Westminster Hall Sitting of 21 April 2004

Preamble
[MR. FRANK COOK in the Chair]

Iraq
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Gillian Merron.]
9.30 am
Sir John Stanley: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am very glad that we have the opportunity, at some point in the House this week, to debate the all-important subject of Iraq. Although this debate provides the only opportunity to do so, I am grateful to the Minister and all hon. Members who are attending. I will come to the current situation in Iraq, the severity of which has been all too tragically highlighted by the appalling multiple bombing in Basra this morning, with terrible loss of life, including children, but I want to start with what prompted me to request this debate—the lessons to be learned from the circumstances in which we originally went to war in Iraq last year.
I make no apology for repeating what I have said before, which is that those circumstances were wholly unique. They bear no relation to the circumstances under which Britain has become involved in other wars in living memory, going back to the first world war. There was no incontrovertible, observable, factual event on the ground that constituted the trigger for war in Iraq. There was no invasion, such as the one that precipitated the first Gulf war, no looming humanitarian disaster, such as precipitated the war in Kosovo, and no appalling act of terrorism, such as what happened on 9/11, which precipitated the war in Afghanistan. Quite uniquely, the war in Iraq rested fundamentally on an intelligence assessment that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction on a large scale, that some of those weapons were at 45 minutes' readiness, and that some represented a current threat to vital British interests, most conspicuously the sovereign base areas in Cyprus and the facilities associated with them.
I understand that Ministers have a considerable degree of nervousness about associating the decision to go to war with the issue of the intelligence assessment of weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, listening to the Prime Minister, one might be forgiven for thinking that the only reason we went to war in Iraq was to change the regime. However, that conveniently ignores the fact that the Prime Minister, on 18 March last year, in making the case to go to war, specifically stated that it would be illegal to go to war in Iraq to change the regime. He said:
"I have never put the justification for action as regime change. We have to act within the terms set out in resolution 1441—that is our legal base."—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 772.]
Equally, listening to the Foreign Secretary, one might also be forgiven for thinking that the trigger for going to war was nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, but was simply to do with Saddam
70WH
Hussein's violation of UN resolutions. That conveniently ignores the fact that the UN resolutions in question, not least 1441, are all about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction, and the need for him to disarm and give the necessary access to the UN weapons inspectors.
The trigger for the war was undoubtedly WMD. The documentary evidence that makes that conclusively clear is the Government's own paper entitled "Iraq: Military Campaign Objectives", which the Government placed in the Library just before the war started. The opening paragraph states:
"The prime objective remains to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction and their associated programmes and means of delivery, including prohibited ballistic missiles, as set out in relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions."
As we went to war uniquely on the basis of an intelligence assessment, it was, of course, incumbent on the key senior Ministers involved—specifically the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary—to subject that intelligence assessment to the closest scrutiny and to ask the key questions about it. Also, if that intelligence assessment was materially in error in respect of its portrayal in the public domain and to Parliament, Ministers should have produced the necessary corrections. One has to ask whether that degree of ministerial scrutiny applied; I fear that it did not.
I want to make it clear that I do not consider Ministers personally blameworthy for the fact that weapons of mass destruction have not so far been found. I accept, of course, that the buck finally stops with Ministers, but they had clear advice from the intelligence professionals that there were weapons of mass destruction, and in my view they were entitled to rely on that advice. That poses important questions for the intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic, and those are obviously the subject of inquiry and scrutiny.
However, there was a clear responsibility on Ministers to ask the key questions to ensure that they understood clearly what the intelligence assessment meant, particularly in relation to claims based on that assessment that were put into the public domain. There was also a clear obligation on Ministers to produce corrections. Of no claim is that truer than the one that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes' readiness to deploy. That was a claim to which the Government gave extensive publicity. It appeared four times in the September dossier, and was used by the Prime Minister in his 24 September speech to the House of Commons. It was also used by the Foreign Secretary, a matter of weeks before the war started, in his speech of 21 February at Chatham house.
With the benefit of hindsight, there is no question but that Ministers were ill advised ever to allow the 45-minute claim to appear in the September dossier. Hindsight aside, it was clearly central to Ministers' responsibilities to ask themselves the key questions about that claim. Especially before the war began, Ministers should have asked, and should have had the answers to, one question that was more important than any other—that is, to which weapons was the 45-minute claim related?
Mr. Tam Dalyell: All of us have made mistakes, but I was cartooned in The Times as asking why the dossier was not nominated to be on the shortlist for the Booker prize for fiction. Many of us challenged the dossier at the time.
Sir John Stanley: I do not take the view that the whole September dossier was fiction. Some of it has, to a degree, been corroborated by the results of the Iraq survey group. However, I agree that key elements in that dossier, particularly in relation to the immediacy of the specific threat to British interests, appear so far to have rested on uncertain, and possibly dubious, intelligence.
Of the three Ministers concerned, it appears, from the written answer that he gave me on 23 February—which can be found at column 2W in the Official Report for that date—that only the Defence Secretary asked the key question about which weapons of mass destruction the 45-minute claim related to. The Defence Secretary knew that the answer was simply battlefield weapons, and he knew that shortly after the publication of the September dossier, months before the war began. Extraordinarily, the Foreign Secretary went into the war without asking that question or getting the answer to it. He found out that the 45-minute claim related solely to battlefield weapons only in June last year, well after the war had ended.
Perhaps most reprehensibly of all, the Prime Minister, who was leading the Government and taking the country into a war for which he sought the approval of the House of Commons, did not know until after the war which Iraqi weapons systems the 45-minute claim related to. In the answer that he gave to me on 10 February—it can be found at column 1346W in the Official Report for that date—he said that he did not know until the Intelligence and Security Committee had examined the issue. That Committee's inquiry did not commence until May, which was after the war had ended.
It is an issue of serious and culpable negligence as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, The Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), was justified in calling for the Prime Minister's resignation on that particular key issue. It was no small matter, because on the answer to that question rested the issue of whether or not the high-readiness Iraqi weapons of mass destruction represented a threat to vital British interests. If the 45-minute claim related only to battlefield weapons, there was no threat to British interests. Only if it related to Iraq's supposed longer-range al-Hussein missiles, which were capable of reaching the sovereign base areas in Cyprus, could the idea of the 45-minute claim affecting British interests be valid. It was a fundamental question and, sadly, it was not asked by key Ministers.
In addition, Ministers failed to make the necessary corrections and they have tried to blame the media, both in the House and elsewhere. In particular, they have blamed The Sun for running a story, under the headline "Brits 45 minutes from doom", which referred to British service men, and British tourists, in Cyprus. Along with other sections of the British media, The Sun was entirely justified in drawing precisely that conclusion from the
72WH
wording of the September 2002 dossier. Whether or not it was justified in drawing that conclusion—and in my view it was—there is no question but that it was incumbent on Ministers to correct that very serious misapprehension. Ministers knew that it was in the public domain and they failed to correct it. Most of all, it was incumbent on the Prime Minister, before he asked the House of Commons to approve his motion to go to war on 18 March last year, to put that key correction before Parliament and the public. That was not done.
It may be said, and perhaps the Minister will want to do so in his reply, that that is all just a matter of history. Well, we would all be relieved if it were just a matter of history and this country was not going to face the dilemma of whether to carry out military operations of one sort or another based on an intelligence assessment. However, given the way that the world is going—and given everything that we are told about the extent of terrorism, the proliferation of WMD and the clear intentions of certain terrorist organisations to try to get access to them—it will be a near miracle if we get through the next five or 10 years without finding ourselves in a situation similar to the one that we faced last year. That is, our Government might very well obtain intelligence information to the effect that a very dangerous terrorist organisation, or other group, has WMD capability and that it might at some point be on its way to this country, or be directed against British interests.
If that happens, the Government will have to come to Parliament and to the country again and, on the basis of an intelligence assessment, ask for support for a military operation that may have taken place already, or which may take place in the future. In those circumstances, it will be of critical importance for the Government that the British public and Members of Parliament are confident that what the Government say about the intelligence assessment is as accurate as possible.
Sadly, I believe that the Government's mishandling of the public dimension of parts of the intelligence assessment made before the war in Iraq has seriously damaged their credibility. The Government must decide how to restore that credibility, but I shall offer one suggestion. I read the recent press reports of Dr. Condoleezza Rice's eventual public appearance before the 9/11 investigation commission in Washington. The day after her performance, it was reported that Dr. Rice, along with senior members of the Bush Administration, had carefully avoided using what I call the "M-word". The Blair Administration also seem careful to avoid using that word, which in this case is "mistake". The Government would be well advised to come clean and acknowledge mistakes that were made, including at ministerial level, in their presentation of the intelligence assessment that led to us going to war in Iraq last year.
The security situation in Iraq has undoubtedly deteriorated alarmingly over the past few weeks, and the practical terms of what will happen when the transfer of sovereignty takes place on 30 June are a huge unknown. There must be increasing worries about whether the critically important reconstruction programme can be fulfilled in the current alarming climate of poor security and kidnappings.

73WH
I regret to say that it appears to me and to plenty of other commentators that a huge political misjudgment has been made by the American-led coalition provisional authority. How many of us had ever heard of Moqtada al-Sadr—I certainly had not—or of his small circulation newspaper, al-Hawza? There is no doubt that the decision of Mr. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator, to close down that newspaper and arrest one of al-Sadr's aides has had profoundly disadvantageous consequences for the coalition. The publicity that al-Sadr has received has been of a saturation order, both in Iraq and worldwide, and it is in danger of enabling him, as an extreme militant, to outflank the more moderate Shi'a leadership. There is plenty of evidence that the events of the past few weeks are bringing the Sunnis and the Shi'ites closer together against the coalition forces. That is exceptionally dangerous.
The security consequences have meant that during the past few weeks more than 100 members of the US armed forces, and now nearly 1,000 Iraqis, have been killed. It is against that background that we must consider the right approach for the future.
As far as I am concerned—and I hope that this is the position of most hon. Members—there can be no question of quitting and running. That would be totally disastrous. It would have the most profound and damaging effects, in the middle east and worldwide, on our attempts to deal with the security threat from terrorism. However, we must view the security position in Iraq with a greater degree of realism than some people have shown.
Although it may be unpalatable to say so, the security reality is that, however unreasonably and unfairly, the coalition forces in most of Iraq are, at best, tolerated and, at worst, hated. There are unlimited numbers of terrorist targets, both physical and human, and in security terms we are spread pretty thinly in that vast country. Moreover, the past few weeks have demonstrated unarguably that Iraq is a security tinderbox.
The key security requirement is to avoid political and military decisions that end up making the security situation very much worse than it was before. If we are to have an orderly exit from Iraq, and if we are to improve the security position, it is crucial that we and the Americans demonstrate the requisite sophistication, astuteness and realism in making those key political and military decisions.
The British representatives in the CPA, both on the civilian and military side, have a full awareness of that necessity. I am afraid that I am much less convinced that that is the case among US civilians or military personnel. I would be interested to know whether the Minister shares that analysis. If so, what steps will the British Government take to try to impress on our American allies and friends the need for the greater sensitivity and awareness to which I have referred?
Finally, I move on to the political situation in Iraq. I welcome and fully support the decision made by the British and American Governments not to delay the date of handover. To have done so would simply have played straight into the hands of those in Iraq who want to misrepresent us as occupying powers determined to stay in Iraq for as long as possible and to deny the Iraqis
74WH
their sovereignty. I am sure that that was the right decision. However, the worrying feature at the moment is that we have just 10 weeks to go until 30 June, and absolutely key questions remain unanswered.
I read in the press that a few short days ago that Mr. Paul Bremer, when asked by a journalist about who would be handed the keys in Iraq on 30 June, replied that that was "a good question". It is indeed, and I suggest that it needs a good answer, given the shortage of time. In his statement in the House on Monday, the Prime Minister was not able to shed any light on the answer. I do not know whether the Minister can do so today, but I urge him to. In his statement, the Prime Minister outlined the institutional arrangements for Iraqi government, and then said, "That is the vision." With 10 weeks to go, we do not want to be in visionary country.
I hope that the Minister can put some flesh and bones on the arrangements, and indeed tell us some names. In particular, can he shed any light on who will be the new President and two vice-presidents of Iraq? Who will be the Prime Minister? Will members of the existing Iraqi interim governing council continue in post, and will they be added to? Most particularly, can the Minister tell us whether the Americans will effectively approve appointments to the key political leadership of the new sovereign Iraq that takes over the reins of power on 1 July? If it appears that the key new political figures are American appointees, I doubt very much that that will be a basis on which they will be able to command authority and respect over a large section of the Iraqi population.
Mr. Dalyell: The last people to whom key positions ought to be given are certain Iraqi émigrés and exiles who have given us such bad advice for a long time, and who are hated by many people in Iraq. I am thinking of Mr. Chalabi, in particular.
Sir John Stanley: I broadly agree: there are those with a previous history outside Iraq who are not well regarded inside the country.
Lastly, I hope that the Minister can tell us what role the British Government will play in these crucial 10 weeks during the formation of the new sovereign Government of Iraq.
In conclusion, whatever the rights and wrongs of our decision to go to war in Iraq last year, the inescapable reality is that the British and American Governments, under the relevant international conventions, have legal and moral duties to the people of Iraq. Those duties are inescapable, and those responsibilities must be discharged. I trust that both the American and the British Governments fully understand the scale of the task that they face in discharging those responsibilities, the difficulty of doing so, and the need for the resources and the determination to see the matter through to success.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Frank Cook): Order. I remind the Chamber that it is customary to start the first of the three winding-up speeches 30 minutes before the conclusion of the debate. We therefore have only 33 minutes left for Back-Bench contributions.
9.58 am
Mr. Tam Dalyell: I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Sir John Stanley) on his extremely thoughtful speech. In one basic matter, however, I must be candid and say that I disagree. I am one of those people, albeit a minority, who thinks that we have no alternative but to withdraw the troops—embarrassing though it might be in causing red faces.
If I mention that I was on television this morning expressing these views, I do so for a reason that will become apparent. I argued that the very presence of coalition forces, far from curtailing violence and terrorism, acts as an incentive for terrorism. We now have a war of liberation, and I fear that we are the enemy. Let us be clear about the fact that it is not only former pro-Saddam people attacking us. We believe that there are many who hated Saddam, and to whom Saddam was extremely cruel, and—all right—for traditional reasons of nationalism they are taking up arms against coalition forces. The situation is appalling.
I said that I was on television this morning because I was immediately followed by Julian Manyon, the veteran reporter in Baghdad, who started by saying, "Tam Dalyell is absolutely right." I had not expected Julian Manyon to say that, but for him to endorse my view brings home the reality.
You have asked us to be quick, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so I shall be. I have only one other matter to raise, which is the question of al-Sadr. I am told that there are many al-Sadr posters; the difficulty is that this man, who has been created by some very foolish things that the west has done, is now seen as a symbol of the Shi'a.
Those are minority opinions, but in my defence I should say that I was in Iraq in 1993 and 1998. That is partly why I challenged intelligence throughout our debates. Apart from anything else, I did not know how it was possible to be an intelligence agent in the Saddam society—by God, one would have been risking one's life. I doubted intelligence because of that.
Here we are, however, in this mess. I fear that, shamefacedly though we may have to do it, the correct decision is for the west now to withdraw. There may be enormous bloodshed, but I think it more likely that Shi'a and Sunni, who were never as divided as was made out in the west, will come together and that by some alchemy an Iraqi state will be born.
10.2 am
Mr. Edward Leigh: We should be grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) for ensuring that we are having the debate, although it is a pity that we are not having a major debate in the main Chamber, as this is a matter of supreme importance. However, we are grateful to him, particularly for the moderate and informed way in which he opened the debate.
I shall not repeat my right hon. Friend's points, but it is important that we do not allow the Government to move on from the arguments about weapons of mass destruction. There is a tendency now for the Prime Minister to say, in the very charming style that he uses, that there was a difference of opinion and that he understands our point of view but we must move on and
76WH
talk about reconstruction. I am sorry, but this is a crucial matter that must be referred to again and again. We need answers from the Government.
Issues of peace and war, especially declaring war, are the most solemn duties placed on a Government. This country has a record unequalled by that of any other, at least in the 20th century, for going to war for only the most solemn reasons—if attacked or to protect our vital interests and our allies. That was not the case with the Iraq war, so the issue must be referred to again and again. We want answers from Ministers.
We now hear in the latest revelations from Washington that the CIA had fewer than five agents on the ground in Iraq, that its intelligence on Iraq was woefully lacking and that in recent history there were no weapons of mass destruction that posed any threat to this country. The reason for the war was spurious, and we have to nail the Government for that.
All that was foretellable and it was indeed foretold by those of us who voted against the war; that was our first reason for doing so. The second reason, which we also referred to continually, was that invading a Muslim country would make terrorism worse rather than better. That is precisely what has happened. We have provided an excuse for extremely unpleasant fanatics in the Muslim world to convey the impression to gullible masses throughout the Arab world that the invasion was part of a western plot to undermine Muslim and Arab culture. We played into their hands.
The Prime Minister repeatedly says that his reason for going to war was to break the links between rogue states. terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. There has never been any evidence that Saddam Hussein either had weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to us or our allies or was responsible for the events of 11 September. That is the second thing that was foretellable and foretold—the war has made terrorism worse.
The third point that we made again and again was that Iraq was ungovernable. We referred back the British experience in 1920 and to the wise actions of the elder President Bush in 1991 when he realised the difficulties of breaking up the Iraqi state and did not go further than liberating Kuwait. Those three factors were foretold and we must remind the Government of them again and again.
What is so sad, and disastrous, is that since the mistaken decision was taken to invade a Muslim country, the American Government have made matters so much worse by disbanding the Iraqi army and spurning the offer by France and Germany, shortly after the war, to come in under UN auspices. The American regime wants to go it alone and is over-confident of its ability to hold down Iraq with so few troops. Eric Shinseki, the US army chief of staff, gave evidence to Congress that, in his view, 500,000 troops would be necessary to ensure peace and security in Iraq. I am told that it is generally accepted that holding down a country after occupation following war requires 20 security personnel for every 1,000 inhabitants.
At one time, there were 60 small US army units scattered throughout Baghdad, but the US army has retreated into eight camps around Baghdad. It has a laager mentality and simply drives through Baghdad in

