside it, including the car park. Some of my constituents—one a nursing sister who had not had a day off in 25 years—came to me to say they wished to have a smoking room. I wrote to the trust and the trust replied, saying, "It is not our decision. The Minister instructed us to do this". So I wrote to the Minister. In reply the Minister sent me a copy of the advice he had given to all hospital trusts. It recommended that the National Health Service should discourage smoking but that members of staff should have a smoking room.
When I received that information from the Minister, I wrote to the acting chief executive and asked for an explanation, since he had clearly misinformed me. I asked the trust to reconsider, since 512 members of its staff — some who smoked and some who did not—had asked for a smoking room, in accordance with the advice given by the Minister.
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That was in early May 1995. I had not received a letter in reply in June, July or August, though I had sent reminders. So in early September when we had our annual meeting with the trust, the chairman said, "Gentlemen, I will give you the agenda". I said, "No, I will tell you what the agenda is. Item one, my correspondence and your failure to reply". I immediately received an apology and an assurance that it would be considered. In October I received a letter saying the trust was confirming its decision. I wrote again. In the end I wrote to Madam Speaker—now the noble Baroness, Lady Boothroyd—who permitted a debate on 17th January 1996.
Mr. Horam was the Minister who replied to that debate. I pointed out my experience in the case in some detail. I suggested that the car park ban was a bit odd, because people might wish to go to their car in anxiety, stress or tension. Hospitals are not always the happiest places. The Minister seemed to have been informed that virtually everyone in the whole area apart from myself was unanimously and wholeheartedly in favour of the ban. However, the trust let me know that it would not apply the ban in the car park.
I retired from the Commons in 1997 and just after the election I went to the hospital to visit a friend. Noble Lords can guess what I saw in the car park: prohibition of smoking. There was no justification for that on the basis of ministerial instruction, yet the last government allowed that degree of excessive nannyism—a phrase we have heard on several occasions—and the ban still exists. Yet I have not seen any convincing evidence that passive smoking is as harmful as some of the smoke-finder self-appointed generals seem to suggest.
We should not smoke where we ought not to do so. We should not smoke to encourage young people. My sons do not smoke and I have never in my life, certainly as a schoolmaster for a long time, encouraged young people to smoke. But the difficulty is, as my noble friend Lord Mason said, that people will continue to smoke as long as we have a structure encouraging smuggling and where the smuggler is seen as a hero. Until that issue is addressed we shall see more crime—a crime of growing scale at the present time which has serious implications for society—which makes me uneasy.
I accept that the Bill is a manifesto commitment. I accept that the problem of smoking will continue to require consideration by the Government. I believe that if the tobacco industry is wise, it will continue to try to produce less harmful products. But if it succeeds. it should have the right to advertise them. I trust that the Government will give serious thought to those points, not least to the need to reduce the tensions and hostility between those who hate smokers and the freedom of smokers to smoke in a free society in a responsible manner. I hope also that the Minister will pay particular attention to the need to avoid yet another tranche of job losses in the manufacturing sector.
5.39 p.m.
The Earl of Northesk: My Lords, I begin by making the point that, in case any of your Lordships had not noticed, I am an inveterate smoker. I am also a member of the Lords and Commons Pipe and Cigar Smokers' Club presided over so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Mason. Against that background I willingly concede that significant health and public policy issues need to be addressed in the context of smoking, tobacco products and their promotion.
None the less, I find the Bill deeply disturbing. One of my major concerns is that there is a sense that the Bill is imbued with an air of fanaticism. However worthy and desirable its objectives, it is weighted firmly to one side of the argument. That makes it all the more important that the justifications which the Government advance for the Bill are properly tested. With that in mind I would ask the Minister if the Government sincerely believe that the advertising of tobacco has been a major contributory factor—many other noble Lords have referred to this point—in the increase in tobacco consumption since 1997 after some 25 years of decline.
I would also ask the Minister to what extent the drafting of the Bill has been informed by consultation and discussions with the tobacco industry. That is important because—I echo the sentiments of my noble friend Lord Geddes—there is an intellectual, if not ethical, inconsistency at the heart of the Bill.
Writing recently in the Daily Telegraph, Tom Utley posed the following questions:
"What is the purpose of the Government's policy on tobacco? Is it to discourage the British people from smoking? Or is it to raise as much money as possible from smokers, by way of taxes and duty on tobacco?",
and,
"if the Government were seriously determined to stamp out smoking, why does it not seek to ban the sale of tobacco?".
Like the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, the Government will argue that it is not their intention to stamp out smoking. That begs the question of how appropriate it is that a perfectly legal product—Ministers freely concede that point—should be subject to a comprehensive, unilateral and in many ways arbitrary measure, one of the major effects of which will be to constrain the industry concerned from exercising legitimate commercial freedoms. As Tom Utley points out,
"The trouble with this government is that it cannot decide whether its purpose is to discourage smoking or to maximise the tax yield from tobacco. It is trying to do a bit of each—and in the process it is failing in both aims".
Far from resolving that dichotomy, the Bill will entrench it.
That polarisation of policy objectives is mirrored in the Bill's provisions for the Internet. We have become inured to the oft-repeated mantra that the Government are aiming to make the UK the best and safest place in the world for e-commerce. That is all
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good and well. But measures such as IR35 and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act work against the grain of that ambition. Far from promoting or facilitating the development of e-commerce in the UK, they act as constraints and disincentives. So it is with the Bill which, in terms, reveals a scant understanding of the way in which the Internet works.
The point at issue here is to be found in the drafting at Clause 5(5) which refers to:
"a tobacco advertisement which is published or caused to be published by electronic means by an Internet service provider".
The difficulty is that in no sense are ISPs publishers. Rather, they are the virtual equivalent of the Royal Mail. In terms, the effect of the Bill is to create the prospect of postmen being statutorily empowered to steam open personal mail with a view to censoring its content. That analogy of ISPs as postmen is well established. Thus, notwithstanding the insistence of the Minister that the Bill complies with the e-commerce directive, Article 12 of that measure defines an ISP as a "mere conduit" of information and states:
"Member states shall ensure that the ISP is not liable for the information transmitted on condition that the provider:

(a) does not initiate the transmission;

(b) does not select the receiver of the transmission;

(c) does not select or modify the information contained in the transmission".

In the same vein, the Defamation Act 1996 states:
"A person shall not be considered the author, editor or publisher of a statement if he is only involved
(c) in processing, making copies of, distributing or selling any electronic medium in or on which the statement is recorded".
Self-evidently, the drafting of Clause 5(5) completely contradicts that, yet the effect of the Bill is to make ISPs liable for third-party content on their servers. At the same time, as my noble friend Lord Lucas pointed out, they are required to comply with the terms of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. which provides that unwarranted interception of material is illegal. Moreover, in so far as third-party content can be defined as personal data, the provisions of the Data Protection Act also apply.
In other words, ISPs are operating under a growing burden of regulations which increasingly pulls in conflicting directions. The potential consequence of that should not be underestimated. It could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. ISPs will no doubt give serious consideration to the desirability of migrating to less burdensome regulatory regimes, should the Bill be enacted in its current form. That would leave in tatters the Government's ambition to make the UK the best place in the world for e-commerce.
I conclude with one small thought. The British Codes of Advertising and Sales Promotion, administered by the Advertising Standards Authority

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require that, among many other restrictions, advertisements should:
"be legal, decent, honest and truthful".
As things stand, that applies as much to the tobacco industry as to any other. Yet, since January last year, the codes have not applied to any advertisement whose,
"principal function is to influence voters in local, regional, national or international elections or referendums".
Given the nature of the Bill before us, what are we to make of the fact that the Government are comfortable with the concept that political parties do not have to be legal, decent, honest and truthful in their advertising? Is it too churlish to suppose that there is a slight whiff here of pots and kettles?
5.46 p.m.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, I start by declaring an unpaid interest as a patron of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. Unlike the previous four speakers, I wish to give complete and unreserved support to the Bill. I do so because it is a measure which will make an important contribution to public health and saving lives. As we have heard from the Minister, it may save as many as 3,000 lives a year; the equivalent of the number who are killed each year on our roads. But even if the number is not as great as that, I would agree with the comments of the health spokesman for the Liberal Democrats in another place, who stated that even a small decrease in smoking that might result from an advertising and promotion ban would be worthwhile. He said that if only a few lives were saved or a few families were spared the misery of seeing one of their loved ones die a horrible, lingering death, it would be worthwhile. If people avoided having to undergo expensive and particularly nasty treatments, and if that resulted in only a small saving to the National Health Service, it would be worthwhile.
In particular, I welcome the fact that the Bill for the elimination of tobacco advertising and sponsorship should have a direct result on the number of children and young people who start to smoke. I am aware that the apologists for the tobacco industry outside this House and, from what we have heard today a few in it as well, who oppose the Bill claim that all advertising and sponsorship does is to promote brand loyalty and encourage smokers to switch from one brand to another.
We heard that argument, in particular, from the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross. He claimed—I am sure the noble Lord will correct me if I have his argument wrong—that cigarette advertising was analogous to the advertising of soap powder. He said that it does not increase consumption; and that all it does is to increase brand awareness. The noble Lord nods in agreement. There is one big difference. Soap powder does not kill 120,000 customers per year. Therefore, soap manufacturers do not need to replace that number of customers each year with new ones. Because tobacco kills, the manufacturers of that product need to attract new customers. If noble LordS
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have any doubt about that, I suggest that they look at what the Health Select Committee in another place found when carrying out its investigation into the conduct of the UK tobacco industry. The Committee obtained, properly and legitimately, the internal working papers of the five advertising agencies retained by the tobacco companies. Those papers filled 16 large boxes of documents. They reveal a shocking story of deceit, a cavalier disregard for people's health, especially the young, the poor and the vulnerable, and a determination to get round the restrictions.
The advertising agencies make no secret of the fact that their campaigns are intended to encourage people to start and continue smoking, especially young people. They aim to enhance the social acceptability of smoking; to increase per capita consumption; to recruit new smokers and to discourage existing ones from giving up.
They know that children are more aware of tobacco advertising and influenced by it than are adults Earlier this month, the British Medical Journal published the results of a study which showed that out of a sample of 629 young people aged 15 and 16, around 95 per cent were aware of tobacco advertising and all of them had seen some form of advertising at the point of sale.
The industry is obviously aware that the general advertising ban is coming, but it is hoping that there will be exemptions which allow point-of-sale brand advertising, particularly in convenience stores. An article in The Grocer of 3rd March quotes the managing director of a leading Scottish chain saying that the tobacco companies
"have realised the last place they will be able to advertise in the UK will be in the convenience stores. Every day I get a phone call. They offer all sorts of things".
That can include a complete store re-fit, provided that retailers meet their criteria. I hope that my noble friend will be able to reassure us that the ban on tobacco advertising can be extended to point-of-sale material in shops which are used predominantly by children.
Children do not buy the cheapest brands. In 1995. the BMA reported that 61 per cent of children who smoke, smoke Benson & Hedges, the most heavily advertised brand. In Scotland, according to research by the University of Strathclyde, the children are smoking Lambert & Butler, again, a product which is extensively promoted.
Sponsorship of glamorous sports provides another way for the tobacco industry to make an impact on the youth market. The Lancet published research in 1997 which showed that boys are nearly twice as likely to become regular smokers if they are motor racing fans. University researchers at Strathclyde have shown that children associate Marlboro with "fast cars and excitement".
Sponsorship is the continuation of tobacco advertising by other means, including through the BBC. Embassy snooker achieved 376 hours of television coverage and cumulative viewers of 385 million in the 1996–97 season.

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Some sports have resisted tobacco money, notably association football and the Olympics. I should be most surprised if my noble friend Lady Gibson saw any tobacco advertising at Ipswich. I am not aware of any way of advertising tobacco in football. However, many other sports, such as cricket, rugby and snooker, have offered a willing vehicle for promoting tobacco. Sport, with its associations with action and youth, offers excellent images and role models to the tobacco industry.
That is especially important in recruiting young smokers; a process of exciting experimentation eventually consolidated by addiction. That approach is described in a tobacco industry internal document as follows:
"A cigarette for the beginner is a symbolic act. I am no longer my mother's child, I'm tough, I am an adventurer, I'm not square. As the force of psychological symbolism subsides, the pharmacological effect takes over to sustain the habit".
That is taken from the speaking notes of Philip Morris's, vice-president for research and development delivered at a company board meeting and revealed under disclosure rules at a US court hearing.
When the Indian associate of the British American Tobacco group sponsored the Indian World Cup cricket team in 1996 with its Wills brand, a survey showed that smoking among Indian teenagers increased five-fold. There was also a marked increase in false perceptions such as, "You become a better cricketer if you smoke Wills", and "Teams with more Wills smokers will fare better". Contrary to the widely held perception among school children, the Indian cricket team had no smokers at all.
I hope that the Government will keep a close eye on everything that the tobacco companies get up to. Philip Morris, for example, provide Ferrari with £45 million a year and it is looking for ways to divert its advertising and sponsorship budgets into new ways of dodging restrictions. Unless it is stopped, we will see more brand stretching—the creation and advertising of spin-off products such as Marlboro clothing—all used to promote tobacco, particularly in the youth market.
We have heard a certain amount in the debate about tobacco smuggling. I wonder how many of your Lordships saw in the Independent on Sunday a long article headed, "Tobacco giants traded with drug barons". I shall quote only a short extract from it.
"Two of the world's biggest tobacco manufacturers knowingly sold cigarettes worth billions of pounds to Latin American drug barons and to a smuggling ring based in Britain. Court papers lodged in New York claim that Philip Morris and R J Reynolds had 'a scheme to smuggle cigarettes on a worldwide basis'…The two tobacco corporations also set up lobbying groups to further maximise their profits by demanding tax cuts because the smuggling was the result of unreasonably high cigarette duties".
How strange it is that we have heard that argument on a number of occasions today. The article continues,
"The two companies 'control, direct, encourage, support, promote and facilitate the smuggling of cigarettes into the European Community'…They make arrangements for smugglers to pay for their purchases through Swiss bank accounts".
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And so it goes on. The companies are facing legal action brought by the EU Commission for an estimated £3 billion lost in taxes over 10 years. If they lose, they could be forced to pay damages and fines totalling £12 billion. When we talk about smuggling, we ought to be aware where it starts.
Furthermore, I wonder whether my noble friend saw the article in the Financial Times on 20th March about a
"second wave of even more devious marketing techniques".
The article states:
"In the US as part of an agreement with the federal authorities, Philip Morris has begun a string of community 'antismoking' initiatives. As part of the initiative, a school book cover distributed to 43,000 schools in California shows a colourful cartoon snowboarder with the words "Don't wipe out. Think. Don't Smoke'. Although education bodies were delighted at first, they later noticed something sinister. When studied closely. the snowboard appeared to resemble a lit match and the snow cigarette smoke".
Those of your Lordships who have ever attempted to persuade your teenage children not to smoke, as I have, know that if you associate anti-smoking messages with boring establishment bodies, you enhance smoking's rebellious connotations and turn it into a rite of passage. So we can be sure that the tobacco industry will be able to afford the best and most expensive psychologists who specialise in teenagers and we can expect to see lots more "reverse advertising" based on the belief that if kids are told not to do something, they do the opposite.
What will make a difference is a ban on cigarette advertising and rigorous action against smuggling. Norway, Finland and New Zealand have all recently prohibited tobacco advertising as part of a comprehensive tobacco control strategy. The per capita consumption of cigarettes dropped by between 14 and 37 per cent after the ban took effect. That is why this Bill is so important and why we should welcome it unreservedly.
5.58 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, it may be a Bill of modest size in terms of its dimension on paper but I believe that it is a Bill of truly major significance. Although the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, did not use these words, the Minister for Public Health in another place described the Bill as "a ground-breaking measure". I presume he means something which has not been done before. He based that remark on two counts. First, it introduces a comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship. Secondly, it makes specific provision to address advertising on the Internet. I believe that the Minister in the other place was excessively modest; the Bill is much more significant than merely "ground-breaking".
I have spoken on the subject previously and have had a number of conflicting interests to declare. First, I hate smoking, which is well known by most of your Lordships, although I have learnt to be tolerant. I have no hostility whatever to those who wear the tie that is being sported by the noble Lord, Lord Mason of Barnsley, who is not in his place, and others who are members of the same club.

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Secondly, between 1989 and 1996 I worked for Hanson plc, which owned Imperial Tobacco. Following the Hanson demerger, I continued for a couple of years as an adviser to the Imperial Tobacco group. Thirdly, during that period and subsequently I was chairman of an NHS trust, which did not exactly encourage smoking, and I am now governor of Nuffield Hospitals where the same conditions apply. I have never smoked, although, interestingly, for a short time on medical advice I was encouraged to take snuff. I dabble in that now only occasionally.
Paragraph I of the regulatory impact assessment which was published last year states that,
"The ban is to cover any means of bringing a tobacco product to the attention of the public".
That is a far more ambitious and comprehensive objective than a simple ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship. It also goes much further than the principle which I believe was in the Labour Party's manifesto pledge at the time of the general election in 1997. That principle, which was far more modest, was to ban tobacco advertising, but somehow the Government's ambitions have grown: first, by the inclusion of a ban on sponsorship, and, secondly, by their support for the European directive on tobacco advertising, which in October of last year was annulled by the European Court of Justice. This Bill largely mirrors the provisions of that directive. I believe that the principled objections to the directive apply just as much to this Bill.
Like the directive, the Bill was promoted by the Department of Health. No one would expect it to be essentially a Bill about health with predictable health provisions, which I am certainly keen to support. In that respect I share the views of the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant. But the Bill is not just about health, any more than was the directive which, according to the European Court of Justice, was wrongly promoted as a single market measure. The provisions of this Bill appear to be concerned almost solely with issues of business and commerce which I believe are more appropriate to the Department of Trade Industry than simply the Department of Health.
Of course the Bill has a health objective. The health risks of smoking arc well known and have been generally recognised by successive governments. The connection made by the Government is that tobacco advertising and promotion has the effect of increasing tobacco consumption and the prevalence of smoking; in other words, for the Government, tobacco advertising is a public health issue, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said at the beginning of the debate.
In the light of the observations of the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, I entirely agree that there is some evidence to support the contention that the limited tobacco brand advertising permitted in this country might be responsible for an increase in the prevalence of smoking. But no one is able to justify that completely.
Similarly, there is no reliable or convincing evidence that this Bill, which bans any means of bringing tobacco products to the attention of the public, will
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reduce consumption. It is a piece of guesswork. Even the Government admit in the Explanatory Notes to the Bill that their justification for the Bill is no more than an assumption, made for the purpose of the Bill, that the outcome will be a reduction in consumption in the long term of about 2.5 per cent.
The Government have prayed in aid two studies. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to the Smee review published in 1992. That was carefully dealt with by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross. However, perhaps the noble Lord could have referred to one additional point; namely, that those data were probably flawed. But, even more significantly, the author of the report made clear in a statement published in The Times on 22nd January 1993 that the Smee review,
"looked at the conflicting evidence of bans in other countries and made no estimate for the UK".
What is the value of that particular piece of evidence?
The second report cited by the Government is the much more recent review published by the World Bank in 1999. The principal relevant conclusions of that report were: first, that price increases on cigarettes were highly effective in reducing demand, and that policymakers should use as a yardstick the tax levels adopted as part of the comprehensive tobacco policies of countries where cigarette consumption has fallen. Secondly, non-price measures can reduce demand for cigarettes but comprehensive bans can reduce demand by more. It does not say that they always do, any more than the report claims to have specific relevance for the UK where tobacco advertising and promotion is already severely limited.
If the first conclusion is truly valid, why does this country now have the greatest tobacco smuggling problem of any country in Europe, as so many noble Lords have said? If the loss is £1 or £2 billion a year, since 1997 the Exchequer has lost between £8 and £9 billion of potential tax revenue, which is a very substantial figure. Worse than that, children have gained easier access to tobacco products. Thousands of legitimate retail businesses have been affected. As my noble friend Lord Oxfuird said, perhaps most important of all—and most disappointingly to all those who wish to see fewer people smoking in this country—tobacco consumption has increased since 1997 by 6.5 per cent. I fear that this Bill will not assist in any way to reduce that consumption: it may well have the perverse effect of increasing it.
My noble friend Lord Naseby referred to price as the most important determinant of tobacco consumption; indeed, the precept which underpins the general policy of governments is to increase tobacco excise as a means of reducing overall consumption, except when it leads to the development of an illicit market in smuggled products. However, I note that the increase in tax in the previous Budget was remarkably small. I wonder why.
Without the ability to undertake brand advertising and promotion, which is the objective of this Bill, the sole means by which manufacturers will be able to compete one with another is by distribution and price.

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That will lead to a major change in market behaviour and purchasing. Prices will become a much more significant factor, as my noble friend Lord Liverpool said, with competitive pressures reducing average prices in the medium to long term. Just as consumption is known to fall when prices rise, so consumption will rise as prices fall. I am, therefore, deeply concerned by the consequences for tobacco consumption which lie in this Bill. I believe that the Government's assumption of a reduction in consumption of 2.5 per cent is misplaced and misconceived. The Bill will increase, not reduce, consumption or the prevalence of smoking.
But matters are worse than that. The Bill goes to inordinate length to ban almost every possible avenue of communication between manufacturers. Your Lordships have heard before, and will hear again from me, that it is not against the law to manufacture or import tobacco products provided that the regulatory requirements relating to them are met. It is not against the law to sell tobacco products, except to children under 16. Those products are sold through more than 200,000 retail outlets. It is not against the law to buy and smoke tobacco products, and one third of all adults in the UK—15 million people—smoke. That is hardly a minority habit.
To return to the public health comments of the Minister in the other place, this Bill is a groundbreaking measure. Worse than that, to impose a total ban on all advertising, promotion and sponsorship relating to perfectly legal products is unprecedented. But other substantial freedoms which are restricted by this Bill have been referred to by many noble Lords this afternoon. Freedom of speech and expression is largely curtailed. The Bill does not even permit a manufacturer to initiate any contact with the customers for his products that may conceivably promote, or have the effect of promoting, those products to those persons. He is not permitted to do that even when the individual has expressed a desire for such communication. Therefore, the freedom of the individual is greatly limited by the Bill.
I understand that the Government seek to justify such an extreme provision by claiming that it is morally unacceptable for a manufacturer to make contact with smokers who at that point may be trying to give up smoking. The Government cite market research that indicated that 70 per cent or more smokers say that they would like to quit smoking. I am sure that that is the case. I am all in favour of it. However, the Government's policy is misguided in telling smokers how difficult it is to give up smoking, while, at the same time, urging them towards pharmaceutical products that may help them quit. The simple reason for that is that there are millions of people who have given up smoking in this country without the need for any assistance. Indeed, I understand that ex-smokers significantly outnumber current smokers.
My noble friend Lord Geddes referred to two lines in Clause 4(1)(b) of the Bill. I agree with every word that my noble friend said; it is a further demonstration
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of the Government's enthusiasm for banning things and their lack of enthusiasm for freedom of speech, other than perhaps in certain selected spheres such as culture. The Bill attacks the right to intellectual property in its provisions on what the Government call brand sharing. Why is that particular provision in the Bill necessary?
I should like to pick up on what my noble friend Lord Northesk said relating to e-commerce. I would simply stress one point that I am not sure that he referred to. That is that if the EC e-commerce directive must be undertaken by the Government by 17th January next year, why are the Government bringing in legislation in advance of that particular date? As the noble Earl said, in this country we try to make the best and become a market leader in e-commerce.
My last point relates to Scotland. Why should the regulations in Scotland applying to advertising at the point of sale, displaying of products, advertising in the shops of specialist tobacconists and the timetable for the ending of a sponsorship agreement, be any different from those in England, Wales and Northern Ireland? Perhaps the Minister in his closing speech will tell us whether that has anything to do with human rights law and the possible challenges to the Bill that might be made in Scotland.
The Scotland Act 1998 requires all Scottish legislation to be compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights. Legislation can be struck down by the courts if that is not the case. The courts do not have the same power with regard to legislation at Westminster, even if in subsequent proceedings the courts make a declaration of incompatibility which remains intact unless repealed or amended by Parliament.
There are far more certain ways by which we can achieve reductions in tobacco consumption and not have to pay the excessive price that the Bill demands. Nothing significant is being achieved by a policy of intense hostility to tobacco. It will not produce the intended reaction in the population. What is needed is a thorough review of the Government's overall antismoking policies in advance of any legislation and, I would also add, a review which ignores political correctness and prejudice.
6.13 p.m.
Lord Palmer: My Lords, smoking is the most disgusting habit ever invented. It is my biggest regret that, aged 17, I started to smoke. I am pleased to say that I have not smoked a cigarette for I 1 years, as I vowed to my children that I would quit after my maiden speech.
I must declare an interest in that I smoke cigars and belong to the all-parliamentary Lords and Commons Pipe and Cigar Club, so ably convened by the noble Lord, Lord Mason. I apologise for not wearing my club tie this evening. I also should declare that my old family firm Huntley & Palmer Foods was eventually acquired by R J Reynolds Tobacco; and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, must have forgotten that he also used to promote our products.

