Westminster Hall Sitting of 9 June 2004

Preamble
[MR. FRANK COOK in the Chair]

Darfur (Sudan)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Charlotte Atkins.]
9.30 am
Mr. Andrew Robathan: I welcome this opportunity to raise the subject of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. I also welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin). I think that he has been drafted in at quite short notice, so I sympathise with him. I know, however, that he has long taken an interest in human rights issues, which are among the most important in Darfur at the moment.
I regret that the Secretary of State for International Development is unable to be here, although he wanted to be, and his attendance at Westminster Hall debates is extremely good. He is likely to make a statement later today on the situation in Darfur, and I look forward to that. The importance of the crisis has been highlighted by, among other things, the coverage that it has recently received on the BBC and in other media outlets. It is rightly described as possibly the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world at the moment. I should add that I have not come to attack the UK Government—the Department for International Development is the second biggest donor in Darfur after the United States.
I have not been to Darfur, although I may be going at the end of the month. After my speech today, however, I may not be especially welcome. I went to Sudan a couple of years ago with members of the all-party group on Sudan, and I see my three companions here today, including the chairman of the all-party group, the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson).
I want briefly to discuss the history of Sudan before considering the situation in Darfur, how responsibility can be apportioned and what, if anything, the UK Government and the international community can do.
Geographically, Sudan is the biggest country in Africa; it is the most enormous place, and Darfur is something like the size of France. Sudan is also grindingly poor, and I have memories of that from two years ago. There is poverty not only in the rebel south, where people have absolutely nothing, but elsewhere, and we saw people around El-Obeid who had next to nothing. So, it is not just the rebels who are poor—everybody is poor. However, the Government did not seem especially interested in furthering the good of the people in Sudan, other than in Khartoum.
Sudan was always a backward place. Parts of it, particularly the north, were colonised by the Egyptians, while in the south, Arab slave-raiding parties would seize slaves. That is pertinent because it reflects on attitudes today.
People in Britain tend to know about Gordon of Khartoum and his historic death in 1885, and about the Kitchener expedition of 1898, which was much
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popularised. Indeed, Winston Churchill took part in a marvellous cavalry charge, which he describes so well in his books. There then followed the Anglo-Egyptian condominium and the Sudan political service. My godfather worked in the service immediately after the war, and it was well described by Wilfred Thesiger. It was an honest and honourable profession, although it must be said that Sudan did not develop enormously as a result of its work.
Independence came in 1956. Civil war has raged on and off since then and has claimed the lives of perhaps millions of people, although I am delighted to say that a peace agreement was signed on 26 May in Naivasha. I shall say a bit more about that later. In 1989, the National Islamic Front, which now forms the Government, seized power under Brigadier al-Bashir, who is now a lieutenant-general. Nobody ever claimed that the Government had any democratic legitimacy, although, of course, they have de facto legitimacy.
One must understand a point to which I alluded earlier. To use shorthand, there is an Arab ethnic grouping in the north. It is not a distinct grouping, but it is more Arab. In the south and west, the ethnic grouping is more black African. That is extremely important because of how people see things in Sudan. Sharia—Muslim law—is also an issue, but not in Darfur, because it is Muslim. However, it was certainly an issue for Christians and animists in the south.
In Darfur, there are perhaps 1.2 million displaced people and refugees, although no one is quite sure. There are 100,000—perhaps more—refugees in Chad, across the border. Estimates vary but about 30,000 people have been killed in Darfur in the last year, and there is no doubt that it is a huge humanitarian crisis. A report from Oxfam, quoted by my local paper, the Leicester Mercury, on Saturday, described refugees fleeing the conflict, who had
"abandoned their homes, their possessions and their livelihoods, clinging on to the hope of finding somewhere safe…Even if they get to the refugee camps, the situation is little better. Malnutrition and diarrhoea are spreading quickly and mortality rates climbing steadily…Eastern Chad is…on the brink of disaster".
Humanitarian agencies have warned of the risk of famine in the displaced population, unable to return home to plant crops before the rainy season. The rainy season is starting now; the displaced people are not returning. A United States Agency for International Development administrator stated in Geneva on 3 June:
"We estimate right now if we get relief in we will lose a third of a million people. And if we don't, the death rates could be dramatically higher, approaching a million people."
Delay in taking action is not an option.
It is difficult to estimate the number of fatalities that can come from such a ghastly crisis, and such estimates tend to be wildly wrong. The message that comes through, however, is that there is a terrible crisis and action needs to be taken. The situation should be taken in the context of the much heralded—by the Sudanese Government—peace deal in Naivasha at the end of last month.
To digress slightly, what about upper Nile? Not included in the peace agreement—and not, of course, in Darfur—is the Shilluk kingdom. I have a briefing from

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World Vision, which states that in upper Nile,
"since early March 2004…between 50,000 and 120,000 men, women and children were displaced by a series of militia attacks… Humanitarian personnel cannot access the area…the Sudan Civilian Protection Monitoring Team documented the wholesale destruction of…villages…The compounds of World Vision and another German NGO…were destroyed and looted."
We do not know what is happening there, but it gives greater context to what is happening in Darfur.
In Khartoum, there is what is best described as a political elite. It tends to be almost exclusively of Arab extraction and to look down its nose at the black Africans. The National Islamic Front of President alBashir is now called the National Congress party, but it has roots through the National Islamic Front back to the Muslim Brotherhood, which sprang up in Egypt. I have already mentioned that it has no democratic legitimacy, but I would like to turn to its honesty.
In April or perhaps earlier, the Sudanese Foreign Minister, Dr. Mustafa Ismail, came to a meeting, which was attended by at least two Members present in the Chamber. He talked vividly about Darfur, because we asked him about it. He said that only a few hundred had been killed and that the Government of Sudan were definitely not supporting the militia in Darfur—the Janjaweed. I recall particularly, because I took the issue up with him, that he blamed the European Union for not giving sufficient development aid. He also blamed President Clinton. I blame President Clinton for many things, but he blamed him for encouraging rebel movements in Sudan.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded its report of 7 May with the statement:
"It is clear that there is a reign of terror in Darfur…The current pattern of massive and gross human rights violations…raises very serious concerns as to their survival, security and human dignity".
That means the survival, security and human dignity of those who have remained in Darfur. The report said that the situation was characterised by
"repeated attacks on civilians by the military forces of the Government of the Sudan and its proxy militia",
particularly the Janjaweed;
"the use of disproportionate force by government and Janjaweed forces";
total impunity for the Janjaweed, who operate
"in close coordination with the forces of the Government of the Sudan";
and a
"pattern of attacks on civilians includes killing, rape, pillage, including of livestock, and destruction of property, including water sources".
Asma Jehangir, the UN rapporteur, echoes that on the BBC website in a story on the extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions. She says:
"the numbers are staggering, the situation is terrible…there is no accountability and in some areas the government officials are also in a state of complete denial."
So what can we conclude about the Government of Sudan? I conclude that they do not tell the truth and are not to be trusted. They have form. Between 1991 and
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1996, when they were still the National Islamic Front, they played host to a fellow called Osama bin Laden. According to reports, al-Qaeda forged an alliance with al-Bashir's Government. Osama bin Laden was expelled from Sudan in 1996, but in 1998, President Clinton launched cruise missiles against a couple of targets in Sudan, one of which was the al-Shifa chemical factory. We should remember that President Clinton was not a great man for sending cruise missiles, but it appears that those missiles were designed to hit al-Qaeda, which was believed to be present at the targets. I did not appreciate that at the time, because none of us knew very much about al-Qaeda.
Since 11 September 2001, the start of the war on terror and the invasion of Afghanistan, the Government of Sudan have become a great deal friendlier and more pliable, and we may draw our own conclusions as to why that may be. However, they are still the same people. AlBashir is still the President, his elite group is still undemocratic and autocratic, and they are still on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.
As I said, the Government of Sudan have form. I have in my hand "The scorched earth: oil and war in Sudan", a document published by Christian Aid in 2001. I will not talk at great length about it, except to say that the tactics employed, which are described in the booklet, are almost exactly the ones that are now being employed in Darfur. Leaving aside the issue of oil in Sudan, I particularly recall, when we were in Sudan two years ago, hearing about the train that ran down to Wau, which was in the south and surrounded by rebel areas. As the train ran down, armed Arab militia on horseback, fanning out to perhaps 20 km on either side of the track, would plunder, kill, rape, pillage, and take slaves—in the 21st century, for God's sake—as they proceeded down to Wau. As soon as the train withdrew, the rebels would blow up the track. It seems to me that what has happened now is exactly the same. In its report last month, the International Crisis Group said of Darfur:
"The situation mirrors the dynamic of other conflicts throughout Sudan, pitting a periphery that views itself as the victim of discrimination against a centre in Khartoum that is seen as holding all the economic and political cards."
I do not intend to say much more, because many Members want to speak and, given the importance of the situation, they should be allowed to have as much say as they can. I will, however, say this: Darfur is a long way from us and is a little part of a country of which we know remarkably little, but it is the world's most serious humanitarian crisis and it will not go away.
So what can the international community and the UK Government do? First, we need to be less supine in what we say. The Secretary of State was extremely diplomatic on the radio on, I believe, Monday. I have been less diplomatic today. The Government of Sudan must take responsibility for what is happening in Sudan. We are contributing humanitarian aid, but Sudan needs yet more. The crisis will not go away for at least a year. We must pursue the matter at the UN, although I know that we are doing so to a certain extent. The Security Council noted the prolonged absence of an accredited resident humanitarian co-ordinator, which is a serious obstacle to international operations in Darfur. I hope that the Minister will tell us what is happening in that regard.

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Will the Minister also tell us what has happened about the African Union monitoring force, which has been agreed? I know that the British Government have agreed to provide part of its funding; the rest must come from the European Union. Let us at least do that so that we can know what is happening. It is all very well to wring hands—people might say that I stand here wringing mine—but people are dying now, so this humanitarian crisis must be dealt with now. The crisis will go on for perhaps a year or more, but the long-term solution is political: to make the Government of Sudan accountable and to make them take responsibility for their actions and their people. I urge the UK Government to be bold and outspoken in what they say to the Government of Sudan, and to mobilise international concern so that pressure can be put on them for real change. I shall not elaborate on the sanctions or other actions that we might take, but this crisis needs reaction from the international community. I hope that the Minister can reassure me.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the Chamber that it is customary to begin the first of the Front-Bench winding-up speeches 30 minutes before the end of the debate, namely at 10.30 am, so we have about 44 minutes in which to accommodate the five right hon. and hon. Members who seek my eye. I hope that they will take account of the time limitations when making their contributions and when accepting and responding to interventions.
9.46 am
Mr. Tom Clarke: I sincerely congratulate the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) on his wisdom, on securing this important debate and on his excellent introduction to it. I agreed with virtually everything that he said, except, perhaps, his final reference to the Secretary of State. That aside, his comments were timely and appropriate.
Mr. Robathan: I should not, perhaps, have used the word supine. I did not mean to criticise the Secretary of State except to say that he has been over-diplomatic.
Mr. Clarke: I am pleased to have allowed the hon. Gentleman to put that on the record because he made a first-class speech, and I have no desire to take away from that. It helped us all to remember what happened in Rwanda when, although there were signals of what would happen, even if they were not as profound or clear as those in Sudan, the international community was, to say the least, far too slow to respond. We cannot be excused from making a similar mistake in Sudan, given what we now know is happening there.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the recent peace agreement. In respect of the problems with the north and south, which have been occurring for about 50 years—certainly for the past 20—there was a great sigh of relief when the agreement was reached, and it is profoundly unacceptable that it should be terribly overshadowed by the appalling events in Darfur, in the west of Sudan, which have had an impact on Chad, when we all hoped that the carnage that had gone on for so long would end.
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What does the agreement mean? Does Khartoum expect the international community to accept that huge areas of the country should not be part of the spirit of the agreement, as is happening in Darfur and next door in Chad? Is access to oil and power to be a matter only for those who were party to the agreement? Will a great mass of people, particularly those in the west, be totally ignored, or worse?
It would be a huge mistake for modern Khartoum to send out the message that inclusiveness in Sudan means that people have to have an army and guns before their human rights will be recognised. That cannot be acceptable. That is why we are right to be extremely angry. It would be wrong of Parliament and the international community, including the European Union, to wring our hands and wash our hands of the problem when we know that so much wrong is happening.
The media have a role as well. Reference has been made to the BBC, and ITN broadcast an interesting and compelling news bulletin on Monday evening that at least focused on the issue. Although I do not particularly want to congratulate the media—they could have done far more—there have been honourable exceptions. In an excellent piece in The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill, the diplomatic editor, who incidentally reported on the Secretary of State's activities in Darfur, which he was observing, wrote:
"In what the United Nations describes as the world's worst humanitarian disaster, the arrival of the rains means that life for the refugees will become even more grim and the death toll will almost certainly rise.
About 30,000 are estimated to have been killed in the last year, victims of a government-armed militia that has terrorised and destroyed villages throughout Darfur, where 1.2 million have been displaced, with a further 100,000 taking refuge in neighbouring Chad."
Chillingly, he added:
"A UN official who has travelled extensively throughout the region said yesterday: 'If you go 1,000km from here to Chad you will not see a single village intact."'
We know what is going on. There can now be no excuse for the record of the Janjaweed—the raiding for cattle, the raping and the other wholly unacceptable behaviour—which has been supported by the army high command, as is well known. The raids are perhaps now more sophisticated, if just as beastly and unacceptable. There are helicopters and gunships, villages razed to the ground, inhabitants murdered, irrigation systems destroyed and granaries burnt to the ground. We can call that ethnic cleansing or genocide; but, in the modern world, given our support for international organisations that are perhaps still capable of exercising more influence—I shall come to the role of the United Nations and its agencies—it is right to say what we are saying in this debate in the tone of disgust that the situation invites.
The hon. Member for Blaby referred to the role of aid agencies and non-governmental organisations. We agree that their contribution has been sterling, as is so often the case. We all want to take on board the advice that the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development, Human Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group and Save the Children have given. Save the Children, for example, has said that the international community should see protection of civilians as a priority, and that

