Westminster Hall Sitting of 5 March 2003

Preamble
[MR. FRANK COOK in the Chair]

AIDS
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Kemp.]
9.30 am
Mr. Mark Lazarowicz: I take this opportunity to raise one of the most important issues facing the world community—the crisis caused by the spread of HIV/AIDS, which is wreaking destruction in much of the world and which threatens to do so in much more of it. This is not the first time that the crisis has been raised in the House of Commons and I am sure that it will not be the last.
I pay tribute to the many hon. Members present, whose interest in the issue goes back over many years. It is particularly appropriate to raise it again now given the greater public awareness and concern that I have noticed in the past few weeks. That development was no doubt stimulated by some of the excellent media coverage. Hon. Members may have read the reports in The Guardian, and The Sun has also run an excellent campaign on the issue. Furthermore, there has been considerable coverage on the BBC and I am sure that other media sources have recently covered the issue.
It is also appropriate to raise the subject again now because the world's attention is understandably focused on events in the middle east. We must ensure that the same attention continues to be paid to crises such as that caused by the spread of HIV/AIDS. The AIDS crisis could have even more wide-ranging consequences for the world community, not least because of the insecurity that could threaten the entire world. Only a few weeks ago, Colin Powell rightly described the AIDS crisis as being as serious a threat to global security as international terrorism.
The basic facts about the crisis are well known and I do not intend to repeat them at length. However, I want to highlight some of the latest figures on the extent of the crisis. The most recent figures from UNAIDS—the joint United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS—appeared a few months ago. In 2002, the epidemic was estimated to have claimed more than 3 million lives and an estimated 5 million people became infected with HIV, 800,000 of whom were children under the age of 15. That is estimated to bring the total number of people in the world living with the virus to 42 million. Life expectancy in some countries has now fallen by 20 years and UN estimates for world population growth have been revised downwards because 300 million people are expected to die from AIDS in the next half century.
The situation is much worse in some countries and the estimates in southern Africa are particularly severe. About 29 million people now live with HIV/AIDS and infection rates in some countries run at more than 30 per cent. of the adult population. Botswana, for example, is expected to lose one fifth of its population by 2050. Those are staggering figures.
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The crisis is not only developing in southern Africa and the epidemic is undergoing fast rates of growth in Russia and the Caribbean. In Asia, in countries such as India and China, the figures are already high and estimates suggest that there are 6 million HIV/AIDS sufferers. The figures suggest that the sub-Saharan rate of infection could be replicated in Asia in the next few decades. The International Development Committee recently reported to that effect.
As hon. Members know, the consequences of the spread of HIV and AIDS are found not only in health programmes, health policies and the health of the individuals affected; the crisis has major implications for development programmes in general because of its impact on economies and social systems. It is estimated that by the end of the decade the per capita gross domestic product in the countries hardest hit by the disease may drop by as much as 8 per cent. AIDS has the knock-on effect of increasing the number of people living in poverty. For example, if a family's main breadwinner becomes infected, that clearly affects the entire family.
There is a real fear—or rather an expectation—that the objectives of halving extreme poverty as part of the millennium development goals may be jeopardised. Key Government workers in developing countries are being lost to the disease and AIDS is reducing the ratio of healthy workers to dependants. In agriculture, AIDS is severely affecting the ability of countries to invest in, or sustain, capital-intensive methods of production. That is exacerbating the food shortages that are being experienced in many southern African states. Farming skills are being lost. Craft skills are no longer being passed from parents to children. A new generation must struggle to find a livelihood. Irrigation schemes are not being maintained. Farms are being abandoned and families are returning to subsistence farming. All that is contributing to the present famine in southern Africa.
The effects go beyond agriculture into the social sphere. The spread of HIV/AIDS, as well as overburdening the health and social security systems, is having a serious impact on education services. Teachers and students die and older children must leave school to look after siblings. The millennium development goal of ensuring universal primary education is also at risk in the worst affected countries.
Dr. Jenny Tonge: Has the hon. Gentleman reflected on the number of AIDS orphans in the world? That will cause a huge social problem in developing countries.
Mr. Lazarowicz: Indeed it will. Another of the awful statistics is that in Africa alone there are more AIDS orphans than there are children in the United Kingdom.
What action is needed from the world community—and from this country—to tackle the crisis? They know what needs to be done. The question is whether the world community will exercise the common will to tackle the crisis. There are three priority areas. First, education is vital. A greater awareness of how to prevent the transmission of the virus is crucial to the successful combating of the disease in the developing world. I welcome the emphasis that the Department for International Development has placed on support for

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education programmes in the worst affected countries. It is commendable that it directs its efforts in particular at the 15-to-24 age group.
Money is also a vital question. Above all, there is a need for commitment to a major programme of multilateral funding. All hon. Members in the Chamber must welcome the setting up of the global fund to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. That is the most important initiative in this context since the crisis developed. The global fund has certainly enabled greater attention to be focused on fighting those diseases. The Government's support of the fund, which comes in addition to their significant spending on bilateral HIV/AIDS programmes, is very much to be welcomed. Although the UK's commitment is welcome, however, and the £138 million that the Government have committed to the fund for the next five years is a positive step, it still needs more money. A severe funding gap is opening up and serious questions are being raised about its future. After all, although $10 billion was called for, only $2.2 billion has been pledged to the fund by countries and only part of that has been delivered and allocated to programmes aimed at tackling HIV/AIDS. More money is needed from the world community, but also from this country as part of that community.
The third problem is access to necessary drugs. Every hon. Member who has been following the issue will be aware of the continuing failure to reach agreement on measures to allow developing countries access to the cheap drugs that they need to tackle HIV/AIDS and a range of other diseases. I am sure that we would all agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer about what needs to be done. He said:
"It's time that all recognise the responsibilities to help avoid unnecessary deaths and that means we've got to get an agreement for the trade round."
He said that the problem
"is a terrible indictment on a world that has the technology, the drugs and the resources to be able to solve these problems—and when you think of the hurt that any infant death causes you've got to understand that so much more could be done".
The Chancellor was absolutely right when he said that and I am sure that he speaks for most people in the country.
I mention in passing that even though we hear talk about the growing transatlantic divide, one matter on which there is a lot of agreement, especially where it concerns some of the big pharmaceutical companies in Europe and the USA, is the view that there is a reluctance to reach a fair settlement on the issue in question. I do not have time to go into the debate about the failure to reach an agreement on access to cheap drugs in detail. All I shall say is that only two weeks ago there was yet another failure to reach agreement in the World Trade Organisation. Every day that that agreement fails to be made is a day less in the lives of millions of people in developing countries who cannot afford the drugs that they need for their condition.
Once again, although I praise what the Government have done to take a lead on the issue and want to express my backing for what they have done so far, I should like them to do more. The Government certainly cannot take on the burden for the entire industrialised world.
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However, even allowing for that point and the welcome sums that they have pledged, the sums are relatively small. Without going into the rights and wrongs of events elsewhere in the world, I observe that the sums that we are pledging to the global fund are a drop in the ocean compared with those that we have put aside for contingencies for possible events elsewhere.
I am aware that other hon. Members wish to speak, so I shall end my contribution by posing a number of questions to the Minister about the Government's future policy on the international HIV/AIDS crisis. I hope that he can give some positive responses to those questions, so that we can underline today the country's continuing commitment to playing a leading role in the international community's efforts to tackle the crisis. First, there are fears that money is drying up and that the long-term future of the global fund is not secured. The international community should not wait for results from the fund before making contributions. I should therefore like to hear from the Minister what the Government's plans for financial commitments to the fund for the next five years are and, if possible, what their long-term attitude is.
Secondly, the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS have a target of treating 3 million people who have HIV/AIDS by 2005. Does the UK see itself as part of the partnership aiming for that target? How do the Government envisage achieving it?
The third question is on the way in which the health systems in developing countries can deliver the service and the drugs to those who are affected. Bearing in mind that drugs on their own are not enough—there has to be access to the relevant services as well—what are the UK Government's plans for supporting health systems in developing countries and, more importantly, will there be a trend in the financial support from the Government to encourage support for the health systems in the countries that are affected by HIV/AIDS? My fourth question relates to the third. How will the UK's bilateral programmes link to global fund programmes?
Fifthly, what monitoring mechanisms are in place to ensure that the DFID money goes to supporting the health systems? Do monitoring systems exist in all the countries to which we give financial support? My sixth question concerns another important matter. How can the global fund ensure that the country co-ordinating mechanism enables the civil societies in the countries affected to participate not just in making proposals regarding funding, but in their implementation over the years?
Finally, what long-term commitments can we give to the countries worst affected by the crisis? We all know that for a health ministry in a developing country to plan a proper anti-retrovirals programme, it must have commitment from international donors, not just for short periods of, say, three or five years, but for up to 10 years. What commitment are we going to make on long-term contributions to the global fund and to our own bilateral programme? Without long-term commitment, we will not be able to tackle the HIV/AIDS crisis and by failing to tackle it we shall allow it to become more serious throughout the world.
We need a long-term commitment and more funding, and we need them on a continuing basis over many years. I hope that the Minister can give some commitments today.
9.48 am
Tony Baldry: The hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) has done us all a service in introducing this debate so well and so succinctly. It is good to see the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) here. I appreciate that the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary from the Department for International Development are doubtless overseas on Government business, but I am glad to be able to thank the Minister, on behalf of the International Development Committee, for the incredible help that ambassadors and high commissioners give us in our work around the world. They are unfailing in their courtesy, support and good humour, notwithstanding the various demands that we place upon them. Foreign Office Ministers do not often take part in these debates.
I hope that I shall not repeat anything that has been said. The US Government have announced a $15 billion dollar programme over the next five years to combat HIV/AIDS. It is a go-it-alone fund, which will work on its own terms and only through US aid agencies. It will ignore existing structures, relationships and action plans already in place in those countries, especially Africa, already affected most by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As the Financial Times recently observed,
"As a recent convert to the war on Aids, the US administration has latched on to a simplistic vision of what to do, based on the example of a single country—Uganda. It knows little of the measures in place in different parts of the world and has not recognised that each country needs to shape the best local response. It is here that the Global Fund plays an important role."
I would go further. The issue is not just the global health fund, but the European countries' response to the United States' proposals. Although the US effort is a bold part, it is only a part of the total financing needs. Its limits are implicit in the fact that it is directed only at HIV/AIDS. It does not deal with malaria or tuberculosis and the American fund will he operational in only 14 countries.
The global fund will require new donor support of about $7 billion this year and next—roughly $3.5 billion a year—to meet the needs of the high-quality proposals that it is considering. A reasonable financing framework is thus clear and I believe that Europe collectively should match the US initiative with our own $3 billion a year contribution, while Japan and other donors should contribute at least $1 billion a year in addition. That would make a total of at least $7 billion a year during 2003 and 2004. Half of that should be devoted to the global fund and the other half should be spent on programmes that would indirectly bolster, rather than undermine, the fund.
As the same article in the Financial Times noted,
"Silence from Europe at this moment would be deadly for the Global Fund. If the US is the only country to put up large new sums for the war against Aids, then it will be a US programme. On the other hand, with a bold European response to Mr. Bush's daring initiative, the transatlantic alliance—under great strain over Iraq—would prove to the world that it continues its historic commitments to freedom and human betterment. Impoverished and dying people around the world await a clarion call from the US and Europe together."
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International partnership to combat an international problem is imperative, but what has been the UK Government's response? I appreciate that this is not the Minister's brief and I hope that he will prevail on the Under-Secretary of State for International Development to respond to any questions raised in the debate that he feels are worthy of a more detailed response.
I do not doubt the commitment of the Treasury and the Department for International Development to fight HIV/AIDS, but a recent interview given by the Chancellor is telling. He has, rightly, said that there needs to be far faster progress on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights—TRIPS—at the current World Trade Organisation negotiations at Doha, which means Governments, such as the US Government, doing much more to make drug companies, such as GlaxoSmithKline, allow their drugs to be patented. Disappointment about the fact that a recent vaccine for AIDS has failed is well understood, but the Chancellor also alluded to the Government's new idea of an international financing facility.
Dr. Tonge: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would hate to give the impression that the vaccine initiative had totally failed. Only one vaccine was being developed for the western strain of the virus and many other trials are taking place in the world.
Tony Baldry: I was simply pointing out that there must be disappointment about the fact that the present vaccine trial has failed.
The problem with the international financing facility is that it does not have the support of the United States. It does not necessarily have the support of UK non-governmental organisations, because it does not make clear where the UK will stand on overseas development investment after 2015, nor what will happen to the UK's commitment to reaching a target of 0.7 per cent. of gross national income for overseas development investment.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 30 million people are victims of HIV/AIDS and as many as one in four people in countries like Zambia have AIDS, so Africa will not necessarily meet the United Nation's 2015 goals even with the international financing facility. Africa is the only continent going backwards as we speak and although the world is ravaged by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Africa is at its epicentre. The World Food Programme estimates that 14 million people face serious food shortages in southern Africa this year, with the same number in Ethiopia and the horn of Africa, partly because hunger begets AIDS as AIDS begets hunger.
What is needed is not an international financing facility for HIV/AIDS but a straightforward commitment to the facilities and mechanisms that already exist. We do not need to invent or create new financing mechanisms; we need to support those mechanisms that already exist, such as the global health fund. I recognise that that fund has its problems. I suspect, however, that those problems are not caused by the structures that it offers, but are a result of the financial commitments that it receives from us and from our partners in the European Union.

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I hope that I can prevail upon the patience of the House by sharing a letter that I recently wrote to The Independent, in which I stated:
"Sir: Prior to the International Aids Conference … the devastating report from UNAids demonstrated the urgent need for renewed policies on HIV/Aids in both the developed and developing worlds to combat the pandemic in poorer countries.
On the part of richer countries to prevent HIV/Aids, it is clear that the Global Health Fund simply isn't working. Whilst such trust funds act as a good mechanism to raise the profile of a specific issue it is less good when the issue's profile is high but only a lowly third of money pledged is actually reaching the Fund. Money surely would be better invested direct to African countries' administrations and local NGOs. On treatment also there is a need for further commitment from countries like the US, Canada and Japan at the forthcoming Doha trade round to ensure that poorer countries are given the capability to copy patented HIV/Aids drugs produced in other better equipped countries.
Nonetheless, on the part of some poorer countries themselves, if more aid is to go to their governments, then still more needs to be done to recognise the extent of the pandemic. No doubt the recent South African court case was a massive move forward but ambiguities still exist in their approach and until these are removed treatment and prevention will stagnate.
The reward would not only be preventing the HIV/Aids crisis escalating ever more; recent estimates also suggest that the economic boom for everyone would be US$186bn each year. I suspect this would benefit African countries more than the recent G8 summit."
I hope that the Government will give the global health fund every possible support. More importantly, however, I hope that they will encourage our European Union partners to match what the Americans are putting into the fund to ensure that it has the requisite funds necessary to do over the next two to three years what it was set up to achieve.
9.59 am
Tony Worthington: As the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) said, this is a timely debate, particularly as President Bush has announced a huge expansion in AIDS financing—£10 billion is a lot of money and in normal circumstances, it would be welcomed enthusiastically. Apart from anything else, as the hon. Gentleman said, it will put great pressure on other countries, including ourselves, to increase our contribution to work on AIDS, particularly the global health fund. However, the way in which Bush is doing it raises great doubts.
I want to raise two issues. First, as the hon. Gentleman said, why has the President virtually ignored the global health fund and allocated only $1 billion of the new money to that fund? That represents only $200 million a year from 2004; he has decided to disburse $9 billion unilaterally. I also want to talk about links between the treatment of AIDS and reproductive health services. By doing so, I shall demonstrate how Bush's decision to keep money out of the global health fund and his attitude to reproductive health are linked.
Initially, the United States embraced the global health fund and although it was criticised for not giving enough, its contribution was far in excess of any other donor. Why is it turning its back on the global health
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fund as a disburser, setting up its own administrative procedure and limiting its funding to 12 sub-Saharan countries and two Caribbean countries? That is happening when the global fund does not have money for a third disbursement of grants in October, which leaves most sub-Saharan countries, including several badly affected countries, such as Malawi, out in the cold. That also has major implications for the global health fund's choices about the distribution of its funding. It also implies disaffection with the fund. That is even odder when one knows that Tommy Thompson, who is Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services, was elected to the chair of the global health fund only a couple of days after Bush's announcement on the $10 billion. Of course, Thompson would have known that he was to be elected before that date because his only opponent had withdrawn.
Part of Thompson's job is to be chief fundraiser for the global health fund. His task is surely more difficult if his Government do not put their major resources into the fund. It is even odder that Thompson did not travel to the board meeting in Geneva to take up his position as chair. I quote from the apology that he sent to the meeting:
"I am sorry that I am unable to be with you in Geneva today but President Bush has asked me to be with him when he addresses his Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS in Washington".
That sends a clear message: America first, the world second.
It is extraordinary that Thompson was not allowed to organise his diary so that he could attend the board meeting when he was supposed to take over as chair of the global health fund. It is stranger still because Thompson's lengthy message to the board expressing his joy at taking over the chairmanship made no mention of Bush's huge increase in funding for international AIDS work, which was announced only a few days before in the state of the union message.
The situation is odder still because the chief executive of the global health fund, Dr. Feachem, made no reference to the $10 billion from Bush in his report to the board. He also came here to talk to the all-party group on AIDS but did not mention Bush's $10 billion until I asked him about it. It is surreal; there is an earthquake going on in AIDS funding yet the chair and the chief executive of the global health fund pretend that the ground under their feet is steady.
A further oddity about Bush's announcement is the fact that his figures for numbers of people to be treated with anti-retroviral drugs are achievable only if there is access to cheap generic drugs produced outside the United States. However, the US has been blocking such access in the Doha talks. Additionally, the new initiative is to be administered by USAID—the United States Agency for International Development—which, in its present statute, requires products supplied as foreign aid to be made in the United States. There are also doubts about the American bureaucracy because promises are made but it takes a long time for money to be channelled in a way that meets with the approval of Congress. I hope that the Minister will explain what is going on—I wish him good luck.