77WH
armoured convoys making itself a target. As my right hon. Friend said, at best it is tolerated and at worst hated. Again and again, decisions have been taken that have made things much worse. What about the offers of Grand Ayatollah Sistani and his advice? He is a modern influence in the Shi'a world and the Americans should have listened to him, but his offers were spurned. What about his calls for genuine democracy? Again, they were spurned.
We are where we are, however, and that is the trouble with this debate. Those of us who voted against the war are constantly told that that is in the past and asked for our solutions to the problem. The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) says that we should leave Iraq immediately. I believe that general opinion is that we simply cannot do what the Spaniards are doing and scuttle out, but we must have an exit plan. I hope that the Minister, instead of reading out a Foreign Office brief, tries to respond to the debate and tell the Members of Parliament gathered in this Chamber exactly what exit plan the Government have and how they will ensure that our troops leave safely.
In the Defence Committee yesterday, General Jackson implied that there is friction between the different approaches of the British Army and the American army to peacekeeping operations. We should all pay great tribute to our troops who, because of their huge skill and experience in Northern Ireland, have managed to keep a lid on the situation in southern Iraq, but can we rely on that continuing for weeks or months? As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Mailing said, we demand answers from the Government now on exactly what their plan is for the handover of power. We hear that the UN envoy, Mr. Brahimi, proposes the concept of a Prime Minister and presidential council of three. As my right hon. Friend asked, who will be appointed? Will they be seen to be appointees of the American Government? Will they be stooges? Will that make the situation far worse?
Mr. Dalyell: The hon. Gentleman rejects the idea of an immediate exit, and I understand why, but did he see Brigadier Nick Carter in Basra saying that if there was pressure at Najaf and if things got worse, he would have 150,000 Shi'a at the gates of his barracks? What would we do then?
Mr. Leigh: That is a pertinent point and it is deeply worrying for our armed forces, who are under-resourced and are holding down southern Iraq with pitiably few personnel. What will happen if the Shi'a are incited to rise up against them? We would have to retreat, just as we did in 1920. I am afraid that, in one sense, the hon. Gentleman is quite right. There must be an exit strategy—not one of scuffling out in the next few weeks, although we must know precisely what our plans are.
We will never solve the problems of the middle east unless we detach moderate Arab opinion from extremists, and we will not do that until we make some effort to resolve the Palestinian dispute. What were the American Government doing—in this week of all weeks—allowing the Israeli Prime Minister three huge settlements in the middle of the west bank? What does that say to moderate Arab opinion throughout the region? Only the Americans can put pressure on the Israelis; nobody else can. The American Government
78WH
sustain Israel. I support the state of Israel; we all do in this Room. We all believe, after the dreadful horrors inflicted on the Jewish people in the 20th century, that they have a right to their state, but the Palestinian people also have a right to justice. That is what the American Government must address. This is a sad and disastrous decision. The debate is timely, and I hope that the Minister gives us some good answers today.
10.11 am
Mr. David Chidgey: I thoroughly endorse the comments made by other hon. Members, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Sir John Stanley) on securing the debate and on making the points that he made. I want to refer to issues concerning the role of the United Nations, the transitional process and the reconstruction of Iraq.
On 19 April, the Prime Minister said in his statement:
"We will hold absolutely to the 30 June timetable for the handover of sovereignty … The UN should have a central role, and it should be developed still further once the occupation ends".
I welcome his sudden recognition of the importance of the UN's role in these affairs, although it is a little belated. However, it is important to consider the mechanics of the UN's current involvement, comparing it with the disastrous events of a few weeks ago, when Kofi Annan's deputy was murdered in Baghdad. I am concerned to know how the UN's new involvement will be handled. Who will provide the security for UN personnel, given the recent disastrous attack on their headquarters? What guarantee will be provided to UN personnel and what discussions have been held with the UN in New York or anywhere else? When I last had the opportunity to discuss these matters a few weeks ago, it was made clear that the UN would not he releasing personnel to go to Iraq until they have a guarantee of security. We have yet to see that.
Returning to the Prime Minister's statement, he said:
"The vast majority of Iraqis want a … stable, democratic Iraq … That is exactly what the coalition want."—[official Report, 19 April 2004; Vol. 420, c. 21–2.]
We must ask, on what form of democracy will a democratic Iraq be based? Clearly, not on the Westminster model, or the US model. The agreement on the political process between the Iraqi governing council and the coalition provisional authority makes that abundantly clear. The key area, however, is the adoption of a permanent constitution prepared by the constitutional convention, elected from and by the Iraqi people. That should happen no later than 15 March 2005, but we already know that opposition is arising from certain quarters—Shi'a clerics, for example.
We must address the risk of attempts by fundamentalists to fill the present democratic vacuum with Islamists, whose constitutional aims are underpinned by sharia law. That is not what I understood to be the reason for being in Iraq, if we are to create a great democratic republic in the region. Has the coalition set out its red lines on what changes to the administrative law and the constitution would be acceptable?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Bill Rammell): I apologise for intervening, but I need to clarify what the hon. Gentleman said. Did he say that during the transitional administrative period sharia law would be the code?
Mr. Chidgey: No, I did not say that. That was not my intention, but I am trying to speed things up. I am concerned that we shall end up with a constitution underpinned by sharia law. Got that, Minister? Good.
Clearly, this is a key issue not only for us, but for the US. Senior US politicians have made clear their view that should the constitution for Iraq result in an Islamist republic, there would be no way that the US could keep its forces in Iraq a moment longer; that would be politically unacceptable. I want to know from the Minister the United Kingdom's view. Do we take the same position? Have the Government made such an assessment? What would happen next should that development unfortunately occur?
We are all aware of the vast sums that the US has allocated for reconstruction in Iraq and that that is tied fundamentally to US business. We are also aware of charges that have been levelled about how such contracts have been awarded. They were supposedly negotiated, but there are claims of a different means of allocation—for example, that Halliburton, the company once led by the US Vice-President, has been found to have vastly overcharged its client for the services that it supposedly provided. Even worse are the recent reports of corruption and bribery on top of the cronyism with which we have become familiar. I raise that point with the Minister.
UK taxpayers are contributing quite a large amount of money to the reconstruction process in Iraq. Perhaps the sum is not as big as that being contributed by the US, but it is certainly significant in our terms. I am sad to say, however, that UK firms appear to have been generally sidelined in their attempts to win contracts from the Americans in the effort to reconstruct Iraq. I think the expression used in Iraq is that the UK process for awarding contracts was "stupidly fair" compared with the way in which the Americans are tying their reconstruction budget to their own firms.
Can the Minister confirm that such is the desperate situation with regard to UK firms' inability to win any projects in Iraq that a trade Minister recently sent out this message, which was quoted in The Guardian:
"All ministers in the government who are in frequent touch with their US opposite numbers"
need
"to ensure that the US administration are in no doubt about the political importance we attach to UK firms being seen to contribute actively to the reconstruction process"?
The result, however, has been an absolute no—a big fat zero—which is of great concern.
Finally, I want to pick up on the concerns about corruption. Those of us who read The Sunday Times will be aware that, last weekend, some rather startling and far-reaching allegations were made that the CPA had been awarding contracts "improperly" on the basis of receiving bribes from companies, which then fail to deliver the project. The allegations are quite horrifying. Such behaviour is, I believe, illegal in British industry, as
80WH
I am sure it is in US industry, whether it occurs in our own country or overseas. I want to hear from the Minister whether he has picked up on that point and what our Government are doing to ensure that the reconstruction of Iraq, which is based to a degree on UK taxpayers' money, is kept free of corruption.
10.18 am
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Sir John Stanley) has done the House a service by initiating the debate. However, it may not have escaped the Minister's attention that, with the exception of the Father of the House, not a single Labour Member has seen fit to take part. I suspect that that is because there is large and growing embarrassment on the Labour Benches. Had they known then what they know now, many Labour Members would never have trooped into the Division Lobby with the Minister and his colleagues. The fact that not a single Labour Member apart from the Father of the House dares to show his face in this Chamber today is effective testament to that.
I agree with everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsboro ugh (Mr. Leigh) said in his excellent speech. The House should also appreciate that the effects of the war have spread far beyond Iraq. I chair the Select Committee on International Development. Many millions of people live on less than $1 a day in central and Latin America. However, as a consequence of the war and the need to divert funds to Iraq, the Department for International Development has withdrawn all aid from the whole of central and Latin America. Every DFID office in places such as Peru is being closed. The House did not fully take that on board. It happened when the new Secretary of State was taking over from Baroness Amos. We have now completely abandoned Latin America.
When Baroness Amos was Secretary of State she appeared before the International Development Committee. It is clear that no assumption made by the Government or the coalition before the invasion of Iraq has come good. She said that
"there was preparation, there was preparation for a range of possible crises, ranging from prolonged urban warfare through large population movements and widespread disruption of essential infrastructure. As it happened what we did see was widespread looting and a breakdown in law and order. which had not been anticipated and which led to serious problems."
With some understatement, she continued by saying that
"we planned for very specific scenarios which did not occur … I think where mistakes were made were in anticipation of what we thought the problems were going to be."
That is like a statement from a general confession; the coalition prepared for eventualities that did not happen and made absolutely no preparation for those that did.
Hoshyar Zabary, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, recently observed that the coalition's greatest error was to assume in international law the role of an "occupying power." Reference has been made to United Nations

81WH
Security Council resolution 1483. The Iraqi Foreign Minister is a Kurd. The coalition is putting its trust in him. He has said:
"I reminded Tony Blair that we have pleaded with his senior officials that this language would be catastrophic. The concept of occupation instead of liberation would change the minds of the people … everything we proposed was rejected. They did not have faith in the Iraqis."
We have a coalition that fails to get United Nations support; when it does get that support, it is simply to assert the US and UK military as occupiers. The coalition rejected all the advice it received, even that which came from Iraqis whom it was purporting to trust and to put into positions of responsibility.
A year after the downfall of Saddam Hussein, it is difficult to credit how little sensitivity there is towards the Iraqis among some US soldiers. Over Easter, American soldiers who had arrested some Iraqis and bound their hands in plastic restraints were quoted as saying:
"We picked up these guys for wearing black … we are under orders to arrest anyone dressed in black."
My experience in Islamic countries is that Muslim pilgrims frequently wear black. In Iraq, Shi'ite pilgrims wear black. It may have escaped the attention of the coalition commanding officers that hundreds of thousands of Shi'ite Muslims were converging on Iraq's twin holy cities of Najaf and Karbala for the Shi'ite festival of Arba-Een.
Such cultural insensitivity and heavy-handedness is part of the reason why, for the first time, the coalition is facing the twin threats of Sunni insurgents and Sadr's Shi'ite gunmen. No wonder on Good Friday, the Foreign Secretary was obliged to observe on "The World at One" that
"there is no doubt that the situation is very serious and it is the most serious that we have faced."
Ministers in the Foreign Office would have done well to take heed of the remarks of my right hon. Friend Lord Hurd of Westwell, a distinguished Foreign Secretary under whom I was privileged to serve when he held that office. He said:
"You really don't win hearts and minds by filling hospitals and mortuaries."
Haifa Sangana, an Iraqi novelist and a former political prisoner of the Ba'ath regime observed that
"ordinary Iraqi people are appalled at the way in which the coalition Provisional Council have seemingly been watching in silence while Iraqis have been killed ".
About 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the start of the conflict, and although most of the governing council's members were once victims of Saddam's regimes they now seem to turn a blind eye to the violation of human rights by occupying troops.
One of the first things that the coalition provisional authority did was to issue a memorandum to remove the jurisdiction of Iraqi courts over any coalition personnel in both civil and criminal matters. Amnesty International recently produced a report. There was a time when Labour Members used to quote what that
82WH
organisation said, but they no longer do. That report states:
"Coalition forces appear in many cases to be using the climate of violence to justify violating the very human rights standards they are supposed to be upholding. They have shot Iraqis dead during demos, tortured and ill treated prisoners, arrested people arbitrarily and held them indefinitely, demolished houses in acts of revenge and collective punishment "
Senator Kerry described the June deadline for a handover of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi Government as a fiction; he said that it was an arbitrary decision that had
"almost certainly been affected by the elections schedule."
Those of us who voted against the war on the grounds that it did not have the authority of the United Nations can only sadly observe that far from striking a blow against terrorism, the invasion of Iraq seems to have unleashed the very forces of extremism that it was supposed to destroy.
During the Easter recess, we watched sadly as the situation in Iraq became blacker by the day, and often by the hour. Dozens of Iraqis have been killed or injured, lives of coalition troops have been lost, foreigners have been kidnapped and any scintilla of a suggestion of coalition forces being peacekeepers has been blown away; they are now clearly occupiers.
Did I dream that President Bush, some months ago, stood on the deck of US warship Abraham Lincoln to announce the end of all major military operations, beneath a banner claiming, "Mission accomplished"? Bizarrely, whatever the body count, the situation seems continuously to be one of "mission accomplished." On Good Friday, US General Sanchez, the No. 2 US military commander in Iraq, observed that
"a new dawn is approaching."
That is what US military commanders were telling us exactly a year ago.
When it suited the United States and, sadly, the United Kingdom, they ignored the United Nations. Now, apparently, Washington is lobbying countries to commit troops to protect UN personnel in the hope of convincing the UN to return to Baghdad to help organise elections and to finalise the constitution after the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi Government. Not surprisingly, neither Kofi Annan, who withdrew his staff from Iraq last October after an attack on UN headquarters had killed 22 people, including his representative, Sergio de Mello, nor individual member states are now rushing forward to endorse that suggestion. One cannot simply pick and choose when one seeks the help of the UN.
A year after coalition troops entered Baghdad, there are only 12 hours of electricity a day and there is more sewage in the streets. Why have the coalition forces failed to restore the basic necessities of life, such as power and water, for the people of Iraq? After 30 years of disastrous wars and the brutality of Saddam Hussein, the vast majority of Iraqis simply wanted to get back to normal life. All the US and the UK had to do was to get the relatively efficient Iraqi administration up and running again, and they have not done that. Few in Iraq will necessarily have been celebrating the anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein on 9 April, because what, in reality, have they to celebrate?

83WH
The Economist endorsed President Bush in the 2000 election and unequivocally supported the war against Iraq. Yet it was obliged to observe on 1 April that
"the war was one of choice not necessity. Given that, it was foolish to exaggerate Saddam's weaponry, downright misleading to imply a link between the Iraqi leader and A1 Qaeda and hubristic to do so little to prepare for post war reconstruction … mistakes soon piled up: handing the running of the country to the Pentagon; letting looters rip out the infrastructure; disbanding the Iraqi army and dismissing outside efforts to help."
Iraq was invaded by a coalition of willing countries. However, it was not a coalition of willing countries acting with the authority of the UN. The invasion has always lacked legitimacy, and that lack of legitimacy has been a tragic flaw.
Commenting on the first Gulf war, Douglas Hurd, in his book "The Search for Peace" observes that after the invasion of Kuwait:
"There was a good deal of argument about the best means of ensuring legitimacy. Article 51 of the UN Charter provides an absolute right of self defence. International lawyers argue convincingly that this right extended to allies trying to rescue Kuwait, as well as to Kuwait itself."
Douglas Hurd notes, however, that the American Secretary of State, James Baker, argued, with his strong support, that "this was not enough." In their view they needed specific authorisation of their efforts by the Security Council. As Douglas Hurd observes:
"There were hazards in this course; there was the danger of Russian or Chinese vetoes, but more subtle was the danger of fudge and obscure wording in a Security Council Resolution which might prevent our Commanders in the field from doing what was necessary."
However, he concludes:
"We managed through firm diplomacy in New York and in capitals to avoid these dangers. The specific approval of the Security Council was a necessary condition of allied success."
What a pity that President Bush Jr. did not follow the foreign policy lead of his father.
Later this summer, the inquiry led by Lord Butler of Brockwell will report, following its review of the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction that was used by Ministers as a justification for war. At that point, the House will undoubtedly need to revisit the legal case for the war, because it seems clear that Ministers at the very least misunderstood the vocabulary, language and ambiguities of the intelligence that they sought to rely on.
10.30 am
Mr. Michael Moore: This has been a most impressive and powerful debate. In particular, I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Sir John Stanley), who opened with a powerful analysis of the reasons why we went to war and cogent arguments against the Government's actions then, and since. With great expertise, the right hon. Gentleman covered a lot of that ground, which does not need repetition from me, and there have been serious contributions from other hon. Members, to which we should pay tribute.
This morning's bombings in Basra set the awful scene for the debate. More innocents—children as well as adults—are dead and British forces have been stoned as
84WH
they try to assist the wounded. It is a truly grisly and awful situation. The bombings are the latest indication of the worsening security situation in Iraq. There is ever-stronger resistance in the so-called Sunni triangle and rising militancy among the Shi'as. Deaths and injuries to Iraqis are on the rise across the country and hostage taking and deaths among the international community are increasingly prevalent. The casualties to coalition forces are increasing every day. The coalition has been weakened by the withdrawal of troops by Spain and other countries and, sadly, trained Iraqi forces have proved unreliable recently.
The deteriorating security conditions make an already difficult political situation much worse. Ten weeks from today, power is due to be transferred to the interim Iraqi Government. At this late stage, it remains unclear how those new arrangements will work. The interim constitution has not found favour with the Shi'a community in particular and the detailed planning remains obscure.
Liberal Democrats firmly opposed the war in Iraq and believe that many of the current difficulties arise from the way in which it was prosecuted and the developments since. We believe equally firmly that we have a duty to continue to play a major role in the transition of Iraq to a new democracy, but there are serious hurdles to overcome in achieving that goal.
We are increasingly concerned about the way in which the US military is handling the response to insurgency. The events of Fallujah suggest that any concept of proportionate response is in danger of being junked by the Americans. We condemn the attacks on US civilians and soldiers, as we do those against the nationals of any other country, but the scale of the civilian casualties has shocked everybody and it looks more and more as if the coalition is returning to a full-scale war footing. That is not the way to win hearts and minds or to prepare for the first meaningful steps towards a sovereign, democratic Iraq. In all dealings with the United States, the British must urge restraint.
The coalition faces both opportunity and necessity to open up the process in Iraq to broader international support. We have argued since the declaration of the end of the war that the United Nations should have a leading role in the transition process. Mr. Brahimi's efforts to find a way through to a sustainable political situation in Iraq need all the support they can get. He urgently needs a security resolution that will promote the timetable of the constitutional process, underpin the legitimacy of the current proposals and provide ways to monitor the implementation of the timetable.
The transition must be credible in Iraq and internationally if there is to be any prospect of a successful conclusion. That means that, in Iraq, they must believe that there will be a transfer of power to the Iraqi people, and not just a regime providing cover for a continued occupation. It also means that other countries will be able to see the prospect of real change legitimised by the international community and will increase the prospect of sharing the security burdens with many more countries.
Clearly, there will be a requirement for a substantial military presence in Iraq for some time to come. We expect that the existing coalition partners will continue to have the largest role in the security set-up. However,