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I was told this morning that the debate would end at around 6.30 p.m. If it ends very much later than that, I fear I shall be unable to stay for the closing speeches. I apologise in advance to the House if that is the case. However, the tradition of staying for closing speeches seems to have gone by the way following the example of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, who was absent for the closing speeches at the end of the Second Reading of the Hunting Bill—a Bill which he introduced into your Lordships' House.
Personally, I think that all smoking should be banned. However, we all know that that is totally impractical as Her Majesty's Government would greatly miss the £10 billion annual revenue. But we must be realistic. Smoking of tobacco products is legal in all countries in the world. As long as it is legal, it must be wrong not to be allowed to promote it. I echo the elegant 'words of the noble Lord, Lord Geddes. I also totally agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, and others, about the idiotic case of tobacco subsidies being given to our European partners to grow tobacco. I hate the way that "banning" has become the new "in" word of Her Majesty's Government.
After the Countryside Alliance rally in Hyde Park three years ago, the Daily Star, of all papers, had an editorial which stated:
"Let's have a Bill to ban banning".
How I echo those words.
With three teenage children, one of whom has never smoked and two who have just given up, I am fortunate to come into contact with a great many teenagers. Unfortunately, many smoke and none of them is influenced by cigarette advertising as to whether or not to smoke. It is simply a matter of brand loyalty. Her Majesty's Government must take that matter on board.
Would not the Government be better employed tackling the large numbers of illegal cigarettes now so freely available—a matter mentioned today by almost every speaker—rather than abolishing advertising which has virtually no effect on consumption? The Government claim that banning advertising will reduce consumption, and yet they have not come up with any conclusive evidence to prove this theory.
There is one matter that concerns me tremendously. We must not forget that there is well-documented health advice on all tobacco advertising. However, if a ban ensues, that advice will no longer be available for the public to see.
If the Bill was going to have the desired effect of stopping people smoking then I would support it, but such a badly flawed Bill as this will not have the desired effect. I believe that the Bill is political correctness gone completely over the top. I am afraid that I cannot support it.
6.17 p.m.
Viscount Simon: My Lords, I was fascinated by the reminiscences of the noble Lords, Lord Geddes and Lord Walton of Detchant. 1, too, took advantage of
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the cheap cost of cigarettes in the 10 years that I was at sea. I gave up 30 years ago when I was forced to do so by a bout of encephalitis and meningitis which formed some kind of aversion to cigarettes. Despite that aversion, I lit up friends' cigarettes because I still had the desire for another eight years. Eventually the aversion won and I have not smoked for many years.
I am grateful to the Government for bringing forward the Bill, which should be whole-heartedly supported. I must declare an interest as I suffer from asthma contracted some six years ago which is made very much worse by inhaling any form of tobacco smoke, and, therefore, would benefit personally from fewer people smoking.
My noble friend Lord Hardy of Wath was somewhat dismissive of the effect of passive smoking on people. I can inform him from personal experience that I will have—I define the word "will" as 100 per cent certain—a serious asthma attack in less than 20 seconds if I inhale certain forms of tobacco smoke.
Let us make no mistake about the issue, the effect of the Bill would be a substantial reduction in the number of people smoking and, more importantly, the number of people dying from smoking. With the Bill we have a chance of saving thousands of lives each year. The Government's estimate is that 3,000 lives a year will be saved through banning advertising. That is almost exactly the same number as those killed on the roads each year. As a nation we are rightly prepared to spend huge sums of money to reduce the number of road deaths; with the Bill we could save the same number of lives without spending anything. The figure of 3,000 a year may even be a cautious estimate, because the World Health Organisation believes that almost twice that number of lives could be saved.
The tobacco companies, and their representatives in this House and in another place, will say that there is no need for the Bill, that advertising does not lead to anyone taking up smoking. That very much begs the question of what on earth this advertising is for if not to encourage non-smokers to smoke and to discourage smokers from giving up. Furthermore, if that is the case, why are they wasting such huge amounts of money on pointless advertising?
The chairman of McCann-Erickson, an advertising company that has handled multi-million pound tobacco contracts, backs up this view. He said:
"The cigarette industry has been artfully maintaining that cigarette advertising has nothing to do with total sales. This is complete and utter nonsense. I am always amused by the suggestion that advertising, a function that has been shown to increase consumption of virtually every other product, somehow miraculously fails to work for tobacco products".
That is, in effect, somewhat contrary to the viewpoint of various noble Lords who have spoken in the debate.
Lord Monson: My Lords, does the noble Viscount think that the consumption of washing powder increases because it is advertised? Surely the same amount will be used. Advertising simply causes people to switch from one brand to another; nothing else.
Viscount Simon: My Lords, I tend to disagree with the noble Lord. We have our own points of view.

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The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was clearly concerned about advertisements cleverly concealing their real purpose. I wonder whether he has considered the fact that, as a health warning has to be given, any editor or owner of a publication can be in no doubt that tobacco products are involved.
Lord Lucas: My Lords, if an advertisement was so obviously a tobacco advertisement, one would not need to reverse the burden of proof to prove that someone knew that it was a tobacco advertisement. It is plain and obvious. It is the reversal of the burden of proof, not putting an onus on publishers, that concerns me.
Viscount Simon: My Lords, I certainly see what the noble Lord is getting at. But the fact remains that a health disclaimer has to be put on any tobacco advertising. If any editor or owner of a publication sees that, he knows that the product is tobacco.
The fact is that the advertising of cigarettes, like advertising for any other product, works. In every country where tobacco advertising has been banned, it has led to a sharp fall in the number of people smoking. Much as we like to pretend the opposite, we are all vulnerable to the advertiser's art. The big difference, though, between tobacco advertising and the advertising of any other product is that only tobacco products will kill you if they are used exactly according to the maker's instructions.
I suppose that we should not be too surprised that the tobacco companies would be a little reluctant to give us the real reasons why they want to keep on advertising. After all, these companies do not have a flawless record when it comes to being honest with their customers. They maintained for years—even under oath in the United States—that smoking did not cause cancer, when their own internal documents revealed that they knew many years earlier just how harmful tobacco was. They continued to maintain that smoking is a habit that is no more addictive than playing the National Lottery. I am led to understand by ASH that the Department of Trade and Industry is currently investigating one of the largest of their numbee—British American Tobacco—for alleged involvement in aiding and abetting smuggling. As I said, these companies do not have a flawless record. That is why we must take with a pinch of salt their reasons for opposing the Bill.
These companies would rather see a continuation of voluntary self-regulation. They argue that that has worked well. Indeed it has—for the tobacco companies. A Health Select Committee report in another place summed up their attitude to this regulation best by saying:
"Regulations have been seen by tobacco companies as hurdles to be overcome or side-stepped; legislation banning advertising as a challenge, a policy to be systematically undermined by whatever means possible".
That is a damning assessment of their attitude and one which underlines the need for legislation to prevent it carrying on. We should give the Bill every support, as an important step in improving public health.
6.24 p.m.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, I have two interests to declare. The first is that, like some other noble Lords, I am a lifelong non-smoker. I tried a couple of cigarettes when I was taking my university finals more than 30 years ago. Unlike my noble friend Lord Tebbit, I did not inhale, but I still thought that they were awful and I have not tried again since.
My second interest is that over the past two years I have attended two cricket matches as a guest of Gallaher in my capacity as Opposition spokesman in your Lordships' House on sport. That should be put within the proper context. Over the past 30 years I have attended countless golf tournaments and football and cricket matches—I am the golf nut and my husband is mad on cricket and football, so we see the lot—both as a paying customer and as a guest of friends who have nothing to do with the tobacco industry.
I put down my name to speak because of my concern about what will happen to some sports over the next three or four years as they face the cliff-edge in the loss of their sponsorship by tobacco companies. Earlier in the debate the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, referred to sports sponsorship within the context of what it might do in attracting new business. I am addressing the issue from the point of view of the impact that the Bill will have on sports governing bodies themselves.
I do not object to the Bill on the basis that it seeks to reduce smoking—I hope that I have made that clear—but it is a flawed Bill because of its unfair treatment of different sports, all of which currently rely heavily on tobacco sponsorship. Clause 19 allows the Secretary of State to make regulations to specify when the ban on sponsorship in Clause 10 should take effect. We know that the latest date is 1st October 2006. We also know that the Government will give preferential treatment to Formula 1 and snooker. I have nothing against either sport. Indeed, how could I, of all people, object to Formula 1 being treated fairly, living as I do in Woking, the home for a long time of McClaren! But I do object to the Government treating other sports unfairly.
It is perverse of the Government to say that two sports are global and therefore, hey presto, they can have until 2006 to sort out their sponsorship deals, whereas other sports like darts have to face that cliffedge drop in sponsorship by July 2003, even though they have players from across the globe and have global appeal.
The Government set up a task force, which was intended to help sports adjust their sponsorship deals in advance of the loss of the tobacco industry money. I am grateful to the Central Council of Physical Recreation for its briefing on this matter. It attended the meeting in November 1997, which explored the issues surrounding the banning of tobacco sponsorship. It then wrote, via the Sports Sponsorship Advisory Service, on four occasions to 1,000 British companies highlighting the potential for sponsorship opportunities. To date, no sponsors have been found.

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To suggest that sports can find replacement sponsors easily is a misunderstanding of the commercial market place. The current shortfall for the sports is estimated to be £10 million with an additional £10 million for marketing the sporting events. The general secretary/director of the British Darts Organisation, Mr 01ly Croft, wrote to my honourable friend in another place, Mr John Greenway, and made this point about the task force:
"The 'Task Force' was simply a gesture to give the impression we were being given assistance. In truth, there probably isn't a business out there which can replace the funding we receive from Imperial Tobacco … Our main concern is that we only have until 2003 to save our sport. What would help enormously is an extension to 2006 like Formula One and snooker. We can fulfil the Government criteria of being a global sport … The number of countries which are members of the World Darts Federation or associate international members of the British Darts Organisation shows that that claim can be justified".
I have spoken to Mr Croft this week and he confirms that his views remain the same today. Will the Government undertake to reconsider this matter even at this late stage?
There is also the danger that the Bill could be just the first step in a series of banning orders on sponsorship of sports and arts in general. Will we see the state making a decision that other businesses should not accept sponsorship from alcohol producers? We heard a timely reminder of that risk from the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, with his intriguing First Reading of a Bill to prohibit the advertising of alcohol.
It is interesting to note that Carling has just given up its sponsorship of' the Premier League, but the only realistic bidder able to take over as a sponsor is Budweiser, another brewer. One of the world's premier steeplechases is sponsored by Martell. The House should be alert to the damage that would be done if such sponsorship were ended.
I have pointed out that the Bill is flawed because of its unfair treatment of different sports, but it is also important to note that the Bill is flawed because of its inadequate definition of what constitutes a "tobacco advertisement". Have the Government considered the impact of Clause 2 on the incentives industry? By that I refer to those businesses which print the logos and advertisements on prizes and awards given away not to the public, but offered to employees during the course of a corporate sports event. The sector represents a large and serious business in this country.
What will happen in the future at a tobacco company sports day such as, for example, a golf day? It is normal practice for the corporate sponsor—the employer—to give those taking part—be they direct employees or even their guests—a clutch of golf balls to start off the day. I should observe to noble Lords if their game is anything like mine, after four years in this House and thus hardly ever playing, by the end of the day those golf balls are firmly lost in the rough. At the end of play, prizes are presented to those who last the distance. It is commonplace for all such items—golf balls, golf umbrellas, golf shirts and so forth—to be overprinted with a logo.
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This practice is not "brand-stretching" in the manner referred to by other noble Lords in the debate. This is overprinting of equipment which has been made by other manufacturers who have no business relationship whatever with the tobacco company. But no doubt the items are used, in a sense, for advertising. Are they to be made illegal by this Bill? I believe that they will be. Is that right? No, I do not think that it is.
What would be the situation if no outside guests attended the event, but rather that it was run only for employees? Would that make a difference? This is a legal question which has not yet been answered by the Government. I merely cite an odd example to reflect a Bill that has many oddities in it.
I am concerned also about the impact of the Bill on tobacco companies which sponsor local arts organisations. When I go to my local theatre in Woking, the Victoria, I walk past a prominently displayed list of corporate sponsors. I do not object to that in any way. But why should tobacco companies have to be excluded from such a list, simply because there is a chance that people might associate the name with a brand of cigarettes? Is that correct? Where in the Bill is there protection against that kind of practice?
I should like to refer to a final anomaly, which was mentioned briefly in another place but did not receive a sufficiently detailed response from the Minister. This anomaly arises in the case of museums which display tobacco advertising as part of their exhibits. Why should they be caught out by this Bill? The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health in another place said that the Government did not want to catch,
"historic tobacco advertisements or items of historic branding value".—[Official Report, Commons, 13/2101; col. 219.]
or to,
"prevent museums from displaying historic posters".—[col. 220.]
But of course that is exactly what the Bill will do because some posters of historic value would depict brands that are still being sold today. History can begin in the very recent past.
Can the Minister further explain where in the Bill will protection be offered to museums such as the Broseley Pipe Works and the Clay Tobacco Pipe Museum, which has its own website and is featured on the Kidsnet website? Furthermore, will protection be offered to lifestyle museums which depict life as it is and was? Do we have to censor history now?
This is a flawed Bill. Noble Lords have pointed out serious flaws with regard to human rights; I have pointed out flaws with regard to the sponsorship of sports and protection for the arts. I hope fervently that tobacco consumption can be reduced, but am far from confident that this Bill will achieve that.
Lord Tomlinson: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, perhaps I may put a brief question to her? She said that the Bill was flawed in relation to sports sponsorship. Does she agree with what the Central Council for Physical Education also said in its briefing; namely, that it does recognise the incongruity

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of sponsorship with health and related matters, of which sport is one? The council is therefore seeking to find alternatives.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, I quite agree with the point made by the noble Lord. I am sorry if I did not make that clear when I referred to the fact that I had understood, from the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, that he was referring to the health impact of sports sponsorship. Certainly I do not propose that sporting bodies should continue for ever to accept tobacco sponsorship of their events because of the incongruity pointed out by the CCPR. What I am saying here is that I think that the Government have adopted an improper route by discriminating unfairly against some sports while helping others.
6.36 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I should declare an interest in that, because I am a non-smoker, I am an associate member of the Lords and Commons Pipe and Cigar Smokers Club. I am also a patron of FOREST.
One of the advantages of speaking towards the end of the list of speakers is that one has been able to listen to so many marvellous contributions to both sides of the argument. I have been able to count how many of those have been in favour of the Bill and how many have been against it. My tally is that 14 speeches have been made against the Bill and only eight in favour of it. At this stage, the House does not appear to be in favour of the Bill.
I listened with interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, who pointed out the incongruity of the policy being followed by the EU. On the one hand, it subsidises tobacco to the extent of some £600 million a year; but on the other hand, it wants to bring in legislation to ban the advertising of tobacco because it wants to see the consumption of tobacco reduced. Thus one part wants to increase consumption while the other part wants to reduce it. My noble friend Lord Tomlinson was absolutely right to urge the Government to take action on this incongruous and absurd situation.
I listened also to the contribution made by the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant, to whom I always listen with the utmost respect. In his remarks he cited figures on the number of deaths due to smoking; namely, that 120,000 die from smoking each year. I am sure that he will agree, first, that that is an estimated figure because, after they have died, records are not kept as regards whether people were smokers.
Secondly, if 120,000 people die of smoking-related diseases each year, some 600,000 do not die of smoking related diseases; they die of something else. After all, in the end we all have to die of something. However, the House should take some encouragement from those figures. While we have been debating this issue, the number of deaths has gone down. That is because, as my noble friend Lord Dubs said, during the time it
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would take for him to make his speech, three people would die from cigarette smoking. My noble friend spoke for 10 minutes. I have done a calculation which shows that, on that basis, only 52,560 people would die each year. It seems that we are making progress even without this proposed Bill to ban tobacco advertising.
In my view, the Bill is a continuation of the prolonged witch hunt against smokers. It is a witch hunt that has penalised and demonised smokers for using a legal product—that has been emphasised time and time again during the debate—out of which the Government have made enormous, incalculable Profits.
But there are 13 million smokers—some people put the figure as high as 15 million smokers—and I understand that we are shortly to have an election. It may very well be that the people who are witch hunted and demonised will take note of what is happening. I urge the Government not to be so harsh on a very large proportion of the voting register.
It is smokers—not the tobacco companies—who have suffered from the witch hunt. The companies continue to thrive and shares in them are very buoyant. You should not think that you are getting at the tobacco companies; they will survive. You are getting at the ordinary smokers who derive pleasure from the habit.
This Bill has been brought forward in the wake of a complete failure of governments to deal with the problem. In spite of all the measures by governments against it—the health warnings, the draconian measures against retailers, the huge amounts spent on measures to reduce smoking, the subsidisation of virulent anti-smoking organisations, such as ASH, and, above all, the penal tax, about which we have heard so much, levied on smokers by successive governments (indeed, the previous government imposed the escalator tax, which this Government has now removed)—smoking is on the increase. The smoking bans by airlines, bus companies, train companies and others, have all failed to bring about the desired objective of governments and of ASH to make Britain a tobacco-smoke free zone.
The Government's desperation has led them to bring forward this undemocratic piece of legislation to deny free speech—because that is what it is, make no mistake about it—and free communication between buyer and seller, and competitive advertising between businesses selling a legal product. I and others have warned time and time again that the Government and their subsidised mouthpieces, such as ASH, were following the wrong policies on smoking and that they were likely to be counter-productive. So it has proved. Not only is smoking on the increase—especially among women and the young—but the yield from tobacco taxation, as we have heard, has been hit by the law of diminishing returns.
Tobacco smuggling has become endemic in our society. Indeed, it is tolerated and even encouraged by the mass of the population. At least one third of cigarettes are now smuggled, and the police and customs officials cannot cope with the problem. They

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never will be able to cope with the problem. Cheaper, and often inferior, cigarettes encourage additional consumption and make it easier for people, especially young people—despite what my noble friend Lord Faulkner said—to start smoking. They are encouraged to start smoking if they can buy them cheaper, make no mistake about that.
So we have now come to this Bill to ban tobacco advertising and promotion. It is certainly an illiberal, draconian piece of legislation, produced, I understand, without proper consultation with the industry. That is completely undemocratic; the industry is entitled to be consulted about measures which will hurt it and its relationship with its customers. It is an industry which has co-operated fully with governments in the past over advertising.
The tragedy is that the measure is unlikely to achieve its objective—which is, in any event, very limited. A 2.5 per cent reduction in consumption is a very small reduction—it is practically nothing—especially when one considers that other government measures, such as penal taxation, have increased consumption by 6.5 per cent. Even if the Bill achieves its objective, it seems to me to be a very large hammer to crack what will be a very small nut.
It also seems to me that, by the Bill, the Government are shooting themselves in the foot. The largest part of tobacco advertisements blazons the message that smoking causes every disease under the sun or kills you. Indeed, not only you but everyone else, apparently. That is free advertisement for the anti-smoking cause which will not appear. So if tobacco adverts are deemed to encourage people to smoke and to start smoking, then advertisements against should do the reverse. Is that not right? Thus the advertising ban becomes self-defeating. As I say, the Government have shot themselves in the foot.
The arguments against the Bill are many and weighty and are being deployed around the House. But the argument which should give pause to supporters of the Bill is where does banning advertisements of legal products stop. Which is the next product in line for a Bill to ban its advertising if this Bill passes into law? As it happens—as some noble Lords know—I can answer that question: it is liquor. Today, I have introduced a Bill. the Liquor Advertising and Promotions Bill [H.L.]. It is a Bill which follows very, very closely the provisions of the Bill before us, as noble Lords will see when it is published, probably tomorrow.
Everyone agrees that alcohol is, of course, the most dangerous drug of all. It is addictive and it is dangerous in its effect on others—drink/driving, for example, kills 800 people every year and injures seriously at least 10,000. People are involved in violent crime because of alcohol; in violence towards others; in wife beating; sometimes in husband beating; in children beating. Alcoholism is an increasing problem. The young are increasingly hooked on binge drinking and women have taken to the bottle as never before. It causes the death of some 35,000 younger people. Do not forget that smoking, if it kills, affects older people, over 65, but alcohol kills about 35,000 younger people
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every year. That is set out not by me but in a report of the Royal College of Physicians published in February of this year.
So this perhaps is the future; tobacco today and alcohol on the agenda. It is well and truly on the agenda now; it is before the House, make no mistake about that. What is next—motoring?
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, for giving way. When does he think the collision will come between measures to ban such things as tobacco advertising and alcohol advertising and measures to liberalise the regime concerning cannabis and other so-called soft drugs? It seems that at some stage there will be an extraordinary collision.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, it is a most interesting question. It intrigues me. I know people who are hooked on cannabis but who are anti-tobacco. I cannot understand it, but it is true. cannot answer the noble Lord's question, but it will be interesting to see what happens when the collision comes.
As I say, alcohol is on the agenda today; it could be motoring tomorrow: 3,600 deaths—not estimated but actual—are caused every year as a result of motoring. There are 45,000 serious injuries, not imagined but actual. Medical problems are caused by exhaust fumes. Asthmatics in particular are affected—10,000 deaths a year are caused by fumes in London alone. Noise pollution, congestion costs, environmental pollution, CO2 emissions leading to global warming, and damage to property are all the result of motoring. Are there any noble Lords who disagree with that list? No, of course, they cannot. We all know that motoring causes those difficulties.
Lord Haskel: My Lords, I disagree with the noble Lord's list. His list did not include the banning of guns, for example. The fact that guns have been banned has probably saved a large number of lives, so he had better add all those on.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, let me answer the noble Lord. I have been following recent Answers to Questions on these matters. He will find that since we banned handguns the number of homicides has increased.
Lord Haskel: My Lords, handguns were banned years ago.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that handguns were banned in 1997. There was one Bill before the general election and one following the general election. I opposed both of them; that is why I know what I am talking about.
As I made clear, I do not believe that we should go round banning the advertising of legal products which are alleged to be harmful to humans. I have also said that I do not believe that brand advertising increases consumption. However, if Parliament in its wisdom

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agrees to this illiberal, authoritarian measure on the grounds that it will lead to reduced consumption and fewer users of tobacco, I shall certainly take my Bill to Second Reading so that we can consider applying to the most dangerous substance the same treatment as we are meting out to the tobacco industry—or at least consider why we should not do so. A Second Reading of my Bill may also serve to remind those in other industries, including advertising and the media, as well as industries whose products are said to be harmful, that their silence and acquiescence in relation to this Bill may have ramifications far wider than they contemplate at present. I hope that even at this late stage the Government and the supporters of the Bill will have second thoughts about it.
Lord Monson: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, is he aware that the figure of some 52,000 smoking deaths a year, which he cleverly extrapolated from the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is very close indeed to the estimate of 50,000 smoking deaths a year which the DHSS, as it then was, gave to Lord Houghton of Sowerby in a Written Answer some years ago? Is this not a far cry from the inflated figure of 120,000 that we are given today?
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: Yes, my Lords. It is interesting that when those figures were given to the late Lord Houghton of Sowerby, smoking was much more prevalent than it is now. So there is a reduction in the number of people smoking but an increase in the number of deaths. I do not know where that gets us.
6.55 p.m.
Baroness Gale: My Lords, at Second Reading in another place, the Secretary of State for Health said:
"Advertising smoking both works and kills. Today, we can begin to break that link"—[Official Report, Commons, 22/1/01; col. 664.]
I wholeheartedly agree. The Bill is long overdue. Anything that can be done to prevent people starting to smoke must be welcomed
The benefits of the Bill are in addition to other measures announced by the Government—such as the increase in tobacco duty, measures to crack down on tobacco smuggling and an education campaign to inform the public of the dangers of smoking, together with information and services to help smokers to give up, and the latest government announcement that aids to smokers in giving up the habit, such as nicotine patches, will now be available on the National Health Service. That package, of which this important Bill is a part, could mean a reduction in the total number of people becoming addicted to smoking. It is estimated that 3,000 lives will be saved in the UK in the longer term as a result of the Bill. In addition, it could mean a saving for the National Health Service of up to £40 million on treatment for smoking-related diseases.
Most smokers acquire the habit when they are young—some as young as 10 years of age. If you can get through your teenage years without starting smoking, there is a good chance that you will not take
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up the habit as an adult. Therefore, the aim must be to do everything possible to prevent children and young people from starting to smoke. If that problem can be tackled, we shall be on the way to seeing a reduction in the number of smokers.
Research indicates that more girls than boys are now taking up smoking. This is a worrying trend. The dangers to a girl's future health are different from those affecting the health of boys. Young women smokers who may one day want to become pregnant will experience difficulties when trying to conceive to a greater extent than non-smokers; the danger of miscarriage is greater; and perinatal mortality is increased by about one-third in the babies of smokers—that is the equivalent to approximately 420 deaths per year in England and Wales.
Research has shown that smoking may contribute to inadequate breast milk production. The infants of parents who smoke are twice as likely to suffer from serious respiratory infection than those whose parents are non-smokers. Studies have shown that for women who smoke the risk of developing cervical cancer is up to four times higher than it is for non-smokers, and that the risk increases with the duration of the habit. The natural menopause occurs up to two years earlier in smokers. The likelihood of early menopause is related to the number of cigarettes smoked: women who smoke more than 10 cigarettes a day have an increased risk. So the dangers to women smokers of all ages are great. It is highly likely that those who are at risk started smoking when they were young. I am appalled that tobacco companies often target women in their advertising. The Bill will go some way to help with that problem.
I see the Bill as a liberating measure, as part of a package to prevent people from starting to smoke. It will liberate all those who might have started smoking and so free them from ill health and premature death. It will help them to have a better life than they would have had, had they not started smoking; and many benefits will accrue, not merely to them but to all those who might have suffered from passive smoking, including their children.
This is a good Bill. It fulfils the Government's manifesto commitment. I welcome it and I hope that it will be on the statute book before we have a general election.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, can she say at this stage whether or not she would support the Bill on alcohol alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, for exactly the same reasons?
Baroness Gale: My Lords, I have not looked at the Bill yet, but as a non-smoker and a teetotaller, I probably would.
7 p.m.
Lord Patel: My Lords, I thank your Lordships for the opportunity to speak in the gap. I had not put my name down on the list of speakers as I did not expect to be here in time.