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During International Development questions last week, the Secretary of State for International Development, who is on the board of the global health fund, expressed some disaffection with the fund's operation. I hope that the difficulties can be sorted out because the global health fund is a first-rate idea. The issue is far too important for those difficulties to be allowed to persist.
Mr. Lazarowicz: Does my hon. Friend agree that the proposal made a few minutes ago by the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), who chairs the Select Committee on International Development, that Europe should match the commitment of the United States to the global fund is one way of emphasising to the United States the world's commitment to the fund? Would he therefore agree to endorse the European Union making a similar contribution to the fund as the USA?
Tony Worthington: I hope that we and the EU make a much greater contribution to the global health fund than the USA: that is the point of what I am saying. The USA's contribution is $200 million per year for five years from 2004.
I also want to raise concerns about the relationship between AIDS work and reproductive health services. I am sure that Bush's decision to distribute funds bilaterally rather than through the global health fund is related to his appalling actions with regard to reproductive health. If he allocated money to the global health fund, it would be more difficult for him to keep the peace with the religious obsessives who back him.
Bush is in debt to, and under the control of, a small group of southern fundamentalist Christians who are obsessed with abortion and contraception. The way for a country to reduce the number of abortions—particularly unsafe ones—is to follow the example of Belgium and Holland. They have liberal abortion laws, thorough education about relationships and total access to family planning services. Belgium and Holland have the lowest abortion rates in the world, but Bush's followers support policies that push up the number of abortions—in particular, unsafe ones—and contribute to the appalling rates of maternal mortality in many countries.
The fundamentalists who programme Bush want to ban abortion and access to reproductive health services. Following their orders, Bush withdrew all funding from the United Nations Population Fund on the pretext that it was supporting the Chinese Government's one child per family project and coercive abortion. That was contradicted by his own investigating team and a group of hon. Members from this House. The UNFPA is working in 20 counties in China: it is weaning the Chinese away from compulsion and lowering abortion rates, but the zealots had their way with President Bush.
At meeting after meeting, the Bush Government are now trying to destroy the pace-setting Cairo conference, which found a worldwide consensus policy in this contentious area. It includes the explicit statement that abortion is never an acceptable method of family planning. The bedrock of the Cairo conference is that women throughout the world should have access to reproductive health services and that is under attack from the Bush Government.
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The Americans are urging on the poorest people in the world policies that would create a riot if they were tried in the USA. Can anyone imagine the consequences in America and Britain if their Governments said that they were going to withdraw access to family planning? The American Government's policies go against the American constitution's statements on freedom of information. The consequence of their policy is that they have withdrawn their supply of condoms from many parts of the world. When the first President Bush was in power, America supplied 800 million condoms to the developing world: it now supplies only 300 million condoms per year, which means that the average Botswanan would have access to one condom supplied by the international community per year.
By cutting the number of condoms, they are condemning to death thousands of people who could be protected if that very cheap method of prevention were available. I do not usually quote the words of the Mozambique bishops, but this is their advice to their flock:
"If you are HIV positive and you have unprotected sex and you infect someone you have in the eyes of God, committed murder. Or if you are HIV negative and you have unprotected sex with someone who is infected and they infect you, you have in the eyes of God, committed suicide. So my children, wearing a condom is not a sin … but not wearing one is."
That is the voice of sanity. In the words of the Mozambique bishops, Bush's policies stimulate murder and suicide. Now, during Bush's $10 billion AIDS initiative, his AIDS policy is running slap bang into a collision with his reproductive health policy. Will his AIDS policy allow condoms to be used as the only means of preventing that disease, but not for family planning? That would be absurd, but it is likely to happen.
American policy on AIDS would prohibit the sending of money to integrated health clinics offering AIDS treatment and family planning with information about abortion or abortion counselling. However, under the same policy money could be sent to a clinic treating only AIDS. In a country like Tanzania, which can spend only $3 or $4 a year per person on health care and where health clinics are sparse, American policy will require that the AIDS service is in a different place and run by a different agency from the health clinic. That is official.
This is not United States imperialism—it is worse than that. Under imperialism, an empire imposes its own way of life on another country. Bush would not dare impose such a policy in America because he would be ridiculed out of Washington. However, he is trying to impose just such a policy on the poorest people in the world and through it he is causing their deaths. That is one of the reasons why he has steered the money away from the global health fund and why he will distribute it bilaterally.
The tragedy of all this is that reproductive health services and AIDS policy should be much more closely linked than they are. That was said in the Cairo + 5 document, as follows:
"Governments should ensure that provision for STIs"—
sexually-transmitted infections—
"and AIDS are an integral component of reproductive and sexual health programmes at the primary health care level."

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That is also the policy of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and, in the words of its director general, Steven Sinding:
"The same systems that enable people to space and limit births and protect themselves from STDs"—
sexually-transmitted diseases—
"are essential to halting the spread of HIV."
The family planning association movements practically invented sexual and reproductive behaviour change and they went a long way towards establishing community-based services throughout the world. Both of those are essential in the fight against AIDS. However, the AIDS community and the family planning community behave as if they had nothing to do with each other. AIDS activists place emphasis on treatment and family planners often act as if they had no role in HIV/AIDS prevention. The donors have a major role to play in bringing the two groups together.
Bush's actions drive people in exactly the opposite direction. In the developed world, HIV transmission was regarded initially as being largely restricted to the gay and illicit drug-using communities, rather than through heterosexual transmission. Treatment was also captured by the large pharmaceutical companies, who saw that more money could be made from keeping wealthy people alive than from preventing people from dying. There was a lack of resources for vaccines or effective barrier methods controlled by women. There are still people who are obsessed with giving people in the poor world access to expensive retrovirals and they are failing to provide the resources for prevention through changing sexual behaviour or barrier methods, such as condoms.
It makes common sense to combine reproductive health services and HIV services, especially in terms of gaining access to young people. That is where the trained staff are and where the infrastructure often exists. Bush's emerging policy of providing condoms in HIV clinics but not to family planning services is counter-productive, both for family planning and for the treatment of the AIDS pandemic; we should wake up to what he is doing.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This is a most compelling debate, but I remind hon. Members that it is common practice in 90-minute Adjournment debates to commence the first of the three winding-up speeches no later than 30 minutes before conclusion, which will be at 10.30 am. Hon. Members should take that into account when contributing and making or giving way to interventions.
10.15 am
Hywel Williams: I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) on securing this debate on an extremely important subject. The brevity of my remarks does not reflect the importance that my party colleagues and I place on the issue.
"HIV AIDS is a modern apocalypse which dwarfs everything that has gone before.?
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Those are the words of Stephen Lewis, the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. "Dwarfs everything" are the relevant words. As I am a relative newcomer to such debates, I shall briefly try your patience, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and that of the House by considering some of the figures, because they beggar belief. The number of people living with HIV/AIDS totals 42 million—5 million people were newly infected in 2002 and about 800,000 of those were children. Those figures are from the World Health Organisation. AIDS deaths in 2002 totalled 3.1 million and 610,000 of those were children. I find it difficult to comprehend those figures.
The vast majority—95 per cent.—of HIV/AIDS sufferers are in the poorest countries. In some African countries, 20 per cent. of adults are HIV-positive. In sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 30 million people are HIV-positive, there were 3.5 million new infections in 2002. Those are astonishing and horrifying figures. The AIDS epidemic is increasingly entwined with wider humanitarian crises, such as the food crisis in southern Africa and the social disruption caused by the need to migrate to find work as people become more involved in the cash economy. Also, conflicts in Africa have caused an increase in HIV/AIDS. The ability of those countries to deal with HIV/AIDS is reduced by crises in the political and economic systems.
As the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Tony Worthington) noted, HIV/AIDS is open to attack through health education and the increased use of barrier methods. I was interested to see evidence of a decline in HIV/AIDS among inner-city women in Ethiopia as a direct result of such factors. There has also been a decline in HIV/AIDS in parts of Uganda among young pregnant women. Those are encouraging signs. I shall not refer to the availability of cheaper pharmaceuticals, which clearly is important. A decline in HIV/AIDS needs human intervention, which must be funded. That is my one and only point, and it is that on which I shall question the Minister.
The UK is making contributions to fighting HIV/AIDS. According to my figures, we furnished $215 million to the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria from 2001 to 2003. The fund was set up by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, whose target is $10 billion per annum. I accept that we are also making other aid contributions, as well as making significant contributions to conflict resolution and development in countries suffering severely from HIV and AIDS. Politics is a matter of priorities, so I shall briefly refer to two of our priorities, without trying your patience, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Based on the Government's figures, we are prepared to spend £1.75 billion on the forthcoming war. That sum has already been committed and I understand that at commencement, the figure may be £2 billion. As far as I can see we are spending £2 billion on war and $250 million on HIV/AIDS.
I do not want to play down the Government's commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS, particularly when one compares their attitude to that taken by some other rich states. We are often told that the demands for health services are infinite, as near as damn it. I am not asking for a comment from the Minister on the potential global demand for services related to HIV/AIDS, but I ask him to consider whether we are spending enough.

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Let us not allow people throughout the world, especially those in the poorest countries in Africa, to die because of our indifference, or because our priorities lie elsewhere.
10.21 am
David Cairns: I will try and follow the good example of other hon. Members and be brief so that we can give the Front-Bench spokesmen maximum time.
I cannot accept the slightly spurious comparison that the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) made between the money set aside for possible international conflict and that set aside for HIV/AIDS. One can take any section of Government spending at any time and compare it to another section to make a particular point. The arguments stand or fall on their own merits.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) on securing this important debate. As a relative newcomer to such debates, it has been a great pleasure to listen to the expertise of colleagues from the International Development Committee. I shall not rehearse the numbers and figures that we have heard over and over again today, numbing though they are.
It is a cliché to say that countries throughout Africa and Asia are simply being ravaged and paying a terrible price due to HIV/AIDS. It is not just individuals—hundreds of thousands, tens of millions of individuals—but entire families and communities that are devastated by the illness, including people who do not even have the infection. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) mentioned orphans; perhaps she might expand on that point in her speech. The challenge is not just to cure individuals of a disease, but to mend broken townships and cities and entire regions and countries.
Before I turn briefly to African and Asian issues, I want to talk about HIV/AIDS in the west. My hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Tony Worthington) touched on that subject. When the disease broke and awareness of it had its first impact, there was a sudden and welcome demise in unsafe practices, which had the predictable result of slowing the growth and spread of the disease. We have to remind ourselves that that happened about 20 years ago and an entire generation has grown up in the post-AIDS era. The doomsday adverts that we remember from the late 1980s increasingly have no bearing on the sexual practices of the current generation.
Complacency is the great threat in the west. Some sexual practices and venues are being reintroduced that closed down 20 years ago, which will increase the spread of the disease in the west at the very time that we are trying to do something about it in the southern world. We must not take our eye off the home front, as we concentrate—rightly in this debate—on the southern world. We all pay tribute to the health organisations, statutory bodies and others, but they need to refresh the message in this country that AIDS is still around, incurable and a killer. People suffering from HIV/AIDS will die as surely in Greenock as they will in Mozambique. Perhaps it will take longer in the west, because of access to palliative medicines, but it is still a killer and we should not take our eye off that ball.
On the global scale of the challenge, in Zambia, HIV prevalence is about 27 per cent. of 15 to 49-year-olds. In certain parts of Africa, one is always on the lookout for
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new ways in which the disease is spreading. I understand that one particularly virulent means is the interaction between long-distance lorry drivers and prostitutes. That is spreading the disease rapidly and non-governmental organisations are working on education programmes to try to do something about that.
The position is gloomy for much of the world and the messages that we are portraying today are dire. However, there are positive signs, including some evidence of increasing awareness of AIDS, which is the first step. We must pay tribute to the organisations spreading an educational message. The focus of today's debate is to emphasise that much more needs to be done. My hon. Friends and Opposition Members have highlighted means of doing that and I shall not go through those again. More money is the cornerstone. There must also be support for the global fund, greater access to drugs and a new approach to patenting important life-saving pharmaceuticals.
I shall briefly mention the international financing facility, although I shall not go into it in depth. The hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) mentioned it in what were, unfortunately, slightly disparaging tones. I have great hopes for that facility. It is not an international financing facility to combat HIV and AIDS—there is much more to it than that—but the scale of the figures mentioned in the document of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is considerable. The figures go up to the £100 billion mark. That is a step change. My right hon. Friend is worried, and rightly, that we are nowhere near meeting the millennium targets. If we carry on at the same rate, we shall miss them. The hon. Gentleman implied that if something is not broken, we should not fix it, but I think that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is right to be worried and to be considering other ways of achieving the step change needed.
I shall finish, if I may, on a personal point, which picks up on the second part of the well made speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie. Since my election to this House in 2001, I have deliberately steered clear of all issues relating to the Church. That is for personal reasons, relating to my previous career as a priest. I spend much time turning down offers of television interviews inviting me to give forth on issues varying from who should be the new Archbishop of Canterbury to war and peace matters. However, this issue is too important to allow such niceties to stand in the way. I yield to no one in my admiration for the work that the Catholic Church does throughout the world. Men and women from comfortable western families have given up a life of luxury to go to the most inhospitable, unfriendly, barren environments on the planet. They have given their lives and put themselves on the line to do work on which we stand here, in our comfortable Westminster surroundings, and opine. Their work in orphanages, schools, education and running programmes is magnificent. I know many such people personally and I make no criticism whatever of their commitment or that of the Church to helping the needy, the impoverished and those ravished by sickness and disease.
But—here is the "but" and my hon. Friend was absolutely right about it—it is incontrovertible that the use of condoms slows the spread of this killer disease. The whole argument about contraception has been

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swept aside by the need to prevent a further genocide—genocide caused by an illness. We know how we can stop that and we have to stop it. The Catholic Church, quite simply, must change its view on the use of condoms. It must change its view on the explicit nature of sex education. Sex education such as that I had at school, which involved looking at sea urchins, is simply not fit for the purpose in the 21st century. The Catholic Church must have a complete, Copernican revolution in its attitude to sex education and its attitude towards gay men, in particular. This issue is too important. Lives are at risk. People are dying. The Church is a church of compassion. It must show that compassion and change its course.
10.29 am
Dr. Jenny Tonge: I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) on introducing the debate. I do not think that we can debate this topic often enough. If ever there were a weapon of mass destruction, AIDS is it. It may well kill far more people over the next 20 years than the bubonic plague ever did. People all over the world face an absolutely horrific scenario. Perhaps that is not so much the case in the west—yet—but if we become too complacent, it may affect us just as badly. Mother nature has provided her own weapon of mass destruction.
We have had some excellent speeches. We have been told about figures: the number of victims and the billions of pounds that are being spent on the issue—it is figures, figures, figures all the time. The hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) talked about the USA's efforts to combat the disease, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith talked of the problems of financing the global fund and the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) stressed the importance of the figures.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns). I assume that he is a Catholic and was a Catholic priest. I admire him for the way in which he spoke. We need more people to say what he said.
As always, the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Tony Worthington) gave a powerful speech. I spent 25 years in reproductive and sexual health in my professional life before I became a Member of Parliament, and I would have been proud to deliver that speech. I agreed with every word, dot and comma. I commend the speech to the House; it should be printed and put up on the wall of every hon. Member's office. I will not go on, because I do not want to embarrass the hon. Gentleman, but it was a seriously good speech.
Several points have not been emphasised quite enough. To start with, there is the availability of drugs. Developing countries need anti-retroviral drugs—particularly, to prevent mother to child transmission—but the problem is not an easy matter of simply providing drugs, however cheap they are. That will not conquer the epidemic or do the trick. The drugs are far too complicated to take and need to be backed by things that are simple for us in the west, such as good nutrition, if they are to work. How many people in developing countries can we honestly say are fed properly
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nowadays? I am sad that the global fund and the American contribution, about which the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie talked, are concentrated primarily on drugs.
I am sad that not enough emphasis is being placed on health systems. Some countries have not got the necessary roads and, even if there were a clinic, people would not be able to get to it. We have to deliver clinics and nurses. We do not need doctors, but we do need health workers who are educated in the delivery of AIDS drugs if those drugs are to be any good at all. If we do not have such workers, the drugs will be taken improperly, resistance to the disease will develop and we will have to start all over again. I feel passionately about that, and I am sick of hearing people castigate the drug companies when we are not placing enough emphasis on health systems.
Some recently published research is quite damaging in that it gives the wrong message. It is claimed that people in the third world use dirty needles and that health systems are inadequate and dirty and do not follow good practices. Those factors will certainly contribute a small amount to the spread of AIDS, but no one should make the mistake of thinking that they are the reason for its spread. It is not so, even if those things may be a small contributing factor.
We have not heard much about vaccines—although something was said by the hon. Member for Banbury. Vaccines are the ultimate weapon against any infectious disease, and the global fund, the Americans, the Gates Foundation, which has contributed a lot, and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative have done sterling work. Trials of AIDS vaccines are going on all over the world, but there are not enough of them. We must ensure that funds enrich research into AIDS vaccines because that will lead to the end of the epidemic, as it did for smallpox and as it soon will do for polio.
The other thing that has not been mentioned is the effect of debt on developing countries. In passing, we should remember that African countries spend $14 billion a year on servicing their debt. The global fund has estimated that those countries need about $10 billion to do something that will have an impact on the AIDS epidemic. AIDS destroys economically active people in the population and will destroy the ability of any country to service its debt because fewer people will be working. As I mentioned during an intervention on the opening speech, AIDS orphans are becoming a huge problem, and developing countries will have to spend a lot of money on those children who have never known a family or a mother and a father. They live rough on the streets, not receiving an education and at risk from all sorts of factors. We expect countries in Africa to service their debt to the tune of $14 billion a year when less than that amount would greatly help the fight against AIDS. That is crazy. Giving with one hand and taking away with another is nonsense.
Finally, I shall compare the amounts of money that the world likes to spend on various things. I said that the AIDS virus is the most powerful weapon of mass destruction in the world. We have already heard from the hon. Member for Caernarfon that the USA is thinking of spending about $200 billion on war with Iraq, against which its contribution to the fight against AIDS pales into insignificance. Far less than 1 per cent