85WH
there must be a clear status of forces agreement with the new transitional authority and clear aims for the military operations. It must be stated that the forces are there to promote the rule of law and facilitate the construction and development of democratic institutions. It must be made clear how the UK will discharge its obligations after 30 June. Currently, we are being asked to take the situation on trust. That is no longer enough.
We have a huge responsibility in that country and to its people. We have a massive responsibility to our armed forces. However, we appear to be back at the edge of a precipice. Unless a credible, sustainable plan is endorsed by the United Nations with some urgency, the increasingly dire security situation will deteriorate further. What is that plan?
10.36 am
Mr. Gary Streeter: I begin by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Sir John Stanley), who made such a powerful speech with such expertise and set out the background to our reasons for going to war. I shall touch on that in a moment and then deal with some of the political and security issues on the ground.
The Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore), made an admirably brief contribution. I will do the same, because the Minister has been asked a lot of questions and I want to give him plenty of time to deal with them, particularly as powerful speeches have been made by my hon. Friends the Members for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) and for Banbury (Tony Baldry), which, together with the opening speech, covered much of the ground that needs to be covered.
I want to make five points, and I hope to make them in five minutes flat. The reasons why we went to war must not be allowed to drift away. It is not just Labour Members who have the right to have a grievance about how we were taken into this battle. I voted for the war; therefore, I voted to send many of my constituents, including Royal Marines and Navy personnel, to war. I voted to send my son-in-law to war three months after he married my daughter. I did so for one primary reason: I believed the Prime Minister. I say to the House today that I will not make that mistake again.
First, it is not just a question of what I believed at the time. As the Archbishop of Canterbury warned in his speech yesterday, there is now an issue of trust and confidence. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Mailing said, this will happen again. We need to deal with this matter. It will not drift away. There will come a time when either this Prime Minister, or a successor to him, will ask the British people and the House to vote to send our troops to war. We need to deal with the issues arising out of the reasons for doing so in this instance. We hope that the Butler inquiry will get to the bottom of this, although we are not that confident that it will. The Minister must understand the strength of feeling about this issue.
Secondly, the Conservative party supported this military action. We still do. I part company from the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell)—although we all respect him as Father of the House—in saying that it would be madness to withdraw. We have to see
86WH
this though; there is no plan B. We must help Iraq to attain a pluralistic, peaceful and prosperous democracy. The Conservative party remains committed to that enterprise.
Mr. Dalyell: Might it not also be madness to stay?
Mr. Streeter: There is no question but that it is difficult to stay. However, I believe that to withdraw would create chaos and carnage. We cannot seriously contemplate that. We must see it through.
Thirdly, it is one thing for the US Administration to be lashed by the usual suspects and its perpetual critics. However, this Government need to know—as does the Minister—and the US Administration must recognise that there are growing concerns, even from its friends, about US tactics on the ground in Iraq. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Mailing mentioned the tactics in the early days in Fallujah and Najaf coupled with the sense that there is a disproportionate use of force and cultural insensitivity. There is a sense that these things are not helping. We need to know from the Minister the extent to which the British Government are being candid friends to the Bush Administration. Are we saying those things to them loud and clear?
I was interested to hear Sir Michael Jackson's comments yesterday to the Defence Committee. He went as far as he could in suggesting that there was a real difference of approach on the ground in Iraq between US and British troops. We need to know that the Government are being a candid friend and raising those issues with the US Administration. I speak as a pro-American friend of America. If we are not careful, we will store up a huge problem for the future.
Fourthly, as many have said, we are now 10 weeks away from the handover arrangements. We need to know much more about them. Can the Minister give an update on the Brahimi report? Can we build on the outline that we have been given? We need to know that proposals for the selection of the new Government are well in hand, and that there will be adequate consultation. I would like to know whether the Government will be consulted about the Brahimi plan before it is implemented. We need the handover to succeed.
In the hope that we can get through the current security problems and get beyond the handover to put in place an administration that can lead Iraq towards a proper election in late 2005, we need institutions and buildings to start to take shape in Iraq. What role does Britain intend to play, either through the global opportunities fund or the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, in building long-term capacity in Iraq to ensure a move towards democracy, a strong, civil society, and institutions that can support Iraq?
That takes us back to the most serious charge of all, which many have rightly made; that there was a complete absence of a proper, post-conflict reconstruction plan for Iraq. That is now freely admitted by the outgoing Secretary of State for International Development. Is it not clear that, in the past 12 months, the US-UK coalition has made it up as it went along? Does not that amount to a serious failure by the Government in respect of British foreign policy, and should not they rightly be held to account?
10.42 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Bill Rammell): First, I thank my opposite numbers on the Front Bench for being sufficiently brief to enable me to answer the many points made in this wide-ranging debate. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Sir John Stanley) on raising what remain exceedingly important issues, which should concern all of us.
I am not convinced that any of us who came to this debate will change our views by the time we leave it; that is the nature of this historic conflict, and I think that that will continue to be the case. Nevertheless, it is important that we discuss the issues, and it is right that the actions of the Government and the coalition be properly scrutinised.
However, I start by expressing my deep condolences to those affected by the appalling attack in Basra yesterday; an estimated 50 Iraqi civilians died. Those attacks were clearly undertaken by people opposed to democracy. I hope that there is no division of view on that issue. It is the first time that an attack on that scale has taken place in Basra. I am confident that the vast majority of Iraqis in Basra do not support those actions, and there is evidence for that in what happened after a suicide bombing attack last month. A crowd that witnessed the incident went mad—for want of a better phrase—and took the law into its own hands against the perpetrator. Both that and the opinion poll evidence, which I will come to later, fundamentally demonstrate that, whatever the actions and views of a minority in Iraq, the overwhelming majority support the moves towards democracy, stability and reconstruction.
It is a reality that, despite continuing terrorist attacks, and notwithstanding the difficult security situation in parts of Iraq, we have made significant progress. The political process of transition remains on course. As the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing acknowledges and supports, the coalition is committed to the handover of power to an Iraqi interim Government on 30 June. Elections will be held by January 2005. The terrorists will continue to do what they do, but I do not believe that they will succeed.
The increased role being taken by the United Nations will help significantly and we support the Iraqi governing council's request for the UN to help to build consensus in Iraq during the transitional period and to provide technical assistance. As was made clear in America last week by President Bush and the Prime Minister, we are open to the idea of a new UN Security Council resolution supporting the new authority. Key elements of that resolution would be to welcome the new political arrangements, clarify and support the UN's role and modify the mandate of the multinational force.
One hon. Member—I forget which—said that they hoped that in summing up I would not read from a Foreign Office brief but would answer the questions; that is what I will attempt to do. I shall start with the comments made by the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing. He started by saying that this conflict with Iraq was unique because no event on the ground constituted an invasion and that there was nothing like the invasion that took place in advance of the first Gulf war. By implication, that comment omits
88WH
the fact that the UN resolutions adopted unanimously by the Security Council at the end of the first Gulf war involved commitments that Iraq had to undertake to conclude that war. For 12 years, Iraq transparently defied the will of the UN and the international community by failing to respond to those resolutions.
I shall come on to the question of our intelligence material, but rather than looking at what this Government or the American Government said, we should look at Hans Blix's 173-page dossier, which was presented to the Security Council in March 2003. Saddam and his regime wilfully failed to respond to those 173 pages of unanswered questions, and that was the reason, after the unanimous adoption of resolution 1441, for deciding to go to war. The resolutions were there and the Iraqi authorities wilfully failed to make the necessary commitments; that was why we went to war.
The right hon. Gentleman made much of the 45-minute claim in the September 2002 dossier and there is no single issue in recent times on which there has been more rewriting of history subsequent to the events. To listen to the right hon. Gentleman and to other commentators, one would believe that the 45-minute claim was the central and most compelling reason for deciding to go to war. Let us look at the facts. That piece of intelligence was mentioned by the Prime Minister once in his statement to the House on 28 September and was not mentioned by him again in any statement or debate in the House. It was mentioned by no one in the crucial debate on the decision to go to war on 18 March 2003. Between 24 September and 29 May 2003, it was raised only twice in almost 40,000 written questions in the House of Commons and not once in almost 5,000 oral questions.
Sir John Stanley: I find this line of argument ridiculous. Surely, the reason why nobody mentioned this matter is that people believed the 45-minute claim because it came from the Prime Minister. When the Prime Minister makes such a claim, who are we on the Back Benches to dispute it?
Mr. Rammell: With the greatest respect, and for want of a better phrase, do me a favour. If that claim was such a compelling argument and the key reason for going to war, and given that there was so much opposition from all parties, do hon. Members not think that there would have been repeated questions about it? There was no such questioning because that claim was not the compelling reason for going to war. The reason for that decision was the unanimously adopted UN resolution 1441, which gave Saddam a last chance to comply. He and his regime failed to do so.
I also listened carefully to what the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing said about our motivation for taking the decision to go to war, and he stopped just short of questioning our integrity. All I will say to hon. Members who take that view is that three separate, independent inquiries have looked at the issues, the evidence and the key allegation that either dishonestly or in some other way we misled people about the nature of the intelligence information. Those three separate inquiries. held by the all-party Foreign Affairs and Intelligence and Security Committees and by Lord Hutton, concluded that we took reasonable decisions based on the evidence in front of us.

89WH
Nevertheless, there are questions about the intelligence that need to be addressed. As the Prime Minister made clear, there is a genuine debate to be had about weapons of mass destruction and the intelligence. That is why we agreed to establish the Butler inquiry to review and consider the intelligence information that we received. I believe that that was the right decision and we should await the outcome of those deliberations.
The right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malting raised several matters relating to the situation on the ground in Iraq. He started by saying that there was a huge political misjudgement by the coalition authority in arresting one of Mr. al-Sadr's aides. However, the facts and the evidence of what has happened in recent weeks show that the right hon. Gentleman has made a fundamental misjudgement. Iraqi prosecutors pursuing the case of the murder of Ayatollah Abdul Majid alKhoei, the moderate Shi'a cleric, in April 2003, have rightly pushed for the arrest of a number of suspects, including al-Sadr himself.
Mustafa al-Yaqoubi, one of al-Sadr's deputies, was picked up by members of the multinational force on 3 April. That act was one of the excuses that al-Sadr used to spark off widespread violence and illegal acts across Iraq. I ask the right hon. Gentleman, what was the coalition provisional authority to do in such circumstances? Ignore the evidence before it? Ignore the fact that the Iraqi authorities, on behalf of Iraqi people, were seeking a prosecution? It would have been completely untenable to act in that way and the coalition provisional authority was right to undertake those actions in the circumstances.
Al-Sadr has been edging towards confrontation for some time; his supporters, especially his illegal militia, the Mehdi army, have been intimidating the local population of several cities—illegally occupying public buildings, abusing women at universities and attacking shopkeepers—but I am not aware that such issues have been referred to in debates or reported in the media coverage of the events in recent weeks. Although we face a difficult situation, al-Sadr's support, while vocal and violent, is limited and the vast majority of the Shi'a population oppose his actions and consider him an insignificant, low-ranking religious rabble-rouser.
Mr. Jon Owen Jones: If that gentleman is insignificant and has so little support, why has he not been arrested?
Mr. Rammell: Because we are trying to act responsibly in the circumstances and to ensure that the situation is not inflamed. We recognise that military action alone is not a solution and we are sensitive to the risks of a backlash against military action. We therefore need a twin-track approach, which is what the coalition authorities are rightly pursuing, but political negotiations, backed up with reconstruction efforts, will succeed only if all parties are committed to a peaceful solution. That is what we are trying to pursue.
The right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing said that the CPA is at best tolerated and at worst hated by Iraqis. I fundamentally reject that allegation. Do not listen to Ministers who have been to Iraq and had direct contact with Iraqis; look at the evidence of a series of opinion polls, which verify the views of ordinary Iraqis.
90WH
In the most recent poll, more than 50 per cent. said that their lives have improved since a year ago and almost 70 per cent. said that they expect their lives to get better. Other opinion polls show majority support for the CPA's actions in liberating Iraq and a clear majority who want the CPA to remain while the security situation is resolved.
That independent, verifiable evidence of the views of ordinary Iraqis is completely inconsistent with the right hon. Gentleman's accusation that the CPA is at best tolerated and at worst hated. I am sure that the CPA is hated by a small minority who do not want Iraq to move towards democracy, but that is not the view of the majority of Iraqis. Nevertheless, I accept that we have to do everything in our power to convince all Iraqis of the integrity of our actions. That is something that we are very much determined to do.
I respect the integrity, passion and commitment shown by the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), on this and other issues, but I sometimes disagree with his judgment. When he calls for a withdrawal of CPA forces at this stage I fundamentally disagree with him, as that would allow an extreme minority in Iraq to prevail. Such action would be unethical, irresponsible and lacking in credibility, and it would give a boost to extremists and violently aggressive regimes around the world.
Let me deal with the comments made by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) on the interim administration and what will happen post-30 June. The Iraqi governing council wrote to the UN inviting it to advise on the form of the interim caretaker Government and on preparations for elections. There are two UN teams on the ground in Iraq. Mr. Brahimi is leading on the political process, and Ms Perelli on elections. In many senses, the key event is not 30 June for the caretaker Government, but the January elections. We need to remember that the caretaker Government are only temporary for seven months. All that was set out in Mr. Brahimi's report and statement of 14 April. The IGC will confirm the shape of the caretaker Government in an annexe to the transitional administrative law following the UN's advice.
On who will vet and approve the process, it will be up to Iraqis and the UN to determine the individuals. It is clear that the Iraqis want a technocratic council of ministers, and the IGC as a body will dissolve on 30 June, although some members may serve in a different function in the caretaker Government. We will put our views forward. We will urge a more representative structure, administrative certainty and a clear change from 30 June. Mr. Brahimi is in New York briefing the Secretary-General. There will be a further report in May, which I am confident will be in full time to enable the change to take place on 30 June.
The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Chidgey) welcomed what he called our belated conversion to the UN. Whatever view hon. Members take of this Government and our Prime Minister, we have gone out of our way from the beginning of the conflict to try to involve the UN at every turn, both in the run-up to conflict and in subsequent actions. The hon. Gentleman also referred to sharia law. Islam will be the official state religion and it is to be considered a source of legislation, but not the sole one. Significantly, the IGC recently

91WH
specifically reversed IGC order 137, which had given a much more important and supreme role to sharia law. He should take some comfort from that.
Finally, the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) castigated the Government for our actions in taking this country to war. It may or may not be the case that we were justified in taking the action that we did, but I happen to believe fundamentally that we were justified. He offered his critique, but will he ponder on the role and responsibility of the official Opposition in these circumstances? If he reads in Hansard all the debates that took place in the run-up to the conflict, he will see that in no sense did the official Opposition act as a brake on or scrutinise the Government's actions. In fact, they urged the Government to move sooner, further and faster on the decision to go to war.
Tony Baldry: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Rammell: No, I do not have time. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues bear some responsibility for that decision to go to war.
Tony Baldry: The person who led us in no longer leads us.
Mr. Rammell: That is a convenient view, but that person's statements and actions were supported by the vast majority of Conservative MPs. Progress is being made. We need to remain committed and ensure that we achieve an Iraq that is free, democratic and fair for the vast majority of Iraqis.

Tuberculosis
11 am
John Barrett: For many people in this country, tuberculosis is something from the past. Many young people do not know what it is. It is something that people used to suffer from in this country. Many older people often remember when it was a problem and are glad that it is now only a bad memory. However, while we might not be seeing too much sign of TB at first hand in this country, what is happening elsewhere in the world, and also here in the UK, deserves much greater attention. I am glad to have initiated this debate, and I am delighted to see that the Secretary of State is present to respond to it. I know that he shares my concerns.
During the early 20th century, TB was the leading cause of death from infectious disease in the UK. The same was true in much of Europe and the USA. As social conditions improved, it became increasingly rare. Although it is commonly associated with poverty and overcrowding, it can affect anyone. The world has witnessed an increase in the problem, and over the past 10 years we have seen it return in the UK. There were over 7,000 cases in 2002, and in some parts of London cases have risen by 80 per cent. It is hard to believe that one area of London has a TB rate that is higher than China's.
As I walked into the building this morning, I met my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Mrs. Brooke). She told me of her own experience of suffering from TB, and of her horror when she discovered that her children would not be able to get the BCG vaccination because of a shortage in her area a few years ago. Although that does not provide 100 per cent. protection, it is still seen by many as the best way of minimising risk in the UK. She said that few people thought that the issue of the global control of TB related to the UK, but when friends and family have suffered or are suffering it brings it home that we are part of that global community. Members on both sides of the House have gone public about having suffered from TB in the past.
The British Medical Association has pointed out that although a high incidence of TB is linked to areas with high numbers of immigrants, it is the poverty and overcrowding suffered by many of them after their arrival rather than their physical health that causes the problem. Surprisingly, the health of many of them worsens after they enter the UK. The problem of TB is back, and it is right here on our doorstep. Another issue that we will have to deal with is that some doctors also think that TB is a problem of the past, and misdiagnosis is easy. One famous case in the USA was when Eleanor Roosevelt fell ill and went to Massachusetts general hospital where she died, undiagnosed, of TB. What we are seeing in the UK is a tiny tip of a very large iceberg. Worldwide, that iceberg sinks the equivalent of three or four Titanics every single day.
What is TB? Anyone who is breathing can get tuberculosis. All it takes for bacteria to be released into the air is for someone with TB to sneeze, cough or even just talk. Those bacteria can hang around for up to six hours and anyone can breathe in that air, allowing the

93WH
rod-shaped bacteria to travel down into the lung. The body reacts and white blood cells surround the bacteria.
When the bacteria are contained inside microscopic lesions, the individual has inactive—or latent—TB and cannot give it to anyone else. It is estimated that 2 billion people—a third of the world's population—are latently infected. HIV multiplies by a hundredfold the likelihood that a person with latent TB will develop the active disease. If I have time. I will talk about the increased problems of HIV and TB.
If the immune system is compromised—if the sufferer is HIV-positive or is weaker in some other way—more bacteria are produced and thousands of bacteria can spread throughout the lungs. That is active TB. Everyone around the infected person can then be infected, and it can spread to other parts of the body such as the spine.
Without any treatment, TB will take its time to kill a patient. The victim will lose weight. find it impossible to breathe, suffer night sweats, cough up lots of blood and in the end will either suffocate or drown in their own blood. That is a gruesome end. Left untreated, 50 per cent. of TB patients will die within five years. The most tragic aspect of the matter is that so many are suffering when it is so easy to cure. There are tried and tested methods, and the drugs cost only about $11 per patient.
I have touched on the situation in the UK; I should like to place on record the scale of the problem worldwide before I go on to consider what can be done about it. Every year, TB kills about 2 million people in the developing world. Some 7 to 8 million people become sick with TB every year. Some 3 million TB cases occur in south-east Asia. More than 250,000 TB cases per year occur in eastern Europe, and 8 million people develop active TB every year. Each of those active cases can affect between 10 and 15 people just by breathing.
Almost everyone could have and should have been cured. The best way to prevent TB is to treat and cure those who already have it. TB kills 5.000 people a day, equivalent to 15 jumbo jets crashing. More people die every day of TB than died on 11 September in the attack on the World Trade Centre.
As I said earlier, the problem can be cured and the approach known as the DOTS strategy was found to be the best way forward. That is the directly observed treatment short course, and on a recent trip to India, the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) and I saw first hand how the strategy was put into place and how effective it was; I will touch on that later.
The World Health Organisation has reported that more than 10 million people have been successfully treated since 1994. DOTS works by making patients take their medication under supervision and by coordinating Government health workers' and patients' fight against the disease. Five elements make up the DOTS strategy. One is political commitment, which means not only obtaining funding from Government and local authorities, but involving key decision makers nationally and locally. Everyone has a stake in the project and everyone benefits from its success.
Case detection is carried out by sputum smear microscopy, SSM. The hon. Member for Leicester, East and I can now both identify active TB under a
94WH
microscope. We feel suitably qualified as participants in the course. We have been able to identify the small, red. active TB viruses. What follows detection is the standard drug regime, which has now been proved successful. The drugs have been identified, and if patients take them regularly and are observed taking them, they can take the full course lasting six months.
That can mean chasing up people who have started the course. If a person does not turn up, somebody is sent out to track down the patient and make sure that they take their prescribed drugs. If they do not take them, or if they feel better halfway through the course, other problems can develop. Most patients are expected to come in on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday to take their course. The drugs come in small bubble packs. It is vital that there should be no missed doses.
It costs only $11 for a six-month dose, but if people break off their course they can develop drug-resistant TB, which can cost much more to treat. There also has to be a regular supply of drugs, the lack of which was a problem in the past. Before the DOTS strategy was implemented, people were given the prescription for a certain amount of the drugs. However, when they were halfway through their course, they would go back to the chemist and find that there were no drugs available to complete the course.
The DOTS scheme identifies sufficient drugs for one patient, which are placed in a cardboard box with the patient's name on it, so that when the patient goes to the clinic, the box can be opened; they then know that when they start the course there are enough drugs to complete it. They are then more inclined to finish a complete course because they know that it is unlikely to fall apart halfway through.
TB quickly becomes resistant to drugs if treatment is inadequate; for example, if the drugs are interrupted or run out. It is then almost certain that patients will develop multi-drug-resistant TB. Treatment for MDR TB costs more than 100 times as much as the initial treatment, and the drugs have to be taken for four times longer. If I have time, I hope to say something about MDR TB, which is a growing problem in eastern Europe, particularly in some of the EU accession states.
The fifth and final aspect of the DOTS programme is the recording and reporting system that must be put in place. Health workers and observers who watch their patients take their drugs develop a system that stops people slipping through the net. It is relatively easy to quantify the success of DOTS, unlike the fight against many diseases. It is easy to provide the statistics that say how successful the fight against TB has been. The DOTS strategy is a huge success, and the Department for International Development must be congratulated on playing its part.
Along with the hon. Member for Leicester, East, I was at a recent meeting with the Secretary of State and the Minister regarding the funding of the DFID India programme and the possible ending of a very successful project in Andhra Pradesh. Hopefully the Secretary of State will be able to say something today about plans for the future of the funding of the programme in India, especially as there is one project that has given hope to so many and could be replicated elsewhere. It would be sad to see that project come to an end, especially when there is money that has been allocated but is as yet

