Westminster Hall Sitting of 16 September 2003

Preamble
[SIR NICHOLAS WINTERTON in the Chair]

Transport (London)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Heppell]
9.30 am
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The first debate this morning will be initiated by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) on the important subject of transport in London.
Mr. John Randall: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. What could be better than starting the morning by debating transport in London under your excellent chairmanship?
When making my way into London, I find that if things are going well it can be a pleasure. Driving along the Embankment and seeing the Thames in all its glory can be wonderful. London is my city, and I am proud of it. However, those are the good days. All too often, for many residents and commuters, the daily business of moving around London is not a pleasure. Indeed, it can sometimes be a trauma.
To a city such as London, transport is vital. I do not have to explain why; it is self-evident. The Government, in their usual brilliant way, have managed to hand over many responsibilities for London. However, I am feeling particularly magnanimous this morning, so I shall not harangue the Minister; he is a jolly fine chap. I feel particularly magnanimous today because, on Friday evening, Uxbridge football team managed to beat Wealdstone football club, a club that I believe he supports. Wealdstone's supporters were magnanimous in defeat, which is unusual, so I shall extend my courtesy to the Minister this morning by not attacking the Government—at least not virulently.
The Government have an important role to play—they hold a watching brief over those aspects of transport that they have handed over to Transport for London—because if things go wrong, the country goes wrong. One of the most obvious problems was the recent power failure on the underground. Interestingly enough, those of my colleagues who are on a pay scale above me have decided to use an Opposition day to debate that subject this afternoon, although it will be answered by the Department of Trade and Industry rather than the Department for Transport. That power failure was a serious matter, but as it will be debated at length this afternoon, we need not spend too much time on the subject now. Suffice it to say that the Government must keep a close eye on things and consider what back-up is necessary.
I know that London Underground is undertaking a full review, and that emergency lighting and other aspects will be considered, but bearing in mind the current situation in the City and elsewhere, with the threat of terrorism as well as having to put with ordinary cock-ups, the Government have a duty to ensure that
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things are being properly looked after. While we are on the subject of mistakes, the Central line comes to mind. Not only did we suffer the fiasco of the line being out of action, which inconvenienced tens of thousands of people, including my constituents, but more problems have been found since. I remember that, because I was a member of the Select Committee on Transport for a while; the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), whom I see in his place, was also a member. The people from the Central line came before us and gave some pretty poor excuses. To see it going wrong again underlines what we thought.
Next year will see the centenary of the arrival of the underground in Uxbridge. The steam locomotive that came into the station where Sainsbury's now stands is still in existence, and I am hoping to arrange for it to come down the line for a celebration. I am not convinced that much has improved in the 99 years since the Metropolitan line first came to Uxbridge. It might be of benefit to those living along the line that the service is no longer steam, but if we consider reliability and the time that it takes to get into London, we have not advanced from those Edwardian times. That is a great shame. The Metropolitan line and the underground are part of the culture in which I grew up. I am proud to be part of Metroland, as is the Minister. I do not know whether the Minister's constituency regards itself as the rolling Middlesex countryside beloved of John Betjeman—in Uxbridge, there are still vestiges of that—but the underground is an important lifeline for us and it must be improved.
I notice a rather striking absence of Government Members. That might be explained by the fact that they have taken the Jubilee line to Willesden Green and other places near Brent, East; it is not for me to cast aspersions. In our previous interesting discussions about London Underground, there has been a range of opinion about public-private partnership. It is now in place, and we have to make it work for the good of all Londoners, so it would be not only pointless but churlish to have an argument about alternatives.
To expand the underground system is expensive and difficult. Because of the built-up nature of the area that I represent, it would have to go overground rather than literally underground. However, in Uxbridge, we have a campaign that we take very seriously. I know that the Minister has no responsibility in the area but, working on the assumption that somebody might one day read what we say in this place, I urge again that serious consideration be given to the extension of the Central line to Uxbridge. That would not be difficult because a siding comes out of Ruislip Gardens station on the Central line, a few yards, or perhaps metres—in Uxbridge, we are probably into yards and chains—from the Metropolitan and Piccadilly lines. It would not only bring enormous benefit to Uxbridge—I declare an enormous interest in Uxbridge from the business side of things—but bring job opportunities to areas closer to London, such as Notting Hill, because it would open up an area that is short of applicants. That would be useful. It would also give us a link to the Chiltern line, which is generally reckoned to be a good thing that works well. That would leave an opening for lots of commuters from the Chilterns.
The overground is not at all bad. However, it does have very bad days. I have only one overground station in my constituency, which is West Drayton station. A

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little work has been done to improve it with the Hayes and West Drayton single regeneration budget. The back of the station is still a bit mucky, but we are working on that. Last year, I managed to commute quite happily from West Drayton to Bournemouth to the Conservative party conference. In fact, I arrived more fresh faced than many of the delegates who had stayed overnight; I cannot work out why that was. Sadly, that will not be so easy for Blackpool, but it is something that we should give more publicity to.
At Hayes, in the neighbouring constituency to mine, they have done a great deal to improve services. There is a line to Heathrow, and, of course, we are all waiting for the advent of Crossrail. We may have to wait some time, but I hope that the Government will get on with Crossrail; I have urged them again and again to do so. We have the added impetus of the Olympic bid. I am very much in favour of that, not just because the event itself would be greatly prestigious, but because it would provide us with a real incentive to sort out transport in London.
I understand that the recent athletics competition in Paris was marred by the fact that its transport could not be sorted out. Of course, the Francophobes in the British press might have been making out that Paris could not get it right, but I recently drove past the Stade de France and was surprised by how far out it was. If we are going to have successful sporting events, we have to get our act together on the matter of transport. We should be seriously considering that.
One thing that we all require from the rail system, whether overground or underground, is safety. I mean not just safety in terms of the running of the train, but safety at the stations and on the way home. Although many people might think that I am a big chap, I would use the underground more often to get to Uxbridge from this place were it not for the fact that on late-sitting nights I do not particularly fancy walking from Uxbridge station to my home, 20 minutes' walk away. It is probably unfounded, but I do not feel particularly safe. Although improvements have been made at Uxbridge station over the years, it is still not a very welcoming place. I think that a lot of people would use the public transport system more if they felt that public safety around those areas had increased. That is obviously not a matter for the Minister's Department, but generally speaking it is something that we must consider if we want to increase the use of public transport.
Reliability is another issue. Using my own example, the journey to Westminster in the mornings might be a bit crowded and unpleasant but it tends—unless one is unlucky and there is a leaf on the line or something like that—to be reasonably quick. Late at night, by which I mean after 8 or 9 o'clock, although I know that people have had other experiences at different times, I may get turfed off the train at Harrow-on-the-Hill; it may not be going as far as Uxbridge. Harrow-on-the-Hill is, as the Minister knows, a marvellous place. It is not quite as good as Uxbridge, but it is not bad. However, the platforms get a bit boring after an hour or so. That is the sort of thing that puts me off the journey, and makes me
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think about using the car to get in and out of London. That is a bit of a blow, of course, because I have to pay the £5 congestion charge.
Anecdotally, things improved a little for me when the congestion charge was introduced, but they seem to have worsened again. When I am already late for a Bill Committee, there is nothing more annoying than thinking that the first thing that I have to do when I get to my office is to log on and pay my £5 charge. I am starting to wonder whether the scheme is as successful as it is claimed, although I am prepared to review the figures.
As a lapsed retailer, I must say that the figures for central London appear to have worsened. John Lewis, among others, says that its sales figures have reduced dramatically. That worries me greatly. It is very easy to take such businesses for granted and assume that they are a milch cow that can provide rates endlessly, never mind what is imposed on them. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) may touch on that if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
On a more positive note, buses seem to have improved a little, although I am disappointed that bus fares have gone up. I use buses a lot in central London. We have problems in my constituency. Again, that is not a matter for the Minister, but the people running those bus services might take note if I raise it in this place. The 207 service is being re-tendered, and a jolly good thing too. I have heard of gaps in the peak evening service of an hour or more. Buses are even taking short cuts, which is an interesting concept for a bus route—"We are running a bit late. Let's not take the usual bus route. Let's take a quick turn down there. That'll get us back on time." That is a little tough for people waiting at a bus stop, but never mind: the bus company is trying to improve its reliability.
There have also been problems with the 222 bus service, but perhaps my remarks are becoming a little parochial. Westminster may not be the place to take up this matter. However, I have a great deal of sympathy for the bus drivers, who must put up with an awful lot: a lot of abuse, even violent attacks. They have many problems with schoolchildren. I recently asked a bus driver which time of day he found the most threatening. I expected him to say that it was late at night, but he surprised me when he said that it was when the children came out of school. I use the word "children" loosely, as they do unmentionable things and cause the vehicles to stop. There is also the sheer weight of them, which means that bus companies must lay on more buses.
I am certainly not a union man—the last union to which I belonged was the students' union: I was responsible for ordering the beer—but London has a problem with the recruitment and retention of drivers. I understand that the shortage of drivers may have an impact on services. The Transport and General Workers Union told me that, between 1992 and 2000, the number of train drivers increased on average by 51 per cent, while during the same period the number of bus drivers increased by only 23.9 per cent. I am not in a position to dispute that, but I know that there is a shortage of bus drivers.

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A problem affecting my constituency is that drivers are trained but then go off to Heathrow where the job is more lucrative, leaving the bus companies, which have paid for the tuition, short of drivers. The turnover rate is very high. There are also problems in the engineering sections. This problem must be addressed. It is part of a larger problem of recruitment and retention that affects London's public services. Everything costs so much that many people move out of London because they cannot afford to live there.
I should like briefly to touch on taxis. They are a part of transport in London that we sometimes do not talk about too much. We all want taxis when we are in a hurry and they always seem to be about, although I think that taxi availability has gone down as London has expanded. I understand that taxi drivers are a little concerned about the Knowledge, which is the test that they take. They think that it should be modernised. I am not suggesting that the Government should consider treating the Knowledge in the same way that, it seems, educational qualifications have recently been treated, so that more and more people pass the Knowledge, because it is an important part of the job. However, the issue should be looked at.
One of the good things about taxis is that most of them—nearly all of them in London—are wheelchair accessible. That brings me on to almost my final point: the accessibility of public transport in London for the disabled, which is not looked at much. The disabled are obviously a wide group, and I understand some of the problems. In the case of the underground system, it is difficult suddenly to put in disabled-friendly access, but we must look at that. Buses now have some accessibility, but I understand that the policy is to allow only one wheelchair user on at a time, which could be a bit frustrating if one is waiting with a friend or somebody else comes along.
I also have concerns about the new pre-payment ticket machines for buses, which, I understand, might cause problems for people with learning disabilities. I would not speak for you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because that would be very unwise, but let us face it, although people try to make things easy with colour-coded knobs and so forth, when one is looking at a machine and trying to follow the instructions, one can sometimes get it wrong.
Therefore, I am a little worried that sometimes we forget about people with such disabilities. That applies even when they come in with their own vehicles. We know that there is abuse of disabled parking bays. There is also sometimes abuse of the disabled badges that enable people to park in those bays—I can never remember whether they are orange or blue these days, and must get colour blind on them.
Transport is one of the keys to success in London, but we must be careful not to add to the problem. In the light of that I finish with a note on airports, inevitably. Any expansion at Heathrow would increase the need for transport in London, never mind whether it would be disastrous for the environment and the quality of life of people living there—this is the place but not the time to discuss that. However, from an economic point of view, an expansion at Heathrow would throw the west and central London transport systems into even more chaos.
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That includes anything done at Northolt, so I hope that the Government will rule both of those out as soon as possible.
In that context, I have a question for the Minister. Can he say when he expects the aviation White Paper to be published? I have heard Ministers, including his boss, the Secretary of State for Transport, saying that it will be published at the end of the year, and of course I believe that, because I believe everything that the Government say—they are always right. However, I have heard whispers that the publication might be delayed. I wonder whether the Minister can assure me, so that I can rest easy today, knowing that I have done my bit to ensure that the Government are living up to their promises.
As I said at the outset, I do not want to have a go at the Government—well, I do really, but on this occasion I might get more if I am trying to be nice. Transport is very important. We must consider all its aspects and bear in mind the environmental consequences. I hope that the Government will adopt one of their famed joined-up approaches not just in the Department for Transport but in all other Departments.
9.54 am
Mr. John Horam: We are all grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) for introducing the debate in his usual felicitous way. He represents a north London constituency, so may I introduce a south London perspective? I shall make only two brief points because I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) also wants to speak.
Connex's decisions affect the whole of south-east London and many of my constituents who use its commuter services through Bromley and south London. The Chamber will be aware that the chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority decided a few months ago to terminate Connex's franchise at the end of this year. Connex will continue to run its services until then, after which some unspecified people—he more or less said friends of his whom he knew and could trust—will run it for a further 12 months, after which there will be a competition and the franchise will be re-let on different terms. I understand that those new terms will include a higher subsidy. I am pleased about that because it is necessary and one of Connex's problems has been financial difficulties arising from miscalculation of the subsidy required.
The transitional 18 months has been handled extremely badly and Connex now has no incentive to provide a decent service. It knows that its time will be up in six months, so why should it bother to do other than what its conscience dictates? That is quite high in Connex's case and I have regard for it in that respect, but there is no commercial or financial incentive for it to carry on providing a good service. The chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority will have had consultations with the Government, and the right approach to the matter would have been for him to say that the service is unsatisfactory, a new franchise would be set up in 18 months with new conditions and everyone could apply. That would have given Connex an incentive to improve its performance and to re-apply with other people.

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Half a dozen train operating companies might apply for the new franchise and that would have led to a better result, because I fear for my constituents during the 18 months of uncertainty and while friends of Mr. Bowker are running the railway line from south-east London for a year. If the Minister allowed the chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority to make that decision, it was the wrong decision and I would like his comments on how we can get through those 18 months.
The first decision as a result of the change—it is common to all parts of the rail service, not just in London—is that trains have been taken out of service because the chairman of the SRA hopes that greater attention can be paid to punctuality and reduced crowding. I do not know the experience of other Members in the Chamber, but the greatest complaint in my area is not lack of punctuality. People become concerned when, for example, at Charing Cross they struggle to get on an extremely crowded train in the evening, because they are aware that there are sometimes safety issues. If people are pressed into a train with their faces against the window, they worry about safety. That is not a happy situation for people going to and from work and there have been instances of commuter rage because people are really worried about crowded trains, trying to get to work, trying to get home and so on.
The idea of paying the same fare for fewer services and, therefore, for punctuality—I understand the reasoning behind that—seems to be evasion of train operating companies' responsibilities. They should pay attention to their own efficiency. The reason for overcrowding on trains, in my experience and that of my commuter constituents, is that a four-car train often rolls up when there should be an eight-car train. That is often because old rolling stock that has not been properly maintained breaks down at the depot and, therefore, does not arrive at the station. Alternatively, there has been a recruitment problem and there are not enough people to run the trains. Those are efficiency problems to which the operating companies should pay more attention, rather than penalising commuters by having fewer trains in order to get back on track with punctuality. I would be grateful for the Minister's comments on those two problems, which immediately affect my commuter constituents.
My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge was characteristically generous in not particularly attacking the Government in this debate. His tactics might be right as he may get a more felicitous answer from the Minister, but he was over-generous. Transport has been a very bad area for the Government. Just before the last election, Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the Government-appointed Sustainable Development Commission, singled out transport as the worst area of Government performance in the whole sphere of their activity. We must lay the blame at the Deputy Prime Minister's door, as he was in charge of transport for the whole of the last Parliament. He set absurd goals, and the Government have had to perform a U-turn. His approach was completely misconceived. It is at its worst in London because he and the Chancellor of the Exchequer simply could not agree with the Mayor of London on how to finance the necessary investment in
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London Underground. That has been a disaster for London. For four or five years, nothing has happened except that piles of legal documents have mounted up to no avail. The result is that badly needed investment in London is barely under way.
Transport has been close to a fiasco from the Government's point of view. I feel sorry for the present team of Ministers. I am pleased that they now have a dedicated transport Department because that may mean that they can concentrate on this matter more effectively than the previous gargantuan Department, but they have major problems to sort out in London as a result of a period when they did absolutely nothing and London suffered as a consequence.
10.2 am
Mr. Mark Field: I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), who is a colleague in the Whips Office, on introducing this important debate.
As my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, and as, I am sure, the Minister will confirm, one of our problems as London Members of Parliament, whether they be the small crowd of 13 on the Conservative Benches or the rather larger, albeit today invisible, massed ranks on the Government Benches—the exception is the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen)—is that much of this issue has become devolved over recent months and years to the Mayor of London. It is therefore inevitable that in any debate in this place about transport issues in London we have to touch on his role during the past three and a half years in the post. Of course, the matter is now under the auspices of Transport for London, but there remains some parliamentary input.
I shall briefly touch on one or two issues as I examine the concerns of many of my constituents in central London. The main concern for many of us in London, and what transport in London means to many people outside the capital, is the tube network. There has been a catalogue of disgraceful delays and bureaucratic bungling. As my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) said, much of the blame must be laid firmly at the Government's door. It is difficult to go into great detail, but the last six and a half years have been a catalogue of wasted time and my hon. Friend was right to cast aspersions on the role of the Deputy Prime Minister. His tenure in looking after the transport system throughout the country, let alone in London, will be remembered only as a never-ending disaster.
Unfortunately, the wrangling between the Government and the Mayor of London over the tube, which finally ended with power being passed fully into the hands of Transport for London, has effectively meant that there have been three wasted years in which no improvements have been made, for all the best will in the world. Many Londoners now have a grave concern that there are going to be appalling blackmail tactics by Mr. Bob Crow and his friends at the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, who have Mr. Livingstone in their pocket—a situation which there is little doubt would continue if he won a second term as Mayor of London, because the RMT will be a major funder of his independent campaign in June.
We have grave concerns about what will happen to the underground system. A lot of money will be spent, but much of it will go into the pockets of union members