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of that amount goes into expenditure to tackle AIDS, and that includes the ear-marked $15 billion that the Americans are spending independently on the AIDS crisis. It is a disgrace that that is going on in our world.
I am pleased that a Foreign Office Minister is here to answer today's debate. If we truly have a wonderful special relationship with the United States, and if our Prime Minister is prepared to follow blindly whatever the President of the USA says, what return are we getting? Let us see some action on the other fronts that the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie mentioned, and let us see action on all those international treaties from which the USA is pulling out.
We learned from the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie that the USA's expenditure on AIDS is entirely cynical. It is making jolly sure that reproductive health and abortion services are not being funded. As a professional in that area, let me say that there is no way that an AIDS epidemic can be prevented unless reproductive health and abortion are also tackled. All those subjects are as one. Another reason why the USA is behaving in that way—this also explains its actions in the World Trade Organisation—is that it is funding the drugs industry.
I am getting black looks from Mr. Deputy Speaker so I shall finish by mentioning just one more thing. We were told that the distribution of condoms from the USA amounts in Botswana to one condom per annum per man. Who in the Chamber could cope with that?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I call the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key).
Dr. Tonge: The hon. Member for Salisbury?
10.39 am
Mr. Robert Key: I could cope quite simply; I had a vasectomy years ago.
Of all the debates that you and I have sat through over many years, Mr. Deputy Speaker, this must have been one of the most interesting. It will present the Minister with a challenge when he makes his wind-up speech.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) for giving us another opportunity to debate this important issue, which has been debated with great success over many years. I was elected back in 1983—the dark ages of AIDS. The foundation of the all-party group on AIDS was a milestone at a time when ignorance was rife in a era of Government health programmes involving tombstones on television to impress on the public the consequences of an AIDS epidemic.
One of the first things that we had to learn was that it is no good being judgmental about AIDS and adopting a high moral tone. It is no good blaming everything on lifestyle choices, as some hon. Members did in the 1980s. One hon. Member said to me: "A plague on them; they made a choice; let them die." That was in line with wide public perceptions at the time, and it is fortunate that things have moved on.
It remains a mistake in 2003 to be judgmental about AIDS, particularly in developing countries. Being judgmental when considering such an important matter is a temptation that we should resist. We simply cannot
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apply European and American cultural stereotypes to entirely different social and cultural situations elsewhere in our world. I would like to sit some of President Bush's advisers under a mango tree in Gambia on a Saturday morning—I have done that—to talk to the village imam and elders about AIDS, contraception, family planning and so on. That usually results in uncontrollable mirth on the part of listeners and, I regret, very little comprehension.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith was right to discuss the consequences of the situation for the entire world, and Colin Powell was right when he said that it is as serious a threat as international terrorism. The Bush Administration's record on frustrating the work of the United Nations Population Fund is not good. I want to say to the President, as one Christian to another, that there is no evidence that the fund promoted coercive abortion in China or anywhere else. Does the President understand the consequences of his policy? The UN has estimated that cutting the USA's $34 million contribution to the fund will lead to 800,000 more unsafe abortions and the death of 4,700 mothers and 77,000 children under the age of 5. That is not a happy outcome from a change in presidential policy.
Another unfortunate consequence, particularly in countries in Africa, is that orphans are created, and there is terrible suffering and enormous medical need. Yet what do we do? We recruit their nurses for the national health service of the United Kingdom. Last year, 2,114 nurses were recruited from South Africa, 473 from Zimbabwe, 432 from Nigeria, 183 from Zambia, 195 from the Gambia, 155 from Kenya, 100 from Botswana and 75 from Malawi, in addition to the 994 recruited from India. That is not a good idea. It may be to the advantage of the nurses, and we cannot blame them for wanting to enhance their careers, but should that be the public policy of the United Kingdom Government?
My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) referred to the UK's commitment after 2015. I wholly endorse what he said about giving the global health fund the support that it needs to persuade the European Union to match US funds. There is an EU problem in that there is increasing evidence that the American Administration seeks to influence European parliamentarians to oppose development work and, therefore, development money for southern Africa if it involves reproductive health care issues. We must take that on board very seriously.
My hon. Friend also mentioned vaccines, which are hugely important. I hope that Government agencies, such as the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research, will encourage work on vaccines in partnership with our universities and their pharmaceutical partners.
The hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Tony Worthington) discussed the importance of Cairo and gave the Mozambiquan bishop's magnificent quote, which I shall use often. However, as a Christian who has a huge respect for the Roman Catholic Church, I would go further and say that the best thing that could happen to it would be that it accepted married priests and women bishops very soon. They might inject a little of the sense that the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) introduced into our debate. The hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams)

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discussed the huge impact on children as something that particularly affected him, and I salute him for making his comments.
The hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde is a Member for whom we changed the law of this land. I spoke passionately in the debate on that occasion. It was a very good debate, which I suspect the hon. Gentleman read. If he did not, he can always check my website and find it there, because I am proud of what I said and proud that I voted to change the law so that he could come along this morning to tell us how the Catholic Church should be reformed and, furthermore, to do so while wearing a purple shirt. I congratulate him on that particular flourish.
The Minister must answer some serious questions. If he cannot do so now, he will in due course find someone who can. What total amount of money has our country given to the global fund? I am keen to know what our Government are doing to encourage other international donors to give more money, and our influence should be used to that effect. From where does the money for the global fund come? Is it from additional funds—perhaps from an unusually generous Chancellor of the Exchequer—or is it from the budget of the Department for International Development?
The Vice-President of Malawi, Justin Malewezi, who runs that country's campaign against AIDS, has raised a problem. He said that there is an upper ceiling for proposals and that any proposals
"over $300 million would be thrown in the bin".
Can the Minister confirm whether that is the case? Is there an upper limit on proposals for expenditure from the fund?
The commission on intellectual property rights, which is funded by DFID, is an initiative of the United Kingdom Government that I warmly welcome. Will the Minister confirm whether its report reflects official Government policy? It is important to know that, because it makes some very significant suggestions. I would be grateful if the Minister would address that issue.
In conclusion, we must not forget that we, too, are a part of the debate about the international impact of the crisis. I wish to draw the attention of the House to early-day motion 691, which is entitled "Contraceptive awareness week 2003". It points out that there is still great cause for concern in our country, in which 41,200 people are living with HIV, 31 per cent. of whom are undiagnosed. The number of people living with diagnosed HIV is rising each year. We should be careful before throwing stones in our own glass house.
10.48 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Bill Rammell): I should genuinely like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) for securing this important debate. It is a long time since I have heard such well argued and passionate comments from so many Members. They demonstrated genuine understanding. It is also a first for me to hear in a debate about the personal contraceptive practices of Front-Bench Members, although I am sure that that practice will continue.
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This is an important debate. Tragically, the scourge of AIDS is reversing the development gains of the past few decades, at a time when 46 per cent. of Africans live in extreme poverty. The Government are therefore committed to encouraging the entire international community to play a full part in tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which is having a huge impact in many poor countries on health, social development, education, food security and, as my hon. Friend argued, economic growth. The epidemic hits agricultural activity extremely hard and contributes to the tragic famine that is unfolding in sub-Saharan Africa.
In the brief time available, I want to focus on the Government's important work on tackling the epidemic in developing countries. The Government's response to the epidemic covers many vital issues. It includes supporting state-of-the-art interventions in prevention, care, impact mitigation, access to treatment, which is crucial, research and—many hon. Members have referred to this—mobilising the additional finance required to tackle HIV/AIDS.
Last year, the Department for International Development invested more than £200 million in HIV/ AIDS-related bilateral work, which is an increase from £40 million in 1997. In anybody's book, the increase is both substantial and welcome. That money is being used to fund several specific tasks. First, it will support national plans to reduce the epidemic's impact. Secondly, it will ensure that national responses are multisectoral and are sustainably embedded in national budgets. Thirdly, it will enable countries to build capacity to deliver high-quality preventive treatment and care for people living with HIV/AIDS and for orphans. Fourthly, it will address underlying causes of vulnerability, particularly human rights, stigma, discrimination and gender inequalities.
To support that programme, the value of DFID's overall programme in Africa is set to increase from £640 million to £1 billion by 2006, which is a genuine indication of the Government's commitment. We want a major element of that money to be used for preventive purposes. For example, we are supporting innovative multi-media work in South Africa, where the HIV message is relayed through television soap operas and on the radio, which is often the most effective way to get the message across.
In Russia and China, we are working to reduce the incidence of HIV infection in injecting drug users. In Mozambique, we are trying to improve users' lives through life skills programmes aimed at HIV prevention. In Kenya, we are working with community-based organisations to care for AIDS orphans. As well as that important bilateral support, we are providing important contributions to support HIV/AIDS programmes run by multilateral agencies, which include the United Nations. Our work on prevention is extremely important.
Although we face a huge task, we should be optimistic: there is initial evidence, particularly from Africa and Asia, that HIV can be beaten. Examples include Cambodia, Uganda and Thailand, where condom use has significantly increased, and Senegal, which has been a model of good practice in HIV/AIDS prevention for some time. Progress can be made, but there is an urgent need for other countries, in which political leadership is essential, to learn from those

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successful countries. This week, Nelson Mandela said that one of his regrets from his time as President of South Africa is that he did not give sufficient priority to the issue. Everybody needs to respond to that message from someone who is enormously respected, particularly throughout the developing world.
Many hon. Members have called on the Government to do more. We are not complacent, and we are making a significant contribution, particularly through our actions through the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. We have pledged $200 million over five years, and $80 million of that has already been disbursed.
I pay tribute to the work undertaken by the Chancellor in conjunction with the Department for International Development, especially in creating the new international finance facility. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith, that the comments made by the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) were somewhat disparaging, and unjustified if one considers the case being advanced. We are not resiling from our commitment to increase our aid financing effectively and eventually to move towards contributing 0.7 per cent. of gross national product. However, that does not contradict the focus of the programme in trying to establish a partnership with businesses and civil society to increase those funds significantly, and that should be welcomed.
I agree with the comments made by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge), who spoke for the Liberal Democrats, that we should not neglect or decry the work being done to find a vaccine for AIDS. In the longer run, that is the most effective contribution that we can make. Although the first candidate AIDS vaccine in widespread trials was unsuccessful, HIV is a complex virus; many other candidate vaccines are in the pipeline, and we must support them. DFID has already committed £14 million to international AIDS vaccine initiatives and £16 million to the Medical Research Council's initiative.
In the short time remaining, I shall respond to points made by hon. Members. First, on the status of the UK's contribution to the global fund raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith, we support the call for increased funding from the rest of
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Europe. We will take up the case and argue it strongly; the UK is one of the largest Government donors to that fund, and we want it to continue.
My hon. Friend also raised the World Health Organisation and UNAIDS' target of 3 million people in developing countries on anti-retroviral therapy by 2005, asking whether the UK was part of that partnership. We are not partners, but we support the goals of the international HIV treatment coalition in respect of increasing access to treatment of HIV/AIDS. We are funding work in support of the goals and will continue to look at the strengthening of health care systems within developing countries.
My hon. Friend asked about monitoring mechanisms to ensure that DFID money goes to support health systems. There are annual reviews in countries to assess the programmes and to ensure that they meet those goals. We are working closely with UNAIDS and other international agencies to monitor the efficacy of the countries' responses, and we will continue to do so.
My hon. Friend raised the issue of the contribution and role of civil society, with particular reference to implementation and monitoring. The full and genuine participation of civil society at country level in the preparation, implementation and monitoring of proposals is vital to the fund's success.
I wholeheartedly agree with many of the points made in the excellent contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Tony Worthington). The financial initiative recently announced by President Bush should be welcomed, as it is a substantial financial contribution. However, there are some legitimate concerns that that money will be diverted from family planning services. We must look carefully at that and raise it with our American partners.
It is worth my underscoring the fact that the initiative is at a very early stage of development and has not yet been approved by Congress. There is a long way to go, and many of the points made today need to be considered in that context.
Finally, the hon. Member for Richmond Park professed passionate opposition to disarming Iraq. There will be no hope of tackling the AIDS crisis if we do not tackle proliferation and if weapons of mass destruction are used, the institutional order of our world will be in ruins. That should concern us all.

Coroners Courts
11 am
Mr. Chris Bryant: Again, it is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Over the past couple of days, several hon. Members have asked me why I called for a debate on such a recondite and obscure subject as the coroners' courts. I explained that there are many and good and strong reasons why we should have a full debate about the role of coroners in society, and how they operate, and I am delighted to see a former deputy coroner in the Chamber.
I wanted to raise the issue partly because of my experience as a curate in the Church of England. My first visit, which the vicar had asked me to make, was to an old lady who had been bedridden for several years. She died two minutes after I arrived. That regularly happened to me when I was a curate; people often died the moment that I visited them.
During the five years that I worked in the church, I saw how much extra and unnecessary grief the whole process of certification and dealing with inquests and post mortems can cause bereaved families. In cases of suicide, especially, when the family are already particularly distressed, a post mortem can cause even more grief when it is clear that the person has taken their own life and the family already face such complicated issues as how to explain it all to the children.
In the 20 months since I have been a Member of Parliament there have been 28 drugs-related deaths in my constituency alone. That is a very large number, by anyone's reckoning, but an accurate recording of the number of drugs-related deaths in the Rhondda. Each death was a tragedy for the person, their family and their community. In a valleys community in south Wales, unlike in a major city or conurbation, everyone in the street knows about the death of an individual, and a drugs-related death affects the whole community.
Under the current system, there is no room for the investigation of a series of deaths because there is no higher court, and the coroner stands alone and relatively unaccountable. An individual coroner might do a perfectly good job, but it is difficult to determine trends throughout the United Kingdom because there are no standard guidelines or rules on how a drugs-related death should be recorded.
In 2001, there were 532,500 deaths in England and Wales, 322,200 of which were certified by doctors without reference to the coroner, and 202,350 of which were reported to coroners. Of the cases reported to coroners, 121,100 led to post mortems but only 25,800 to inquests. In other words, 121,100 families went through the additional process of a post mortem. Almost one in four deaths in England and Wales led to a port mortem in 2001, which is a very high number in comparison with figures for other European countries. In Northern Ireland, where the coroner is allowed greater discretion as to whether to hold a post mortem, fewer than one in 10 deaths—9 per cent.—led to a post mortem.
I do not think that that is because there are more suspicious deaths in England and Wales or more deaths due to industrial disease that need greater investigation.
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I do not think that it is because people see their doctor less frequently or further from the moment of death. It is simply because the system in England and Wales has long been due for review. After all, most of the way in which coroners in England and Wales operate goes back to the Coroners Act 1887. The 138 coroners plus their deputies—roughly 375 individuals—operate in a miasma of fragmented legislation, which genuinely makes it difficult for people to have confidence in the system.
Mr. Elfyn Llwyd: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising this very important subject. He is right to say that far too many post mortems are ordered for no apparent reason. They should be confined to deaths in suspicious circumstances and genuinely sudden deaths for which there does not appear to be a medical cause.
On the hon. Gentleman's point about the need to bring the coroners' system up to speed, part of the reason for that, in my experience as an ex-deputy coroner, used to be that many coroners were part-time. However, that is not the case now. The situation has changed considerably, and now may be the time is right for better instruction from Government—for example, as to when post mortems should be ordered.
Mr. Bryant: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He is right about when post mortems should be held, and I shall come to that. However, a large number of coroners and deputy coroners are still part-time. I should like to see a far more professionalised service. Currently, a coroner has to have either legal or medical training. We should be able to guarantee both medical and legal training throughout the coroners' service. That is one of the issues that we need to consider.
I called for the debate because no society can truly value life unless it honours death properly. The traditional obsequies in different communities are important, and they vary enormously. Much of the 1887 law was written at a time when cremation was coming into use, but was still used by only a small minority of people in England and Wales. Now, however, 70 per cent. of funerals involve cremation. I shall deal with the three-tier certification process for cremation in a moment. In the multi-ethnic society in which we now live, and with the changing perceptions of death and how it should be honoured, it is important to review and renew the coroners' service.
Why on earth do we need a coroners' service in the first place? Obviously, we need it to detect and prevent foul play. I think that part of the reason why the Government initiated the review of the coroners' service that is being conducted at the moment—it should report finally at the end of the month—was the Harold Shipman case. It was clear that the certification process did not make it possible for us to detect and prevent further foul play in that case.
It is also important to determine trends in pathology and disease. One problem with a fragmented service is that it is difficult to provide the Office for National Statistics with clear and unambiguous reporting that is consistent throughout the United Kingdom.
An increasingly important aspect of the coroners' service is adjudication on cases of industrial disease. As a Member of Parliament for a former mining