95WH
unspent. It might be that if slightly more time were given in which to spend the money, it could last for longer. As I said, DFID must be congratulated on committing more than £20 million between 2000 and 2005. The concern in Andhra Pradesh is that the excellent programme that they have should be built on and that it should not come to an end.
The situation in India is generally stark. It has the world's highest number of TB cases, involving more than 4.5 million people. Foreign aid and debt relief also have a major part to play in the fight against TB; the disease is intimately linked to poverty. Again, credit where it is due, the Government are moving in the right direction on the issue.
The recording of the success of the DOTS strategy is relatively easy, because the statistics are recorded in each hospital or medical centre. The WHO targets for 2005 are 70 per cent. case detection and for 85 per cent. of those cases to be cured. There is a long way to go; only 32 per cent. of TB patients worldwide are being treated by the DOTS programme, or at least that was the case in 2001. In some countries coverage is rising fast. For example, in Brazil it has increased from a low base of 7 per cent. to 32 per cent. in only four years.
It is easier to list the countries where TB is not an issue than those in which it is. Nowhere can ignore the problem. North America, Europe, Australia and Japan constitute most of the world that has a low incidence of TB, but the USA and Italy have had problems and outbreaks, as we have had in the United Kingdom. The increased number of people who travel by plane means that TB crops up everywhere. We all have a vested interest in its global control. For those who ask why we are so interested in what is happening elsewhere, we answer that as well as reducing the suffering abroad we can prevent it at home.
A quick run through some of the countries where infectious cases are being treated using DOTS is contained in the report card that was produced by the WHO. It covers countries such as Vietnam, South Africa, the Philippines, Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, India, Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Brazil, Russia and many others. Twenty-two of the world's poorest countries account for 80 per cent. of its TB cases. DFID's work is rightly poverty-focused, and few diseases are more poverty-focused than TB.
While there is good news, it is worrying that in some countries the problem is worsening. I mentioned the problem of drug-resistant TB and the possible threat to the EU. Drug-resistant TB presents one of the most difficult challenges, but with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with the Harvard medical school and the WHO, the fightback has started.
In the largest ever study of drug-resistant TB, the WHO examined 63 countries and more than 60,000 patients worldwide. MDR TB rates were 10 times the average in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which are all countries from which we expect increased migration to the UK from 1 May. The only way to deal with the issue is through investment in global TB prevention.
There are positive indicators. There is an increased flow of funding through the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, a flow of anti-TB drugs
96WH
through the global drug facility and a decreased TB incidence rate in the American, Mediterranean and south-east Asia regions. I urge the Department for International Development to play its part in helping to develop new vaccines, which are needed now but will more desperately be required in years to come. The problem is well documented, and the solution is tried and tested. I look forward to hearing from the Secretary of State about the part that his Department can play in the war against tuberculosis.
11.15 am
The Secretary of State for International Development (Hilary Benn): I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) for initiating this important and timely debate. I know, from the discussions that he referred to during his speech, that he has a personal interest in this matter, as does my hon. Friend the Member for. Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). Both of them recently visited India and saw an excellent programme that my Department is helping to support. I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate them on their newly found microscopic skills, which show how the talents of Members of this House spread far and wide.
I shall begin with the programme that we discussed when we met recently. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West will remember, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for International Development and I undertook to reflect on the points that were made. We have not yet made a decision about what will happen when the current project comes to an end, and we need to talk to the Indian Government about that. We have promised that we will respond to the hon. Gentleman and to my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East, and we shall do so. I am grateful for the comments about the quality of that programme, which is an example of the contribution that DFID is making to tackle the problem of TB around the world.
As we have heard, 2 million people a year die of TB. It disproportionately attacks poor people: it is a disease of poverty that is made worse by poverty. Some 92 per cent. of cases and deaths occur in developing countries, and infection transmits more readily in the conditions of poverty, where people face overcrowding, inadequate ventilation and not having enough food to eat. Once they are infected, poor people are more vulnerable to economic effects, because if they cannot work, they cannot get an income. They therefore have less to spend on food, treatment and supporting their families. It is a vicious cycle that affects all parts of their lives.
I learned more about the problem of TB and the challenges of trying to treat it from the first visit that I paid to Africa as a DFID Minister in November 2001, when I was Under-Secretary of State. I got off the plane in Lilongwe and went straight to what is known locally as the Bottom hospital to visit its TB treatment centre. In the course of that morning, and during a visit to the slums of Lilongwe, I learned exactly what can be done to treat TB. I also learned about the problems that people with the disease face.
The treatment centre had recently moved to the DOTS—directly observed treatment short course—system. As I recall, the TB ward had six or seven beds. The doctor said that if I had come three months before,

97WH
I would have seen 30 people in the room—seven in the beds and the rest sleeping on corners or the floor. However, the centre had moved to the DOTS programme, which means that patients can be treated at home.
I also learned that people wanting to go to the hospital for testing had to give up a day's pay and find the bus fare to get them there. Despite their low incomes, they had to repeat the whole process to return for the results of the sputum sample and the microscopy that had been undertaken, and they then had to find a friend or family member who was prepared to observe the treatment.
For those able to do all that, the system works, and the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West was right about the benefits of that approach. However, when I went to the slum area, I found that, for many people who could not afford to make the journey to the Bottom hospital, the alternative was a private provider who had set up in that part of Lilongwe. For those who could not afford the cost of seeing the private provider, the alternative was to go to the local kiosk and buy a cough sweet. At the bottom of the chain of "treatment" was the act of buying something simple to deal with the symptoms without treating the TB itself.
That crash-course lesson in the economics of health care choice—or, to be more accurate, in the lack of such choice—for people living in poverty in Lilongwe in Malawi opened my eyes to the scale of the problem and to the practical difficulties that poor people can face in accessing treatment.
John Barrett: When I visited that hospital, I was struck by the optimism there, but I was also aware that the health service workers themselves suffered from TB and HIV. Could the Secretary of State say anything about the impact that we have on these countries when we recruit their staff?
Hilary Benn: The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the code of practice that the Department of Health has drawn up, which makes it clear that the NHS will not recruit directly from poor countries and further reduce the capacity of their health service staff. Malawi is probably the most pressing example because of TB, but particularly because of HIV/AIDS. It lacks the capacity in many areas to carry on with the job of providing services and running the Government because so many nurses, doctors, police officers, members of the armed forces, teachers and civil servants are dying of AIDS. We need to address that major capacity problem in Malawi.
As we discussed in Select Committee yesterday afternoon, the fundamental problem for health service workers is the push factor that leads people to leave developing countries and take their professional knowledge and skills to earn a better living elsewhere, in much better conditions. Those issues have to be addressed in the long term, if we are going to make a difference. That is why the considerable investment of resources that DFID has put in to support better health services—£1.5 billion since 1997—is the best long-term contribution that we can make to help developing country Governments tackle the problem that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West has rightly identified.
98WH
The World Health Organisation estimates that, between 2002 and 2020, approximately 1 billion people will be newly infected with TB. It says that more than 150 million people will get sick, and that 36 million will die of the disease if we cannot make better progress in tackling the epidemic. In 1993, the organisation declared TB a global emergency. It is an emergency that affects a small number of countries in particular: 22 countries account for 80 per cent. of the global TB burden.
It is a problem that is getting worse. One of the reasons is HIV/AIDS. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West talked about the interrelationship between HIV/ AIDS and the growth of TB. The other reason—the second point to which he referred—is the growth of multi-drug-resistant TB. That arises either because patients do not complete their treatment programmes or because the drugs themselves are not of a sufficient standard. It is a particular problem in the former Soviet Union, especially among the prisoner population, where infection rates for multi-drug-resistant TB are extremely high.
One challenge that we will have to face together is the cost of treating TB, as it is so expensive. The hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that in the early 1990s the United States spent $1 billion on treating an outbreak of multi-drug-resistant TB in New York. That is a lot of money in the context of the scale of the epidemic that we are talking about. It is important that we should respond.
A certain amount of progress has been made towards the targets for 2005 set by the World Health Assembly for global TB control efforts—to detect 70 per cent. of TB cases and to treat successfully 85 per cent. of detected cases—but much remains to be done if we are to achieve those common goals.
In 2002, an estimated 37 per cent. of new smear-positive cases were notified under the DOTS programme, an increase from 27 per cent. in 2001 and halfway towards the 2005 target. In other words, progress is being made, especially in some high-burden countries such as India, which the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West recently visited. However, even with those encouraging recent trends, we expect the case detection rate to be only 50 per cent. by 2005. In other words, the target will be missed. That is another reason why we must intensify our efforts to deal with the problem.
The Stop TB partnership aims to do precisely that by encouraging social and political action to stop the spread of TB around the world. The independent external evaluation of the partnership that was undertaken in 2003 found that there had been real achievements, including sustaining a broad network of partners that commands support. Under the elements of the DOTS programme, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West spoke about the importance of political leadership, and he is right. Whether we are talking about TB, HIV/AIDS or the other problems that developing countries face, political leadership above all else is required to find the means and the will to tackle the problem. The partnership also achieved heightened political commitment and support for the global plan to stop TB, and has done work to highlight developments in new diagnostics, drugs and vaccines. It is important that we build on that.

99WH
We have seen the development of global partnerships and have put a great deal of effort into supporting them. I have talked about Stop TB, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has also been established. So far, DFID has committed itself to contributing $280 million to the fund up to 2008. About 17 per cent. of the resources disbursed from the fund so far have been in response to proposals to fight TB. We have put in £2 million to support the work of the Stop TB partnership, and to help its co-ordination efforts. That is alongside the other funding that we have put in, but more will undoubtedly be required—a big challenge for the international community. One reason why we are strongly encouraging other donor partners to consider the international finance facility—the proposal made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give us the potential as a world to double development aid over the next few years—is that this is one issue that requires additional financing to enable real progress to be made.
The action that needs to be taken in order to make a real difference in tackling the scourge of TB is now reasonably clear, but we need to get on and make it happen. We need to increase funding levels and strengthen public health services, because if a village or community does not have such a service, the DOTS programme cannot be administered and drugs cannot be provided to tackle multi-drug-resistant TB. More staff resources are needed: although money is a constraint, the sheer lack of staff is also an issue. Inadequate health facilities are real obstacles to progress, and we need to fund and investigate further new technologies and treatments.
We know, from our experience in London, of the problems of TB control, and we need a concerted international effort, working across borders, if we are to make progress. DFID will remain committed to that goal, but it is above all the responsibility of the international community collectively to ensure that we will the means, the resources and the political commitment to make progress in tackling this terrible disease.
11.29 am
Sitting suspended until Two o'clock.

Prvilege (Correspondence)
2 pm
Mr. Andrew Dismore: This debate has an intriguing title, and a few people have asked me what it is about. I hope that as my remarks progress people will understand what my concerns are and the implications not only for correspondence with local authorities but more generally.
My original worries arose from the fact that all my correspondence with Barnet council officers, no matter how senior or junior, is copied to council "cabinet members", as they call themselves, for the relevant department. When I started to investigate the issue, I found that that practice commenced soon after the Conservatives gained control of Barnet at the local elections two years ago, but that it now happens more systematically, with every letter copied. The introduction of those arrangements coincided—perhaps it was a coincidence, perhaps not—with the Conservative Barnet council establishing its new "cabinet office".
Barnet council's cabinet office was established last year and has two "non-political" members of staff—a full-time cabinet adviser and a part-time cabinet secretary. The part-time cabinet secretary is truly non-political, but the cabinet adviser is Dr. David O'Brien, former Conservative political assistant at Surrey, Swindon and Carlisle, whose doctoral thesis was entitled, "Interpreting New Labour". There is little chance of finding out exactly what they do, but they admit to being responsible for keeping cabinet members' diaries, responding to correspondence, dealing with casework, writing to all petition signatories, speech writing, and providing overall guidance to the cabinet on policy and direction. The borough treasurer gives the cost of the cabinet office service as £50,000, and I question whether that is a good use of money given the significant cuts that Barnet has introduced.
I have no objections in principle to the unit or to it carrying out the activities that I have described—as long as that is all that it does—except for the fact that Dr. O'Brien's post should not be classed as non-political. What concerns me is the extent of the unit's role in monitoring correspondence between the council and Members of Parliament and between councillors, especially opposition councilors, and officers, on behalf of cabinet members.
You may ask, Mr. Deputy Speaker, why we should worry. Like most active hon. Members, I am regularly out and about meeting constituents who raise complaints and problems with me and I receive vast amounts of correspondence. An increasing number of the issues raised, especially since Barnet went Conservative, concern problems with local authority services. Constituents expect me to raise those issues fearlessly with the local authority. Of course, if the subject were highly political, such as the high level of council tax under Barnet Conservatives or the appalling cuts in support for the elderly or the disabled, I would naturally write either directly to the cabinet member councillor concerned, the director of service, or the chief executive. In that event, I would expect the letter to be seen by the relevant politicians.

101WH
We are on opposite sides of a political world, and on a political issue I would expect a political reply approved or written by the relevant council cabinet member. However, I fail to understand why cabinet members need to see every letter that I send, for example complaining of a broken pavement or a pothole, requesting traffic calming for a residential street, raising a housing repair, or the need for somebody to move house, or the poor standard of street cleaning, or asking for information about or objecting to a minor planning application. More important, why do they need to see every reply that a council officer, no matter how junior, sends to me? There are no obvious policy implications in the correspondence. Council policy is well set out on those issues. They are straightforward operational questions that do not require any political input.
Before I came to this House, I was leader of the Labour group on Westminster city council. I was a member of that council for most of the reign of terror of the gerrymandering Dame Shirley Porter. Even in those days, our correspondence as opposition councillors was not monitored to this degree.
My experience of those difficult years as the leader of an opposition group leads me to be extremely suspicious of what is going on in Barnet council. I believe that it is developing Dame Shirley Porter-style control-freakery at its worst. It is adopting her methods. They were designed to keep officers in line and under control, and to influence the way in which they approached correspondence—and perhaps to look at it a little less sympathetically if it came from opposition people. They were also designed to ensure that officers gave a political line on issues that were not really Political with a big P. Usually, they would attempt to find a way of blaming others for the council's failings—or was the motivation to enable cabinet members to piggy-back on work done by Labour MPs and councillors by responding to residents direct or taking over the casework?
I know of a couple of examples of that happening. Councillor Brian Coleman is the cabinet member with responsibility for the environment, the deputy leader, a Greater London authority member, and the spokesman for the Tory party on fire service issues. He holds about half a dozen other jobs. He is up for re-election in June, and he will probably be defeated. I am concerned that he is using correspondence from the opposition. I do not believe that he is doing so because he is a nosey-parker or a gossip, although I think that he is those things. I think that he knows what he is doing—he is using that correspondence for political ends. He is the Tory group's ideologue and he is trying to achieve political advantage unfairly from casework raised by Members of Parliament. I believe that he is behind attempts to create a Dame Shirley Porter-style regime, which was branded at the time by the district auditor in Westminster as creating a climate of fear.
I do not say that idly. Councillor Coleman has form with regard to riding roughshod over correct democratic procedures. He has a reputation for failing to consult and to listen to people. One of his early acts was to reopen a road in my constituency—Partingdale lane. He did so against the wishes of local residents. He was criticised by a judge for not consulting properly, and the review against the council succeeded.
102WH
The leader of the council has had to disown Councillor Coleman on a number of occasions as a semi-detached member of the Conservative group, most recently over his attack on Middlesex university, which he branded as a four-letter word beginning with C. I cannot repeat it because it is an unparliamentary word. His comment was immediately disowned by the leader of the council, who pointed out that the council sent staff to Middlesex university for training. Apparently, Councillor Coleman's main criticism of Middlesex university was that it takes too many foreign students.
I raised my concerns over the treatment of my correspondence with Barnet council's chief executive. A few weeks later, I received a reply from Mr. Geoff Lustig, the borough's solicitor. He stated:
"The copyright in a letter (and by corollary an e-mail) belongs to the sender not to the receiver. Whilst the receiver of the letter/ e-mail may not copy it without the consent of the sender, he may communicate the information obtained from reading it, unless the letter/e-mail is of a private and confidential character.
Therefore, you are acting within your general legal rights to ask that your e-mails are not copied. However, you cannot prevent the information gleaned from those communications from being passed on, unless private and confidential.
The next point to consider is whether we, as Council employees, can agree generally not to pass on to the elected Members of the Council information gleaned from or copies of letters/e-mails received from a third party.
The answer to that question has, I believe, to be "no". We are employed by the Council and the sovereign decision making body of the Council is the assembly of 63 elected councillors (Cabinet for executive matters)."
The political reality is that the sovereign decision-making body is the executive cabinet.
"Those councillors, additionally, have the right both legally and constitutionally to require disclosure of information which is relevant to their role as councillors. Neither members of the public nor Members of Parliament write to a council employee in his/her individual capacity, but rather write to him/her as a servant of the council. Exceptionally, particular correspondence will be of a nature that makes it inappropriate for the recipient Officer to share other than to a select few specified individuals e.g. whistleblowing allegations. However, in the main, where correspondence is sent to an individual Officer, acting in the course of his duties, in my opinion, it is sent to the Council corporately. Therefore, there is neither breach of copyright nor of confidentiality if the letter is passed on within the Council."
He goes on to the final bullet point:
"There does, of course, have to be some judgement on the part of Officers concerning what needs to be shared and what doesn't. It is not the Officers role to let Cabinet Members know what their political opponents are raising queries about, unless it can reasonably be said to fall within a policy area for which the Cabinet Member is responsible and he/she can reasonably be said to have a need to be consulted or informed of a proposed response."
If that is what is happening—if discretion is being exercised, and some thought is being given to what needs to be copied and what does not—I will not make such a fuss, but, unfortunately, that is not happening. Every single item is routinely copied. Cabinet members

103WH
know what we political opponents are asking about. There is no consideration of whether correspondence should be copied.
Mrs. Angela Browning: Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether he uses the wording recommended by the House authorities in respect of data protection on all his correspondence?
Mr. Dismore: The hon. Lady raises the question of data protection. which I am coming to now.
The problem to which I referred raises issues of confidentiality, not only in general, but in the context of the Data Protection Act 1998. I am grateful to the Library for its brief on the issue, which refers to the Data Protection (Processing of Sensitive Personal Data) (Elected Representatives) Order 2002. That change in the law came about due to the concerns of hon. Members that their casework correspondence was not exempt from the strict requirements of the 1998 Act except when they had the explicit authority of the constituent. It was recognised that it was often difficult to get that explicit consent.
The order makes use of the power under schedule 3 of the 1998 Act enabling the Lord Chancellor to add to the list of circumstances in which the processing of sensitive personal information is allowed. The order applies to Members of Parliament and various other elected representatives, including elected members of local authorities.
Two main functions of the order apply. The first gives the relevant person, or someone acting with their authority, the authorisation necessary under the 1998 Act to process sensitive personal information without having to establish the explicit consent normally required by the Act. Secondly, the order gives others—for example, agencies or organisations that are contacted by the elected representative, such as local authorities—the authority to disclose sensitive personal information, without having to obtain the explicit consent of the individual concerned, to the Member or councillor where that is necessary to help them with its functions.
I am worried that what is happening with my correspondence is a routine breach of confidentiality. It is not geared towards helping with either my functions or those of the local authority, and is therefore probably a breach of the requirements of the order. That raises the question of why the council is copying on the correspondence. I simply do not believe that it is to help with their functions.
The Library brief says that the exemptions for elected members to enable the processing of data do not give Members of Parliament carte blanche to process constituents' personal details in a way that impinges on their rights and freedoms. Elected representatives still have to abide by the eight data protection principles in section 1 of the 1998 Act, including the duty to process data fairly and lawfully. By extension, of course, the same rules apply to the council.
I believe that the council is interfering with the rights and freedoms of my constituents, including their right to confidentiality. It cannot be said that what the council
104WH
is doing is fair or lawful under the overriding eight data protection principles. In other words, I do not believe that the council is exempt under the exemption provisions.
I raised the issue with the House authorities and I am particularly grateful to Mr. William Proctor, the Clerk of the Journals, for his help and advice. Mr. Proctor also informed me that, in recent months, a significant number of hon. Members have raised with him similar, varying concerns about aspects of constituency correspondence. Although I refer to Barnet council, the debate has a much wider application—it goes beyond local authorities into aspects of Government, too. The issue stretches beyond the political concerns that I have outlined and has serious legal implications for the privilege of correspondence, to which I will refer shortly, contempt of the House and freedom of information rules.
Many of the problems that I have described have been exacerbated by the progressive shift from the traditional, committee-based structure of local government towards a cabinet system. Although I am not opposed to that, it has complicated the relations between Members of this place and local officials and back-bench councillors. The problem highlights a further serious obstacle to our freedom as Members of the national legislature to do our job properly in serving our neighbourhoods. We need to be able to correspond with the council officers at the sharp end of delivering council services if we are to be able to assist our constituents in getting at the truth and finding solutions to their own, often personal and intimate problems. We must be able to correspond with them and our constituents with complete frankness and openness, without any fear that the local political executive will be checking not only what our correspondents and officers say, but what we say. We must be able to carry out what is now a vital function of the local Member of Parliament—probably the most important from our constituents' point of view—and be confident that we
will not find ourselves hauled before the courts for merely doing our jobs.
If there is a constant danger that our correspondence may be revealed or transmitted to the local council cabinet, there is a much greater risk of its contents being more widely disclosed, possibly for partisan reasons. It is in the nature of many of our communications with constituents that they make allegations against individuals and we are bound to retell those allegations in correspondence if we are to obtain a proper explanation.
Some allegations that are made by constituents may be true and may easily be substantiated but often a constituent may have misunderstood the circumstances, attributed improper motives where there were none, or occasionally merely vented their anger in forceful and inappropriate terms. I am sure that all of us have had rude letters of that sort from time to time. If there is a danger that any of that may be revealed to the outside world—and what Barnet council is doing means that there is—our ability to deal completely openly with councils to ascertain the truth of a case is already compromised. It is a question not just of the gossipy councillor but of whether, if the correspondence is spread more widely, it will become public information.