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who will constantly complain about safety measures, despite having had no great concerns about safety in past decades. It is interesting that most railway accidents in recent years have been down to driver error or the incompetence of unionised staff, rather than Railtrack, to which blame has been attached. We are in for yet more difficult times, and the commuters who rely on the underground and the rail system to get from far-flung suburban areas to work in central London are the ones who will suffer.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge pointed out, the bus service is one of the success stories of recent years. It is only fair to say that, although perhaps the success has been slightly over-hyped by the Mayor of London in the past three years. In my constituency there have been marked improvements, including the addition of new hopper buses, but at a great cost. The Transport for London budget is now out of control. A shortfall of £500 million is estimated for future years and the Mayor will, I fear, throw himself on the mercy of central Government, who, I suspect, will have relatively little sympathy for his antics.
Above all, Londoners will suffer. Some advertisements in London buses are about the advantages of a congestion charge—notionally, the money raised will be put into buses, but we all know that that is far from the truth. I shall not go into detail about the congestion charge, because I have spoken about it in this Chamber several times and led a debate on it in February. It has not been quite the failure that we all feared, in the sense that there have not been riots in the street. However, many central London retailers and traders have suffered greatly, and my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge mentioned the comprehensive survey by Sir Stuart Hampton of John Lewis, outlining the many grave concerns of central London retailers. However, at least in the first few months of the congestion charge, there was less congestion. That was one reason for retailers suffering—passing trade was radically reduced, although there is evidence that that is beginning to change.
The real concern about the congestion charge is that so little money has been raised. It has been a bureaucratic nightmare; it now appears that the over-hyped assumption that £200 million a year would be raised is being downplayed, not just to the latest figure of £65 million a year given by the Mayor of London, but to a mere fraction of that, for the next two or three years.
The raison d'être of a congestion charge was to raise a pot of money that could be securitised for a range of other transport initiatives, such as Crossrail in particular, which people in London consider an important part of a long-term strategy. Crossrail is an issue that dates back to the post-war era as it was recommended as long ago as 1948. The Conservative Government in the early to mid-1990s first put the project on hold, and a repeat of that by this Government appears almost certain. I should be glad to hear the Minister's comments about Crossrail. The tragedy is that a decision must be made now to bring about improvements 10 or 12 years down the line. An Olympic bid would be almost unsustainable without a commitment to—and the reality of—Crossrail, at least for those areas in the near part of eastern London that would be affected.
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I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge about taxis, although I appreciate that the subject is a little outside the Minister's area of authority. There is a grave concern that there has been an explosion in the number of unregistered cabs here in central London. My feeling is that we need to encourage the licensing of reputable black cabs, despite concerns about the dumbing down of the Knowledge. My real concern is safety for the elderly and for young women, many of whom come to socialise in my constituency in such places as Soho and Covent Garden on a Friday or Saturday night and want to know that they can return to the suburbs safely. There have been appalling statistics on rape and assault in recent months.
Mr. Randall: My hon. Friend may be interested to know that I am a member of the Sexual Offences Bill Committee. One of the presentations from the Metropolitan police was on rape resulting from taking a minicab. That obviously does not happen everywhere, but it is a serious problem.
Mr. Field: I thank my hon. Friend. There is little doubt that there has been an explosion in the number of unregistered cabs, and we all feel very strongly about that on behalf of our constituents.
I shall touch on airports, although that issue is closer to the heart of my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and I appreciate that he has expressed grave constituency concerns. When walking in such places as West Drayton in his constituency and Harmondsworth and Sipson in the constituency of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), one cannot fail to be impressed by the number of posters, which are all over the place: the campaign involving many local residents in that part of west London is massive. One of the benefits of our long parliamentary recess is that it gives us a chance to do some research, and on one of the warm summer days this year I spent some time walking through much of that area and looking at the beautiful 12th century foundation church of St. Mary's, Harmondsworth, which is likely to be entirely obliterated, or find itself a mere stone's throw from a third runway, if such a runway is built.
However, the business argument cannot be lightly dismissed, apart from the very questionable Department for Transport methodology on aircraft usage. I am a great believer that freedom to travel gives freedom to think, and one of the benefits of living in a cosmopolitan and open-minded globalised society is that if people are allowed to travel and experience other cultures, many of the problems highlighted by the global terrorist threat of the past two years will begin to be dissipated. The discussion on the third runway at Heathrow is ongoing, and I understand that the final decision on that and on runways at Stansted and Gatwick is likely to be delayed until the new year. I hope that the Minister can confirm the precise state of play.
There has been a savage attack on private car usage by central Government through fuel duties and by the Mayor of London's anti-car policies—not just the congestion charge—but car usage must be seen as an integral part of sensible transport planning.
I shall conclude soon, because the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead wants to say a few words. Our concerns about transport in London reveal a mess of the

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Government's making. The Secretary of State may well be seen as a safe pair of hands who was appointed to neutralise this as an issue, but the conclusion, first aired by the Evening Standard, that the Government really have it in for London and Londoners is inescapable. As a capital city, we make a vast contribution to the national coffers—some £20 billion net per year—yet we receive considerably less than our rightful share in terms of infrastructure projects. That applies not only to Crossrail, but to the general state of the railways and roads, and to hospitals and other matters outside the Minister's transport remit.
To me, that is an attack on the quality of life of all but the very richest Londoners, who can in effect opt out. It may well be that national pay bargaining suits the trade unions and a Labour Government dominated by Scots and northerners, but it is an absolute disaster for Londoners whose public services are thereby denuded of cash and staff. I appreciate that the Minister will want to address specific transport issues when he sums up. but I hope that he takes back to his boss the grave concerns— felt by many of us who represent Londoners—about the general quality of life. Much of that is, I fear, in the hands of central Government and I hope that they will act positively in the months and years ahead.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) is an assiduous Member of Parliament. He is also a London MP. I am sure that, if I call him, as I intend to do, he will provide some explanation of why he could not be present for the opening of the debate.
10.15 am
Harry Cohen: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise for not being present at the beginning of the debate and missing the speech of the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), which I will read assiduously. I was across the road at St. Thomas's hospital getting my tetanus and diphtheria jab. I am in a bit of a sweat—I do not know whether that is to do with the jab, or running across the bridge.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that those injections are necessary for travelling on public transport?
Harry Cohen: They are necessary for travelling on public transport in Bangladesh, where I am going on a Commonwealth Parliamentary Association trip early next month.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Uxbridge for securing the debate. It is incredibly important for Londoners and commuters, and for business, that public transport flows smoothly in London. I know that the matter has been devolved to the Greater London Authority, but Parliament must keep its hand in, as public transport is important to the national economy.
Rail transport has never recovered from the appalling privatisation by the Conservative Government. The costs just keep going up, particularly in relation to safety. Trying to make the railways safe has eaten up a vast amount of money that the Government put aside
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for investment. The Government must consider that. They are right to make safety the top priority, but investment must be increased again. We need to make rail an efficient means of transport throughout the country, as well as in London. Crossrail is an important new investment that should get the go-ahead. I am not convinced that it will be relevant to any Olympics bid, but it should go ahead in any case to improve the efficiency of rail in London.
The Government should reconsider the urban rail network rather than throwing all their eggs into the M25 and road widening and road building on the outskirts. The Labour Government came in in 1997 saying that they would do much more for the urban rail network. That seems to have been a low priority for investment. It should come back up the order of priorities.
The Government must do something about fares. That issue does not relate only to rail transport, but it is relevant to it. Rail fares are too high. With all the different companies, there is great confusion about what fares people pay. Again, we were promised that that would be sorted out and that people would be able to see clearly which fares were the cheapest or the best, but that has not come about. We need to end the confusion that arises from private companies charging different fares for the same journey and enable easy comparisons to be made. The overall level of fares should also come down if we want to encourage people to use the railways and the tube as opposed to their cars.
I have had debates on the public-private partnership and I do not think that it was the best value for money. The Audit Commission is to carry out a major review in the coming months and I suspect that it will confirm that PPP is not the best value for money. However, the contracts are signed. I remain concerned that there are delays in getting the improvements that even those contracts say should happen. Pressure must be put on infrastructure companies to ensure that those improvements come about.
The Government must consider issues such as air conditioning that are way down at the end of the queue. People may be stuck in trains, as happened when the electricity was cut off. It is appalling that they should be stuck in tube trains for any length of time, whether it is due to a power cut or some other reason without proper air conditioning. Air conditioning should be higher up the order of priority.
The Central line has been experiencing more problems after all that happened earlier this year. The compensation payments were a bit mean and are only now being increased to a reasonable level for regular commuters. In recent times, it has become evident that the tracks are in disrepair, which has caused some problems. I hope that under the PPP scheme the responsibility for that will fall to the private companies and that they will not call on their letters of comfort or tell the Government, "You foot the bill." That would defeat the object of what the Government said that PPPs were about. I will be following that aspect with interest.
The congestion charge has been a success, but increasingly traffic is creeping back into central London. Unpleasant though that may be for many drivers, the Mayor may have to consider increasing the congestion charge. It is important to ensure that traffic that has to enter London can flow. I would like the congestion

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charge scheme to be extended into urban areas where local authorities want it. It is a tool that they could use to tackle congestion in their main high streets and shopping streets. Legislation and more flexibility may be required to allow that to come about.
On signage, traffic signs showing directions and destinations in London are very poor. Attention has been drawn to that, but no one has overall responsibility for it. It should be put into the camp of Transport for London, which should be given the power to do something about it to improve signs across London.
We should give Transport for London and local authorities more flexibility where they want to introduce a local tram scheme, such as the Croydon light rail scheme. That came in over budget, but it has been an effective transport project. Similar projects would be effective in many other parts of the country. Coming in over budget is a problem that goes beyond transport. The Government need to get a grip and ensure that estimates are realistic. That is a bigger problem, but it should not put us off trying to introduce such tram link schemes, which could be effective on a small scale in suburban areas. I ask that consideration be given to bring that back on to the agenda of Transport for London.
10.23 am
Tom Brake: I congratulate the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) on securing the debate. I know that he has a keen interest in transport issues, and I enjoy sitting on the Transport Committee with him.
The contributions this morning have all concerned transport issues, and I do not think that anyone has made political points. I hope that the points that I am going to make will not be deemed political either. The hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) referred to overcrowding on the trains. I had hoped to do a little reading on the train this morning for this afternoon's debate on electricity supply and London Underground. Unfortunately, the slam-door train that arrived consisted of four carriages rather than eight, so I was packed in there with other commuters. That was good for being able to talk to people about the train services, but not very good for travelling in comfort.
Other Members have made good contributions. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) made a very good point about the confusion over rail fares. The Liberal Democrat party conference is in Brighton next week, and we have been informed that the cheapest fare is two single tickets. I fail to understand why two singles are cheaper than a return, and such confusion must be sorted out if more people are to use train services.
I welcome the Minister's presence today, but, given the issues with which we are dealing, where is the Mayor? He is, no doubt, in Brent, East at the moment, along with others. My colleagues are doing mystery shopper exercises on the Westminster to Willesden Green section of the Jubilee line. Presumably, that is where several other Back Benchers are as well.
The Mayor and the Government must have as their objective a transport system in London that is safe, reliable, affordable and of a quality that the world's greatest city deserves. The transport system must
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improve the quality of life in London. In every survey, Helsinki and Stockholm are always at the top for quality of life while London is at No. 60, 64 or 70. Quality of life must be addressed so that people think of London not only as an exciting city but as a city in which it is enjoyable to live.
The Mayor in particular will be judged on his ability to meet that objective. He will be assisted by his Government supporters, as they are now working together to meet it. The Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate, my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes), will also seek to meet that objective if elected. He would have liked to be here for this debate but is, presumably, in Brent, East.
What are the obstacles to meeting the objective? Clearly, the key obstacle is the lack of funding. It is unlikely that the fares box will be a great source of additional revenue, given that London already has the highest transport fares in the world. As well, there seems to be a downward trend in the Government's contribution to London's transport—it has fallen from £1.3 billion in the 2002 spending review to £1 billion in 2005. Finally, as several Members mentioned, the congestion charge is raising less money than expected.
That is the background against which additional funds must be found for transport and necessary transport infrastructure improvements in London. There is probably only one significant source of such funding—the businesses that will benefit from new transport infrastructure projects. Such arrangements are widely accepted in other parts of the world and should be considered in this country. For instance, if property prices for office premises increase significantly because a new Crossrail line has been built outside the front door, it is entirely right that the owners should be asked to contribute.
The evidence from surveys by London First is that the largest businesses—although, admittedly, not the smallest—have responded positively to past suggestions that, for instance, business rates be increased temporarily if funds are earmarked specifically for transport improvements. If anyone believes that that is not the way to fund infrastructure improvements, which are needed in London, they must come up with an alternative. Everyone accepts that Crossrail is needed. Perhaps the Minister can tell us how much private funding has been secured. The Government have said that private businesses will contribute significantly to the project, which will not happen without such contributions. That is the principal problem.
The tube is also a problem. In the Select Committee last week, it was interesting to hear the Secretary of State for Transport say that Metronet will be responsible for funding if new rolling stock is required on the Central line. If the current rolling stock is unreliable and the technical flaws, which appear to exist, cannot be remedied, he expects Metronet to pick up the £700 million to £800 million bill. I would be interested to know whether Metronet considers that an option. Would the public-private partnership deal involving Metronet fold if it were required to stump up such sums of money? One can imagine the effect that such expenditure would have on Metronet's profit margins. There is a problem with PPP, which many Members, including the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead,

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have identified: what happens when a major consortium or one of the major players in a consortium goes belly up? Who comes in and saves the day?
There are also problems relating to buses. I can only assume that journalists, Ministers and some Members of Parliament tend not to travel on them very often because, if they did, they would, like me, want to see the resolution of the problems with the Countdown information system. If we want people to travel on buses, they must know when the buses will arrive. A replacement for the Countdown system was supposed to have been identified, but I do not know whether that has happened. Currently, no one can rely on the information provided at bus stops. No one can rely on being told when the next bus will arrive, so there is complete confusion about whether it is worth trying to make alternative transport arrangements or whether it is better to wait for the next bus.
The congestion charge has a role to play. If it is going to be extended, it may be necessary to examine alternative ways to deliver it, which may involve a global positioning system. I hope that the Minister can confirm whether the satellite tracking system, which is being examined for lorries, will be specifically designed for use in cars. That point is extremely important.
It is not clear how far the retail industry has been hit by the congestion charge—it depends on which survey one reads. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry asked businesses whether their productivity had increased because journeys were faster. Some 21 per cent. said yes and 74 per cent. said no. If that means that 74 per cent. of journeys take exactly the same time as before and that 21 per cent. are faster, I suggest that the congestion charge has been a success.
When businesses were asked whether they were considering moving to a site outside the congestion charging zone, 25 per cent. said yes, although they did not give a reason why. They were not necessarily saying that they were considering moving because of the congestion charge. An independent survey of 500 business found that only 2 per cent. said that they would consider relocating their premises outside the zone. The only conclusion that one can draw is that the congestion charge's impact on retail industry is unclear.
Mr. Randall: Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether the figures concern businesses in general or exclusively retail businesses?
Tom Brake: The first figures are about retail businesses, and they come from the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The others are from an independent survey of businesses by an American research firm. The survey does not specify which lines the businesses are in.
Clearly, one solution is Crossrail, and we must hear from the Minister what progress is being made to identify the private funding that is key to its development. However, the Mayor's latest gimmick with the Oyster card is an unnecessary addition to the range of solutions. I do not know who has been given one of them, but they are being distributed free to, among others, London Assembly Members, the
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Association of London Government, chief executives, council leaders, London MPs, rail and other transport groups, bus companies, Government transport representatives and several reporters. They are exactly the people who probably already have free travel, or who are aware of the Oyster card. That freebie would have been better aimed at people who are less informed of the advantages of the card, rather than those who are already well informed. As the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) said, when the buses budget is out of control, the Mayor needs to consider the pennies and the pounds.
The Minister is responsible for ensuring that there is guaranteed, stable funding for transport in London. However, the spending review states that funding appears to be decreasing and we need an assurance that Crossrail is not going to drift year on year. If it does. the expansion that the Government want to see in east London—in the Thames gateway—will not happen.
I have not touched on airports, but will the Minister confirm whether the recent reports in The Sunday Times, suggesting that BAA has already been given the go-ahead for new runways at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, have any truth in them?
10.36 am
Mr. Christopher Chope: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) on securing the debate and introducing such a broad range of subjects. He demonstrated his great sense of tolerance, which has more to do with his character than the feelings of the public and visitors in London, who possess a mood of great intolerance towards the dire state of the transport system in London.
I begin with a reminder of the verdict of the British people on the Government's transport and public transport record halfway through their second term. According to MORI, 53 per cent. of the public think that the Government have a poor record on transport and public transport, compared with 25 per cent. who think that their record is good. In answer to the question whether they think that transport and public transport will get better, get worse or stay the same over the next few years, 39 per cent. think it will get worse, compared with 23 per cent. who think it will get better. My hon. Friend has done us a great service by getting the Minister in the dock to answer the charges of people who are fed up to the back teeth with the poor quality of public services.
It is all very well to say, "Not me. guv, because it has all been passed off to Transport for London," but the Government initiated plans for transferring responsibility to Transport for London. They said that that meant that things would get better, but we now know that things are getting worse. To add insult to injury, we have not only a decline in the quality of service, but further, sharp fare increases for bus and rail passengers. That is a hallmark of the Government's approach to public services, which cost more and decline in quality. On Thursday, the people of Brent, East will express a strong indictment of the Government's public transport record and policies.