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In supporting the Bill I would like to add to the list of health hazards of smoking mentioned by my noble friend Lord Walton of Detchant. I say to him that the illusionary pipe that he saw was always a dagger. The effect of using either would be the same. I would like to declare an interest. I am associated with the charity QUIT. It is a charity concerned with helping people to stop smoking.
I would particularly like to mention the effect that smoking has on pregnancy. It has the effect of reducing birth weight and contributes to the high incidence of low birth weight babies born in this country. We have the highest incidence of such babies in the western world, apart from the United States of America.
Smoking during pregnancy is also associated with an increased incidence of premature births with the consequences that that has on neo-natal death rates and disability. Among young mothers the incidence of smoking in certain areas of this country is as high as 42 per cent. The incidence of cigarette smoking among young women is higher than in young men and the incidence of lung cancer in young women is increasing. In some parts of Scotland, for instance, the commonest cancer now in women is lung cancer and it is higher than breast cancer. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, that snuff is not harmless. It increases the risk of cancers of the throat and nose.
Let us not pretend that the advertising of tobacco is not aimed at promoting smoking and is not primarily aimed at the young. I have never seen a septuagenarian or an octogenarian in a cigarette advertisement. One sees many young ladies on such advertisements.
Anything that we can do to reduce smoking among the young has to be for the good and we should support this Bill. However, I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Tebbit, Lord Tomlinson and Lord Palmer, that it makes no sense to continue to subsidise tobacco growers in Europe. I hope that the Government: will support any moves that lead to removing that subsidy. I support the Bill.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I had not expected to be here this evening and shall not make a speech on the Bill. But there is one matter that concerns me and when the Minister winds up I hope that he will be able to help me. Clause 4 deals with advertising exclusions. Subsection (1)(d) states,
"If [an advertisement] is contained in an in-flight magazine provided on board an aircraft by an airline which is not a United Kingdom airline"
that is a defence to Clauses 1 and 2. Why is that not hybrid?
7.4 p.m.
Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, we have had a very interesting and an unusually gladiatorial debate today. From the outset on these Benches I want to state unequivocally our welcome for the introduction of the Bill. We have long advocated the banning of cigarette advertising on public health grounds. Indeed, my honourable friend Simon Hughes attempted to bring in a Bill to that effect in 1996. Despite the successful
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legal challenge to the European directive in the European Court of Justice last October, which was alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, the Government have reacted and introduced this Bill quickly and I congratulate them on that.
This Bill is supported by a huge range of organisations such as the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians, Diabetes UK, the National Consumer Council and the Consumers' Association. As we have heard from noble Lords such as the noble Lord, Lord Walton and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, it is no wonder that smoking is a major factor in lung cancer, strokes, heart disease, diabetes and a variety of other conditions such as asthma. If we are to reduce the incidence of these conditions we need to reduce smoking levels. On these Benches we believe that this Bill will make a significant contribution to reducing deaths from smoking, perhaps more than the 3,000 or 2.5 per cent modestly claimed by the Government in the Explanatory Notes. As such, we believe that this Bill is a proportionate response.
In resisting the Bill, the tobacco manufacturers have used a number of arguments, many of which have been rehearsed today by noble Lords. First, an advertising ban infringes the principles of free speech and violates Article 10 of the European Convention. But no advertiser has unfettered freedom of speech. The existence of the British Codes of Advertising and Sales Promotion administered by the Advertising Standards Authority recognises that. Furthermore, there are provisions in the convention giving an exemption when issues of health promotion come into play.
Secondly, the tobacco industry argues that its advertising does not increase consumption or encourage people to take up smoking; it is pricing which is all important. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, dealt extremely ably with that. He made some particularly powerful arguments especially in the light of the fact that he is a communications professional.
The industry maintains that advertising is aimed at promoting brand loyalty—the noble Lord, Lord Harris, was very strong on that point—persuading people to switch brands or launching new ones. But it is all too clear that the advertising efforts of the tobacco companies are aimed at expanding the market as well. The former chairman of McCann-Erickson was quoted by the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, to very good effect on that point.
The internal documents from the tobacco industry's advertising agencies referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, which are now generally classified under the title, "Keep Smiling, No-One is Going to Die", to which the health committee of the other place gained access, give a depressing glimpse of the motives and practices being pursued by the industry and its advertisers. They show very clearly how the aim is to increase consumption as well as brand share. Efforts are made to make smoking socially acceptable. They show that the industry is actively involved in increasing per capita consumption and recruiting new

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smokers. In that context the young are a key target. It is all about adding aspiration and street credibility to smoking. The advertising agencies conduct a huge amount of research into lifestyles and motivation of the young.
It is also quite clear that sponsorship and advertising are treated as one. Sponsorship is as important as advertising in promoting brand image. Above all, and most depressingly, there is a revelation of a lack of principle and sharp practice in these papers by the advertising agencies and their clients in devising market strategies.
In its report last year the Select Committee was quite correct in concluding, on the basis of the evidence,
"advertising agencies have connived in promoting tobacco consumption, have shamelessly exploited smoking as an aspirational pursuit in ways which inevitably make it more attractive to children and have attempted to use their creative talents to undermine government policy and evade regulation".
That underlines the need for flexibility in this Bill and in particular that is why we support Clause 7. It is in order to combat the ways in which the advertising agencies are going to chance their tactics in response to the provisions of this Bill.
The key issue in all of this is the recruitment through advertising of young people to the smoking habit. That is the key commercial objective of the tobacco companies. The article in the British Medical Journal of 3rd March has been cited in the debate today. Young people are extraordinarily aware of advertising. About 90 per cent are aware of postal advertising in this area.
Thirdly, the manufacturers claim that it is wrong to ban the advertising of a legal product. I believe the noble Lord, Lord Geddes, in particular raised that argument. That is a complete red herring. Guns and pharmaceuticals are products which can be manufactured and sold legally subject to regulation, but they are also subject to advertising restrictions.
Fourthly, the manufacturers claim that there is no evidence that a ban on advertising will be effective. Many noble Lords dealt with that point in their speeches today. There is abundant evidence provided that such bans are comprehensive, covering all media. It is where they are partial that the evidence is not clear. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, catalogued the evidence. He mentioned the report of Dr Clive Smee. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, interestingly, mentioned the 1999 report of the World Bank. However, I come to totally different conclusions from those of the noble Lord. The report states:
"Policymakers who are interested in controlling tobacco need to know whether cigarette advertising and promotion affect consumption. The answer is that they almost certainly do, although the data are not straightforward. The key conclusion is that bans on advertising and promotion prove effective, but only if they are comprehensive, covering all media and all uses of brand names and logos".
That was very much the conclusion that Clive Smee also reached.
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I turn to the fifth argument used by the manufacturers. We now have to call that not just humbug but perhaps the "humbuggery" argument advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit. I follow him on one point; that is, in respect of the European failure to cease subsidising tobacco growing in southern Europe. The Health Select Committee dealt with that point well. The desire to cease that subsidy is not inconsistent with a desire to ban advertising and the promotion of cigarettes. All of us would wish to see that subsidy cease, but I certainly do not follow the noble Lord into the wider realms of his arguments under that heading.
In some respects the Government's policy in this area does not go far enough. I deeply regret the Government's decision to delay the ban as regards global sports such as Formula I racing until 2006. Formula 1 cars were described by Tobacco Reporter which I must admit is a publication I have not come across before—as,
"the most powerful advertising space in the world".
I can testify to the association of Formula 1 with glamour, having followed the sport for many years. I am a keen follower of Formula 1. It is quite possible to run teams without tobacco money. My father-in-law, a fanatical non-smoker, did so for many years. He was able to secure sponsorship throughout the time that he ran a Formula 1 team. In fact, the FIA, the governing body of Formula 1, has said that it could comply with the measure by 2002. I agree with the Select Committee that sponsorship should not be treated more leniently than advertising. In fact, Formula 1 is the very sector that should not have any concessions at all. The tobacco industry boasts of its initiatives on youth smoking, but continued sponsorship of Formula 1 gives the lie to that. It is the most aspirational sport of the whole lot.
I have a further reservation about the Bill which has been raised by the noble Lords, Lord Haskel and Lord Faulkner. If we are to have a ban which is consonant with the terms of the primary legislation, the regulations must be effective, whether they concern point of sale material, displays or direct mailing. We must not have any ambiguity as regards the way in which the ban on sponsorship to promote tobacco consumption works. That is extremely important. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, that we need clarification in that respect.
In the years since Sir Richard Doll discovered the link between cigarettes and cancer, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Walton, it has become clear that voluntary agreements on the promotion of tobacco are not adequate. As the Commons Health Select Committee stated in its report,
"Voluntary agreements have served the industry well and the public badly".
We welcomed the Bill. It is not a petty, puritanical pique—I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, used that phrase—it is not unenforceable, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, seems to think, and it does not mean the end of e-commerce as we know it. It is not a witch-hunt; it is not even the thin end of a wedge. It is

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a significant and important step. We welcome the fact that the Bill is part of a comprehensive strategy designed to discourage smoking and prevent deaths. However, the next steps must be taken in the European and international dimensions. As a first step towards that we very much welcome the Bill.
7.14 p.m.
Earl Howe: My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate and I thank the Minister for moving the Second Reading in his characteristically clear and helpful way.
Let me begin, if I may, by repeating something that I made a point of saying during the debate on the gracious Speech. I have been, and I remain, open to persuasion on the merits of this Bill. I ask the Minister to accept that there is no difference between us on the end that we have in view, which is to reduce the prevalence of smoking, particularly among young people. He is right to say what he did about the damage that smoking does to people's lives. I shall not repeat the statistics he quoted, which we have rehearsed often in this Chamber. It is the duty of any government to look for ways of raising standards in public health, and cigarette smoking must be a prime target in that sense. Deaths caused by smoking, as the noble Lord, Lord Walton, reminded us, represent one in five of all deaths. We cannot be complacent about that, which is why I would never allow myself to condemn a Bill of this kind before considering the evidence in its favour.
It is the extent of that evidence, and its credibility, that we need to look at. I listened very carefully to what the Minister had to say. My opening comment to him is to pick up a point made by a number of noble Lords. If we are going to ban, and indeed criminalise, the advertising of a legal product and anything directly associated with that product, we need to be as sure as we can be that such a ban will work. That may be a statement of the obvious, but it has to be made.
Primary legislation is a powerful weapon. We should use it only when we are sure we need to. The Minister will not hear me say that civil and commercial liberties should never be infringed under any circumstances. There are circumstances where it is right for the state to intervene in that sense. Nor do I hold any love or any brief for the tobacco companies. The territory we are in is that of making finely balanced judgments between opposing moral principles—civil freedom and public health. Perhaps this is where the Minister and I differ.
The reason I lay stress on the need for certainty before legislating is that I start from the premise that we live in a free country. To put it at its kindest, I am not sure that Ministers in the present Government always have that thought in the forefront of their minds. Whereas the Government have the air of being instinctively relaxed about banning and criminalising things, I am instinctively uneasy about it. That is a feeling shared, I believe, by many on this side of the House. That is why I feel the need to look a little further at the strength of the evidence presented by the Minister before being prepared to set my unease to one side.
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There are perhaps two main planks on which the Government's case for this Bill rests. One is the range of evidence indicating that a ban on advertising is associated with reduced levels of tobacco consumption. The other is research that concludes that decisions of young people to start smoking are directly linked to the promotion of cigarettes.
The Minister mentioned the Smee report. That report had a powerful influence on Ministers in the previous government and formed the basis of the antismoking strategy that was then adopted, including much tighter, but essentially voluntary, restrictions on tobacco advertising. Perhaps the most important single feature of the current code, in my opinion, is that advertisements must not glamorise cigarette smoking or incite people to take it up. That is tremendously important.
The Minister was kind enough to write to me about the Smee conclusions, and other research, before Christmas, and I am grateful to him. In that letter he ended by saying—as he did today—that quantification of the effects of a ban is not an exact science. That is right. The fact is that the results of research in this area have been very mixed. As he will be aware, while Smee arrived at his own conclusions, subsequent studies have completely contradicted them. A review by KPMG was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross. That review in 1996 concluded—I repeat the words that the noble Lord quoted—
"There is overwhelming evidence to support the proposition that advertising bans on tobacco products do not reduce tobacco consumption".
KPMG illustrated that by looking at four European countries where a ban had been introduced—Norway, Iceland, Italy and Finland. In none of those countries were trends in tobacco consumption affected by the advertising ban. In Italy during the 20 years after a ban was implemented tobacco consumption continued to rise. Other studies, post-Smee, have reached the same results as did KPMG. So while I certainly would not wish to discount Smee, 1 do not believe that his report presents us with anything like a knock-down argument.
The other aspect of the Government's case is take-up by young people. Take—up, particularly by teenage girls, is rising. Why should that be? The Government say that it is due to advertising. Again, this assertion is not self evident. The Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, found that the characteristics most likely to be found among children who smoke compared with those who do not are gender—girls smoke more than boys—having brothers or sisters who smoke, having parents who smoke, living with a single parent, not intending to stay in full-time education after six years, and having relatively few negative views about smoking. The influence of advertising on smoking uptake was not found to be significant. It may seem obvious to Ministers that children first take up smoking as a direct consequence of exposure to advertisements, but if one looks for hard evidence for

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such a correlation it is lacking. In Canada the prevalence of smoking among those aged 15 to 19 actually increased following the introduction of a ban.
I make no apology for being pernickety over these issues because they are central to the Government's case. There is an obvious reason why this is such difficult territory. The biggest single determinant of tobacco consumption is price, as my noble friend Lord Naseby and the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, pointed out. That fact has been recognised by each successive Chancellor in my lifetime and no doubt by Chancellors before that. Between 1971 and 1996 smoking prevalence went down by about 40 per cent. Since 1997, total UK tobacco consumption has increased. We have to ask ourselves the question: what has changed? What has changed is not the extent or nature of tobacco advertising, the rules for which have been the same since 1994; it is something quite other. It is the increasing availability of cheap, smuggled cigarettes.
As the noble Lord, Lord Mason, and others pointed out, since 1996 the black market in cigarettes has taken off in the wake of annual tax increases of 3 per cent and then 5 per cent above inflation which have made it attractive for bootleggers to import from the Continent illegally. At £4.22 for a packet of 20, on which the tax take is higher than in any other EU country, it is no surprise that usually law-abiding citizens have been looking elsewhere for their supplies of tobacco. Although the figure is difficult to estimate, it is currently estimated that between 18 per cent and 25 per cent of all cigarettes consumed in the UK are smuggled, resulting in a loss to the Exchequer of £5 billion. The Chancellor suddenly finds himself on the wrong side of the yield curve. And the co-ordinated anti-smoking strategy adopted by the previous government, which involved a combination of high duty, restrictions on advertising and anti-smoking education, is all of a sudden thrown off course.
Typically, the cigarettes that arrive here illegally from the backs of lorries find their way to the less affluent areas of the country, to the school playgrounds, car parks and clubs where young people congregate. The Government are to be commended for taking action to try to reduce the level of smuggling. But they were late off the mark. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that the scale of the problem is so vast that progress looks likely to remain modest for some while at least.
The distortion of the market brought about by over-high tobacco duty and, in turn, by smuggling provides a much more credible explanation of the rise in smoking prevalence than anything to do with advertising. But that leads me to a further and important point. If, because of the Bill, the tobacco companies are no longer able to compete with each other through advertising, only one means of competition will be available to them—competition by price. My prediction is that we shall see price wars breaking out between brands and an influx of cheap, foreign imports of cigarettes. If it is accepted that the biggest single determinant of cigarette consumption is
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price, then, as my noble friend Lord Glenarthur pointed out so ably, we could see the worst possible situation: that is, consumption rising.
Those are the reasons why my doubts about the Bill remain. As regards smuggling, it could be argued, and has been argued by Ministers. that it should not be a case of either/or. The Government believe in stopping advertising as well as clamping down on bootlegging. That would be a defensible position if one could be certain of the initial premise: that an advertising ban will have a beneficial effect on current smoking prevalence. For the reasons I have given, I do not believe that that will happen.
Therefore, if the Government get their way, as they no doubt will, we believe that it would be appropriate to include a sunset clause in the Bill to take effect after, say, five years. Five years should be long enough in which to determine whether or not the ban has had the effect that the Government now predict. If the Government are proved right, and I am wrong, then there would be absolutely nothing for Ministers to fear. The Act could simply be renewed without political disagreement.
This is an issue that we would wish to pursue in Committee, along with a number of other concerns. We are concerned about the preferential treatment accorded in the Bill to some sports to the detriment of others. We are concerned about the implications for certain international newspapers and other publications that may carry tobacco advertisements. We are very unhappy about Clause 7. We are very worried about the anomalous and unjustifiable effect of Clause 5(5) on Internet service providers. We deplore the reversal of the burden of proof about which my noble friend Lord Lucas spoke so compellingly. We have considerable criticisms of the provisions for brand sharing in Clause 11 which look set to disadvantage legitimate businesses marketing products wholly unconnected with tobacco. Those criticisms on Clause 11 are compounded by our doubts on its legality under EU law.
This is a Bill which, for all the sound and fury which accompanies it, will, I fear, do little if anything to advance the cause that is common to the Government and ourselves. It may even have the opposite effect from that intended. As such it is difficult to regard it as other than at best window dressing and at worst misconceived. It is, therefore, with a mixture of interest and a considerable helping of scepticism that I look forward to the Minister's response.
7.27 p.m.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, it has been an interesting and wide-ranging debate. The first comment I wish to make to noble Lords is that this is not a witch-hunt against smokers. It is not an attack on freedom. It is a genuine effort to try to tackle the single greatest cause of avoidable death in the United Kingdom. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, underpinned the responsibility of Government to develop policies which can help to discourage people from starting to smoke and help those who want to give up.

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Perhaps I may say to the noble Viscount, Lord Oxfuird, that the Bill, of course, is not a stand-alone provision. It has to be seen as a key part of a much wider and comprehensive strategy to tackle smoking that was set out in the White Paper, Smoking Kills, which was published in December 1998.
I readily say to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, that we do not pretend that a ban on tobacco advertising on its own will deliver the Government's targets for reductions in smoking prevalence. But—this is crucial-—it will remove much of the tobacco industry's ability to undermine the impact of positive health messages with its own advertising and marketing.
This will mean that the 70 per cent of smokers who wish to give up will not be surrounded by sophisticated pro-smoking propaganda. The overall effectiveness of our NHS smoking cessation programme, and the impact of our tobacco education campaign, will be enhanced. The result will be more people giving up and better health in this country.
The noble Lord, Lord Geddes, questioned me on the European Convention on Human Rights. Ministers have certified that the Bill is compatible with those rights. Article 10 of the convention says that the right to freedom of expression,
"shall include freedom to … impart information … without interference by public authority".
However, the convention also provides that freedom of expression may be restricted by law for a number of reasons, including the protection of health. On that basis, we believe that the proposed restrictions on advertising for the protection of health are both necessary and proportionate.
We all agree on the common agricultural policy tobacco regime. Of course we contribute to the EU budget as a whole and not to any particular part. The Government strongly disapprove of the tobacco regime on health, expenditure and control grounds. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and others that we shall continue to press for progressive disengagement from that regime.
The noble Earl, Lord Howe, rightly said that we have to be sure that the ban will be effective. Any number of studies have been quoted tonight. As I said in my opening speech, absolute certainty cannot be provided. It was fair, open and honest of me to say that. However, I believe that there is sufficient evidence to show that advertising has an impact on consumption. I have already quoted some studies. I refer your Lordships to the World Bank, which suggested that the implementation of the original EU directive could have reduced cigarette consumption in the European Union by nearly 7 per cent. I also refer your Lordships to recent evidence from the US researchers Saffer and Chaloupka, who studied data from 22 countries and concluded that tobacco advertising increases tobacco consumption.
The noble Earl, Lord Howe, referred to children. University of Manchester researchers in the mid-1990s found that awareness of certain brands of cigarette was linked to an increased risk of the onset of smoking among 11 to 13 year-olds. I also refer him to a study of
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adolescents in California between 1993 and 1996, which found clear evidence that tobacco industry advertising and promotional activities can influence non-susceptible people who have never smoked to start the process of becoming addicted to cigarettes.
My noble friend Lord Tomlinson asked why the UK is not joining in the action being taken in the US. We have not ruled out attaching ourselves to the case, although we have ruled out joining in as a party to the action. There are other ways in which the UK can support the Commission's action. We are considering our options.
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asked about the Internet, as he often does. I recognise that regulating the Internet in one country is not easy. We shall continue to press for wider bans on Internet tobacco advertising in Europe and globally. The alternative to seeking to show a lead in the UK is to take no action and to leave this new potent technology to the tobacco industry to exploit. That is not a comfortable prospect. Understandably, the Internet is now the first choice means of advertising and communication for a wide variety of purposes, but it ought not to be an unregulated domain. The Bill will enable us to stop tobacco advertising on UK websites. We cannot prevent access to websites in other countries where it is legal to advertise tobacco, but we can take action against those facilitating such action in appropriate cases.
I understand that the representatives of Internet service providers have raised concerns about the Bill, as a number of noble Lords have pointed out. The question of whether ISPs are publishers or distributors is complex and there is no legal certainty about it. That is why the Bill was amended in Committee in the House of Commons to furnish ISPs with robust defences regardless of the opinion of any court. I understand the concerns that have been expressed. We are prepared to listen to those concerns and discuss them with representatives of the industry as the Bill proceeds through your Lordships' House.
The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and others raised the related issue of Clause 7. The clause gives the Secretary of State the power to amend any provisions if it becomes necessary to do so in consequence of any developments in technology concerning publication or distribution by electronic means. We do not propose to treat advertising by electronic means less or more favourably than any other forms of advertising. However, the sheer pace of technological change makes it very difficult to predict what new means of publishing or distribution might emerge. We think that it is right to cater for potential developments in this way. The Delegated Powers and Deregulation Committee did not object to the clause. We have no immediate plans to make an order under the clause. If and when it appears to be right to do so, the use of the power will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, the Minister must understand the concern that it is unusual, to say the least, to allow primary legislation to be amended by

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regulation. We have almost got used to the fact that that is being done under the 1972 Act of accession. There is not much that we can do about that unless we denounce the Act. The Minister should understand that many of us do not think that arguments of convenience and speed should override the precedents of the way in which we legislate.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I understand the point that the noble Lord has raised. It will be a matter of great interest to your Lordships. I also believe that when we legislate we sometimes need to anticipate future developments. That is justified when it comes to the Internet. The use of the affirmative resolution procedure is surely a safeguard that allows noble Lords to debate the issues. It is noticeable that your Lordships' House has started not only to debate, but also to vote on such regulations. That is a big change, even in the very short time that I have had the honour of being a Member of the House.
Sponsorship raises some interesting arguments. We have heard two contrasting views on what action the Government ought to take. My noble friend Lord Faulkner would like an earlier end to tobacco sponsorship, but that view was not shared by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns. We have said that tobacco sponsorship will end by 2006. We are considering the most effective transitional arrangements. Our intention remains to end existing tobacco sponsorship for most sports by July 2003 and for global sports, as the noble Baroness has said, by October 2006. We will consult on the draft regulations, which will cover the timing of the end of sponsorship and the conditions under which it may be continued for a period.
We believe that July 2003 is reasonable for most sports, thus giving them considerable notice of the Government's plans. They have been offered assistance and advice from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport's tobacco task force. I say to the noble Baroness that the task force stands ready to help sports to find themselves new sponsorship. Many sports have taken advantage of that help; others have chosen not to do so.
I am aware of the issues that the noble Baroness raised specifically in relation to the British Darts Organisation, which argues that it should be recognised as a global sport. She will understand that I do not want to pre-judge the consultation process during which that organisation can make representations. I believe that the task force is useful. It is not a gesture. I urge the British Darts Organisation to engage in, and take advantage of, discussions.
So far as concerns the other issues that the noble Baroness raised, I should point out that the provisions under Clause 10 do not prevent a tobacco company giving money to support an event provided that, in return, tobacco products are not given promotion. In the circumstances that she raised, I do not see any inhibition to the continuation of the type of support suggested by the noble Baroness.
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It is also worth pointing out to noble Lords that a report, published by International Marketing Reports, entitled, Driving Business Through Sport, revealed that in Europe a massive £4.03 billion a year is accounted for by sports-related endorsements, with 5 per cent of that amount coming from the tobacco industry.
My noble friend Lord Faulkner referred to loopholes and felt that the Bill would not go far enough; he would prefer there to be no tobacco advertising at point of sale. The fact is—I shall return to this point in a moment—that tobacco is a legally available product. There is no question of that, and there is no question of the Government seeking to change that position. Therefore, a balance must be struck in seeking to end all advertising and promotion while still, for example, allowing the adult smoker to see the information needed to make a purchase.
My noble friend Lord Haskel asked about regulation. I confess to him that I am the Minister responsible for better regulation in the Department of Health. I have suffered the Star Chamber process, defending my department's performance before Mo Mowlam, and I can tell him that it was as uncomfortable an experience as he suggested. However, in the end, the regulations, particularly those in Clause 4(2), very much safeguard the position. They allow for a certain amount of information to communicate the availability and price of the products on sale. I believe that at the point of sale that is a necessary balance to the overall ban.
So far as concerns the Scottish Parliament—this matter was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur—ECHR legislation applies to the whole of the UK and, of course, Westminster is subject to the Human Rights Act. However, in this instance, I do not believe that that is relevant to the question of why Scotland has regulation-making powers in this Bill. It simply arises from the fact that there may be issues particular to Scotland in connection with advertising in shops; for example, where the Scottish Executive is being given the power to regulate for local conditions if that is necessary, and if it is felt that that is the right way forward.
A number of questions were raised in relation to fiscal policy and smuggling. The Government are, and continue to be, committed to maintaining a strong fiscal policy as a way of deterring people from smoking. I listened to my noble friend Lord Mason, the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, and other noble Lords, who referred to the issue of tobacco smuggling. I am the first to acknowledge that this is a major issue which must be tackled. However, the Government's view is that that should be done through intensive measures to make it much more difficult to smuggle those goods.
Noble Lords have already referred to the measures that we are taking. I believe that they are already having an effect. In the nine months following the launch of a new strategy in March 2000, Customs seized over 2.1 billion cigarettes and is confident of a better performance as extra officers and x-ray scanners