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although there has been a reduction in hostilities between the parties to the agreement—people who, in my view, have an interest—there is no corresponding improvement in the security of civilians. Save the Children concludes that militia groups are carrying out a pattern of human rights abuses against a backdrop of impunity, and that it is time for us all to act. I know that my views are shared by hon. Members on both sides of the House, and I want the Government to exert the maximum possible pressure on the Government of Sudan because we know—there is no point in their denying it—about their influence on the militia and its distasteful activities.
There is strong support for the approach of the hon. Member for Blaby. Given the carnage, we are entitled to demand that non-governmental organisations seeking access should have the opportunity that he described. There should be a response to those who cry for food, water, medicine and trucks. It is outrageous that the Government of Sudan are even restricting the number of trucks that could be made available so that those people's needs can be met. The UN believes that only half the displaced population of 1 million has access to humanitarian assistance.
Let us continue the pressure on President al-Bashir. Let us continue the pressure on the United States, although I do not want to denigrate its influence and the time and thought that it has given to the issue. Our colleagues in the United Kingdom—I welcome the role of the Secretary of State for International Development—and the European Community Humanitarian Office have made substantial pledges of assistance to Chad and Darfur. Nevertheless, they are doing so when the UN is telling us that only 19 per cent. of the needs of Darfur have been met and only 45 per cent. of Chad's.
There are opportunities within the international bodies that I have mentioned, particularly this week of all weeks, in the European Union, for us to express not just our distaste for what is happening, not just our demand for an end to the carnage, and not just our hopes that the international aid agencies can get the access that they want, but our determination that all that will change and that such activities will never again take place. As the hon. Gentleman said, following their dreadful experiences, people have very little to look forward to—more rains, more starvation and more attacks from above. It may be difficult to reflect on the possibilities of long-term development, but even those people, in their dreadful situation, are entitled to dream. They are entitled to count on our support and I believe that that will be the view expressed in our debate today and by the Secretary of State later when he speaks on this crucial matter.
9.58 pm
Dr. Jenny Tonge: As a colleague of the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) on the Select Committee, I congratulate him on this debate. However, I have a terrible sense of déjà vu. The right hon. Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke) said "Never again," but how often have we said that? Only six years ago, in 1998, the Select Committee on International Development
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produced a report on the origins of the famine in Bahr el Ghazal and Sudan and how we dealt with it. Reading that report today, one thinks, "Here we go again. We could write precisely the same words and precisely the same criticisms now." I draw the House's attention to that report, which makes sad reading when one thinks that it was written six years ago. Yes, there were Moraleen, yes they came down to Wau on their trains and, yes, we called them Arab raiders—they fanned out, raided and pillaged and they took the women and the cattle. Exactly the same methods are being used in Darfur.
It is interesting to consider the problems that were highlighted then. One of the things that most concerned me was the early warning system. We felt that there had not been sufficient early warnings in the case of Bahr el Ghazal in 1997–98. There were even accusations levelled at the aid agencies that they had left it until they saw the pictures of starving little children on the television screens before launching their appeals. That has not happened this time—the warnings have been being sounded for a considerable time. The NGOs cannot be considered guilty in that respect.
We considered the problems of access for flights and the Government of Sudan banning flights by aid and humanitarian agencies over the area. Just the same has happened this time I understand that some of the bans have now been lifted, but it is something of which we were aware and that we knew would happen; it had been recorded before, yet somehow we did not manage to get round the problem.
We considered the problem of where the aid would come from. We must have stockpiles and aeroplanes. Operation Lifeline Sudan has been in operation for 20 or 25 years—perhaps the hon. Member for Blaby can remind me exactly how long. It had been going for at least 10 years before the famine in Bahr el Ghazal. It operates from Lokichokio in northern Kenya, which, I suspect, is much too far away to get to Darfur, but there must be bases in Chad. Perhaps the Minister can tell us from where we will distribute the desperately needed humanitarian aid to Darfur.
I remind Members that one of the conclusions of the 1998 report—the eighth summary point—was:
"Clare Short was quite right to be frustrated at a process which involved political indifference, ineffective and declining levels of humanitarian assistance, little prospect of longer term development, continuing conflict, and the prospect of millions starving to death."
The same is true now.
We can all bemoan what is happening and say that something must be done and that it must never happen again, but we should consider the origins of the new disaster. If the Minister has time, I would like him to say something about the political background. The history of the peace process in southern Sudan has been that various factions have formed in the south, which for a long time made it difficult to know with whom to negotiate. Do the Minister or the Government think that there is any connection between any of those groups and the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, which are now operating in Darfur and which formed less than two years ago when the all-party group was visiting? We met them and the SLA told us very proudly that they had just formed. It would be interesting to know where they came from, who organised them and who gave them the push.

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I also wonder how many hours the Department for International Development has spent it and how many tonnes of paper it has produced over the years on prevention of conflict. Considering the situation, we should have been aware of what might happen. Everyone knows Sudan—Britain is an expert on it. We all know about the peace process and how difficult it has been. Who has been considering prevention of conflict in Darfur? From where have the arms dealers been getting their arms? Who has been considering that? Who has been trying to break the chain of dealers in death throughout the world who make sure that small and medium-sized arms get to rebel groups whenever they want them? When I was first in southern Sudan in 1998, I asked members of the Sudan People's Liberation Army where the dickens they got their arms. They fell about laughing and said, "We can get them from anywhere. It is no problem. Arms are the least of our problems." Who has been considering that while the peace process has been going on?
The human rights record of the Government of Sudan is appalling. They react to many things with state terrorism. That is a rather difficult subject sometimes because we have good friends among the great and famous democracies of the world who also employ state terrorism at times. We must not always criticise: we must not look at the mote in our brother's eye when we cannot see the beam in our own. State terrorism is practised all over the world, not just by the Government of Sudan.
We should also look to the future. As the hon. Member for Blaby pointed out, Sudan is a very big country that is almost ungovernable because its communications are so appalling, and many areas outside Khartoum are at a very early stage of development. Are we looking at those other regions? Who will organise rebels in the upper Nile region in the east of the country? What groups are forming and who is making sure that they have arms? Is anyone looking at that? Is the United Nations or anyone trying to help with those issues?
Perhaps we should look to the journalists, who are very fond of telling us about humanitarian disasters, scorched earth, and desolate villages I saw such villages in southern Sudan in 1998. Point 11 of the 1998 Select Committee report states:
"We urge journalists not only to report the starvation of Sudan but also to investigate, question and pursue the reasons for war and the possibilities for peace, as has been done, for example, in Bosnia. This has not as yet been properly done and reporting of the crisis in Sudan is to that extent sadly it adequate."
The same is needed today. Journalises, please listen—go and talk to those other groups, do not concentrate solely on Darfur, look to the future.
Since 1998, I have been bleating about the only long-term solution for countries such as Sudan—development aid. In one sense, the Foreign Minister, whom we met a couple of weeks ago, was correct. We try to give humanitarian aid when it is needed, but such countries need development aid. Most of the time most of Sudan is not at war, so at the very least we could try to educate children. That will, in the long term, have a preventive effect if we can get gradually get in some development aid. Humanitarian aid is all very well, but I remember the previous Secretary of State saying that a lot of it went to the rebel groups. It was captured and
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used by them, and could even have prolonged the war. Development aid is needed. We must also consider debt relief for Sudan. If we can give Iraq debt relief when it has billions of dollars worth of oil in the ground, surely we can give it to Sudan, which has a lot less oil and is much further away from extracting it from the ground. We must examine the long-term development of that country.
I am reminded that I am still wearing a rather rough bracelet made out of cartridge cases. A woman in Bahr el Ghazal in southern Sudan gave it to me in 1998, and I was pledged to wear it until there was peace between the north and the south. A few weeks ago I was very optimistic about the prospect of being able to take it off—it makes a black mark on my arm and is not all that comfortable. However, I will have to leave it on for the people of Darfur: perhaps it will act as a lucky charm for them and eventually they will see peace. They need peace. The only way to obtain peace is for us to think ahead, to understand the causes of conflict in those areas and, most of all, to use development aid.
10.9 am
Mr. Hilton Dawson: I am pleased to have the chance to take part in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), who joined us on the last all-party visit to Sudan. I am sorry that he will not be with us in three weeks' time when we return. This is a timely debate, and I suspect that it will carry on in a few hours' time in the main Chamber.
It is essential to reflect on the enormous progress that has taken place in Sudan in recent years. Peace talks have proceeded slowly, but productively. Peace has come to a very large part of the country, and there have been effective monitoring mechanisms in problematic areas, such as the Nuba mountains. There have been fundamental, important agreements on a referendum, which will take place six or so years down the road, on power sharing, wealth sharing and smaller contentious issues relating to the application of sharia and the status of various parts of the country.
The current tragedy in Darfur can be seen as a symptom of the frustration of a number of groups that have been telling our Government and everyone in Sudan for a long time of their frustration at being excluded from the peace process. It is vital that that process draws to a conclusion so that what is called the pre-interim period can begin, wherein a range of groups from throughout the country can engage fully in discussion about the way forward and the way in which they will be involved in the country's future development.
That is the overall context, and in our despair about the current situation we should lose sight neither of that nor of the enormously constructive diplomatic role that this country played in the peace process. The other day I heard on the radio a programme featuring the Secretary of State, which implied that the Government had become aware of the situation in Sudan about two weeks ago. Hon. Members know that that is absolutely wrong. It is important to pay tribute to the work that has been done.
Many people have a responsibility in relation to this issue. The Government of Sudan have an enormous responsibility, as do the Sudan People's Liberation

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Movement and the Sudan People's Liberation Army, to draw peace talks quickly to a conclusion. The immediate problem is the desperate situation of thousands—possibly hundreds of thousands—who face death during the next few months as the rainy season takes hold. We are talking about people who are in internally displaced persons camps, who have run away from their homes, who have no shelter, security, food or health care, and who have nothing to sustain them in what will become increasingly appalling circumstances. There can be no excuse for the Sudanese Government's denying humanitarian access to those people.
On the other hand, there can be no excuse for all the nations of the world that have finally woken up to the desperate circumstances of the people of Darfur for not bringing to bear on the situation in Darfur all their resources, ingenuity, skill and international co-operation. Huge efforts have been made in Iraq; let us have a fraction of those efforts to save hundreds of thousands of lives in Sudan. There should be a UN Security Council resolution, and I believe that the United Nations should rise to the occasion and take a lead. It is good that our country and the United States have contributed so much already, but an international or a multinational effort is needed.
We must ensure that ceasefire monitors and police from the African Union are allowed to do their work. That work needs to be benchmarked, so that we are clear that the ceasefire is being monitored, but above all we need to ensure good access. This may be a question for the Secretary of State rather than the Minister, but has an estimate been made of how many people will be beyond access when the rains come? To how many can we gain access now in order to provide them with sustenance for the next few months? If we know that we will not be able to gain access over the next few months because of the rains, surely an international effort is needed now to get those people out of a situation that will lead to their deaths.
I do not see why, with all the resources that the world has at its disposal, we cannot locate everyone who needs our help and get them everything that they need to sustain themselves. If we cannot get to them before or during the rains, an international effort will clearly be needed to get them out, to give them support, and to try to stop people dying in the numbers envisaged.
There can be nothing more important than that the entire world deals with the situation now. We should not stand by, nor should we allow others to stand by and allow people to die on the scale envisaged. Once we have dealt with that situation, there may be a positive and effective impetus to move forward and ensure that the peace process in Sudan is completed. Once we are through the interim period, all concerned groups in the country will have to come together so that we can start to build towards elections in Sudan, and the crucial referendum in six months' time that will decide the future of the country.
10.18 am
Ms Diane Abbott: I am glad to be able to take part in such an important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) on initiating it.
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There was a time, certainly within the lifetime of most of us in the Chamber, when many people of good will thought that the most serious problems facing Africa were caused by the activities of the west, with its western colonialism and western neo-imperialism. It is a tragedy that cannot be overstated that, long after the winds of political change swept across Africa, region after region became convulsed by intercommunal strife. One reason why the conscience of the world seems so hard to rouse on such occasions may be the spectacle of Africans killing Africans.
Today's debate is important not only because of the scale of the humanitarian tragedy that may yet engulf the region, which could be as big a tragedy as Rwanda, if not bigger, nor because not enough attention has been paid to the tragedy It is important because the situation in Sudan raises many general issues about Africa and international affair. For instance, it raises the question whether we need a more robust system of international law to encompass humanitarian intervention and a different mindset in the Security Council on international relations. I did not support the war in Iraq. Only with reluctance would I support western intervention in other parts of the world. But it is clear when we study Sudan and other issues that we need a more robust system of international law that would legitimise such interventions.
A further issue raised by the situation in Sudan is the rubble of the post-cold war world. Various factions in obscure parts of Africa were funded by different sides in the cold war. Once the cold war ended, we all congratulated ourselves on the collapse of the Berlin wall, but those armed and militarised factions continued to fight in Sudan and Somalia and across the region.
Another issue underlying the problems in Sudan is scarce resources. When examining the roots of intercommunal strife in Africa, one often finds that the situation is partly the result of the post-cold war situation but also partly the result of fighting for scarce resources.
Finally, having made so much in the international community of the need to intervene in Iraq for humanitarian reasons, will we stand by and allow another Rwanda in Sudan?
As has been said, from 1916 to 1956, Darfur was a backwater ruled by a handful of British officials, including the relatives of the hon. Member for Blaby. One root cause of the present crisis goes back to the 1980s, when prolonged droughts accelerated the desertification of northern and central Darfur and led to pressure on water and grazing resources as the camel nomads were forced to move southwards. Conflicts over wells and water that would in earlier times have been settled with spears or mediation are settled in the 21st century with guns. The situation was made much worse by the decision of Sadiq al-Mahdi, the Prime Minister in the mid-1980s, to give arms to the Arabic-speaking cattle nomads, leading to today's ethnic cleansing.
The ethnicisation of the conflict has grown rapidly since the military coup in 1989. Of course, one reason why the Khartoum Government are determined to retain control over the area is the possibility of an oil pipeline through Darfur. Once again, we come to one of the issues underlying intercommunal conflict all over the world.