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My hon. Friends the Members for Orpington (Mr. Horam) and for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) also added to the charges against the Government, and I hope that the Minister takes time to respond to the pertinent points that were made.
I shall start with the congestion charge. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, who is in splendid isolation today, suggested that the charge is all right—indeed, it is his party's policy to extend congestion charging across the country—but he pooh-poohed an important survey conducted by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. That survey attracted a surprisingly high response, and although only an interim report has been produced, the concerns expressed should be taken seriously. If the retail sector inside the charge zone suffers a significant loss of custom as well as a possible loss of investment and threatens to move out of central London as a result of the congestion charge, people should take the threat seriously.
The rationale for the congestion charge was that it would be a double benefit—we were told that it would reduce congestion inside the zone and that the income generated would be used to improve public transport. We now know that the scheme is not generating anything like the income forecast. Originally, that figure was more than £200 million a year, but it was downgraded to £200 million. Based on the Mayor's latest figures, it will now be £65 million. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, a more realistic assessment is that we shall be lucky to achieve a surplus of £6 million in the first year. What a poor return on an enormous capital in vestment.
Our consistent charge against the Government is that they have wasted a heck of a lot of public money. If one looks at the detail of the congestion charge, one can see that it is another example of public money being wasted hand over fist. I do not know whether my hon. Friends or you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have had a chance to look at a document that has relatively recently come into the public domain—the rebaselined combined services agreement between Transport for London and Capita Business Services Ltd., which was published on 29 August and which includes a supplemental agreement dated 19 August. Those who are worried about where the money is going could do worse than look at the money being paid to Capita in respect of routine work in connection with the congestion charge.
You may be surprised to learn, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that an administrative assistant is charged at the rate of £250 per day. Those with a little more technical expertise are charged at the rate of between £800 and £1,000 a day. That is where the money is going—on the exorbitant charges being imposed by Capita under its agreement with Transport for London. No wonder the Mayor resisted publication of that document. He did not want people to see exactly where the money is going. If administrative assistants, who need only two A-levels to qualify, can be charged at £250 per day, that surely is overpricing, particularly as most of them are based not in a high-cost area such as central London, but in Coventry, which is where Capita's activities are centred.
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That is where the money is going—it is being wasted in administration. That is why the Opposition say that it would be better to invest capital in London's transport, where it is really needed, and scrap the irrelevant and increasingly problematic congestion charge.
Tom Brake: If a Conservative mayor took such action, what would the hon. Gentleman do to address the resulting significant increase in congestion and how would he fund the shortfall in revenue?
Mr. Chope: The hon. Gentleman asks about funding the shortfall. It looks as though the revenue generated this year might be £6 million, which is not a proper return on the capital employed. So far as the other costs are concerned, he has just said that he believes that the shortfall in funding for Transport for London, estimated at £500 million for each of four successive years starting next year, can be made up only by increasing the business rate. That would place an additional burden on the business community, whereas we know from the reports that we already have that scrapping the congestion charge would relieve it of a significant burden.
While congestion in the centre of London has been suppressed by using market mechanisms, the evidence is that outside the inner London area congestion is as bad as, if not worse than, it was before. If the hon. Gentleman believes in adopting public policies that use the market mechanism to suppress demand, I can understand the logic of his position—if he applied that principle to the health service, the charges would increase enormously and demand would decline. We do not accept that. Almost everybody who uses our transport system does so out of necessity rather than because they want to go out on a frolic. People find it necessary to get between the place where they live and the place where they work and most of them have no alternative but to go by public transport. Those who have small businesses and need to deliver have no alternative but to take a van and park it close to where they work. We do not think that artificially increasing those people's costs is a way forward. We should improve the transport system overall.
My hon. Friends have covered many aspects of this policy, but I think that the most important is crime. That is highlighted by the appalling news that a seven-year-old child who was supposed to be in the care of social services has been brutally murdered in a case that was almost dismissed as one in a separate category that does not concern most people, as it is a so-called black-on-black crime. That is an appalling expression, which should be excluded from the language of politicians. Any victim of crime should be treated on a par with everybody else, and the colour of the perpetrators and the victims is irrelevant. The case illustrates the violence and the threats of violence that permeate much of London life and affect those who use public transport, whether they are on the buses or on the underground. Unless the Government and the mayor get to grips with that, we shall never have a public transport system in London of which we can be proud.
10.48 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Tony McNulty): I congratulate the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) on the

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characteristically generous way in which he opened the debate, on having secured it and on all his opening comments save the unnecessary dig over a very lucky goal that means that Uxbridge rather than Wealdstone will proceed in the early rounds of the FA cup. I declare a partial interest in that, when Wealdstone gets its glorious 3,000-seater stadium in my constituency, I shall become a non-executive director, having laboured in the vineyards for some 12 years, both as a councillor and an MP, to get the club into that position. In the words of football fans, "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough," in terms of the new pitch.
Many of the points raised by Back Benchers of all parties were well put and well argued. Some were cogent, some I would disagree with. I shall try to comment on them in the short time available. If there is time at the end, I might indulge the boring and vacuous contributions of both Oppn Front Benchers, which were not terribly worth while. Although I am temporarily a Front Bencher, I always consider Westminster Hall and general Adjournment debates to be the purview of Back Benchers. If I am allowed a passing comment on parliamentary traditions as they grow and on being a Minister during the past year or so, the notion of Opposition Front Benchers winding up in a Back-Bench debate adds nothing whatever to such debates and I would rather that they desisted. However, that is not for me to say.
Turning to what the hon. Member for Uxbridge said, of course the Government still have a significant role concerning transport in London. Although some matters have been devolved, there is still a significant job to be done with scrutiny, oversight and ultimate decisions on the overall quantum of transport spend. I assure the Chamber that whether it is on Transport for London generally or what it is seeking to do in terms of traffic management, street work, the roads network, the tube and so on, we shall certainly continue to meet regularly for discussion and liaison. That is important because Transport for London is partnership focused. We are not saying, "It's all yours now, so get on with it—it's not my fault." Nor shall I indulge in saying, "That is a matter for them, so go and see them." If London Members are concerned about London's transport system, whether it is my responsibility or that of the Mayor or of TFL, I am more than happy to deal with them.
I appreciate what the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) said about the power supply debate, which will come later. It is a Department of Trade and Industry and Department for Transport debate, and it is better for the matter to be dealt with then.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) said that he will keep a watching brief on the Central line. I assure him that I shall do so as well, and with interest.
I wish the hon. Member for Uxbridge well in plans for next year's centenary of the tube going to Uxbridge. It does not hurt to go to the very end of the line and the far reaches of the Middlesex area of London every now and again, and if he wants me to come along in any capacity I am more than happy to do so. I might even have a cup of tea in Randall's or some other obscure little retail
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outlet in Uxbridge. Unhappily for me, I suspect that he has far more of the rolling hills and dales of Middlesex countryside a la Betjeman than I have in Harrow, East where the Metroland developers were perhaps otiose in covering much more of the green bits than in West Drayton, Harefield and other areas that he represents.
I agree that the underground must be improved. I also agree with the hon. Gentleman that when London's transport goes well, whether people are driving in or travelling by tube or train, it can be very pleasant, but I fully accept that there is much that we can and should do. Members have suggested that now that the PPP is in place, the message should be, "Get on with it." I could spend time apportioning blame for the delay, which is three years and not longer, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) and others have suggested. I could regale people with the history of mayoral interventions via his legal friends in and out of the courts and so on, but that is not worth dwelling on.
I suggest that we simply need to get on with not only the PPP but subsequent suggestions to develop the tube network, which, on the whole, is an extremely efficient way of transporting many millions of people around London every year. It is easy to dwell on the serious occasions when things go wrong, such as with the Central line. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead said, we never see headlines saying, "Another good day on the tube. Millions transported to and from work safely and securely." I appreciate that that is not news, but it is the reality more often than not.
I accept Members' exhortations on Crossrail. We have set out the framework and I shall try to give an update on that. The Government never suggested that the Olympic bid depended on Crossrail. The sponsors' business case states that it will be 2013 or 2014 before the rail link is finished, even if it has a fair wind between now and then. Those who link the fortunes of Crossrail and those of the Olympic bid do this city a grave disservice. The rail link will not be ready. It is unnecessary for those purposes, and the Olympic bid team are on record as saying that it is unnecessary, given possible improvements elsewhere. To talk down our bid before it has even started does not say much for London Members.
On the congestion charge, Mr. Kylie would say that there is a range of opinions. I agree. I partly accept some of the points made about retail, although, as someone said, the position is murky. We still do not know the complete picture. Mr. Kylie would say, "Give it a year and we will take full stock of what is going on." Figures have risen and fallen. My office was in Whitehall, which was a ghost town when the congestion charge was introduced. Admittedly, it was half term and there were road works, but it was a delight. One might have been at work in the middle of the day, but given the traffic it felt like Sunday at 5 o'clock in the morning. We must wait and see. The congestion charge was never meant to be a revenue-raising instrument, as is suggested by those Norrisites who would revise history. It is about relieving congestion. Revenue was very much a secondary issue.
I am sorry, but I do not have a great deal of time left to talk about other matters. I broadly accept what all Members said, especially about public sector workers and bus drivers in particular. We will work closely with British Transport police and/or other authorities to

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ensure that threats and violence against bus drivers are dealt with and that the full force of the law is brought to bear against the offenders. I worked in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister last year, so I know that much of its work relates to the broader issues of transport and affordable housing for public sector workers.
I can tell the hon. Member for Uxbridge, although I am sure he already knows, that there were major increases in the frequency of the bus service on the 222 route from August 2003. Sadly, I have no information to hand about the 207 service, but I wish the re-tendering process well.
Members talked about the importance of taxis, which I recognise. Much of the taxi industry's concern is twofold. First, the process—not the amount and the substance of the Knowledge—should be reduced. People very often fail one part of the test but pass another and have to wait for ever to reach the next level because all sorts of time slots are built into the process. That needs to be reconsidered. Secondly, I strongly accept the point about touting and the increase in the number of minicabs. The sooner that we can work with the Public Carriage Office to introduce the new licensing regime, the better. I do not yet have the date, but I know that I shall have the great pleasure of going out at midnight with the British Transport police and the Met on one of their purges.
I know that getting home at night is difficult, but if anyone outside ever listens to our proceedings I strongly advise people—male or female, but especially female— not to get into cars that pull up and say, "I am a cab. Where do you want to go?" Some 5 million more passengers now use night bus routes and services. People must use reputable taxi companies, or not use taxis at all. That is a matter of grave concern.
The hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) talked about Connex. I shall write to him about some of the more detailed aspects, as I cannot do the matter justice now. I am bemused to see not one but two talking Opposition Whips. I spent a couple of years in the Whips Office. I talked, but not publicly, so this is a relatively novel concept for me. Again, I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, but I strongly disagree with the notion, which I am sure was merely a flippant, throwaway remark, that most accidents are the result of driver error or incompetence and that unionisation has something to do with the level of error.
The debate was wide-ranging, and I shall write to Members about any other matters that I have not addressed. I say simply to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), who seems so confident about Thursday's by-election in Brent, East, that he is deluded.

Yarl's Wood Fire
11 am
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Nicholas Winterton): Order. The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who has initated this debate, is an experienced and long-serving Member and an ex-Minister. He will be aware that certain matters are covered by the sub judice resolution of the House. In particular, that resolution applies to any reference to matters relevant to outstanding criminal charges, which in the present case may include the performance of Group 4, which operates the centre. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear that advice in mind.
Alistair Burt: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I appreciate that advice and will do my utmost to stick to it and ensure that any references fall entirely within the rule.
I am thankful that this debate on such an important subject has been allowed, and I appreciate the attendance of the Minister and the attention of her office in the past few days to ensure that she would be briefed about what I would be asking. This is no attempt at an ambush. I appreciate her interest, because I know that she intends to try to provide the best possible answers to my questions. I also acknowledge the presence of the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Hall), who has had a considerable interest in the matter for a long time. We share a number of concerns over the issue.
Briefly, this is the story so far. Yarl's Wood was designed as the largest asylum, detention and removal centre in Europe, and was opened in my constituency in November 2001. It was several months late and built at an unknown cost—questions about the cost are deferred, owing to commercial confidentiality, to which I shall return. The centre was run on behalf of the Home Office by Group 4, which had also been part of the private consortium that had designed, built and insured it under the authority and, presumably, the supervision of the Home Office and the immigration service.
On 14 February 2002, barely weeks after opening, one half of Yarl's Wood was burned down and completely destroyed, following an incident of disorder. There were 385 detainees on site at the time, less than half the 900 that the centre could have held when fully operational. Injuries were mercifully slight all round—one security officer was hospitalised with a broken pelvis after leaping from an upstairs window in fear for his life. A number of security officers remain affected by the incident and there were minor injuries elsewhere. A number of detainees escaped in the confusion. Although there were fears that some had died, an exhaustive police search of debris concluded that, mercifully, this was not the case.
The fire was a disaster and the Home Secretary came within a hair's breadth of seeing major loss of life. That he did not was sheer good fortune, as the chain of events that led to the incident was a series of errors and incompetence. As a result and due to the potentially serious consequences, in terms of loss of life, and the real financial consequences, I am bringing the issue back to the Chamber today.
Following the incident, there were further significant developments. Most bizarrely, the private insurers of Yarl's Wood, having presumably collected fat

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premiums for their trouble, decided to sue the blameless Bedfordshire police under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 for upwards of £100 million. That may be business, but it is shameful. The police are vigorously contesting the claim and the Government, belatedly, are examining whether the Act has outlived its usefulness. Although the outcome remains in doubt, my constituents are acutely aware that they will technically be liable for the bill if the private insurers win. In passing, will the Minister say whether the Crown is joined in any way in that action? If so, I should like to know which side it is on, as it has an interest in Yarl's Wood that is insured, I understand, by the same insurance syndicate.
An internal Home Office inquiry commenced after the fire. That, however, was doomed to failure, as the Home Secretary was advised. It took some limited evidence in secret and reported in secret to the Home Secretary in September 2002. The report could not be published because of the next significant event—the criminal trial of those accused of violent disorder and arson at the centre. The trial concluded this August after about four months. Of the 10 accused people in the dock, only two were convicted—neither of them for arson. The trial concluded with a series of startling allegations of incompetence made against Group 4 not by the defence but by the prosecution, the Crown. I shall refer to that obliquely later.
In summary, 18 months after the fire we do not know what led up to it, who started it, precisely what happened on the night or who is liable to pay for the damage. To its great credit, Bedfordshire county council held its select committee inquiry in public. The report was published in the summer of last year and raised important questions. It could not compel witnesses, however, and as the criminal trial had yet to take place, critical evidence was sub judice and could not be given. Accordingly, now that the major criminal trial is out of the way, it is time to take the next steps and bring the matter to the Floor of the House again.
I shall ask the Minister about a series of major issues, on all of which her staff have been briefed. First, there should be a full public inquiry. The appointment of Stephen Shaw as prisons ombudsman, to pick up where Mr. Stephen Moore of the Home Office left off, is a good appointment. However, to justify what he is going to do, he must hold meetings in public and he must cross-examine. That is because we are now aware of a series of contradictions over potentially serious incidents, which must be dealt with. I shall mention two.
The first is the decision whether to fit sprinklers in the building. The former acting chief fire officer of Bedfordshire, Jeff Goddard, gave written evidence to the Bedfordshire county council inquiry. He said that he was at a meeting about sprinklers with Home Office officials at which the issue was absolutely one of cost. The decision not to fit sprinklers was in his opinion made purely on the grounds of cost. That is not what the Home Office says. Which is right? It is only for the independent inspector examining witnesses in public to determine the answer.
Secondly, there is confusion about the chain of events on the night, particularly whether the police had access to the Yarl's Wood site at a time of their choosing as opposed to a time of Group 4's choosing. Having
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spoken to Group 4 and the police, I am now in possession of two completely contradictory accounts of that vital time. Again, which is right? That is of major importance. If the police had been allowed on site at the time when they say that they asked for access, the incident might have been dealt with before the fires were started and before the tremendous cost that resulted and the danger to people. Is that the case or not? We do not know. I maintain that that should be brought out in public, so that the public can see people examined to determine the answer.
Will the inquiries be held in public? Will the inspector be able to cross-examine? Will he be able to compel witnesses to come? Does the Minister agree, and will she back him in his efforts to hold meetings in public? While she is about it, will she now publish the Stephen Moore report that came to the Home Secretary last year?
Mr. Patrick Hall: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the issue is not just whether the inquiry is held in public but whether it is a judicial inquiry? If it is not, we may be in exactly the same situation, with a revamped Home Office overarching internal inquiry, as we have been during the past year or so, for the very reason that the criminal investigations have not yet been completed. The reasons for the delay and the eventual demise of the first part of the inquiry could remain relevant today, whereas a judicial inquiry might he able to open up matters a little.
Alistair Burt: I am entirely with the hon. Gentleman. It is vital that the inquiry has the opportunity to delve into all the facts. Although I welcome the appointment of Stephen Shaw, who will be more independent than the previous official appointed, I have no doubt that the powers sought by the hon. Gentleman are the correct ones. I, too, want a judicial inquiry. I hope that the Minister can respond to that.
On my second issue, will the Minister say that commercial confidentiality will not be a defence for anyone who is required to give information to the inquiry? I referred earlier to the fire and the fact that the buildings were destroyed very quickly. The construction of the Yarl's Wood buildings and the way they caught fire and were destroyed so quickly are major issues. The point is simple: the loss of the buildings, and the allegations about the competence of those who were running the centre, mean, in my view, that the right to stand on commercial confidentiality should be forfeited. My constituents, and everyone who has already paid for Yarl's Wood and will do so again, are entitled to know how much it cost us and who is pocketing all the money.
An incident that illustrates my argument has been reported in the Bedfordshire on Sunday newspaper. It published an allegation that the cost of the sprinklers, which was originally considered to be about £750,000, jumped to about £14 million at the time when the Home Office rejected efforts to have them installed. Why did the amount rise so rapidly? What were the costings for the sprinklers? We do not know. Why not? I think that the public are entitled to know the cost of construction, operation, maintenance and insurance at Yarl's Wood. I should be grateful if the Minister confirmed that it will not be possible for any of the companies involved to rely on commercial confidentiality to continue to hide the true cost of Yarl's Wood from the British public and my constituents.