105WH
What happens in sensitive cases—there are many of them, as all hon. Members are all too well aware—if our correspondence on behalf of our constituents is revealed in the local media? Can we claim that correspondence is part and parcel of our job as Members of the sovereign legislature and therefore protected from action for libel or defamation by the privilege that is properly claimed by this place? In short, we cannot. We cannot rely at all on the protection of parliamentary privilege from defamation in an important and often sensitive area of our work—we can do so only if correspondence on constituency cases is specifically conducted in preparation for a formal proceeding of the House or a Committee of the House.
As some colleagues will be aware—although I suspect not many will—the much prized freedom of speech accorded under article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689 extends only and exclusively to the proceedings of the House and its formally constituted Committees. We have the protection of privilege against defamation neither in our correspondence with constituents, nor in correspondence with our local authorities and agencies, or Ministers of the Crown. Of course, there is a way around that. We could, when writing to these people, say, "We are asking for this information preparatory to tabling a parliamentary question or early-day motion". in which case it would fall within the privilege afforded by the Bill of Rights. However, that defeats the object, because by putting it in those terms, we may, if it comes to tabling a parliamentary question or early-day motion, be breaching the confidentiality that we are trying to protect.
Similarly, there is no absolute protection for those who write to us. I do not believe that it would be proper. desirable or sensible to allow individuals to use the cloak of parliamentary privilege to defame or to libel their fellows with impunity. Hon. Members should be aware that those who provide us with information are not protected from intimidation, molestation or punishment as a result of anything that they may tell us. If they gave formal evidence to a Committee of the House, they would enjoy such privileges.
The Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, of which I am proud to be a member, has just had a painstaking and thorough examination of the pressure that was alleged to have been put on a single witness before a Select Committee. We were able to return a verdict of guilty of contempt on a number of people, including no less a personage than the Lord Chancellor—that was the Wilaminsky case. In that circumstance, the individual concerned was a member of a public body. All the members of that body were asked to resign. She believed that she was put under a detriment because she had given evidence to the Select Committee. In fact, there was no detriment, in that she would have been treated the same. However, the correspondence and behaviour of those involved gave the appearance of her being subjected to a detriment, which led to the findings of contempt.
If an individual, whether a constituent or anybody within the jurisdiction, communicates with their constituency Member or any individual Member, they are not protected by those rules. The 22nd edition of "Erskine May", on page 129 puts it simply:
106WH
"protection is not afforded to informants, including constituents of Members of the House … who voluntarily and in their personal capacity provide information to Members, the question whether such information is subsequently used in proceedings in Parliament being immaterial."
Of course, the same applies to any council officer, particularly, unfortunately, if the officer is looking over his shoulder all the time knowing that his correspondence is being monitored. I could obtain protection from a council for such a council officer by using the process of saying that I want the information for my work on a Select Committee, for a parliamentary question or for an early-day motion. If such a person were to provide the information in response to a request that was along those lines, I suspect that they would have the protection afforded by parliamentary privilege and that, if their correspondence were interfered with or if they felt that they were under some sort of pressure to respond in a particular way, Barnet Council and its officers and members, for example, could possibly be guilty of contempt of Parliament. I think that it is using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut if I have to preface every one of my letters to the council with the comment that I am asking for information for those purposes in connection with parliamentary proceedings. If I were to do that, it might stop the council from taking action.
I could easily envisage a situation where council officers were put in such a position, if I were seeking information from the council on that basis. Then if the officer feels under pressure to reply in a particular way, or that he has been subject to disadvantage after providing information to me, even if that were not the case and he were just to feel it to be so, the chief executive, the leader or cabinet members of the council could find themselves unwittingly in contempt of Parliament. I say "unwittingly" because that was the position in relation to the Lord Chancellor.
While I would like nothing better than to see Councillor Coleman hauled up on a privilege charge before the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, so that I had to recuse myself from hearing the case, that is hardly a sensible way forward. Equally, the council officer transmitting the defamatory correspondence could be at risk of a personal libel action and they would not be protected by their role as a council officer.
Returning to the theme of defamation, Parliament must examine the extent of its privileges in the light of the modern reality of the work of a Member of this House. I acknowledge that on occasion the courts have regarded the informants of Members as enjoying qualified privilege of law. Normally, the courts would accept a similar defence in defamation proceedings against a Member. However, what does "qualified privilege" mean? Certainly it does not mean that we are protected from actions in the courts, but merely that, according to paragraph 110 of a report by the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in 1999:
"a member has a good defence to defamation proceedings so long as he acted without malice, that is, without some dishonest or improper motive."
That is all well and good, but if a case arises, it still has to be defended. Even though I understand that the House now operates an insurance scheme to provide some limited defence costs, that does not remove the worry, irritation and threat to the reputation of the

107WH
Member concerned. If any Member of the House were to talk to colleagues from almost any national Parliament in Europe about parliamentary privilege, most of them would be amazed at the lack of protection that is afforded to Members of the United Kingdom Parliament. The general rule in other national Parliaments and in the European Parliament is that Members have absolute protection from civil suit and, in some cases, from criminal prosecution in relation to all their activities arising from their membership of that Parliament.
Of course, that could go too far, as occasional instances of parliamentarians or even members of Government hiding behind privilege from criminal law demonstrate only too well. However, we have gone too far in the other direction, or have not progressed, by failing to provide any statutory protection for ourselves or our informants in the area of work that takes up the bulk of the time of most MPs.
We do not run what amounts to a combined ombudsman scheme, citizens advice bureau and counselling service as private individuals. We do so only because we represent our local communities, and those communities expect us to do that work as an important part of the job that they send us to Westminster to do. It is not a peripheral part of our job; in any job description for an MP, it would be included as one of our core functions.
In the past, the question of protection for Members' correspondence has been considered on several occasions by privileges committees and inquiries. In 1967 and 1977, the Privileges Committee agreed that at least Members' correspondence with Ministers should be covered by absolute privilege. In 1970, the Joint Committee on the Publication of Proceedings in Parliament recommended a new statutory definition of proceedings, which would have specifically included correspondence between Members, and between Members and Ministers
"for the purpose of enabling any Member … to carry out his functions as such."
Such a definition would not have covered the case of correspondence with local authorities and, in any case, would not have gone far enough. However, it would have provided greater certainty of protection against libel and defamation proceedings arising from the discussion of constituency cases with Ministers.
Nothing was done in response to any of those or similar reports. In 1999, the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege considered the matter again, and dismissed out of hand not only the wider extension of protection, which I believe is needed, but the more modest proposals of its predecessors.
Paragraphs 103 to 112 of that report are worth reading. They appear to reflect the interests and concerns not of the average Member of Parliament or their constituents, but of the Law Lord, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, who chaired the Committee. The report acknowledged that there was a problem, but argued that there was "insufficient evidence of difficulty". If absolute privilege were to be extended to all correspondence with Ministers, it asks, where would it all end?
108WH
The report accepts that the distinction between a Member's letter, which enjoys no absolute protection, and a Member's speech or parliamentary question, which does, "can be somewhat arbitrary". It takes comfort from the fact that the defence of qualified privilege
"seems to have enabled members of both Houses to carry out their functions satisfactorily"
but admits that qualified privilege is "less effective."
Most important, the members of the 1999 Joint Committee decided not to recommend the extension of absolute privilege either to communications with Ministers, or to Members' correspondence more generally, because
"this exceptional protection should remain confined to the core activities of Parliament, unless a pressing need is shown for an extension."
That is precisely my case—constituency work is, in practice, and should be recognised as one of the "core activities of Parliament", and one that is growing exponentially. We in this House all know that that is the case—most of their Lordships have no experience or understanding of the matter, or of the real nature of our jobs. Moreover, things have moved on since those reports were prepared. For example, the Data Protection Act did not exist at the time. Nor did the question of freedom of information. I believe that, as things stand under the present legislation on freedom of information, busybodies can ask for documentation that may be very personal to our constituents, while probing into central Government or local authority activities.
In November 2003. an interesting report was published by the Legislative Assembly of Queensland in Australia, to which I believe the Government of Queensland are due to respond soon. It is a weighty tome, and contains a good analysis of the problem facing today's politicians. Reading the report, my impression is that the problems facing Members of the Queensland legislature are similar to some of those that I have mentioned in my contribution this afternoon. As modern politicians, we should examine some of the recommendations that that report makes. It proposes a series of protections believed to be essential
"if members of the community are to communicate frankly and freely with their parliamentary representatives about matters of significant public or private concern."
The report states that the protections
"should achieve two main goals. Firstly, they should provide an appropriate level of immunity for disclosures to parliamentarians by members of the community, and action taken by members in response to those disclosures. Secondly,"—
and equally important—
"they should preserve the confidentiality of constituency communications."
There are a lot of worthwhile recommendations that the Government would do well to consider in that report.
I know that the Government are still considering what, if anything, to do about the 1999 Joint Committee. Some are calling for the full implementation of its recommendations and the introduction of a new privilege Bill. I urge my hon.

109WH
Friend the Minister and his ministerial colleagues to do one thing at least: not to take at face value what seems to me to be the over-complacent approach, of several years ago, to a matter that deserves the full consideration of Members of this House alone.
An inquiry into the question by a Committee would, I suggest, produce a very different answer. However, any such inquiry should consider wider concerns, too. It should consider all the issues that I have raised, legal and political, to ensure that we can do our job properly and effectively; that we can protect our constituents' privacy; that, equally important, we can ensure that those with whom we deal are themselves protected from undue influence and interference; and that we are able to respond to our constituents' problems fairly and openly, whether that involves correspondence with local authorities or local government departments. I raise those concerns not for my own protection, but to ensure that my constituents' cases are dealt with properly, effectively and fairly. I believe that that should be the objective of us all in this House.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps I should remind the House that it is common practice to start the first of the three winding-up speeches 30 minutes before completion. We have 29 minutes remaining.
2.31 pm
Sir Sydney Chapman: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am very grateful for that advice.
I must confess that I was intrigued—and that is the correct word—when I discovered from the Order Paper that the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) had secured this debate. I saw the hon. Gentleman in the Corridor before our proceedings started. I had not intended to speak, but he mentioned a borough that contains both our constituencies. We are neighbours: he is the hon. Member for Hendon and I am the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet. I feel impelled to intervene.
At the outset, I should say that the hon. Gentleman is a lawyer, while I certainly am not. He is a former leader of the opposition on Westminster city council, whereas I have never been a councillor in any tier of local authority. The hon. Gentleman has politicised the important issue that he has raised, and I do not blame him for that. I am sure that he mentioned Councillor Brian Coleman, who is not only a councillor on Barnet council—he is cabinet member for the environment—but the directly elected member for Barnet and Camden in the London assembly. I am sure that he will be very grateful for the publicity that he has been afforded.
The fact that I am not a lawyer will become absolutely apparent, but I want to raise a number of points. First, it is worth recording how Members of Parliament get in touch with their local councils when they receive a letter from a constituent. My practice is to write to the appropriate officer of the council rather than directly to the relevant cabinet member, although some people may do that. When I first came to this House in 1970, it was not unusual for the town clerk—I think that he is now called the chief executive of a local authority—to
110WH
request that hon. Members write directly to him on any issue. He would then send the letter on to the appropriate person.
Matters can be pursued in different ways. I have always taken up an issue with the appropriate officer, regardless of whether the council is Conservative or Labour. If that officer passes on the contents of my letter to his cabinet member, if that is the right phrase, or to any councillor. I am exceedingly grateful. Usually, I am looking for publicity in trying to right what I believe to be a wrong, or in taking up what I believe to be a genuine complaint.
In general terms, when the information in a case is sensitive, my hope is that the officer involved does not divulge more than absolutely necessary. In such cases, I would take the precaution of putting "Private and Confidential" on my letter, in the hope that the officer would use his or her discretion when deciding what part of the information ought to be disseminated to a wider field. Equally, council officers have written back to me about cases and asked me to treat some information confidentially. I respect that point of view, as would the hon. Member for Hendon.
I accept that cases vary, and I am fascinated to know the Minister's thoughts on such matters. The hon. Member for Hendon spoke eloquently, but quickly, so perhaps I did not understand correctly what he said. Legally, an officer of the council is an employee of that council. Presumably, the employer is the council itself or, in our case, the 63 councillors who represent 21 wards on Barnet council. Whether we like it or not, a council officer may be obliged to inform the appropriate member of the council, or all members of the council, of the matters raised in any letter that we write. To use the phrase employed by the hon. Member for Hendon, he is trying to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut. We politicians must be robust, and willing to accept that, when we take up an issue, it is thoroughly ventilated. If hon. Members will permit me to express a certain vanity, the more people who know about the issues that I take up with the council, the better.
I hope that my final point is germane to this interesting debate. When I reply to a constituent, I always have at the back of my mind that what I write in my letter could appear on the front page of the local newspaper. Therefore, I must be willing to accept that what I write could be made public. That is an important point to bear in mind, although I am modest enough to accept that I can hardly expect anything that I write to my constituents to appear in the national press.
This Chamber is grateful to the hon. Member for Hendon for raising the issue, and I shall listen with interest to what other hon. Members and the Minister have to say. We should keep a sense of proportion about the matter. Members of Parliament are in the public domain, and we should accept that what we say—with the exception of some sensitive matters that we take up on behalf of constituents—will be broadcast, at least throughout our constituencies.
2.38 pm
Mr. Colin Pickthall: My tale is tangential to the powerful speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore). It has nothing to do with Barnet. If it is too tangential, no doubt you

111WH
will rule me out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The debate coincides with an issue that I am wrestling with at the moment, so it was too much to resist.
A few weeks ago, my constituent Mr. McDerby, who is a firefighter, came to see me about a common problem. Next door to him is a garage service station, which has changed into a 24-hour outfit, bringing with it much trouble, noise, disruption and litter throughout the night. It has a fast-food shop, too. In response to my constituent's complaint, I wrote to the council asking about the licensing of the establishment and to the police inquiring what they were doing about the disruption in the middle of the night.
A couple of weeks later, Mr. McDerby came to see me again, bringing a letter he had received from Drallam and Glover Solicitors of Liverpool. It reads:
"Dear Mr McDerby
Re: 24 Hour Retail Licence at BP Garage, County Road, Ormskirk
It has been brought to our client's attention that you have been coordinating a petition which seeks to rescind the 24 hour licence at the premises named above. It has been further brought to our client's attention that you have sought to gain the support of the local MP, Colin Pickthall, in your endeavours to restrict the terms of my client's licence.
I wish to advise you, in the strongest possible terms, that my client considers your actions inflammatory and considers comments regarding the management of the premises to be unfounded and libellous.
I am therefore putting you on notice that, should your actions not cease immediately, my client will have no alternative but to pursue the matter through the Courts to seek recompense for any loss of trade and damage caused to his good name and reputation."
In the usual course of events such a solicitor's letter would be thrown in the bin, but had Mr. McDerby brought his petition for me to present in Parliament there would have been a clear breach of parliamentary privilege. The petition was going to the local council.
My concern is that the solicitors have bracketed together the question of the petition and Mr. McDerby's request for my help as his Member of Parliament as a reason for threatening court action. A citizen has sought help from his MP on a relatively straightforward complaint, not unlike hundreds of others that we all deal with every year. That request has resulted in a threat of court action. If that were to become a common occurrence it would paralyse MPs' constituency work. Constituents would be reluctant to consult us.
How did the garage owners and the solicitors get information about my letters to the council and the police? The council officer concerned or the policemen might have told them that there had been a complaint from the local MP and asked what was going to be done about it. I do not want to make too strong a point about that, but it is not easy to find out how the contents of my letters reached the garage owners.
I hope I am not being unduly sensitive in this matter, which seems to me to show a potential and actual danger to the citizen's access, without fear or threat, to his parliamentary representative. That should concern us all.
2.43 pm
John Mann: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) on securing the debate and on the elegant and informed way in which he introduced it. I, too, am not a lawyer. If I had to declare an interest it would be that, like my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall), I have a series of cases—involving, for example, planning, miners' compensation and local authority car parking—in which solicitors have threatened to sue me and my constituents. In all cases, threats have been made to attempt to stop the issue being pursued.
In my robust style, f have rebutted such threats. On a planning case, for example, I declared that I would expose the lack of insurance on various houses on a new build. My constituent was threatened with being sued if did so. It is my duty as a Member of Parliament to inform new residents coming into the area of any potential problems. I will advise any of my constituents who are buying houses on a floodplain to check that they can get full home insurance at comparative rates. That is an appropriate role for a Member of Parliament and I do not expect to be threatened with legal action for carrying out those actions, and neither do my constituents. Similarly, I do not expect to be challenged on the double charging in relation to miners' compensation, and neither do I expect my constituents, who may have to take legal action against solicitors and who contact the Law Society, to be challenged.
The interpretation of the Data Protection (Processing of Sensitive Personal Data) (Elected Representatives) Order 2002 is one of the devices being used in several cases, including those involving the local authority. That attempted defence is increasingly being used to confuse, hinder and stop the proper process of parliamentary representation. For example, the solicitors threatening me are also refusing to enter into correspondence because of their interpretation of the order. I have a range of such examples, because I throw the order back at people who refuse to allow me to represent my constituents.
The issue boils down to the definition of consent, and seek the Minister's clarification of the Government's view. If there is a matter to be resolved, what do the Government intend to do about it? If an individual asks to be represented by their Member of Parliament, and with due diligence and appropriateness the Member of Parliament takes the matter forward, he or she is representing that individual. For organisations such as local authorities to refuse to provide information in such cases would be wholly out of order and if the law in that respect needs tightening, it should be tightened. It is highly inappropriate if threats of litigation are made against Members of Parliament, as they have been against me: correspondence was copied to my constituent in an attempt to influence his willingness to pursue the case through my good self.
The best way to describe some actions taken by local authorities—I deal with several—is to use a real, but in this case theoretical, example of how I would take forward the Donnygate scenario involving Doncaster council, should such a case occur again. I remind hon. Members that Donnygate was a planning scandal. Councillors of all parties, developers and council officials were successfully prosecuted and jailed for what