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constituency, I know that for many widows what is on the death certificate is vital. A death certificate that refers to emphysema and chronic bronchitis results in a very different response from IRISC with regard to the miners' compensation process than does another certification, so it is vital that people have confidence in the process.
It is also important to adjudicate on whether a suicide has taken place, which may have significant legal and financial implications for the family concerned on mortgages, life insurance and so forth. Many implications stem from the determination that a suicide has taken place.
Finally, one important aspect of the coroner process and certification of death that is seldom mentioned is that it provides reassurance and support to families and next of kin. Knowing how and why someone died—especially after protracted illness in hospital when it has been disputed whether the treatment was right and proper, or in cases of mental illness—can be crucial for the family and the coroners' service carries out no more important role than providing secure and understandable reasons for cause of death.
At the moment the system is failing, partly because of fragmentation. To the vast majority of people, the system is incomprehensible. Until the moment when people have to go through the process of certification, they do not understand how the coroner relates to the registrar and the pathologist, or why a post mortem is carried out at some times, but not at others. Often there is no requirement to tell families that a post mortem is going to take place; sometimes they are not told about it.
Remarkably few rules and guidelines are in place to ensure consistency across the United Kingdom. One part of the country might have a meticulous and diligent coroner, but a coroner in another part of the country might work to a different set of assumptions and standards, and that must be wrong. Although a court of appeal exists in theory, in practice, few people have been able to go through the higher courts because the coroner service has no structure for appeal.
As I said earlier, too many post-mortems are carried out in England and Wales. The system is still under investigation, but the certification process seems to lead to many errors in adjudicating the cause of death. Some estimates suggest that more than 30 per cent. of deaths are incorrectly certified. The process for the certification of cremations was devised in 1887 and amended in the 1920s; it is open to abuse, not least because the second doctor is often nominated by the first doctor or by the funeral director, so is clearly not genuinely independent. Furthermore, the medical referee at the crematorium often receives the papers so late that he is deprived of the opportunity to say no and insist on reference to the coroner.
Most importantly, the current system has little sensitivity to the needs of the bereaved. A mechanistic approach is customarily adopted—a point reinforced yesterday when an hon. Member told me that families should get used to the fact of post mortems because they are important to society. However, for many people, the thought of their relatives and loved ones being dissected unnecessarily—particularly a double dissection of the bodily cavity and the skull—is profoundly upsetting. The system should be able to honour grief that naturally arises.
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What would I like to see happen? Above all, I would like a single national coroner service for England and Wales, responsible to the Home Office rather than to the Lord Chancellor. Superior courts should be used for contentious cases or for the review of multiple cases—for example, a raft of drug-related deaths in a particular locality. I should also like clearer rules on how coroners operate—not just the legal procedures used for an inquest or in a coroners court, but a clear set of rules governing every aspect of when there should and should not be a post mortem. Of course, there should be a presumption that there will always be a full public inquest into deaths in custody or in prison and also perhaps in psychiatric hospitals or under psychiatric care. However, there should not be a presumption that there should be a full post mortem with double dissection in as many cases as there are now.
Thirdly, there should be clear national guidelines on the recording of deaths as drug related and in particular on when to require a toxicology report. Toxicology reporting across the UK is very patchy. I pay tribute to my own local coroner who does a good job in that respect, but it is uncertain whether that is equally true around the whole country. We should have an end to the three-tier certification process for cremation, which many doctors refer to as the ash-cash system. Instead we should have a robust system to support and monitor the certification of death to ensure that we have fewer errors in the attribution of the cause of death and clearer prevention of any foul play.
The coroners' review has already suggested that there might be a medical auditor. The Government should look at that. Undoubtedly we need to move towards roughly the same processes for burial as for cremation. We also need clarification of responsibility for the disposal of human tissue. It is not just the Alder Hey case that has provoked a great deal of concern in the UK about that. There is great uncertainty about whether it is the responsibility of the NHS trust, the pathologist or the coroner. That needs clarifying. We also need the active involvement of the family in the process of post mortem and inquest. As I said earlier, sometimes families do not even know that a post mortem is taking place.
Yesterday in the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport we were told the tale of a couple whose son had died in a contentious case that was widely and incorrectly publicised in the media. They were required to pay £300 for a copy of the transcript of their son's post mortem. That is wholly unnecessary. We should make the full coroner's report available to the families and the next of kin in such cases, and we should interpret the concept of families or next of kin in the broadest sense to mean not just married partners but unmarried partners.
Finally, I believe that there should be training for all coroners and all their officers. Dealing with bereaved families is complex and sometimes doctors or lawyers—with all respect to the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd)—have not had training that is necessarily relevant to that process. Many coroners also need training in dealing with the media. Often in contentious cases families will be gobbled up by the media and spat out at the other end. With just a simple element of sensitivity to the issues around the media and how to respond to them, coroners could make lives much easier for the bereaved.
11.18 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Hilary Benn): I congratulate my hon. Friend on having secured this debate and more importantly on his speech. It set out in an exemplary fashion the range of issues that society needs to address in relation to the coroners' service. It has made my job of responding that much easier. I also acknowledge the expertise of the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd), of which I was unaware until this morning. I do not know of any other hon. Members with that knowledge, and it is good that he has joined us for the debate.
First, I should like to address the question that my hon. Friend touched upon, which is the purpose of the coroners' service. It is an ancient office that has existed since the middle ages and which, particularly since the early 19th century, has evolved into the current mechanism for trying to ensure that violent and unnatural deaths are properly investigated on behalf of society.
Coroners' inquests serve four main purposes. First, as my hon. Friend said, they reassure the public that any untoward or uncertain death will be investigated impartially by an independent judicial officer, and secondly, they enable any rumour or suspicion surrounding that death to be dispelled. Thirdly—I shall return to the point—they assist in maintaining the integrity of data on causes of death in the interests of public knowledge and public health. Fourthly, they underpin arrangements for detecting and deterring crime.
The coroners' service also has to answer, and rightly so, the natural questions asked by society and relatives when someone dies about what happened and why. However, in recent years, the coroners' service has also been subjected to the pressure of determining how coroners courts fit in with the other mechanisms being developed to try to answer the questions of why, how, and whether someone was to blame for what happened. That is important with respect to the review that is being undertaken. Coroners courts are only part of that overall process. However, some of the pressures on them have been due to the fact that people have sought, when they have lost a loved one, to use the coroners' service to answer some of those broader questions. We should recognise that other mechanisms, such as public inquiries, have been developed to try to deal with those broader issues, particularly when a large number of deaths have occurred.
The second issue, which my hon. Friend touched on from his experience in his former profession, is society's approach and attitude towards death. In the 19th century there was a formal system, structure and rituals for dealing with death. In the 19th century, people were much more familiar with death—one only has to walk into any graveyard and look at the ages of those who died at the time to see that that was the case. The real truth—and I speak from personal experience—is that although we now seem to be able to talk openly about a wide range of things to do with people's personal lives, society still has some difficulty in grappling with death, although it is the most natural of occurrences. Some of the issues that I will discuss later arise from that attitude.
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I feel strongly that we should be open about death and what it involves. For example, we need to provide open information for people on the arguments for carrying out post mortems, both in respect of the coroners' service and advances in medical knowledge. For the best of motives, people in the medical profession used to talk about taking tissue samples, but we have learned from a range of experiences since then, and that approach will not work in the modern age. People are entitled to receive information and to hear the arguments, so that they can then take decisions.
Coroners have always been local to the communities that they serve. They are still appointed and supported by their shire county councils, unitary authorities, or consortiums of metropolitan districts or London boroughs. The coroner's jurisdiction is quite different from that of the criminal or civil courts. The justice that they dispense is not one of arbitration between different parties. It is an investigation of those deaths which society rightly considers should be the subject of a judicial inquiry held in public.
Coroners are independent of the Government and are answerable in their judicial decisions only to the courts. That is an important feature of the system if they are to investigate deaths fully. Nevertheless, as a public service, coroners have to operate with many Departments and agencies that have an interest in their work, and the Home Office provides general support and direction, working closely with the Coroners' Society of England and Wales.
As my hon. Friend said, about 12 per cent. of deaths reported to coroners result in inquests. Although the inquests will report all the relevant details of how the deceased came by his or her death, much attention is of course focused on the verdict. Coroners and their juries are not restricted in the verdicts they may bring in, but for the sake of statistical consistency—a point to which my hon. Friend referred—a number of formulae have been recommended to coroners, including accident, unlawful killing, and suicide.
My hon. Friend raised the issue of drug-related deaths, in which I know he takes great interest. In 1984 new verdicts were suggested to coroners in respect of such deaths: death from dependence on drugs or nondependent abuse of drugs. The truth is that these drug-related verdicts are not entirely satisfactory. Coroners believe that accident or other verdicts may more closely reflect the circumstances of the death. It is not always easy to separate the different contributory factors in trying to reach a verdict.
In view of the need to improve our information about the number of deaths due to drugs, work has been proceeding on finding the best way to use the information from coroners' inquests in conjunction with the Department of Health and the Coroners' Society of England and Wales. I pay tribute to their contribution to this work. We aim to issue guidance to coroners in the next couple of months, although it is in part linked to the coroners review. The suggested definition will be:
"deaths where the underlying cause is poisoning, drug abuse or drug dependence and where any of the substances listed under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, as amended, were involved".

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As an illustration I shall give statistics published on the total number of drug-related deaths in England and Wales. In 2000 it was 2,968. Within that total only 622 were recorded by coroners' verdicts as coming within the two 1984 definitions, of which 309 resulted from a dependence and 313 from non-dependent use. Yet the Office for National Statistics information on the total number of drug-related deaths draws heavily on the further information that coroners provide. Most coroners provide it in a form that the ONS has requested, but not all, which raises questions about the data's consistency to which my hon. Friend referred. This is part of the Government's national programme on substance abuse-related deaths.
My hon. Friend made the case for change in the coroner system with great skill. It has evolved over 800 years but the need for fundamental change has been highlighted by a number of recent events, of which the Shipman case is of course one. A separate inquiry into that is being led by Dame Janet Smith. One issue for the House after the inquiry will be balancing the arising recommendations, which will be important, with a recognition of the extraordinary nature of those crimes.
The Marchioness disaster highlighted the treatment of the bereaved. As Lord Justice Clarke's inquiry showed, it was easy for professionals who in good faith considered their practice as acceptable to fail to realise that it was not acceptable, particularly when it came to the concerns of the bereaved and the need to deal sensitively with families. I am particularly concerned, and I know my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is passionate about it, to ensure consistency of care and compassion across the board in the coroners' service. I have seen with my own eyes such care and compassion being exercised in the coroners court. I have also, as a Minister, received correspondence from families who felt that the opposite was the case. We must also take account of the issues arising from the Alder Hey affair.
The review of coroner services has been established to look at these issues. The Government are clear that we need to reform the system. In its consultation document, the inquiry said:
"The prevailing impression we have is of people managing to give committed, professional, and compassionate service through obsolete and neglected structures".
That sums it up. We have committed and professional people but a structure that does not necessarily work. That is why the Government established the review, and we look forward greatly to its results, which are expected shortly, so that we can put the coroners' service on a new footing for the new century and meet the objectives that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda so ably set out.
11.30 am
Sitting suspended until Two o'clock.

Rwanda and the Great Lakes
2 pm
Norman Lamb: I am very pleased to have this opportunity to highlight what is happening in one part of the Great Lakes region, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I want to focus on the report by the UN panel of experts on the illegal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth in that country. However, I am pleased that the debate also gives an opportunity for others, with a much longer track record than mine, to raise important issues relating to the region. I know that other hon. Members applied for an Adjournment debate on the same subject.
The all-party group on the Great Lakes region and genocide prevention produced its own report on the exploitation of mineral resources in the DRC. I pay tribute in particular to the work of the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Ms King), who chairs the group, in pointing out the challenges that the region presents for the international community.
The DRC has been ravaged by conflict since 1998. It is pretty clear that the cause of the continuing conflict has in large part been the desire of countries or groups to get their hands on the country's rich natural resources—gold, diamonds and other rare metals such as coltan, in particular, which is used in mobile phones and is probably present in this Chamber. Six foreign armies have been involved in this war-ravaged country: Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Burundi.
Back at the start of the events in question, in 1998, there were already 50,000 troops from various countries engaged in the conflict. Child soldiers have been used on all sides. In February a BBC news report suggested that the DRC was "awash" with child soldiers. A report on the north-eastern Ituri region cited aid workers as saying that children formed the bulk of the troops in some armed groups.
The conflict has left between 2 million and 3.5 million people dead—that is the scale of the disaster that has afflicted the country. Disease and abuse are widespread. There have been recent reports of cannibalism practised by the Movement for the Liberation of Congo. A report in January suggested that there was a UN investigation into claims that rebel groups send pygmies out on hunting expeditions and, if they come back with nothing, kill them and feed on their sexual organs. There are also reports that pygmies are forced to eat the remains of their colleagues who have been killed.
A peace process was begun in 1999 and stepped up in 2002. I do not underestimate the progress that has been made in bringing peace to the country, but it is a long way from completion, with trouble continuing throughout the DRC. In 2002 peace accords were signed in Pretoria by the DRC and the Governments of Rwanda and Uganda. However, atrocities have continued. In the past few days there have been reports of a massacre near the Ugandan border, committed by pro-Government forces, including members of the Ugandan army. Estimates of civilian deaths in that massacre range from 250 to 467. Some 150,000 people have been displaced by the latest violence.

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The Guardian has reported that both Rwanda and Uganda have denied breaking the peace accords. However, many believe that both countries are still intent on exploiting diamonds, gold and other minerals in the DRC.Africa Confidential, a London-based newsletter, has accused them both of delivering fresh arms to proxy militias, in defiance of the South Africa-brokered peace accords of last year.
The UN panel of experts was first established in June 2000 to consider the illegal exploitation of natural resources, and to consider in particular the link between that exploitation and the continuation of the conflict. Foreign armies were using the conflict as an excuse to continue exploiting resources. The first report was issued in April 2001 and concluded that illegal exploitation of mineral and forest resources was taking place "at an alarming rate." It considered two forms of exploitation: looting on a mass scale, and systematic, systemic exploitation of those resources. It identified key individual actors,
"including army commanders and businessmen and government structures",
as
"the engine of this exploitation."
The report also referred to the enrichment of top Ugandan military commanders and civilians—remember that we give millions of pounds in aid to Uganda. It noted the emergence of illegal networks headed by top military officers and business men, and recognised the
"opportunistic behaviour of some private companies and influential individuals."
Its recommendations included sanctions against both countries and individuals.
On 19 December 2001, the UN Security Council requested a renewal of the expert panel's mandate for a further six months. The panel was asked to provide an update on the situation and to make further recommendations. Its final report came out in October last year. Its conclusion was that there had been a
"multi-billion dollar corporate theft of the country's mineral assets".
The panel looked at politically and economically powerful groups involved in exploitation activities which had become "highly criminalised". It looked further at the concept of an elite network of senior military people, business men and government officials in the various foreign Governments and in the DRC Government, all acting together to continue that exploitation.
It is important to state that various parties who are named and shamed in the final report heavily dispute aspects of it. I should be interested to hear the Minister's comments on the process, because the panel's remit came to an end when it published the report. When the Governments concerned sought further evidence to support the allegations in the report, they were told that the panel's remit had come to an end and that it was unable to respond. Thankfully, the panel's remit has been re-established through another UN resolution, but we are still waiting for further supporting evidence. That
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is wholly unsatisfactory, especially for people who have been wrongly named in the report, quite apart from the need to bring the illegal activity to an end.
The latest report describes the operation of criminal groups linked to the armies of the countries to which I have referred. It describes how the groups do not disband as the armies withdraw, which is why this important issue continues to be unresolved. The report describes how such groups
"have built up a self-financing war economy centred on mineral exploitation."
As the armies withdraw,
"the Governments of Rwanda and Zimbabwe, as well as powerful individuals in Uganda, have adopted other strategies for maintaining the mechanisms for revenue generation, many of which involve criminal activities."
The Ugandan defence forces have been training local militias to take over where they leave off, and Rwanda has engaged in similar tactics.
Senior Zimbabwean officers have enriched themselves by exploiting the DRC's mineral assets under the cover of arrangements to repay Zimbabwe for military services provided to the DRC Government. The Zimbabwe defence force has set up new companies and contractual arrangements to defend its economic interests. The report refers to the criminal activities that have been indulged in, which include theft, the embezzlement of public funds, the under-valuation of goods, smuggling, false invoicing, the non-payment of taxes, kickbacks and bribery—it is a pretty wide range.
In the Government-controlled area, the elite network that the report describes is made up specifically of Zimbabwean politicians and members of the military. The report says that the
"key strategist for the Zimbabwean branch of the elite network"
is the Speaker of the Zimbabwean Parliament, Emmerson Mnangagwa. It also refers to Air Marshal Perence Shiri, who is a long-time ally of Mugabe and who helped to turn Harare into a significant centre for the illicit diamond trade. The report names several other Zimbabwean politicians and military people.
I want to deal now with an individual who has a base in this country and who, according to the report, has been very active in this disaster. John Bredenkamp must be a serious concern for the British Government. He denies the allegations against him, but serious questions have been asked, and it is important that progress is made with the investigation. His British business is based in Sunningdale, and he has extensive interests in the UK. His estimated personal wealth is $500 million. The report says that he
"is experienced in setting up clandestine companies and sanctions-busting operations"
and
"has a history of clandestine military procurement".
It is alleged that he was involved in sanctions busting for Ian Smith before the end of white rule in Rhodesia and, of course, before he transferred his allegiance to the Mugabe regime. It is alleged also that he supplied arms to both sides in the Iran-Iraq war.
In March 2001,The Observer reported close links between John Bredenkamp and the Mugabe regime, and critics claimed that he was making significant sums as a supporter of that corrupt regime. There were also