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Thirdly, I should like the Minister to ask the inquiry—judicial or otherwise—to extend its remit to include the allegations made about Group 4 at the end of the criminal trial. For the reasons that you suggested, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall not go into the allegations in detail. However, it was curious that the allegations were made not only by the defence but by the Crown. They are serious and go to the heart of the integrity of the company. The company was not represented at the trial and had no opportunity to defend itself. If the allegations are true, Group 4 should not be running anything. If they are not, an apology is required. I do not think that the matter can be satisfactorily settled until the allegations have been properly examined and that is why the remit of the inquiry should be extended.
Fourthly, and consequent on what I have said, Yarl's Wood should not be reopened until the matter relating to the competence with which it has been run has been dealt with. Yarl's Wood is shortly to reopen. A series of consultations has been held and I appreciate the efforts of the Home Office, on this occasion, to tell local residents what is intended, who will be housed at Yarl's Wood and how it will be run. My constituents appreciate that too. However, the overriding issue is whether, in view of the allegations made about Group 4, it should be running the establishment at all. The county council, local councillors and the local liaison committee, which has worked hard on the issue from the outset, often in co-operation with the Home Office, agree with me that the centre should not be reopened. I should therefore appreciate it if the Minister, even at this late stage, told us that until allegations about the competence with which the Yarl's Wood centre was run have been cleared up, it would be unsafe to reopen it.
Finally, I ask the Minister for a commitment to complete openness by the Home Office and the immigration service, on questions that will be raised during the inquiry. There are serious charges to be made against the Home Office and the immigration service, and I shall run through some of them—in no particular order, and without expecting an answer to every one.
The Home Office changed its policy in autumn 2001 so that asylum detainees would no longer be held in prison. Did that lead to the placing of inappropriate detainees at Yarl's Wood? When the Home Secretary visited Yarl's Wood in March 2002, he certainly referred to inappropriate detainees being placed there. When Yarl's Wood was first opened, local residents were told that the low level of security and the light regime were entirely appropriate because the detainees to be placed there required low security and were a low risk. If the policy changed during the autumn, without that being made known to the local residents or me, and inappropriate detainees were placed at Yarl's Wood, did that contribute to what happened subsequently?
Will the Minister publish the names of everyone who was at Yarl's Wood during the short period from November 2001 to February 2002? Had some of those people been in prison? Had they been involved in previous disturbances, and if so, were they involved in the disturbances at Yarl's Wood? Had Bedfordshire police offered to run background checks on everyone who was being brought to Yarl's Wood, particularly if they had been in the UK for a period of time and something was known about them? If that offer was made, was it refused by the immigration service? Is it
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true that Group 4 was required to take everyone that the immigration service brought to Yarl's Wood regardless of whether it had any information on their background?
What responsibility does the Home Office take for the matters relating to Group 4 complained about at the trial concerning the design and build of the centre, training and the running of operations there? Was the Home Office involved in the allegations made by the Crown at the trial that appeared to some to deflect attention away from the Home Office and on to Group 4? What happened to all those who escaped from Yarl's Wood? What happened to those detainees who were deported?
Is there any truth in the suggestion that some of the detainees who were subsequently deported could have been charged with offences, including arson, that might have led to the conviction of someone for the fire started at Yarl's Wood? Will the Minister tell us of the latest situation in relation to the outstanding legal matters concerning Yarl's Wood, further criminal trials, and the conduct of further civil litigation?
I am sorry to put such a number of questions to the Minister, who I know will endeavour to do her best to deal with them, but she will appreciate that for me, and the hon. Member for Bedford, Yarl's Wood remains a serious matter. The Minister knows that I have every sympathy for her in dealing with issues affecting asylum and immigration in the UK at the moment. That is exceptionally difficult. She also knows that I support the policy that those who have had their claims denied will have to be returned, and some of those people may have to be held before they are returned. Because of that, and the rolling out of centres intended to hold people in such circumstances, it is vital that we get it right. What happened at Yarl's Wood was a disaster; things went badly wrong. To give full confidence in the system in future, we might as well be as open as we can be now about what happened. I put it to the Minister that the series of suggestions that the hon. Gentleman and I have made give her the best opportunity to do just that. I would appreciate her response.
11.17 am
The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Beverley Hughes): I know that it is customary to do so, but I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on securing another debate on this important issue. I thank him for the energetic way in which he has represented the legitimate concerns of his constituents and the constructive way in which he has taken up some very difficult issues, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Hall). I also note your important guidance at the start of the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for which I am grateful. Finally, I thank the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire for his assistance in preparing for the debate. I shall need further advice on some of those questions, particularly the ones that he raised latterly. I shall write to him about those, but I shall try to cover most of the important points in my reply today.
I appreciate that the events at Yarl's Wood on 14 February 2002 are still of great interest and concern, not only to local people, but to myself, officials in the Home Office and the Home Secretary. He is right to say that we

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need to ensure that we move on and do not repeat whatever mistakes were made that led to those events. I am determined to do that. I understand and share the disappointment that there were not convictions for arson despite the seriousness of those events. Clearly, those are matters for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to consider because it is for them to bring charges.
Hon. Members will be aware that the events of February are the subject of an inquiry by Stephen Shaw, the independent prisons and probation ombudsman. I do not want to pre-empt the outcome of his inquiry in any detail, although I want to touch on some of the points that the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire raised. We are some considerable time on, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says. It is not the case that nothing has been done in that time. Lessons have been learned about the design of the building, and management, and that has all been taken into account in reaching today's position.
The hon. Gentleman raised several general but very important issues. The first of those is that Stephen Shaw's inquiry should be conducted in public and that it should be a judicial inquiry. I remind the House that, in the light of the interest that has been shown in this important matter, we decided at the outset that it was preferable for the outcome of the investigation that the proceedings should be fully independent. Stephen Shaw was therefore asked to take overall responsibility from Stephen Moore, with the same terms of reference, and to bring the matter to a conclusion. The decision followed careful consideration of the work that Stephen Moore had done, and it was in line with the original commitment to have an independent element. Stephen Shaw will draw on Stephen Moore's work and the material that he gathered, and build on that. I conveyed that information to the House in a written statement in June.
I think that that was a sensible approach and it follows that I do not feel that a full public inquiry is the best way of getting the information that we need into the public domain at the earliest opportunity. The question of whether the evidence should be given in public should turn on whether that method is most likely to get at some of the core issues and contradictions that the hon. Gentleman identified. I have absolute confidence, and I know that he shares this, that Stephen Shaw will do that. He is most likely to be able to do so under the terms of reference that he has accepted. If he comes back to the Home Secretary and me and tells us that he feels constrained, we will have to consider a response to that.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether it should be possible for someone to hide behind commercial confidentiality as a reason for not giving information. I accept the general premise that it should not. If that were to happen, I have no doubt that Stephen Shaw would come back to me. For the hon. Gentleman's information, Stephen Shaw has already been given all the Yarl's Wood contracts and all the documents relating to contracts and costings. He will use those as a basis for the line of questioning that the inquiry will take.
Alistair Burt: Does Mr. Shaw need formal permission from the Minister, or the Home Secretary, to dispense
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with commercial confidentiality, or can he make that sort of decision and a decision about public hearings on his own? What is the chain of accountability and authority?
Beverley Hughes: We have agreed the terms of reference with Stephen Shaw, and having been given the relevant information he can pursue issues in line with those terms of reference as he wishes. We have decided that the hearings will not be public at the moment. That is the situation unless Stephen Shaw comes back to me and says that he feels constrained, and that we need to rethink any aspect of the conduct and parameters of the inquiry.
Mr. Patrick Hall: On the matter of timing, surely my hon. Friend will agree that the time things will take is a possible constraint. The fact that the matter has gone on for so long without the investigation being completed, never mind anything being published about it, and that further criminal investigations are likely to take place, could lead to months of delays that would not help to restore public confidence. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a constraint?
Beverley Hughes: With the greatest respect, my hon. Friend cannot have it both ways. I know that Stephen Shaw wants to conclude the inquiry in the most comprehensive way that he can in the shortest possible time. A balance is needed. The material gathered by Stephen Moore was very much work in progress, but Stephen Shaw will draw on that and will take the inquiry as far as he needs to to get to the bottom of the important questions being asked. I can assure the Chamber that his report will be published. I hope that my hon. Friend will accept that there is a balance to be struck. It is more important for us to get to the bottom of those questions than it is for me to ask Stephen Shaw to rush the inquiry through. When I met him just after he had started his work, we talked about timing and discussed that very point. He will do it in the shortest time he can while feeling that he has done the best work that he can.
On whether the centre should reopen before Stephen Shaw's work is done, I say to my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire that I do not want to delay the reopening of Yarl's Wood any longer than is necessary, but we will obviously take great interest in the results of the inquiry, when it is published.
We have already put in place revised arrangements, which include mandatory fire training and drills. They are witnessed by Home Office officials under a permitto-use process, and they have to be successfully and satisfactorily completed before the Home Office will allow the building to open. Members already know that sprinklers are being installed throughout the centre together with additional fire-breaks, fire alarms and other associated safety modifications. That work has been undertaken following extensive consultation with other bodies, including Bedfordshire fire and rescue services. Operational procedures have also been scrutinised and enhanced, and improvements have been made to the building's internal security features. Contingency planning is being developed with the police, fire and ambulance services.

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We plan to open the undamaged part of Yarl's Wood incrementally. On 28 September, the first phase will open for 60 single women. Following the successful establishment of that group, there will be a progressive reopening of the undamaged part of the centre to accommodate up to 400 people—single women and families—by spring 2005. We are not rushing that. We are introducing it in a planned, progressive and managed way to ensure that it is a success. There will be an incentive scheme to encourage responsible behaviour. Participation in constructive activity has been planned to encourage a safe and controlled environment for detainees and staff.
The hon. Gentleman wants details of detainees who were in Yarl's Wood on 14 February. Whether or not it is right to divulge that information, it would be very difficult to provide it. We would have to go through the files of every detainee to find out who they were and where they came from. That is the information that the hon. Gentleman wants. He wants not only their names, but where they came from. He is concerned that a disproportionate number of people with difficult backgrounds, such as those from prison, ended up in Yarl's Wood after the closure of remand places. I will check, but the policy that he outlined has not changed.
There were 385 people in Yarl's Wood at the time and they came from various sources. Some would have been detained for the first time at a port and brought to Yarl's Wood, and some would have been brought from other parts of the removal estate. There would have been others from the prison estate, and those dispersed from
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the prison estate were dispersed around the detention estate. They were not disproportionately placed at Yarl's Wood or any other detention centre.
The spirit of that policy was retained. I will check and write to the hon. Gentleman, but there was no deliberate attempt disproportionately to place difficult people at Yarl's Wood
Alistair Burt: I know that it is late in the debate, but my point was not that a disproportionate number of people may have been sent to Yarl's Wood, but that any were sent there. There was such a low-level and light security regimes, that no one from a difficult background should have been sent there.
Beverley Hughes: I need to check the policy commitment at that time. The hon. Gentleman implies that it meant that nobody from the prison estate would be placed in Yarl's Wood. I need to check if that was a policy commitment, and if so, what happened. The hon. Gentleman has asked several questions about checks and about Group 4's requirement to take everyone, and I will write to him about those matters.
I guarantee that Stephen Shaw will have access to all the information that he needs. He will do an excellent job. It will include the behaviour of all concerned, and he is aware of the comments made in court about Group 4. He has asked for a transcript of them and he will deal with them in his investigation. I have assured him that, to assist him in his inquiry, he will receive the full cooperation of the Home Office.
11.30 am
Sitting suspended until Two o'clock.

Community Policing
2 pm
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Nicholas Winterton): The first debate this afternoon is initiated by the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). The subject is community policing. Before I call the hon. Gentleman, may I congratulate him on being a prolific user of Westminster Hall? I think few hon. Members recognise the opportunities that this Chamber offers, but the hon. Gentleman certainly does.
Mr. David Drew: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am not sure that I can live up to that billing, particularly as it was you and I who got the idea off the ground. If nothing else, we will serve as a memorial to the long-term future of Westminster Hall. It is a wonderful Chamber, and we have debates here that we could never have in the main Chamber. We were right to push for it in the Modernisation Committee.
That is my first explanation for what I am doing. My second, as I have said to a number of colleagues, is that I asked for a debate on community safety and, thanks to the good offices of the Speaker, the title has come out as "Community Policing". I shall refer to community policing, but I shall refer also to community safety. If all else fails, do not blame me, blame the Speaker's Office. It is important that we consider the debate at this time. Before we started, I said in an aside to my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing, and Community Safety that this was a coming debate.
Mr. James Paice: Would it he in order for the hon. Gentleman to seek an adjournment while I find my colleague who deals with community safety issues rather than community policing, which is the subject on which I was intending to embark?
Mr. Drew: I shall not be so indiscreet as to veer completely away from the subject. particularly as I have a lot of support from the police in Gloucestershire. It is good to see several hon. Members here today including a near neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda).
I can talk on this matter with some expertise because, since I was elected in 1997, I have been out with the police at least every three months with inspector neighbourhood area patrols, so I have seen things at the raw end. Many of the experiences that I will talk about are the result of that.
I want to discuss the positive issues of community engagement and the preventive measures that are encapsulated by the title "community safety". I owe the police thanks for helping me construct the debate. I will quickly run through the roll of honour and then say no more about it. I thank the chief constable, Tim Brain and Superintendent Nigel Avron, who has briefed me carefully. I thank the three inspectors of the inspector neighbourhood areas, which is the structure we have in Gloucestershire: Pete Craddock, Mac McGarry and Paul Donovan. I also thank the district council's community support officers Phil Sullivan and Dilys Warren.
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To complete the cycle of greatness, I would not want to ignore the voluntary sector. I have done a lot of work with neighbourhood watch with Eddie Whitlock and Phil Hughes, and with victim support with Richard Lacey, with whom I raised some money on the back of a tandem. We rode around 100 miles of Gloucestershire, so I know his backside if nothing else. I shall move quickly on.
The context of the debate is that people care passionately about law and order. All the evidence coming from polling or social organisations shows that the issue of law and order is highly salient. By chance, a group of pensioners came to visit me yesterday from Minchinhampton in my constituency. With no prompting, their first questions were all about law and order. It was the classic thing: "We used to have a sergeant; we used to have two constables in Minchinhampton, and we've got no one now, yet the problems—the burglaries and the disorder on Friday and Saturday night—seem worse than ever."
That problem is the crux of my debate. I said to that group what I always say at police consultative committee meetings: we want visible policing. People have a right to expect, when they pay their bill to the police authority—and there was a whacking great increase in Gloucestershire last year, which I shall not dwell on, but which people noticed and took a view on—that they will see the police actively engaged in their community. However, visible policing is not the same as effective policing.
Mr. Parmjit Dhanda: My hon. Friend mentioned the police precept—which was very big—but does he agree that it is often forgotten that the police precept is 9.7 per cent. of the overall community charge bill for Gloucestershire?
Mr. Drew: I agree, and I am not attacking the police. I spend a long time listening to them, and have great respect for them. However, the high precept has made an impression; people want to know what they are paying their money for. Visibility is what they want. Many people still have the notion that the best form of policing is the bobby on the beat. Unfortunately, the criminal fraternity has moved on and society has become somewhat more difficult. Hon. Members know that the police tell us that what is required is intelligence-based policing and the use of modern technology. Policing is now about working in a different way, although there is no escaping the fact that in rural areas—and I make no apology for focusing a great deal on rural areas—a conflict arises. It is not an easy question to resolve.
It is not only through an increase in police numbers that the Government have set about resolving the problem. When I visit INAs, I always meet new police who are in training. The numbers are greater than they have ever been, but so are the pressures. The Government's approach uses a raft of partnerships, which are incredibly valuable. The key ones are the crime and disorder reduction partnerships, but community safety partnerships are also important. The work involves agencies that were previously discrete; now probation and health are locked into the partnerships.

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On Friday, the chief fire officer of Gloucestershire, Peter Jones, was saying how much the fire service appreciates being involved in going out on preventive work—not just dealing with smoke alarms. He suggested that, rather than expecting officers to retire at 48 or 49, it would be good to enable them to go on to that work, instead of using front-line officers to do it. I hope that the Minister will take note of that inspired aside from him; I have always argued the same about the police. They retire far too early; I do not mean that they retire from front-line work too early, but we could use their expertise when they retire.
In Gloucestershire, the key to what I am talking about has been the evolution of the tri-service facilities at Quedgeley in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester. Ambulance, fire and police services have come together in a new way of dealing with emergency calls and what is happening is also linked to the new police station at Quedgeley. Those responsible should be congratulated. I have always been in favour of the regional agenda, but I should he grateful for an assurance that it does not go as far as trying to undermine the tri-service arrangements that were put together with a lot of time, money and private finance initiative schemes. We do not want those to be ripped asunder by a sudden decision that the fire or ambulance service is to be reorganised in a way that means they cannot use the facilities.
I want, finally, to look at the importance of the voluntary sector. I have mentioned two voluntary organisations, but I would also include some of the preventive work that is being done with housing and health. Although such matters are not seen as the police's main responsibility, the police welcome engagement with those agencies. Another relevant agency would be social services, as the police argue that too often their biggest problem in the community is that they pick up the responsibility for jobs that others could, and in some respects should, do.
I make no apology for saying that the way that such things best come together is through some form of mutuality. I am interested, as is my hon. Friend the Minister, in concepts of mutuality and new forms of cooperation. I do not think that we should stay with existing systems and structures when better ones could encourage the greater sharing of responsibility and of the resources applied. That sounds like nice fluffy-bunny stuff, but in reality if that is made to work, it can be much more successful.
Much of the issue of community policing is tied in with two important pieces of legislation. They are the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Police Reform Act 2002. The first set up the whole agenda—making organisations work together in a different way so that they bear down on crime and disorder. Whether we like it or not, crime and disorder are the problems of our time. The latter Act brought in more organisations and introduced a more targeted approach—and a more effective one—to specific problems.
In Stroud, the strategies and organisations created on the back of the 2002 Act are working very well. They are clear, popular and easy to defend by those who explain them at meetings. The people who make them work—the police and the CSOs in Stroud district and those in the county council and other organisations—are heroes in a way because they have put so much of their own
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time into making the strategies as effective as they have become. I make no bones of the fact that trying to persuade the public that the system is working as well as it could is still a problem.
We need to give things time, but the structures are right and the legislation has spawned different areas of activity, such as the work of the racial incident unit. In Gloucestershire, we have not traditionally had a problem with a high level of racial crime, but sometimes an undercurrent of racism has been found in rural areas. Other issues, such as runaway children and domestic violence, have been around for generations, but now, because of the way in which crime and disorder reduction partnerships work, we are at least putting measures in place that can highlight what needs to be done. People come forward with their complaints with more confidence that something will be done.
The Police Reform Act 2002 broadened the crime and disorder context to bring in other organisations. The Government are to be congratulated on that. The Act also brought new appointments; there is a link with current changes that are establishing the idea of community well-being in the framework of local government. That has led to the establishment of new positions. In Stroud, we now have a number of neighbourhood wardens who go into the community, not necessarily under the auspices of the police, although they work very closely with them, and deal with all the relevant issues. They do not deal just with crime-related issues, but with good neighbourliness. They are already making a difference.
Mr. Dhanda: My hon. Friend and I both have a habit of slipping into speaking Gloucestershire from time to time. He mentioned INAs earlier, but I am not sure that all hon. Members are familiar with INAs, but they are policing areas in Gloucestershire. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) was not aware of that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) also made an interesting point about the involvement of local authorities. Does he agree that one of the most helpful things that the Government have done is to provide match funding to ensure that officers funded by city councils, such a park wardens and city centre managers, can now be beefed up to community support roles?
Mr. Drew: We are always willing to take more funds, wherever they come from, but particularly from central Government. I am sorry if anything was lost in the translation, but we in the west country tend to talk in a dialect and sometimes use abbreviations. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford, but no doubt he has similar arrangements in his constituency and refers to them slightly differently.
My final point about the 2002 Act is that it highlights what needs to be done about disorder, but that was not happening with antisocial behaviour orders. We in rural areas have not been great users of such orders, but we are beginning to use them more now because they have been streamlined. I do not entirely belong to the same school of thought as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) when he argues about that, but the public have been way ahead of us in realising the