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come on line. Smuggling is a problem for many countries; for example, Italy. That country has low duties but still has problems with smuggling.
The noble Viscount, Lord Oxfuird, asked about voluntary agreements. It is true that smoking rates fell steadily for many years under governments of both parties during the time of some of those voluntary agreements. However, as noble Lords suggested, since the early 1990s we seem to have reached a plateau. I say simply to the noble Viscount that that suggests to me that we need to adopt a new approach. That is why we believe it is important that, as part of our army of measures, there should be a ban on tobacco advertising.
My noble friend Lord Hardy of Wath asked about passive smoking. I believe the evidence shows that prolonged exposure to environmental tobacco smoke is harmful. That has been borne out by many medical studies.
I turn to the issues of freedom, free speech and the issues that were raised at the start of our debate and threaded through it. The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, does not like smoking. As noble Lords will know, my problem is that I do like smoking, and I am making yet another effort to give it up. I am not a health fascist. I do not present this Bill as an attempt to curb the freedom of smokers. I accept that restricting the advertising of illegal products is not a step that could be taken lightly. However, I believe that commercial freedom of speech must be weighed against the unique public health dangers posed by tobacco. We are talking about a product which is extremely addictive. It is a product that most of its consumers started using before the age of 20. The Government are not trying to ban smoking, but we are removing the tobacco companies' right to advertise a lethal, addictive product.
I listened with a great deal of interest to my noble friend Lord Stoddart, and I have given careful consideration to the Bill which received its First Reading immediately before this Bill. The Government will not be supporting his Bill.
Lord Dubs: My Lords, perhaps my noble friend will allow me to take his reference to my noble friend Lord Stoddart as a cue to ask him about another point. My noble friend Lord Stoddart suggested that my arithmetic was wrong with regard to the overall effect of the number of people who died from cancer or cancer-related illnesses. Will he confirm that a death rate of 120,000 a year represents 10,000 a month, 333 a day and, therefore, between two and three every 10 minutes? That was the point that I made in my speech.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, together with geography, I am not very good at maths. However, my noble friend's figures sound right to me.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. I want to apologise to my noble friend Lord Dubs for doubting his prowess at arithmetic. He is absolutely right. It seems
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to me that I should be very much better off if I handed my accounts over to him. I should be twice as well off as I am.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords. surely the difference between smoking and drinking is this: we know that all smoking does harm. It is my understanding, belief and experience that responsible drinking does no harm; indeed, some consider that it does good, particularly bottles of your Lordships' claret, which we enjoy from time to time.
Are the Government going to legalise cannabis? It has been suggested that two different threads go through our debate and society. The Government's position on cannabis is clear and unchanged: we continue to recognise that the drug can have serious health and social effects. The cross-government antidrug strategy sets clear targets for reducing the availability and use of all illegal drugs. Long may that continue!
The noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, asked why Clause 4(1)(d) was not hybrid. My understanding is that hybridity arises where persons in a class are treated differently without good reason. The Bill has been vetted for hybridity by the House authorities, who do not see that to be an issue. My understanding is that UK airlines constitute a genuine class. That is a big enough category to be a class in terms of hybridity and to ensure that no UK airline is treated differently.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for that. I shall be the first to put him out of his possible agony. Would he be good enough to write to me—obviously, I do not expect a response at the moment—comparing what he has just said with the provisions in Clause 4?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords. I am very happy to do that.
We have had a very good and thorough debate. I conclude by echoing the words of my noble friend Lord Mason. There is a balance to be struck. We want tolerance for smokers and non-smokers. The measures that we have taken in relation to the Bill and to our tobacco strategy as a whole recognise that. We have not embarked on a moral crusade against smokers. We wish to help those who do not wish to start smoking: but, equally, we wish to help those who wish to give up smoking, and enable them to do so as speedily and effectively as possible. The Bill will help us to tackle the biggest source of preventable death and disease in this country.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, before my noble friend concludes, I have a question for him. He said that he would not support my Bill. It is not usual for governments to oppose Private Members' Bills. Can I take it that the Government will not actively oppose the Bill, in accordance with tradition?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: My Lords, I assure my noble friend that I shall be present at every stage of his

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Bill's passage and that I shall be happy to give comments as required. The Bill will no doubt proceed through your Lordships' House in the normal way.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Homes Bill
7.53 p.m.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The Bill is an important part of the Government's aim of ensuring that everyone has the opportunity and choice of a decent home. It complements the ambitious strategy set out in our April 2000 housing Green Paper and in December's follow-up statement, entitled Quality and Choice.. A decent home for all.
The Bill will help millions of householders in England and Wales by improving the home-buying and home-selling process and by strengthening the protection available to homeless people. It is a Bill that provides benefits: for people who are selling or buying their homes; for people who are seeking help when they have become homeless or who are threatened with homelessness; for people in housing need who are applying for social housing; and for existing tenants seeking to move within the social housing sector.
Before I describe in detail the provisions of Part 1, let me first explain the problem that needs to be addressed. Currently, we have one of the most inefficient systems for buying and selling houses in the world. That is not just rhetoric or an opinion; it is borne out by our research. For every three transactions that proceed successfully, one fails. That means that up to half a million transactions each year are aborted. That carries with it huge costs in wasted fees paid to solicitors, surveyors and lenders. We estimate the cost of aborted transactions at about £350 million a year. If one includes the cost of delayed transactions, the figure is higher. Those figures do not begin to reflect the frustration and misery suffered by those who are affected.
We do not intend to allow that to continue. Apart from the personal distress that is caused to many, an inefficient housing market is bad for the economy and for our society. Our system is in desperate need of reform.
The Bill will require anyone in England and Wales who is marketing a residential property to assemble a seller's pack before putting the property on the market. The information in the seller's pack is important to the home-buying decision. However, under the present process it is not available to buyers until after they have made an offer and had it accepted by the seller. That is one of the main reasons why so many transactions fail. A staggering 28 per cent of transactions fail after an offer has been accepted. Many more transactions have to be renegotiated as relevant information—for example, about a house's
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condition—becomes available later in the process. Under our proposals, that information will be provided up-front.
Seller's packs will include home condition reports which will provide important information on homes for sale and they will cover the general condition of the property and take account of its age, character and location, how energy efficient it is, and any major repairs or other matters requiring attention.
The reports will help sellers to make decisions about how much to ask for their home and give them the option of having any necessary work done before they market the property. The reports will also help buyers to make an offer that reflects the true condition of the property and to identify potential future repair or improvement work for which they should budget.
By providing information up-front. the whole process will become more transparent, providing earlier certainty for sellers and buyers and reducing the risk of problems that lead to failed transactions and abortive costs. That is only part of the story. Other non-legislative measures which we are pursuing to improve the home-buying and home-selling process will complement that approach. Those measures include encouraging better preparation by buyers, for example, in obtaining "in principle" mortgage offers before making an offer on a property; encouraging faster mortgage offers and local authority searches; promoting better use of information technology; and encouraging lenders and insurers to develop products that help and protect buyers and sellers.
All of those measures are based on the most thorough research ever undertaken into the housing market in England and Wales, and follow a comprehensive public consultation in 1998 and a successful pilot scheme in Bristol last year. Some noble Lords may have received briefing from professional and representative bodies such as the Law Society and the Council of Mortgage Lenders. We take seriously the concerns expressed by such bodies. I am prepared to explain in detail how our policies address any criticisms that concern noble Lords. Let us remember that we are asking people to change the way in which they have been doing things for many years, so it is not surprising that there is some nervousness in the professions. Their jobs will change as a result of the reforms.
However, the real test of the Bill is how it affects not professionals but consumers. I believe that it will benefit consumers. Crucially, the Consumers' Association also believes that. There are many conveyancers, lenders and estate agents who are embracing the new approach enthusiastically and see it, rightly, as an opportunity for them, not a threat.
The proposals in Part 1 are based on extensive public consultation, research and piloting of the scheme. We will continue to work with the key professionals and consumers' representatives in developing the detail of our proposals, especially the home condition report and the supporting certification scheme, so that seller's packs can be introduced in 2003.

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The proposals in Part 2 will extend the homelessness safety net, promote a more strategic approach by local authorities in preventing and managing homelessness and assist local authorities in offering greater choice to those seeking social housing. Our proposals are designed to protect the vulnerable, promote choice, create sustainable communities and tackle social exclusion.
Each year local authorities and other agencies expend huge efforts helping people who have become homeless through no fault of their own. One of the most important changes we want to bring about through the Homes Bill is to focus a greater amount of effort on the prevention of homelessness. Our proposals will require local authorities to adopt a more strategic approach to tackling the causes of homelessness and preventing its recurrence.
The Bill will require local authorities to review homelessness in their area at least every five years and put in place a multi-agency strategy for preventing and dealing with homelessness. That will require close consultation and co-operation between local authorities, registered social landlords and other voluntary and statutory agencies. They will be encouraged to work together to assess the extent and causes of homelessness in their areas, to identify the most effective solutions and to ensure that adequate advice, accommodation and support is available for those who need it.
Within local authorities, the Bill will encourage a more co-ordinated approach by requiring housing and social services departments to take the homelessness strategy into account when carrying out their responsibilities. We are also strengthening the existing safety net by removing certain measures imposed by the Housing Act 1996. These include the two-year limit on local authorities' duty to provide accommodation for unintentionally homeless households and the restrictions on authorities' use of their own housing to provide short-term accommodation for homeless people. Those rules are unnecessary and can limit an authority's ability to find sustainable housing solutions for homeless people.
The Homes Bill will ensure that local authorities offer everyone who is unintentionally homeless and in priority need somewhere suitable to live until they find a long-term home. Our proposals will give existing social tenants and new applicants improved rights and will facilitate greater choice for applicants seeking social housing that meets their and their families' needs.
Extension of choice to everyone is central to this Government's policy. I was very pleased last week when my right honourable friend the Minister for Housing and Planning announced that 27 local authorities would be funded to explore a variety of choice-based letting schemes over the next two years. Those pilots demonstrate real progress by local authorities and registered social landlords in working together in extending choice to existing tenants and new applicants for social housing.
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Our proposals for protecting homeless people go beyond the Homes Bill. We are proposing-—by order under the 1996 Act—to extend the categories of homeless households who have a priority need for temporary accommodation. Evidence demonstrates that a high proportion of homeless people who end up sleeping rough come from institutionalised backgrounds. We are adding to the priority need groups such people who are homeless and vulnerable as a result of having spent time in local authority care, in prison or in the Armed Forces. There are three further groups we are adding to the priority need groups. Those are homeless young people aged 16 and 17; those aged 18 to 21 who have previously been in care; and people considered vulnerable as a result of fleeing domestic or other violence including racial violence. I hope your Lordships will agree that we must ensure a proper statutory safety net for vulnerable people, to protect them and to help them back to a settled way of life.
This Bill, taken together with the broader economic and social policies, the substantial increase in capital investment in housing and the wider policies set out in the Government's housing Green Paper, will help us to ensure that everyone has the opportunity of a decent home. I commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Whitty.)
8.4 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, we are all grateful to the Minister for his clear explanation of the Bill. Let me at this stage declare my interest as an estate agent in central London. I helped to found the firm in 1995. I have been a surveyor since I started in the land agency profession aged about 21.
I want to concentrate on Part I of the Bill, though if it proceeds I shall want to say more on the rest of it. Much of Part I is to be welcomed. Most responsible estate agents are already undertaking most of what Part I offers. If we are instructed to sell a house., we warn the solicitor that a sale is proposed and ask that the papers be prepared. That process is naturally speeding up with the advance of technology and does not need a Bill to encourage it.
I want to mention one comment the Minister made about the pilot scheme in Bristol. Everybody I have spoken to about that scheme said it was the most useless waste of time and a complete disaster; that it was an unreliable pilot scheme and should not be used for primary legislation.
Unquestionably this Bill will change the dynamics of house buying. I do not object. I welcome the change. I agree that house buying takes far too long and I shall look at some of those points in a minute. But what the Bill will also do, which is a key matter into which very little research has been done, is alter the relationship between a client and the agent. At the moment if the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, instructs me to sell his house for him, I believe what he tells me about the house. I will not be able to do that in the future. I cannot share that trust with him because I will be criminally liable

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for anything that he tells me. Therefore everything he says will have to be confirmed in writing and signed by him. That will change our relationship enormously.
We must remember that when people move house they are facing perhaps the most expensive transaction they will undertake in their lifetime. For them to be confronted by an agent who says, "I am sorry, I cannot accept your word; you must put it in writing", will not get that relationship off to a good start.
What are the aims of the Bill? The Minister did not say that it was aimed to stop gazumping or "gazundering". That is one of the Government's policies. But this Bill cannot; in fact it will positively encourage gazumping because so many extra costs are being put on the vendor and he will be duty-bound to seek the best price that he can in order to recover some of those costs.
The Bill will help to speed up the process of buying and selling. I agree with the Minister in that regard. But that is happening anyway and it will not speed it up to the extent that he anticipates. Also, on that point, the Minister has possibly selected some of the wrong targets. There is nothing in the Bill about solicitors. Although agents may be to blame for some failed transactions, most of the failed transactions with which I have dealt are entirely the result of solicitors not producing documents on time, not answering letters on time and not fulfilling their duties. There is a wide discrepancy. Some solicitors are quite brilliant at conveyancing and others who take on the work to get the fees are not terribly good.
The Minister for Housing and Planning in another place said on 8th January,
"The Bill will help to ensure that most of the information needed by both parties—buyers and sellers—is on the table when marketing begins".—[Official Report, Commons, 8/1/01; col. 710.]
That is a misleading statement. It is not true and I shall turn to the reason for that in a moment. So that cannot be a reason for introducing this Bill. Nor do I think it will stop transactions failing—a point the Minister stressed when he introduced the Bill. Transactions fail for a variety of reasons and having the information available at the beginning of the transaction will not do much to dampen that statistic down.
Let me turn to the reason for my objection to part of Part I; that is, the work of the surveyors and the home buyer's pack—the seller's information pack. I object to it for a number of reasons. The surveyor cannot serve both the vendor and the purchaser. He acts for either one party or the other. To change that vital role and ask the surveyor to perform an independent role between the vendor and the purchaser when the vendor is paying the bill will place the surveyor in an impossible situation.
I differ with the Government to a large extent in relation to the home condition report. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said that it was a good document and told us most of what we needed to know when buying a house. That was also a point made by the Minister for Housing and Planning in another place. The
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document does not do that. That is the one thing that the home condition report does not do; it does not tell us where the major expenditure lies.
I hope that all noble Lords have seen a copy of the house condition report. It states that the services to the property, including electricity, plumbing, heating, gas and drainage will be subject to a visual inspection only and no tests will be applied. That is where cost is involved; that is, in the drains. There is an endless amount of settlement in houses in London. That would not be picked up in a home condition report. The report goes on to state that the home inspector will not be able to report in compliance with regulations relating to supply or operation of any services as that can only be ascertained by the application of tests. Similarly, the home inspector will not be able to confirm compliance with building or planning regulations.
A purchaser who accepts a home condition report could then fall foul of planning laws or building regulations and would incur considerable extra expense. He has been led to believe that this report will answer his questions. It will not. It is totally misleading to say that it will. The potential major costs of liabilities in houses are not included in a home condition report.
The home condition report is a simplistic little document. The surveyor has to give a report on the condition of various parts of the house, such as the painting or the look of the radiators. Such a report will be numbered from one to four. However, much will depend on the comment of the surveyor, which varies from very good to—I assure your Lordships—very poor indeed. The home condition report is a major defect in the Government's proposals. On that point I fundamentally disagree with my profession, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
Let us consider the workload of a surveyor. It will probably take about half a day's work for a surveyor to carry out a home condition report. In a month of, say, 20 working days he will have done 40 surveys. Let us assume, quite reasonably, that he might expect five calls per survey from potential purchasers. He will receive 200 telephone calls, which he will need to return. He is not paid for that work. That is only one month's work. I am told that a survey will be valid for six months. The total number of calls with which he will be involved and which may require further research will be over 1,000. How will a surveyor possibly remember all those surveys without having to spend a huge amount of time looking them up to check what he said?
If a survey is valid for six months—I should be grateful for the Minister's confirmation of that—that is a disaster for a purchaser. The one thing that changes rapidly is the structure of one's home. If a survey is carried out in October and we have a good gale in November and a few tiles come off, the surveyor's report is wrong; it is out of date. Settlement due to global warming can happen at any time. Yet a purchaser and a lender are encouraged to rely on the home condition report. All that will lead to a mass of insurance claims, which will push up costs.

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I turn to the qualification test for surveyors. I have spoken about that to a number of my friends in the building profession. They are horrified by the simplistic nature of the test they have been asked to undertake which, in their opinion, devalues the profession. I agree. I have been a surveyor all my working life. I could produce a home condition report, but I would not advise a single one of your Lordships, as a purchaser, to rely on it. When I bought my own property I obtained my own survey and am glad I did so. It revealed items which would be noticed by a professional surveyor looking in depth, but not by a surveyor producing a home condition report. That will not speed up the process. It will lead only to further antagonism.
Can the Minister tell us whether or not the surveyor will value properties? At present it is usual for that to be done by the lender's surveyor. If a vendor's surveyor is asked to do a valuation of a property, there will be a complete distortion of the housing market. That is the agent's job; to take into account the supply and demand, among other things, which the building surveyor will not do.
Another crucial point is the independence of the surveyor. Far too many agencies have their own in-house surveyors who will not be at arm's-length from the vendor or purchaser. It will be those surveyors who will recommend a particular mortgage company. The whole process will revolve around that estate agency getting fees from the mortgage company and the life endowment policy. That is an area which needs to be considered. What happens if the property does not sell? The Government are forcing a vendor to pay a surveyor upfront. If the property does not sell, that person will be discontented by what has happened and by the extra cost to which he has been put. Those are my main concerns on that subject. The rest of the proposals I could live with. They need tinkering, but we shall come to that if the Bill progresses.
I turn briefly to other problems in the same area. What about the problem of low-cost houses? I know that it is not true of central London, but in many parts of the country houses have been sold for as little as £2,500 or £5,000. Yet a building surveyor's charges will be around £500. That is a huge amount for somebody in those sort of properties to have to pay upfront. If we were to exempt the lower end of the market, would we not be classing this country into two tiers of citizens; those who can abide by what the Government want and those who are unable to do so? I wonder whether the Minister has considered the hybridity potential of bringing in two tiers and exempting the lower tier.
I move to the other end of the scale; that is, high-cost housing. Some of our clients have specifically asked us not to advertise a property or to prepare details but to sell it quietly. That may be for all sorts of reasons, perhaps concerning family or security. In future, we shall riot be able to do that. Their position will be significantly jeopardised. Before we can market the property we must have a seller's pack, which will be available to anybody. We shall not be able to market those properties in the way we have successfully done to date.
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What about people with low or negative equity? The proposal for having to first pay for a costly home buyer's survey will lead only to more evictions because people will be unable to pay. The Bill also requires there to be no pre-sale information. That is a key part of the housing market at present. Let us suppose that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, instructs me to sell his house. Let us also suppose that I know the very person who wants to buy it, but he is speaking to somebody else about another property. I would he unable to go to him and say, "I know that your ideal property, the one that you really wanted, will be coming onto the market in a month's time, or a couple of months' time." If I did that, I would be a criminal.
I believe that it is wrong to make agents responsible for what is legitimately the work of solicitors. The agent will become a criminal for not having the right title deeds. That is very much for the solicitor. I cannot ring up a mortgage company and ask for the title deeds to properties for sale. I instruct a solicitor to do that on behalf of the vendor. To put the agent in that sort of position would cause all sorts of trouble in future.
Finally, the idea that private sellers will be criminalised when they get things wrong introduces a new aspect of law. Many people believe that we agents are expensive and cannot market properties in the best way; that they can do so better themselves. I fully respect that; they are entitled to do that. However, under the Bill, people who do that will become criminals if they have not complied with every part of the law. It is no good saying that it will be up to the weights and measures departments of the local councils to be reasonable because we know how unreasonable they can be.
Part 1 of the Bill contains many potentially good measures which can help a long drawn-out process which is frustrating to many people. However, I believe that the Government are wrong in respect of the home buyer's survey. They are wrong in other areas and in many respects are targeting the wrong people. I advise every vendor to continue to get their own survey in order to protect their own interests. I strongly recommend that everyone uses solicitors for the legal work. As so many house sales are part of chains a solicitor with particular knowledge is required to hold that together and deal with the matter in the best way. None of those proposals will speed up the process as we would want.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is a reasonable man and I hope that he will take the Minister for Housing to one side and say, "Look, what we have got is a totally unworkable proposition. It will result in a lot of extra costs and a complete seizure of the housing market. Why do we not rethink it through and not take the Bill through a further stage in this Parliament or in another Parliament?".
8.22 p.m.
Baroness Maddock: My Lords, as March began I wondered whether I would ever have the opportunity to make a speech on the Homes Bill. I had understood that the Government were anxious to get the Bill on to

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the statute book. Indeed, they timetabled it through the other place after Christmas, but still it did not arrive in this House. I remember that in 1996 I heard the present Minister for Housing, Planning and Construction, the right honourable Nick Raynsford, promising that repealing the worst aspects of the Housing Act 1996 would be an absolute priority for any incoming Labour Government. Here we are, four years later. What is worse is that as we have no idea what will happen in the next few weeks we do not know whether the Bill will go any further.
In another place and more widely, we on these Benches have supported the review of the homelessness legislation in Part 2. We have also given our support to the intention in Part 1 to improve the speed of transactions in buying and selling homes. However, as I believe that there is a more pressing need for Part 2 than there is for Part 1, I intend to deal first with that part.
Part 2 had its beginnings in the 1970s when the nation was appalled by the picture of homelessness portrayed in the film "Cathy Come Home". In 1977, the late Liberal MP Stephen Ross, piloted a Private Member's Bill through Parliament which became the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977.
In 1996, I had the good fortune—perhaps I should say misfortune—to try to defend and prevent legislation undoing the intentions of that Bill. Therefore, I particularly welcome the repeal of some of the worst aspects of the 1996 Act with regard to homelessness. I also welcome the extension of the categories who will be helped by the Bill to young, vulnerable people and to those fleeing violence. In 1996, I spoke about those fleeing domestic violence and I am pleased that the Bill recognises the fact that anyone fleeing any form of violence should receive top priority help.
I know that noble friends on these Benches feel much the same as me and also welcome the provisions which will give more flexibility to local authorities to determine their lettings policies. They will be able to have policies which best suit their local circumstances. We also welcome the requirement for local authorities to draw up a homelessness strategy. We as Liberal Democrats have long thought that a good idea and would rather go further. That is demonstrated in Liverpool where Liberal Democrats have a successful strategic housing partnership which is set up across all the housing partners in the city to plan policies across all tenures.
As regards homelessness duties, we welcome the fact that once again local authorities will be required to find permanent accommodation for homeless families. The 1996 Act took away that responsibility, resulting in increases in the number in bed and breakfast accommodation. That has been condemned on all sides of the House. At that time, not only were local authorities unable to look after people for more than two years, they were not allowed to use their own properties to do that.
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We recognise that the private sector may still be used to help people in housing need. That is why we are particularly disappointed that the Bill contains nothing about the regulation of houses in multiple occupation. I know the arguments relating to that and I am sure that the Minister will tell us that provisions are on their way, but four years is a long time.
The Minister will know that many issues continue to concern us on these Benches. Given that we know not what will happen to the Bill after today, I shall go into those issues in more detail than I would normally at Second Reading. Some concerns are shared by organisations in the legal profession which give advice to homeless people, those who work in providing housing and those who work with homeless people. However, in another place the Government promised that they would examine some of the concerns that I shall raise. I shall deal with the last first.
It is vital that the statutory framework is always clear and robust so that it does not prevent local authorities denying people access to social housing in justifiable circumstances. In another place, the Minister stated that he did not believe that priority in allocation should be removed, for example, from people who were likely to be subject to a suspended possession order. I know that he did not intend that to happen and I hope that the Minister will confirm that, despite the difficulties, the Government will bring forward an amendment to address that issue.
The second point which the Minister in another place promised to examine was the requirement for a local authority to notify homeless applicants of their right to review and the time limit in which they can have that review. Those requirements were included in the 1996 Act and we believe that they should appear on the face of this Bill.
Finally in this part I want to deal with the power of the county court in relation to appeals on homelessness decisions. My honourable friend the Member of Parliament for Bath, Don Foster, tabled an amendment in another place which would direct a local authority to accommodate a homeless applicant pending decisions of appeal. At present, that power is in the hands of the High Court and it requires applicants to take out judicial review proceedings. Solicitors who deal with that will confirm that it almost never happens as it is greatly discouraged. Therefore, I look forward to hearing the Minister's response.
We shall want to return to other issues if the Bill moves to later stages. One such issue is the definition of suitability to be a tenant. The issues are controversial but we know that housing benefit does not always run smoothly and that tenants may incur a small amount of arrears through no fault of their own. Yet under this legislation the local authority can use that as an excuse to say that the tenant is not suitable. It is possible to change the legislation to do away with that.
We welcome the fact that under the Bill one particular category is to be helped: non-priority homeless people. That category has had some help