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Kofi Annan has said that the international community is prepared to take action on the situation in Sudan, meaning the continuum of steps that might include military action. Obviously, any such action would have to take place under the aegis of the Security Council, but the Security Council has discussed the crisis twice and declined to condemn the Khartoum Government. More focus on the issue is needed at the very highest levels.
I congratulate Her Majesty's Government, who are one of the biggest donors to Sudan and who, as has been pointed out, are not looking at the question only now but have been addressing it for some time. However, underlying issues are involved. Even if we avert the yet greater humanitarian crisis that may engulf the area, we as a Parliament must address those issues. What is the proper framework for humanitarian intervention? To what extent should the west take responsibility for the shambles left behind after the end of the cold war? As colleagues have said, the only way to stave off recurrent flare-ups of violence over scarce resources is by injecting development aid and considering the whole economic infrastructure of countries.
No one who cares about Africa and what it means to people of African descent all over the world can fail to be moved by the situation in Sudan. Sadly, that situation is replicated across the continent. I hope that Security Council and the Government can take action that may yet avert the impending tragedy, but I also hope that the Government will continue to play a part in addressing the underlying causes of the economic and political underdevelopment of the African continent.
10.24 am
Mr. David Drew: I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) on introducing the debate. We will miss him. If nothing else, we will miss his taking the opportunity to start sparring again with Vice-President Taha, which is something that will long stay in my memory, if not his.
I shall not cover ground that has already been covered. I believe that there is unanimity on the matter and that we all feel passionately about it. In a previous debate initiated by my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson), who chairs the all-party group on Sudan, I made two points. The first was that it is a scandal that the world faired to see what was inevitable and predictable months ago. That has much to do with the fact that the eyes of the world have been fixed obsessively on Iraq. I did not support the intervention there, and I feel guilty for my fellow human beings who could not stretch their minds away from it into other parts of the world: Sudan, was desperate for intervention, although I do not mean military intervention.
My second point was well made by the hon. Members for Blaby and for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge): the Government of Sudan have form. Not much research is needed to find out what has been going on. Members of the all-party group are always indebted to the Sudan Organisation Against Torture for its excellent work, which has not been mentioned so far. The organisation clearly presents some of what goes oil behind the scenes. One has only partly to believe that the Government are responsible for torture, let alone the many other ills in that society.
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As for the United Nations, we must not forget that the history in this context is not one that attracts glowing endorsement. I think in particular of the role of Libya when it was on the UN commission on human rights; it chaired the commission for part of that time, and it was then that the special rapporteur, Herbert Baum, was removed, much against his will. He was doing some excellent work in highlighting some of the problems that were occurring.
The usual argument was made at the UN: "It is none of your business." Libya made it clear that the matter was an internal, tribal dispute. If that was so, I hate to think how any other conflict would be defined. That attitude is unacceptable. If Libya is now part of the greater world, and we are engaged in a love-in with it, it must act responsibly. That means criticising nations with which it may have a strategic partnership. We want to hear that that is so and that Libya is prepared to go beyond the sometimes flaccid comments of diplomatic language. It must be willing and able to lean on the Government of Sudan. There is no evidence that it has done so.
We all very much welcome the peace at Naivasha. One worry is that, while, with the eyes of the world on Sudan, there has been encouragement to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement to sign a deal with the Government, there are many other places to be concerned about. As the hon. Member for Richmond Park said, most of Sudan is at peace. However, the possibility of the balkanisation of the country is a worry. We have seen what has happened in the south and what is now happening in Darfur. There are many other places in Sudan where ethnic conflicts could break out. The world must continue to attend to what is happening in that country. We cannot step back from that.
There is a worry—it is not a conspiracy theory—at the back of my mind; I was talking to an oil analyst the other day about the situation in Western Sahara. I said that we were going to Sudan. He dropped into the conversation the comment, "Of course, since we found oil in Chad, it would not be surprising if there were similar resources in Darfur, and someone somewhere had been thinking in advance about land grabs." That is the history of the south. The matter is not simply one of Arabs versus Africans and Islam versus Christianity. It is one of resources, as is the situation in Iraq. Let us not fool ourselves; there are things going on behind the scenes.
I pay tribute to the British Government. It is wrong for them to be criticised for disengagement from the issue. They have been highly engaged. The work of Alan Goulty, which has not been mentioned, deserves credit. He has been shuffling regularly between meetings with people in this country, the Government of Sudan, the SPLM and all the other parties. It is a very difficult situation, and we must be engaged and never again forget Sudan.
10.30 am
Tom Brake: I join other Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) on securing this timely debate. There have been heartfelt contributions from all Members present, all expressing a desire to help the

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people of Darfur. The situation there is desperate, and I will not repeat the statistics about displaced people. It is the worst humanitarian crisis that the world faces. As well as the hunger and murder, the Ebola crisis developing in the south may spread throughout the country. If things were not already bad enough, there is that element to add to the picture as well.
I am grateful to Alan Goulty, DFID's official, for briefing me on the subject on Monday. From what he was saying and from press reports, it appears that the Government and DFID have done much to alleviate the situation in Darfur and facilitate the peace process in the south, and I congratulate them wholeheartedly on that. However, it appears—I put it no stronger than that—that the UK and other countries could do more to apply the necessary pressure to the Sudanese Government to fulfil their obligations to the people of Darfur.
I hope that the Minister will set out how the UK Government can exert pressure on the Sudanese Government to ensure that the security and protection of civilians in Darfur is maximised. I welcome the statement yesterday from the Secretary of State in which he said:
"Action must also now be taken to bring irregular forces and militias under control. The Government of Sudan needs to take steps immediately to provide security to Darfurians, who told me yesterday that they will not return home until is it safe to do so."
I hope that that statement is the first notch and that pressure will be ratcheted up if the Sudanese Government do not respond.
Perhaps there have been developments in the last couple of days, but one thing that surprised me during the meeting on Monday was that by then the Sudanese Government had made no public statement condemning what is happening in Darfur. They had not distanced themselves from the Janjaweed nor ordered the militias to cease human rights abuses. I hope that more forthright statements have come from the Sudanese Government in the last couple of days.
It is interesting that in the notes from the all-party group on Sudan, which does an excellent job and produces very good briefings, Dr. Ismail is quoted as saying that
"the people in Darfur need security urgently and the Government of Sudan needs to move quickly to ensure their security…there is a humanitarian urgency…the Government of Sudan should collect weapons from those not in regular forces."
That is a positive statement but it is weak in its condemnation. With the contact that the Secretary of State has had, perhaps the Minister will be able to reassure us that condemnation has been more forceful in the last couple of days. I understand the niceties of Sudanese politics, and the concern may be that forthright condemnation from the Government would lead to the breakdown of the peace process. Therefore it must be done tactfully. It must be done, however, because the killing continues.
I welcome the fact that our Government are putting more resources into assisting the African Union. A timetable is needed to ensure the improved protection of civilians and humanitarian access and the speeding up of the customs clearing process. I understand that it currently takes weeks and that the target is to reduce it to seven days.
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The most urgent task is to get the Government of Sudan to do all that they can to halt the killings and destruction in Darfur. I hope that the Minister can tell us what means our Government have at their disposal to encourage the Sudanese Government to send the necessary public signals, to issue the relevant military orders and to do their best to deploy more impartial police and security personnel in Darfur. On the latter point, it would be a source of enormous concern if the Sudanese Government simply encouraged the Janjaweed to swap their uniforms for police uniforms. That would not create a climate in which displaced people would want to return to their lands.
The Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs claims that ethnic cleansing is not taking place in Darfur as ethnic cleansing means d populating areas and bringing in a different group to replace those who have fled. Does the Minister agree, however, that what is happening amounts, in effect to ethnic cleansing if the original inhabitants cannot return in the short term because of the rain, in the medium term because they have been unable plant their crops for next year, and in the long term because they cannot trust the security forces? At the very least, one ethnicity has been cleared out, and the land has been left empty. What assistance could the UK Government give to encourage the creation of a police force that people in the region can trust? Could they perhaps do something about training?
Clearly, the situation in Darfur is desperate, but there are positive developments, and the peace process is one. I hope that the Minister will be able to say something about the applicability of the model that has been developed for the south. Could it be transposed on to Darfur to provide Darfurians with some of the devolution that they seek?
I turn briefly to the role that the UK can play in getting the international community more involved. Would the Minister support a firm statement by the UN Security Council condemning atrocities in Darfur, or does he agree with the Secretary of State, who is quoted today as saying that talk of military intervention is unhelpful? What role does the Minister see other countries on the Security Council playing? I understand that China, Pakistan and Algeria have not been terribly helpful in developing clear statements or firm action on the issue. Does he believe that the European Union has a greater role to play in bringing an end to the violence? Can the Government do more to encourage our key European partners such as France and Germany, to contribute greater assistance?
One hopes that the situation in Darfur will be resolved at some point, but as several hon. Members have said, there will be still be a significant humanitarian and environmental problem once the situation has been resolved. The region is badly affected by climate change and desertification, so the land will probably not be able to support people. What role can we play in the longer term in providing developmental aid to the region? Clearly, such aid will be needed once the humanitarian crisis and military conflict have been resolved.
Darfur is isolated from the rest of world; it is 800 miles from Khartoum, with no roads. It is our responsibility to put it centre stage and to keep it there. The international community must use all the means at its disposal to stop the killing and to provide the humanitarian assistance that is needed to prevent the

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tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths that could occur. We still have time to prevent this disaster from turning into a calamity of biblical proportions, but time is slipping away, and we must redouble our efforts before it is too late.
10.39 am
Mr. John Bercow: The debate was opened in admirable fashion by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) His speech was followed by several powerful and impassioned contributions from right hon. and hon. Members.
The former United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, famously described what is happening in Darfur as
"the worst humanitarian and human-rights catastrophe in the world."
However blame is apportioned, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is clear that the Janjaweed militia is responsible for massive violence, that a climate of impunity in Darfur continues to prevail and that the Government of Sudan permit the Janjaweed to exercise a reign of terror over Darfurians. His report and those of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group paint a consistent and unmistakeable picture. UNICEF has access to only half the displacement camps and, as hon. Members know, the safety of its aid workers is often far from guaranteed. The recent capture and subsequent release of 16 UN aid workers is but one example of the poor security that humanitarian agencies face. Oxfam says:
"Food stocks are depleting fast, access, to drinking water is limited".
and Médecins sans Frontières has emphasised that the lives of tens of thousands of people in Darfur are at risk.
Last month I wrote to the Secretary of State for International Development to detail my concerns about the situation in Darfur. I was grateful for his prompt reply. I should now like to put some specific questions to the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs.
Shortly before the Whitsun recess, the Secretary of State wrote to me to say that the Government expected the Government in Khartoum to "rein in" the Janjaweed militia. Does the Minister accept that the Janjaweed militia in Darfur is manifestly sponsored and armed by the Sudanese Government? How does he think that the Sudanese Government intend to disarm or limit the capabilities of the Janjaweed? Would he accept that reports, to which the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) referred, of the Sudanese Government's proposals simply to incorporate the Janjaweed forces into the country's formal police and security structures offer scant reassurance to those only too well aware of their wanton savagery?
What measures do the Government propose to take with others to ensure that forcible repatriation of refugees does not take place in Chad and Darfur? Does the Minister agree that it is vital that the impotence and passivity of the United Nations in the face of genocide in Rwanda is not repeated in Sudan? On the assumption that he of course does, will ha say whether the Government intend to press for a robust United Nations
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Security Council resolution explicitly condemning the Government of Sudan for the ethnic cleansing of Darfur?
Does the Minister agree that, in urging the Government in Khartoum to provide aid operations immediate and full access to war-affected populations in Darfur, pressure needs to be applied for the opening of the rail lines, so that the United Nations can make massive deliveries of food and medicine from Port Sudan? Will the Government seek to join forces with the United States, the European Union and other donor Governments to approach Libya, Chad, other neighbouring countries and the Sudan People's Liberation Army, in order to establish alternative channels, which are not subject to Khartoum's veto, for the delivery of humanitarian aid to Darfur by land and air? Will the Minister stress that the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement should admit all humanitarian aid facilities into territory that they control, including from Government-controlled areas, subject to the proviso only that those deliveries are not accompanied by Government military forces?
Earlier this week, the UN emergency relief coordinator noted the imposition of new obstacles to aid, including an insistence that all medical supplies should be tested in Sudanese laboratories and that all supplies, including food, must be carried in Sudanese trucks and distributed by Sudanese charities or Government agencies. What representations has the Secretary of State for International Development made to the Sudanese Government on that point?
What recent discussions have Ministers had with the African Union, the United States and EU member states, to ensure that, in implementing the role of the ceasefire commission, there are adequate numbers of ceasefire monitors, equipped with helicopters and Land Rovers, in the major towns of west, north and south Darfur? If Government bombing occurs in Darfur, should not the Security Council authorise a no-fly zone to protect civilian populations and consult with those states with the capacity to enforce such a restriction to urge them to do so?
I hope that the Minister will agree that the Security Council should appoint a high-level panel to investigate war crimes in Darfur, establish legal accountability and deter the commission of further atrocities. Those guilty of heinous crimes must be held to account. I hope that the Minister accepts that and that he also accepts that we need to see detailed proposals for compensation and reparation for all victims who have lost grain, livestock and other assets.
The crisis in Darfur is harrowing. That point has been eloquently made by many others and I do not seek to compete with them or to improve on their descriptions. The crisis comes 10 years after the genocide in Rwanda, and none of us can be in any doubt about how much is at stake or where our own responsibility lies. Once again another African people who are innocent have been violated on a scale so grotesque as to defy all but the most vivid and, dare I say it, lurid imaginations. This time, the world has the chance to ensure that Darfur does not descend into genocide. There is not a moment to lose. As each day passes more lives are lost. We have a responsibility to act now. Our duty, in terms of humanitarian aid, diplomatic contact and moral pressure, is abundantly clear.