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problems that antisocial behaviour causes and we must be seen to be doing something about that sooner rather than later. That is something that rural, as well as urban, Britain should learn from.
Another issue on the back of the two Acts is that so much is tied up in the word "partnership". It has not only spawned many new activities, but has reconstituted some existing activities so that people, certainly the professionals, can see the delivery of services being clearer cut. We are fortunate in having help from central Government. We have a number of bobby buses so that we can send the police out to rural areas. Police stations disappeared generations ago and the visibility of policing is important.
We have also begun to pull together some of the drug and alcohol strategies with the work of drug action teams and a very successful substance abuse group in Stroud. They are now reporting directly to the community safety group and through that to the crime and disorder reduction partnership.
Last, but not least, we were proud to pioneer—not internationally because the idea came from Canada—messages in a bottle whereby older people are encouraged to put a medicine bottle in their fridge with all their details inside. That was encouraged by the police because when they break into a place where someone may be ill, they fear having no easy access to the details. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford pressed that idea with the support of the police. There is much good going on, but much more could be done.
In conclusion, I refer to what I see as the key problems and how the Government are setting about trying to overcome those problems, but I could do with some advice from my hon. Friend the Minister on how we could do better and how the message could be taken to the Strouds of this world to ensure that people understand exactly what is happening. First, there is a degree of complexity between people and partnerships. I have already referred to many of them and one day I shall get someone to draw out for me all the different interrelated partnerships that exist between the statutory, voluntary and private sectors.
There is a worry about lack of co-ordination, as well as expense in terms of time, let alone money, because people must attend so many meetings nowadays. I suppose that we could look at some form of rationalisation, but that, again, has been overtaken by events with the start of the local strategic partnerships within which, supposedly, all the other partnerships sit. I sit on the Stroud local strategic partnership, as I do indirectly on the county partnership. There is much good will but some question about what it is turning up. The crime and disorder agenda often sets the wider agenda for the local strategic partnership. That may be a good thing or may show that other areas are weaker than they should be.
The second issue concerns resources. As always, there will be special pleading by people in rural areas. Sparsity issues and the fact that such areas have traditionally been less well funded do not mean that there are no problems with drug abuse and disorder and that people do not ask why they do not see the police. We must take
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account of that in the funding structure. The issue must be addressed by local government, police authorities and, of course, central Government.
The raft of measures that the Government have introduced, though highly creditable, are expensive to run. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will assure us that we are not looking for quick fixes but are providing long-term funding streams. The programmes may change slightly over time, but we must see how they work. That is important as places such as Gloucestershire begin to get access to CSOs, who will work with neighbourhood wardens, specials and the full-time police. We must ensure that there is proper protocol and that each office knows what it is to do and that it will be appropriately funded.
Another issue is how we engage the public in policing, particularly the kind that they want: traditional, old-fashioned policing that tackles the criminal fraternity. The approach in Gloucestershire is good. There are regular meetings with consultative committees, and I always find the police accessible. I am not so keen on their phone line, but I believe that they have ironed out many of the problems.
Unfortunately, research from the Local Government Association indicates that people's opinions of the police tend to be worse after they have had contact with them than before. I am afraid that that is not unusual. People have contact with the police in the most pressured situations—when they have been robbed or attacked or something has gone badly wrong in their lives—so it is not difficult to understand that finding. However, improvement is needed in that area. For that reason, the call from the police for support from the other organisations is crucial. It is no good putting together all these different partnerships if the police end up at the front doing all the difficult business. It is important to know that everyone is capable of pulling together. The ASBO experience is a good example. The police have been calling for ASBOs to be used much more often, but other organisations have been less than forthcoming.
I seek from my hon. Friend the Minister guarantees that, once the system is in place, it will be left alone. We must let it work its way through to a natural conclusion, so that people know what the different roles are and that resources are in place. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester rightly pointed out that there was a big debate in Gloucestershire on the precept. People want to know that they are getting value for money and that things are being done.
My last point is that policing must be done in a very positive light. If it is seen to be purely negative—all about catching people rather than prevention—I am afraid that society will always lose. Policing will work much better if partnerships continue and build on a level of positive engagement in which the public and the voluntary sector are included. If that happens, the Government will have done well. More particularly, people will feel much more confident. They will go out in the evening, which is something that many say that they are not prepared to do at present.
2.24 pm
Mr. David Kidney: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) on securing this very important debate and, as you said, Mr. Deputy

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Speaker, on his hard work in securing many other debates like this one. Luck, as well as assiduity, plays a part. I ask for many debates in this Chamber, but they are never called.
In Staffordshire this year, there has been an impressive reduction in crime, and an impressive increase in Staffordshire police's detection rate. I trust the figures, because a few years ago, Staffordshire was ahead of most forces in adopting the ethical recording of the crime that was reported to it. As a result, it bore the pain of an apparent increase in the number of offences committed. I am therefore inclined to trust the improvement shown by the current statistics.
I am pleased to pay tribute to our chief constable, John Giffard, and his police officers, for their enormous contribution to this year's very happy situation. I am sure that they would agree that there is much more to community policing than putting police officers in uniforms and sending them out on to the streets. The police are supported by a great team of people, including the very professional civilian staff who greatly contribute to the work of police officers and help them to carry out their other duties by supporting them in those duties.
Increasingly, we see closed-circuit television cameras on our street corners, which of course means a control room somewhere that is usually staffed by employees of the council or private security firms. Again, they support the police in the valuable work that they do.
Traffic wardens, too, are part of the family of the community police. They do very important work, especially in more rural areas where people get quite het up about those who break road restrictions with impunity. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud said, CSOs are the latest addition to the police family. He also rightly mentioned neighbourhood wardens, who have been doing valuable work in areas that may be more built up than those in the Staffordshire constituency that I represent.
I draw particular attention to the local authorities that are part of the crime and disorder reduction partnerships, and to the support and the resources that they bring to community policing. I shall talk later about special constables, who have an important role to play in supplementing the work of full-time police officers, as do the neighbourhood watch schemes and the public.
The tremendous success of the Staffordshire police relates to other parts of the country in that the police are aided greatly these days by the technology that they use. From a shaky start six years ago, Staffordshire police are now so good at handling calls that, this year, they won two awards, including a European one, for their call- handling prowess. I am grateful to them for making that great improvement in their call handling, which was necessary.
My hon. Friend the Minister may want to talk about the radio system because of the great amount that is being invested in it and the fact that it is diverting funds from other parts of the policing budget because of its importance. Another important new piece of technology is the automatic number plate reader—the ANPR—which is a tremendous aid to policing in Staffordshire. I have been with the police when they have used ANPRs by the side of the road in a
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community and on the motorway. Last year, I attended the V2002 pop concert, not as a concert-goer but as an observer of the policing operation for what was a huge event. The ANPR was a valuable tool there, too.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud also mentioned the visibility of the police in rural areas where there are no longer any police stations. Staffordshire is one of the few forces that possess their own mobile police station. At the V2002 concert, the front desk and holding cells—an important attribute of that service—were in full use. The sergeant, whose idea it was, proudly showed me around it and told me that police forces around the country had shown great interest in hiring it from Staffordshire police when they are not using it, for use in rural locations in their areas. That tool has helped Staffordshire police and, it seems, other forces around the country.
Full-time police officers do such magnificent work every day of the year in every community. Thanks to the crime fighting fund, record numbers of police officers in uniform are doing their valuable work for our communities both nationally and locally in Staffordshire. When I was elected in 1997, the police authority in Staffordshire had recently made the difficult decision to freeze recruitment of police officers for three years because of financial difficulties. That caused a problem, and we have been slightly slower in reaching a new high for numbers of police officers than other parts of the country because of the continuing effects of the freeze. We have, however, certainly taken full advantage of the crime fighting fund.
In Staffordshire, the police authority showed political courage in raising the council tax precept for policing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud observed, however, we have suffered electorally as a result. In this year's local elections, there was a big swing away from Labour candidates. When I talked to people about why that happened, many of them mentioned the large increase in their council tax, which was a function of the councils, which raise the majority of council tax, and the police authority. There is an interesting lesson there for politicians of all parties: the public may well clamour for more police officers on the beat, but there is a cost. In Staffordshire, people are beginning to notice the cost. Perhaps they will be more willing to listen to solutions that complement the valuable work of police officers. I want to develop that idea later in my speech.
In August 2002, we moved to a new system of allocating a uniformed police officer to every local government ward in Staffordshire as community beat officers. It is now possible for any Staffordshire resident to know the name and see the uniform of the police officer allocated to their area. That is particularly valuable in rural areas, which have alleged that they have been denuded of police officers and that they therefore never the see the police. Rural areas are now seeing the police.
I can speak from personal knowledge about the presence of a police officer on the beat. In the summer recess, I took the opportunity to accompany a couple of community beat officers as they pounded the beats of the rural areas that they represent. I walked the streets of Penkridge and Wheaton Aston with officers, and I saw the areas that they police. We took the opportunity to stop and speak to local people. For example, PC Calladine, the officer for Wheaton Aston, and I were

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called across by the local neighbourhood watch coordinator to discuss an issue. Because PC Calladine knows his beat, he took me to a woman who was concerned by vandalism to the local public payphone, and we were able to exchange information about it.
That shows the value, especially in rural areas, of the individual police officer on the beat. I must say that, in the several hours that I spent in Penkridge and Wheaton Aston, the most serious crime that we detected by pounding the streets was an out-of-date tax disc on the windscreen of somebody's car. The police officer cautioned the person responsible and explained that he was going to report them to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, which might well prosecute them and would certainly demand repayment of the back duty. That is a valuable service, but police officers are expensive resources.
People must understand that, while police officers are performing such duties, they are not performing the other services that people also want. If, for example, I am woken up by the sounds of an apparent burglary downstairs and dial 999, I do not want to hear that the beat officer will start walking promptly towards my house and will be with me in an hour; I want to hear that the police will be there in minutes. Indeed, I have had to ring 999 once during my six years as a Member of Parliament. I thought that someone was trying to break into my next-door neighbour's house. I did not say, "I am an MP. I expect a super service." Nevertheless, two police cars appeared within minutes of that 999 call, and that was impressive. However, it is important to remember that there has to be a balance between the visibility of police officers walking their beats to give reassurance and to collect human intelligence, and the ability of the police to respond appropriately to situations that might need a fast response or the attendance of many officers.
That brings me to community safety officers. Again, it is marvellous that the Government are offering money from central funds to allow police forces to recruit community safety officers. As a result of that fund, Staffordshire has just announced the recruitment of its first 10 CSOs. I am grateful to the Minister for that. I have spoken to the chief constable about how he intends using that resource, and he is minded—I agree with him—to focus the work of the CSOs on antisocial behaviour.
I feel sorry for the police officers bombarded with calls about antisocial behaviour, because it is often the case that no crime has been committed. Nevertheless, everyone wants to know why the police cannot knock on a neighbour's door and ask them to turn down the music, to stop the argument or to stop using bad language. The police are under public pressure to turn up, so they do what is wanted, but it is not their job because no crime is involved. Using CSOs is a good alternative, because they can add presence with their uniform. They can also supplement the work of the local authority and the housing authority, as they are more likely to be responsible for dealing with antisocial behaviour. I believe that CSOs can play a valuable role. I would be interested to know whether the Minister envisages that being a front-line use of community safety officers.
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When people speak of their dissatisfaction with crime levels, they do not say that are too many burglaries—we have seen a hugely impressive reduction in the number of burglaries in Staffordshire. Nor do they talk about car crime or theft, which have also seen huge reductions. They tend to talk about antisocial behaviour. As I said, much antisocial behaviour is not criminal and it is not a priority for the police. However, people consider that it comes under the heading of community policing, and they want something to be done about it. I hope that CSOs will be used in Staffordshire as part of the police response.
I want to talk about the valuable role of special constables, because I have walked the beat with them. I have talked to them about why they chose to do that brave and good work, which they do for no financial reward. I have been impressed with their motivation and their desire to do something good for the community. The fact that such people have the valuable intention to put something back into the community should be encouraged and facilitated.
Since the crime fighting fund starting paying for more police officers to be recruited, special constables in Staffordshire have decided that that they like the work and want to convert to full-time police officers. That has left us with fewer special constables. We have finally woken up to that, and Staffordshire has started a number of campaigns to recruit new special constables. I hope that the Minister can say something about national support for those local recruitment campaigns. I have assured the police in Staffordshire that I want to support them in their recruitment because I know how valuable the work of specials can be.
That brings me to the other partner in policing—the public. The police in Staffordshire organise the neighbourhood watch. The crime reduction partnerships obviously give verbal support to it, and councils pay for neighbourhood watch signs on lamp posts showing that an area has a scheme in operation. I do not think that the commitment of the other partners to neighbourhood watch schemes is as good as that of the police. I would like it to be better, and I would like to hear the Minister's views on that.
The police's support for neighbourhood watch in Staffordshire is excellent. They have dedicated officers, and a good telephone warning and messaging system for their co-ordinators. Neighbourhood watch coordinators have strong support. They have an annual conference, and between conferences they do some recruitment. I support all that, and I have been ever-present when they held their annual conferences in my constituency. I am committed to neighbourhood watch, but I think that the scheme could be much better. That is an example of the public accepting some responsibility for the policing of their areas. I believe that the most effective deterrent to crime is the fear of detection. The police on their own cannot detect criminals very well or frequently without the support of the eyes and ears of the public. So often it is thanks to information provided by the public that the police are able to secure convictions.
Neighbourhood watch is a good example of the formal organisation of the public into recognising their responsibilities and having the opportunity to carry them out. Every area should be a neighbourhood watch area, which is not yet the situation in Staffordshire. I

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want to hear the Minister say that she agrees with me on the value that I place on that, and that there will be national support for neighbourhood watch recruitment and support once systems are in place. It is so important that, as is the case in Staffordshire, the police can share their successes with their neighbourhood watch schemes as a result of the information collected. Those successes constantly reinforce for people the message that something useful and valuable is being done for their community. I hope that the Minister can speak on that, and also say that the status of neighbourhood watch schemes in the crime and disorder reduction partnerships will be raised in coming years, and that they will be a priority for the support of those partnerships.
It is the personal responsibility of each of us to take care and follow sensible crime prevention advice over matters such as property marking and locking windows and doors when we go out. We should also go that little step further and actively support the police in their difficult and courageous work, in whatever ways we can. That can happen as long as it is not difficult—as long as we can get through when we make a phone call and that members of a neighbourhood watch scheme have the support that they need. That is my wish, and I hope that the Minister will comment on it.
2.41 pm
Mr. Parmjit Dhanda: The debate has already been quite an education for me as I have listened to my two colleagues. I now know where to go if I want a ticket for V2002, although I might be dragged into doing a little community policing work. I have also learned that if I ever need to speak to my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), I should come to Westminster Hall first. It is very useful to know that this is where I am most likely to find him.
I wish to make a couple of brief points on the Gloucestershire background to this debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud said, we have had a vigorous debate in the past 12 months on policing and funding issues. When last year's settlement came through, we were a little disappointed because we were one of the 19 authorities that received a 3 per cent. increase. At the same time, we must bear in mind that inflation is 2.5 per cent. and that the police grant for Gloucestershire for 2002–03 is at its highest ever level, £55.34 million.
The story does not end there, because we need to take into account a number of subsequent grants to get the full picture for Gloucestershire, not least the rural policing fund that this Government introduced in 1997, which is now worth some £778,000 for Gloucestershire, and is going up. Other contributions include money—about £190,000—towards Airwave, the local communications channel. Just before last Christmas we were told that we would get another £180,000 towards the provision of video interview and rape examination suites. Perhaps the most satisfying thing about being the Member for Gloucester, however, is the tri-service centre, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud referred. It is a £6 million private finance initiative scheme and the first such centre in the country. It works superbly. It is a great capital investment project, reducing crime and doing its bit for the ambulance service and the local fire authority as well.
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In addition, we are to have a £25.2 million brand new police headquarters at the same site in Quedgeley. We are lucky. As my hon. Friend also said, we are blessed with some very good local community officers. Dominic Everiss, who works on the boundary between Gloucester and Stroud, is one of many officers who do a good job at a local level. When considering the Gloucestershire experience, we must remember the neighbourhood projects and the work done by people such as Mark Gale—I know that the Minister knows this—in reducing crime and working with communities. They make a huge difference.
During this debate about policing and whether we are making a difference, my hon. Friends have put the case about police numbers and uniformed presence very well. I dug up some figures from the House of Commons Library the other day because I wanted to get a good look at the picture in Gloucestershire. I have a brief summary of the position since 1979, which is as far back as the Library's figures went. In 1979, there were 1,096 police officers in the county. Numbers rose steadily until 1984 when they peaked at 1,149. The figure stayed around that mark for a number of years. It gradually peaked again at 1,174 in 1992, but that was the highest level that it reached under the Conservative Government. It then fell steadily year on year and kept falling until 1999—it takes time to turn round such a problem. At its lowest ebb, in 1999, the figure was 1,104. The crime fighting fund came into force in the subsequent year and the figure steadily rose. In 2002, it had reached 1,183, and it has now risen to its highest ever level of 1,240.
I pay tribute to one of the police officers we have left out: Chris Merrick, who is the divisional commander for the Gloucester and Forest of Dean division. Chris Merrick deserves the plaudits that he gets because he challenged the scaremongering that sometimes goes on. The weekend before last, a front page in our local paper in Gloucester, The Citizen, claimed that the city centre was not being adequately policed. Chirs Merrick put that right on the letters page. He said that, as well as the work that was going on in the city centre, there were
"another three INAs in Gloucester—Hucclecote, Gloucester South and Barton Street—which all have officers working in them 24 hours a day to respond to incidents and support officers in neighbouring areas".
He said:
"Furthermore, we have many other officers working from Gloucester Central Police Station, such as our Operation Resolve robbery squad, CID, scenes of crime officers, Operation Gemini, Professional Development Unit, the Crime Management Unit, the Divisional Support Group, and our Barton Street-based Road Policing Unit to assist as and when required.
Add to this our Force Operations Unit, which includes the Motorway Unit, the Dog Section and firearms teams, and readers may be assured that rather than the 20 officers your article suggests are policing the city centre, the figure can be multiplied many times."
He said that the article was inaccurate. He continued:
"The force as a whole now has more than 1,240 officers—the most it has had in its history".
My two colleagues made good points about the uniformed presence. It is not only a question of police officers; it is also about community support officers and others. I got some statistics from the House of Commons Library on the civilian support staff based in