113WH
could broadly be described as irregularities in the planning process. Only last week, three more people involved in the case were sent to prison.
One of my constituents is a key informant in the Donnygate case, so it would create a potentially major issue were my probing and challenging correspondence to the local authority involved to be automatically copied to the very councillors whose probity may be questioned. I seek the Minister's advice on how the law stands in that respect.
I give a more mundane example of some issues that may arise should correspondence be widely disseminated. I know of local councillors ringing up individuals who have contacted me for assistance and whom I am representing, and they attempt dually to represent them without the individuals requiring or requesting it. That is a breach of any natural process of representation. If I choose to take up an issue, which could be dealt with by a councillor, that is my prerogative as a Member of Parliament and it is my constituent's prerogative to choose to come to see me—my constituents may regard me as more effective.
However, constituents may choose to go to their local councillor because they regard him or her as more effective. Things can get even more complex in multi-member wards, where different parties are up for election in the same year. We can envisage a scenario in which three councillors might try to jump on an issue and pursue it, which is clearly not in the interests of the constituents. How local authorities and other public bodies handle sensitive information according to the Data Protection Act 1998 is becoming an ever greater issue.
I trust that the Minister will be able to clarify the situation. If there are restrictions on our ability as Members of Parliament to carry out our proper and due duty, as defined by any reasonable assumption of good practice by an elected representative, they need to be removed. We need the power, without the distractions that are being thrown around, to represent our constituents to the best of our ability and to give them the best result we can. I am interested to hear the responses of both Opposition parties and the Minister.
2.52 pm
Mr. Andrew Stunell: The debate has far exceeded my expectation in terms of interest, and I thank the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) for triggering it.
When a Labour Member attacks a Conservative local authority, it is something of a free ball for the Liberal Democrats. In snooker terms, it is a question of whether I go for the red ball or the blue ball. If I were ever to be locked in a barrack room and short of a lawyer, it is the hon. Member for Hendon whom I would want to join me. Equally, if I were not quite sure how many angels were on top of a pin, the same hon. Gentleman would be well suited to providing me with a number of different but equally intellectually sound answers.
Mr. Dismore: All I would say to the hon. Gentleman, in response to what I think was a backhanded compliment, is that if he were to repeat that allegation outside this place, it would be libellous.
Mr. Stunell: The hon. Gentleman has made my point admirably. In a moment, I will comment on the matters raised by the hon. Members for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall) and for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who made slightly different points.
The hon. Member for Hendon had complaints at two levels. First, there was the complaint about the organisation and staffing of the cabinet office of the London borough of Barnet. Frankly, that is not a matter for this House or this debate, although I have no doubt that it makes good stuff for the front page of, say, the "Barnet Chronicle". He conceded straight away that if it were a strategic issue involving the direction of the authority or the allocation of resources, he would, in any case, write to the relevant executive member. He seemed to think that that was entirely okay. What the hon. Gentleman was really complaining about were the non-strategic matters that he writes to the council about, such as the details of paving stones, streetlamps, overgrown hedges and so on. He is complaining about entirely the wrong things, and I shall develop that point in a moment.
The hon. Gentleman also spoke about the application of data protection. That is a more serious concern. I hope that the Minister will deal with the issues raised by not only the hon. Gentleman but the hon. Members for West Lancashire and for Bassetlaw.
We are talking about information given in good faith by a Member being passed to a third party, whether within or beyond an organisation, not with a view to satisfying the complainant or producing a solution—as might be the case if a director of social services passed information to a social caseworker for a briefing—but for an entirely different purpose that does not fall strictly within the local authority's remit. Passing on information with the aim of monitoring the number, severity, nature and geographic distribution of received social services complaints would be legitimate. However, to pass on information with a view to scoring a political point is not, and I hope that the Minister will give some attention to that element of the criticism made by the hon. Member for Hendon.
The hon. Gentleman had an entirely different complaint about the capacity of Members of Parliament to claim privilege in their communications both inside and outside the House. Significant people though we are, it is important that we do not become too pompous or precious. We should not claim for Members of Parliament privileges and exceptions that we would not want granted to other people. I am almost certain that the hon. Gentleman contributed to the public debate about the former hon. Member for Tatton and the House's decision to change the rules of privilege in that case. I am also sure that he had some strong comments to make about claims for exemption in the case of the London borough of Westminster. We have to be careful that in setting rules designed to make it easier for us in one direction, we do not inadvertently make difficulties in a completely different one.
It was a mistake to make it compulsory for local authorities to have an executive and cabinet system. That is having a profound effect on the internal political relationships of councillors, most of which is not for the best. Nevertheless, as a member of three different local authorities in my time, I know that it is important for a local authority to have political leadership. The current

115WH
legislation makes it a matter of faith that the executive councillors are in charge and are the decision takers. Whatever one feels about that political framework, it was set up by an Act of Parliament for which the hon. Member for Hendon voted. He cannot complain too much when the political leadership of Barnet, whatever its colour, leads, tries to keep a grip on what is happening in its borough and takes an interest in the matters that come before it.
Mr. John Taylor: I profoundly agree with the hon. Gentleman about the imposition of the cabinet system in local government, but I should like to ask him not a personal but a general question. As a general proposition, would he consider it appropriate, when a constituent first brings a problem to a Member of Parliament, for that MP to share the consideration of whether the problem is more susceptible to treatment by the MP or one of the constituent's locally elected councillors? Should that discrimination be made or thought given along those lines?
Mr. Stunell: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. but I remind him that there are 659 of us, none of us has a job description and we all do the job in a way that suits our constituents and us best. Every four or five years, we find out if we are right or not. I find it difficult to advocate a precise definition of our roles and the split between the work that we do and that which we believe local councillors should do.
I commend to the hon. Member for Hendon a document that is colloquially known as the Cheshire conventions, which was being developed by Cheshire county council when I was a member of it, but has been widely adopted in the 20 years since by a range of other authorities. That document deals with the distribution of information inside those authorities and tries to establish conventions on having Chinese walls. If there is a missing ingredient, it is the lack of understanding of what a Chinese wall in Barnet might be and of the channels of communication in, through and out of that authority.
As much as I think it important that Members of Parliament be able to carry out their business effectively, I am against the House taking away the right of councils to decide their internal procedures. The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir Sydney Chapman) pointed to the need for exceptions, for instance in the case of whistleblowing, and the hon. Member for Hendon made the same point. As the hon. Member for Bassetlaw pointed out, it is crucial in a case such as that in Doncaster that, if complaints of significant malpractice and wrongdoing are made, the accused should not be tipped off during the whistleblowing process. Given those obvious common-sense examples, a council ought to be free to arrange whatever internal procedures it thinks fit to progress fairly.
That brings me on to the question raised by the hon. Member for Hendon about expanding and extending parliamentary privilege. He conceded that a strategic question such as "Why have you cut £1 million from social services?" which is far more likely to be defamatory than "Why haven't you repaired the street lamp outside No. 26?" ought to go to the political
116WH
leadership of the local authority. Therefore, it is difficult to understand how expanding privilege or exempting us from defamation would help in the specific cases that he highlighted.
Mr. Dismore: The problem arises not necessarily when hon. Members make defamation allegations, but when a constituent brings an allegation to an hon. Member who then relays it to the local authority, that is, transmitting the defamation: the Member is potentially liable even though they are not making the allegation.
Mr. Stunell: I understand the distinction that the hon. Gentleman is making. I am not a lawyer, but it would be a perfectly adequate defence of good faith if one passed that allegation on to an appropriate investigating department or authority without putting it on the front page of a newspaper.
I shall now turn to the activities of Barnet council. I am amazed that Barnet council considers it worthwhile to circulate to its senior members the hundreds or possibly thousands of complaints that the hon. Member brings to its attention about paving stones and street lights. That cuts away the argument that the senior members are involved in the strategic management of the authority. I send roughly 1,000 letters to my local authority each year, and I can imagine the looks on the faces of my executive members if that torrent were put in front of them. I hope that the council has a wider purpose.
Mr. Dismore: That is the whole point.
Mr. Stunell: The hon. Gentleman says that that is the whole point. The council might have a wider purpose and I shall illustrate one example in which such a purpose may be beneficial—I am not saying that it is on this occasion, but I want the hon. Gentleman to understand that his paranoia might need modification. I briefly mentioned the example of ensuring that, when complaints are received about a particular department or service, someone at a strategic level decides whether there is a systematic pattern of failure. They may need to establish whether a section of the council is not delivering a service, whether a council is failing in a particular geographical area, or whether one aspect constantly causes grief. Is that not a sensible point that should be brought to the attention of members? I am surprised by what Barnet is doing, and I hope that it has a reasonable justification. I think that it has been clumsy and overbearing, but I do not believe that we should pass an Act of Parliament to stop it.
I do not know whether the hon. Member for Hendon has taken it upon himself to look at the cases of Chadwick v. Sheffield and of Strak v. Hyndburn. They are historic cases, but they laid down the need for council information to be open and to be explicitly available to people—to councillors and others outside the local authority. They also laid the foundations for access to information legislation and, in part at least, to the data protection legislation. In some ways, this debate would have been much more likely to have struck gold 20 or 25 years ago. I want Members to be able to do their job without let or hindrance, whatever their party. I also want to ensure that local authorities can do their job, whatever their party.

117WH
I will conclude by asking the Minister three questions. Does he accept that the Act that his Government introduced and imposed on local authorities that brought into existence the executive and cabinet system requires there to be a chain of command that stops with the executive member—and that therefore the complaint of the hon. Member for Hendon is, in effect, a consequence of that Act? Does he have any plans to extend or clarify the extent of privilege for Members of Parliament in their dealings with local authorities and other public bodies? That addresses the essence of the cases that the hon. Members for West Lancashire and for Bassetlaw brought to the Chamber's attention. Does the Minister also accept that the Data Protection (Processing of Sensitive Personal Data) (Elected Representatives) Order 2002 contains some ambiguities? It might be clear enough legally, but it is frequently ambiguously interpreted by public bodies with whom Members of Parliament correspond. That is a nuisance for Members. It should be tidied up, especially given the purpose of the order.
I entirely agree with the hon. Member for West Lancashire that it is outrageous that any solicitors should be offering to sue either him or his constituent for raising a petition against a local nuisance. I am sure that the courts would be as dismissive of such an action as this House.
3.8 pm
Mrs. Angela Browning: I am standing in for the shadow Leader of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald).
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) on bringing this matter to the attention of the Chamber. I think that this was an opportunity that he felt he could not miss. One got the tad of a hint that a press release in respect of Barnet council was already winging its way. He is looking very innocent, but we all know the way the game is played. However, I shall leave aside all the personality issues.
The hon. Gentleman's opening remarks about the way in which his correspondence is dealt with troubled me. As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) said, Members of Parliament have their own methods of working with their local authorities: how we deal with them, whatever their political persuasion, is down to us. There are no guidelines, but perhaps we can share best practice more. There may be an opportunity for the House to look at guidelines and to share experience and advice.
When I was elected in 1992, I took over from a very well respected Member who had been an MP for 32 years. Among the small amount of correspondence that he left for me was a standard letter that went as follows; "Dear whomever, I am afraid that this is not a parliamentary matter, it is very much a local government matter, and I refer you to your local council. Yours sincerely." We all wish that we could deal with what must amount to 30 per cent. of our postbag nowadays in that way, but we cannot do so. There are legitimate matters in respect of local authorities that we must take up.
Mr. John Taylor: I wish to be even-handed with the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) and with my hon. Friend. Having been a Member of Parliament for 21 years and never having received a letter from a solicitor, I have developed the practice of considering whether a problem brought to me is for me, as an MP, or whether it might be more appropriate to refer it to a councillor. I am talking about there being not a strict definition but an application of common sense. Does she accept that comment?
Mrs. Browning: That is exactly right. I do not treat my constituents' applications to me to do something about a local authority problem in the way in which it was treated many years ago, but we must use our judgment. For example, it would be wrong of Members of Parliament to pretend to have powers that we do not have. We must recognise that councillors of whatever political persuasion are democratically elected. They have their responsibilities in respect of individual planning applications, for example.
Sometimes, the general public believe that the council system is the same as the school system. If they do not receive the answer that they want from the local authority, they write to me thinking that I am the head girl and that I will bat the council around the head, so that they receive an answer. I point out to my constituents that I do not have that power. What I can do, however, is to draw the views of my constituents to the attention of the appropriate planning officer, so that those views are at least known when a decision is made.
I return to the essence of what the hon. Member for Hendon said at the beginning of the debate, which was that all his correspondence was conveyed to the appropriate councillor. I am sure that he agrees that the cabinet system of local government has not been helpful in such matters. It works differently from the old committee style. However, I regard the officers of a local authority as members of the civil service with whom I deal daily. I have the opportunity to talk to them and to councillors, whether they are my party councillors or opposition councillors, which I often do if they hold portfolios. There are other avenues to use, but it is for the individual Member of Parliament to decide how to proceed in their dealings with the council.
As with all of us, the correspondence that the hon. Gentleman sends to his council will be a mixture of letters from people, for example, those with urgent housing problems. In such cases, we may telephone the housing department at the local authority to try to enable a constituent who is facing homelessness to be rehoused. In the course of such cases, we become party to much personal information that is pertinent to the representations that we make on behalf of our constituents. Moreover, my area has a county-district structure and we cover matters such as potential child abuse cases that may involve the social services department. Given some information that we, as Members of Parliament, receive, we really tread on egg shells.
I intervened earlier to ask whether the hon. Gentleman added to his correspondence the advice of the House authorities, which was given to us nine months ago. I am referring to the wording that should be placed at the bottom of our routine correspondence when dealing with personal information and the

119WH
necessity to obtain a signed piece of paper in some cases, so that health authorities share medical information with us. The Minister may like to consider that best practice to see whether it could be better disseminated among Members of Parliament to protect us. I am advised by the Library that hon. Members
"had protection for their constituency correspondence, always provided that the channel of communication was a proper one for the transmission of a complaint or other defamatory comment, to the responsible authority, and that no malice was involved".
Mr. Dismore rose—
Mrs. Browning: I shall give way in a second. The advice goes on:
"But it must be stressed this is a common-law right based on case law; every case is different, and Members are open to continued challenge in the courts in this respect."
Although it is about five years since the Standards and Privileges Committee examined such matters in some detail, now might be the opportunity for the Committee to look again at such matters and to take soundings from Members of Parliament, although not necessarily for something to be put on the statute book, for which the hon. Member for Hendon asked. At the moment, I wish to reserve my opinion as to whether we need to go that far, but times are changing.
All the new legislation that is coming in, and particularly the interpretation of the Data Protection Act by statutory organisations and bodies, give us cause for concern. I try to take a belt-and-braces approach. I put that wording at the bottom of my letters. I get signatures of consent where possible. I never discuss an individual case with the press, even when constituents themselves have gone to the press, and I am always conscious of the information that I hold on my files. Perhaps we as Members need more information because of the nature and the breadth of the information that we hold.
I am moving away a little from the initial complaint that the hon. Member for Hendon raised. He would clearly like an answer to his complaint, but it is not for me to say how the problem with his council could be resolved. Some of the wider casework that we have heard about, in particular with Members of Parliament being threatened with solicitors' letters, is outrageous. Nothing should fetter us in doing our duty with the toolbox that we have in this House—whether we are presenting a petition to Parliament, tabling an early-day motion, or securing an Adjournment debate. Nothing should intimidate us in carrying out our responsibilities, or using our judgment about what is in our constituents' best interest.
In response to the hon. Members who have made personal contributions, I do not know whether they were talking about a try-on. I know that solicitors do try it on sometimes. They think that, if a solicitor's letter crosses somebody's desk, that person will shake with fear and trepidation. In my 12 years of experience, I have found that a piece of paper with the portcullis on the top makes people shake even more. I am sure that those hon. Members with their experience of this House have been able to help their constituents, and have not been intimidated. It probably ought to be exposed who
120WH
the solicitors are who have the temerity to threaten Members of Parliament. The Law Society should be informed of who they are and their practices.
Mr. Pickthall: May I make a slight correction? I was not threatened by lawyers. My constituent was threatened for approaching me.
Mrs. Browning: Third-party intimidation, I think they call that, but the same principles apply.
I have some sympathy for the Minister. Because things have moved on, in particular with the Data Protection Act, it would be timely for him to initiate, with the Leader of the House and appropriate Committees of this House, another look at the way in which Members of Parliament correspond and the way the law may impact on us today. He could look to introduce some best practice guidelines for Members of Parliament, which would provide some security and protection for Members when applying guidelines. Clearly, we all work as individuals, and we have different relationships with local authorities and the other agencies with which we deal when sorting out constituents' problems. Such a review would be timely.
When that exercise has been completed, it may become evident whether things need to be moved forward on the statute book, as the hon. Member for Hendon suggested. I think that that would be going too far at this stage, but I have an open mind. We cannot, however, just leave things as they are because the situation has moved on and we are all having different experiences of how the legislation and rules impact on us. I hope that the Minister will take on the views that have been aired today—I am sure that he will—even though only a small number of hon. Members are present. I am sure that our views reflect what the wider membership of this House has experienced in recent years.
3.19 pm
The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Phil Woolas): I start with the traditional congratulation of my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) on obtaining this debate and on drawing attention to this important matter. As I listened to the debate and the contributions moving on from the specifics raised by my hon. Friend, it struck me that this is one of those debates where the title does not suggest the importance of the subject. There is evidence in this debate of consensus among Members that something needs to be done. I share that view, as I shall explain.
My hon. Friend spoke very well. He has obviously researched the issue thoroughly, and his case was well argued, particularly as he was raising what could be interpreted as exclusively a party political issue, although it is not. He was in fact raising an important issue of principle.
I shall briefly respond to points made by other hon. Members. The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir Sydney Chapman), who shares a borough with my hon. Friend, mentioned the necessity for robustness among Members of Parliament, and the issue of how one handles correspondence. I think, and hope, that he agrees with the central point. which is that what is at

121WH
stake in the case raised—and, indeed, in other cases—is the use to which correspondence is put by recipients in the council. No one could seriously say that there are many instances in which directors and elected councillors should not be given information when they are solving a problem. An example was given of a managerial reason why some cases may legitimately be passed on.
To draw a parallel with the civil service and Ministers, all hon. Members would be outraged if Ministers were to use correspondence that Members sent them to pass on to their civil servants in a party political manner if it involved an individual case. That is a parallel that opens up the question of parliamentary privilege.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Mr. Pickthall) raised an important case, and mentioned the growing trend of intimidation of constituents by members of the legal profession, who are ever keen to make a buck. They are often referred to as ambulance chasers, but they chase other forms of business, too. I condemn that practice in clear terms and support him in his pursuance of the case of Mr. McDerby. My hon. Friend raised an important matter. If the case had been pursuant to a petition to Parliament or a parliamentary question, there would clearly have been a breach of privilege.
Interestingly, the Joint Committee report in 1999, to which many hon. Members have referred, which argued against extending privilege, referred to the 1967 report and drew a parallel that is pertinent: Members writing to Ministers asking a question on behalf of a constituent before tabling a parliamentary question. Of course, the letter to the Minister is not covered by privilege, but the parliamentary question is. The 1967 Committee concluded:
"The practical effect of this distinction seems to"
the
"Committee to be indefensible".
That is a parallel that I want to expand upon.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) mentioned threats of legal action that were made against him. I am aware of his work on the miners' compensation scheme. He raised the issue of dual representation. He pointed out that in some cases—we are all familiar with this: it is not just a party political issue—one's own councillors try to muscle in, particularly if there is an election on the horizon. Of course, a constituent may well he intimidated by an offer of help and may feel, particularly if the problem were in relation to a housing matter, or to do with council housing, that his or her case may be prejudiced by a refusal to allow that dual representation. Often, constituents come to Members of Parliament rather than councillors about council issues precisely because of such fears. They see Members of Parliament as independent.
The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) asked a number of questions and raised many important points. Again, it is the purpose behind the passing on of correspondence that is important; I think that he accepted that point. He drew our attention to the dangers of what the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor) has referred to, on the many Standing Committees on which I have served with him, as the law of the unintended consequence. In other words, there are other ways to skin a cat.
122WH
The hon. Member for Hazel Grove asked three specific questions, the first of which was whether the problem arises as a consequence of the cabinet system. I do not believe that it does. I can see parallels with committee chairs, leaders and deputy leaders, although perhaps the roots are different. The problem existed before that system. I agree with the analysis of the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning), which is that the problem arises as the world becomes more complex. She would say that that happens because of legislation, but I would say that legislation is the response to the complexity of the world. Nevertheless, the point is the same. My answer to the hon. Gentleman's first question is no.
Secondly, the hon. Gentleman asked whether there are any plans to consider extended privilege. I put it on record, in response to the debate, that there are. I will explain, in the brief time that I have, how I intend to do it.
Thirdly, the hon. Gentleman asked whether there are ambiguities in the implementation of the Data Protection (Processing of Sensitive Personal Data) (Elected Representatives) Order 2002. Clearly, there are. I agree with him. Although the lack of clarity is not in the order, there is clearly ambiguity in its implementation. That matter has been raised in the House during business questions on a number of occasions with regard to a number of public bodies, not just local authorities. Again I shall explain what I hope to do about that.
The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton asked whether we could consider guidelines to see how we could better promote the advice available from the House authorities. I accept that that needs to be done.
We have talked about our relationship with local authorities and councillors. In Wales, there is the question of Assembly Members, and in Scotland there are the Members of the Scottish Parliament. In Northern Ireland, the issue is much more complicated because of the political situation.
Mr. John Taylor: I feel that I am getting drawn further into this debate, having been a borough councillor, leader of a metropolitan county council, an MP and, dare I say it, a solicitor. I ask the Minister the same question that I asked the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning). Does he not think that in the normal, common-sense way of things, if a Member of Parliament is brought a problem by a constituent, it is worth while giving a moment's reflection to whether the problem may be more susceptible to handling by a councillor, rather than by the MP, or vice versa?
Mr. Woolas: I concur with that point. My predecessor Geoffrey Dickens taught me that. He had a sign in his office that said, "Pass this to councillor if appropriate". It was good advice from him, and it is good advice from the hon. Gentleman.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon focused on privilege as it applies to one part of our work: not to the proceedings in Parliament, which, as he said, are guaranteed absolute protection by article 9 of the Bill of Rights, but to an arguably equally important part of

123WH
Members' work—the correspondence that we conduct on behalf of our constituents with local authorities and other public authorities. As he pointed out, Members' correspondence is not considered to be part of parliamentary proceedings and can enjoy only qualified privilege. Therefore, there is a risk that Members might be subject to defamation proceedings, even though they would have a good defence as long as they acted without malice.
My hon. Friend outlined the point of the 2002 order regarding the exemptions of Members of Parliament from the 1998 Act. He drew attention to the 1999 report of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, to which I referred, which provides a wealth of information on Parliament's ancient rights and immunities. He thinks that we should reconsider that. I am happy to do so. I will seek the advice of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), Chairman of the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs, and the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), Chairman of the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges, as well as ministerial colleagues.