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I have the highest respect for the Secretary of State for International Development as a humanitarian. I am in no doubt about how horrified and appalled he is by what has taken place. The Government have made an important commitment and are providing financial resources, and the Secretary of State has displayed considerable energy in attending to the situation. Insofar as the Government do what is necessary on all the fronts that I have described, they can be assured of enthusiastic support from Conservative Members.
10.47 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Chris Mullin): As the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) mentioned, the Secretary of State for International Development had hoped to be here in time to respond to this debate, but his plane has unfortunately been delayed and he asked me to respond in his place. He hopes to make a statement to the House in the very near future. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Blaby for raising this important issue and to hon. Members who are present, many of whom have taken a long-term interest in events in Sudan, for the generally constructive tone of today's debate.
Darfur is the most serious humanitarian emergency facing the world today. Several thousand people have already lost their lives, and if there is not swift and effective intervention, many more may do so. This is a man-made catastrophe. Its origins lie in a local rebellion, apparently fuelled by outside interference, which has resulted in a massive over-reaction by the Sudanese Government and their agents, in particular the Janjaweed militia.
As hon. Members have described, there have been systematic attacks on civilians: rape, pillage, looting and destruction of livelihoods. As a result, more than 130,000 people have fled to neighbouring Chad and there are perhaps a million internally displaced people inside Sudan. Their situation is desperate and will grow more so with the onset of the rains, which are beginning now.
The ability of the international community to respond has been limited—initially at least—by lack of access. Darfur is, at the best of times, an extremely remote area and the difficulties have been compounded by obstruction on the part of local authorities and by the Government in Khartoum. Lately, as a result of repeated representations by ourselves and others, there has been some improvement, at least in the situation in Khartoum. On the ground in Darfur, however, there is still some way to go before aid agencies can obtain access to all of the worst affected people.
As I said, we have made repeated representations to the Sudanese Government about the need for unhindered access. Our ambassador, William Patey, has been in almost daily contact with them. My right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development and I pressed the Sudanese Foreign Minister on the matter when he visited London recently, and the International Development Secretary has pursued the issue in Darfur and in Khartoum in the past few days.
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We have been repeatedly assured by the Sudanese Government that all obstacles to access will be removed. I am glad to report that, at least so far as the central Government are concerned, there are signs that that may be happening. There are indications from the United Nations and other agencies that new fast-track procedures for clearing humanitarian relief through customs, registering non-governmental organisations and granting travel permits are beginning to work. However, there is no cause for complacency. Much time has been lost, and the ability of agencies to deliver relief to those in desperate need will decrease with the onset of the rains.
The first priority is the continued lack of security in much of Darfur. A ceasefire was agreed in Chad on 8 April, but, although the worst of the atrocities have ceased, attacks and intimidation by local militia continue. African Union monitors are starting to be deployed and, as they do so, we expect access to improve, and we are pressing the UN to get a move on with the deployment of its monitors.
Perhaps I could say a few words about the UK response. I am grateful to those hon. Members who acknowledged that the UK has been engaged with Sudan for some years. We have not suddenly become aware of it in the past couple of weeks, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) implied. Hon. Members of all parties will acknowledge that we have played a leading cart in raising the matter with the Sudanese Government, the UN and its agencies and the European Union, and I expect it to be discussed at the G8 meeting.
I wish to add my tribute to Alan Goulty and his colleagues in the Sudan unit for the part that they played in helping to achieve the peace agreement between the north and the south, which was recently signed at Naivasha. It is an extremely important agreement, and, as some hon. Members said today, it is also extremely important to ensure that the catastrophe in Darfur does not destabilise all the good work that has been done in the past couple of years to achieve a settlement between the north and the south.
Mr. Robathan: I said in my speech that the UK Government have generally behaved extremely well over Sudan. I am not here to criticise them. Could the Minister say something more about the G8? Condoleezza Rice said that Sudan would be discussed. What does he think might come out of the meeting, or does he have no idea?
Mr. Mullin: I think that I had better leave the answer to that question to the G8 participants on Sea island, of whom I am not one I am sure that word will filter out soon.
The UK has been in the forefront of the humanitarian relief effort. Since last September, it has committed humanitarian relief worth £19.5 million for nutrition, health, water and sanitation, and yesterday in Khartoum my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development announced a further allocation of £15 million for humanitarian assistance plus £2 million to support African Union monitoring. Overall, that is the second largest contribution after the United States. The US, the EU and the UK have

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contributed 75 per cent. of the response to the crisis so far, and we are anxious to encourage other donors to do more.
Strengthening the response of the UN agencies has been critical. We have already seconded four staff to the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs and three to the UN joint logistics centre. We are considering further support in the form of personnel and equipment to UN agencies including UNICEF and the World Health Organisation, as well as logistical support to the World Food Programme. Our in-kind contribution to the UN appeal for non-food aid accounts for about 25 per cent. of the requirement for blankets and a large part of the contribution made for temporary shelters. We are now airlifting those supplies to Darfur.
In the short time left to me I shall try to deal with some of the points raised by hon. Members. They are likely to have an opportunity to question the Secretary of State for International Development, who be coming hotfoot from Sudan, but I shall write to hon. Members about points that I do not have time to get round to now or that are not dealt with by him.
The hon. Member for Blaby asked about the absence of a UN humanitarian co-ordinator. An acting UN coordinator, Kevin Kennedy, is now n post. As for the humanitarian monitoring force, we hope, as I said, that that will be dealt with in the near future, but the African Union monitors are already beginning to be deployed.
Several hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke), asked for maximum pressure on the Government of Sudan. I hope that we have demonstrated that considerable pressure is being exerted by us and others, and that there is evidence that it is having an effect, albeit belatedly. There is still, of course, scope for considerable improvement.
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The hon. Member for Richmond Park asked how the aid will be distributed. Generally speaking, it will be distributed in-country and directly. That is already beginning to happen. Of course, aid will also have to be supplied to the 130,000 refugees in Chad. She also asked who is arming the rebels. The area is unfortunately awash with weapons, and it is not difficult for people to acquire them. However, there are signs, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, of outside interference. I am not in a position to go into the details today, but the hon. Lady is right to raise that wider issue.
The hon. Lady also asked about development aid. We are committed to that, especially in support of the agreement reached at Naivasha. However, as I am sure she will appreciate, we do not want to prop up any Government who are behaving as badly as some Governments in the region have done. Therefore, we are concentrating in the short term on humanitarian aid. However, she is right that development aid is the long-term solution.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) said that we should not overlook the progress that has already been made. I am grateful to him for the tribute that he paid to Alan Goulty and the Sudan unit. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) was right to raise the underlying issues. There is a big picture to be taken into consideration; she is right that we need a more robust system of international intervention and a different mindset on the Security Council. However, in the dying moments of the debate I do not think that I can elaborate on that point.
The next four to six weeks will be critical. Leadership, co-ordination and the deployment of experienced personnel are the key to avoiding a catastrophe and that must be our focus for the time being.

Freedom of Information
11 am
Mr. Richard Shepherd: I am grateful both to have secured this debate and that the Minister is here to respond.
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 was a flagship piece of legislation for the Labour Government, which fulfilled heroic, long-term pledges to institute such legislation. It will come fully into force in January 2005. That long-awaited reform gives the public the essential right to know what Government and public bodies are doing in their name. It aims to strengthen the rights of the individual, to make Government more accountable and responsive, to improve decision making by exposing data to public scrutiny, and to permit public debate on the basis of facts rather than supposition and ignorance. It also invites authorities to demonstrate that they are addressing problems, not covering them up, that they are competent and committed, and that they deserve the public's trust.
For those benefits to come about, the information itself must be accessible and affordable. During the passage of the Act, Members repeatedly highlighted the issue of fees, warning that high charges for information would undermine the right of access. In response, Ministers promised a relatively modest charging regime, under which those requesting information would pay no more than 10 per cent. of the cost of finding the information for which they had asked, plus the full cost of expenses such as copying and postage. Ministers set out those details in draft fees regulations, which were published while the Bill was still before Parliament.
We now read press reports that the Government are said to be considering dropping that approach and substituting an alternative regime that involves substantially higher fees, which, reportedly, might lead to charges that are six or even 10 times greater than those promised. Apparently, the intention is to limit the number of requests made to public authorities, but such charges would do more than that: they would destroy the Act as an effective, affordable means of obtaining information. Businesses and companies might benefit from the Act, but the ordinary citizen would not. Perhaps the Minister will tell us that the press reports are not wholly accurate, but what concerns me—and, I am sure, Members on both sides of the House—is the possibility that the explicit commitment repeatedly made to both Houses of Parliament may be broken. I hope that the Minister will assure us that there is no such possibility.
Let me remind the Chamber of the promises. The Freedom of Information Bill was published in draft form in May 1999 and was subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by the Select Committee on Public Administration, of which I was a member. I see the current Chairman of that Committee, the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright), present in the Chamber. The Home Office, which had responsibility for the Bill, said in written evidence to the Committee:
"we propose to allow authorities discretion to charge up to 10 per cent. of the marginal costs of providing information and in addition the full cost of disbursements…The costs would relate to locating the information and preparing it for disclosure".
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When the Bill was debated in Standing Committee, the then Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), said:
"We have decided to apply a charge equivalent to 10 per cent. of marginal costs…Unlike other jurisdictions, we are limiting the application to the marginal cost of locating and finding the information."
Later the same morning, he said:
"The basic regulations will lay down a method for calculating fees; 10 per cent of marginal costs."
That afternoon, he said:
"we have further made it clear that the charge to applicants will not exceed 10 per cent. of those marginal costs." —[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 18 January 2000; c. 87–113.]
Mr. John Greenway: I was the Opposition spokesman in that Standing Committee—it is hard to believe that it was only four years ago. It is fair to say that the cost issue went to the heart of our ability to be confident that the Bill would deliver anything to the ordinary citizen. Does my hon. Friend agree that unless access to information comes at a cost that people can afford, the Act will prove to have been a waste of time?
Mr. Shepherd: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I pay tribute to his commitment to the Bill and to the noteworthy work that he did in Standing Committee. The substance of today's debate is to hold the Government to a pledge that seems to have been given. I hope that they will hold to it.
On Report the then Home Secretary said:
"The cost of complying with a request is the cost of locating information, plus disbursements, but authorities may charge only up to 10 per cent. of those marginal costs."—[Official Report, 4 April 2000; Vol. 347, c 933.]
There is no question but that there was a great deal of reiteration. When the Bill reached the other place, the Government spokesman told peers:
"The Government have published their draft fees regulations. The policy is that the maximum fee should be 10 per cent of the marginal costs of seeking and finding the information."—[Official Report, House of Lords 14 November 2000; Vol. 619, c. 186–7.]
The draft fees regulations, which had indeed been published and are still available on the Department for Constitutional Affairs website, state that, apart from disbursements, the maximum fee that may be charged is
"10 per cent. of the prescribed costs".
The prescribed costs are defined as the costs reasonably incurred in locating and retrieving the requested information, and in providing it in the form requested by the applicant.
If anyone imagines that those charges might leave public authorities exposed to an unmanageable volume of requests, let me highlight the safeguards that the Act provides. First, under section 14(1), if the request is vexatious, the authority is not obliged to respond. Secondly, under section 14(2), if the applicant previously made an identical or substantially similar request to the authority, the authority is excused from replying
"unless a reasonable interval has elapsed."