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reports that his companies were major suppliers of arms in the DRC war and that he had taken over the management of Zimbabwe's mining concessions in the DRC to make money from the exploitation of the resources to which I referred.
It is said that Bredenkamp favours one Emmerson Mnangagwa—the Speaker of the Parliament—as a successor to Mugabe. As I have already described, Mnangagwa cropped up as a key strategist in the Zimbabwean operation in the DRC. Bredenkamp operates through various companies, including Aviation Consultancy Services. ACS represents BAE Systems and has supplied Zimbabwe's air force with BAE Systems parts. Bredenkamp claims that that stopped when sanctions were imposed on the country, but the report refers to his discussions with senior officials and says that he
"offered to mediate sales of British Aerospace military equipment to the Democratic Republic of the Congo."
It also claims that BAE Systems spare parts for the Hawk 60 aircraft were supplied to the Zimbabwe air force early in 2002, in clear breach of the sanctions. I have tabled numerous questions about that, and we still have not got to the bottom of exactly how those parts arrived in Zimbabwe. It is reported that the Zimbabwe air force has used Hawks for attack operations in the DRC.
I want to refer now to British business man Andrew Smith, who is a former Royal Engineers captain. He manages Avient Air, which supplied six attack helicopters to the Kinshasa Government and contracted to perform bombing raids over the eastern DRC between 1999 and 2000. The report also highlights transactions between Avient Air and the accused arms trafficker, Leonid Minim, an unsavoury character by all accounts.
What concerns me are the responses that I have received to my questions to Ministers about contact between Bredenkamp and Andrew Smith and UK Government officials. Given the alleged involvement of both men in profiting from the conflict in DRC, there is, understandably, serious concern about the extent of that contact. A parliamentary answer of November last year confirmed that, in the previous 12 months, two meetings and two telephone calls had taken place between John Bredenkamp and British high commission officials in Zimbabwe, but when I subsequently asked what was discussed at those meetings and who was present, I was told that the Government were not prepared to answer my questions. Why not? These seem to be perfectly legitimate points.
Concerns about the activities of the high commission in Harare were underlined by a report in the Zimbabwean Financial Gazette in March 2000, which stated that the then British high commissioner in Harare, Peter Longworth, had dispatched a confidential memo to the Foreign Office arguing for the lifting of an embargo on arms exports to Zimbabwe. As recently as 2000, the Ministry of Defence appears to have supported arms exports to Zimbabwe, and it is alleged that another batch of spare parts for the BAE Hawk was supplied via Kenya in 2000. Was that done with the knowledge of the MOD and BAE Systems? No one knows.
I was also told in parliamentary answers that Andrew Smith has had several meetings with British diplomats in Harare during the past two years. In October 2001, he
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met the defence attaché. Why? What was that meeting about? The Government are not prepared to say. The previous political councillor at the British high commission in Harare apparently met Smith on several occasions. Officials met Smith at several social events in 2001 and had several telephone conversations with him during the same year. As with Bredenkamp, the Government refuse to provide information about who was present at meetings and what was discussed.
I understand that the Minister is, in a sense, a stand-in today, so if he is unable to answer my questions, I would very much appreciate it if he would undertake to ensure that they are answered by whoever is responsible for the matter at the Department for International Development. First, have the Government specifically investigated how those BAE Hawk spare parts got to the Zimbabwe defence force last year? In a written answer of November 2002, I was told that the Government were urgently seeking details from the UN and would have to investigate. What is the result? In letters to me, the chairman of BAE Systems, Sir Richard Evans, claimed that the company did not know where the spare parts came from. What is the truth of the matter? Do the Government accept that assertion?
Secondly, on the contact between UK officials and Andrew Smith, what has been revealed by the further investigations that were promised in a parliamentary answer on 5 December? Further investigations about John Bredenkamp were promised in another parliamentary answer. What have they revealed? Furthermore, given the fact that Bredenkamp has a business base in this country and Andrew Smith is a British citizen, what is the Government's assessment of their role and that of their respective companies in the massacre in the Congo?
When I asked who was present at those meetings, I was refused an answer. Can that be justified? Surely we should know who was present and what was discussed with those characters, given the allegations against them in the report. Will the Minister confirm what investigations are under way into the allegations in the report, in particular those about companies and individuals based in this country and named in the report?
Has there been a further request to the panel of experts for evidence since the new resolution was passed in January? What has happened since then? It is important that progress is made on the matter but from my perspective, there seems to be an absence of it. That may be the UN's fault; it may be the UK Government's fault, but we need to know what logjam is preventing anyone getting to the bottom of the scandal.
In a written answer dated 11 December 2002, Clare Short specifically said—
Mr. Robert Key: The Secretary of State.
Norman Lamb: I apologise. The Secretary of State said that the report contained "notable and deeply regrettable" inaccuracies. That may well be the case, as I said earlier, but what are those inaccuracies? What are the UK Government's concerns about the report? A written answer dated 4 November 2002 stated that the Government were considering a substantive response to the report's findings. When will that response be given? Will it be in the form of a statement to the House of Commons? What progress is being made?

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For future action, the UN report recommends, among other things, travel bans on individuals identified in the report. It also recommends freezing their assets and imposing banking restrictions. Given the extensive business connections with this country, that is an important question, and the Government must deal with it. What action are the Government taking to follow those recommendations about individuals closely connected to the UK, and what is the time scale for that action?
How do the Government respond overall to the report's recommendations, specifically in considering how the actions of the countries involved in the conflict in the Congo will affect future grants of development assistance? Will those grants be conditional upon proper conduct regarding the DRC? On 13 November 2002, the chairman of the panel of experts, Ambassador Kassem, recommended a five to six-month grace period to allow individuals and companies to change their working practices. What is the Government's assessment of the position three or four months on from that recommendation?
Again in a parliamentary answer, we were told that the behaviour in Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda would be factored into future assessments for development assistance for those countries. What does that mean? How will compliance with the recommendations be measured? Is it already taking place? Will the Government agree to the all-party parliamentary group's proposal for a regional strategy paper on the Great Lakes region and for a regional conference?
The whole matter has been an absolute scandal. When 2 million people or more are massacred in one country in four years, it is important for the international community to treat the report's recommendations with the utmost seriousness and to ensure that action is taken. We recently heard about the loss of 1 million lives in Iraq; we are talking about the loss of far more lives in Africa. There is a tendency for us in the west to put to one side the loss of life in Africa, but that is not acceptable. It must be taken extremely seriously, and I look forward to hearing the Minister's response.
2.23 pm
Mr. Tom Clarke: I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on securing the debate and on his very illuminating introductory speech. As one who had the privilege of leading the interparliamentary group to Rwanda about five months ago, I came to the debate for an update on the situation. He has helped us by referring to that very important report, which was published since the IPG's visit, and with the questions that he asked.
I am delighted that the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) and the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson), who were members of the delegation, are present. During the delegation's time in Rwanda, as during a debate in this Chamber initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Ann McKechin) on 18 December 2002, we inevitably focused on the terrible issue of genocide, which was, in many ways, the reason for our visit. We saw the appalling evidence of what had taken place in 1994 and we were keen to see how the process of reconciliation was
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progressing and to ensure, in so far as we could influence matters, that never again would anything like that take place in Rwanda or anywhere else in the Great Lakes region. We were concerned then, as we are today, about the evidence of activity in the DRC. When we met President Kagame, he was not able to reassure us—he said that he had pulled out his troops but that if there were any suggestion of a threat to his borders, they would return.
We have no more reason for optimism today than we had then, particularly if, as the hon. Member for North Norfolk said, we consider the problems in Burundi as well. Three million people have perished in the DRC since 1998 and, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development reminded us in the debate on 18 December, there are still people in gacaca courts who want genocide to continue in the region. We still have great worries.
It is right, given the focus on international events, and the possibility of conflict elsewhere, that these terrible issues in Africa should not disappear from our thoughts. That is one of the reasons why I am delighted that the debate is taking place today. I welcome the Minister for Europe and look forward to hearing his views. When members of our delegation met President Kagame, we discussed with him three important issues, based on the memorandum of understanding between the United Kingdom and Uganda: respect for human rights, media independence and transparency. Those three issues remain at the heart of everything that we are trying to achieve in Rwanda and in the wider region.
It is right that we should put on record our questions and our concern about the achievements of the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda. A lot of funding and resources have been made available, there is a great deal of good will, and the nations of the European Union have given their support to its activities, but there is not as much action or as much evidence that long-standing problems are being dealt with as many of us might wish. Many people who should have been brought to justice have not been. That cannot be acceptable, given the knowledge that we have.
We discussed with the President and others the role of the European Union. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has a great interest in that, as well as in our own contribution towards conflict solution in the region. We were told, not least by the president, that in 1994, the international community stood by, aware that genocide was taking place, and did not respond in the way that that dreadful situation invited. My hon. Friends in the delegation, as recently as five months ago, saw some of the evidence. We visited the church where 5,000 people from both tribes had perished: men, women and children—babies as well. We visited Giterama prison, which holds 7,000 or 8,000 people. That visit reinforced our belief that reconciliation, welcome though it is, requires the speeding up of the legal process. People have waited far too long to see justice done.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill spoke here in December she reminded those of us who were on the delegation of a very poignant visit to one of the gacaca courts. When eventually one of the prisoners was called forward, the proceedings were conducted in a very humane way, despite the dreadful backdrop. A woman walked out of the crowd,

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comporting herself with great dignity. She asked the prisoner a few questions. He responded by admitting to killing 13 people, including three of her children. None of us, shocked as we were, wanted to rush to judgment. When we saw that woman's dignity, we wanted to be sure that such things could never happen again. We supported the endeavours of the people of Rwanda to co-operate with such hearings.
We came away disturbed, but not without hope. Despite Rwanda's dreadful past, its lack of opportunities, its poor prospects for prosperity in tourism and agriculture—the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) was firm on that point—the country does have opportunities. Commodity prices are falling, and we saw the problems that the country has in exporting coffee and cocoa, and market conditions in the EU are not helpful.
We had then, and still have, great hopes for the development of pluralism in Rwanda. We look forward to the elections that have been promised for July this year. If they do take place—and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will bring us up to date on them—I hope that all the political parties will have access to the voters; that the process will be seen as free and fair; and that when the results are declared we will see a society that is moving further towards genuine democracy. It will be able to inspire not just its own people but neighbouring countries in that vital region. It will offer them hope—
Dr. Jenny Tonge: The right hon. Gentleman has very noble aspirations for Rwanda and the Great Lakes region, which we all share. Would he not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk and me that unless we do something about the legal and illegal—especially the illegal—exporting of arms to those countries we shall make little progress?
Mr. Clarke: The hon. Lady is right. I know that she worked tremendously hard during the delegation's visit. She raises a fundamental point. We cannot speak about the dreadful things that are happening while we continue to export arms to Indonesia, East Timor and African countries. We must ask why we are doing that. Her point is a profound one, and I am happy to end on it, because it raises a number of ongoing questions. I am delighted to have had the opportunity to contribute to the debate initiated by the hon. Member for North Norfolk.
2.34 pm
Mr. Laurence Robertson: It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke). He ably led the parliamentary delegation to Rwanda in October, a group that I was privileged to join, as was the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge), whose skills extended to treating me when I became rather ill there. Thanks to her help, however, I did not miss much of our visit.
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on initiating the debate and speaking so knowledgeably on the subject of Rwanda and the Great Lakes. I shall confine my remarks to my experience of Rwanda. The right hon. Member for
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Coatbridge and Chryston covered much of what I wanted to say, and I shall not repeat it. However, he was right to say that although we were aware of what was going on in Rwanda, the world stood by and watched.
I understand people believing that politics is a hypocritical business. At the moment, we are rightly concentrating on what is happening in Iraq. After that, perhaps, we shall consider what is happening in North Korea, Pakistan and Iran; but we stood by and watched while 850,000 people in Rwanda were being massacred in the most horrific way.
We visited a church in Rwanda where people had taken refuge, and had literally to walk through piles of skulls and human bones. We laid flowers on massive collections of human remains, which brought home the horror of the genocide that had taken place only a few years before. Unlike a previous parliamentary delegation, we did not find out more about how those people—men, women and children—had been killed. However, it was the most horrific thing that I have ever seen, and I am sure that I shall never experience anything like it again.
It got worse, however. As the right hon. Gentleman said, we visited the court and saw what was described as justice on the grass. I happened to meet a woman who had lost her father, her husband, her sister and three children in the massacre. Her dignity was incredible. She told me that she did not want retribution. She did not want to see the young man who had just confessed to the crimes being put to death, because that would have added to the carnage. She wanted justice, but also the reconciliation to which people in Rwanda now seem committed.
The right hon. Gentleman was right to say that that reconciliation needs the help of the international community. Although people there are determined on reconciliation because of the horrors that they have experienced, the situation in Rwanda is fragile. Indeed, as the hon. Member for North Norfolk said, that fragility extends to the countries that surround Rwanda: when we arrived, we found that conflict had broken out on Rwanda's borders, albeit briefly, which was a reminder of how fragile the situation is.
The right hon. Gentleman graphically analysed what we found in Rwanda. I shall not repeat what he said, but shall finish by saying that although we concentrated on the carnage and the desperate genocide that took place there, it is too easy to forget that the country is poor and diseased, that it has no infrastructure and that it suffers under European Union trade rules. We need to address all those issues: we should not forget that side of Rwanda.
A short while ago, I had the privilege of leading a delegation to Ethiopia, which is facing drought and the possibility of starvation. However, people there can survive—they probably will—with the help of the international community. In Rwanda such help is necessary. I support the Prime Minister's stance against certain countries, but I ask the Minister to remind him that, in addition to the threat from Iraq—we must never take our eye off that ball—murders on the most massive scale have been committed elsewhere, right under our noses, in what is supposed to be a civilised age.
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Ms Julia Drown: I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on securing the debate. I also congratulate the Government on their engagement with and support for the region. I have attended meetings with Ministers and officials, and I have seen a shift in policy. There is now a determination not to run away from the region's problems, but to remain engaged and to help to solve the problems that still have a devastating effect on millions of lives.
There are strong relationships between the countries of the Great Lakes region. For many years the all-party group has acknowledged a major issue: the need for a regional policy that recognises those inter-relationships. Although the UK Government initially did not seem to be persuaded of the need for such a policy, I understand that they have since recognised it and that there is now a regional policy paper. However, that paper is not a public document. There is much instability in the region, and there will be uncertainty about the impact of donor countries—supporter countries—such as the UK.
Sometimes it is in the interests of one of the Great Lakes countries to claim that the UK is biased in its support for another in the region. That does not help to produce a peaceful solution to problems. A public document—a published regional strategy—could show that the UK policy is focused not only on Rwanda and Uganda, but on peace, stability and fairness throughout the region.
The hon. Member for North Norfolk concentrated on the Democratic Republic of the Congo; he spoke on the involvement of the arms trade in that country and the illegal export of natural resources. I share his concerns about those issues. On the arms trade, it is right that we should consider the big issue of weapons of mass destruction, but we must also consider the minor weapons and the huge damage that they can cause. The UK is a large producer and exporter of arms and unless we make serious attempts at defence diversification, which we could do, there will always be concern because we fuel employment in this country by our continual sale and export of arms. We have many talented people working in the arms trade in this country, and they could be using their skills in other ways. It would be a better use of taxpayers' money if the subsidies that go into arms exports and other endeavours were used to diversify.
On illegal exploitation, I would urge the Government to respond publicly to the findings of the UN panel of experts. Is British and European bilateral aid likely to be linked to the cessation of the illegal exploitation of natural resources and to the implementation of the Lusaka accords? The all-party group welcomes the UN initiative to introduce certification schemes that detail the country of origin for diamonds; it also recommends that there be similar certification schemes, if that is possible and appropriate, to address the exploitation of other precious resources in the region. I also urge the Government to do all they can to ensure that an evenhanded approach is adopted towards all the parties involved in the illegal exploitation of resources. Appropriate pressure must be brought to bear to end the suffering that has escalated, especially around the mineral-rich areas.
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I hope that the Government will recognise that a sustainable peace in the DRC will not be possible without a solution to the crisis in Ituri and the Kivus. We must maintain the pressure on the Governments of the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda fully to implement the Pretoria and Lusaka accords. Primarily, those Governments must withdraw all foreign forces from DRC territory. We could guarantee the future territorial integrity of, and cease supplying the armed groups in, Ituri and the Kivus. I hope that the Government will do what they can to press all the parties that agreed to the political settlement on 17 September last year. The settlement has not yet been fully ratified to create and implement a full transitional Government in Kinshasa, which is needed as soon as possible.
The involvement of the MONUC forces is incredibly important. We must work with the United Nations to ensure that there are sufficient resources so that the forces can have a stronger mandate and an enhanced peacekeeping role. There must be protection of civilians because there is still a huge amount of rape and sexual violence in the region. I hope that the Government will make the strongest possible representations to the Governments of the DRC and Uganda to ensure swift effectiveness of the Ituri pacification commission.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) rightly pointed out the real issues in Rwanda. I ask the Government to take more action on specific issues. The Rwanda-UK memorandum of understanding needs to be redrafted to strengthen the language on human rights and conflict prevention and resolution, especially in relation to the DRC. Concerns have been raised that Rwanda is getting away with human rights abuses and conflict in the DRC, although I understand that the UK Government have not seen evidence of that. However, if it is occurring, neither the UK Government nor the Rwandan Government should have any worry about strengthening the memorandum of understanding—indeed, they should welcome it.
Clearly, if the Rwandan Government are to withdraw troops fully and permanently from the DRC and ensure that there is no supply to the rebel groups involved in the unrest in the Kivu and Ituri region, we must play our part by showing the importance of that. Things could start to move forward if Rwanda were at least pressed to answer the allegations of serious human rights abuses that have been made, such as allegations in the report by the United Nations panel of experts.
Burundi has not been mentioned much today although it is an equally important part of the great lakes region. A ceasefire was agreed in December 2002 between the Government of Burundi and CNDD-FDD, but that has not come into force. Both sides have repeatedly violated the ceasefire, although of course each side blames the other for the aggression. I hope that the Government will continue to negotiate with that country. We need to press all parties in the conflict to respect international humanitarian law and to bring those guilty of human rights abuses to justice.
Mr. Andrew Love: Rumours are circulating that the Burundians are considering giving an amnesty to the leader of the FNL—which is responsible for several atrocities in the region, including