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our head offices. In 2002, 545 civilian support staff were based in police offices in Gloucestershire. That is an increase from 1992 when there were 367. The figure is still rising. We have another 60 community support officers, who will be out patrolling the streets. It is important to point out that a uniformed presence on the streets—community support officers—is not about policing on the cheap. It is about communities being empowered and people from communities helping to police their own areas. Involving communities in the policing of their areas can reduce crime. That is the whole idea behind the CSO scheme.
My hon. Friends the Members for Stroud and for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) mentioned specials. We are lucky to have a number of specials working in Gloucestershire and we have a long and proud history of specials. Will the Minister talk about the protocols for specials and how they will continue to fit into the scheme when we have a uniformed presence with police officers and CSOs? It is important that we maintain our specials and that they continue to feel a valued part of policing in our county and beyond.
Mr. Drew: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Dhanda: I was about to conclude but I will gladly give way to my hon. Friend.
Mr. Drew: I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree with what I have to say, and I want to address the Minister through him. Getting time off to serve is one of the biggest problems that specials face. We ought to encourage employers to see the benefit of serving with the specials as a form of community engagement. The issue is important and it is getting more difficult to resolve.
Mr. Dhanda: I agree and I hope that the Minister can elaborate on that.
We are blessed locally with very good private companies that are ethically minded. Our local Barclays bank and Cheltenham and Gloucester building society are keen to become involved in community initiatives, and I would like the Government to do more to involve them in communities and policing,. If we gave them the opportunity. they would grasp the nettle.
2.51 pm
Mr. David Heath: I congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) on securing the debate. Stroud is the constituency most similar to my own, so I recognise several of the matters that he has raised—I recently met Gloucestershire's chief constable, Tim Brain, who served part of his career in Avon and Somerset police and whose work I commend.
Listening to the hon. Gentleman, I had running through my head the memory of one of my rare excursions to Gloucester to play a rugby match many years ago, in which a Gloucester forward decided to bite me on the top of my head. I have had a very poor opinion of law and order in Gloucester ever since, but no doubt things have changed.
Mr. Dhanda: The hon. Gentleman is welcome to return to Gloucester. We had the same discussion on
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Select Committee business in the United States recently, and I assure him that no one will bite him on his head.
Mr. Heath: That is a welcome reassurance.
Community policing is about keeping the peace. That is one of its prime functions. I am a great believer in community police patrols for several reasons. I accept that they do not result in a massive decline in the clear-up rate, and I accept that detection is not their primary function.
The police patrol function distinguishes itself in three ways. First, it deters. That can be over-emphasised, but a uniformed police presence has a deterrent effect. Secondly, it reassures communities and individuals who would otherwise feel vulnerable. Thirdly, it informs the detection process through a constant flow of low-level intelligence, which may have a significant effect.
I am constantly worried by the perception that community policing and the patrol function are marginal activities for police forces, and that those are expendable when times are difficult and resources are stretched. That is not to say that other factors to which hon. Members referred are not important. Policing can be put only into the context of the community that it serves. Environmental considerations such as lighting, children's facilities, the strategic partnerships that have been mentioned, other uniformed presence and other agencies in the field all play a part in creating a safe, law-abiding environment.
I return to whether we have an effective community policing strategy in this country. Inevitably, I refer to my experiences and I make no apologies for that. I had a long involvement with the Avon and Somerset police authority, but for some time I was also a member of the Audit Commission. One of the functions of the commission was to look at the effectiveness of police forces. Just before I left the Audit Commission back in 1996, I recall that we published an extremely useful document, which I revisited to see whether it had any lessons that were still relevant. The document is called "Streetwise: Effective Police Patrol". It was published in February 1996 and it examined the patrol function.
The document came to the conclusion—much of this is still relevant—that the public attach great value to police patrolling, as many hon. Members have said. It asserts that uniformed police officers have a function in reassuring the community. People like to know who their local bobby is and I commend Gloucestershire for achieving that sort of recognition. Effective patrolling underpins an important and basic concept in British policing, which is policing by consent. When a police officer is part of a community and known by it, that underpins a feeling that is the basis of British policing—policing by, for and from within the community rather than something applied by the external force of state control.
Back in 1996, most people were dissatisfied with the way that police functions were carried out and about 80 per cent. of people wanted to see more police. I do not know what the more recent figures are but I would be surprised if they have changed much. People want to see more police and they are worried when their police officers seem to disappear at regular intervals. That is a

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particular problem in rural areas, as police officers often seem to be taken from rural communities to the cities to meet the latest targets.
The Audit Commission study revealed that at any given time only 5 per cent. of police strength was on the streets. I shall return to that matter in a moment because it is an education as to what happens in reality. There were also criticisms of the way in which the police patrol function was managed. Too often, officers who are on patrol are unsure about what they are expected to achieve and their principal role. The lack of adequate briefings or debriefings was criticised. Often, when a police officer returned to the station at the end of a patrol they could not pass on what they had learned that day to anyone and patrolling was not well targeted.
I return to the figure of 5 per cent. as it is an interesting illustration of where all the police have gone. The Audit Commission considered a medium-sized force of 2,500 officers serving a million people. Of those 2,500 officers, many are on specialist duties of one sort or another, and there are probably about 1,350 available for patrol at the outset. Of course, policing is a 24-hour-a-day activity, so there is a shift pattern. During each shift, 335 of the original 2,500 officers are available. However, that number is cut down by sickness, training, attendance at court and biannual leave. It is reasonable to say that only 250 of those 2,500 officers are available for patrol at that point. People on patrol have to do other things. They have to interview prisoners and fill in forms—they have to do all the things that are associated with their function as officers. Making all those assumptions, we end up with just 125 of the original 2,500 officers available on the street to that county or policing area. That is a rapid and telling decline.
The Audit Commission put it another way. It considered the case of a reasonably big city with a population of, say, 180,000. Such a city will have 1,400 miles of pavement, 850 acres of parks and open spaces, 770 miles of road, 75,000 houses, 230 pubs and 95 schools, and it will have just 10 police officers on the streets. When they are spread as thinly as that, is no wonder that people say that they do not often see a police officer.
There are ways in which the problem can be addressed and the dilution can be mitigated. Geographic policing has been mentioned; it should be standard practice throughout the country. Named officers should police named areas, so that everybody knows who they are. If that is done, one way of undermining it is to move the officer on every five minutes and put a new named person in place. That happens alarmingly often and for a variety of reasons. A named officer in a geographical area has a problem-solving remit and can analyse patterns. He might do it on an ad hoc, unscientific basis, but that can help to identify where the problems lie in the patch and he can feed back information about the patterns. There can also be intelligent patrolling, targeted to ensure that the police officer is visible at the time when it will have most impact on the people whom we seek to reassure—when the pubs chuck out in the middle of a market town or when the pensions are collected at the post office.
If a patrol function is carried out properly, it will go wider than simply policing and will touch on community safety, the subject that the hon. Member for Stroud really wanted to debate. Community policing is more
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than just a marginal area of police activity. It is not just part of the police function, it is vital to good community relations and the quality of life of an area. At the moment, it is beset by continual funding problems. I accept that there are more officers in our provincial forces than there were a few years ago, but there are still too few to reassure people that they have adequate policing. There are inequalities, and there is a feeling that not only the police but other agencies. such as the magistrates courts, are retreating from rural areas. Everything seems to disappear into the nearest town, or even further away, and there are difficulties with police management.
Notwithstanding all the difficulties mentioned by the hon. Member for Stroud, and the fact that so many officers have joined he regular force, it is important to keep the special strength up. We should have retained officers, as I have said many times. However, the council tax business is now a real deterrent. It is causing problems. People are refusing to pay because they say that they are being asked for more money but are not getting a better service. That is why we hear wild talk about splitting up police authority areas and electing sheriffs—a sort of wild west scenario. It is a consequence of people feeling that they do not get value for money from their police force. The Government need to deal with that; they neglect it at their peril.
3.3 pm
Mr. James Paice: I cannot pretend to be the aficionado of this Chamber that the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) is, but it is a useful forum for less partisan discussions about issues of concern. I welcome the debate because, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) has said, it concerns something that actually matters to the people whom we are elected to represent. I sometimes think that the House spends too long debating issues with which many people cannot readily identify, but today's debate is certainly about an issue that most people identify with. It takes place against a background of rising public disillusionment with the police and the law and order system.
There is an increasing perception among many members of the public that someone who is largely law-abiding—obviously, the description must be qualified—will get everything thrown at them for doing the slightest thing wrong, whereas habitual criminals and people who present a serious problem seem to get away with impunity. That may not be an accurate picture, but I believe that it is a common perception in the communities that we serve.
The term "community policing" is used by different people to describe different things. Some use it to describe the function of a police officer walking down the street or round the village. That is often coupled with references to reassurance, as if that is the be all and end all of the matter. I get very angry when I hear people talking about community policing as a means of reassurance. Reassurance comes as a result of doing what people want, which is preventing, deterring and detecting crime—not from being able to see a police officer. Reassurance is a result, not a fundamental objective, of effective community policing.
My definition of community policing is one in which officers are actively involved in the community. The hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) made reference

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to an example in his constituency. There are good examples throughout the country of officers being available almost day and night, often setting their own shift patterns and deciding the best times for them to be on or off duty. Officers are involved with public sector and other organisations that serve the community, such as housing associations, the housing and planning authorities, environmental health, waste collection and so on. They have a vital role in that respect, but they also play a key part in the detection and deterrence function of the police.
It is true that community police officers carry out the function that we have heard about from New York, explained in the broken windows theory about helping to keep the environment attractive, so that it is less of a cause of crime. However, good community police officers are also familiar with the people whom they serve; they have their ear to the ground and pick up low-level intelligence, which often leads their colleagues to significant policing actions. What I am describing raises issues of personnel, including civilians and the countless people who have been described as the police family—not just police officers but CSOs, civilians, street wardens, the accredited community safety officers and, importantly, special constables, whom several hon. Members have mentioned.
I shall not rehearse today the arguments that I have had with the Minister's predecessors about CSOs. The Conservative party has never opposed, and would never oppose, a role for civilians in helping the police. Indeed, a Conservative Government worked hard to promote the concept of civilianisation of police authority posts that did not need a police officer. There are two matters on which we differ strongly from the Government; on one of them we are on the same side as the Liberal Democrats.
One of those matters is police powers. It is our fundamental belief that police powers should be given only to people who have been trained at the same level and with the same rigour—which effectively means regular police officers. The second matter involves our belief that the decision whether to employ CSOs or regular officers should be made at force level, and should not be imposed by Government. Of course, many forces have CSOs, but when the Government produce a ring-fenced fund that is available only to be spent on CSOs, it is hardly a surprise when CSOs are appointed. If the Government had said, "Here's £60 million that we're going to add across the board to police forces' budgets," and left police authorities to decide how many CSOs or regular officers to employ, in whatever permutation, we might have a different picture from that which we have today. That is particularly so as it becomes increasingly obvious that the cost of employing a CSO is not dramatically cheaper than that of employing a regular officer. The cost is cheaper, but not to the extent that was perhaps once perceived. The training costs are obviously very much cheaper, because CSOs get comparatively little training.
The problem of policing versus civilians and the way that that links through to police numbers, to which all hon. Members have referred, is connected to the issue of crime numbers. In the last 30 or 40 years, the number of crimes per police officer has increased at least tenfold,
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and I have some statistics that estimate that there has been up to a seventeen-fold increase. The burden of crime that we are expecting each police officer to deal with has therefore increased dramatically.
That leads me on to issue of council tax precepts and the growing increases that we have seen over the last few years. We have heard about the increases in Gloucester and Staffordshire, and one can find similar figures in Cambridgeshire and most other police authority areas. However, coupled with that is the point that the hon. Member for Stafford made, which is the increasing public resistance to and concern about those increases. I am quite certain that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome is correct that part of that concern is due to the fact that people do not see any benefit as a result of that increase. That is partly because they do not see the police officers, but it is also due to the increasing problem that police officers do not attend the scenes of crimes that they do not believe to be significant. That is particularly true in rural areas, but I believe that the situation is the same in many urban areas.
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that many crimes are reported not because the victims ever expect them to be solved, but because they need to report them to claim on the insurance for whatever has been stolen. The consequence of that is that more and more local authorities—both the London boroughs and those outside London—now use their council tax either to pay accredited CSOs or, in some cases, to buy in officers from the police force, because they want to have more control over what is going on, and to feel that they are providing police officers to be seen on the streets by the people they serve. That is an indication of the lack of accountability between police forces and the communities that they serve.
That lack of accountability is largely due to the huge increase in centralisation that we have seen over the last few years of both direct and financial control. There are so many ring-fenced, penny packets of money in police budgets, and the only decision that is open to the discretion of police authorities is whether they get them, rather than how to spend them. One extreme example that my local authority has given me is of an apparently national budget of £2 million to be used for video systems. Dividing £2 million up between 43 forces does not add up to very much and, when one takes into account the huge cost of compiling a bid, which is so commonplace these days, one ends up with a big question mark over whether the plan is worth it.
Lack of accountability is also related to the question of whether the visibility of police officers has anything to do with effectiveness. It was suggested earlier that there is somehow a conflict between visible policing and effective policing. I do not believe that that is the case, as I made clear earlier. The role of a visible community police officer is critical not only in deterring, but in combating and detecting crime. There is ample evidence of that from some parts of the country—the North Wales police has pioneered this approach—and from the United States.
Other hon. Members mentioned the particular problems of rural areas. I stand second to no one in my concern for rural areas, where problems of lack of police numbers, visibility and attendance at crime scenes may be more obvious than anywhere else. It is difficult to see how effectiveness can be increased if the police do not

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attend crime scenes. There can be no expectation that a crime will ever be solved if no statement, or any other evidence, is taken. Such failures, which are caused by several factors such as centralisation, give rise to public scepticism about policing and encourage the public's resistance to increases in the council tax precept to which all hon. Members have referred.
The fundamental issue that all politicians must challenge is how we rebuild a system of trust and accountability between police forces and the people whom they serve. That is not a criticism of, or a negative reflection on police officers—I have huge admiration for them—but a criticism of the system in which they are ever increasingly forced to operate.
The hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda) referred to the huge increase in the number of civilians in his local constabulary from 367 to 545. Has he looked into the breakdown of what they do? How many of those extra civilians are involved in anything that could be described as combating crime, and how many are involved in the bureaucracy that is now enshrined in every police force, such as filling in forms about Government targets and the countless other administrative functions that now burden every authority?
Mr. Dhanda: I can inform the hon. Gentleman that quite a few of those civilians—I do not have a specific number—are civilian statement-takers, which frees more police officers to provide a greater uniformed presence on the streets.
Mr. Paice: I hope that the hon. Gentleman is right, but most police forces went down that road a long time ago. I suspect that many of the 367 civilians that he referred to at the starting point, which I believe was in 1997, were already performing the functions that police officers need not do. That idea was pioneered by the previous Government.
This afternoon, I have heard some side-swipes at what may be perceived as Conservative policy. As we have made no announcements on that front, any such sideswipe is purely speculative. The role of Government must now be about refocusing the linkage between the communities and the police forces that serve them. That must involve an element of democracy. The partnerships about which hon. Members have spoken highly are a step forward—I would not decry that—but they are not the sole solution.
We have to consider more clearly direct accountability between police forces and their communities. We will then see the dramatic step change in the role of community policing that I believe is behind every hon. Member's speech. We all want that. There is an increasingly widespread belief that it is an important part of policing, but the issue is how we make that happen. We have a long way to go to achieve that.
3.18 pm
The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing, and Community Safety (Ms Hazel Blears): I am delighted to reply to the debate. I believe that I am one of the few Ministers who spend more time in Westminster Hall than in many other places in Parliament, and I am delighted to be here again.
We have had an excellent debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) on his thoughtful and perceptive contribution, which considered the wider issues of community policing and how that is central to making our communities safer, healthier and more vibrant places for people to live and work in. That is the breadth of today's debate.
I am also delighted that my hon. Friends the Members for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) and for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda) have been able to contribute the views from their patches. I have been impressed by the connection that all hon. Members have with their local police forces. I had no idea that most Members of Parliament were in effect community support officers in their free time. I am delighted to welcome them to the extended police family and I am sure that they are making an excellent contribution to safety in their communities.
In the short time available, I want to address many of the issues that have been raised. First, community policing is not just a warm, friendly feeling. It is not simply about reassurance, but it is key to making our police services both visible and effective. I am glad to agree with the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) at least on that. Community policing is not a mutually contradictory way of policing; good community policing means gathering intelligence, knowing what is going on in the patch, feeding into strategic responses and increasing the confidence within communities, so that their members feel able to come forward and give the police information on which they can act. In our drive towards community policing, we must be clear that we want to value, reward and enhance the skills involved. In the past, the community officer was almost at the end of the chain; he did not play the central role that we now envisage.
Community policing is not just about police officers. We have heard a lot about the extended police family, community support officers, neighbourhood wardens, street wardens and neighbourhood watch, and latterly schools watch and hospital watch. Finally, what can people do to re-establish the norms of decent behaviour in the places where they live and work? The extended family embraces all of us. We face a step change, moving from policing by consent, which was emphasised by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), to policing by co-operation. That is a significant step. If one is policed by consent, one is a passive recipient of police services, whereas if one is policed by cooperation, one becomes an active player—a citizen with an important role in the process.
Despite the initial reluctance of the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire, the introduction of community support officers has been welcomed across the country. In Lancashire, we are piloting an innovative use of those officers, a tri-service project that mirrors in some ways the one in Gloucestershire between the police and the fire and ambulance services. We are beginning to pilot community support officers as the first port of call for all the blue-light services. That is an exciting development, creating added value by co-ordinating all our services. It is not about policing on the cheap; it is about thinking creatively about the skill mix that is needed. I am disappointed by the lack of creativity and imagination of the hon. Member for

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South-East Cambridgeshire when considering how we can use that skill mix to get a bigger impact from the investment in our police resources.
We have learned the lesson in the health service. By getting nurses to do things that only doctors used to do and involving therapists more, we get better value out of the trained professionals in the service. The same challenge faces the police. How do we utilise civilians who are beginning to do not only routine tasks, but important forensic investigation, which has not happened in the past and was highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester? We can bring people with a range of skills into the service and we have to be creative about it.
I turn to funding, because it would be remiss of me, as a Minister, not to do so. Hon. Members have acknowledged that funding has increased in the past three years.
There has been a pretty generous police settlement, and I would be the first to acknowledge that local communities, too, have done their bit by being prepared to accept higher precepts and make a contribution from their local areas. I know that precepts have increased significantly but if we look at the absolute numbers, even in the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud where there was a 50 per cent. increase, we are talking about 93p a week to pay for those extra police officers and the extra community support officers who are tremendously valued by local people.
There is also the rural policing fund in areas of sparsity and, in addition to the general police grant, specific grants for the crime fighting fund. That is not simply imposed from the centre but has been introduced with the support of all members of the tripartite organisation. There has been Airwave funding, which means that our police officers have better means of communicating with each other. That can make a difference on the ground. The basic command unit funding enables unit commanders to have more autonomy to decide where resources should be put. The building safer communities fund helps the crime and disorder reduction partnerships.
On multiplicity of funding streams, I am delighted to be able to say to my hon. Friends that, by bringing together the money for communities against drugs and for safer communities, we have been able to put into a single pot funding for the crime and reduction partnerships to make a difference in local areas. We have also put into a single pot the money for diversionary activities, the positive activities programme that has been taking place throughout the summer. What were in the past various different funding streams that people found very difficult to access are now in a single pot.
We have significantly more work to do to try to simplify the partnerships and ensure that people are in the "doings" world rather than the "meetings" world. I am hugely conscious of taking up people's time in a whole range of meetings and I want to examine where we can streamline them and make them more effective.
I am delighted to confirm that police numbers are at record levels: 132,268 police officers was the latest count, and there are also 1,600 community support officers out there on the ground and a number of neighbourhood
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wardens acting locally. We are increasingly providing visible and high-profile funding locally to reassure local people that officers can be out there preventing and detecting crime, because this is not just about reassurance.
In the remaining couple of minutes I shall mention specials and home watch, about which hon. Members have expressed concern. It is right to say that many of our specials have joined the regular force, which is one reason why we have struggled to keep numbers up. I am delighted that we have now got a whole programme to support the recruitment of specials. We have invited forces to bid for co-ordinators and we have a programme to persuade employers that it is in their best interests to have the extra skills that people gain by being a member of the specials and to encourage them to provide time off and ensure that employees are not disadvantaged by becoming special constables. We are making sure that the job of being a special is more worth while and are tasking specials in the same way as police officers. There is always a temptation to get the specials to do the jobs that the mainstream force does not want to do. If specials are willing to volunteer, it is important that they are right at the heart of the action as well as doing local work. Involving them in the way in which they are tasked is very important.
I am pleased that, in Gloucestershire, the number of specials has gone up in the past six months. We are beginning to see numbers come back up through some of the recruitment campaigns that are taking place, but we have to think very carefully about the role of specials in relation to that of community support officers in the future. As we widen the police family, we cannot allow any one section of it to remain static. We must see where they fit in and how work can be done to support them.
Home watch and neighbourhood watch are very under-utilised resources. I went to a conference of neighbourhood watch co-ordinators in my area last week. We have 300 schemes in my relatively small city with several thousand local people prepared to do something to make a difference in preventing and fighting crime in their neighbourhood. That is a huge pool of people whom we can perhaps engage more realistically and substantively in future. Community engagement is a thread that will now permeate every part of our police reform programme and how we can re-establish our relationship with local communities. We need to do that in a real and practical way; we should not talk about community engagement but make it a reality for people on the ground.
I welcome the contributions to the debate made by all my hon. Friends. I can think of nothing more important than increasing the trust and value that local communities have in their police force, and the role of the wider police family in making our communities safer and healthier, and more vibrant places for people to live, work and bring up their families. We face a huge challenge, but I am certainly not pessimistic about it. A great deal of good work has already been done, and a great deal of exciting work remains to be done, in which we can all engage, for the benefit of our constituents.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Time is up. We thank the Minister for her reply to that important debate.