Churchfields School
3.30 pm
Ms Julia Drown: I wish to raise with my hon. Friend the Minister the process of deciding on specialist school status, and in particular the renewal or otherwise of that status. My concern arises because Churchfields school in my constituency was awarded specialist school status as a performing arts college in September 1999. It made a huge success of that, yet when it applied to have the status renewed from April 2004, all that success was apparently unrecognised and the school lost its designation.
The decision to de-designate Churchfields school was wrong and has, understandably, resulted in a loss of morale in the school. It will mean that the opportunities for students at Churchfields, and for the wider community in Swindon, are not maximised and that the great work that has been going on in the school is not properly rewarded. If Ministers have any powers to reverse that decision, they should do so now, but I have been told there are no such powers.
I do not want what has happened to Churchfields to happen to other schools or to Churchfields again, and that is why, in this debate today, I am asking the Minister to review the process of designating specialist schools so that either Ministers make the decision and take into account all the necessary factors, or those making the decision are charged with having a much wider view of the education and community benefits than they have at present.
The main complaint that I and the school share is that the huge achievements of the school as a performing arts college were not recognised in its application to continue as a specialist school. The one inspector who came to judge the school stayed for one day only. The school was recommended for de-designation and an appeal was considered on the basis not of further visits, but of the head teacher and two senior teachers presenting their case to an independent panel at the Department for Education and Skills. The panel seemed to be interested only in the number of five A to C grade GCSEs that the school had achieved. All they wanted to know about was why the percentage passes had not increased.
I recognise that GCSE qualifications are important, but it is just as important for people, particularly those who are disadvantaged or excluded from society, to learn, to be inspired and to achieve, be that in performing arts or elsewhere. Anyone who visits Churchfields school and sees its productions, or just walks into one of its performing arts classes, will see children, often from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds, thoroughly absorbed in their schooling. In dance, the school achieves what many others have failed to do: it makes boys as inspired by dance as girls are. One can see students who, in other schools, would have been excluded, keen to attend and to perform in art, music, dance and drama. Yet all that the appeal panel seemed interested in was why the school's GCSE results for 2001–03 had riot exceeded those in 2000.
The Government know that results are crude indicators and that added value should be looked at. Churchfields school's value-added performance has continued to improve over the past two years at both

125WH
key stages. The whole-school value-added improvements have also taken place in separate subject areas, most notably in the performing arts.
I recognise that, at a superficial level, the results look dramatic. In 2000, 42 per cent. of Churchfields students achieved five A to Cs. That fell to only 22 per cent. in 2001, rising to 31 per cent. in 2002 and 28 per cent. in 2003. However, any serious analysis of the situation at Churchfields school fully explains why there is an improving school underlying those statistics. The school is on target to achieve 36 per cent. five A to Cs this summer and more than 45 per cent. in the summer of 2005.
So what is the bigger explanation? Performing arts status was achieved in September 1999, at the very same time when the school completely changed because a neighbouring school—Oakfield school, which served the most disadvantaged part of my constituency and whose results in 2000 were 11 per cent. five A to Cs—closed. I opposed that closure, but Ministers confirmed the borough council's decision. Churchfields school took most of the pupils from that school. There was a destabilising of the school as a result of an influx of new students, a significant number of whom were disaffected and further disrupted by their previous school having been closed against their wishes.
Churchfields now serves one of the 10 per cent. most deprived council wards in the United Kingdom, and 17 per cent. of its students are entitled to free school meals, which is a higher figure than that for other specialist schools, where the average is 14 per cent. Churchfields has increasing numbers. Currently, 23 per cent. of pupils do not have English as their first language. The number of students on the special needs register has more than doubled, going from only 13 per cent. in 1998 to 30 per cent. in 2000.
However, the big increase in the size of the school and the fact that many of those joining it had special needs was not the only issue. Because of the major change for the school and other difficulties. Churchfields school was placed in special measures in January 2000. October 2001 saw the head teacher leave, and Swindon local education authority failed its Ofsted in 2001. October 2001 saw a new head teacher appointed, and within 13 months, by November 2002, the school had turned round and was removed from special measures. That turnaround was incredible and part of the achievement resulted from the work done and the boost that the school had been given by being a specialist school.
Against that background, the school's results are impressive. It would have seen even more improvements had the results of 22 children who were not educated at the school been excluded, but that seemed to count for nothing. Nor did the great improvement in dance GCSE results seem to count; there was a near 30 per cent. increase in passes between 2002 and 2003.
I fully anticipate that results will improve further over the next few years, but I would be even more confident if the school maintained its status as a specialist arts school. The £125,000 that it received each year as a specialist school was used well to expand students' opportunities and to inspire them to learn. The money was not spent only on the students; the whole community benefited. With the loss of that status, the
126WH
school's links with 10 primary schools—allowing them, for example, to do joint productions with key stage 2 and 3 students—will not be able to continue. We have had community carnivals and there has been work with special needs pupils, and that, too, will be threatened.
We in Swindon have one of the nine national dance schools and have used performing arts status well to bring professional dancers into the school. These include Banksi, who was brought up in Swindon and is a nationally renowned professional street dancer and breakdancer. He often revisits the town and never fails to reach out and raise the expectations of some of the most disadvantaged people in our community. Through dance, he and the Churchfields staff give youngsters the confidence and self-esteem that is too often sadly lacking in young people. Without that support. they could become aggressive and be excluded from our society.
The loss of status also means that there will be fewer students able to learn a musical instrument, a probable reduction in technical and support staff and an obvious reduction in learning opportunities both in the school and in partner schools and other organisations. There has already been a need to reduce arts staffing, the funding of artists in residence and facilitated resources.
The extra money that Churchfields had was used well. People could not get better value from specialist school status, either financially or, more importantly, in terms of the impact on students' lives. Because the school is doing everything that Ministers want to see in schools, particularly those that serve disadvantaged areas, it is clear that something went wrong with the decision. There should be something such as a three-year warning system before specialist school status is taken away, and realistic targets should be set, taking into account the circumstances of individual schools, so that any hardworking school that has achieved specialist school status will stay that way.
I also question whether the appeal decision should be taken by an independent panel rather than Ministers, who can consider the bigger picture. This is about supporting a school in a disadvantaged area that competes with schools elsewhere to be a success. It is hugely disappointing that a school of which the Government should be proud is seen by an independent panel to fail on crude indicators. In my mind, Churchfields school will continue to be a specialist school and performing arts college, and it will be one of which I am extremely proud.
I am encouraging the school to continue to work with others in the town in performing arts and other fields. It has made a strong application for artsmark gold and is currently applying for performing arts status again in two years' time. I hope that, by then, the Government will have changed the designation rules to ensure that schools such as this, which can succeed with specialist arts status, are allowed to do so. I do not want any school like Churchfields to go through the disappointment and loss of morale that results from the loss of specialist school status. That is why I appeal to the Minister to change the mechanism for this in the future.
3.40 pm
The Minister for School Standards (Mr. David Miliband): First, I offer my genuine congratulations to my hon. Friend on securing the debate and, more importantly, on her tireless prosecution of the case for Churchfields school and other schools in her constituency. We have talked about this at Education Questions. We have corresponded two or possibly three times about this. Her work on behalf of Churchfields is a real source of support and encouragement for the school. It has a relatively new head teacher, Mr. Steve Flavin, who is playing a critical role in both the school and some of the collaborative work that is going on between Churchfields and other schools in the constituency. The support from the wider community, including the MP, is of enormous help in taking the school forward in an obviously challenging time. That is recognised on all sides.
I want to talk about the specialist school programme and how it works, and about our approach to the re-designation process, and to add a few words about the specifics of the Churchfields case. I do not want to go into that too deeply because I do not know whether it is appropriate for the particular issues of an individual school to be advertised in quite such a public way. If my hon. Friend is keen for me to do that I will be happy to give further information in that area, but I do not want this to become a prosecution and defence of Churchfields school. It is in all our interests to support the school in its future development.
The importance of specialism and specialist status has been developed enormously over the last seven years. My hon. Friend will know that in 1997 there were just over 150 specialist schools, mainly in the technology area. There are now 1,700 specialist schools, spread across nine different specialisms. We are well on the way to the Government's ambition that every school in the country should become a specialist school and be re-designated as such.
The specialist schools programme is designed first to raise standards in the area of the specialism—the performing arts in this case—and secondly to raise standards across the school. Specialist schools deliver the whole of the national curriculum. It is an important part of the specialist schools programme that the development of a centre of excellence in one part of the curriculum should contribute to the raising of standards right across the curriculum. The third and particularly innovative aspect of the programme is the requirement that the specialist school contribute to the wider school community by partnering with five or six primary schools and/or with other secondary schools.
We know from the evidence of exam and test results, as well as from independent inspection by Ofsted and anecdotal evidence, the power that specialist status can offer in the development of school standards. I pay tribute to the work that is being done in specialist schools right around the country. The success of specialist schools—the premium in terms of exam results for all specialist schools is now about 7 per cent. on GSCE A to C grades—is explained by a number of factors. They include the challenge of becoming a specialist school, the requirement to engage with the wider community, to develop wider sponsorship and governor arrangements and to engage wider community partners.
128WH
Head teachers often say that specialism has been a tool for them to raise expectations for standards right across the school, not just in the area of specialism. It is an approach that could be characterised as one of challenge and support. In addition it brings some capital benefit, which has been used to good effect in many schools. The specialist schools programme is very much something for something. There is a capital benefit and a revenue benefit of £126 per pupil per year, and a capital investment of some £100,000. It is a challenging programme and there is a requirement, in spending public money, to ensure that the money is well spent and that it delivers what was set out at the beginning of the programme. That balance of support and investment on the one hand and challenge on the other is critical to our approach to re-designation—the second aspect on which I wanted to speak.
Specialist status has never been for life. It has always been renewed over four years through a process that is challenging and rigorous. This year 39 schools were not re-designated on the first time of asking. Virtually all of them appealed, and I think that I am right in saying that 32 gained their designation in the end. We take the process extremely seriously. There are two objectives to the process. One is to allow schools to review their progress and to build on it in the next four years. The other is to provide an informed challenge to the specialist schools that have not yet met their own targets, or that have significantly underperformed.
In that sense, re-designation is distinct from the initial process of becoming a specialist school, because after four years we expect specialism to be firmly embedded in the school and its community partners. That is why the specialist schools that apply for re-designation are assessed against three rigorous criteria. They are assessed first in relation to the objectives of the programme and the targets set by the school, to which my hon. Friend referred; secondly on improvement in academic performance, both in specialist subjects and across the school; and finally on the quality of the school and community plans submitted for the next four-year phase.
My hon. Friend was concerned about whether non-examination performance was considered in assessment. I can reassure her that at all stages in the re-designation process, non-examination as well as examination achievement was considered. At the final re-designation decision panel, the school showed some of its work in its production of "Fame". That was included in the panel's decision making. The non-examination performance is a part of the assessment.
It is important that my hon. Friend should know about two significant changes that have occurred.
Ms Drown: It may be, on paper, that more than the crude examination results are taken into account. However, those from the school who were present at the appeal panel felt that the only thing in which the panel was interested was the crude measure of five A to C results. Although Churchfields may have set targets at the beginning of the process, they were inappropriate by the time it had gone through changes. Does the Minister recognise the loss of morale that occurs when a school loses its designation? I hope that he will discuss the

129WH
question whether there should be more warning and reviews, and whether it should be possible to change targets more regularly.
Mr. Miliband: I assure my hon. Friend that I am only just getting up to full speed. There is plenty of scope for me to deal with her concern about the way in which the programme works. I was just about to deal with her point about how the re-designation process supports school improvement. Two significant changes have been made to the re-designation process in the past couple of years. They speak pretty directly to her concerns.
First, previous practice was that any school that left the specialist programme had to wait four years before re-entering it. The thinking behind that was that schools needed a period of readjustment and a chance to start afresh. We have now relaxed that requirement, so that schools need spend only one year out of the programme before they can reapply, ensuring that any school that is in that position and is confident of its future plans can re-enter the specialist fold more speedily. I hope that my hon. Friend will recognise that that speaks to the frustration that I understand can exist in staff rooms at the time of de-designation. It offers our commitment to the school that we want to work with it to help it back into the specialist school family.
The second change that I have made deals with something that my hon. Friend mentioned: the role of the independent panel. It was a significant decision to ask a group of experts to play a key role. However, under the framework that I have established in the new system, senior education professionals spend a significant time scrutinising the characteristics of each situation, ensuring that every contextual factor can be carefully examined and assessed. If I may provide a slight correction, it is not a matter of a school competing against another school for a limited number of slots in the specialist schools programme; it is a matter of the school showing that the specialist status is being used to good effect.
The specialist panel has introduced a degree of openness into the process and also allowed schools and others to make representations. I hear what my hon. Friend says about the frustration that those who attended the panel felt, and I take seriously what she says and what her constituents have reported about the process. If there were any suggestion that the panel had not operated the criteria fairly or had not engaged with the challenge that the school faced appropriately, I would investigate that charge seriously. The people on the panel have experience of schooling and specialist schooling, and they perform their duties with real rigour and seriousness. If there are any issues relating to the appeal, how the panel worked or how the questioning and discussions took place, I would be happy to look into them. However, my hon. Friend and her constituents might judge that that is not the right thing to do now and that we should get on with the future.
The process of re-designation is not designed to be punitive. It is designed to offer the challenge and support that we think are important. The panel has just finished its first full year of operation. We are looking at any glitches and, as I said, I would be happy to incorporate into that process anything that comes out of the case in question.
130WH
Churchfields has had significant challenges and has been subject to special measures in the past. I recognise that the loss of specialist status can be significant, and I empathise with the statements that my hon. Friend made. I do not want to dwell at length or in too much detail on all aspects of the school's performance. The school's case was considered twice. Its appeal against the initial decision was delayed until October of last year in order to allow it to present further evidence of 2003 performance, but it was unsuccessful. In both cases, school and community performance was considered.
I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend refer to value added. She was right that Churchfields' performance was 0.1 per cent. above the local education authority and national average between key stages 2 and 3, but between key stages 3 and 4 there was a significant gap in the other direction. I am happy to go through those figures with my hon. Friend afterwards, if that would be helpful.
Ms Drown: Are the results at key stage 3 below the average or have they declined?
Mr. Miliband: No, the value added between key stage 3 and key stage 4—that is, at GCSE level—was significantly below the local and national average.
Ms Drown: If I may say so, the school's results at key stage 3 have been improving over the last two years and have added value at key stages 2 and 3.
Mr. Miliband: I do not believe that I have the key stage 3 results with me, but I am happy to take my hon. Friend's word for that. All I would say is that value added does not exist at key stage 2 or at key stage 3. Rather, it exists between phases. Value added measures the progress between the ages of 11 and 14 and the ages of 14 and 16. The value added between the ages of 14 and 16 was not what we might have hoped for.
My hon. Friend was also concerned about the number of visits to the school. The person who conducted the visits knew the school and had been there before. The appeals panel that considered the matter was made up of senior representatives, who of course met representatives of the school. However, I do not want to go into too much detail. I have some figures on which targets were hit and which were missed, but I am not sure whether discussing those would serve the best purpose.
There are three things to be said about the future. First, we are looking at the re-designation framework. We want to ensure that we learn from the experience of the first year. Secondly, we want to create the conditions under which schools will be prevented from becoming involved in the appeals process in the first place. We want to move from cure to prevention. We want the specialist schools re-designation programme to be rigorous and challenging, but we want schools to rise to the challenge. That is the rationale behind the funding that we have provided for the leadership incentive grant in Swindon, which offers £125,000 per year for three years to Churchfields and other schools to strengthen leadership, other important issues and the excellence cluster in which Mr. Flavin is engaged. Some 300 partnerships are funded around the country.