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from local authorities. and that is to be increased under the Bill. But Shelter has recently produced a report which looks specifically at what has happened to single people. It is quite clear that although many authorities make an assessment of the needs of people, the wording of the legislation, which states that they have a duty to make such inquiries as are necessary, is not the same as a requirement to carry out an assessment of need. It would not be too difficult for the Government to change the legislation.
Another area of concern is the 21-day limit for people who appeal against decisions about their homelessness. As to this and the other point that I have made, these Benches, Shelter and the Law Society believe that a period of 21 days is not enough for vulnerable people who find it difficult to deal with bureaucracy.
Just as there is a problem of accommodation during appeals, there is also a problem during reviews, and it would be helpful if local authorities had a duty in this respect. One of the other matters about which I felt strongly when I was a Member of another place was the time during which people had to say "yes" or "no" to any accommodation that they might be offered by a local authority. At present, I believe that the limit is 24 hours, but it should be a minimum of three days. If people say "no" that is their last chance and they will not get anything else. I believe that it is unreasonable to expect them to make that decision in that time.
One other issue which has been raised by my honourable friend Don Foster is the role of registered social landlords in helping local authorities with their duties under the Act. This is a fairly contentious matter. Registered social landlords like their independence and do not want local authorities to be able to control 100 per cent of their lettings. But we know that that can be a problem as there are more and more large-scale voluntary transfers of local authority housing to registered social landlords. It is important to ensure that there is a balanced approach which is not to the disadvantage of vulnerable homeless people, which is what this legislation is all about. Many registered social landlords are regulated by the Housing Corporation, and in that respect I look forward to the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde.
I believe that there is a wide consensus among a number of bodies—the National Housing Federation, Shelter, the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Local Government Association and the Association for London Government—that Part 2 of the Bill should be enacted. We welcome the new powers and duties to assist homeless families and vulnerable people, but the Bill does not address how local authorities will help people in areas where social housing is under immense pressure at the moment, particularly in London and the South East where house prices are so high that for many they are unaffordable. Tonight I do not have time to go into how we would like to see that matter tackled.
I turn very briefly to Part 1: the seller's pack. My noble friends Lord Goodhart and Lord Phillips of Sudbury will speak to this matter in much more detail.
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I make three observations. First, we believe that the pack will not achieve the original aim of the Government; namely, to deal with gazumping. Secondly, as has already been said, the pilot project undertaken is not sufficient to base legislation on it. Thirdly, the requirement for the seller's pack to contain a seller's survey, which is backed up by criminal sanctions for non-compliance, is totally unjustified. Practitioners on all sides believe that that will be very detrimental to house-buying. One positive aspect of the seller's pack that I applaud—I refer to my own particular interest—is the requirement for inclusion of the energy efficiency of the building.
I apologise for speaking at some length but, given the uncertainty of the future stages of the Bill, we on these Benches want to record matters at Second Reading that normally would he dealt with in much more detail in Committee. I sincerely hope that the parts of this Bill which deal with improving the provision for homeless people reach the statute book before a general election, but I do not feel at all the same about Part 1 which is concerned with the seller's pack.
8.36 p.m.
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I join in the last wish of the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, that Part 2 reaches the statute book before the next election. The sooner it helps people, the better. I declare an interest as a commercial and domestic landlord. Today more homeless households than at any time since the late 1970s are in temporary accommodation. The number in temporary accommodation at the end of December 2000 was in excess of 70,000, over 40,000 of whom were located in London. Most of those households comprise families. The number of homeless households in bed and breakfast in London alone is over 7,000, and that number has doubled in the past two years.
Homelessness harms children. Children suffer greater sleeplessness and disease and their education is often less successful, partly because they are moved from school to school. Their diet is often poorer. Your Lordships may remember my description of a visit last year to a family living in Newham. That family with four children under the age of 11 had been in bed and breakfast for 12 months and had lived on snacks and one takeaway meal per day.
Homelessness harms adults. Homeless adults are 20 times more likely to contract tuberculosis. Homelessness overwhelms, or reduces, the resources of the National Health Service. Homeless people find it hard to keep a GP and, therefore, are far more likely to use the accident and emergency services of hospitals.
When young people run away from home, leave local authority care incapable of looking after themselves, leave prison with nowhere to go, or are pushed out of the family home prematurely, they are vulnerable. Most young people do not leave home until about the age of 22. Boredom, hunger and peer pressure may encourage those young people into

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opportunistic crime if they are on the streets. Similar factors, and possibly their own family history, may attract them to drugs. Occasionally, they may be drawn into the sex trade. Once on the streets, young persons can find the ethos much to their taste. I remember two young women who looked back fondly on their filthy, cold squat because of the camaraderie they had enjoyed there. The street can provide a kind of family to those whose experience of family life has been lacking.
It makes sense to minimise homelessness, with all its adverse effects, by anticipating it. That is why I applaud the introduction of a duty on local authorities to produce a quinquennial homelessness strategy. For the past three years, Leeds has operated a similar strategy for its homeless young people. Joe Kent is the project co-ordinator. His plan examines the key issues. It makes clear the action to be taken to address each issue, and it indicates where that action will join with that of other initiatives, such as the authority's supported housing strategy.
The key areas are the assessment of housing needs; the supply of information; the impact of the use of heroin and crack cocaine; the special needs of black and ethnic minorities; the particular problems faced by young homosexuals; ensuring that young people living in bedsits in the most deprived areas and young people with mild learning difficulties do not lose access to services; preventing young people becoming homeless through school programmes and the development of a family mediation service; determining what support for young people is and which young people need it; and how to provide support over the weekends, the evening and in the lodgings of young people.
A homeless strategy would also include consultation with users. In Leeds the consultation revealed that one care leaver suffered repeated break-ins to his ground floor flat and would have felt more secure on a second floor or higher; that young people placed in tower blocks faced theft from other tenants within the building and that a security camera on the main door provided inadequate protection; that people seen moving in were targeted for theft; and that the caretaker in one block "keeps things better".
A homelessness strategy would encourage local authorities to prevent homelessness and support the homeless into having and keeping homes. That is so much to be welcomed. At this point I should like to warmly welcome the extension of priority housing need to homeless 16 and 17 year-olds, young people leaving care and other people leaving institutions.
I turn to the problem of benefit delays and the consequences for allocations of lettings. That is also dealt with in Part 2 of the Bill. In some local authorities, Islington and Hackney, to name two of the worst, there are frequently delays of months in processing housing benefit payments of any complexity. The Government are taking steps to address the current scandalous situation. Past attempts have failed. It seems possible that these delays will continue. Benefit delays bring small charities, such as the Single Homelessness Project,
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which has high exposure in failing boroughs, close to bankruptcy. They also cause great anxiety to many families in rental accommodation and can result in eviction. A person can find himself evicted for rent arrears. Those arrears can be either solely or, to a great extent, due to the local authority. Yet that person can be denied housing by a local authority because he has had rent arrears.
It is for that reason that we need to look carefully at the measures regarding suspension of allocations in the Bill and consider whether they unfairly penalise those without blame. We should also consider carefully the force of the new measures to provide advice and support to non-priority homeless people; for example, single people and childless couples. The quality and level of advice and assistance provided by councils is extremely variable and, in some cases, very poor. People are turned away without being interviewed. Assessments of vulnerability are inconsistent and, on occasion, contravene statutory guidance. Applicants generally receive no written notice of the authority's decision, nor are they informed of their rights to a review of that decision. I hope that in Committee we can amend the Bill to strengthen the duty of advice and support to non-priority homeless people.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, pointed out, the Bill omits the Government's manifesto pledge to license houses in multiple occupation. Such a licence would help to ensure that the lavatories and bathrooms were in a decent state and other matters which are very important to families living in that kind of accommodation—families with young children. The housing Minister has given a reasonable explanation for the delay but I hope we can now press on to that important legislation.
The second part of the Bill will help more of our citizens to feel part of a community, to be rooted and connected. I sincerely believe that the Government are, in bringing forward the Bill, reducing the extent of needless human suffering. The sooner people can benefit, the better. I hope that the second part of the Bill may enjoy the good will of all your Lordships.
8.46 p.m.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde: My Lords, I first declare an interest. I am chairman of the Housing Corporation, the government-funded quango that provides investment and regulates what is called "the social housing sector".
The Bill has been welcomed across all opinions. In meeting people on housing estates or organisations of various partners we work with. I have yet to find someone who feels that they do not want Part 2 of the Bill. There is a great deal of support for it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, said, it is true that people would like amendments and changes in some areas. But the general summing-up to the Government is, "Well done. This is a Bill which is needed. We should like to see it enacted as quickly as possible".
Part 2 of the Bill deals with homelessness, its prevention and the allocation of accommodation, which includes the key issue of choice. The Bill

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essentially puts the responsibility on local authorities to ensure that they have housing strategies and that they are carried through. I would be the first to accept that the housing organisations that we fund and regulate must have a key role in that. Approximately 1.5 million homes in Britain are owned by registered social landlords. Therefore, they are an important key factor within communities. It is to be hoped that the provisions in the Bill, when it becomes law, will be delivered. It is important that we work with not only local authorities but other parties. Many authorities are doing that. We welcome the requirement to have a homelessness strategy. Local authorities will have to set up such a strategy. Some already do. But it is important that we have one across the board.
The noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, said that the contentious issue was letting policy. She is absolutely right. That might be one of the few important areas where there is a slight difference between us. I cannot think of many others in social housing. I take the opportunity to put on the record how we are approaching this matter. We are not directly covered by the Bill. If one looks at last year's housing Green Paper and the restructuring of our organisation and our different approach to regulation and investment, they are all part of the whole. Homelessness is an essential part of that whole.
We are currently revising our 1997 Performance Standards and Regulatory Guidance. We give that guide to the housing associations that we regulate. We require them to meet those standards. We have already published a draft regulatory code which has been welcomed in the sector and by other stakeholders. We are also currently working on our Statutory Housing Management Guidance. That will be out for consultation in mid May.
The coming together of those developments will feed positively into what the Government are seeking and what the bodies supporting the Bill are seeking in Part 2. An essential requirement is not only a homelessness strategy but a prevention of homelessness strategy. We shall be working with local authorities to implement those strategies through the lettings policies of housing associations and how they sign up to the local policies with local authorities.
We shall also be looking at ways in which we can strengthen our regulatory requirements. For a housing association to be registered with the Housing Corporation it has to accept and apply, and confirm that it applies—we audit that housing associations apply—our regulatory requirements. Hand in hand with that, we are looking at our current funding conditions. 'We do not need to be convinced that the Bill is essential. We know that it is from our practical experience on the ground. When members of the Greater London Assembly—I notice that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is in her place—decided that housing would be their number one issue, we were delighted and asked whether we could join them in support of that work. We are working hard at the moment to develop that partnership. I am pleased to say that in the past few weeks we have funded the purchase of 740 previously privately rented flats to be
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brought into the social housing sector in London. We want to do more of that because housing in London and the South East is a serious issue.
Homelessness creates so much human misery that we cannot afford not to do anything about it. That is why the Bill is so helpful. We need to ensure through our funding and regulatory processes that housing associations not only work with local authorities and the other agencies but that they are delivering what is required.
Noble Lords have mentioned the various groups of people who fall into the homeless category. From my personal experience with the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, I know that, traditionally, former Armed Forces personnel have been one of those groups. This afternoon I attended—I hesitate to call it a seminar a get-together of 50 teenage mothers or prospective mothers. None was over 22 and many of them—I did not ask their age—looked very young. The Teenage Pregnancy Unit, which came out of the Social Exclusion Unit report, is working with us. It was delighted to hear about the Bill. Teenage mothers are a vulnerable group who need support. They need not only housing but supported housing. Of course, not only the mothers are vulnerable but the babies too. The whole area of homelessness affects so many in our population. It is essential that we do something about it.
Part 2 of the Bill also covers housing allocations. Choice was one of the core elements of the housing Green Paper. We welcome it. We have no impediment at the moment in applying the current regulatory framework that will implement choice. But we will be strengthening that with guidance. In parallel with that, nearly 300 housing associations have wanted to be involved in pilot schemes on choice. I have heard the arguments from some housing associations. They ask how on earth one can have choice when they do not have enough houses in an area to go round. There are in fact some interesting developments that one can apply. The William Sutton Trust is working on this issue. The Leicester Housing Association, in conjunction with Harborough District Council, has been working on a scheme for the past year. It is modelled on the Delft scheme in the Netherlands. Although it is in a highly populated area, choice has worked. It can work. The William Sutton Trust and other housing association partners are working on choice-based allocations in high demand areas. We shall be monitoring it and we are helping to fund it.
In the North West, Ashiana, a black minority ethnic housing association—it used to be called North British—is having discussions with Bolton City Council and seven other housing associations to put the whole of its 28,000 stock into a system where the tenants have choice. A good deal is going on and we welcome it.
We feel that the Bill is well balanced. We feel that Part 2 is welcome and that we have to respond to it. Working with social landlords, we shall be tightening our regulations and we shall be looking at where we invest. That investment will go increasingly to areas

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that have these strategies and work within partnership. We shall be monitoring that and ensuring that we deliver not only a welcome piece of legislation but one that will change the lives of so many vulnerable people in our community.
8.56 p.m.
Baroness Byford: My Lords, I have a certain sympathy with anyone who attempts to make the process of house buying more simple. However, I am aware that very often one person's gain is another person's loss. It seems to me that some of the provisions of Part I will cause just that.
The central issue is the seller's pack, which is to be made mandatory for homes being sold for owner occupation. The contents of that pack are to be laid down by the Secretary of State, who will have the power to control both the form and the detail of the documents, their provision and the circumstances of their variation. All the data in the pack will be of interest to potential buyers and the Bill supplies an indicative list of the sort of things the Government feel should be there.
Most of the rest of the first part is concerned with fixed penalties, criminal convictions, enforcement powers and offences. I have to say that I find it offensive that citizens of this country should be liable to a criminal prosecution for not following what will be the only procedure allowed for selling their home. No choice—none at all.
Perhaps I should have begun my speech by declaring an interest. I have two cottages that are out for rent. On a farm in Suffolk we made some land available for social housing when we were approached by the local authority.
The Bill makes no reference to time, and in buying and selling houses, time is often critical. The Radio 4 programme "You and Yours" yesterday, 27th March, had an item on house purchase through the Internet. In the course of the programme an Internet service provider stated that on average houses advertised by his company stayed on the Net for 10 weeks. He added that this accorded well with estate agent surveys which put the average time to sell a house at nine to 11 weeks.
An average is constructed from a range of values. An average time to sell a house may well be 10 weeks but the range from which it is taken may well extend from a mere few days to many months. It would be well to recognise that houses which do not sell quickly are often removed from one estate agent and given to another. In that sense the actual time taken will not be reflected in any average as the first agent may have it for, say, 16 weeks and the second for, say, 12 before it is sold.
An average does not reflect the differences in areas or in price levels. I have known times when houses in the lower price ranges sold easily while the bigger ones took a lot longer. Equally, I understand that houses in parts of London are sold in days while in parts of the East Midlands similar models can stay on the market for many months.
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Under the provisions of Clause 4, it will be an offence for an estate agent to tell anyone that a property is or may be coming on to the market until the seller's pack is available. My noble friend Lord Caithness referred to that. I believe that it should be known as a "buyer's pack" because everything in it appears to be designed for the advantage of the former at the expense of the latter. Moreover, the prohibition on telling anyone what is or is not for sale until the pack is ready can only add to the disadvantage. A number of friends and acquaintances of mine have sold their properties to people who visited estate agents before the details were available, but were sufficiently interested in the properties to go and take a look.
One of the items to be included in the pack will be a house condition report, similar to the present home buyer's survey and valuation. The Bill makes provision for buyers or mortgage lenders to sue a surveyor whose report is inaccurate or misleading. This is where the issue of time may become critical. If it takes nine to 11 weeks to sell the average property, and the agent may not tell anyone that the house is available for sale until the seller's pack is ready, how much time will elapse from the survey visit to completion? Would an average of 12 to 14 weeks seem reasonable?
What will happen when a deal progresses to the point where contracts are due to be signed before it becomes obvious that the buyer cannot complete for at least another 10 weeks? Will the seller have to pay for another condition report'? Will the seller be able to sue a buyer who wilfully or negligently fails to complete? As regards the business of buying and selling houses, I have never been sure about the process, but I can recall many instances involving family and friends where the proposed sale fell through at around the time the seller was due to sign the contract.
The Bill remains silent on the matter of how long the condition reports are to remain valid. It is also silent on when and how they are to be paid for. It is likely that a family moving for job-related reasons may be unable to raise the necessary fee for a house condition report. Equally, an elderly couple or widow whose home encompasses their entire savings may be forced to borrow money at interest in order to pay for the document, which many may feel will simply be replicated by the buyer.
The Leicestershire Law Society has written to me stating that it feels that both the buyer and the mortgage lender are unlikely to rely on the condition report. If that is the case—I suggest that the society has enough experience for that to be the case—the pack will simply cause a delay in the system. Delays will be occasioned by the double surveying of a particular property. The same letter from the society states that:
"The exercise in Bristol resulted in sellers shunning their packs".
Other noble Lords have referred to the Bristol trial. If that is the case, the Bill before us would seem to be yet another attempt by the Government to impose unwanted legislation on one section of the populace. If people are given the chance to use their intelligence

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and to decide whether the pack will be welcomed with open arms, why not simply give it legal status and let the market establish its use?
In its parliamentary briefing, the Law Society opposes the inclusion of a condition report on the grounds of the substantial extra expense incurred by the seller and a lack of trust in it on the parts both of the buyer and the lender. The Law Society strongly opposes the proposal to instigate criminal proceedings against those who, for whatever reason, fail to provide the pack. That suggests that the Government are unwilling to rely on market forces and indicates their lack of confidence in the measure.
Part 2 of the Bill tackles the issue of homelessness, to which other noble Lords have referred. The proposals seem to make sense, as far as they go, and I was pleased to see the inclusion of measures relating to young adults after they have left care, a matter to which the noble Earl referred in his remarks. However, the basic problem of where to house homeless people still remains.
Enforcement of standards of council housing occupation levels may do more than the Bill to house the homeless. But councils are being forced to produce strategies in all kinds of areas, and at times it is hard to imagine them being able to achieve anything in the face of the flood of consultations to which they have to respond, along with the strategies they have to prepare.
Perhaps I may turn briefly to the rural White Paper, which contained a section on affordable housing. I welcome the Government's recognition that there is a problem, but I should be glad of an assurance that they also recognise the problems faced by parish councils. It is quite common for parish councils to turn down planning requests for single large dwellings in villages on the grounds that three to four one or two-bedroom houses are more urgently needed and would be more appropriate. However, all too often their views are ignored at borough or district level and the planning restrictions overturned.
I have received reports of instances where both the parish council and the local planning department have recommended that planning permission should not be granted for a particular building, only to find that refusal overturned by councillors, most of whom are urban based. I know that on one occasion such a permission was granted by the casting vote of the planning chairman.
Another aspect to be borne in mind when considering rural development is that sites often comprise relatively small plots of land, to which the 25 per cent affordable housing rule does not apply. Will the Minister consider imposing a requirement to reduce the size of the plot to which the 25 per cent rule applies in rural areas and small villages? Paragraph 5.4.3. of the White Paper states that, currently, the derogation for villages comprising under 3,000 people is often not applied. If the Government target of 60 per cent of new ho using to be built on brownfield sites is to be met, I suggest that that should be made mandatory.
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When a developer uses a half-acre plot to construct a five-bedroom detached house with a triple garage, he often then houses no more than the number of people who otherwise would live in a two-bedroom terraced house, of which he might have been able to fit six on to the same plot. Those six houses might then have been used to retain in the countryside young couples who otherwise have to move to the towns. The houses could also be used to re-home elderly people who otherwise would occupy three or four-bedroom houses in the village.
Again, I refer to the White Paper. Under "Exception policy", paragraph 5.4.4. states:
"The exception applies to additional affordable housing made available only for local people in perpetuity. Local authorities who include an exception policy in their local plan can grant planning permission for small sites within or adjoining villages which would not otherwise be released for housing. Again we would like local authorities to make more use of the exception policy".
I hope that the Minister will refer to this when he responds.
Rural homelessness is often obscured by the fact that young people, in particular, go into towns looking for work and for somewhere to live, and to apply there for assistance. Similarly, old people left alone after the death, perhaps, of their spouse, will often move to town because their existing property is too big or too expensive and because there is nothing suitable for them locally. These are the very people who would use the village shop and the local pub and keep the heart and life in our rural communities.
I welcome the Bill with a slight cautiousness. Part 2 has much on which we can build but, as I have said, I have great reservations about some sections of Part 1.
9.9 p.m.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I intend to speak only to Part 1 of the Bill. I have no qualifications to speak on Part 2, but I have some qualifications to speak on Fart 1. Since I started practising at the Bar—which is now, I am afraid, a little over 40 years ago—property law has been a fairly substantial part of my practice. I served for two years, from 1998–1990, on the Law Commission's standing committee on conveyancing. Throughout the period of my practice delays in house buying have been a constant problem.
We have seen some improvements. These are mainly due to the extension of compulsory registration of title to the whole country. That has enormously simplified the investigation of a seller's title to the land. In the old days, the investigation of unregistered titles could take weeks. I remember acting in a case which concerned land belonging to a City livery company, where the main problem was that the title deeds had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London. It was a little difficult to find anyone who could swear to having seen the deeds before they were destroyed.
The main effect of registration of title is to shorten the interval between contract and completion. That can now, in effect, be as short as the parties want it to be. The continuing problem is the delay between agreeing a sale in principle and signing the contract.