Rail Infrastructure (East Coast)
3.30 pm
Mr. lain Luke: As a Member who represents a constituency that is some considerable distance from this capital city, I shall continue to raise this subject in the House. The Minister may be aware that, last year, I had an Adjournment debate in this Chamber on the electrification of the north-east section of the east coast main line. After the recent visit of the all-party rail group and the Rail Freight Group on the east coast main line to York and Doncaster and enjoying a trip on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, on a steam engine especially named "The Parliamentarian", I return to the House revitalised and ready to refocus on the important issue of the reinstatement and fast-tracking of the stalled improvements desperately needed on the east coast main line infrastructure.
Looking back on my Adjournment debate on 26 June 2002, I was disappointed by the response of the then Minister for Transport—now the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar)—to my pleas for the electrification of the most northern part of the line. I am sure that the Minister who is to reply this afternoon will be much more sympathetic to my representations.
I am greatly saddened that the much needed improvements to the infrastructure of the east coast railway, which were promised and promoted as the best way to secure faster travelling times between London, Dundee and Aberdeen have been so badly delayed. In retrospect, I accept that those improvements would be a useful and positive step in an investment programme that would make the long-term prospect of electrification much easier to achieve—if it ever makes it back on to the agenda.
My major concern in today's debate, however, is that even those hoped-for improvements to the east coast main line have been shelved. Furthermore, the prospects of improving the line north of Edinburgh have disappeared into the highland mist that we so often experience at this time of year, despite the sunny weather that we are having in London. Once again, the northeast of Scotland's rail aspiration has, as a result, been ignored and forgotten. That is to the detriment of travellers, business users and rail freight opportunities alike.
It is time for Members of Parliament who represent constituencies in the north-east of Scotland to start clamouring for a higher priority for an agenda that does not discriminate against the east coast at the cost of a vastly improved rail transport infrastructure on the west coast. Given the Strategic Rail Authority's review in January of this year, even those improvements are now at risk. The question is whether the Government's target of increasing the number of rail passengers by 50 per cent. and rail freight traffic by 80 per cent. over the duration of the 10-year plan is at risk.
I hope that the Minister will reassure us that the Government will do all they can to ensure that the SRA and Network Rail get their priorities back on track, and that improvements to the west coast line are delivered on time and on target. With the completion of the works being timetabled for 2007, the focus needs to be shifted
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to the east coast, and improvements on the east coast main line need to be made as swiftly as possible. It goes without saying that without improvements to the east coast line, the economic benefits that can accrue from fast, efficient transport links to the south and Europe will be seriously diminished.
The Prime Minister highlighted the importance of the east coast main line when he was interviewed earlier this year for Great North Eastern Railway's house magazine, Live Wire. When asked how important the east coast main line was to national and regional prosperity, he replied:
"This line is vitally important both nationally and regionally. Everyday it carries 200,000 passengers, 1,900 trains and 200,000 tonnes of rail freight."

Malcolm Bruce: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is absolutely crucial fully to understand that when we discuss the east coast main line we are talking about the line from London through Dundee to Aberdeen? Unfortunately, some people think that it starts at Edinburgh. We must never allow that to be accepted.
Mr. Luke: I shall deal later with that matter, about which I have had discussions with the chief executive of GNER.
Referring to the economic relevance of the east coast main line, the Prime Minister said that he knew how important it was to people in the Sedgefield constituency to have a safe, reliable and frequent service to York, London and Edinburgh. In the context of my constituency, I entirely concur with those sentiments. Furthermore, if such connections are important for the constituents of Sedgefield, they are doubly important for my constituents and those of other Members whose constituencies are farther north and more isolated.
Since the debate last year, I have continued to get a negative response to my pleas for electrification. You will not be surprised to hear, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I have continued to pursue the required improvements to the rail infrastructure to ensure that the constituents of Dundee, East and Sedgefield have parity of service. In the wake of last year's debate, other hon. Members and I have had meetings with GNER. Virgin Rail and the SRA to put the case for electrification and improvements to the east coast line north of Edinburgh. The Minister who replied to that debate accepted the need for such improvements. He made it clear that the line from Edinburgh to Aberdeen was in need of some improvement and that several projects were in hand to assist with that. In subsequent discussions that I have had with the SRA, to which I shall refer, there was no evidence that those projects were in hand.
The need for improvement was also recognised by the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), when I wrote to her following last year's debate and the comments of the then Minister for Transport. In her response to my inquiries, she, like the Minister, argued that increased line speeds could be achieved without electrification of the route. I am sure we all appreciate that that would be a very expensive option, because of the nature of the line. She said that electrification would, unfortunately, not overcome the physical difficulties that the route

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presents. As a consequence, her initial priority, like that of the Minister, was to improve the line and increase line speeds. As both Ministers pointed out, however, and as has been recognised by everyone who is involved in the debate, the only way to do that north of Edinburgh is to straighten the line over its entire route through Fife and to lay further track north of Dundee at Usan to ensure that travellers get the travel times that they deserve. To allow such improvements to go ahead would mean a significant shift in priorities and spending once the improvements to the west coast line are completed. Any lengthy delay there would condemn travellers on the east coast line to a second-class railway service for an even longer period.
Christopher Garnett, the chief executive of GNER, shares that worry. In March, in his response to a letter from me, he stated:
"As far as the East Coast Main line is concerned, wherever we say it ends"—
I had taken issue with him about remarks from GNER and others that indicated that it stopped in Edinburgh, whereas it goes on to Aberdeen—
"the key issue for me is to ensure that Network Rail and the SRA provide the funding to the highest level of operational and safety standards."
His great worry, voiced in that letter, was that any delay in the supposed upgrade of the east coast main line would result in ordinary maintenance renewal delays such as those that occur on the west coast main line. In truth, I believe that he worries, as I do, that the current delays in the implementation of the 10-year plan condemn us to a second class—not a standard class—east coast rail service. Indeed, instead of getting faster services and shorter travel times on the east coast, we are getting some slower services and longer travel times.
In his letter to me, Mr. Garnett goes on to conclude that we need to keep up the pressure on Network Rail and the Strategic Rail Authority to achieve the best service possible on the east coast line. It will come as no surprise to the Minister that I have had several meetings with the SRA to that end. The main objective of my dialogue with the SRA has been to extract a costing of what would be needed to upgrade the line north of Edinburgh.
In his letter of 19 May 2003, Chris Austin, the executive director for corporate affairs with the SRA pointed out that, following discussions he has had with Network Rail,
"the only scope for achieving any further significant line speed improvements on this corridor would be through a programme of route realignments and strengthening works on some of the major structures".
That has already been highlighted. The major structure to which Mr. Austin refers could be the Tay bridge, which causes something of a block on the line on the way north. He goes on to say:
"Each of these items carries a significant price tag and as a consequence no work is planned on raising line speeds by the Scottish Executive on the route at this stage."
In the letter, he goes on to give an interesting comparative exercise on the costing arrived at for the Midland Mainline railway improvements by Railtrack in 2000. That placed a price of £60 million on the
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upgrade of the route between London and Sheffield—a distance of about 159 miles. Mr. Austin points out that, given that that level of investment would achieve a saving of only 10 minutes, that work could not be seen as cost effective and as a consequence Railtrack and Midland Mainline were unable to make a value-formoney case. However, the £60 million was an alternative used on the introduction of new trains that had the ability to reduce the travel time between London and Sheffield through better acceleration.
I have yet to respond to Mr. Austin on that but, although there are little geographic differences between the London-to-Sheffield line and the north-east part of the London-to-Aberdeen line, if £60 million were spent on improving the east coast main line north of Edinburgh to Aberdeen—a distance of 126 miles—the travel time would be significantly reduced. I believe that it would be halved. That is a value-for-money case if ever I heard one.
That type of improvement would lead to a dramatic increase in the number of passengers using the railways along the east coast main line from the north-east to Edinburgh and London. Cutting travelling times from Aberdeen to London to six hours or less and from Dundee to London to five hours or less would create that demand. The improvement would be a huge benefit to travellers. It would be a massive boost to the prestige of the railways in the area and would provide a tremendous vote of confidence in the Government's transport plans for the next 10 years. The improvement would also bring the Government closer to achieving their target of increasing passenger numbers by 50 per cent.
Is the improvement achievable? In the light of the celebrations today—I am sorry that the Minister is not at Waterloo—surrounding the completion of the first phase of the fast-speed link to Europe, which, for the first time on a regular service in the UK, allows trains to travel at 186 miles per hour and which has cut the travel time between London and Paris by 20 minutes, I believe that it is eminently achievable, if we use that kind of approach. If we have the confidence in our railways that the French and the Japanese have in theirs, the improvement will be achievable. Let us make the next 100 years of the railways as exciting as the first 100 years of their existence. The UK should take the initiative it gained in pioneering the railway age to recapture its lead in promoting this universally popular, environmentally friendly and accessible form of travel in the 21st century. Empty trains are rare in the UK. The need to boost rail traffic is always the Government's prime concern.
We need to set an ambitious agenda, however, if we are to regain the momentum that we have lost in the development of our railways in the past two to three decades. Certainly, in the past five years, we have lost further ground in some aspects. First, we need to review and speed up the works on the west coast main line, and given the current crisis in funding, we need new innovative ways to do that. The SRA and Network Rail will have to look at new models of finance for that project. One option open to them could be to enter into discussions with companies involved in rail maintenance that have developed new ways of laying track at lower costs. As part of the railway delegation that visited some of those companies during our time in York, I believe that underutilised potential for

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completing the work on the improvement of the railway system in the UK more cheaply is waiting to be harnessed if those companies are given the opportunity to be more fully involved.
As I said, on completion of the west coast line, the emphasis has to move eastwards. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) is here today, and improvements such as upgrading Waverley station in Edinburgh have to be progressed. The delay in delivering a faster, more efficient rail service on the east coast was featured on the front page and in the editorial of Glasgow's newspaper The Herald. In those features, the SRA and its failure to deliver the much-needed £800 million worth of improvements—an upgrade to the Waverley station as a way of speeding trains up the east coast has been shelved—and the stop-gap funding to be provided by the Scottish Executive were much criticised. About £100 million was to be spent on the improvements, rather than £800 million over the next 10 years. A sub-heading in the article read:
"Cost cutting plans will not benefit suffering rail users."
The point was well made.
My colleagues from Edinburgh will continue to put the case for these draconian cuts to be reversed just as I will continue to argue for greater investment in the east coast main line north of Edinburgh in pursuit of the much improved rail service that rail users and the taxpayers in that area deserve.
The £60 million mentioned in relation to spending on Midland Mainline, or indeed a small fraction of the billion or so spent on the completion of phase one of the fast service Eurotunnel rail link, could be put to good use—some might argue better use—in my part of the east coast. The Minister in his response may say that the Scottish Executive have a major role to play in that area of transport policy. I will not deny that, but the Minister can rest assured that I and other Scottish Members will be working with colleagues in the Scottish Parliament to ensure that the points I have made today will be forcibly relayed to the Scottish Executive.
I will send the Scottish Transport Minister a copy of this debate and ask him to meet me and other Members from the north-east to discuss issues relating to the Scottish end of the east coast main line. However, saying that the Scottish Executive are involved does not excuse the United Kingdom Government from their responsibility for cross-border transport links and the overall co-ordination of national transport strategy throughout the UK.
To ensure the excellence of the rail service that we all want in the years ahead the Government and the SRA need to take action now to ensure that the targets they have set out are achieved. They need to give a commitment that UK rail travellers, whether they live in Doncaster, Darlington or Dundee, should enjoy the excellent levels of service taken for granted by so many citizens of our European Union partner states. We need a world-class rail service to transport a new generation of rail users
In conclusion, I hope that the Minister will endorse that aim and give a commitment to do all he can to achieve the goals we set as an outcome of this debate. I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for granting me the opportunity to go on about the rail infrastructure on the
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east coast—a subject close to my heart. It is a theme I will return to time and again until we achieve the improvements in the rail infrastructure up and down the east coast that are needed to provide the service standards required throughout that area.
3.49 pm
Mr. Mark Lazarowicz: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Luke) on the persistence with which he has raised this issue. He referred to Edinburgh's Waverley station, which is a vital hub for the rail network in Scotland and the entirety of Great Britain. Most of us were looking forward to the major upgrade of Waverley station, which has been under discussion for a number of years. I share my hon. Friend's concern at the way in which the original proposals for a major upgrade—ambitious, but essential if rail services in Scotland and on the east coat are to develop their full potential—seem to have been reduced to the minimum. As my hon. Friend says, the signs this week—I hope that it is just press speculation—are that the proposals will be reduced to the most basic scheme possible. Moreover, those proposals would have to be funded entirely by the Scottish Executive and, notwithstanding the UK-wide importance of the Waverley upgrade, without a contribution from the Strategic Rail Authority.
I do not expect my hon. Friend the Minister to be able to respond to the issue in any detail today. However, given the concerns raised by so many hon. Members and others, I ask him to meet me, the other hon. Members who represent Edinburgh seats and members of the local authority, so that he can hear our concerns about the future of Waverley. We can then find out the time scale and the current situation for that project, which is important both to Edinburgh and the entire country.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Nicholas Winterton): Order. The Minister will reply in the time that he has got left.
3.51 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. David Jamieson): Indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall try to respond to the points in the time that I now have available.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Luke), not only on securing this debate but on having secured the second debate on the subject in 18 months. He is a powerful advocate for his constituents on matters of transport, and he has spoken powerfully about today's railway system. I listened carefully to the points and issues that he has raised. I hope to be able to respond to some of those and I will write to him about any I cannot deal with today.
I would like to say a few general words about the Strategic Rail Authority that were raised by my hon. Friend. The authority is responsible for the development of the east coast main line and Network Rail has responsibility for its maintenance. Those bodies are addressing the key problems in the rail industry that were inherited from the previous Government—the years of decline, poor management and fragmentation following privatisation and a lack of strategic direction. We now have those things in place, which I am sure is good news for his constituents.

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The statutory purposes of the Strategic Rail Authority are to promote the use and development of passenger and freight networks and to contribute to the development of an integrated transport system. Its primary objectives are the achievement of the key targets in the Government's 10-year plan for transport, to increase passenger and freight usage and to improve the punctuality and reliability of train services. The SRA is tasked by the Government to work within allocated resources and to secure value for money from its expenditure.
The SRA will determine national investment priorities and take forward the enhancement programme in its role as the strategic specifier, working closely with Network Rail as its delivery agent. The SRA assesses proposed improvement projects for affordability and value for money on a Great Britain-wide basis.
Britain's railway network is now under the new ownership and strengthened management of Network Rail. Network Rail is a private sector, not-for-dividend company, whose key objective is to provide a safe, efficient, reliable and affordable network rather than to generate profits for its shareholders. I think that those are some of the points that my hon. Friend made in his speech.
The creation of Network Rail was a turning point for Britain's railways, and a real opportunity to reverse the years of decline. In its first year, Network Rail has made a promising start.
Mr. Frank Doran: I have a simple point. The Victorians invested in the railways and built the line to Aberdeen. We have heard from two hon. Members about the failure to invest in the line north of Aberdeen. In the past 30 years, the North sea oil and gas industry, one of the key economic generators in the country, has been based in the north-east. Last year, that industry accounted for about 20 per cent. of investment in manufacturing industry. Throughout that 30-year period, transport links between the north-east and the rest of the UK have been appalling. Will we see any improvement in the next 30 years?
Mr. Jamieson: Had my hon. Friend been patient, he would have heard the next part of my remarks, which I hope will give him some comfort.
Track renewal has increased dramatically. Steps are being taken to improve the knowledge of the network's condition and the factors behind the escalating costs. The SRA has developed the capacity utilisation policy to ensure that the most efficient use is made of the existing network. A consultation on the subject ended last year. and we have now published the network utilisation strategy, which looks at getting better use out of the existing lines. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East would agree that that is vital.
The second route to be completed under the national framework is the east coast main line, which my hon. Friend discussed today. I understand that the baseline work on the east coast main line route strategy started in April. A set of options was drawn up in June and evaluation work began on those options this summer,
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with stakeholder involvement in the form of regional reference groups, including representatives of the regional development agencies, the regional passenger councils and the passenger transport executives. This will help to develop the preliminary options to be included in the draft strategy document, which the SRA aims to produce in December.
The route strategy will provide the basis for a major review of timetables for implementation in 2005 and for implementing the SRA's new franchise replacement policy on the east coast main line. It will also produce a strategy for rolling stock replacement and a modest affordable model programme of investment based on requirements for the next 10 years. The SRA aims to have the route strategy in place in the summer.
The east coast main line is a huge route and I understand that Edinburgh was chosen as the cut-off point to make the route strategy manageable. My hon. Friend will be aware that services north of Edinburgh, and in Scotland as a whole, are the responsibility of the Scottish Executive.
The SRA has confirmed its commitment to producing a strategy for the development of the east coast network by the end of 2003. This will determine which further enhancements of the infrastructure will be required. It will also focus on making the best use of current infrastructure on one of the country's principal rail routes.
The SRA therefore intends to upgrade the east coast main line in a phased programme, and individual project elements will be subject to case-by-case approval and careful integration with Network Rail's renewal programme. It is too early to say what that will include, as further investment will depend on the completion of wider studies, especially the route utilisation strategy, but the preferred schemes will be those that produce capacity and performance benefits.
My hon. Friend also talked about the electrification of the east coast main line. I understand that that there are no plans for electrification north of Edinburgh. This issue is often raised in my area by people who say that there is no electrification on the south coast west of London. Previous assessments indicated that electrification of the line would be very expensive. There are also doubts about whether there is sufficient demand to justify the investment required.
Advances in train technology are such that the traditional distinction between electrification and non-electrification is becoming blurred. Diesel engine technology now produces fewer emissions, better acceleration times and higher top speeds, and is a serious competitor with electric trains.
My hon. Friend raised another issue about the line from Edinburgh to Aberdeen and the need for improvement. Straightening the line, not electrification, may be the main issue here. It may be more important for the through-put of passengers, but is not one of the SRA's main priorities. It would, however, be a more attractive proposition than electrification if funding could be secured. The Scottish Executive may consider funding for works that benefit internal Scottish services. They do, however, have their own list of priorities.
My hon. Friend also talked about Waverley station. At £33.5 million, this is the largest investment project being undertaken in Scotland and is due for completion

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in April 2004. It includes the renewal of equipment in the main signal centre at Waverley, which controls the east coast main line.
I have not had time to cover many of the points that my hon. Friend raised. To give a proper answer to some of the other question I am prepared to enter into correspondence with him if he will find that helpful, rather than trying to deal with them now.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: We thank the Minister for his reply. He got in a great deal in a short time. Before we move to the next debate, I have to advise hon. Members that I anticipate a Division in the House. We shall, of course, be granted injury time.