131WH
Finally, Churchfields is, as I said earlier, eligible to reapply for the specialist schools programme in October this year. Happily, six of the 39 schools that left the programme have since returned, and two became academies last September. Obviously, it is important that a specialist school application should be right for the school, and made at the right time; it will be for the school to judge whether, as it seeks to improve itself, it is the time to go for specialist status.
I hope that that reassures my hon. Friend that we take seriously the development and implementation of the re-designation procedure. We take her concerns seriously. We would all agree that the key is to give the maximum appropriate support to Churchfields. I think that she will agree that there is a significant amount of effort going in to support the school and to ensure that it manages to reach and go beyond the levels of academic achievement that it had two or three years ago, whether through national or local initiatives. In the end, that is key for her constituents, for the pupils in the school and their parents.
On that note, I hope that we can reflect on the issues that she has raised and be sure that we are developing a programme that is rigorous and challenging, but that is also supportive: that is the right balance for an education system that is trying to move forward.
Ms Drown: I am pleased to hear that, a year in, the Minister is going to consider the framework again. I wonder whether giving some sort of warning could be considered as part of that review. Part of this issue is
132WH
about managing expectations. Staff salaries are often at stake, but it is not only about staff morale; the issue affects a whole school and the wider community.
Would it not help to manage those expectations if, rather than it being a yes or no issue at the end of the period, one could have a review at points during the specialist school status process? Such a review could state, "If you do not achieve this and this, then you will lose specialist status." That would enable people to manage the process so much better.
Mr. Miliband: My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that every school in the country, whether it is specialist or not, is engaged in a process of self-evaluation and engagement with the local education authority and beyond. Specialist schools know the targets that have been set and can follow the progress that is being made.
The specialist schools movement, far from saying that it wants earlier warning during the four-year process, has suggested that it should be stretched out in the other direction; that schools should be given longer to show how much progress they have made. The fifth year of exam performance is now taken into account in specialist school re-designations.
Although I will of course think carefully about what my hon. Friend has said, I hope that she will understand that the information from published figures, Ofsted and other inspections is there for critical self-review, and that many schools believe that an early warning system would work against their interests, because they want further time to show how much difference the specialist schools movement is making to them.
3.58 pm
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

Shanklin Jobcentre
4.12 pm
Mr. Andrew Turner: The Isle of Wight is a diamond-shaped offshore island with four major centres of population, each of which has a population of around 15,000 to 20,000. They are: Newport, in the centre of the island; Ryde, on the north-east coast; the Sandown and Shanklin area, which is called the bay area, on the south-east coast; and Cowes, which is 4 miles from Newport. The other towns are about 7 and a half miles apart. Shanklin jobcentre serves the Sandown bay area, plus the town of Ventnor, right on the south of the island, and places as far afield as Godshill, Newchurch and Chale.
We have been aware for some time of the Government's plans to roll out the Jobcentre Plus concept, a new way of providing back-to-work services in a one-stop way right across the island. It appears to have been very successful in Newport and Ryde. The Jobcentre Plus property agent wrote in a letter to the landlord of the Shanklin jobcentre on 22 May 2002:
"A significant number of properties are to be refurbished and converted as new Jobcentre Plus properties. The premises detailed above"—
that is Shanklin jobcentre at I Steephill Road and the corner of the high street—
"have been identified as one of those offices that will be refurbished to present a more welcoming environment for the Jobcentre Plus customers. The refurbishment will involve internal alterations to provide a better reception area and more space for face to face interviews to be conducted."
So, the landlord, like everyone else, believed that the centre would remain open.
Although I was told earlier this year that the district manager for Jobcentre Plus had, later in 2002, decided that the premises were unsuitable—a decision that was reversed—we heard nothing officially about closure until a letter from the district manager dated 23 January 2004. It really was a bombshell for Jobcentre Plus in Shanklin and for its customers. The district manager said:
"I had hoped to be able to secure new premises in Shanklin, as our current premises are unsuitable for future business requirements: most notably in respect of allowing access for Disabled customers. Unfortunately, no suitable premises can be found at an acceptable price and the existing office cannot be adapted at an acceptable cost. Consideration has been given to looking at building new premises … but the cost of these (in excess of £2 million) has proved prohibitive.
I have now been advised that it is unlikely that suitable premises could be secured within an acceptable cost or timescale. As a result, we are forced to consider an alternative service delivery plan for the Isle of Wight. This will entail closing the existing office in Shanklin, and expanding the facilities at Ryde, whilst establishing (subject to discussion with partners) a Jobpoint terminal locally within the Shanklin area."
I met the district manager, with the Isle of Wight manager, at Shanklin jobcentre on 1 March, and later that day I visited Ryde jobcentre to see what had been implemented there. At the meeting on 1 March, the district manager told us that Shanklin was unsuitable for disabled people and costly to convert. We asked whether a disabled access audit had been undertaken and were told that it had. However, it has not been provided to us.
134WH
The landlord is an architect and said consideration would be given to making further alterations to establish compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Alterations could include reopening the door at high street level, which opens on to the corner of the front office. The building is like one of the few bank buildings that have not been converted into wine bars. He also suggested that a lift could be installed.
We have received no evidence that the office is unsuitable, although clearly it is not ideal. The agents of Jobcentre Plus clearly did not think it unsuitable in May 2002. If they had, the local community would have made an effort to find suitable premises. We requested information at the meeting on 1 March, and confirmed that request by email on 2 March. The information we requested included details of any legislative reason why the jobcentre service could not be continued from the current building: details of the perceived operational reasons for the decision; and details of any research undertaken on the cost to the user of travelling to alternative premises should the Shanklin branch close, and the time that it would take.
In a letter on 30 March, of which I believe the Minister has a copy, I also commented on the costs of relocating Jobcentre Plus to Ryde vis-à-vis refurbishment or relocation in Shanklin. Suffice to say that it is curious that in the case against the new build the cost is given as a capital sum, while the cost of relocation is given as a revenue sum, which does not make the figures easy to compare.
I accept that the present building may not be acceptable, although I do not accept that it is not. Let us consider what Jobcentre Plus has done to find new premises. I asked the district manager what specification the agents of Jobcentre Plus had been provided with and what other premises they had looked at. In a letter to me on 12 March, the district manager provided an annexe, which said simply:
"Floor space 450 sq m
Location Shanklin or Sandown (but prepared to look at others in the vicinity)
Access requirements fully DDA compliant."
I have asked for more details on the specification, but they have not been provided.
As I said, I also asked for a list of premises that had been considered and was given four, among them the old cinema site in the high street, which was described as
"unsuitable as refurbishment was not viable."
I happen to know something about the old cinema site, because it belongs to Shanklin Conservative club. I declare an interest as a member of that club. The club was proposing an extension at ground and first floor levels, but over only one third of the footprint of the old cinema site. That would have left two thirds of the footprint plus the basement, which is accessible at high street level, for possible development. It is a pity that it was not pursued more vigorously by the Jobcentre Plus agent because it is only now that the site is being cleared for development and it looks as though the remaining two thirds, plus some floors above, will be used for housing. That would have made an excellent site.

135WH
On 30 March I reiterated a number of other requests for information, including the access audit and the list of the five alternative premises considered. I will not go through the other premises, but they did not include, for example. Spithead business park, Shanklin library, which the county council is considering relocating, and the huge and underused Shanklin railway station car park. I believe that that was because Jobcentre Plus retained only a mainland agent. Had it appointed an island agent—or if the mainland agent had appointed an island sub-agent—with a brief to find premises rather than merely find what premises were available, it would have got better value for money. For example, an agent on the island might have found that one convenient site that is available has outlying planning permission for 6,000 sq ft, which is in advance of what Jobcentre Plus needs.
The Library has supplied me with a memorandum on consultation undertaken, which was submitted by Jobcentre Plus to the Work and Pensions Committee on 9 July 2003. I will not read it in detail because it is extensive. However, having read section 2, under the heading "Consultation", I conclude that there was no adequate consultation. Let me give you some examples. Mr. Deputy Speaker. The people to be consulted include:
"Local MPs, MEPs, MSPs, Members of the National Assembly of Wales. Local authorities—both councillors and officials … Employers—a sample of key employment providers and their representative bodies, for example, the local chambers of commerce. Health authorities, primary care trusts, local GPs, landlords and joint tenants."
The memorandum continues:
"Stakeholders are provided with a description of how it is proposed to deliver services, details of which sites are planned to be refurbished, a description of any planned acquisitions, and details of which sites are considered for closure."
Sadly, there was no consultation with the county council, the town council, the Isle of Wight economic partnership, the chamber of commerce, the primary care trust, or the Member of Parliament. I was sent a letter outlining the proposal and was asked for my views, but I was not asked to respond as I could have done had I been informed earlier of the Jobcentre Plus agent's conclusion that the current premises were unsatisfactory; a conclusion with which I, as well as the people working in those premises, disagree. One of those people, Diane Graham, wrote to me to point out:
"As a Disability Employment Adviser, based in Shanklin Jobcentre for the past six years, I can confirm that there has never been an access problem for my clients. Likewise should a disabled person be seeking help from other staff in the office, it has always been the policy for the staff to come to the ground floor, if necessary, to provide the full range of services to the caller, in line with the service they would give on any floor in the building."
I am not impressed with the intensity or meaningfulness of the consultation. Furthermore, I am not confident that the needs of the local community and of users have been properly considered. The town clerk of Ventnor town council writes:
"The Town Council have noted with great concern the report"—
136WH
a report in the county press, not a letter that the town council received from Jobcentre Plus—
"that it is intended to close the Job Centre at Shanklin. Ventnor, as you will be aware, is amongst the top ten areas in the country designated as having social deprivation … Now it is being suggested that users would have to travel to Newport it beggars belief. Are those dealing with the closure aware of the difficulty of travel from Ventnor to Newport and the cost of public transport? As much as anywhere on the Island, Ventnor needs the service of a Job Centre. We cannot believe that any real understanding exists about the true position of our population."
Another service user writes:
"The Department keeps telling the staff in newsletters how we are customer focused. I cannot see how forcing the poorest people on the island to travel 8–10 miles extra by inadequate and expensive public transport is in the public interest or for their benefit … When a customer's giro doesn't arrive (or bank account is not credited) how are they supposed to find almost £4 to travel to Ryde or Newport to ask for an urgent payment?"
A local mother-to-be, again from Ventnor, wrote on 27 February:
"I am extremely unhappy with the proposal to close Shanklin jobcentre as this would cause much inconvenience to me in my condition, especially in terms of time and cost which I can ill afford. Would you be kind enough to ask whoever is responsible for this decision-making to please reconsider?"
It concerns me even more that I appear to be getting the blame. One constituent wrote:
"I went to sign on in Shanklin today and to my dismay I find that you are considering closing the jobcentre and dole office there.
I think that you need a signing on office for Sandown, Shanklin, Ventnor and surrounding areas. Also to my dismay I am told that I will have to pay my own bus fares to sign on in Ryde or Newport. Please tell me that you're taking the"
something or other.
He went on to say:
"It costs £7 from Shanklin to Newport return. Am I getting more money to cover this extra cost on an already stingy amount of cash to live on!! You try and exist on £54 per week!!"
Incidentally, I rang Southern Vectis and I found that not all buses on the service from Shanklin to Ventnor are disabled accessible. The young mum, to whom I referred, would find it a great deal easier to negotiate her way into the jobcentre at Shanklin than she would to get on to a bus, travel to Ryde, perhaps with a child in a buggy, and go to the jobcentre there.
This is something that concerns me more widely, but it is important because it illustrates what the staff of the jobcentre are doing, which is perhaps beyond their remit. Another member of the staff wrote:
"At the present time with Income Support claims being processed in Fareham and Social Fund in Cosham I consider the service to islanders wishing to claim these benefits is poor. Often we have customers coming to Shanklin job centre about these claims, sometimes in a distressed state and we are unable to help except to give these customers access to our phones. When I have phoned on behalf of customers to Income Support for instance, I have found them to be unsympathetic and unhelpful, easy for them at the end of the phone, not so pleasant for us with the customer sat in front of us."
That is a bit of a sorry tale. Most infuriating has been the difficulty of obtaining evidence from the district manager as to exactly what advice she has been given.

137WH
That is illustrated by an email that was sent to my secretary and which I received on 15 April. It said that the district manager:
"has answered the issues Andrew has raised in his letter with all information that is available to her at this time."
Well, how come it is not available to her at that time, but it was available to her when she made the decisions?
It seems to be a sorry tale of corners cut and solutions brought forward that work for the bureaucracy, but not for the community. I am grateful to Geoff Lumley of the PCS union for drawing the issue to my attention. Its members are unaffected by the proposal because their jobs are guaranteed, but they are concerned about the consequences for their clients. I am grateful to Val Urquhart and to other staff of the job centre in Shanklin for the good work that they do all of the time; to the many local residents who have put out petitions and to businesses who have made petitions available; and to David Pugh, the editor of the local "In Touch" newsletter, who has publicised the availability of the petition.
I understand that the district manager is about to move to a new district and that a new manager will be in place shortly. I ask that that new district manager undertakes a new and genuine consultation, perhaps with the assistance of Isle of Wight agents, and in particular that they consider whether a partnership approach could enable new build to take place.
4.29 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Eagle): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate on what is clearly an important subject, not only for him, but for his constituents. He has made that quite clear in the way in which he set out his remarks.
I fully understand his concern to ensure that Jobcentre Plus provides a quality service to his constituents in Shanklin. I would hope that he would accept that it is also our concern that we are able to do that. Before I start dealing with the detail of the points that he raised, I must say that those issues arise only because of our determination to modernise the welfare state and provide an individualised service to a range of people who have not received that service in the past. They include those who are sick, disabled, on incapacity benefit, lone parents and those who have not been expected to look for work in the past.
Our active labour market policies have resulted in the highest employment figures on record, the lowest unemployment figures since 1975 and a reduction of 500,000 in the number of children living in relative low income. We have the highest employment rate and the lowest unemployment rate of the big seven industrialised nations. That has not happened accidentally: it is due in part to our active labour market policies and the transformation of old-fashioned services into much more individualised services. That is what Jobcentre Plus is about, and that is what we are trying to achieve in the hon. Gentleman's constituency.
138WH
The people of the Isle of Wight are being well served by the established Jobcentre Plus offices, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledged. Since 1997, unemployment there has fallen by 57 per cent. and long-term unemployment has fallen by 85 per cent. Both those figures are higher than the national average. The new deals on the island have helped nearly 3,000 people into work in his constituency. I am sure that he rejoices in that record of success as much as I do.
We know that there is more to do, and that is why we want to transform the rest of the services on the island. Jobcentre Plus is about providing a new type of service, as well as helping the traditional jobseeker's allowance clients. We are also helping lone parents and disabled people to think about finding work, sometimes for the first time.
Having reduced the numbers of unemployed people, we are now working to give employment opportunities to everyone. and in particular those groups that have traditionally been ignored by previous Governments. We are making our services more accessible to everyone, and it is absolutely key that we do that in a modern and sensible way that deals with the extra challenges that the agenda poses for staff and services.
We are opening new, modern offices. The hon. Gentleman has visited some in his constituency and he will have seen the vast difference that there is between the old-style social security office—even the old-style Employment Service office—and what we can offer with
Jobcentre Plus. Customers can make inquiries about their benefits and employment opportunities in a joined-up way that makes sense to them. Telephone contact centres allow them to make the same inquiries from the comfort of their own home, which they were not always able to do in the past. New technology enables them and us to find the information that they need about jobs and training via the internet, job points and other such innovations, all of which are being placed in local sites such as libraries and supermarkets to make them more accessible.
During the national planning for the implementation of Jobcentre Plus, customer representatives and trade unions were consulted widely. At district level, managers consult the widest possible range of people about the service that they plan to provide. Local advice and welfare groups, local authorities and MPs are essential sources of guidance, and we seek to take advantage of their local knowledge and their insight into what is necessary.
Some 450 of the new-style offices have been successfully opened, but the change cannot be delivered nationally overnight. In specific instances, it presents us with specific problems, and the hon. Gentleman has highlighted one that we face on the island. We find that once the changes have been introduced, however, eight out of 10 customers are satisfied with all elements of the service. That is quite a high percentage.
The hon. Gentleman knows that our original plans for the Isle of Wight involved the creation of three integrated offices in Newport, Ryde and Shanklin. Shanklin provided a particular dilemma, partly because the new office had to handle its existing client base of 700 unemployed people and about 3,500 more people claiming income support or incapacity benefits—the

139WH
types of people whom we have not helped in the past but wish to draw into the service now. Any plans put in place had to ensure that all customers, including the new cohort whom we had not previously considered, could use the office.
We would like to have maintained the excellent service already provided to the unemployed in the Shanklin area, and extended it to lone parents and people claiming incapacity benefits, ideally from a site in Shanklin, thus improving the service we provide to those who have to travel to Newport. However, as the hon. Gentleman knows, at present only JSA claimants use the Shanklin service; the 3,500 lone parents and incapacity benefit claimants who want to access our services already have to travel because they cannot access the services in Shanklin. Many people from that area have to travel to Newport.
The existing jobcentre is too small; I have seen the correspondence to which the hon. Gentleman referred and I know there is more of it, with other contacts. Figures have been bandied about on square footage, size, what is needed, what is necessary and what it is possible to squeeze out of the existing premises, which are on three floors. As the hon. Gentleman said, a town house is not ideal, and there is a slope from front to back that presents difficulties. Proper disabled access in such a building is difficult, but not impossible, to achieve. However, it is an issue, and there is no doubt that for an integrated office—a Jobcentre Plus office—we would prefer to have the best possible standards of access that we can manage.
We considered a number of alternative local properties and the possibility of a bespoke new build, which would have cost in excess of £2 million. There has been a big investment of £2 billion across the country to deal with the roll out of Jobcentre Plus, but that does not absolve us from the obligation to secure proper value for money.
The hon. Gentleman referred to some of the existing sites; it would not be helpful for me to go through them now, but I shall be happy to send him a full list of those that we considered if he does not have one. There are at least two sites on that list where we considered a new build, but that would involve the extra consideration of cost. We have to be able to show value for money and an amount in excess of £2 million would be a big investment.
Mr. Turner: I accept that the whole point of developer building is that the developer puts in the capital and the Department pays the rent.
Maria Eagle: The hon. Gentleman knows that some consider the arrangements in respect of our estates and the private partners that we already deal with to be quite complicated. Things are not always as simple as he might think. However, I can assure him that we have considered a range of existing properties, sites and new build, not only in the Isle of Wight. We have been rolling
140WH
out these offices throughout the country, and different sites and areas present us with different problems. Each one is unique, but there are common themes and our people are becoming skilled at tackling the issues. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we have done our best to find an alternative in Shanklin that is suitable all round. We did not want the outcome to be moving out of Shanklin, but to ensure that all our customers can access our services—that is what our proposed second-order solution will require.
Newport and Ryde already have Jobcentre Plus offices, which have been upgraded, as the hon. Gentleman, who has visited them, knows. They are providing the new services, are completely accessible to all clients and are already being used by the majority of the 3,500 additional customers from Shanklin to whom I referred. Although that alternative has required an extra expansion at Ryde to be able to cope with the capacity, it is a more cost-effective, value-for-money solution than the alternatives that we identified in Shanklin.
The district manager did consult, but he made some comments about the consultation, which he considered inadequate. I am sorry he thinks that, but we did consult 18 local stakeholders. We can bandy thoughts around about what constitutes a consultation, but I assure him that final decisions had not already been taken about what the solution should be when the letter, which he does not consider to have been a consultation, went out. Since then, we have spent time trying to find a Shanklin solution. To date, only the hon. Gentleman has responded negatively. I do not mean that unpleasantly, but he responded by saying that he does not agree with the way in which we have tackled the problem. That is not to say that no one else has concerns.
I also appreciate that the distance and cost of travel for existing customers of the Shanklin jobcentre is a matter of concern, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. More than 80 per cent. of our customers in Shanklin already travel to Newport because the services that they were accessing are not available at Shanklin. For the others, the local bus and rail links—he referred to a fare of £7, with which we do not disagree—compare favourably with similarly sized towns on the mainland, and even with those in the rest of his constituency, and the distances and the lengths of journeys are not out of line with those in other parts of the country. I acknowledge his point, but they are not unusual. The only alternative is to provide in Shanklin a service that is available only to the unemployed. We believe that that would be a two-tier service, which we do not want to consider.
The Department is a key employer on the Isle of Wight. It provides jobs for about 250 people. We recently announced that one of the two sites for the new national organisation for the checking of national insurance numbers will be in Newport and will guarantee a future for about 70 jobs there. I am pleased to be able to announce today that we will increase staffing on the Isle of Wight by almost 50 per cent. in that unit in the next two years as part of the national centralisation of the work.

141WH
Jobcentre Plus is managing the integration of more than 1,500 officers, handling more than 10,000 job vacancies and helping more than 100,000 callers every working day. In doing so, it is extending its services to everyone of working age who wants to access them, including people who have been ignored in the past, such as lone parents, disabled people and the unemployed, who will all be given increased opportunities to work and to contribute more to society. We can then begin to break the cycle of benefit dependency.
142WH
The Shanklin solution is not what we originally wanted, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that we have done our best and that the final outcome will produce a much better service to everyone on the island. Despite his continuing concerns, I assure him that we have done our best. I am more than willing to talk to him further if he so wishes.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at eighteen minutes to Five o'clock.