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Thirdly, if the cost to the authority exceeds the limit laid down under section 12, the authority does not have to respond at all. The Government have said that the limit will be set at the level at which a parliamentary question can be refused, which I believe is currently £600. Fourthly, if the applicant divides a request into a series of smaller requests in order to avoid the limit, the cost of the different requests can be aggregated. Regulations to provide for that can be made under section 12. Finally, where different requests are made by different people who appear to be acting tog ether, as part of a campaign, the regulations may permit their requests also to be aggregated and refused if the total cost exceeds £600.
Those are formidable—some would say excessive—safeguards. The House accepted them only because Ministers repeatedly promised that the charge for an individual request could not exceed the 10 per cent. figure. That is why some of us are disturbed that reports that that principle could be abandoned have appeared in the press.
Brian White: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in Ireland the number of freedom of information requests halved when the fees were increased? Is not that the concern that he is articulating?
Mr. Shepherd: That is the basis of the whole debate, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing that out.
I know that Constitutional Affairs Ministers recognise the importance of the Freedom of Information Act and are genuinely committed to its success. If there is pressure to raise the fees, I am sure that it is coming from elsewhere. I hope that the Minister will recognise, even if those elsewhere do not, how damaging it would be to abandon these commitments, and how damaging it would be to the Act, to the benefits that should flow from it—a point that the hon. Gentleman just made—and to the Government's credibility. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that there is no question of that occurring.
11.9 am
Tony Wright: It is a great pleasure to follow my friend and parliamentary neighbour, the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), as I have often dove on occasions such as this.
Over the years, I have found it sensible not always to believe the things that I read in The Guardian. Leaks are very naughty things, but they sometimes help us to make necessary interventions in public policy debates. Clearly, this intervention is necessary. We know from the draft document that is circulating that a battle is going on inside the Government. The Minister is one of the good guys. He and his Department want to preserve the spirit—indeed, the letter—of what the House was promised. However, there are bad guys. The hon. Gentleman was too kind to mention the bad guys who live in the Treasury—normally a great institution—who do not want the measure to cost much at all.
Clear, unambiguous, categorical, unequivocal guarantees were given to the House when the Freedom of Information Bill went through Amendments were
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withdrawn because of those guarantees. We in Parliament take many things on trust—not least Ministers saying, "There's guidance to follow." We assume that the guidance will reflect what Ministers have told the House. When it does not, we are entitled to get very cross.
Will the Minister repeat today the assurances about the cost regime that were given to the House during the passage of the Freedom of Information Bill? I ask that in the spirit of helpfulness, because the answer given today will help him in the discussions that are going on.
11.11 am
Mr. David Heath: It is a great pleasure to follow the previous two speakers and to make this an all-party plea to the Minister. This debate sees a reunion of principal players in proceedings of the Freedom of Information Act. The hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) and I were part of the Standing Committee, and the hon. Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), for Cannock Chase (Tony Wright) and for Milton Keynes, North-East (Brian White) made significant contributions on Report and in the other parliamentary stages.
I shall not repeat what has already been said. Nothing would please me more than to hear the Minister say that there is no substance whatever to the reports that have been published and that there is no possibility of fees being set that will act as a deterrent to the dissemination of information that was the whole purpose of the Act.
The hon. Member for Cannock Chase was absolutely right to say that during the Committee stages of the Freedom of Information Bill, the hon. Member for Ryedale and I, and my then right hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, now Lord Maclennan, tabled a series of amendments. It was not by accident that the Minister who took the Bill through Committee, the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), had to repeat his assurances throughout Tuesday 18 January 2000. We had repeatedly questioned him on the point and tabled many amendments. We tabled amendments to provide that where no information was supplied, no payment should be made—"no say, no pay", as I put it at the time. We tabled amendments to provide that where no charges currently apply, the Bill should not have the perverse effect of introducing charges. We tabled amendments to exempt information provided in the public interest and to assert that applicable charges should be reasonable in the circumstances of the inquiry. To all of those, we received the most positive reassurances from the Minister that the Government did not have a fee regime in mind that would deter access to information.
The present debate has two aspects. First, we need to have good public policy. We have a Freedom of Information Act—let us make it do the job for which it was intended, and not act as a deterrent. I hope that the Minister is not only fully apprised of the significance of what is needed, but is entirely in tune with that aspiration. Secondly, we need to have good faith. I believe that we were given assurances in good faith and we as a House are entitled to accept in good faith Ministers' assurances. The Minister can ensure today that in future debates we can believe what we are told

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from the Dispatch Box and that we can govern in a proper way our debates on matters of vital importance to many of our constituents.
11.14 am
Mr. John Greenway: I am most grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the Minister. I did not clear the possibility of my speaking with my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) because I was not 100 per cent. sure that I could be in the Chamber by 11 o'clock, as I had some other parliamentary business to attend to.
I have two things to say. First, I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and proving that we can have debates of national importance in Westminster Hall, rather than just raising issues of concern to our own constituents. My hon. Friend has campaigned tirelessly on freedom of information throughout his career in the House and I congratulate him on securing the opportunity to put questions firmly to the Minister.
My second and key point is that all of the proceedings relating to the Freedom of Information Bill, in Standing Committee and on the Floor of the House, were dominated by one concern. Although the Government had made great play of their decision to open up information to the general public, there was a deep-seated suspicion that that would turn out to be not quite so true. I recall a Bird and Fortune interview on "Bremner, Bird and Fortune" in which the "Minister" was persuaded to admit that no extra information would be made available at all.
That is the background to the issue, which is why the cost of obtaining information for members of the public is key to persuading everyone that the Government mean what they say. If the fees are excessive, people will not apply. As my hon. Friend said, there is a panoply of devices available to bodies to avoid vexatious and high-cost inquiries that are made simply for the sake of it. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively to the debate, and that we can get on with the job of ensuring that the legislation, on which we all spent a great deal of time, bears fruit and brings the availability of information that we all want.
11.17 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs (Mr. Christopher Leslie): I congratulate the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) on securing the debate and on managing succinctly to describe his healthy scepticism, as other hon. Members have done, in respect of making sure that we are doing what we said we intended to do.
The Government took many people by surprise in passing the Freedom of Information Act early in our first Parliament. Despite the cynicism about it, we have made good progress in implementing the Act. It is a complex Act, but it is landmark legislation that will significantly change the environment and the character of the relationship between Government and the public. I pay tribute not only to my predecessors in government who were instrumental in forging such significant legislation, but to the champions of freedom of information, many of whom are present in the Chamber today.
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I would like to give a little background to the situation. The Freedom of Information Act is being implemented in stages, with full implementation by 1 January 2005. We set out the timetable in 2001 and we have adhered to it. The Act will cover about 100,000 public authorities, inch as central and local government bodies, police authorities, health authorities, education services, and so on. The size of authorities covered varies significantly.
We are always ready to consider options that will help to make the Freedom of Information Act as effective and efficient as possible. Potential policy improvements need to be kept constantly under review. A good deal of work is now being done on many different aspects of the legislation as part of the preparation for its full implementation. For example, since the Act gained Royal Assent in November 2000, we have introduced seven orders giving effect to its various provisions, keeping the list of bodies covered up to date, and adding new bodies to the list. Three annual reports have been published detailing the steps taken towards implementation across the public sector. A model action plan for use by all public authorities that are subject to the Act has been designed to give general guidance on the sort of action that authorities should undertake to prepare for implementation of the Act; it also provides a coherent, structured path to effective readiness for implementation.
Detailed guidance on the Act is being produced. We will publish the first edition in July. We are also supportive of other initiatives, for example the creation of a professional freedom of information qualification, which could be of considerable value to the practitioner community that will develop as a result of the legislation. A separate network is being created to consider and develop the course content for a professional academic qualification. Much good work is being done as the policy environment for the new freedom of information framework comes on stream.
I come to the point that the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills and others asked about—fees and the report in The Guardian of 18 May, which claimed that the Government are seeking to revise the charging scheme under the Act set out in the draft fees regulations that we published in 2000. As is so often the case, that newspaper report is inaccurate—very inaccurate. Let me set out the facts regarding the proposed charging regime. Sections 9, 12 and 13 of the Act provide for fees to be determined in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of state. In some cases, it may well be that no fees apply, but in others, there will be a fee to pay. The nature of the fee and how it is calculated will be set out in regulations. A public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying will exceed an appropriate limit. The regulations may also provide that, in some circumstances, the estimated costs of complying with two or more requests could be combined.
The draft fees regulations that were published during the passage of the Bill, proposed allowing a charge of up to 10 per cent. of the prescribed marginal costs of dealing with the re west, plus the full costs of any disbursements—copying, postage and so on. Prescribed costs are defined as any costs reasonably incurred by a

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public authority in determining whether it holds information of the description specified in the request, in locating and retrieving any such information and in giving effect to any preference expressed by an applicant as to the means of communication of such information. It does not include the cost of staff time incurred in determining whether the public authority is obliged to comply with the request for information. As I mentioned, the regulations also provide an appropriate upper limit—a cost ceiling—beyond which authorities are not obliged to provide the information requested. The draft regulations link that with the disproportionate cost limit for answering parliamentary questions and set the amount at £550, although that would now be £600.
So that the fees regime will be operational by the time that the Act is fully implemented in January 2005, the Government will bring final regulations to Parliament in about October. Those regulations will be subject to the negative procedure.
The story that appeared in The Guardian emerged from a clear process. An advisory group has been preparing guidance for public authorities on the charging regime. The group comprised representatives from Departments, the police, local government, the Office of the Information Commissioner and independent members of the advisory group on implementation of the Act. They include, for example, Maurice Frankel, the director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information. It is hardly, as portrayed in the article, a secret Government committee. The advisory group's informal remit was to consider how the charging regime will work, to assist in making proposals for amendments to the draft regulations where necessary, and to advise on the drafting of guidance for public authorities on charging. That the group did.
I understand that the group also briefly considered alternative charging arrangements to those outlined in the draft regulations. A range of options were considered and discussed, including charging full marginal cost, charging a fixed fee and charging variable amounts based on an hourly rate. To an extent, that mirrored consideration given to the issue by the Government when preparing the Freedom of Information Bill and considering relevant documents; many of those have been published on my Department's website. The discussion is therefore not new. I understand that the group recognised that there were pros and cons to each of the options and that it did not reach unanimous agreement in favour of any one option. A majority of the group sup ported the option of a variable charging regime based upon an hourly rate.
A paper by the advisory group is being considered by officials who sit on the Whitehall freedom of information practitioners group. The members of that group will take into account the views of the wider public sector for which their Departments have responsibility, and will consult as necessary. The group will advise the Government should it consider changes to the published charging regime to be necessary or desirable.
Mr. Shepherd: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Leslie: I shall give way before I come to the denouement of my argument.
Mr. Shepherd: I hope that my intervention will help the Minister to reach the denouement. We want to hear
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an absolute and clear assertion that the Government will stick by the undertakings that they gave on the Floor of the House and in Committee, and that all the discussions elsewhere of other methods will be set aside. The Government should stick by their undertaking.
Mr. Leslie: I understand the direction of travel being taken by the hon. Gentleman and others. I shall come to that point, but I thought it important to set out the context from which the report emerged and to calm some of the concerns raised.
Obviously, the Government are aware of the commitments made during the Bill's passage through the House. We published the draft fees regulations during that time as further evidence of our commitment to the proposed charging regime. We are also aware that any action that we take to introduce different regulations will incur criticism from either those who opposed the legislation, or those who are its guardians. We will therefore need to be convinced that changes to the proposed charging regime offer a better, and not merely a different, option. A fee structure that acted as a significant deterrent to people making use of their rights under the Act would go against the spirit and purpose of the Act.
We intend that the cost of handling information requests is borne substantially by the public sector; that is right and proper, as we are accountable to the public. I cannot give an undertaking that every aspect of the draft fees regulations is set in stone and will not change; it would imprudent to do so. However, the gist of the point is that the costs of freedom of information requests should be borne substantially by the public sector. That is the Government's commitment.
Mr. Shepherd: The commitment given was explicit. The Minister spoke of the commitment given by the Government, but now seems to be trying to wriggle out of it—or at least exploring the possibility of doing so. The purpose of the debate was to establish whether the Government stood by a commitment that was given on more than one occasion. The Minister must answer that point. He is suggesting that there could be an alternative system, but what happened to the commitment to which he referred?
Mr. Leslie: I reiterate what I have said. Yes, it is true that the draft fees regulations referred to 10 per cent. of the prescribed marginal costs; as my noble Friends said in another place, any changes to that approach would have to provide a better state of affairs, not just a different one, to that set out in the regulations. I hope that that gives the hon. Gentleman the degree of assurance that he seeks. We remain firmly committed to ensuring that the public sector bears the substantial burden of the costs on freedom of information requests. It would be wrong of us to not take into account the needs of the public sector and of the public in applying for freedom of information requests and in ensuring that they are easy to obtain. That commitment remains. That is the Government's position.
11.30 am
Sitting suspended until Two o'clock.