Road Speeds (Somerset)
4 pm
Mr. Ian Liddell-Grainger: If the Minister would like, I shall finish slightly early so that he can continue with east coast electrification and upgrading, but I am sure that he does not really want to do that. I sympathise with him for having to respond to two consecutive debates. That is remarkable, and probably above and beyond the call of duty.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Nicholas Winterton): Order. My worst fears are confirmed. We shall break for 10 minutes.
4 pm
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
4.11 pm
On resuming—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The debate can continue.
Mr. Liddell-Grainger: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hope that [do not have to say that again this afternoon. I shall certainly not return to the subject of east coast railways.
I should like to begin with a quotation from "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". Alice may never have encountered any of Somerset county council's crazy new speed restrictions, but there is no doubt that Somerset county council currently occupies a kind of administrative wonderland.
"'You are old, Father William', the young man said, 'And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head—Do you think, at your age, it is right?' 'In my youth,' Father William replied to his son, 1 feared it might injure the brain; But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again.'"
Those words were penned by Lewis Carroll, but they might as well apply to Councillor Tim Carroll, the chairman of Somerset county council's environment and transport policy committee.
Last year, the county council came up with a new road safety policy that involved standing common sense on its head. Presumably Councillor Carroll turned cheerfully upside down. There was no danger of injuring his brain, because the brain power behind the policy can be identified only with a very powerful microscope. Somerset county council decided arbitrarily to introduce new speed limits on A and B roads. Its motives were, no doubt, unimpeachable: it wanted to make Somerset's roads safer. We would all agree with that aim. However, in doing so with no proper consultation, it created a complete speed muddle that contributes nothing to safety and has already cost the council tax payers of Somerset a small fortune in public money. Indeed, what it has done might have created a danger to road users.
For example, the council has rightly set strict new limits outside all schools. No faster than 20 mph, says Somerset, but that applies all day and all night, long after the children have gone to bed and the gates of the school are firmly locked. Everyone agrees that speed

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limits outside schools make sense. Most intelligent councils—I suspect that that includes Plymouth—fix advisory limits and do not operate them 24 hours a day, but Somerset county council could not be bothered with the administrative and legal paperwork. So, outside every school there is a 20 mph limit, even in the middle of the night.
If this were not a short debate, I could list every town and village where the county council contractors have arrived at dawn with drills to erect new metal posts bearing new metal signs and new speed limits.
Mr. Adrian Flook: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. He will be well aware of events not many weeks ago on the A358, which joins our constituencies—my hon. Friend lives at one end and I at the other, in Taunton. I am told that there are more than 50 new speed signs, with varying speed limits, along a 12-mile stretch. Is he aware that those were put in not on the basis of what parish councils want but on the basis of safety figures that show that there have been 108 accidents? That sounds laudable, 'but those figures date from 1994 to 1999. It has taken the county council four years to implement them. If nothing else, it is guilty of lethargy.
Mr. Liddell-Grainger: I certainly know the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Flook) on the matter. The Taunton Times and the Somerset County Gazette resound to the noise made by my hon. Friend and long may that continue. He is absolutely right. The figures are out of date, ill conceived and ill thought through.
We have not heard the worst yet. Next come the county council road painters, emphasising the message with stripes on the tarmac. All that would be acceptable if the county council had sought the real views of real people in real villages before implementing the new policy, but it did not ask the district councils, nor did it consult all the parish councils. Somerset county council did what it always seems to do nowadays, which is to assume the role of the nanny, and nanny, as we all know, thinks that she knows best. The proverbial buck is meant to stop at the top. Perhaps Councillor Cathy Bakewell, leader of Somerset county council, deserves the title "Nanny-in-chief".
If the speed management policy had been properly baked, there would not be a single complaint, but it was not baked well, or even half baked; it did not even get into the oven. The result is a heavyweight harvest of completely unnecessary metalwork. Poles are sunk into verges and signs by the hundred have been bolted on, as my hon. Friend said, but it is what those signs say that makes the policy such a sick joke, because they contradict each other. If one drives on the A39 through the village of Holford, one is greeted by no fewer than seven new signs in each direction. That is 14 signs in all, to save the mathematics between us, not including the extra ones that have been painted on the road surface. In case you have not been there, Mr. Deputy Speaker, or the Minister, Holford is the size of a postage stamp. It is a very nice place with very nice people, who are just as concerned about road safety as the rest of us, but they did not ask for those signs outside the village. The
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council did not send round a consultation form or even a man with a clipboard. It simply turned up, banged in the poles and screwed in the new speed signs. That is how it works.
One is entitled to approach the village at a perfectly legal 50 mph, then one brakes to obey the new 40 mph sign, brakes even harder to keep to 30, reduces suddenly to 20, goes back up to 30, then 40 and finally to 50 again, all within a few hundred yards. That is assuming that one goes any faster than 20 mph anyway. The A39 is a busy, winding and narrow road. It carries a huge number of tourists in the holiday season and slow-moving lorries at all times. It services Butlins at the rate of about 9,000 people a week. In my experience, if one averages 30 mph on the A39, one is doing very well. It may need upgrading—that is another story for the Minister—but what it does not need is a set of silly speed limits.
I invite the Minister to take a look at some of the signs. I went out with a camera to photograph some examples and I have pictures of some of them here. They made not only myself but the pictures quite red. I have pictures of some of the signs warning of cameras from one village in Holford. That is not some cheapskate exercise by Somerset county council. It has spent a small fortune planning it. Many of those new expensive signs bear the symbol dreaded by all motorists, the picture of a fixed camera—liable to flash in one's rear-view mirror and guarantee an automatic fine and several penalty points on one's licence.
We all agree that in the right place speed cameras are an excellent idea. I have talked to Avon and Somerset constabulary about the matter and it.knows what it is talking about. It uses mobile speed cameras to great effect where there is room to deploy them, but it would not contemplate fixed speed cameras on winding stretches of the A39. One officer told me:
"That would be the act of a lunatic."
The police have to enforce the speed limits. Councillor nanny Bakewell and her pals simply dream up the loony schemes. The scores of new signs warning of speed cameras ahead are, unfortunately, not a dream. Nobody in their right mind would plant a speed camera where Somerset county council declares that a speed camera should be planted. Some motorists are stupid but not that stupid. When a county council makes believe on an issue as important as road safety, it is liable to bring the whole legal process into disrepute.
Since the new signs were put up, hundreds have been deliberately defaced. I do not condone such vandalism—nobody does—but I understand why people have taken the law into their own hands. They were furious at the high-handed attitude of a local authority that did not listen, did not ask and did not take a blind bit of notice when people complained through elected Members, such as myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton.
There have been as many complaints as there are new road signs. My postbag has been groaning with letters of complaint ever since that madness started. The latest stupidity is in the village of Fiddington in my constituency. The villagers have been pleading with the county council for speed limits and nanny Bakewell has done absolutely nothing about it. Under the enlightened

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leadership of Somerset county council, one gets no new speed limits where they are actually needed, and a rash of them where nobody wants them.
As constituency MPs, it is my job and that of my hon. Friend to get things sorted. I went to the county council and had a private chat with officials and they said, "Don't worry, Ian,"—no use of "Hon. Members" there—"we hear that the whole policy is under review." There were signs of relief all round as I told everybody that we were going to have a review. That usually means a rethink—an official recognition that they have got it wrong. "Whoops, silly me!" Nanny Bakewell and her Somerset county council cohorts are not as straightforward as that. They do not believe in saying sorry publicly, but they are prepared to admit their errors to one another.
A dramatic and revealing document has just come into my possession. It is an e-mail that was sent to all county council staff by the new chief executive, Mr. Alan Jones. In it, he confesses that the implementation of the new road policy has been "inconsistent and insensitive." Thank you, Mr. Jones. I could not have described the mad hatter antics of nanny Bakewell better. However, there is worse to come.
People who live in Somerset will receive a 21-question survey from Somerset county council. It will seek people's views on what sort of speed limits there should be and where they should be placed. The county council is now adding insult to injury by inviting people to give their views after the work has been carried out. I have been unable to obtain an estimate of the cost of that absurd exercise in pyramid-selling democracy, but I am absolutely sure that it does not come cheap because nothing ever does from Somerset county council and it comes on top of the high price of introducing speed limits that people did not want in the first place.
Road safety is crucial and the Government rightly leave it to local authorities to settle matters of speed, but I was disturbed to read a disquieting article in the Western Morning News on Saturday 13 September under the headline, "Hopeless rural roads are not our concern!" It included a fetching photograph of the Minister with a copy of the Western Morning News in his hands. The state of rural roads is certainly not our fault, but should be of great concern. When a local authority behaves in the way that Somerset county council has behaved, my question to the Minister is, "Please, can you not do something to stop them?"
4.27 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. David Jamieson): I congratulate the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger) on securing this debate on this important issue. There is obviously a spat between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in Somerset, but I shall not enter that debate. I do not know Councillor Bakewell, but I am sure that, although she is a Liberal Democrat, she is motivated by the best intentions. I shall also not go into the lengthy metaphors that the hon. Gentleman used.
I was also surprised to see the headline in the Western Morning News. The old story is, "Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers." People should certainly not believe everything that they read in the Western Morning News. It was certainly not what I said.
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I said that I was pleased that the Western Morning News had joined the Government's campaign for better roads in the west country and I said that they were very much our concern. I said that it was the concern of the Government to get better roads, but the responsibility of local authorities to carry that out. I also said that a lot of extra money had been provided for those roads and a former Tory council leader admitted that he had underspent on roads and spent the money on other things, but he said it was all our fault anyway.
Speed and safety are at the heart of the Government's policies. About one third of the accidents in which people, many of whom are children or elderly people, are killed or injured on our roads each year are caused by people travelling at inappropriate speeds, so we should not treat the matter lightly. I was glad that the hon. Gentleman distanced himself from those who take the law into their own hands with safety cameras and signage. That is manifestly not the way in which we do things in this country and we have democratic means of dealing with such matters. Some of the thugs who go around doing that are putting people's lives at risk and I am glad that he distanced himself from those people, as I have.
I listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said about Somerset's current programme of introducing speed limits on such a comprehensive scale throughout the county. However, I understand that the county council is only part of the way through implementing the initiative and that some rethinking is taking place. Slower speeds are one of many measures available to local authorities to reduce accidents and to improve the environment, particularly in rural areas. The key is that it is up to local authorities to find the right balance between the quality of life in their communities, achieving the important objective of reducing accidents and maintaining the appearance of attractive villages in rural areas. The policies have been devolved because locally elected councillors are best placed to deal with such matters.
I applaud Somerset and many other local authorities for taking the problem of traffic speeds in their communities very seriously and striving to achieve the right balance in such a difficult policy area. I receive many representations from across the country, including Somerset, from parents whose children are trying to cross roads outside schools. There is a considerable problem in both rural and urban areas of people going too fast. I am not surprised that local authorities are being pulled two ways in implementing the policy, and I cannot help but wonder whether the same people who urged the introduction of measures to slow speeds in their villages are now finding it inconvenient to slow down in others.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the Government's real commitment to address the serious issue of road safety. In 2000, we published, "Tomorrow's Roads—Safer for Everyone," in which we adopted challenging targets to reduce the number of those killed or seriously injured in road accidents by 40 per cent. by 2010, and to reduce by 50 per cent. the number of children killed or seriously injured over the same period. I am pleased to say that we are on course to meet those targets.

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The hon. Gentleman will know that the Prime Minister is committed to the road safety strategy. We published a review of speed policy, in which we recognised the value of 30 mph being the norm for villages. Experience shows that lower speed limits without other measures to encourage drivers to slow down have generally only a small effect on traffic speeds, and local authorities are advised to consider what other measures are necessary to achieve the lower speeds required. It is also for local authorities to target their resources where the problems are the greatest. The resources are best targeted where speeding causes casualties and discomfort to residents.
In October 2002, the Government responded to the Transport, Local Government and the Regions Committee report on road traffic speed. Some evidence from that report is pertinent to the issues raised in this debate. If the measures recommended in the report were to achieve a one-third reduction in road traffic accidents, the savings to society could be as great as £100 million per week.
Speed is clearly a major factor in causing accidents. It is highly significant that, when we introduce speed management measures or improve speed enforcement on roads with a high level of casualties, casualties are substantially reduced, in some cases by 50 per cent. or more. That is why it is important to identify where speed is a problem and deal with it effectively with targeted engineering and enforcement, and driver education and training.
I am pleased to see that local authorities, the police and motorists have responded positively to those road safety targets, and there can be no doubt that there have been real improvements in safety on roads in this country, not least in the west country. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the implementation of that policy is, of course, a matter for the local transport authority. We have put in place a system of local transport plans, under which local authorities can bid for new capital funding for local transport measures. I must say that Somerset has done very well out of those measures. Cash-starved a few years ago, it is now doing very well.
We have, of course, provided a real increase in resources to local authorities to implement and to improve their local transport plans and, in particular, to pursue better road safety. In Somerset, funding for integrated transport measures, which includes measures to promote road safety, has increased from just over £0.3 million in 1998–99 to more than £5 million in 2002–03.
Local authorities are best placed to decide how to use resources in their areas, and they are also best placed to understand their local problems and how they can be solved. Local authorities can, of course, pursue a range of measures to achieve those road safety targets. The policies implemented in Somerset have, in general, reduced accidents in line with targets. To give the figures again, they reduced the number of people killed or seriously injured from an average of 376 to 332 last year, although that figure has risen to 351 this year. I also note
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that the number of children killed or seriously injured has fallen from 34 to 25 over the same period. They are most likely the hon. Gentleman's constituents.
Mr. Liddell-Grainger: Much of that is to do with the M5, which goes all the way through the county. There have been an enormous number of deaths on the M5, as the Minister is fully aware, so the problem is not just to do with the county.
Mr. Jamieson: I am aware that some of those incidents happened on the M5, but the motorways tend to be among the safest roads in terms of the amount of through-put of traffic. One of the big problems is on rural roads, where local people tend to get killed and injured.
The changes that I mentioned are a real tribute not only to the safety improvements that we have made to vehicles. but to local highways authorities and the police in promoting better solutions to create safer roads.
I understand that there is another reason for Somerset's policy of introducing the new speed limits throughout the county. Put simply, I am told that that is what residents have asked authorities for. Somerset has undertaken an extensive consultation with the communities in rural areas, asking them how they would like to see the resources that are made available through the local transport plans used. I am told that the answer that was given was clear: speed of traffic through rural villages, sometimes at the national speed limit of 60 mph, was a key concern. However, to return to the point that I made originally, perhaps the problem is to do with reducing speed in the village where one lives, but finding it inconvenient when the limit has been reduced in other villages.
Mr. Liddell-Grainger: I apologise for intervening on the Minister again. The speed limits in villages are not in doubt, and we are not here to debate them. However, nobody asked for the speed limits outside villages, and the consultation has only just started.
Mr. Jamieson: Somerset's approach was clearly spelt out in its local transport plan, which was published in July 2000 and which stated:
"We will introduce a policy to apply a consistent approach to speed limits across the county, particularly in built up areas".
That commitment was based on requests from more than 250 parish councils for environmental traffic calming. Somerset has implemented that commitment with a comprehensive programme of promoting 20 mph speed limits at 280 school sites and 30 mph speed limits in about 230 villages, which is an impressive programme.
The aim of the approach, as I understand it, is to achieve a consistent speed limit throughout the county, so that road users know that, whenever they enter a built-up area, they should slow down. No doubt the number of traffic signs that the initiative has required may be a surprise to those who were unaware of what Somerset was proposing to do. Somerset will have consulted local parish councils, as is required, in promoting individual schemes, so parish councils must have expressed a view on the proposals as they were going ahead—there was a statutory duty on them to do

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so. The consultation will have included details of the signs proposed to be put in place, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned.
The hon. Gentleman asks what the Government's policy is on such a programme. Put simply, the local transport plan system gives local authorities the powers to implement such a programme, if they so decide, in the light of their local policies and objectives. However, our advice on the production of local transport plans states:
"Traffic management in rural areas should aim to produce better and safer local road conditions for those who live, work and visit there and help protect the character of the countryside and its communities."
Plans must balance the needs of both rural communities and road users.
It is a sad fact that some drivers drive at inappropriate speeds. However, one of the biggest influences on drivers' choice of speed is not the speed limit itself but the nature and appearance of the road in question. It is therefore imperative that speed limits are set that are appropriate and enforceable.
We are always looking at the most effective ways to improve safety on rural roads and working to deliver our road safety strategy commitments on that, including
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updating our guidance to local authorities on setting local speed limits and how to reduce traffic speeds in rural villages. Local authorities have the powers to introduce 20 mph speed limits, but their success relies solely on drivers reducing their speed without the constraining influence of any physical measures. We therefore feel that if there is a criticism of what Somerset is doing, it is that some the limits have been set without some of the other measures that are perhaps important in reducing the speed of vehicles.
The hon. Gentleman has raised an important matter. I hope that there can be a calm and sensible debate about it in Somerset. Road safety is important, and children are particularly vulnerable. I hope that good sense prevails. He might revisit in today's Hansard some of his comments about certain Liberal Democrat council leaders and how they have dealt with this matter. They may be able to come to some mutually agreed resolution.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty minutes to Five o'clock.