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the murder of one of my constituents—in the hope that that would shore up the peace process. Will my hon. Friend join me in condemning any such pact?
Ms Drown: Yes. There is a serious argument for bringing those people to justice. The issue must be considered from the point of view of both sides of the dispute and there is a call for people to be brought to justice.
There is a need to reintegrate the rebel and Government forces in order to give them another route in life. The British Government have had success doing that in other countries and we could use skills and talents that we have developed, although financial and political back-up will be required. The whole security sector in Burundi needs to be restructured, demobilised and reintegrated into civil society. Political and financial support is important in order to achieve the swift deployment of observers and peacekeeping troops that the UN Security Council requested in January.
The Minister knows that I have been interested in the issue of debt for many years. I am currently chair of the all-party group on highly indebted poor countries. I would be grateful for an update on the debt situation of the countries in the Great Lakes region. All of them are hoping to move to a post-conflict position, which means that they can be helped by the HIPC initiative. If we are going to assist such countries to reconstruct, and to make them economically and militarily stable, they will have to be enabled to build up their infrastructure and public services to show their populations that peace is worth working for. All of that must start before we begin to talk about millennium development goals for those countries. We should be achieving those goals in every country throughout Africa and beyond. If they are going to achieve them we need to ensure that their bilateral and multilateral debts are written off.
The region has many intractable problems, but I encourage the Government to stay engaged and to find solutions, and I am confident that they will do so. That is what the ordinary people of those countries want. The prize of peace and stability in the region is worth working for, and I am pleased to be able to play my part in pushing the Government to do their bit to help to achieve that.
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John Barrett: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on securing the debate. I have worked closely with him in the past, and I know that he takes a strong interest in these matters. I wish to draw particular attention to the work that he has done in relation to countries in the Great Lakes region.
I also congratulate the hon. Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) on making an interesting contribution, and the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) and the right hon. Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke), who led the delegation to Rwanda late last year. I heard both of them speak in the debate on the genocide in Rwanda, and I was greatly moved. Although I was not a member of that delegation I feel that I was because of their moving contributions both today and in the past.
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Although the eyes of the world are currently focused on events in the middle east, it is equally important to remember the problems of the rest of the world. They may not involve weapons of mass destruction or threats to international security, but the Government and all of us would do well to confront these issues, and debates such as this help very much in achieving that purpose.
As several hon. Members commented, we thoroughly debated Rwanda in December. Particular attention was paid in that debate to the aftermath of the genocide, and Rwanda's problems were fully aired, but the debate also served as an opportunity to highlight some of the progress that has been made in that country. Today, we heard about the report by the UN panel of experts on the exploitation of natural resources and the way in which, under cover of conflict, looting has taken place in which the army and the Government have been involved.
I do not wish to repeat the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk, but he raised several questions that the Minister must answer. Not all the answers will necessarily be at his fingertips today, but they must be forthcoming. The behaviour of private individuals and companies leaves a lot to be desired, and we hope to hear more about that in the near future.
As I mentioned in the previous debate, Rwanda's commitment to development and the relief of poverty among its people must be accompanied by a commitment to peace with its neighbours. The agreement signed by Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo was crucial in laying the foundation for peace, but it was only ever going to work if all sides acted in accordance with the spirit of the agreement and if all aspects of it were implemented. Months later, despite good words, widespread evidence remains that that has yet to happen.
The October 2002 report of the UN panel of experts, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend, listed a series of recommendations on which I hope the Minister will comment. I was interested to read that the very first recommendation highlighted the importance of development aid for the region and stated that such assistance should be made a priority. It said:
"the first set of initiatives could be for quick disbursing aid for the Democratic Republic of Congo and the other great lakes countries involved in the conflict, for reconstruction and rehabilitation programmes, aimed at creating jobs, rebuilding infrastructure, and improving conditions for local populations, notably in the areas of education, health and sanitation."
As in many other parts of the world, aid is the key to alleviating the poverty that often leads to hostility and warring between nations. If we can relieve that suffering, we will have come a long way in tackling conflicts such as those that have plagued east-central Africa in the past.
Although we Liberal Democrats welcome the investment that the Government have made in countries such as Rwanda and the increased spending that has occurred, I make no apology for returning to that old chestnut, 0.7 per cent. of GNP, which is so often highlighted inside and outside Parliament. We have consistently argued that the Government should set a clear timetable for raising UK contributions to 0.7 per cent. of GNP, but time and again they have failed to produce a satisfactory answer. To say, as they have said to me in parliamentary answers, that Department for

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International Development contributions beyond 2005£06 are matters for future Parliaments is unacceptable. The Department of Transport can plan a budget 10 years ahead, so I cannot understand why DFID cannot do likewise.
Last week Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, issued a further appeal for international support, especially because the country is approaching the end of a transition period ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections. As the Minister knows, a new constitution is soon to be produced that will provide the basis for the political situation that will develop after the transition period. I am keen to hear details of the support that the Government intend to provide.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk rightly placed great emphasis on problems in the DRC and the institution building that will have to take place if long-term peace and security are to become reality. What is needed is not only building in bricks and mortar, but building trust between countries and rebuilding people's lives. If the trust that has so often been lacking in the region is ever to be created, there must be transparency at all points in the process. The commission of enquiry that was set up to investigate allegations against Ugandan companies and individuals highlighted in the UN report has helped a great deal in that respect. The Government of Rwanda would do well to follow suit, and, in view of the arguments advanced by my hon. Friend, there may well be a case for similar action by the UK Government.
The United Nations mission has been widely credited with doing sterling work in the region, but it is clearly hampered by a lack of resources. Many of us have argued for an increased role for peacekeeping and protection of civilians, but good will must be backed up with hard cash if it is to be made into a reality.
The ongoing occupation of eastern Congo by Rwandan soldiers cannot be tolerated. I recall a story I read some time ago in The Observer, which accused many Rwandan soldiers of working in conjunction with Hutu militiamen to stay within the DRC and exploit the resources of the country. One American diplomat stated:
"The Interahamwe is now a very convenient excuse for Rwanda to loot Congo. Maybe it is 20 per cent threat and 80 per cent for show."
Another UN officer said that security concerns of Rwanda had become "a joke".
I conclude by reiterating the needs of the countries around the Great Lakes and stressing why at this time of international crisis we must endeavour not to take our attention away from countries in real need. Figures that I have received from the World Bank and the Minister's Department show that about 70 per cent. of the households in Rwanda are below the poverty line. Life expectancy in Burundi is little more than 40 years, and in Uganda almost two in every 10 children die before the age of five. Those countries, along with many others in Africa, are living in the stranglehold of HIV/AIDS, which was discussed at length in this morning's debate on the international AIDS crisis. Rwanda is now among the 10 most heavily affected African countries, with an estimated 13 per cent of its population now infected.
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It is surely those statistics that prompted the Prime Minister at the Labour party conference to describe Africa as
"a scar on the conscience of the world".
I look forward to hearing the Minister say what steps the Government are taking to help these African countries, at a time when our focus is elsewhere.
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Mr. Robert Key: I start by congratulating the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on securing the debate. It has provided an important opportunity to hear the thoughts of hon. Members, many of whom speak with deep knowledge and have long experience of the part of Africa under discussion.
I look forward to hearing the Minister's response to the hon. Gentleman's important and detailed allegations. It is a pleasure to see the Minister for Europe. I accept that he will not be able to answer all our questions. The Under-Secretary of State for International Development is on important business in Cambodia, and we wish her well, as that, too, is a part of the world that we should not forget. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be so kind as to respond to some of the points that I shall be raising, as I am sure he will to those made by other hon. Members.
I have heard many people say how well the right hon. Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) led the important Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation. I was pleased to hear him say that, in spite of everything, he had a message of hope for that part of Africa. My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) described graphically the personal horrors that he had witnessed, and he reminded us that the situation remains very fragile in Rwanda, a poor country that continues to suffer.
The hon. Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) asked whether UK policy was biased. I shall return to that important point, but I share her commitment to ensuring that the Government remain engaged in the part of the world under discussion. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) also made many important points.
Will the Minister respond to some intriguing questions that were answered in the other place yesterday? Several hon. Members have referred to the UN panel of experts on the DRC. Yesterday, Baroness Amos referred to Security Council resolution 1457, which extended the mandate of the UN expert panel for a further six months. She said:
"In the light of the panel's findings, Her Majesty's Government will consider taking appropriate action where there is clear evidence of wrongdoing.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 March 2003; Vol. 645, c.W A95.]
Will the Minister explain what the appropriate action will be? The hon. Member for North Norfolk gave a well-rehearsed and detailed account, but not much action has followed. What is appropriate? What is action? In an important answer given in the other place yesterday, Lord Bach referred to reservists being called up
"to support operations in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo."

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He said:
"A new call-out order has been made under Section 56 of the Reserve Forces Act 1996 so that reservists may continue to be called out to support operations".—[Official Report, 4 March 2003; Vol. 645, c.W A101.]
What are the operations in the DRC? What is continuing to take place there with the assistance of the British military? I am delighted that the reservists are engaged there and I am sure that they are a great force for good, but I should be grateful to be updated and told exactly what British forces are doing in that part of the world.
An important aspect of illegal exploitation of natural resources is corporate social responsibility in the area. I start with allegations against British companies and nationals. As long ago as last November, according to the excellent briefing of the United Nations Association (UK), a long list of British companies were involved, but not a lot seems to have happened. It is a long time since last November and I hope that the Government will soon decide what action to take. Has DFID requested the available evidence from the UN panel of experts' report? A copy of the evidence could be placed in the Library in both Houses. What is the response to the report? Will DFID make a statement of its intentions in the light of access to the evidence?
The Government should also press Rwanda to publish a serious and comprehensive reaction to the allegations contained in the UN panel of experts' report. I hope that the Government of Rwanda will establish a commission of inquiry to investigate those allegations, similar to the successful commission established by Uganda. Have the British companies named responded and, if they have, has DFID seen copies of those responses? Again, those copies could be placed in the Library so that we can all know what is going on.
On the need for aid in Burundi, at the first donor conference in December 2000, President Mandela said:
"it must be possible for the people of Burundi to materially distinguish between the destructiveness of conflict and the benefits of peace."
Jacob Zuma, the facilitator of the new ceasefire said:
"regional efforts have achieved much progress in Burundi, but a complete peace could not be achieved without the full support of the international community."
The International Crisis Group said that donors should act now and release the promised dividends before faith is lost in the peace process and the situation deteriorates further.
There is a paradox in Burundi: peace will not be possible without international financial support, yet that support will not be forthcoming before peace is achieved. Will the Government release the funds pledged to Burundi? How will DFID deal with the paradox? What assessment has been made of the forthcoming change of leadership in the transitional Government in May? Many people wish to know what level of financial and political support will be provided to enable the swift deployment of observers and peacekeeping troops requested by the UN Security Council on 13 January. Will the Government put pressure on all parties to the conflict to respect international humanitarian law and to bring to justice those guilty of human rights abuses?
The hon. Member for South Swindon is wholly correct about the need for an integrated regional policy. UK involvement in the region has not been equally
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balanced. Total UK bilateral aid to Burundi in 2001£02 was £604,000, compared with £10,262,000 to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and £27,189,000 to Rwanda. Of the £604,000 for Burundi, £515,000 was humanitarian assistance. DFID recently appointed a permanent member of staff in Burundi—a positive sign that we welcome—and the Department has also contributed £1 million to the World Bank multilateral debt trust fund. DFID is apparently planning to expand its programme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after the establishment of a transitional Government.
I am concerned by the Secretary of State's statement that Rwanda's security depends on regional security. The International Crisis Group report said that donor intervention now could be helpful to achieving peace. Even if the balance of aid is not biased, there is a perception of bias that could cause great tensions state to state and donor to state. Several British non-governmental organisations have said that there is a distinct anti-UK feeling in the DRC because it is perceived—rightly or wrongly—that the UK is bankrolling a country that occupied a third of its territory. There are still allegations of Rwandan involvement. What are the Government doing to deal with the problems surrounding the balance of aid in the region?
It is appropriate that we consider one other issue that has caused suspicion. The Secretary of State for International Development has developed a very good relationship with the President of Rwanda, whom she called, "Such a sweetie." In her genuinely charming way, she will not hear a bad word said against him, which is typical of the right hon. Lady. However, that sometimes gives the impression that there is a special relationship, and I wonder if something should be done to put that right.
Mr. Clarke: I must admit that other special relationships give me greater cause for concern that the one between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development and the President of Rwanda. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman reads the Hansard account of the debate in the Chamber of 18 December last year, if he has not yet had the opportunity to do so. If he does so, he will acknowledge that what my right hon. Friend has achieved because of that relationship has been truly outstanding. I doubt whether anyone in our delegation disagreed with the views that have been conveyed to us confirming that.
Mr. Key: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. It is well worth reading that debate.
Dr. Tonge: The hon. Gentleman is very generous. I want to add that I would not describe the President of Rwanda as a sweetie, but many of us who know what he has done, what he went through and what he achieved to liberate his country believe that, on the whole, he is pretty good news.
Mr. Key: I am sure that he is, but it would be wrong of me not to reflect the concerns that some NGOs have put to me. That is all I want to say on the subject; I certainly do not want to build it up into some great tabloid experience.
Reference was made to MONUC and its work to maintain liaison between the parties and carry out various tasks. It was set up on 30 November 1999 and is

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hugely important. We must ensure that it has sufficient resources both to carry out its current work and to press for a stronger mandate and an enhanced role in peacekeeping and the protection of civilians. Furthermore, it should have unlimited access in its investigations into Governments' and other states' actions. I hope that the UK Government will fully support its work.
Regional peace is crucial. Several hon. Members referred to finding a solution to the crisis in Ituri and the Kivus. I hope that the Government will maintain pressure on the Governments concerned—those of the DRC and Uganda—to implement fully the Pretoria and Luanda accords, primarily to withdraw all foreign forces from DRC territory, to guarantee its future territorial integrity and to cease supplying armed groups in Ituri and the Kivus. I hope that the UK Government will make the strongest possible representations to the Governments of the DRC and Rwanda to ensure the swift effectiveness of the Ituri pacification commission. Reference was made to the memorandum of understanding between the Governments of Rwanda and the United Kingdom in the area of conflict resolution.
Before I conclude my remarks, I should briefly mention the problem of food and water faced by the Great Lakes region. Only 50 per cent. of people in rural areas have access to safe water, and almost 45 per cent. of the deaths of children under five relate to water. We would warmly welcome the Government applying pressure to deal with those problems.
We discussed HIV and AIDS at great length this morning, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West pointed out. Tearfund calls the problem of HIV/ AIDS in the Great Lakes "the second genocide." A serious issue in the region, the problem is exacerbated by rape, poor infrastructure, and lack of education and access to medicines. The Government's programme on HIV/AIDS is crucial to the area.
Child soldiers are also of concern. They are still present in all the armed groups in the DRC—in some cases, they comprise as much as 35 per cent. of the troops—and they are being sent to the front lines. I hope that the Minister will reassure us that the Government are exerting pressure in that respect.
I end by repeating the message of hope for the region. We in this country are engaged and anxious for our Government to do more and to influence international organisations and the Governments of the countries involved. Above all, we send the people of that region the message that we are engaged. The Prime Minister has given a commitment and the rest of us in the House of Commons feel very strongly about the region. We will not forget its people, despite the other great issues of state that currently confront us.
3.15 pm
The Minister for Europe (Mr. Denis MacShane): I am aware that, in this interesting debate, I represent three Ministries. That shows the cross-cutting nature of our international engagement between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of
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Defence. All three Ministries have been referred to, and it is important to understand the holistic nature of Britain's new international policy.
If we want to have a presence and be an effective power across the world, we must link our military abilities, development commitments and the diplomatic role of the Foreign Office. I am pleased that one of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary's first duties on appointment was to go to the region with the then French Foreign Minister, Mr. Hubert Védrine. That shows the other side of joined-up foreign policy, which is that we cannot act alone.
Several hon. Members, notably my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) and the hon. Members for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) and for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge), referred to the delegation to the region of which they formed part. It is good that we as parliamentarians take an active and concerned interest, but other powers, in particular France, are involved, and it is vital that we co-operate as much as possible with our French partners.
If I may say so, it does not always help to indulge in some of the name calling that we have heard about some of our key European partners recently and in the past. If Europe is to have an effective policy and presence in the region, we must learn to work together, instead of reaching for the "book of scorn", to cite that excellent compendium by Matthew Parris, to make sour and unpleasant remarks. That is not the way forward.
I shall try to combine my overall remarks with answers to the specific problems raised. If there are issues that I cannot deal with, I will ask officials to write to hon. Members if they so desire. I also have to bear in mind the fact that serious and important allegations have been made, each of which will require investigation. There may be legal ramifications connected with that, so it would not be proper of me to prejudge the UN panel of experts, which, as hon. Members have noted, has been reactivated and is undertaking further inquiries. The Government will have to react to those in due course.
Dr. Tonge: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. MacShane: I would rather not, because the hon. Lady has made several interventions, and I should get on with replying to the points raised.
There has been significant progress on the peace process in the DRC over the past year, but that is not enough. The external participants in the war—Zimbabwe and Angola on the Kinshasa side and Rwanda and Uganda on the rebel side—have withdrawn from the DRC. That leaves the Ugandans in Ituri, to which my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) referred. I shall return to that point shortly. Unfortunately, the Congolese parties have seemed unwilling or unable to take advantage of that advance to bring peace to their country. The inter-Congolese dialogue drags on even as we speak, and all hon. Members expressed disappointment about that. The British Government have taken a great interest in the peace process and continue to do so. As soon as the transitional Government are instated in Kinshasa, we will be keen to play our part in helping the Congolese rebuild and develop the DRC in the same way as we have helped the Tanzanians, Ugandans and Rwandans in their countries.