Sex Abuse Cases
2 pm
Mrs. Claire Curtis-Thomas: First, I need to make hon. Members aware of the fact that I chair the all-party group on abuse investigations, which was established three years ago and has 60 or 70 members drawn from both Houses. In addition, I have been a member of Rape Crisis for four years.
I intend to talk about the interviewing techniques used with victims of physical or sexual abuse. The categories of victim I wish to discuss include: children who make allegations of sexual or physical abuse against teachers; individuals in prison who are victims of sexual abuse; women who are the subject of domestic physical or sexual abuse; and children who make allegations of abuse against individuals, irrespective of where it occurs.
The interviewing of teachers following an allegation of abuse is of immense interest to thousands of teachers in schools throughout the country. Let me give hon. Members some idea of what we are dealing with. According to the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, since 1991 nearly 2,000 of its members have been the subject of a complaint by a young person at school. Of those complaints, nearly 1,800 were proved to be false, but even though the allegations were malicious or vexatious, the lives of many of the 1,800 people who were falsely accused have been ruined for ever.
Following work in which I was involved last year, and with the support of the Home Office, the Press Complaints Commission and the other broadcasting authorities have come under concerted pressure to deal with the way in which allegations of sexual abuse are reported. That was in recognition of the fact that, even though very few of the many people accused of that horrendous crime go on to be convicted, the accusation and the publicity associated with it mean that lives are trashed for ever. Three teachers who were members of NASUWT committed suicide as a consequence of the allegations that were raised against them. That is sad for many reasons, not least because, if they were innocent, they have lost their opportunity to prove their innocence. Such cases reflect the stress, horror and revulsion experienced by those who face such charges.
Absolutely nobody is saying that it is wrong of a child to make an allegation of sexual or physical abuse, but we must be mindful of the procedures that are employed in taking evidence from children. If 1,800 children make allegations that eventually falter, 1,800 too many allegations go forward into the system. It has long been a concern of mine—not only in this regard, but in others, which I shall discuss later—that those involved in taking statements from children are not adequately trained. We do not have facilities that enable children to make declarations that are untarnished by the contribution of any of the agencies that are involved in the process. A child who makes an allegation in school may see half a dozen people before a formal statement is eventually taken from them, and throughout the country, there is a paucity of appropriate venues for taking statements. Despite good efforts—I want more effort to be made in this respect—the people who take evidence from the children may not be trained to do so. Despite being very
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nice and well intentioned, they might not be able adequately to assess whether the child is speaking the truth or lying.
In this country at this time there is a general belief that children who make accusations of being sexually or physically abused are telling the truth. That is a natural reaction to the decades—probably centuries—in which children who alleged that they were being sexually or physically abused were routinely ignored. It was thought that they could not be telling the truth because no adult would perpetrate that sort of crime on a child. We now know that not to be the case. However, there is now a real concern within the teaching and caring professions that once a child makes an allegation, there is a presumption that the child is speaking the truth. The nature of the evidence provided by the child means that it frequently cannot be corroborated by a third party—the case may consist of their recollection of an event against a teacher's Given the climate that has been engendered over the past few years in relation to any individual who is accused of sex offences, who could blame a teacher for doubting whether they will ever be free of the allegation made against them, even if they manage to prove their own innocence?
The NASUWT and the other teachers unions have expressed concerns to Education Ministers, and I have made known to the Home Office my concerns about the way in which individuals are interviewed. If we poured more specialist resources in at the beginning of the process, probably far fewer cases would be taken forward. That could save teachers' lives, given that, in the present circumstances, teachers so accused are not afforded anonymity
Without anonymity, as I said earlier, there is the risk that many lives will be lost. We are talking not just about the lives of teachers and their future welfare, but about the families of which they are members and the communities of which they are part. Such allegations touch everyone. I have dealt with men who have been able to prove that they are not guilty of the crime of which they were accused, but even so it is almost impossible to look it them and not think, "Are you really innocent?" There is no other crime of which someone can be accused that leaves such a stigma and such everlasting doubt. In these cases, more than in any other, people believe that there is no smoke without fire, and that belief damns thousands of people every year.
I back the NASUWT campaign for anonymity for teachers until they are convicted of the charges brought against them. Such anonymity is only fair. When I put that proposal to the Home Office, I was told that if it was implemented it would preclude others coming forward to make further allegations against the individuals concerned. I understand that claim, but it presupposes that the police have not already trawled extensively for further complaints. We must not think for one moment that when a teacher sexually abuses a child, only that child is subsequently interviewed. It will not be only that child. It could be every child at the school, and perhaps every child who has attended the school over the previous decade. There will be extensive trawling for further evidence to substantiate allegations against teachers, so they should be protected from publicity

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until the point at which they are convicted. In that way, if such individuals are found to be innocent, they can walk away and try to rebuild their lives.
Mr. Alistair Carmichael: I am following the hon. Lady's speech with great interest. Would her proposal exclude, for example, the identification of a children's home or a particular school without a teacher or care worker specifically being identified at an early investigative stage?
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: I did not quite understand the hon. Gentleman's question. Will he be kind enough to rephrase it for me?
Mr. Carmichael: I am suggesting that, rather than identify an individual teacher as being under investigation, thus engendering publicity that allows other people to come forward, it might be possible to identify a particular school, children's home or other institution as being the place in relation to which allegations have been made. Putting such information into the public domain could allow other victims to come forward.
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: That happens in some cases. For example, when no win, no fee solicitors want to bring a class action for compensation, they frequently advertise in different venues the fact that they are looking for young people who may have resided in a particular home, or attended a particular school. Furthermore, in some cases—especially in the large, historical sex abuse cases that are being conducted in this country—the police might identify every member of staff in a particular establishment as suspects whom they might wish to interview about sex abuse allegations. There is much talk within communities about such matters. People understand what is happening. I draw attention to the broad-brush declaration made in the press. Some of the reporting is horrific and people never, ever recover from it.
Before the hon. Gentleman intervened, I said that I was backing the NASUWT campaign for anonymity, particularly in relation to the caring and teaching professions.
Mr. Jonathan Djanogly: The question is not solely about identifying the school or the individuals concerned, but what stage the criminal proceedings have reached. In other words, are we talking about the investigation stage or the point at which a charge is made? If she referring to police making haphazard investigations or fishing expeditions, I have much more sympathy with the hon. Lady's argument regarding anonymity than if she is saying that it should continue past the point at which the charge is made.
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: In fact, individuals who have not even been interviewed by the police or charged have had their names flashed across the papers. It does not matter what stage the process is at. The first time that a teacher may know about such matters is when he opens the evening newspaper and learns that he has been suspended following allegations of abuse. When people read about abuse, they think automatically not of
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physical abuse, but of sexual abuse. Even at that early stage, those against whom allegations have been made might learn for the first time what is happening from reading details in the newspaper. That cannot be right.
I should be interested if my hon. Friend the Minister, who has been immensely helpful so far, will be kind enough to let me know what improvements have been made to interviewing techniques and the facilities and services that are available to minimise the number of false allegations that are taken forward.
I have serious concerns about the interviewing in prison of people who have been sexually abused. Members may be aware that in recent years, and continuing today, police authorities throughout the country have been engaged in major investigations that centre on historical and complex sex abuse allegations. They have been considering cases of sexual abuse that occurred five, 10, 20, 30 and in some cases 40 years ago. The investigations centre on care homes and the teachers or care workers in those homes. Unfortunately, many of the children from those homes have gone on to a life of crime. It is a sad indictment of our society that many of those people have ended up in prison. The historical sex abuse cases conducted have involved more than 20,000 suspects and more than 10,000 individuals in care homes who say that they have been either sexually or physically abused. The scale is fantastic. Over a long period, the police have established contact with those individuals and obtained statements to substantiate their allegations. The way in which the police access those individuals and the way they are treated in prison are of deep concern to me.
First, the police may conduct a trawling exercise, writing repeatedly, until they get a reply, to everyone who has been in a certain care home or school in the past 20 years. In one case, 800 letters were sent on three occasions to individuals who had been at a school, seeking information about a named care worker. In the event that they get no response, occasionally the police visit people. Many of the people they visit are in prison. The police arrive at prison to interview an individual who may have been convicted of the most appalling crimes. I think that I could write a best prison guide, having been to so many, and I have met many witnesses in such cases. Even though some have been convicted of terrible crimes, it is tragic to hear about their lives, which have been utterly ruined. I ask them to explain the nature of the contact that they had with the police before, during and after their statement was given. Let us assume that the person whom the police interview is 35 years old and that they are in prison for 18 years for committing an awful murder. Such an example would not be untypical.
The criminal tells me, "The police came to see me one day and the first thing I knew about it was when I was told that they were here to see me." Most criminals' response to that is that it must be about clear-ups. Their automatic assumption is that the police are coming to see them because they can help the police with their inquiries. The police say, "We would like you to help us with our inquiries. Would you like to tell us about your time in this home? We are in receipt of allegations of sexual abuse committed by this person against your friend in that home, and we would like to know whether you can corroborate the allegations so that we can get the case to court." The term for that is corroboration by volume.

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Ideally, one could assume that the conversation took place once and once only, and that the individual concerned was immediately able to disclose some awful sexual activity to which they were subjected many years before. That does not happen. Having worked in Rape Crisis, I know that it is not possible to get people who have been subjected to terrible abuse to tell everything at one sitting. They may not have the capacity, the words, or the voice to do that. The police therefore argue that they need to return to interview the individuals concerned regularly.
It should be borne in mind that the police assume that the individuals whom they interview have been subjected to the worst conceivable forms of sex abuse. We have heard of the case of men convicted of abusing 53 boys in the most atrocious way 30 years ago. The police go to the prison in the knowledge that they may interview someone who was subjected to abuse of that kind. If one believes that someone has undergone the most horrendous abuse, it is not remotely acceptable to interview that person about it in prison.
I do not know how many hon. Members have been inside our prisons, but I can tell them that the interviewing suites are nothing more than glorified dog kennels. There is no notion of a comfort suite, no echo of a supportive environment. There is nothing. Many of the individuals concerned have made declarations or statements about being horrendously abused; when they have done so, the police leave—to return at an undetermined time—and the person who made the declaration is left. It is not right to leave an individual who has disclosed such abuse to their own devices—particularly in prison. I do not care if the person sitting before the police in the interview is a mass murderer. He is disclosing sex abuse of a degree experienced by very few people, and he should be afforded the support that every other rape victim could expect in this country.
Many years ago I asked how many times Victim Support had been into a prison and I was greeted with a complete blank. Victim Support is about victims of crime, and the people in prison are the perpetrators of crime. However, we should recognise that they can be victims as well. I want those victims to be brought out of prison and interviewed in appropriate suites. I want them to have the psychological support that they deserve as a consequence of the statements and declarations that they make. Undoubtedly, in many instances when individuals are in court having been accused of committing crimes, their defence will argue that they committed them because of the way in which they were brought up—because of their childhood experiences. If we recognise that there is a relationship between being abused as a child and one's subsequent behaviour, we should recognise that the individuals concerned need support.
I am concerned also because the conversation between the police and the witnesses is not independently witnessed. It is not possible to know what goes on between the police and the prisoner. I know that many of the allegations result in convictions and that, moreover, the people concerned receive significant compensation. That is fine, but I deal with constituents whose relations have been convicted of the crimes who are convinced that, in the prison cell, there is a
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conversation between the police and the prisoner about the soft benefits associated with presenting a statement. The police tell me that that does not happen, but I cannot prove it does not. If we took those people to a video suite outside the prison we would have independent, uncorrupted evidence that I could show to the families and say, "You can hear it for yourself."
Mr. Djanogly: Will the hon. Lady say why the videoing could not take place in the prison?
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: My hon. Friend the Minister might say something about that. I know that trials with roving mobile units have been conducted, and some witnesses are giving statements on video, but that is only a halfway house; the individuals are still interviewed in a prison environment and are not afforded the benefit of an environment that is more conducive to talking in a relaxed way. When I go on legal visits, prison warders are right outside the room and are capable of hearing what is going on. Such matters are deeply private and personal, and the police say that it is sometimes necessary to interview a person 15 times before they get a statement because the men in question find it difficult to talk about what has happened. Why not remove them to another place that has been demonstrated to enable people speak more willingly about such problems?
Mr. Carmichael: The hon. Lady mentioned victims being eligible for criminal injuries compensation. My knowledge of the operation of that scheme is that those who have a significant criminal record are generally excluded from receiving criminal injuries compensation. Does the hon. Lady have any figures to show that that is the case?
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: The hon. Gentleman is correct. The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority does pay out compensation to criminals, but normally on the basis that they have not received a custodial sentence. In exceptional circumstances someone who has received a custodial sentence may be paid, but other than that the compensation that individuals access comes through civil litigation. They are informed of the compensation either directly by solicitors writing to them in prison, or by adverts that appear in the prison advising them of class actions that are being taken and asking anyone who has been physically abused or suffered trauma in certain schools or homes to come forward. Class actions are the preferred method for insurance companies because they are more cost effective. The downside is that the state does not know how much it is paying for such litigation. At least one authority that I know of spent 10 per cent. of its social services budget on compensation, which is a huge amount of money.
There is an easy way around the problems for all the classes of individuals that I shall talk about today. Some of them are already classified as vulnerable witnesses. Vulnerable witnesses are people under the age of 18, people with a learning difficulty, and there is a third category that I am desperately struggling to remember—perhaps the Minister will remind me of it later. Whatever that category is, prisoners do not fall into the category of vulnerable witness. In cases of sex abuse, such individuals should be classified as vulnerable witnesses, and if they were, they would have