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That was looked at very carefully and in great detail by the standing committee on conveyancing. We encouraged the Law Society's development of its transaction protocol, which provided for more information to be disclosed by sellers up front. Indeed, it amounts to something like a mini seller's pack. The use of the protocol has had a modest effect in speeding up house sales.
Speaking for myself, I would not object to a seller's pack containing information similar to that which is disclosable under the protocol being compulsory, although the enhanced use of information technology will mean that most of the relevant information will be accessed within a matter of minutes or even seconds. That is likely to start happening in two or three years.
I have three important reservations about Part 1. First, this is a minor, not a major, reform to the house-buying process and it cannot be expected to speed up house sales to any great extent. Secondly, remedies for failure to provide a seller's pack should be civil remedies, not criminal. Thirdly, I am afraid that I am not persuaded that the seller's pack should include a survey or, as described in the Bill, a home condition report.
Let me take each of these reservations in turn. First, the delay in producing the kind of information that would go into a seller's pack is not the main cause of delay in bringing house sales to a conclusion. The real causes of delay are the necessity to build up a chain of people willing to commit themselves to contracts for sale and purchase, and the delay in getting commitments from mortgage lenders.
Most buyers are also sellers and vice versa. Buyers do not want to buy a new house before they are certain that they can dispose of the old one because they cannot afford to hold two houses with the enormous interest costs involved in bridging finance. Equally, sellers do not want to sell their old house before buying a new one because they would then find themselves with nowhere to live and having to look for temporary rented accommodation.
There is a need to build up a chain and keep it together for long enough to get every member of the chain in a position to enter into a contract. That, frankly, can take weeks. There is no easy or obvious way around this problem, and this Bill certainly does not provide it.
The other main cause of delay is, as I have said, the delay in getting a commitment from lenders. These two problems are interlinked, because one of the reasons for delay in putting a chain together is the delay that some members of the chain may have in obtaining a mortgage commitment. Commitments by mortgage lenders could perhaps be speeded up, but again I do not think that the Bill is likely to do that.
I move on to my second reservation: the use of a criminal penalty. It is wholly inappropriate to enforce the obligations of the seller's pack through the criminal law. Criminal penalties would apply not only to estate agents—who could, I suppose, be expected to know the law—but to owners who market the
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property without using agents. They will be extremely worried by the possibility of acquiring a criminal record by failing to include the necessary information in the pack.
There is a simple and obvious method of enforcement which uses the civil law and not the criminal law; namely, to give any potential buyer, whether or not he or she becomes an actual buyer, the right to recover any costs reasonably incurred by him or her in obtaining information that should have been in the seller's pack but was not. That is the right way to proceed and I intend to table amendments to that effect if and when the Bill reaches Committee stage.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, there is the question of the inclusion of the home condition report or survey in the seller's pack. I strongly agree with the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Caithness. It can be argued that the inclusion of a survey in a pack could speed up the process. If a survey were produced as part of the seller's pack, it could be said that the need for the buyer to have a survey carried out will be eliminated. The buyer, it is said, will not have to wait for his or her own surveyor's report before signing the contract. It can be argued, secondly, that the inclusion of the survey in the pack will make the process cheaper because there will not be the problem of wasted surveys—that is, potential buyers pay for a survey but do not proceed because they are gazumped or because the survey is so alarming that they back out. The first of these arguments is only doubtfully true and the second is almost certainly untrue.
The seller's survey would speed up the selling process only if lenders were required or could be persuaded to accept the survey as a substitute for their own valuation. But there are real difficulties with this. First, the Bill as drafted requires the survey to deal only with the physical condition and energy efficiency of the property. It does not require the survey to include a valuation. Of course, to do so would increase the cost. But the valuation is exactly what the lenders need. I do not think that lenders can be required to accept the home condition report as a replacement for their own valuation. But the brief from the Council of Mortgage Lenders indicates that lenders are most unlikely voluntarily to accept the home condition report, at least as the whole basis of a valuation; it could at best be used as part of the process.
Therefore, the inclusion of a home condition report would have little effect on speeding up transactions. It could, however—and I believe that in all probability it would—increase the cost. At present, only some 30 per cent of buyers get a survey of any kind done. Most buyers simply rely on the mortgage valuation. That valuation does not tell them all that they would like to know, but at least it tells them that the property is not subject to defects so serious as to mean that it is not good security for the mortgage. As I have explained. lenders are likely to insist on a valuation. So if all sellers have to produce a survey and lenders insist on their own valuation, the cost of a house sale is likely to escalate sharply. I believe that that will involve forcing buyers who do not now require a survey, because they are prepared to take the risk, to pay a higher price for

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their houses through having ultimately to recompense the seller for the cost of having to produce the survey in the seller's pack.
I believe that there would be a greater cost because of the involvement of the lenders and their insistence on their own valuations, even if buyers who would now carry out their own surveys could be persuaded to rely on the seller's home condition report. That will certainly not happen unless the Bill makes it clear that a surveyor who prepares a home condition report will be liable to compensate any buyer for any negligent defects in the report. The Bill does not make that clear. General law suggests that a surveyor would not be liable to compensate a buyer unless the surveyor is preparing the report with a view to its use by a specific and identified prospective buyer. If the home condition report is to have any value to buyers the surveyor who prepares it must be liable to the buyer for any negligence in its preparation.
There are particular problems for sellers at the lower end of the market because survey costs are usually tapered so that a survey of a low-priced house costs more as a proportion of the value of the house than a survey of a high-priced house. I believe that a compulsory home condition report will increase and not reduce the cost of house sales. Frankly, it is no wonder that the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is solidly behind this Bill. It will get from it the biggest bonanza in its history.
Part 1 of the Bill will not do as it stands. It will do little to speed up the process of buying and selling houses and too much to increase the cost. It will impose criminal penalties where civil remedies are more appropriate. It is certainly not something that ought to be rushed through in the dying days of the present Parliament.
9.2 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, it is always a special pleasure for me to follow the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, for a number of reasons. His father was a notable professor. He also had a unique method of serving at tennis. He used the reverse side of his racquet. I do not know whether the noble Lord has inherited that method. I have never seen anyone else do it. In addition, when I was going through the most humiliating period of my life having been invalided out of the Army with no honour, the noble Lord's father and mother took pity on me and looked after me until I recovered. I am enormously grateful to him.
I am not going to deal with Part 1 of the Bill. I shall not detain the House for long. I have two reasons for speaking. For once and beyond question, I am coming out on the side of the Government. Most of the time I agree with them and vote for them. One has to make a contribution. Here I am 100 per cent behind the Government. It is a good show, and well done the Government.
I think of the lines by Macaulay about the great scholar, Warren Hastings. He said that there was a deep treasure of wisdom too often buried in the earth and paraded with inelegant and injudicious ostentation, but still massive, precious and splendid.
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I am not in touch with the homeless in the way that applies to the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and others. I am out of date among the homeless. I have visited prisons so often and one cannot do that without being aware that many prisoners were homeless before they went into prison; and will be homeless when they are released. So there is some connection. My knowledge of the homeless goes back 30 years.
I had the great honour of starting the New Horizon Youth Centre over 30 years ago. It was very small to begin with: there was just myself and a secretary. We had a corner of an office provided. When she was in the office I had to sit in the corridor, and vice versa. We started at the lowest level. Nevertheless. today there is a staff of 18. Last year the centre looked after at least 1,200 people with, as I say, a staff of 18 and a good many volunteers. When St Peter asks, "Did you do any good down there'?", I shall reply, "At least I started the New Horizon Youth Centre". I am keen on caring for the homeless.
What do we make of the Bill? The New Horizon Youth Centre warmly welcomes the Bill for many different reasons. It provides a new vision from the top which we hope will be conveyed through local authorities. The Bill is not perfect. I hope that there will be an opportunity to amend it to make sure that local authorities look after the homeless in the way that is required by the Bill. However, on the face of it, no one could want more. There is an instruction to local authorities to do a great deal more for the homeless than they have ever done before. I warmly welcome the Bill.
9.26 p.m.
Lord Bowness: My Lords, I shall address Part 1 of the Bill, not because I think Part 2 is unimportant but because I know that other of my noble friends have, or will, deal with those issues. In dealing with Part 1 of the Bill I must declare an interest as a practising solicitor who practises in the high street and therefore deals with conveyancing on, sometimes I think unfortunately, a daily basis.
Everyone would like to see home buying and selling, in the words of the Government's Explanatory Notes, made,
"faster, easier and more consumer-friendly".
That includes the practitioners. Everyone considers it a stressful experience which is ranked with divorce and bereavement. It is an important matter to address. But it is equally a dreadful oversimplification to suggest that the seller's pack and the proposals in the Bill will deal with the problem. I endorse entirely what the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said about the failings of those measures in that regard.
If anyone thinks my scepticism arises from a desire to see the conveyancing process take longer than is necessary to ensure a higher fee income, I remind noble Lords that the majority of domestic conveyancing these days is undertaken for a fixed fee before the papers are seen in detail in circumstances where it is extremely difficult to increase that fee even by

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agreement with the client. Therefore problems that arise fall not only at the purchaser's cost but also at the lawyer's cost.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to the survey that the Government undertook as part of the justification for these measures. I make two points in that regard. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, told your Lordships that our system was the slowest of, I think, the 10 countries surveyed. He did not tell your Lordships that it was also the cheapest of the 10. The much vaunted Scottish system, which is supposed to enable transactions to proceed more quickly, is often held up as an example, but 25 per cent of Scottish buyers go into temporary accommodation and 14 per cent have bridging loans. I cannot remember the last time that I acted for anyone who was willing or able to take up a bridging loan.
The majority of solicitors already use the voluntary system known as the transaction protocol which was introduced by the Law Society in 1990. Without going into too many details, this means that when the draft contract is submitted by the vendor—or the seller in the non-technical language that we are now all urged to use in these matters—the draft contract and details of title are accompanied by a schedule of fixtures and fittings and the seller's own replies to a whole series of inquiries which deal with such matters as fences, maintenance, alterations and planning. Leasehold properties have an additional questionnaire.
As my noble friend Lord Caithness said, in good practice that is already done in good time. When the client starts the process and advises his solicitor, the property information forms are given to the client to complete and the draft contract prepared so that it is ready to go out when an estate agent has found a suitable purchaser.
I endorse entirely the reservations expressed by other noble Lords against making a seller's pack compulsory backed by the sanctions of the criminal law and enforced by local authority trading standards. Essentially it is a private transaction, and the largest transaction that most people undertake at any time in their lives, and it is totally inappropriate that it should be a matter for criminal proceedings. That will have no practical or useful effect.
Like the transaction protocol, the pack will also include details of the title, registered or unregistered—a property information form similar to that which is already supplied. In addition to that information, searches are now to be included. In addition, the leasehold pack is to include the leasehold information forms, which we already have, and an appropriate search where necessary against the management company and details of insurance. In both instances, there is to be the home condition report and the home energy report.
I hope that the Government will think again about the requirement that a draft contract should be included. If they proceed with the scheme, perhaps they will consider a summary of terms. The draft contract should be prepared by the sellers' solicitors
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and the buyers advised upon it by their solicitors before there is any chance that they might sign it. With great respect to my noble friend Lord Caithness, it would be particularly inappropriate if the seller's pack were to be prepared by estate agents—I understand that they may be responsible—who, as my noble friend reminded this House, in some instances not only sell the property but also secure the mortgage for the purchaser.
The home condition report presents real difficulties. Noble Lords have referred to them. I shall not go into the details of its inadequacies and the matters that it does not cover. My noble friend Lord Caithness dealt with that issue at some length. But we should remember that the proposal is that the report is to be relied on by both sides, and the lender. In briefing to your Lordships, the Council of Mortgage Lenders has said that it does not propose to accept that.
I believe that the cost will be considerable, on the introduction of the scheme, if it comes about, and once the claims start to be made against the surveyors. The cost of a seller's pack arising from the project held in Bristol was some £652. That is fine in theory, but it begs the question as to where the seller is to find the money at the beginning of the transaction. Alternatively, is it suggested that we should have a little more pro bono work and that the professionals involved should wait for payment at the end of the transaction and do the work on credit?
The inclusion of the searches in the home condition report make the proposals for the seller's pack significantly different from the practice followed by the vast majority of solicitors at present. But what difference will that make? Will the buyer rely on that home condition survey? He may have his own surveyor. He may object to the surveyor for the home condition report. He would be well advised to have a structural building survey in any event which will not be covered by this report.
We need to ask whether the issues addressed by the pack are those matters which cause the delay between the making of the offer and the signing of the contract. The seller's pack will still have to be examined by the buyer's solicitors before the buyer commits himself or herself. It is proposed that the pack can be prepared by anyone, including a layman—although it might be helpful if the lawyers were involved at an early stage. It is apparently unlikely that the Government will impose any serious conditions upon the quality of the pack. It has already been stated that we do not know what the lifespan of the pack will be. Will the surveyor's report last for six months? There are no proposals about that. If there is to be a cut-off date, will the sellers incur another cost when they have not sold their property? Those are real questions for real people when they come to sell their real home and not a matter of academic debate.
The factors that cause delays arise after the submission of the documents. I shall give the House a random selection of problems that have arisen when the documents are examined between the making of an offer and the exchange of contracts. No doubt they are

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dreadfully boring compared with a glossy seller's pack with an agent's logo and an advert for insurance on the front.
Delays can be caused by the need to establish whether a road is to be adopted where, according to the planning consent, there is to be a bond under the Highways Act, but neither the developer nor the local authority has entered into it. A property with registered title may have no easements for the drains or the water. A prospective purchaser may choose to change his mortgagee—or his lender, as we must call them—because he prefers a different mortgage product. Problems can also be caused by one purchaser in the chain being unable to get a mortgage product. There are a host of conditions set out in the Council of Mortgage Lenders' handbook, any deviation from which has to be referred to the lender. Most lenders now operate through call centres without legally qualified people on the end of the telephone and you cannot speak to the same person two days in a row. It is not uncommon to find a defective lease for leasehold properties and deeds of variation may be needed from the management company and the landlord. There is to be no obligation in the seller's pack to point out such defects. It is clearly stated that the principle of "buyer beware" will continue to prevail.
I shall return briefly to the pilot scheme. It is already out of date. It did not include an environmental search in the cost, although that is now considered to be good practice in many areas of the country. That will mean additional costs and additional time. Given the experience of the pilot scheme, hopes for a faster, friendlier conveyancing process are ill founded.
The scheme was restricted to properties in the city of Bristol. In most instances, it involved only one property out of the two in the usual sale and purchase arrangement. There were 250 packs on offer, for which the Government had paid the legal costs and disbursements. Six firms of surveyors, seven solicitors and two licensed conveyancers were involved, together with 13 estate agents. At the time the property market in Bristol was buoyant. Most purchasers did not bother with the packs. Estate agents used them to move the properties that they were finding difficult to sell.
Surveyors and solicitors were given targets of five and 10 days to carry out their tasks. Special arrangements were made by the lenders to deliver the deeds and only two lenders, both local to the area, participated in the scheme. Bristol City Council agreed to accept applications for searches by fax. The Minister's department had paid the fees in advance and encouraged them all to be returned in three days. Those circumstances will not be replicated across the country.
A national scheme would also result in a shortage of surveyors. I am advised—no doubt the Minister will tell me if I am wrong—that that is to be overcome by a scheme of accreditation, which will take 12 weeks. Would you buy a house that had been surveyed by somebody who had undergone a 12-week test to
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produce the report on which you were to place all your savings? I think that a very considerable number of people will require their own survey from a proper surveyor. In the pilot scheme, even the two local lenders insisted on dealing with their own valuation.
Delays arise from the difficulties that I have referred to and because, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said, there is a chain. People want to coincide their sale and purchase. They want to have their mortgage in place before they commit themselves. If they are properly advised, they will not be allowed to commit themselves until all the conditions attaching to their mortgage are complied with. They will definitely continue to tie in the purchase with the sale because it is too expensive and impractical to revert to the old practice of staggering the process and borrowing money in order to complete one stage before the other.
I may well be criticised by the Minister for being resistant to change. I submit that the legal profession has undergone enormous change, not least in the property-selling field. I should welcome faster, cheaper and easier processes but I do not welcome processes that add to purchasers' costs or that introduce criminality into this private transaction. What the processes seek to achieve is misguided and misplaced and will not make the system faster and easier, as the Government propose.
9.40 p.m.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton: My Lords, I have informed my noble friends on the Front Bench that I, too, am critical of Part 1 of the Bill. I shall explain why in some detail. Before doing so, I give credit to the Government for introducing the Bill, for being prepared to tackle the problem of homelessness and for making an attempt—I believe that it is not the right approach—to regularise home ownership and the housing markets.
Some years ago, the then Secretary of State for the Environment, Tony Crosland, described housing policy as "whimsical". Its capriciousness remains to this day. I sought to establish whether some of the problems in the housing market that make it so capricious would be solved by the Bill. As the Minister said, Part 1 will help the 1.5 million individuals and families who buy and sell homes each year and speed up the process, which is currently the slowest in Europe. I am not too worried about the speed of the process but I am much more worried about its uncertainty. I am prepared to wait in order to know that there will not be a series of problems along the way and that the process will not fail to be completed.
The Minister reported that 40 per cent of people are dissatisfied with the current process and he referred to the half a million transactions each year that fail. There is no doubt that gazumping thrives and that 28 per cent of transactions fail after terms have been informally agreed. The Minister and other noble Lords referred to the uncertainty and stress that that causes and to the abortive costs that can run into many hundreds or, in some cases, thousands of pounds. Change was obviously necessary. I am not certain that Part 1 meets that need.

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There is a need for greater transparency in the process. The seller's pack goes some way towards dealing with that problem. I therefore do not oppose the proposal as such because it will help the seller to decide on a realistic asking price and it will assist the prospective buyer to make a well-informed offer. From my own recent experience, the provision of a seller's pack alone will not resolve the many problems faced by sellers and purchasers. I have experienced problems in both capacities.
As the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, transactions will still fail. The proposal will not stop buyers from pulling out at the last moment—that has happened to me four times—the process will not necessarily be speeded up, and gazumping will not be eliminated.
I turn, as other noble Lords have done, to the question of the home condition surveyor's report. A property may look all right and one might think, "Okay, I can manage—perhaps—with a home condition surveyor's report". However, sometimes when one sees a property one thinks, "I am not sure about this property", and one chooses—I suspect that this happens in the majority of cases—to have a full structural survey report. I have done that on two occasions. We must be confident that what we are buying and spending this enormous amount of money on is going to satisfy our needs for a long period of time. We do not suddenly want the roof to fall in and be faced with large bills. I am absolutely convinced that a home condition survey report will not suffice for many properties, particularly old ones.
I would not accuse any seller of deliberately being dishonest about the flaws in their property or any estate agent—I look with respect to the noble Earl, Lord Caithness—of overselling the virtues of a property. But I am drawn to the adage that "he that pays the piper calls the tune"; and in this instance the piper is the seller. I am also drawn to the Explanatory Notes which make it plain that it is not intended that the Bill should alter the principle of caveat emptor—let the buyer beware. So I am worried about that aspect of the Bill.
In the statement from the Council of Mortgage Lenders, of which we all received a copy, it was said that there would be a need for the lender to retain the right to appraise the property. I should like to know how much negotiation took place with building societies to make sure that they are satisfied with the use of a seller's survey pack. Perhaps the Minister can tell us.
My noble friend also referred—I mention this in passing—to the fact that buildings societies would be asked to provide early mortgages and that offers can be obtained before a property is found. That is true. Offers can be made on the amount of salary one earns. But the lender will not issue that mortgage until after it has done the survey. So although we might think we have a mortgage offer, at the end of the process we may suddenly discover that that is not so. That aspect therefore is not as simple as was expressed.
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Another problem singled out by the Government, quite rightly, as being one of the most traumatic experiences in the house buying process is gazumping. In another place the Minister quoted anecdotal evidence of the heartaches, frustrations and financial loss suffered due to that practice, to which I can again testify from experience. It usually occurs when house prices are rising, and mainly in the South East. But it can happen anywhere. To the people involved it is not merely anecdotal but a real disheartening and costly experience.
That is why I am surprised by the Government's position as set out in the 1998 consultation paper. They stated that,
"these problems are rare. They average fewer than one in 50 transactions".
But using the Government's own figures, that could involve 20,000 people a year. For those 20,000 people it is a really serious problem. Therefore I do not consider gazumping to be a rarity. We will only abolish the pain of gazumping when legislation is introduced that makes acceptance of an offer to purchase a property a legal contract. Some reference was made to the Scottish system, which I know contains considerable flaws. Nevertheless, I should have liked to see an examination of that system to see whether or not those flaws could be ironed out. It certainly provides a level of security for both the purchaser and the seller.
Another cause of great distress is the buyer or the seller pulling out, particularly almost at the point of exchange of contracts. I understand the half-hour process in respect of contracts in a chain, and in one instance it happened to me literally half an hour before I was due to sign my contract. That was after I had waited three months for the purchaser to obtain his mortgage. I can assure your Lordships that that was an extremely distressing experience. At that point I wrote to my right honourable friend Nick Raynsford to ask whether the Homes Bill would do something about that situation. He replied,
"Our proposals will not prevent buyers pulling out at the last moment".
It is a great pity that this Bill does not do something to cover that.
It may well be that the Law Society's transaction scheme; the proposed national land information service; the seller's pack with its information upfront, and, ultimately, electronic conveyancing may marginally reduce the time between oral agreement and exchange of contracts. However, it will not take away the disappointments of withdrawals; just perhaps make them happen a little sooner.
Other noble Lords referred to the Bristol pilot. I understand that the take-up of the packs was far from universal, despite the fact that all the cost was paid by the Government. One-third of the buyers insisted on undertaking their own surveys. The Bristol pilot must be questioned for two reasons: first, it had no control group; and, secondly, by any definition it was a narrow piece of research. In his opening remarks the Minister referred to other consultations which have taken place.

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I should like to hear more about such consultations which would reassure me that the legislation was not solely based on the Bristol pilot. From the debate in the other place, it has been made clear that what might have been successful in Bristol may not be so in Brighton or Bradford, particularly not in areas of low-cost housing.
Perhaps I may ask a question on a point mentioned by other noble Lords. I refer to the fact that money has to be produced upfront for the seller's pack. Is it not a deterrent to people who might want to sell their property if they cannot afford the seller's pack? Are there any exceptions in order to enable and help people who might want to sell a property?
On behalf of all people like myself who have had bad experiences in the buying and selling of property, I believe that an opportunity has been missed to overcome many of the problems which we have faced and which others will continue to face in future irrespective of this legislation. Before leaving the question of the seller's pack, perhaps I may ask the Minister two practical questions on who the seller's pack will apply to. First, does the Bill exempt newly-built or converted properties from the home conditions report aspect of the seller's pack? Secondly, will buyers exercising their rights under the "right to buy" legislation receive a seller's pack from the vendor; than. is the local authority?
Having been negative about the first part of the Bill, I now wish to welcome warmly and endorse the Government's proposals in Part 2. I believe that my noble friend is correct when he states that the Bill will help to reduce homelessness and ensure a more appropriate provision of housing to homeless families. Other noble Lords applauded the repeal of Section 194 of the Housing Act 1996 which restricted local authorities from using their own housing stock as temporary accommodation, and Section 197, which limited a local authority's duty if it considered other suitable accommodation to be available in the area.
The noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, said that an amendment would be needed to the Bill. As a principle, I believe that the Bill is an immense step forward. More choice will be given to homeless people by allowing them to have a reasonable time to choose their permanent accommodation. That gives the homeless the same rights as others on the housing list. Fairness and a level playing field are essential in the access to and allocation of social housing.
The eighties and early nineties were years when homelessness increased. Many people at risk were denied access to priority housing. The causes of homelessness are diverse. There is no one reason for people becoming homeless. I am particularly concerned about the growing incidence of homelessness among women. It is clear that women face distinctive problems which increase their vulnerability to homelessness. Their weak financial position, for instance, puts them at a disadvantage in the housing market. Domestic violence is the most common reason for women in their thirties becoming homeless.
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Not often realised is the fact that domestic violence is a common reason for homelessness among women of pensionable age. That is why we tend to see more older women sleeping on the streets. Women's Aid reports growing numbers of women seeking assistance. Shelter reported that in 1997 more than 36,000 women sought its help and that figure is growing, particularly among young women. The number of women admitted to Shelter projects rose from 25 per cent in 1987 to 44 per cent in 1997. It is particularly disturbing that 66 per cent of the young homeless experienced physical, sexual or emotional abuse and in some cases all three.
As other noble Lords have said, the Government are right to extend those in priority need to include young adults, the 16 to 17 year-olds, the 18 to 20 year-olds, care leavers and also those fleeing from domestic violence and from racial violence. Those at-risk groups were not only neglected in the past but In some instances they were punished for being vulnerable.
However, the Government have also recognised that increased obligations and extra duties will entail extra costs. I hope that the Minister can reassure the House that local authorities will be given the necessary resources to carry out this crucial work, particularly in areas where there is great housing need.
Finally, in supporting the proposal that local authorities have to undertake regular reviews and to publish a homelessness strategy, can we be assured that these strategies will be transparent and available to the public, which is not at present the case in many areas? I was delighted to hear the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talk about Leeds, which is my home town, and the progress that is being made there. Can authorities be urged to ensure that free advice and information about the right to housing is as widely available as possible? That is not always the case.
The Opposition in the other place rejected this legislation, particularly the extra help to groups at risk, on the spurious ground that it would increase queue jumping. For too many years the treatment of homeless people was characterised by the ethos and values of the Poor Law. It is time that some of the damaging myths and stereotypes about homeless people were removed. I believe that this legislation goes a long way towards that goal. As has also been said, it is greatly welcomed by groups working in the field. The Government deserve commendation and approval for introducing Part 2 and I hope that the Bill receives the support of the House and is enacted with speed.
9.58 p.m.
Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I hope that the Minister will be pleased to hear that I shall give him some small respite and shall not trespass on the Government's mounting grief over Part 1 of the Bill. I shall immediately declare an interest as a member of a local authority.
There appears to be general acceptance that, in broad terms, the provisions in Part 2 are welcome. Indeed, the good intentions are welcome. However,

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some practical issues need to be taken into account, not least the capacity of local authorities to absorb the impact of the proposals. Sadly, national strategies do not always reflect the nuances of local areas—in this case, those must be housing pressures.
The impact of homelessness across the country varies from those authorities where there is sufficient vacant housing to those such as the London authorities where housing both in the statutory and affordable private sectors in relation to the number of people requiring it is a scarce resource. The housing waiting list has long ceased to have any meaning in that there are thousands of people who have registered hopefully but have come to realise that they have no real expectations of those hopes being fulfilled. This has been a debilitating factor both for them and the authority which has had to maintain it. I do not believe that the removal of the requirement to keep such a register will be mourned, for the reality is that, by and large, it is those who are in priority need under the current legislation who have absorbed the totality of accommodation that is available from all sources.
Those in priority need, particularly the homeless, have been a large percentage of those housed, and the additional priority categories that are added by the Bill—the young leaving care, the young homeless, former prisoners and those at threat of violence—simply mean that to maintain a register of any other than those in the priority categories becomes self-defeating.
The amount of accommodation that is available to London local authorities from all sources is nothing like sufficient for their needs now, so it is logical and sensible that they should have the ability to take a flexible approach and that there should be co-operation between those which are subject to pressure and those which have accommodation to spare, particularly if those are areas in which people with aspirations to live in London are willing to settle as an alternative. Such flexibility will help, but as most people who are homeless in London want to be in London that relief may be only marginal.
One of the major expectations in the Bill is that those who have been assessed for priority need, as well as those who are accepted as such, will be provided with temporary accommodation, not for a maximum period of two years as at present but until permanent accommodation is provided by the local authority. In the authority of which I am a member there are currently 930 households in that position. At best, about 500 to 600 households in total, including some from the current waiting list, are able to be housed annually. Often it is fewer than that. It is not unfair to say that in London there is a crisis over temporary accommodation. Any such accommodation is limited. Many boroughs such as mine have limited amounts of short-life property, as it has now been rebuilt or improved for permanent housing, and many households must still be placed unsatisfactorily in commercial hotels. The situation in relation to permanent housing is nearly as bad.
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Permanent housing in London is in short supply and, even with the involvement of all other registered social landlords, the need cannot be met. Even with the extra money now being provided to enable the payment of a higher level of housing benefit in central London in particular, the costs of temporary accommodation run into millions of pounds. In my borough alone, the overrun on expenditure that is being borne by the council taxpayer now approaches £4 million annually. This is not helped by the fact that only 90 per cent of housing benefit is reimbursed. It is not hard to see that the provisions of this Bill will, therefore, exacerbate the financial difficulties. I very much endorse the observations of the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, about ensuring that if these provisions are enacted adequate resources are made available to local authorities to deal with this increasingly difficult problem.
It is odd that, as the Bill is drafted, there is no requirement for housing associations to help with the provision of either temporary or permanent housing within a local authority's housing priorities. I appreciate the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, who is not in her place at the moment, about the involvement of the Housing Corporation in the whole of the Bill. It is true that some housing associations adopt their own priorities. But these may or may not accord with the local strategy of their local authority. I hope this area will receive further consideration in Committee, if indeed we ever reach such a stage.
Even with a requirement for housing associations to be involved—I fully accept that registered social landlords are mentioned, but housing associations are so fundamentally important to this matter—the implications that all those accepted as homeless have the right to a choice of where they wish to live is an expectation that may be hard to satisfy.
I recognise that in this respect London may be exceptional, but a requirement in legislation will, ultimately, be a requirement in law. London authorities will struggle to meet the burdens placed upon them as designated in the Bill. No one doubts the good intentions behind the Bill. It is right and proper that local authorities should help young people leaving their care into self-sufficiency, and, as any good parent would want, to see that they are properly housed. There are far too many young and vulnerable people sleeping on our streets. It must be of concern when people are threatened with violence and have to leave their homes because of it. At the very least, it is proper that they should be able to seek and receive practical advice and help.
I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that there is variability in the value of the advice that is given by local authorities, but the constraints and limitations to the provision of accommodation of their choice for each and every person deemed to be in priority is, in London, a particularly tall order. To achieve the aspirations contained in these provisions will require a very flexible approach, probably even more flexible than the Minister at this stage appreciates.