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I want to touch on some of the external and internal dimensions of the peace process mentioned by hon. Members this afternoon. The Lusaka agreement in 1999 effectively brought to an end the fighting between the various Congolese armed groups and their foreign backers, but the foreign armies stayed in the DRC, so the end to fighting was an advance, but it lead to stalemate rather than peace. The subsequent Pretoria agreement between the DRC and Rwanda, which was brokered by the South Africans, was signed in July 2002 and was a major breakthrough. It offered the prospect of Rwanda withdrawing from the DRC—the withdrawal most strongly demanded by the Kinshasa Government. It also offered to address the fundamental issue at the centre of the war, which was the presence in the DRC of the Rwandan extremist groups that had perpetrated the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and which were fighting from Congo to return to Rwanda to complete the job.
The Rwandans withdrew as promised but the Government in Kinshasa have not yet fulfilled their side of the bargain. They apprehended and handed over to the international tribunal one senior genocide suspect and, as requested, proscribed and expelled the FDLR, the political arm of the Rwandan Hutu extremists. They also pushed over to the east many of the Rwandan Hutu fighters who had been part of their army so that they were able to say the fighters were beyond their control. However, they continue to support and arm them in the east.
It is in the eastern DRC that we see the volatility and violence to which hon. Members referred. The vivid descriptions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Chryston and the hon. Member for Tewkesbury of the church that they visited will be on the minds of everyone who has listened to today's debate or will read it in Hansard. Such happenings are a source of deep concern and alarm. The abuse of human rights, whether it is brutal rape, the use of child soldiers or resource exploitation, is unacceptable, and we will continue to use our influence to demand improved respect for humanitarian rights by all parties. However, the real obstacle to progress is the failure of the Kinshasa Government to agree to the establishment of a transitional Government. That political decision must be faced. It would bring an end to most of the fighting and use of surrogates to create what is called in the jargon "facts on the ground".
The Ugandans must also now withdraw their forces fully from DRC. We should help them by pressing all parties involved in Ituri to stop fighting, and that is where our current diplomatic efforts are focused. The international community, including the United Kingdom, has been clear with all signatories to the Gbadolite agreement that the agreed terms of that and previous agreements must be respected. I call again on all Governments in the region, particularly the Kinshasa authorities, to do more to ensure the compliance of allied forces with the terms of those agreements. The UK has recently provided £1 million to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs to support efforts to co-ordinate humanitarian responses in the region, and we will continue to monitor the situation.
The fundamental goal is resolution of the conflict, which in turn will provide the necessary conditions to begin achieving the millennium development goals, such
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as halving poverty and boosting school enrolment for the Congolese population of some 50 million people. The key to any lasting political settlement will be to ensure achievement of power sharing within the transitional Government, followed by national elections.
Hon. Members referred to the issue of HIPC and the need to support debt relief in the region, and that remains a top priority of the Government. I am proud of the fact that we have doubled the amount of the people's money going on overseas aid, and I hope that the Liberal Democrats will stop their nonsense of endlessly demanding tax cuts. One cannot ask for massive cuts in taxation and then ask for massive increases in public expenditure.
We continue to provide substantial support to the UN operations in the Great Lakes region. We are also providing support—
Mr. Tom Clarke: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. MacShane: I would rather not, if my right hon. Friend will allow me to continue.
We are also providing support to civil society groups involved in grass-roots peace building and reconciliation. We have offered to play our part in enabling the establishment of a reformed national army drawing on the forces of the Kinshasa Government and the armed groups. We will also be helping in the enormous task of demobilising the tens of thousands of combatants who have taken up arms during the civil war. We have pledged £25 million over five years to the multi-donor regional demobilisation and reintegration programme in the Great Lakes.
The penalties of the region's severe instability fall most heavily on the civilian population, especially the most vulnerable. Civilians continue to die in large numbers, with mortality rates approaching five times the sub-Saharan norm in some front-line areas in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Only a small proportion of this "excess mortality"—I use the jargon term—is directly attributable to acts of violence. The main killers are not bullets and machetes, but diseases like malaria and malnutrition that have gained a hold and are spreading, as health services are disrupted and food production and distribution systems fail.
Access for humanitarian relief agencies is more complicated and challenging than ever, as the conflicts fragment. These can be very dangerous places to work. Relief agency staff, both expatriate and Congolese, have been attacked and killed by fighters who go unidentified and unpunished. It is estimated that only 20 per cent. of the population in Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo are accessible. The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) gave us the most vivid and rather difficult-to-listen-to details of atrocities—one could almost use that word—that are taking place. Parts of Burundi are virtually inaccessible and yet access is vital in order properly to establish needs and to monitor assistance so as to ensure that the most needy are reached. Only a tiny proportion of the population in the area are fighters; the vast bulk are civilians caught up in a conflict not of their making, who need, value and deserve the help of the international relief agencies.
A major international relief operation is under way in the Great Lakes region to address these problems, and there are constant efforts at all levels, including at the

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UN Security Council, to improve humanitarian access. Significant resources have been allocated by the international community to meet humanitarian needs. In 2002, that amounted to some $270 million in humanitarian assistance from international and bilateral agencies, including DFID.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon rightly asked about the need for a regional approach. The Government support the proposal for a regional conference to consolidate the peace and development process in the DRC once the transitional Government have been established. DFID is actively considering its future development strategy in the DRC following the establishment of the trans-national Government. Next Monday, DFID will host a round table to listen to the views of DRC experts in the UK and Europe. DFID notes carefully the view that one of the outputs of the process should be a regional strategy paper for the Great Lakes region. I hope that that goes some way to addressing the important matter placed before the Chancellor by my hon. Friend.
I am pleased to have this opportunity to explain the Government's position on the major challenges facing the Great Lakes region, and to explain what we are doing in terms of concrete assistance. It is of the utmost importance that the political groups in the region finally seize the chance for peace in the region. If they do so, I assure the House that we will play our full part in supporting its recovery. I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Norfolk and to other right hon. and hon. Members who have put on record the great concern of British parliamentarians for peace and reconciliation in the region.

Horse Racing
3.30 pm
Mr. Alex Salmond: I am delighted to introduce this short debate today on horse racing. I am not certain whether my horse racing column in The Scotsman on a Saturday qualifies as an interest to declare: if it does I willingly declare it. Some people reckon that it should be a matter of certification rather than declaration; nevertheless it is there on the record. The hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale), who takes a keen interest in these matters, would have liked to be present but unfortunately he is elsewhere on parliamentary business. I know that he shares many of my concerns.
In general, the horse racing industry is in pretty robust shape, although there are a number of challenges and difficulties, some of which have been well publicised. Much of the underlying health and growth in the industry is due to the Government's wise decision in October 2001 to move to a gross profits tax on the industry. I particularly liked that decision. It was one of the few occasions when the Government took my advice on a matter: it was not just my advice as there was a widespread campaign. However, the occasions when I find myself in central agreement with the Government are few enough to make something of them. It was a wise decision.
That decision was based on the view that there was a win-win situation in horse racing. Horse racing depends for its funding on punters: the large numbers of people all over the country who want to back horses. That is where the real flow of income comes from in horse racing. The view was taken that we could have a large-turnover, low-margin, betting market that would be good for everyone. Potentially that is the present situation.
The issue that I want to focus on today could partly undermine that and spoil an otherwise rosy picture. I said that there were a number of issues in the industry. They have been well publicised in television programmes, such as "Kenyon Confronts" and "Panorama", which investigated scandals and difficulties in the racing industry. I do not underrate those. Unlike some, I consider investigation a perfectly legitimate journalistic activity. It is the job of journalists to draw attention to anything that goes wrong. Only then can they be put right. I am confident that over time the racing structures will adapt themselves to confront and to overcome those challenges.
I am delighted to welcome the Leader of the House of Commons, the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) to our debate—
The Minister for Sport (Mr. Richard Caborn): It must be serious.
Mr. Salmond: I am sure we are about to have a statement announcing an extension of time or a Government motion to extend time for the debate. I particularly welcome his presence here. I acknowledge his interest in the industry.
Many of these challenges will be overcome. It is an important part of the journalistic process that attention is drawn to them. There are other organic and

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regulatory issues in the industry. It has so many representative bodies that even people like myself, and perhaps the Leader of the House and others who are interested, find it hard to keep up with who represents whom and who regulates what. I suspect that the Minister shares my concern that we need a much more rational understanding of who are the gamekeepers, who is responsible for policing various aspects of racing and whose interests are being represented by whom.
I had an interesting meeting with Michael Singer of the Punters Protection Association yesterday. I was struck by just how frustrated Mr. Singer was. He has a long career of trying to represent punters' interests. Punter is not a derogatory term: it is fairly well celebrated in the racing industry. He asked the question: are punters not consumers? Where is the consumer interest being centrally represented in the various bodies of the racing industry? The Minister might like to touch on that. It seems a substantial question that should be answered.
From a Scottish perspective, all five Scottish racecourses are grouped together in an organisation called Scottish Racing. The Leader of the House may be an honorary president of that organisation. He certainly has some association with it. That is to his credit, because that grouping says a great deal about the potential of Scottish racing to grow, with more fixtures, trainers, jockeys, meetings and more employment, making a substantial contribution to the Scottish economy. People feel frustrated by the limited number of fixtures that they are allowed to have.
Several important issues surround the horse racing industry, and the central theme that touches them all is the question of who is responsible for regulating which parts of the industry, and which bodies are responsible for representing the consumers. The decision by the British Horseracing Board to impose a charge of 10 per cent. of gross profits on on-course bookmakers may have substantial and profound implications. How was that decision arrived at; can it be fair and just; and, above all, what are its implications for many people?
On-course bookies are part of the firmament of the racing industry. They are not all as rich as Barry Bismarck Dennis, but they are all characters, as he is, and form a crucial part of the racing experience. It would be regrettable if their ranks were thinned and that part of the market weakened. They are concerned that that is exactly what will happen as a result of the new charge arising from the British Horseracing Board's decision.
To help us to understand the background to the decision, I shall quote from a letter from Mr. John Stevenson, chairman of the National Association of Bookmakers, to the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Page), which provides a crystal clear summary of the complex process behind the introduction of the new charge on 1 April next month. Last year, various large bookmaking companies were in dispute with the British Horseracing Board—almost everyone has been in dispute with the BHB recently. The dispute was resolved at a meeting in March 2002, when the chairman of Bookmakers Committee, comprising the big three bookmakers, took part in discussions. The letter states:
"Peter Savill agreed to meet the only representatives of the 'Big 3' but it was pointed out that the Chairman of the Bookmakers' Committee … should also be present. Peter Savill agreed on the
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condition that he would only meet the above four bookmakers. This meeting was held at the Hilton Hotel on 26th March and was followed by a further meeting on 28th March at which Nigel Smith (BHB Commercial Director) also attended. At these meetings a number of decisions were agreed including that a 10 per cent. gross profits data charge should be paid by all bookmakers.
The outcome of these meetings was circulated to members of the Bookmakers' Committee and discussed at a meeting of the Bookmakers' Committee on 5th April 2002 and ratified at a later meeting held on 15th April 2002 by a majority of 8:4 which under the Bookmakers' Committee Constitution was a virtual certainty"—
any "certainty" in respect of the racing industry is to be welcomed!
"Thus, the NAB was specifically excluded by the BHB from taking part in the negotiations which led to the decision concerning the 10 per cent. gross profits tax although we were informed of this decision by the Bookmakers' Committee when it was a fait accompli. However, at no stage was the NAB allowed to be involved directly with the BHB in these negotiations. Since Warwick Bartlett was also the Chairman of the British Betting Offices Association … which represents small independent off-course bookmakers it is clear that the interests of all off-course bookmakers were represented in negotiations with the BHB and that racecourse bookmakers were not represented."
That provides a fair summary of what happened at last year's meetings.
I have also had sight of the agreement between the BHB and the body representing the biggest companies in the industry—Corals, the Hilton group, Stanley Racing, William Hill and the Confederation of Bookmakers Associations—which brought to an end the disputes over the imposition of the charge on all bookmakers. Significantly, in clause 4.3 of the agreement, the signatories had to forgo any suggestion of making complaints or submissions to the European Commission or to any other competition or anti-trust authority anywhere in the world, unless they had a legal obligation to do so. That was the document that on-course bookmakers were later invited to sign, but refused to do so, preferring to develop their case through the Office of Fair Trading.
There seems to be a strong case for arguing that a section of the industry was not represented at the genesis of the agreement, and was only afterwards consulted and outvoted on a committee on which they were a minority. The process of imposing the charge on the on-course bookmakers is wrong.
Is the charge fair and just? I have a host of information that shows the essential difference between an on-course bookmaker, who bets at a fine margin, who can make a profit as well as a loss and whose satchel can grow larger or smaller, and a major off-course bookmaking chain, which has guaranteed profits across its range of undertakings.
On-course bookmakers do not need all the data for which they are being asked to pay an astronomical increase in charges. Over the past few years the estimate of that increase has ranged from 2,000 to 4,000 per cent., depending on how much the charge will rake in. It does not seem fair that those bookmakers, who are in a different financial position from others, should face such enormous increases in their charges.
The most important point I want to make concerns the implications for the industry as a whole. The on-course market is a bulwark: a protection for the wider punting interest. Starting prices, which still denominate

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the majority of bets that are struck and returned, are centred on the on-course market. If the on-course market is weakened by a substantial tax increase on on-course bookmakers, one potential—or certain—result will be to force an increase in on-course margins, which will then result in a substantial increase in off-course margins.
One does not need a crystal ball to know that some major bookmaking chains have an ambition to raise margins in the industry. Mr. David Harding, the chief executive of William Hill, speaking at the annual industry seminar this year, said that margins were unsustainable at starting prices, and that he wanted to see them raised substantially. The ambition to raise margins, at least for that company, is clear.
I had a discussion with Mr. Alan Ross, the managing director of Ladbrokes, who takes a different view. He thinks that I am reading too much into the sequence of events by suspecting that there is a conspiracy to raise margins and prices in the industry. He believes that people were properly consulted and that their interests were taken into account. However, I would say that there is, at least, a serious question mark over those proceedings.
Government policy in the past, and, I hope, the policy of the current Government, has been to encourage a strong on-course market. The latest consultation document from the Treasury on the modernisation of gambling tax discusses the success of the movement towards the gross profits tax on betting, and notes that the duty exemption for on-course betting was introduced in 1987 to promote a healthy on-course market in the horse-racing industry. It appears to imply—I am sure that that is the case—that the Government support that.
The Government's policy seems to be to encourage that market to thrive and prosper, and not to see it weakened in any way. However, I believe that market to be threatened with weakening if the charge goes ahead as proposed.
When people say that I should not read a conspiracy or a plot into these proceedings, I am reminded of a quotation from Adam Smith:
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
In my closing remarks, I should make it clear that my chief concern is not with the activities of the major bookmaking companies. I do not think that there is a company in any market anywhere that has not tried to raise its margins by one means or another. It is part of the natural job of a company to attempt to increase its profitability. I am much more concerned with the role of the BHB. It seems to me that the genesis of the BHB and some of its activities, and the control that it has over things such as racecourse information, mean that it should be holding the ring. It is meant to be the referee—a regulator of the industry. There is a difficulty if the BHB has a vested interest in profits increasing for bookmaking chains because, under the levy, it will get 10 per cent. of that profit increase. It is difficult when the referee becomes one of the players, and that may be the case now.
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The 10 per cent. charge on on-course bookmakers may not be the central problem facing the horse racing industry, but it is unjust. It was arrived at through the wrong means. There was no effective process of consultation, and the charge might have serious implications for punters across the country—millions of people who have the right to expect the protection of a competitive market.
In betting activities for which there is not such a competitive market, bookmakers arrive at their own prices. In horse racing in South Africa or Italy, for example, only pool prices are returned, and there are sometimes profit margins of 180 per cent. in the bookmakers' own starting prices. The margins in UK horse racing are much finer because the on-course market that sets the SPs is very competitive. It would be against the public interest if, through one means or another, those margins were unfairly increased. It is also against the public interest if a section of the industry—a lynchpin, a protector for the punter at large—is treated unfairly. The charge and the way that it is being introduced treats on-course bookmakers unfairly. I hope that the Minister shares those concerns.
I do not say that the charge is the only issue facing the industry, or that people may not have decent motives for doing what they are doing. However, I hope that the Minister is prepared to address my central concerns about the confusion between the regulatory bodies involved in the industry; what their interests are; and who is representing the punters and defending consumer interest, now that the charge is being carried through. Unless we consider those concerns through the Office of Fair Trading, ministerial intervention or at least ministerial concern, we might find that this magnificent opportunity, to which the Government contributed through their wise decision to change the taxation structure, is dissipated as the lack of an effective referee begins to operate against the public and racing interest.
3.47 pm
The Minister for Sport (Mr. Richard Caborn): I congratulate the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) on securing the debate, even though I had to come back from a meeting of Ministers in Copenhagen to address the House this afternoon. It is nice of the hon. Gentleman to acknowledge that the Government have done quite a lot for the racing industry. He used phrases such as "win-win situation", "robust" and "very wise". The industry is doing extremely well on the betting side and on the horse racing side, which we are discussing. In fact, in a few years, horse racing income will have doubled.
3.48 pm
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
3.56 pm
On resuming—
Mr. Deputy Speaker(Frank Cook): We can resume our sitting with eight minutes of injury time.
Mr. Caborn: As I was saying, the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan gave due credit to the Government for what they have done for the industry. In a few short

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years, the racing industry will have doubled its income, which shows the magnitude of the tax changes. If the recent results of Ladbrokes are anything to go by, the bookmakers are not poor either. It has been a win-win situation for the industry. We are talking about relative positions because, overall, both sides of the racing industry are thriving. The punters have had a reasonable deal, and reinvestment into facilities will pay dividends.
The hon. Gentleman is right that it is disappointing that the industry has probably not taken advantage of the opportunities placed before it. We have tried to create a framework for the industry, which is extremely important for leisure activities, employment and economic activity. The hon. Gentleman referred to some of the problems that we have tried to resolve. The Jockey Club responded positively to the "Panorama" programme, and I am confident that in the not-toodistant future we shall have a new regulatory structure to deal with jockeys, owners and trainers.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, until the Office of Fair Trading decides who owns the data, it is unlikely to make decisions on complaints that bookmakers have made to it. Until the major principle of who owns the data is decided, we can only speculate on that decision and the major implications of it. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I take an active interest in the industry, and I will watch what is happening throughout it, particularly in the area to which he referred. We have made a major investment in the industry through our tax reorganisation. We have tried to be fair with the industry. The fact that the money on the data is actually going through the levy structure makes it tax efficient in its own right. It does not bear VAT, which is a saving of 17.5 per cent. Again, we have raised no objections to that at this stage. We have tried to be as helpful to the industry as we can.
Some important points have been raised. The starting price has been the subject of some discussion. Changes in the industry have been brought about by the convergence of technologies. Betting exchanges are now coming into play, although I have no evidence at the moment that they are undermining the on-course market. I have no proof of that, and it is very difficult to consider that situation objectively. If there is an unwelcome impact, it should be negated for the time being by the enforcement of the current National Joint Pitch Council rule, which prevents on-course bookmakers from taking or laying bets through betting exchanges.
Our starting point on the SP system should be an acknowledgement that there is nothing sacrosanct about it. We, as a Government, have no locus on that matter. It is for the industry to determine. It is not
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enshrined in statute, and whether to use it has always been purely a matter of choice for off-course bookmakers. Off-course bookmakers are licensed in the same way as on-course bookmakers, and could offer their own prices on every race now if they wished. That is a clear position, and a debate is under way on it at the moment. The same position on starting prices already exists in every other betting opportunity apart from horse racing and greyhound racing.
Mr. Salmond: I suggest that there is a legitimate Government interest. The on-course market sets the starting price, which sets the majority of bets. If this imposition weakened the on-course market and resulted in a raising of margins, at a conservative estimate, some £40 million of off-course money would go straight from the pockets of consumers—punters—into Government profits, into the BHB via the Levy Board and into the profits of large bookmakers. That seems to me to be a matter of consumer interest, which is part of Government responsibility.
Mr. Caborn: I was coming to that. The letters to which the hon. Gentleman referred—it would be helpful if I could have copies of them—implied that a cartel is emerging. I can assure him that the OFT is already taking a passing interest in the matter. The hon. Gentleman suggests that there could be a lack of competition, which could become unhealthy and lead to operations under a cartel. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the people who would suffer most would be the punters. We will watch that situation, and other institutions will look into it, too.
On BHB data charging, the commercial market and market forces will determine that. I shall take an active interest in any spin-offs from that, and will consider the matter carefully to ensure that the industry runs fairly for the punter. I have made it clear many times that the investment now going into the industry must be from not only the bookmakers and others, but the punters. Three areas should gain from the new fiscal arrangements in place. As I have mentioned, that matter has been referred to the OFT. I do not think that it will proceed at any pace until the OFT has taken the major decision on the rules and regulations and on who owns the data rights. Once that has been determined, the OFT may consider the imposition of the 10 per cent. requirement and whether it is fair to the industry and, in particular, to the punters. We shall probably have to wait a little while until the OFT concludes its work on the first inquiry.
4.4 pm
Sitting suspended.