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the opportunity that is afforded to other individuals who have been raped and receive the support that younger people already receive in such cases.
There has been some good news in relation to domestic abuse cases—and, I was going to say, some bad news, but I prefer to think of it a, work in progress. We cannot underestimate the scale of the problems associated with domestic abuse case. I have talked to the Metropolitan Police Authority about the issue. I will talk about the type of cases that it is handling, because I think that that is indicative of what is happening throughout the country. I was surprised to hear that between 2002 and 2003, there were 104,000 cases of domestic abuse in London. The next, t thing that I was surprised to learn is that there is only one community safety unit in each of the 32 London boroughs. The community safety unit is where interviews with people who have been the subject of domestic abuse normally occur. By dividing the number of domestic abuse cases by the number of community safety units, we can calculate that there is approximately one community safety unit per 4,000 cases. That is clearly not enough to meet demand, and it may be why so many domestic abuse cases fail to get off the starting blocks.
In order to make a substantial allegation of domestic abuse, a woman needs a significant amount of reassurance and protection. Such women, too, are not classified as a vulnerable witness. I appeal to my hon. Friend to consider the classification of vulnerable witnesses to see whether they can be extended to include victims of domestic violence. To make a statement, a woman must attend a community safety unit or a conventional police station. She may be greeted by somebody who has little experience of domestic abuse cases and who may not have appropriate facilities to look after her and, importantly, her children.
Mr. Djanogly: I had not intended to speak about non-sex offences today. The hon. Lady makes an interesting point, but should she not extend her remarks to cases involving female-on-male violence which is much in the press?
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: Yes. When I use the term domestic violence, I include both women and men who have been the subject of abuse in the home. Of course, sexual, physical and mental abuse are frequently mixed together.
An environment that is conducive to making statements must be created. It is, in small part, present. An announcement was made last year about an additional —1.3 million being spent on units and facilities. That would buy a very decent detached house in London but not much more. That means that, in UK terms, facilities still fall far short of demand. I believe that we must refocus our energies, because many women who are involved in domestic abuse are not protected. They have no avenue by which to pursue an allegation against their partner, simply because the environment is not there for them to do so safely.
I want the facilities to be open at any hour so that they serve the people who have been abused at a time when they can best be served, which is when the abuser is not at home, so that the abuser does not know that the victim has gone to a police station It is important that
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sound facilities for managing children are available, because women often need to take their children with them. They cannot make statements about the abuse that they have endured with their children bouncing and running around. Children are often witnesses to abuse, but all too frequently the measures that we have asked to be put in place to allow children to give their evidence on video or from behind screens are not available. The picture is therefore mixed: in some areas there is good practice; in others much more needs to be done.
I am conscious of the fact that I have spoken for a long time. I reiterate my seminal concerns that teachers' anonymity should be protected until they have been convicted of the charges brought against them. That would greatly reassure the hundreds of thousands of teachers who work in the UK every day, not one of whom has not considered the possibility of an accusation being made against them against which they cannot defend themselves. I want the Government to consider the definition of a vulnerable witness to see whether it can be extended to include others who are obviously vulnerable. Finally, I want the Government to examine the adequacy of the services and the competencies of the staff who take statements to see what they can do to reduce the number of false allegations made against various people in this country.
2.36 pm
Mr. Alistair Carmichael: I congratulate the hon. Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas) on securing the debate and on the reasoned and measured way in which she presented her arguments. She has dealt with several issues that are sensitive in the extreme and are open to being sensationalised, and which the wider public and indeed Members in this place are often happier not to discuss. She introduced several issues that were new to me—not least allegations made by people in prison—and she has done the House a service in bringing these matters to our attention.
It might be helpful to start my speech by reminding the House of my background. Before I entered the House, I was a solicitor in private practice. Before that, I trained and worked with the Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland. In the course of my professional life, I have dealt with several sex abuse cases involving adults as well as children, which has informed my thinking on the subjects that the hon. Lady brings before the House today. I should also remind the House that I served as director of Aberdeenshire Women's Aid and was involved in the provision of refuge services in the north-east of Scotland. Again, I have seen at first hand some of the practical difficulties that allegations of rape and domestic violence can cause when they are made within the family unit.
The subject is particularly pertinent to me as the Member for Orkney and Shetland, because it was in my constituency several years ago that several children were removed from their homes in South Ronaldsay on the basis of some very interesting interviewing and disclosures made at the time. That led to a substantial investigation under the chairmanship of Lord Clyde and ultimately to the passing of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995. I have always maintained a very keen interest in these issues.

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The first overriding principle in these matters must be that the witnesses are always treated as individuals, whether or not they are vulnerable. Those interviewing them must always bring to bear whatever experience they have so that they treat the witness as an individual. The second overriding principle is that the objective of the person responsible for the interviewing is to get at the truth. That comes down to training. There are few more dangerous things than a professional with an agenda or a person on a mission doing the interviewing in a sex abuse case. That is why the resourcing and training of people involved in this area, especially those in the criminal justice system, is of supreme importance.
My experience is that the preparation and prosecution of the defence of such cases is very harrowing for the individuals concerned. Frankly, there are days when all one wants to do on coming home from the office is take off all one's clothes and have a shower. The manner in which cases are dealt with and the inadequacies of the court system in dealing with them are horrific. One of the most distressing things that I have ever endured in my professional life was sitting through a child abuse trial at the High Court, sitting in Aberdeen, in which a seven or eight-year-old girl gave evidence about the taste of semen. No one should have to endure that sort of indignity.
The legal profession and the criminal justice system are not well equipped to deal with such cases. I once heard about a training session given to advocate deputes—High Court prosecutors in Scotland—who were gathered in a nice, oak-panelled room with a roaring fire in a country house hotel. They were sitting there in their twill trousers and tweed jackets when the child psychologist training them, who was quite a go-ahead, in-your-face, assertive woman, said, "Right. I want you to think about your last sexual experience. I want you to think about the sounds, smells and tastes involved and about the other person who was involved, if indeed there was another person. Then, we will go around the room and. one by one, I want you to tell us about that." When she said that to those middle-aged men, the atmosphere in the room could have been cut with a knife. Then she said that they were not really going to do that, but that maybe that thought had given them some understanding of what is required of children who give evidence in child sex abuse cases. I have held that incident with me throughout my time in professional practice. It is a very real way of illustrating the point, and it comes back to my earlier point about the need to treat such people as individuals.
The Minister may wish to look carefully at the situation north of the border. We now have, as a matter of routine, joint investigations by specially trained police officers and social workers in appropriate surroundings. As the hon. Member for Crosby suggested, such investigations will often happen in a specially adapted house in which the situation is more relaxed, so that disclosure can be more open, free, and, it is to be hoped, more honest.
The Procurator Fiscal Service has been given resources to provide specialists in each region of that service who are qualified in interviewing child abuse and sex abuse witnesses, and trained in countering the difficulties associated with prosecuting such offences.
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The Scottish Executive propose that child witnesses and other vulnerable witnesses should automatically give evidence via video link in cases such as those in which an application to do so can now be made. That is the sort of direction that the Home Office may wish to consider taking.
There have been useful developments in the law on rape, which are to be examined thoroughly north of the border. The extension of the crime to include rape within marriage is an obvious example that was long overdue and which we now take for granted. However, the figures for successful prosecutions in rape cases remain disturbingly low. That issue is linked to the hon. Lady's point about support for people who make allegations, which hopelessly inadequate in all parts of the country.
That is the case not only because of training, but because of a lack of resources that is not immediately obvious. Resources can be put into a nice, cosy interview suite in a house away from a police station, but what happens to the won an when she leaves? Where does she go? What resources are available to support her and her family? She may be allowed to stay in the family home, but excluded from the rest of the family, who might take the side of the abuser. Such a witness, whether male or female, would require substantial and resource-intensive support in order to remain in the community. There is simply no option but to address the question of resources.
If we are to increase the number of successful prosecutions, the Crown Prosecution Service has to address how cases are prioritised. Cases involving allegations of sex abuse should be given priority for resources with regard to investigation and obtaining court time. Cases of sex abuse are the classic case of where justice delayed would be justice denied.
The hon. Lady spoke of the number of complaints of domestic violence that are withdrawn. I know from my experience that the pattern is depressing: the complaint is made, the victim is left without support in the community and, as a result, the only option available is to withdraw the complaint or not to see through the prosecution. Ultimately, the person involved has to go back to the environment from which they sought to escape in the first place.
The hon. Lady dealt at length with the issue of people who make complaints while serving as prisoners. I know from my experience of time spent in prisons that the interview facilities are basic, at best. That is an interesting issue, which I had not considered before today. I was not aware that it was an issue, but if she tells us that it is, we have to treat it as such and take it seriously.
My practice allowed me to experience the fact that the attitude of people it prisons as a community is often skewed by the compensation that may be available. Among sex offenders, there is almost a myth that such complaints are made so that the complainer can obtain criminal injuries compensation. Trying to break that down is next to impossible. If there is a case for saying that compensation skews the picture, I do not know how we will deal with it. We certainly have to bear the issue in mind. That goes back to my initial point: one always has to treat witnesses as individuals and look at all the circumstances, rather than approach them as a class.

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The hon. Lady made the good point that it is often those who have been through the care system in the first place who end up serving custodial sentences in the criminal justice system. That struck rue at an early stage of my practice, when I was required to consider a case in which allegations of fairly mild inappropriate conduct had been made in a children's home The names of all the witnesses became familiar to me in the following 12 months, as their number crossed the threshold of 16 and they began to make regular appearances in the district and sheriff courts. Just about every individual who had been through that children's home in Aberdeen went on to have a career before the criminal courts in the north-east of Scotland, which was quite depressing.
We are dealing with individuals who are often among the most dysfunctional and difficult people in society, and they need particular support. If the hon. Lady has brought anything to our attention today, it is the need to look at all the aspects of sexual abuse as a whole, rather than pick at individual aspects.
That brings me to the final point raised by the hon. Lady, who was right to speak of the problem of teachers being subjected to the allegation that they have abused those in their care. The issue needs to be addressed if 2,000 complaints are made, but 1,800 are not ultimately brought to an successful conclusion. The Government will not find that statistic reflected in the broader range of sex abuse cases. The complaint in question is a particular species of complaint, and we will have to examine the need for anonymity for those of any breed who face such charges.
We live in a climate that makes the accusation of any sort of sexual abuse especially potent. Mud always sticks, and it leaves a stain that can never be removed. Such allegations can ruin reputations and careers. The presumption that children will tell the truth is rebuttable if it can be shown that they are not telling the truth. If that is so—it clearly is for a number of teachers—some redress should be available. We must ensure that no damage, or as little as possible, is done to them, and if publicity is to be given to such cases, surely it should be done post-conviction.
2.51 pm
Mr. Jonathan Djanogly: After that expert contribution from the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael), I thank the hon. Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas) for opening this important and serious debate. I acknowledge the tremendous work that she has done over a considerable time; she also chairs the all-party group on abuse investigations.
I agree that we need to consider sex and abuse cases in the round. If it seems that I am not doing so, it may be due to the title of the debate; it is not that they should not be so considered. Victims of sexual abuse, like victims of all crime, should be able to bring the perpetrators to justice, and, in an ideal world, they should not be afraid of doing so. However, the opposite is the case. Research shows that sexual abuse goes greatly unreported, whether it is abuse of adults or children.
The inherent problem with the arrest and conviction of sex abusers is that there are often no witnesses and the victims are often reluctant to give evidence. The
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problem is particularly evident with child sex abuse, because many abused children are physically and emotionally dependent on their abusers. The law should protect the innocent and give confidence to the abused when giving evidence against their abusers.
The report "Speaking up for Justice", published in June 1998, made 78 proposals to encourage and support vulnerable or intimidated witnesses and to help them give their best evidence in criminal cases. Those provisions that required legislative action were included in the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. Victims of sexual offences are automatically considered eligible for special provisions unless they tell the court that they do not want to be eligible.
Those special provisions include being asked questions through an intermediary, giving evidence from a separate room via a television link, giving evidence through an interview recorded on video before the trial, and having cross-examination recorded on video before the trial. Those provisions can give much-valued security and support to victims of sexual abuse. It would be helpful if the Minister could give us an update on how effective those provisions have been. I am not sure whether she is allowed to do so, but, as previously requested, I hope that she can give us some idea of how Scotland is placed in relation to those proposals.
The Home Affairs Committee report "The Conduct of Investigations into Past Cases of Abuse in Children's Homes" recommended the video recording of police interviews of witnesses. I certainly agree that there is a good argument for making such video recordings, but I am concerned that various reports say that the police may find it hard to carry out the proposal, due to the often complicated procedures for taking witness statements. The issue has been subject to ongoing review, and it would be helpful if the Minister would share her current thinking on it.
The subject of expert evidence is also relevant. As I said, there are no independent witnesses or medical evidence in most sexual abuse cases. With that in mind, advocates often expect experts to shed light on the facts of the case. In the interests of justice, it is essential that expert witnesses are cross-examined in a way that does not do more harm than good to a case.
I recently read an interesting article written in 2001 by Mr. Charles Fortt on expert witnesses and the problems with using them in cases involving children. An excerpt from it states:
"Historically, the professionals who deal with victimised children—paediatricians, child psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers etc—have been separated by training and employing agency from those professionals who deal with offenders, mostly adults. This has tended to mean on the whole that those who deal with the aftermath of sexual crimes against children do not have much experience of dealing with the perpetrators of it. Again, historically, the bizarre and repugnant nature of child sexual abuse has usually prompted the courts and the legal profession to look to psychiatry for explanations and clarification. However, since most perpetrators of sexual crime are not mentally ill and since most sexual abuse follows a rational pattern of attitudes, thinking, fantasy and behaviour, psychiatry is not necessarily best equipped to assist Courts to pick their way through a minefield of ignorance and prejudice."