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The construction of a homeless strategy can be part only of a more general policy on housing and the use of housing resources. Increasingly, local authorities are becoming the conductor of the orchestra rather than the main players as statutory housing moves from local authority control to housing associations, co-operatives and tenants' management organisations—as a result also of voluntary transfer. Therefore, the responsibility is beginning to lie elsewhere. A housing strategy rather than just a homeless strategy would reflect the totality of the policies of all these bodies. I hope that this part of the Bill will be amended to reflect that situation.
There are concerns about the proposals in this part of the Bill. Although I recognise that good practice dictates that there should be co-operation between all agencies to prevent homelessness, most local authorities of any standard and stature have been carrying out that co-operation. To have this issue underlined by legislation will, for some, just gild the lily that is already there, although I appreciate that for others it might be a sharp shake in the right direction.
The authority which I have the honour to represent has been selected as a pilot for the lettings test. It is already a beacon council for looking after care leavers from the age of 16, and the housing and subsequent care that are provided. I do not boast, I am just proud that somewhere along the line there is a local authority that is acting properly.
While there is much good in this part of the Bill, there are areas over which caution needs to be exercised and an understanding that matters are different in one part of the country from another.
10.9 p.m.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I must declare an interest. As a solicitor, I have been directly involved in conveyancing over as many years as my noble friend Lord Goodhart. Although I ceased some years ago to do the nuts and bolts of conveyancing, I am still very close to it and will therefore confine my remarks to Part 1 of the Bill. I shall try not to repeat ground that has already been well covered.
The points made by my noble friend Lord Goodhart and others as to the criminalisation aspects of the Bill are wholly well founded. It is wrong in principle in a measure of this kind to contemplate criminal action. I am inclined to think that it is wrong in principle to try to force a method of proceeding in a contract of this nature, privately entered into between citizens. I do not think that the criteria by which the state should intervene in private transactions are satisfied in this case.
Perhaps I may make a few points on Part 1 of the Bill. I agree wholeheartedly with what the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, said very much from the coalface of conveyancing. I do not think that the speed of transactions will overall be much affected if the measure is carried into force as drafted. It may increase speed at the onset, although I am bound to say that these days any party to a conveyance needing swift
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action will make sure that its solicitors are into the fray well before the 14 day period provided for in the Bill for the supply of the necessary information.
The chain is the problem. It is the absolute blocker on any attempt and wish on the part of both parties to a transaction to get through it quickly. The majority of transactions are part of a chain—quite often of two or three separate transactions. Chains do not merely affect buyers. They affect sellers in a different way. Sellers will put their house on the market, having, as they thought, secured the house to which they want to go. They will not enter into a contract, as their solicitor will advise them, until they have a contract to sell. Then, hey presto, they are disappointed up the line.
The difficulties of speed are insuperable unless one adopts a Scottish system or something like it. I believe that the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, on that are conclusive against it.
There are other causes for the failure of transactions besides that of the chain. There are issues of financing; there are issues of changed circumstances on the part of either of the parties, the health of the parties or the family circumstances of the parties. There are 101 reasons, which those of us who have been in this world know all too often rear their ugly heads and abort a transaction.
Perhaps I may say a few words about the cost. A great deal of the Government's justification for the Bill rests on two statistics which the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, gave in opening the debate. First, he said that the cost of aborted sales in a year was in excess of £300 million. Reference was also made to the 28 per cent of transactions—the noble Lord expressed himself aghast—which failed between acceptance of a deal subject to contract and exchange of contracts. One needs to know two things about that latter statistic. The vast majority of those failures are because of failures in the chain up the line or down the line. Only a small proportion of them are for what one might call dishonourable reasons—people finding a property they prefer, if they are buyers, or gazumping on the part of sellers. The figure of 28 per cent should be seen in that light.
I turn to the cost figure of £300 million-plus. I believe that the increased overheads which will attend all conveyancing transactions if the Bill becomes law will make that figure look rather modest. We are talking about a seller's pack, which, roughly estimated, will be £600 of work, mainly on the part of the surveyor but also on the part of the solicitor, plus the local search fee of £100 plus, as it is in most places now. In a high proportion of cases those overheads will be wholly or partly wasted. My noble friend Lord Goodhart referred to the fact that only 30 per cent of conveyances today are with the benefit of the survey that will be a compulsory part of every conveyance in the future. He gave the reason for that: the majority of purchasers are willing to rely on the much cheaper and obviously less comprehensive mortgage survey.
However, many other circumstances arise where people do not go to the expense and trouble of securing a full survey. If they are taking on a property with a

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view to rebuilding or substantially reconditioning it, they will not worry about a survey. My own first two purchases were completed without the benefit of full surveys. On the first, I asked a friend who was a surveyor to walk around and take a look. I was content to rely on that. On the second, I secured only a basic, cheap survey because I thought that I knew what I was doing. Thank goodness, I did. From now on, however, in every case the "full works" will need to be undertaken—at vast expense.
We need to bear in mind the point that the overheads of both the seller and the buyer ultimately will be reflected in an increase in the cost of the property. There is no way around that. It will work its way through in a very short space of time. Even if we calculate additional overheads of only £200 per transaction, given that we see around 2 million conveyances per year, that will be £400 million in extra overheads. The figure of 28 per cent aborted sales comprising dishonourable conduct which the Government are seeking to check will form only a tiny fraction of the final figure.
I should like to comment on what I believe is the wholly unfair one-sidedness of this legislation. It puts all the burden, all the expense and all the criminality on to the seller. I do not see how that could be conceived as a balanced piece of legislation. In responding to that point, Nick Raynsford, the Minister for Housing and Planning, wrote to Charles Clarke, who in turn had sent him a letter from Standley Bushell, President of the Norfolk and Norwich Incorporated Law Society. This was one of the points raised by the society. The reply from the Minister was as follows:
"We are not imposing legal obligations on buyers, but we do consider that it is important that buyers are well prepared before starting on the home buying process, and would encourage buyers to obtain an In-principle' mortgage offer before making an offer on a property"—
as if, in any event, an "in principle" mortgage offer would be sufficient for the purposes of entering into a contract. The Minister went on by stating:
"We anticipate that the new system will put pressure on buyers to come to the market prepared".
How will this put pressure on the buyer? I should be grateful if the noble Lord, when he responds to the debate, could answer that point. That explanation will be the only justification for passing into law this one-sided piece of legislation.
I believe that it will have precisely the reverse effect. Rather than put pressure on a buyer, it will place a lever into the hands of an unscrupulous buyer that will be used unfairly. If someone has already invested £600 on the seller's pack, the buyer can then string out the process for as long as possible. In a flat market or a buyer's market, that could well lead to a situation where the buyer will be able to go back to the vendor and say, "I can no longer afford the price I agreed in principle some three months ago. By the way, I need a new search and the survey is out of date. I'm afraid that all I can offer is the asking price minus x".
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Consider the situation where old-age pensioners put their only asset—their home—on to the market. Pensioners may have to deal with unscrupulous commercial landlords—such people are still about—who will be looking out for such vulnerable people. They will make play with this unbalanced and one-sided set of rules. I urge the Government to contemplate that.
If the Government response is that I should not worry because a defence is allowed against the offence of failing to provide a seller's pack under Clause 3 of the Bill, I have to say that that is no defence at all. It will be completely useless as a protection for someone caught in this position. Clause 6(3)(a) states that it is a defence for a person refusing to supply a pack to say that he or she thought that the person asking for it,
"was unlikely to have sufficient means to buy the property in question".
You are not going to know that until some way down the line.
If someone comes to you, saying, "I want a pack", will it be sufficient for an interrogation then to occur between the would-be seller and the would-be buyer to ascertain whether the would-be buyer is "likely to have sufficient means" to buy the property? I do not think so. It is not a defence. It does not add up to anything worth having for a seller put into the position that he or she could be placed under this one-sided arrangement. This penalises sellers severely and unfairly, and to no purpose.
Quite apart from the point I have just made, there will be many circumstances where, for good reason, a seller withdraws a property from the market. Under the law, he or she has to provide this expensive pack even though no one is prejudiced by the withdrawal of the property from the market—that is say, no buyer has committed himself to expenditure. In those circumstances, as I said, a real harshness and unfairness will be imposed on the seller.
As I mentioned earlier, there are many circumstances in which such a situation could arise—family changes, a child coming home, a divorce, a pregnancy, illness, a loss of a job, a business that has gone downhill. It could merely be that the property has been on the market for six months, has gone stale, and the agent has said to take it off the market. In such circumstances, the seller will have wasted all this money and will have to get a new survey and a new set of searches when the property is put back on the market.
For all these reasons, and the reasons mentioned by other noble Lords, I believe that Part 1 needs substantial review. The trial in Bristol was not adequate. In any event, the framework provided is altogether too insensitive to cope with the myriad differences and variations which attend conveyances in this country. Frankly, unless the Bill seriously improves the conveyancing process overall, it is not worth having as regards Part 1. I say that while recognising that other parts of the Bill are of great utility. For those reasons, I hope that the Government will think hard about this matter.
10.22 p.m.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, during the lifetime of the previous government we were accustomed to hearing a great deal of criticism from the then official opposition of the government's housing policy and the great gaps in it. I congratulate the Minister for bringing this measure to the House but, like others, I wish that we had seen it a good deal earlier. No doubt the imminence of the end of the parliamentary term concentrates the mind somewhat. These measures are rather late but, conversely, the seller's packs—I agree with nearly everything that has been said about them—come at the wrong time and inadequately.
I should declare an interest as a solicitor and a partner in a practice in London. I should like to declare more of an interest than perhaps technically I have to as a member of the Greater London Authority, where we do not have the power to provide housing but we do have a huge policy concern. I certainly have an interest in that capacity in the more normal sense of the word.
We have waited in vain for support to arrive for these seller's packs. There was perhaps some from the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, but her support could not be said to be a great deal more than lukewarm, if I can put it that way. Not to put too fine a point on it, speaking for all of us on these Benches, I, too, believe that Part 1 should be deleted from the Bill.
As we have heard, there has been a very limited pilot, which was not a true test because the Government paid for it. There is provision for the creation of a criminal offence when we have heard so often that the Government will not create new criminal offences lightly, with resource implications for its enforcement. I expected the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, to refer to that when she was talking generally about the resource implications of the Bill. There are also resource implications there for local authorities.
It should not be forgotten that properties can change hands for £10,000, £25,000 or £50,000. The cost of these proposals for low-cost properties would be disproportionate or even unaffordable. A third problem is the chain, and I do not believe that that can be addressed through this measure.
A fundamental issue is the acceptability of the condition survey to lenders. I was surprised to hear that only some 30 per cent of purchasers arrange for their own surveys to be carried out. It is ironic. This problem is the opposite of what I had perceived as the current problem; namely, that a lender's valuation is often inadequate for the purchaser. The question of liability surrounds all of this.
We need to examine ways of improving the speed and certainty of conveyancing. I hope that that need can be met very soon by technological advances. The noble Baroness, Lady Byford, referred to the Internet. I believe that there will be a far wider application of Internet technology, as my noble friend Lord Goodhart mentioned, than simply to sales. I hoped to have read before this debate the paper that has come from the Lord Chancellor's Department on electronic
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conveyancing; but unhappily, the Printed Paper Office did not seem to know about it, even though it was explained that it was in response to a Question from the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, and its publication was announced. Progress must lie in the world of technology, which is moving ahead so fast. The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, referred to this, as he did to the dangers of the seller's pack including a form of contract. Having had unfortunate experiences in this area, my observation is that some estate agents have difficulty in working out who their client is. They may well be too tempted to push a particular form of contract much too hard.
My noble friend Lord Goodhart and the noble Lord, Lord Bowness—indeed every speaker—gave what amounts to a devastating critique of this proposal from many different perspectives. On these Benches we would support whatever assists consumers, both buyers and sellers. But in our view the seller's pack will not increase either speed or certainty.
Those of us who have criticisms of Part 1 of the Bill must seem to be a self-centred, whingeing bunch to those who we hope will benefit from Part 2. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, spoke powerfully about the effects of homelessness, as he always does. My noble friend Lady Maddock and others spoke about the need not merely for a homelessness strategy but for housing strategies. A report on the subject was published recently by the Association of London Government. It is worth quoting from the introduction to the report which expresses rather well the position on what should be—although I hate the term—joined-up policy making. It says:
"Achieving both sufficient housing to meet demand and balanced communities and sustainable development is the key challenge for London. Quality is as important as quantity. Minimising social polarisation and social exclusion must be a key policy objective. Increasing choice for all households is also critical. This requires an integration of housing. planning and broader social policy and corporate and inter-agency implementation of policy initiatives".
Strategists increasingly demand partnerships—particularly, partnerships between local authorities and housing associations. We support further proposals for housing associations to assist local authorities to meet housing need. The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, whom I should never describe as an "anorak", made some interesting comments about the interaction of the two sectors.
All local authorities need the tools and mechanisms as well as the policies. We need affordable housing not just for those who cannot afford any housing at all but afforded in the right place to those who until quite recently one would have regarded as having a reasonable middle-sized income. There are other measures such as mortgage rescue packages.
While welcoming the proposals for a strategy, given the caveat that I have mentioned, I wonder if we are not still in a little danger of compartmentalising what local authorities need to do. It is not very long ago that Parliament passed the Local Government Act 2000 providing for every local authority to have the duty to prepare a strategy for promoting or improving the economic, social and environmental well-being of

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their area. Housing is absolutely fundamental to that. For those who are in non-priority need—I find that almost a contradiction in terms—a duty rather than a power would be the ideal, but it is welcome.
I recently came across a reference in a report to two London boroughs which looked at how single homeless people were treated. In one borough a single woman fleeing domestic violence was told that she could not be seen unless she showed her passport. In another she was referred to the council tax office. I am told that others approaching London boroughs receive similarly unhelpful advice.
The comments go on to say,
"Despite this evidence, we are aware that some London boroughs do provide a decent level of service for single people, despite significant pressures on their services. This suggests that poor service is not just about levels of demand".
I was also struck by the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, about people being punished for being vulnerable. Why should a victim of violence be the one to lose his or her home? We support these proposals although we want to see improvements on matters such as the period for an applicant to consider an offer and so on.
Finally, there is the question of allocations. I am guilty of being one of those whom the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, referred to as not perhaps being adequately optimistic or understanding. At first I thought that it was unrealistic to talk about giving a choice when there is no selection. It is right to continue to make that an aspiration. Choice is about dignity and not categorising people for whom the services are provided as being in any way second class.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred to benefit delays. It is important and a real problem from many angles including deterring landlords from making property available in the private sector in the first place. He also spoke about the variable quality of advice. I have a great sense of déjà vu since we seemed to debate that during the passage of the last major housing Bill. It is hugely important. The assessment of need and tailoring advice and assistance is an enormous element in preventing homelessness and ultimately preventing rooflessness.
Part 2 of the Bill is part of the jigsaw for providing decent homes which we on these Benches regard as a basic human right. We wish that part of the Bill perhaps not quite a fair wind. I would like to see it picked up by a tornado and whirled into port. I hope that that same tornado will sink Part 1.
10.34 p.m.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, only yesterday the noble Lord the Chief Whip persuaded us that today was the final Wednesday of the Session. If his remarks have any validity at all, this debate takes place in somewhat unusual circumstances. The future progress of the Bill—if it is to make any at all—will be subject to many conventions which I have tried to explore but with little success. As regards the kind of procedures which the Chief Whip may have envisaged, it appears
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that anything might be possible, but, at the same time, nothing could be possible. We shall have to deal with that situation if it arises. However, in the back of our minds we must all bear in mind the fact that the Bill might have to make regular progress.
There has been remarkable consensus on all sides of the House that the Bill comprises good and bad elements. That is not unusual. Oppositions instinctively tend to find fault with legislation. However, two parts of the Bill are welcome. One has to welcome anyone who is brave enough to venture into the free market of the housing market with the idea of simplifying it, speeding it up and improving it. It is a rash attempt. If the Government have listened to the comments made tonight, they must now realise the rashness of their actions.
However, Part 2 has been generally welcomed. I add my voice to that welcome. In parts of the country homelessness constitutes a deep, chronic and worrying sore on the whole of society which everyone feels. It is, of course, particularly acute in a metropolis such as London. All the policies in the world will not solve that problem because invariably—this will be the case for as long as I can foresee—there is a shortage of available housing in London. The demand outruns supply and that, of itself, is a problem.
My noble friend Lady Byford made the same point with regard to rural areas. These problems are difficult to tackle if there is a shortage of resource. However willing local authority staff may be to aid the homeless, it is difficult when they know that the physical resource is not available. I recognise that local authority staff—we heard from my noble friend Lady Hanham many of the implications of the measure—must feel deeply frustrated when they wish to help people but are unable to do so for the perfectly sound reason of a lack of physical resource. I am sure that that is part of the reason why occasionally people are given a less than satisfactory response. However, Part 2 of the Bill may be capable of being adapted.
Part 1 of the Bill concerns the aspect of the housing world with which I am more familiar. However, I certainly have no interests to declare as a lawyer or an estate agent or anything else, which, for once, is a great relief to me. It seems to me that as regards Part I the Government have set up a target at which they have aimed but they have proved to be rather a bad shot. They seem to have missed what they seek to achieve.
One of the reasons for Part 1 of the Bill was that gazumping and gazundering were again becoming prevalent in the housing market. As we have heard from noble Lords around the Chamber, the Bill does not tackle that issue. In my judgment the Bill does nothing to shorten the procedure for making a housing transaction. Although if all goes well, the documentation is agreed and everyone acts with sweetness and light, the time for two parties to come to an agreement may be shortened, it is dependent upon the seller doing a great deal of preparatory work before sellers and buyers get together. The total time for the transaction will still be the same. The work done by the seller is part of the transaction time. I do not think that there will be any saving of time.

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I agree with so much that has been said. The Bill also misses its target because as drafted it appears to suggest that all the problems in the housing market are caused by sellers. We have heard enough today to know that that simply is not so. There are problem buyers. The chain, about which we have heard from many noble Lords, is a serious difficulty.
We then have what I regard as a preposterous suggestion: that if a seller does not comply with the letter of this law he should be subject to serious criminal charges. At present, the housing market is flexible. I may say to an agent, "I'm thinking of selling my house". The agent may know someone who considers it a nice house. I do not understand why he cannot say to that person, "That house is coming on the market. Will you be interested?" In those circumstances, agreement is reached speedily and a transaction takes place. As the Bill is drafted, such flexibility will no longer arise. That is unreasonable. If one does not fulfil the procedures set out in the Bill, one can be fined up to level 5 on the scale of fines. That is the maximum criminal fine which a magistrates' court can impose. I find it amazing that someone who fails on a technicality in this area may be susceptible to a criminal charge at that level. I recognise that Schedule 1 refers to fixed penalties. I was attracted to the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, of civil redress if we have to go down that road. So there is a problem there.
The home condition survey has to be undertaken by someone with a qualification yet to be established under regulations by the Secretary of State. It is interesting to note that such a measure was in the Estate Agents Act 1979. Clause 22 purports to deal with standards of competence of estate agents. For some good reason—I am sure that it exists but no one has ever explained it to me—that clause has never been implemented. If we have to devise a new qualification for home surveyors, will we ever get this measure to the starting post? There is a major problem there.
Reports will also have to be made on the thermal efficiency of a property. The number of people in this country qualified to do that work could probably be counted in tens, or at the most in scores. There are certainly not enough of them to do the work.
There are some fundamental flaws with Part 1. I wholly agree with the serious arguments that have been put suggesting that it should not make further progress. However, we have to face the fact that the Bill may have to progress in the normal way. I dread that prospect, because without a great deal more flexibility than the Government appear to have been prepared to show in the other place, I have grave doubts as to whether Part 1 could ever be put into sufficiently good order as to be satisfactory legislation that this House would be pleased to pass. That will be a potential difficulty in the future. I hope that we do not have to cross that bridge.
10.46 p.m.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, as we have been in this Chamber solidly for two and a half hours, I do not
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know what happened in Albania, but this has certainly been a game of two halves. I shall start with the second half.
We had a pretty wide welcome for Part 2, even if some noble Lords were more equivocal than others. Its general drift was welcomed by the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock and, to an extent, by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, with positive contributions also coming from the noble Earls, Lord Listowel and Lord Longford, who is no longer in his place—and quite right at this time of night. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, gave graphic descriptions of why we need the provisions. My noble friend Lady Gould spelled out why women suffering from violence or the threat of violence, as well as other groups, need the new legislation.
I shall attempt to cover the questions that were raised. I accept that the use of bed-and-breakfast and temporary accommodation has increased and is at too high a level. That is largely a legacy of previous regimes and the treadmill created by the Housing Act 1996. We are tackling that through capital investment in housing. The Bill will ensure that suitable temporary accommodation must be provided for homeless households until a settled housing solution becomes available. That is one reason why an increase of £8 million for each full year has already been included in the revenue support grant settlement for local authorities. We are providing additional resources in both respects to meet the point made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hanham and Lady Gould.
The problem is particularly acute in areas of high demand. The Government are very concerned about that. The backlog is mainly due to the insufficient supply of social housing. We are tackling that through increased capital grant, by doubling the Housing Corporation's investment programme and, by providing £250 million over the next three years for a starter home initiative to help key workers find accommodation.
The Bill creates some additional pressures, but it also provides greater flexibility for local authorities by removing the current restrictions on the way in which they allocate housing. The Bill facilitates but does not require choice-based letting schemes. We recognise that that will be much more difficult in some areas than in others. We also recognise that one has to treat differently the situation regarding temporary accommodation—the way in which to deal with those who are vulnerable and on the streets—and the allocation of permanent accommodation. There is a tendency to elide those matters. Although there is a read-across in that regard, the two matters have to be treated separately.
We agree that there should be strong co-operation between local authorities and registered social landlords. Registered social landlords are already under a statutory obligation to co-operate with local authorities. The Bill will require local authorities to consult registered social landlords. As my noble friend Lady Dean said, the Housing Corporation will strengthen its regulatory guidance, procedures and