Iran
4.8 pm
Mr. Win Griffiths: The people of Iran have now suffered some 40 years of tyranny. In 1963, the Shah undertook what was called the white revolution, clamping down on the people. Ever since, the people have been under tyranny. The Shah was regarded as a friend of ours and we tolerated him. In 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded in overthrowing the Shah. The tyranny continued, and the Ayatollah was our enemy. He died in 1989 and the current Ayatollah, or supreme leader, is Ayatollah Khamenei, who was previously the president.
In 1997, after Rafsanjani had been president, Ayatollah Khatami became president. People in the United Kingdom, and perhaps in the whole of the western world, almost breathed a sigh of relief because he had a reputation for being a moderate. As a result, in September 1998, at the General Assembly of the United Nations, the current Leader of the Houseߞthen
Foreign Secretary—made a deal with the Iranian Foreign Minister, Kharrazi, to restart a relationship. In May 1999 that resulted in full diplomatic relations being restored.
President Khatami was seen as a man who espoused reform, was moderate and wanted change. The United Kingdom hoped that by contacting Iran we would help the reform process. That was summed up by the current Secretary of State for Defence—then a junior Minister in the Foreign Office—at a speech, appropriately enough, at Sandhurst, on 14 July 1999. He said:
"We still have important concerns over Iranian policy, particularly over support for terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and human rights. But we believe the current Iranian Government is making good progress in the right direction, and we are resolved to support that."
That sums up British policy in a nutshell. Since then, Foreign Minister Kharrazi has made two visits to the United Kingdom, in 2001 and earlier this year. The present Foreign Secretary has made two visits to Iran, and several other Government Ministers—Cabinet and non-Cabinet have visited Tehran during those years.
The European Union takes a similar view. The External Affairs Commissioner, Chris Patten, in response to a US attack on Iran had this to say:
"There is more to be said for trying to engage and draw these societies into the international community than to cut them off."
The United Kingdom and the European Union were as one in trying to create a dialogue involving both trade and human rights issues. The United States, however, remained totally unconvinced of President Khatami's ability to deliver the reform agenda. In February 2002, US Secretary of State Colin Powell posed the following questions, which were published in the Financial Times on 13 February:
"How can we ignore the fact that this country continues to barrel straight ahead trying to achieve a nuclear capability?"
He added:
"How can we ignore the fact that they are complicit in shipping arms of a very escalatory nature in the Middle East?"
He also stated:
"Iran sponsors terrorist organisations. Should we hold back from pointing this out?"
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The EU and UK, and the US have two quite diverse and different views.
What does the record tell us during the last few years? Huge amounts of material are available. There is a very useful House of Commons Library brief on Iran. The Foreign Office publishes human rights reports. There are reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, United States Departments, the UN rapporteur on human rights, and a host of other groups with an interest in human rights and the situation in Iran, including the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Iranian Women's Association in the UK, the Iranian Civil Rights Committee and the International Committee against Stoning. There are many more. What do those sources reveal about the progress being made in Iran through the process of engagement by the UK Government? The Foreign Office report of 2000 states:
"Iran's reformers have made some progress over the last year. But there have been many setbacks too. The human rights situation … has on balance deteriorated over the past year despite the support of the reformers by an overwhelming majority of the Iranian people."
The 2001 report continues in much the same vein:
"The pace of progress has slowed since he was first elected in 1997 mostly as a result of the continuing struggle between the reformists and conservatives.
The conservative-dominated judiciary has closed down over 50 publications in the past two years… and imprisoned a number of journalists and editors … A number of members of the Majles have been given prison sentences, mainly for critical remarks made in the Majles"—
let us hope that that is not taken up here, Mr. Deputy Speaker—
"although only one, Hoseyn Loqmanian, was actually imprisoned… His pardon by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini, defused the short-term confrontation, but the underlying issue of Parliamentary immunity remains in doubt".
There is one small bright spark on the horizon. We note that there has been some improvement in the situation of the Baha'is over the past year, and that none are now under sentence of death just for being of that faith. The Human Rights Watch report of 2003 paints much the same picture:
"Despite landslide electoral victories in every major election from 1997 to 2002, the reformers were unable to dislodge repressive policies favored by the clerical leadership, including far-reaching restrictions on freedom of expression, association and political participation.
The Guardian Council repeatedly blocked bills passed by the Parliament in such areas as women's rights, family law, the prevention of torture, and electoral reform. The judiciary … undermined the rule of law with arbitrary closures of newspapers and imprisonment of political activists … Any pretence that legal principles would be observed in regulating the press disappeared. Iran's press courts acted as a law unto themselves, issuing closure orders by decree without legal basis".
The picture is not good. Executions, floggings, stonings, maimings and arbitrary arrests all continue at a high level. The National Council for Resistance of Iran, which monitors the official press, reported that 474 sentences of execution were granted last year and many of them were carried out. That is 50 per cent. up on 2001. In reply to my written question it was pointed out that 139 executions were recorded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, or whoever takes down such information.

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Three men and three women were stoned to death in 1997; two or possibly three women in 2001; and three stoning sentences were passed on women in 2002. The National Council for Resistance reports that 26 stoning sentences have been passed since 1997. This year 50 executions have been reported up to 5 February. Ninety prisoners have received nearly 5,000 lashes—this is just in January—and there have been four cross-amputations: one leg and one arm cut off on alternate sides of the body. A woman's eyes were gauged out. The situation is not pretty.
Many of the mullahs maintain that they have banned stoning, but there is no evidence that that is so. A Bill to abolish stoning is said to have been proposed, but an MP says that that is a lie and no proposal for the abolition of stoning has been presented to the Majles. An official in south-east Iran told the BBC in December that he had received no written or official instructions from the judiciary to cancel sentences of stoning. The situation is bleak.
For the first time in seven years a UN rapporteur has been allowed into Iran. In a report on the jails in Iran published at the end of February this year, the team reported:
"Iranians suffer large-scale arbitrary detentions and some prisons operate outside the control of the judicial system".
They were given full co-operation, but it was
"the first time the working group has been faced with such a practice on such a scale".
So the situation is not good in Iran's jails either. It is vital that within the European Union the UK makes sure that at the general assembly of the European Commission on Human Rights later this month a censure motion on human rights abuses in Iran is passed and the human rights rapporteur is reinstated, because last year for the first time in many years that motion failed by one vote. We must make sure that it happens.
It is not surprising for such a country to be the suicide capital of the world. It certainly has one of the highest rates of suicide. Some 75 per cent. of all suicides are women, and more than 80 per cent. of those are women between the ages of 15 and 31. The picture is not pretty.
We should consider the other areas of concern. The United States believes that Iran is the most active sponsor of terrorism and that it helps Hezbollah and Islamic jihad. Although it has condemned the 11 September atrocities and has sent some al-Qaeda people back to Europe for trial, early in January a boatload of arms was captured on its way to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Iran's nuclear plans are also a cause for concern. The National Council of Resistance of Iran revealed in August that the Iranians were working on new nuclear facilities for enriched uranium in heavy water, which would provide the opportunity to build weapons. Iran is a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, but it nevertheless failed to report those new works to the International Atomic Energy Agency. I am not sure whether Mohammed el-Baradei has had a chance to go to Iran to check the situation, but he has expressed concern and intends to see what is going on.
The CIA national intelligence estimates reckon that Iran could have a nuclear weapon by 2015, but if it receives foreign assistance it could be a lot sooner. Its biological and chemical weapons programmes are recognised by the United States. It has a ballistic missile
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that can already reach 800 miles. The National Council of Resistance of Iran reports that the country is working on longer-range missiles, and the United States thinks that the country may have an intercontinental missile within the next decade, which is of grave concern.
I hope that our Government will do much more than carry on a dialogue. There have been recent local government elections in Iran. In Tehran, only 12 per cent. turned out. One of President Khatami's supporters said that that was an indication that the people had lost hope of achieving democratic change through the ballot box. That must be a serious warning of what might happen in Iran.
There was so much hope when Khatami came to power. There was a large turnout of 80 per cent. plus for his first election, but that is all turning to dust. On every front, the Government of Iran, instead of getting better, are getting worse. President Khatami seems to have been the fig leaf for the tyranny of Ayatollah Khamenei. The Majles has no power of its own and everything that it does must be approved by the Guardian Council. The country may want reform, but President Khatami has his legs manacled and one arm tied behind his back while being in the ring with Mike Tyson or Lennox Lewis—that is the measure of the struggle that the country faces. It is true that the people want change; they showed that by electing Khatami, a potential reformer. Reports in the western press coming out of Tehran also indicate that there is an underground desire for change. However, there is not much hope of it happening. Ayatollah Khamenei, the Guardian Council and the judiciary do not want change. People are certainly talking to them, but Ayatollah Khamenei is not listening. Many exiles, who live in countries around the world including the United Kingdom, fled from the tyranny of the mullahs and want to return to a democratic, free and tolerant state. They must recognise that those objectives are also our objectives.
Sir Sydney Chapman rose—
The Minister for Europe(Mr. Denis MacShane)rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Frank Cook): Order. Perhaps I should explain to the Chamber that 30-minute debates are essentially between a Member and the Minister, unless prior arrangements have been made and passed on to the Chair.
4.24 pm
Mr. MacShane: That clarification is helpful, because last week there was a half-hour Adjournment debate in which five hon. Members spoke. I was happy to leave room for the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir Sydney Chapman), but your clarification of House practice is helpful, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) on securing the debate. The Government share many of his concerns about Iran, which is why I believe that we are right to pursue a policy of constructive and, where necessary, critical engagement. That allows us to support reform in Iran while maintaining a robust dialogue on issues of concern. Those issues include Iranian support to

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terrorist groups involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict—my hon. Friend has put the facts about that support before the House—Iran's reported development of weapons of mass destruction and aspects of its human rights record.
We continue to engage Iran on a wide range of issues of common interest, including bi-lateral co-operation in the fight against drugs, which is a matter of great concern for many of our constituents, and international support for reconstruction and the interim Administration in Afghanistan. For many years, Iran has hosted more than 2 million refugees from both Afghanistan and Iraq. The Department for International Development has provided substantial support—more than £4.3 million since 1999–2000—for refugee programmes in Iran and has agreed to fund several United Nations agency and non-governmental organisation projects. We regularly discuss Iraq with our Iranian counterparts. Like the UK, Iran is committed to the maintenance of Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its current borders.
Sir Sydney Chapman: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for misunderstanding the convention. Has the Minister any evidence that the violent, barbaric punishments and executions in Iran are subsiding? Will he confirm that it is false to assert, as the regime has done, that there is a moratorium on stoning?
Mr. MacShane: I hope to cover those points in the rest of my remarks.
Our policy of engagement enables us better to put forward our views and concerns, which has only been made possible by the changes that have taken place in Iran since President Khatami was first elected in May 1997. The UK supports President Khatami's stated objective of a civil society based on the rule of law. We welcomed his re-election in June 2001 with an increased share of the vote, which demonstrated the Iranian people's clear will for reform and gave him a strong mandate. Unfortunately, owing to the complex political situation in Iran, to which my hon. Friend referred, President Khatami has had many problems in implementing his policies of political and economic reform.
Naturally, the Government share many of my hon. Friend's concerns about human rights in Iran, which we and our EU partners have addressed through dialogue, UN resolutions and practical projects. We and our EU partners regularly make clear to the Iranian authorities, at all levels, our concerns about human rights. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary did so most recently in his meeting with the Iranian Foreign Minister on 6 February. We use a wide range of independent sources to assess the situation. Our embassy in Tehran also gathers information from its sources and colleagues at other like-minded embassies.
We welcome the efforts that the Iranian Government and Parliament have made towards seeking to improve the human rights situation in Iran, but we regret that because of the political stand-off between reformers and their conservative opponents, who include members of the judiciary, there is still a long way to go. The people
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and elected Government of Iran want an improvement in the human rights situation. The Iranian Parliament has drafted a number of Bills on important issues, such as the prohibition of torture, which have been rejected by the Guardian Council as incompatible with religious teachings: that is, despite the fact that the Iranian constitution prohibits torture. The Iranian Parliament is determined to make progress on the issue, and we hope that it succeeds.
The United Kingdom and European Union believe that one way of expressing their concerns is to sponsor resolutions on human rights in Iran at the UN General Assembly and the Commission on Human Rights, as has been done for many years. We were disappointed that the Commission on Human Rights failed, by just one vote, to adopt the resolution on Iran in April last year. As my hon. Friend noted, that also meant the end of the mandate of the special representative. In practice, the special representative has not been allowed to visit Iran since 1996, but his reports on the human rights situation provided valuable detail on the human rights problems in Iran, and he was active in pursuing cases with the Iranian Government.
All EU partners are concerned about the human rights situation in Iran, and we are currently consulting on the most effective way in which to encourage positive change. A resolution is one of a number of tools currently under consideration.
Following the failure of the resolution last year, Iran made a number of gestures, including inviting the EU to engage in a dialogue on human rights. After an internal debate, the EU decided to take up the offer and the first round of the dialogue took place in mid-December. The next round will take place later this month, which will give us an opportunity to assess progress before the next Commission on Human Rights begins its work on 17 March. Discussions in December were frank, and the EU made it clear to the Iranians that they need to be able to show results to get agreement for the talks to continue. Initial impressions have been positive, although change, as ever, is likely to be slow. The EU delegation handed over a list of cases on which answers were sought, and those issues will be followed up this month. My hon. Friend quoted Commissioner Chris Patten. When Chris Patten visited Tehran in February he said that it was not enough just to talk about human rights and that we needed to see progress. Of course, he was right.
In a further development following the failure of the resolution last year, there has been an open invitation to UN Human Rights Commission inspectors to visit Iran. The UN working group on arbitrary detentions was the first to take up the invitation, and completed an inspection in February. The group has still to make a full report.
Together with our EU partners, we have repeatedly expressed concern about stonings, which is a subject on which reformers, and especially women's groups, in Iran have been campaigning for years. We welcomed the announcement at the end of last year by the head of the Supreme Administrative Court that the practice has been suspended. We have also been informed that, of the four women who were sentenced to death by stoning last year, three have been given alternative sentences and the fourth is awaiting the outcome of her appeal. We are

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monitoring the situation closely, because that barbaric practice is not acceptable to any decent human being anywhere in the world.
We are considering other ways of developing practical co-operation on human rights issues. We have supported a number of projects through the Foreign Office's human rights projects fund. The projects include technical assistance on specific issues relating to the rule of law and work by Penal Reform International, a highly regarded worldwide organisation, which was initially approached by the Iranian prison authorities, who are keen to reform their prisons. Other projects have included specialised training for judges working with juveniles, through UNICEF; strengthening the capacities of the Islamic Human Rights Commission; human rights training courses for young adults; and a familiarisation visit by five Iranian judges to the UK, which took place last March.
I accept the point that hon. Members have made about progress remaining slow. There is a steady, drip-by-drip attempt to show Iranian officials that an alternative system is possible. We noted at least 111 executions last year, some of which took place in public. The Government oppose the death penalty in all circumstances, and we urge all states to abolish it.
We regularly raise with the Iranian authorities our serious concerns about the treatment of the Baha'is. Persecution of individuals on religious grounds is unacceptable. Although no Baha'is remain under sentence of death, they continue to suffer harassment and discrimination in areas such as education, employment, housing and travel.
Despite moves to improve the situation of women, such as amending the divorce law to make it easier for women to initiate the divorce, there is continuing discrimination against women in the courts and in society generally. However, Iran has many women MPs and a woman Minister. Women are pursuing those matters and debating them with senior clerics, some of whom support their case. An increasing number of Iranian women go on to higher education and participate in politics, and that can only help them in their efforts to improve their status.
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Freedom of speech remains under threat, particularly the freedom to speak out. However, there is lively debate in public and in the media on a wide range of subjects, and we acknowledge that Iran is a country of great culture and education. The Iranians want nothing more than to be able to enjoy the freedoms normally enjoyed by those who live in democracies. None the less, 90 newspapers and other similar publications have been closed during the past three years. Journalists and editors have been jailed, and lawyers have been jailed for speaking out on behalf of clients who claim that they have been tortured. Students have been imprisoned for taking part in demonstrations.
We take every opportunity to press the Iranian authorities on their approach to the middle east peace process. Peace in the middle east is in everyone's interests, including those of Iran. The Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary have discussed the matter with the Iranian Foreign Minister. We believe that Iranians should be more constructive in their attitude to the middle east process, and that they should support efforts to resolve the differences between those involved.
I am concerned, as is my hon. Friend, about Iranian resources being used by Palestinian groups to carry out atrocious and unacceptable attacks on civilians in Israel. We might argue about the definition of terrorism, but attacks on civilians can never be justified, whether in Israel or Palestine—or by terrorist groups in Iran.
We continue to press the director general of the International Atomic Energy Authority to investigate allegations that Iran has weapons of mass destruction. We have encouraged Iran to be transparent about its nuclear activities in order to dispel concerns about the nature and purpose of those activities. The situations in Iran and Iraq are worrying. They cannot be ignored, and we seek a peaceful resolution to both.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the matter. I assure him that the Foreign Office and the Government take seriously human rights and other political developments in Iran.
It being twenty-two minutes to Five o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the sitting lapsed, without Question put.