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funding arrangements to ensure that registered social landlords co-operate effectively with local authorities without the need for further statutory requirements. That co-operation is necessary if we are to achieve the aims of Part 2 and deliver improved facilities for the homeless.
The inclusion in the vulnerable groups of 16 and 17 year-olds, care leavers aged 18 to 21 and those who are vulnerable as a result of an institutionalised background—those from prisons, hospitals or the Armed Forces—will create additional dilemmas. However, that means that all groups are provided for and that there is a duty to do so.
This is an important proposal to secure the resettlement of people who might otherwise end up sleeping rough. It is important to distinguish between that effort and the long-term allocation of permanent housing. The proposal is not a recipe for queue-jumping or for altering the priorities that local authorities already give to different groups that are in need of social housing.
There may be pressure for reduced provision. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Maddock, suggested that the assistance for those with non-priority needs might suffer as a result of broadening the categories of vulnerable people. The Government have already included, during the Bill's passage through another place, provisions for strengthening the duty owed to homeless families or individuals with non-priority needs. We intend to follow that up by improving statutory guidance in that regard. The noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, raised several detailed questions in that context. I shall attempt to answer some of them now but I may have to write to her about most of them.
The noble Baroness asked about the minimum period of three days for considering a housing offer. The Government are concerned that a minimum requirement would become a maximum requirement, which many authorities might use as a yardstick. Local authorities must act reasonably and allow sufficient time for consideration. In certain circumstances, that will take more than three days.
The noble Baroness also asked about how to accommodate people who are pending review on appeal to a county court. We do not consider that it would be sensible to require local authorities to accommodate all applicants when an authority has decided that no duty is owed to it on the grounds that applicants are not in the priority categories. It is right for local authorities to retain discretion relating to accommodation in such cases. I shall write to the noble Baroness about the other four or five points that she raised.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, discussed the problems caused by housing benefit. We are well aware of those difficulties. Improving standards of administration is a key priority for the Government's reform of the housing benefit system. That was covered in our December housing statement.
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A couple of other points that are not covered by the Bill were raised in our debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Byford, discussed housing in rural areas. We set out in the rural White Paper and in our planning guidance on housing—PPG3—new powers to ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing in rural areas. That is being addressed in a different context. We recognise that specific problems arise in relation to homelessness in rural areas.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock. raised the question of why there was nothing in this Bill in relation to multiple occupation. I accept that we have not included such a provision in the Bill but it remains a government commitment. We found neither the space nor the time to introduce the licensing of HMOs in this Bill. However, we do not intend to backtrack on that commitment. It makes greater sense to link licensing with other measures aimed at improving the quality of housing and it is our intention to come back to Parliament on those issues.
That deals with the points raised on Part 2, which was widely welcomed. Now we turn to Part 1. A real problem arises in relation to Part I. Everybody accepts that the present system does not work; almost everybody accepts that it should be speedier; some people consider it should be significantly cheaper and that there should be less uncertainty. However, the proposals that we put forward to achieve some of those aims are rejected.
The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, referred to a free market. If this were a labour market, many free marketeers and probably some of my friends in new Labour would describe it as sclerotic. It has huge rigidities. It is highly institutionalised and is far from transparent. We are attempting to address all those areas. The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, said that although it may be a bit on the slow side, it is cheap.
Lord Bowness: My Lords, with respect to the Minister, his survey said that; I did not. I only quoted it.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, that is at least one point on which we are in agreement. But the cheapness element only arises if we do not take into account aborted costs. One of the key aspects of the English market as distinct from other systems is the high level of aborted costs—£350 million is the figure that I quoted. I am not claiming that we will save all of those costs, but we can save a significant part of them. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said that of course there will be aborted costs—people move; people divorce; people change their minds; situations change; people decide that they want a different property after all. That is true. But that applies in other countries as well. Divorce and pregnancy have even been known to happen in Scotland. What is unique about the English and Welsh market is that the form of institutionalisation causes severe delays which are over and above those which

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seem to apply in other systems. It is that problem that we seek to tackle. And nobody has actually put forward a better solution.
Baroness Byford: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He said that people change their minds abroad just as much as they do here. But in fact home ownership in this country is much higher than it is in other countries. Therefore to compare our figures with those of other countries is not a fair comparison. It does not detract from what the Minister says. But we should remember that home ownership is much higher in this country.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, that is true, and that would affect a comparison with the £350 million figure. But the time issue relates to individual transactions. There is no reason why, because we have a higher level of home ownership, we should have a longer period of transaction. If anything, one would have thought that economies of scale would be involved.
Baroness Maddock: My Lords, one of the other important matters is the chain. Because so many more people are m the housing market, the chain is much more of a problem in this country than anywhere else in Europe.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, that is a non sequitur. Simply because more people own their own homes does not mean that people should be involved in longer chains.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, I am obliged to the Minister for allowing me to intervene. I merely reinforce my noble friend's point. The fact is that if two or three transactions are inter-dependent, then they move like a convoy; that is, at the speed of the slowest transaction. If one of the transactions fails, then because of our prudent policy of not entering into a contract until one has a firm back-up contract, all of those transactions fall together. That is the fact of the matter. The Minister says that we have not come up with a better idea. With respect, I do not think that his Bill addresses the chain problem.
11 p.m.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, by speeding up the process and putting upfront much of the information gathering, the likelihood of particular transactions falling through is reduced. Therefore, the impact on the chain is reduced. I accept that some noble Lords do not think that our proposition achieves that. However, I suggest that it does so better than the present situation. it may not be ideal but it goes some way to meeting the problems of the present market.
Other objections were raised. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, began his remarks by stating that this changes the whole nature of the relationship between the agent and seller. Perhaps I may say to the noble Earl that it does not. The noble Earl is clearly a meticulous estate agent and surveyor. I may well take him up on his implied offer to help me when next I sell
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my house. The fact of the matter is that he already has a duty under the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991. That Act requires estate agents to take reasonable steps to verify information provided by sellers. Therefore, the question of trust is already loaded on to the estate agent. The Bill does not change that basic situation.
Comment has been made that the Bill does not tackle gazumping. It does not do so head-on in the sense of banning it—there are misapprehensions about the Scottish situation—but it addresses gazumping indirectly by narrowing significantly the window between offer, acceptance and exchange of contracts, during which period gazumping frequently occurs. It is difficult to see how we could deal entirely with the problem of pulling out at the last moment or how we could ban gazumping completely. There will always be situations where it is reasonable that the seller should be able to offer the property to another buyer or to withdraw that property from the market. Nevertheless, if the proposals were accepted and operated across the market, I believe that the incidence of gazumping would be reduced significantly.
The noble Lords, Lord Phillips, Lord Goodhart, Lord Bowness and others all said that the seller's pack would add to rather than reduce the cost of buying and selling. There are a number of points to be made on that. First, the information in the pack is that which needs to be provided at some stage in the transaction in any event. The only additional item is the home conditions report. That is additional only in the sense that, as some noble Lords have said, in some transactions under the present system buyers do not commission their own surveys. Secondly, the overall costs are likely to be neutral between buyer and seller in many, if not most, cases. The seller's pack involves a shift in cost from the buyer to the seller. However, as the vast majority of sellers are also buyers, because of the chain, that balance will shift. Indeed, the only buyers who are not sellers are first-time buyers who face substantial costs. That will be shifted away from them. If we were to keep the whole burden of the cost on the buyers, it would continue to be detrimental to first-time buyers.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Have the Government considered what would be a much simpler and cheaper way of achieving results than requiring the home condition survey and the seller's pack, which is to reverse the existing rules of caveat emptor; namely, the buyer is stuck with what he gets? If the buyer could sue the seller for any defects that had not been disclosed to him, that would, first, put the seller on his toes to ensure that he did make disclosure and, secondly, it would do so without this elaborate and bureaucratic system.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, the noble Lord referred to an elaborate and bureaucratic system. That would he replaced with one enforced by considerable litigation. We would have to hesitate before altering the general

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presumption in every market under English law in relation to caveat emptor. I would be hesitant to go down that route.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, not in the sale of goods.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, subject to statutory restriction, that is true. But where there is no statutory restriction, that is the presumption. Thirdly, in relation to costs—
Lord Bowness: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I do not want to detain the House but I want to clarify an important point. Can he confirm that as things stand there will be no obligation on a seller in the pack to point out any defect in title and it must therefore be examined carefully by a buyer's solicitor? If a defect is found, the time spent will be the same as it currently is. If the buyer has to pull out, the effect will be precisely the same.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, the noble Lord's premise is right but his conclusion is not. It is right that there is not a requirement that defects in title should be pointed out and that it would be subject to the usual checking by the buyer's solicitor. The point is that the information required to be checked would be provided up front by the buyer before he goes to the market. That is where the time saving occurs.
I believe that I have made sufficient points in relation to the cost, except in relation to a point made by a number of noble Lords that the lenders will in any case require separate valuation surveys and therefore the apparent saving will not arise. Certainly, the lenders will continue to require separate valuation inspections but for the most part lenders are moving to a more simple system of valuation. Many have desktop methods of valuation assessment. The home condition report will assist them in that and will therefore provide cost savings either to the home buyer or to the lending organisation.
Many buyers will not regard the home condition survey, the seller's pack, as sufficient, as my noble friend Lady Gould said, and they will therefore commission their own survey as under the present system. But that is not an argument for not bringing as much of the information as possible to the market right at the beginning of the process instead of both sides having to proceed with the various professional bodies in parallel or in part in series through the lengthy process.
The noble Lords, Lord Phillips and Lord Dixon-Smith, asked how the seller's pack will bring pressure on the buyer to come to the market prepared. That is the other element of speeding up the process and bringing it up front. Because the seller's pack will provide up-front information the buyer can move quickly in relation to his own lender. He can establish an in-principle mortgage and that will rapidly smoke out any prospective buyer who is not serious. Therefore, both sides of the equation will be in a
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position to share information and to move on the basis of that shared information at a much earlier stage than the process currently provides for.
There is the continuing problem in relation to the point made by my noble friend Lady Gould that buyers and lenders will not trust the home condition survey, but nevertheless they will have it at an early stage. If at that stage they consider it to be inadequate, they can take out their own additional survey. I believe that we will be able to rely on the home condition report to a large extent. It will be setting up a certification scheme for home inspectors to ensure consistency and high standards. A level of inspection will be similar to the current home buyer survey and valuation, which is the survey most commonly used by home buyers, and home inspectors will be liable to sellers, buyers and lenders so that they can enable all the key parties to any sale to have full confidence in their reports.
My noble friend Lady Gould asked about lenders. The Council of Mortgage Lenders has been consulted on this matter and is one of the main stakeholders involved in developing both the format of the home condition report and the associated regime which will underpin it. Therefore, the interests of lenders are fully engaged in the process.
The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said that the home condition report was too simplistic. Like other noble Lords, he went on to query the Bristol pilot. The Government commissioned that pilot and paid for part of it. That pilot shows quite clearly that the seller's pack can be assembled quickly; and that it injects transparency into the process and gives buyers and lenders a clearer understanding of the property. It proves that the seller's pack increases certainty and that problems are resolved more rapidly than elsewhere.
My noble friend Lady Gould asked whether the Government relied entirely on the Bristol experiment. Part of the background to the Bill includes a study of international comparisons, the biggest study ever undertaken of the system of home-buying in England and Wales, a major consultation exercise involving about 1,000 responses, a study of 14 existing sellers' packs and, in particular, research into low value, low demand areas. It also included a litmus test of small businesses. We continue to look at the detailed implementation of the scheme. We have just commissioned a study to look at the role of insurance products. We shall consider other matters in the runup to implementation and the final regulations as regards the form of the seller's pack.
Two other main issues were raised: sanctions and how the scheme would operate in low value markets. It is claimed that criminal sanctions are completely inappropriate in this area. In order to be effective, the seller's pack must he backed by appropriate sanctions; otherwise, the temptation for people to attempt to market their houses without sellers' packs will be too great. In this context we have looked at whether we can use civil sanctions but have concluded that they cannot provide an effective deterrent. Civil sanctions can be

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based only on the buyer taking action through the courts. The buyer will need to demonstrate that he has suffered financial loss in the process, which may not be easy.
Therefore, we have concluded that the long stop should be criminal sanctions. That is consistent with similar sanctions, for example, under the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991 and various obligations under the Landlord and Tenant Act. That does not mean that we have moved directly to criminal sanctions. Local trading standards officers will have discretion to take appropriate action where they find a person marketing a home without a seller's pack. That discretion will be vital in ensuring that action is proportionate, especially in cases where private sellers are ignorant of the law and make an honest mistake. There is a range of possibilities, from offering help and advice to a warning right through to the imposition of criminal sanctions.
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, in drafting these provisions have the Government discovered whether criminal sanctions in the transfer of residential property are applied in any other jurisdictions?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, as the noble Baroness knows better than I, the distinction between civil and criminal law in other jurisdictions is a little more blurred than in this country, but certainly sanctions are applied in other regimes.
The final point on which I wish to touch is property in low value, low demand areas. Concern was expressed by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, my noble friend Lady Gould and others about the effect on low value properties and whether they would come to the market. We have made it clear that we are prepared to consider measures where the seller's pack requirements would cause difficulty in particular areas or with particular types of property. We are preparing a consultation paper which will set out a number of measures that we might consider.
Under the Bill there is a possibility of having different instructions for different types of property. However, our research hitherto has shown that sellers' packs would offer benefits in precisely those low value areas about which people are concerned. As noble Lords have said, we must avoid the question of a two-tier market and of stigmatising properties in areas of declining demand and low value. That is quite a difficult area. However, there is the possibility under the Bill to provide separately for those areas.
Many points have been made tonight. Were we to have a normal process for the Bill, some could be explored in later stages. Many points misunderstand the benefit of this process and none provides a better solution to what, almost everyone is agreed, is the present problem with the housing market. Our proposals go some significant way to easing the pressure on the buying chain and will thereby bring some comfort and financial and time benefit to those engaged in 11-ie market. We recognise that other noble Lords think differently.
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The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, referred, somewhat delphically to particular contingencies which might arise. They no doubt would he dealt with either within or without this Chamber. We may have to deal with those matters. However, despite the rather wide-ranging barrage of criticism of Part 1 of the Bill, no one has proposed anything better.
We are convinced that it is sensible to take the legislation forward. We shall consider how to deal with the matter at later stages. I very much welcomed the wide and heartfelt support for Part 2 of the Bill.
Lord Bowness: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, can he deal with the point raised by my noble friend Lord Caithness and, indeed, myself: what is the envisaged shelf life of the seller's pack and the home condition report—six months, one year or has it statutory immortality?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, none of us has statutory immortality. We are not proposing that the seller's pack should be required to be renewed. The only items likely to have limited shelf life are the home conditions report and possibly, in certain circumstances, replies to local searches. Since the home conditions report does not contain a valuation, and the question of a change in the market does not apply, and in most cases the physical nature of the property will not significantly have changed within a period that it is likely to be on the market, we are therefore not statutorily requiring renewal of the home conditions report. Should the seller decide that he needs to update that information or if the information is sufficiently old for buyers to be somewhat put off by the age of it, then clearly the buyer and his professional advisers might think it sensible to provide an updated report. But it does not seem sensible for us to put that in the statute.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, before the Minister sits down, he said three times that no one in the Chamber has come up with anything better than the provisions. Will he accept that it is the job of government to produce a Bill that makes things better? Does he further accept that he has not had a single speaker in this Second Reading debate supporting the proposals in Part 1 of the Bill?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I certainly accept the noble Lord's description of the debate. I would, however, say that there are a wide range of people out there, including the Consumers' Association, many professions, and the majority of people we consulted in our various surveys who recognise the provisions as an improvement. There may be other improvements which can also be made. Indeed, we are pursuing some of them. We believe that this is an improvement. Although the House, as constituted today, does not accept that argument, we believe that we have support out there. We can make this work, and work to the benefit of both buyers and sellers.

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On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Election Publications Bill [H.L.]
11.19 p.m.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Bassam of Brighton, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
The circumstances that have given rise to this three-clause Bill are unusual and unexpected. The House will recall that in the previous Session we enacted what is now the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Following consultation with the main political parties, the substantial part of that Act was brought into force on 16th February. For reasons which I shall explain, we now need to suspend the commencement of those provisions of the Act relating to the imprint on election material. That is the one and only purpose of the Bill.
A number of your Lordships have, at one time or other, shared with me the privilege of seeking election to the other place. They will be familiar with a long-standing provision, in Section 110 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, requiring the printer's and publisher's name and address to appear on election publications.
In taking forward the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill, we made a number of changes. First, we amended Section 110 itself. We believed, and still believe, that what I shall term the "old Section 110" was not entirely satisfactory. There was some uncertainty about who was the "publisher" of an election leaflet or poster. The provision did not readily operate in the case of material in a non-print format, such as videos and websites. Secondly, the provision did not apply to national advertising promoting a party rather than the individual candidate. It was one of the central purposes of the Bill to bring national party expenditure under control.
Each of those points was addressed in the Act as passed. Paragraph 14 of Schedule 18 to the Act substituted a new Section 110 of the 1983 Act. It replaced a requirement to name the publisher with a requirement to identify the promoter—that is, the person who caused the material to be published—and the person on behalf of whom the material was being published; that is, the candidate or third party as the case may be. In addition to the new Section 110 of the 1983 Act, Section 143 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act introduced similar imprint requirements in respect of national election material. To complete the picture, although it is not directly relevant to this Bill, Section 126 of the Act also introduced imprint requirements in respect of referendum material. Those requirements, too, are in the same terms as the revised Section 110.
In December last year, we consulted the main political parties and the Electoral Commission on the commencement timetable for the Act and, in
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particular, on those provisions amending the Representation of the People Act 1983. The view was then taken that a number of the amendments to the 1983 Act should be deferred until 1st July so as to allow the parties sufficient time to familiarise both themselves and their prospective candidates with the various changes. But we felt that some of the other provisions, including the Section 110, should be brought into force as soon as possible as part of the package needed for applying the new expenditure control provisions. None of those consulted raised any difficulty in that regard. A commencement order was duly made on 29th January. Among other things the order brought the new Section 110 of the Representation of the People Act and Section 143 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act, together with a number of other provisions, into force on 16th February.
Now I come to why we are bringing forward this short Bill. With the benefit of hindsight, the commencement of these two provisions—Section 143 of the Act and the revised Section 110 of the 1983 Act—was premature. By 16th February, parties and prospective candidates were already gearing themselves up for the county council elections on 3rd May and, no doubt, a possible early general election. Many candidates and local parties were either unpacking old campaign literature from their constituency party cellars or sending off to the printers new material for use during the forthcoming campaign or campaigns. Much, if not all, of this material would have had the old "printer and publisher" imprint on it rather than the details now required by the new Section 110. The same story applied to national material which, until February, only had to bear the name and address of the printer, in accordance with an 1869 statute.
As a result, we are faced with the prospect of going into the forthcoming elections with all the main parties, together with thousands of candidates up and down the country, having large stocks of election publications which do not comply with the new imprint requirements. In theory, it would be open for the parties and their candidates to pulp all this material and start again. But I do not believe—and it is clear that the political parties do not believe—that that is a realistic or practical option. The only alternative is primary legislation, and hence this Bill.
While the problem is a significant one for the parties, the proposed remedy is relatively simple and I can explain briefly the thrust of the Bill. Clause 1 suspends the commencement of both Section 143 of the 2000 Act and the new Section 110 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. These two provisions are not repealed. but they are deemed not to have come into force. The natural corollary of this is that the status quo, as at 16th February of this year, is restored. To that end, the old Section 110 is reactivated.
Clause 2 enables Section 143 of the 2000 Act and the new Section 110 of the 1983 Act to be re-commenced by order. Given the history of these provisions, it clearly would not be sensible to do this for a period of

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months. And in any event, we would wish to consult both with the Electoral Commission and the political parties before any decision is taken.
Clause 3, as well as containing the usual Short Title and extent provisions, includes a saving for any election publication which complies with the new Section 110. The saving will apply during the period beginning 16th February 2001 and ending with the date on which the new Section 110 is brought back into force. In effect, during this "continuation period", local material which complies either with the old or with the new Section 110 would be lawful. It clearly would not be right to penalise any person who, in the period since 16th February, had meticulously arranged matters so as to be able to comply with the new imprint requirements.
It is unfortunate that we have to legislate on this matter a mere four months after the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill received Royal Assent. In doing so, however, we are responding to representations from the two parties opposite, as well as from my own party. The Electoral Commission has also expressed sympathy for the predicament which parties and candidates alike now face.
I believe that in these circumstances the Bill has all-party support and that noble Lords will understand and accept the need to secure its swift passage. Indeed, while not wishing to curtail legitimate debate, I am merely stating the obvious if I say that this Bill can reach the statute book quickly and therefore achieve its purpose only if there is co-operation from all sides of the House. Nominations for the local elections close on 3rd April and both candidates and parties need to know where they stand as soon as possible. To this end. I commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Davies of Oldham).
11.29 p.m.
Lord Cope of Berkeley: My Lords, one of the catch phrases of Oliver Hardy, in his exchanges with Stan Laurel, must be used in the Home Office more often than in any other Whitehall department. It is, of course, "Here's another fine mess you've got me into".
When the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill was going through this House, the Government moved 665 amendments. One of them, as the Minister said, altered the familiar imprint which all of us whose lives have depended upon elections know so well.
The Home Office never consulted the political parties about this particular change and did not advise the parties of its view of the change until 1st March, some time after the commencement order made it law. The amendment to the Bill which brought in this provision was never discussed at all in the other place because of the operation of the guillotine.
The Home Office guidance of 1st March, a couple of weeks after the provision became law, differed slightly from the advice that my party had received. We can all
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live with that, but we should have been told it before the provisions were brought into force by the commencement order.
As the Minister said, we are in a situation where all the main parties are now in breach of the law and stand to waste millions of pounds on scrapping the tons of pre-printed material stacked up for the council elections and for the general election—which, I think we can assume from the way in which this measure is being handled and the Motion that we passed earlier today, will definitely be on 3rd May, although I am not asking the Minister to comment on that.
If we pass this measure, I suppose that a small forest of trees will be saved from being turned directly into waste paper. So, in that sense, it is an environmental measure—although I do not think that even this Government would have the cheek to claim it as such.
We can all understand how it happened, but we should recognise that we, the political activists, are the only people who can pass our own "excuse me" Act and secure our own collective immunity from ignorance of the law. Small businesses struggling under the burden of regulations will view us with envy.
The message should be quite plain: there is too much new legislation for anyone to absorb—and nowhere more than in the Home Office. A dozen Acts of Parliament last year; already six Home Office Bills in this truncated Session; two new Second Readings this week and another one on Monday.
I make no apology for making these points because I made them in the debate on the Bill when we discussed the amendment under consideration now. I said:
"The fact that these huge changes have been made to a comparatively simple part of the Bill emphasises part of the Home Office's problem this year: it has had too many Bills. It has not been able to draft them properly".—[Official Report, 18/10/00: col. 1144.]
The Minister mentioned the question of imprints on websites and e-mail, which were also part of the Bill. These are subject to regulations and were supposed last October to be urgent. But I understand that nothing has happened. It would be helpful if the noble Lord could tell us, either today or in writing, whether websites will have to have imprints as anticipated in the coming elections—council or otherwise—and, if so, when we will see the necessary regulations.
I made the point in October that we would need clear regulations and guidance well before the council elections, even if there was not a general election, but I do not think that we have seen anything about them as yet. Many more websites will be used by candidates in this general election. Some of us, including me, had websites at the last election, but more will no doubt have them, and much better ones, this time. The matter was described as urgent in October by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, who was taking the provision through., and of course it is all the more urgent now.
This is a nasty little mess, but the Bill is required in order to get us out of it.
11.34 p.m.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, last Saturday morning, when I was doing my usual round delivering party literature to my neighbours, it did not occur to me—no doubt it should have done—to check the imprint. I now realise that I may well have been participating in a criminal offence.
Be that as it may, this is an interesting Bill. I am familiar, as we all are, with Acts that contain provision for commencement orders. This is the first occasion on which I have come across a measure that contains a "de-commencement" order.
The noble Lord, Lord Cope, referred to the fact that this is an environmental Bill in that it saves vast quantities of newsprint from having to be pulped—a point with which I am sure we all agree. My party has always been very keen on protection of the environment. For that reason, if for no other, I am happy on behalf of my party to welcome the Bill.
11.36 p.m.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful for those responses from the noble Lords opposite—although I should attest to the fact that I did not introduce the Bill as an environmental measure. However, as both noble Lords identified, if that gain is one of the effects of the Bill I am happy to have their support in that respect.
I am not sure that the description of the noble Lord, Lord Cope, is quite fair: he said what a fine mess we have got into. Among his many delightful characteristics, Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe, who is sadly missed, enjoyed Oliver Hardy above every other experience in film. I can almost hear him using the phrase now. So I accept it from the noble Lord in the friendly way in which he presented it. He has obviously identified the fact that we are in a situation that we should very much prefer not to be in.
I accept the noble Lord's point that we have a remedy to hand through the passing of this Bill that would not be so easily achieved in other circumstances. Important though small businesses are, and I attest to that obvious point, political parties and the successful and proper conduct of our democracy probably rate a good deal higher in terms of the needs of the nation. That is why, when we have difficulties such as this which cause all political parties substantial problems, it is proper that we remedy them as early as we are able to do so.
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The noble Lord, Lord Cope, erred slightly on the side of unfairness: the issue has not arisen as a result of shoddy drafting of the Act or the work of Home Office Ministers in that respect. There is nothing wrong with the drafting of the Act. The problem relates to the timing of the commencement and the impact that it had on parties which had already had election material printed. That is the nature of our difficulty.
Lord Cope of Berkeley: My Lords, I apologise for interrupting. I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. The point that I was trying to make—evidently not clearly enough—was that this matter was introduced as one of over 600 amendments. That is why it was not noticed nearly so much as it would have been had the measure been properly drafted in the first place and had it not required so many amendments.
Before I sit down, perhaps I may say a word about Lord Cocks. I agree with what the noble Lord said. Lord Cocks was a good friend. I knew him well. We served together in another place in our various Whips' offices and had a good deal to do with one another. He was also a constituency neighbour. We shall all miss him a great deal. We shall particularly miss his humour and his company.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I very much appreciate the tenor of those remarks from the noble Lord. I hear what he says about drafting. I believe that he will recognise that the Bill we eventually passed was successfully, properly and accurately drafted as regards this issue. The problem has arisen from the commencement orders.
The noble Lord asked me one particular question about websites. With this measure, we have suspended Section 143 of the 2000 Act and new Section 110 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. We have, therefore, suspended the regulation-making power, so there will be no regulations governing non-print material this side of the May local elections.
I appreciate once again the response of the two noble Lords who have spoken. We are all in a difficult situation. It is recognised that outside people are watching this occasion with very great interest because we are right up against the deadlines for the May local elections. Therefore, we have to move with considerable expedition if we are to remedy what is recognised to be a very real problem. I therefore commend the Bill to the House.
On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at eighteen minutes before midnight.

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