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Mr. Fortt goes on to state:
"However, lawyers frequently engage experts to assist in presenting their clients' cases, and to make the best of the evidence available it is important for advocates to have a rational way of evaluating their witnesses' expertise—the skilled cross-examination of a poorly chosen expert can do more to damage a case than not calling one at all."
Mr. Fortt made a series of proposals that I shall not go into, but I wonder whether the Government have been reviewing that area and, again, whether the Minister would give us her thoughts on it.
We should be aware of the fact that miscarriages of justice occur and of the consequences that investigations into sexual abuse have on the accuser, but we should not let that detract from the principle that it is essential to protect victims and to encourage them to bring their abusers to justice.
The effects of a miscarriage of justice may be severe, and we must work to ensure that innocent people are not convicted of a crime that they have been accused of due to false memory syndrome or an accuser's desire for compensation. I appreciate the concern of the hon. Member for Crosby for teachers, although I would not wish to make a special law just for them. They are no more or less deserving than anyone else, such as those who work with children in care homes. As a social services chairman in days gone by, I have personal experience of that situation.
However, at the same time, we must have faith in our justice system. We must ensure that abusers are punished and that the abused are not exposed to further abuse, but faith in our justice system must cut both ways. If an investigation is closed, it is unlikely that people will get anything more than a letter saying that the allegations were unsubstantiated. That procedure has two problems: first, it may protect public servants from scrutiny; secondly, it could leave the person who has been investigated with a lifelong stigma. In so far as it is possible that an individual who is guilty of a sex crime could be found not guilty in court by reason of lack of evidence, so it is also possible that a guilty person will get off at the investigation stage through lack of evidence. However, if due process has been carried out and adequate evidence has not been found, the human rights of the person being investigated must be respected and, after a reasonable period, they should be clearly exonerated so that they can get on with their lives.
Of course, if new evidence comes up at a later date, there could be a fresh investigation. The problem may be that the investigators, such as local authorities, might be more concerned about improving their chances in future litigation and claims against them than admitting that they were wrong. Surely, however, the initial concern should be about the reputation of the person being investigated, once the case has not been made.
I have referred to the impact of one aspect of the compensation culture, which works against people's reputations. Unfortunately, however, the problem goes further, as has been said. Some individuals may falsify claims of sexual violence against them, perhaps even from decades ago, to qualify for compensation. I am sure that all hon. Members would agree that, to whatever extent such violence occurred, it would of course be of great concern. It is also a fact that a
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relatively high proportion of criminals suffered abuse as children. Importantly. many were also brought up in broken homes or care homes, which the hon. Member for Crosby mentioned, where sexual abuse could have been more likely.
It is also likely that an existing criminal may not be as concerned about lying for compensation as a non-criminal. If that is added to police trawling operations for collaborative evidence, the potential for abusing the system could become magnified. Have the Government investigated that and, if so, to what extent does the Minister think that it is a problem? Why have more individuals not been prosecuted for conspiring to pervert the course of justice or for perjury? When people lie to the authorities, particularly for monetary gain, examples should be set. That does not seem to happen.
3.1 pm
The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety (Ms Hazel Blears): We have had an extremely interesting and, dare I say, wide-ranging debate this afternoon, with some valuable contributions. I, too, would like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas) not only on securing this debate, but on taking forward some of the submissions that she made in the debate that we had about 12 months ago in response to the Home Affairs Committee's report on historic sex abuse cases. Some of the issues that have been raised today are similar to those that we discussed last time, but my hon. Friend has added new concerns. She is not only an expert, but extremely committed to ensuring that such issues are properly ventilated, at least in the House. As I think I said last time, such issues are not universally popular and it takes courage to pursue them. She has exhibited such courage and commitment again this afternoon.
I should like to make some general points about where we are in protecting vulnerable and intimidated witnesses and give hon. Members a flavour of how the "Achieving Best Evidence" guidance is being implemented. I shall then consider the positions of teachers, people prison, whom my hon. Friend mentioned, and some of the issues that other hon. Members raised.
In 1997 the Government made a general commitment to providing greater protection for victims in rape and serious sexual offence trials and for those subject to intimidation, including witnesses. It was recognised then that the criminal justice system did not adequately protect vulnerable and intimated witnesses or the victims of sexual offences. That was a broad promise. Almost the first thing that we did in government was commission a working group to consider how to improve the treatment of vulnerable or intimidated witnesses in the criminal justice system. That was a huge undertaking. As the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) said, the "Speaking up for Justice" report contained 78 recommendations. Those recommendations included defining vulnerable or intimidated witnesses and identifying the special measures needed to ensure that they could give their best evidence, thereby increasing the likelihood of conviction where offences had been committed.

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My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby asked for the definition of vulnerable or intimidated witnesses, and whether it could be extended to cover some of the matters about which she expressed concerns. Vulnerable witnesses are defined as those who are subject to a mental disorder, a learning disability or—this, I think, was the category that she was searching for—a physical disorder. Intimidated witnesses are defined as those whose evidence is likely to be affected by intimidation, and my hon. Friend asked whether that definition could encompass victims of domestic violence. I think that the evidence of such people—men or women—could be affected by the possibility of intimidation arising from the circumstances of an alleged offence. There is therefore no reason why they cannot be encompassed in the definition of vulnerable or intimidated witnesses, who are entitled to the special measures in the scheme. Clearly, that is a matter of interpretation, but the definition is certainly wide enough for us to contemplate including the kind of witnesses whom my hon. Friend mentioned.
It is important to emphasise that all victims of sexual offences are automatically entitled to special measures under the provisions. If domestic violence gives rise to allegations of a sexual offence, therefore, the victim is entitled to special measures, unless they indicate that they do not want them put in place. The only instance of where that might occur that has been highlighted to me is when a child has been subject to abuse involving video recording. In those circumstances, it is difficult to think of anything more horrendous than offering the child the possibility of giving evidence by video. Most hon. Members would accept that that would be entirely inappropriate, and video evidence would not be one of the special measures implemented. In the normal run of things, however, a victim of sexual offences is entitled to such special measures. Again, the definition is fairly wide. All children come within the definition of vulnerable witnesses and are entitled to be considered as such. That is clearly set out. As far as adults are concerned, cases are considered individually.
The implementation of the recommendations of the "Speaking up for Justice" report in the "Achieving Best Evidence" guidance has taken us significantly further forward. However, it is not just a matter of defining who is covered and then giving them access to special measures. There is a third issue, which is vital, but which has not been raised this afternoon: improved communication between the police and the Crown Prosecution Service as regards witness needs. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) talked about bringing the agencies together so that they share such information. It is important that these matters are not left to the police, be cause the CPS has a key role to play in how the case is conducted in court. It is essential that there are early meetings to ensure the right circumstances so that people can give their evidence.
There should also be guidance on appropriate interviewing methods for vulnerable or intimidated witnesses, and that is at the heart of the concerns that have been raised this afternoon. I have had a look in a little detail—although probably not as much detail as my hon. Friend—at the "Achieving Best Evidence" document, which I commend to hon. Members. It is extremely detailed. It first sets out the general principles
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involved in interviewing vulnerable and intimidated witnesses. It then has two sections specifically about interviewing children. There is a big section about how to plan the interview—how to get involved early on, how to shape the interview, how it should take place, how to take account of the circumstances and the background, and how to guarantee the best evidence.
There is then a section on how the interview should be conducted, and I found it especially interesting that it is all about establishing ground rules. The document discusses how to deal with very young children and older children in different circumstances. There is also an important section about truth and lies, and I think that it was the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland who raised the issue of how to interview children and of whether they know the difference between truth and lies, right and wrong. That is difficult to ascertain, but the document contains the very best information about how to pursue such matters. It gives examples of the kind of questions to ask and the inferences to be drawn. There is a big emphasis on the witness freely giving a narrative account—on the police not leading them or placing words or ideas in their minds, but obtaining the account that the witness wants to give.
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: I agree with the Minister that the document is excellent. The Home Office has produced a number of documents containing guidelines on interviewing techniques, and that is absolutely fine, but how many of them are really implemented? Has the Minister considered auditing for compliance and if not, would she do so, or permit Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary to consider it?
Ms Blears: My hon. Friend raises an important point. Issuing guidance and strategies does not of itself indicate that the service and the culture are changing, or that we are implementing the action in the guidance. I would however ask her to accept that there is an ongoing process of changing the culture and practice not just in the police but in a range of agencies that are involved in the area. She makes an important point about audit and measuring implementation, and she will know that HMIC recently conducted a baseline survey of all police forces in the country, measuring them against a number of criteria. Those baseline assessments are due to be published shortly. They are the first ones ever to be conducted in that way. Clearly, professional practice is an important part of that measurement. I am not aware whether there is a specific requirement in that baseline assessment to consider implementation of the guidance, but I undertake to look into that area to assess whether we can do more to audit it.
Every police officer receives training in investigation techniques, and at the national centre for police excellence we are developing a code for investigators. That includes investigation skills at level 1, level 2, level 3 and level 4, ranging from the day-to-day grass-roots investigation of a minor incident through to very serious investigations. We are trying to professionalise the investigation capacity in our forces. It is a relatively new development to ensure that every officer has some rudimentary basic training, and that those who are involved in the more serious, technical investigations have the necessary skills. We are trying to increase our capacity.

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My hon. Friend is aware of the senior investigating officers manual on investigation technique, which we have talked about on previous occasions. It sets out clear guidance for investigators on how to go about their business. I gave her an undertaking that the SIO manual would be reviewed in light of some concerns that she and the Home Affairs Committee expressed about past sex abuse cases. I can tell her today that that review is ongoing and that the manual is being reviewed by people who have been involved in recent cases, to try to ensure that its guidance incorporates recent learning.
Mr. Carmichael: While the Minister is on the subject of technique and guidance, can she tell the Chamber whether any formal guidance is given centrally to police officers who conduct what the hon. Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas) referred to as "trawls"? That procedure seems to be fraught with difficulty, so some guidance must be given to forces engaged in it.
Ms Blears: There is guidance; it is clearly an important area. Even though the Home Affairs Committee expressed some reservations about the procedure, it was satisfied that the use of the technique was legitimate. The senior investigating officers manual covers that area. We have disputed whether it is trawling, fishing or—the term that the police prefer to use—dip-sampling, but it is a proper, credible investigatory technique, concerned not simply with trawling for evidence but with dip-sampling people to see whether they are making appropriate investigations, and there is guidance for it. Part of the undertaking that I gave to my hon. Friend was that we would update and review the guidance on the basis of learning from cases. In those terms, over the past few years there has been a major impetus to try to ensure that the way in which we conduct investigations is more professional and designed to elicit the best possible evidence.
In the "Achieving Best Evidence" guidance, there is a presumption that there will be video interviews for child witnesses in cases involving sexual offences, violence, abduction or neglect. Several hon. Members have raised the issue of resources for video facilities. Last year, the premises improvement programme—a general police programme—was opened up for bids for video suites. That, together with a specific £2 million fund for video interviewing facilities, means that we have invested £7 million in trying to increase capacity. Hon. Members will say that we never have enough, and there will always be pressure to do more, but I hope that they accept that we are trying to ensure that as many facilities for video evidence as possible are available.
In addition to the early meetings between the Crown Prosecution Service and the police, therapy is available for particularly vulnerable witnesses before a trial. That is something I was not aware of, but it is a significant step towards ensuring that people are in a position to give their best evidence. We are also trialling the introduction of intermediaries, which could be controversial. Providing an intermediary in court for someone with communication difficulties could again ensure that a witness can give their best evidence, without interfering with the substance and integrity of
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the evidence. That is a difficult balance to achieve. The pilot started in Merseyside in February, and I will be interested to see the outcome.
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: I am aware that intermediaries and support are available for children who have been involved in sexual abuse—in about one case in 10. However, there is concern about the independence of the intermediary or the person providing assistance. Usually, they are from social services, the Crown Prosecution Service or another authority. There is concern about whether they are tainted by association with the prosecution authorities and therefore hold a position relative to the outcome of the inquiry. Would the Minister advocate an independent advisory and support unit rather than something stemming from the current bureaucracies?
Ms Blears: Those matters will always be the subject of challenge and concern. We must get the balance right as to where intermediaries come from. How do we ensure that they have appropriate and sufficient skills without being tainted by bring seen to be part of an existing organisation? I am sure that when guardians ad litem were introduced into care proceedings many years ago, similar concerns we re raised about whether they would have sufficient independence to act on behalf of the child and not another party. I will inform my hon. Friend of the details of the pilot, and if she wants to make representations about it I will consider them. However, if the legal representatives of defendants have concerns, they are at liberty to raise them during proceedings. I have no doubt that those concerns would be raised and adjudicated on.
I shall now deal with specific matters raised by hon. Members. The issue of teachers being accused of sexual offences is very important. We are aware of the devastating effect on individuals falsely accused of sex offences or child abuse. We recognise that being accused of such offences carries a social stigma and brings adverse publicity. Such an allegation could have serious implications for someone's reputation, employment and sense of self-worth. We have carefully considered whether defendants in such cases should be entitled to anonymity, but we do not think that there is a case for it.
We appreciate that teachers feel vulnerable to being identified because they have a public profile, but we are not convinced that legislating to provide anonymity is the answer to those concerns. Regrettably, some allegations of abuse are true, and being abused by a person in a position of trust and authority, such as a teacher, can have a devastating effect on a child. I ask hon. Members again to try to ensure that we strike a balance: allegations can devastate the individual accused, as the hon. Member for Huntingdon said, but it is important to listen to those who have been abused.
We genuinely sympathise with defendants who are accused but subsequently acquitted, or against whom no further action is taken, but the principles of open justice are necessary to the maintenance of public confidence in the criminal justice system. It has long been established that criminal trials take place in the open in this country; the media are allowed to report them freely and that is an important principle in the criminal justice system, which must be open and transparent. The media must be able to say what went on in court if people are to believe

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that the legal system is functioning properly. In that way, the confidence that victims and witnesses have in the system is reinforced.
However, anyone who has been investigated by the police but who has not been charged should not be identified in the press in the period between investigation and charge. The Association of Chief Police Officers has issued revised guidance to all police forces, which applies to all offences, making it absolutely clear that anyone under investigation but not charged should not be named, and no details should be provided to the press that might lead to their identification before they are charted. It would be a serious disciplinary matter if members of the force were to transgress that guidance.
It is for the police to make sure that that guidance is very strong; equally, the Press Complaints Commission, which has safeguards against the publication of inaccurate or misleading information, oversees the system of self-regulation of the press. Sometimes, good investigative journalism has revealed cases of crime that might otherwise not have been revealed, but it is important that the PCC has proper guidance in place to ensure that people's reputations are not damaged by their being splashed all over the tabloid press when they have not been charged with an offence.
I understand that the PCC is drawing up stronger guidance on the issue and it is important to give it a chance to achieve the desired effect, because we do not want to take the legislation path at this stage. The enhanced ACPO guidance and work by the PCC needs to be given an opportunity to have an impact. Legislation to prevent a teacher's identity being published would not necessarily achieve the desired result: the people who are most concerned by the allegation—parents and the local community, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby said—will know what is going on in the area. Even if it is couched in the most general terms, mentioning a subject teacher in a particular school, for example, means that identification would be possible. The hon. Member for Huntingdon said that teachers are no more vulnerable to false allegations of abuse than other groups who work closely with children, and many people in chose groups feel at risk, too. Any concessions to teachers in that respect would inevitably lead to wider calls for anonymity for others who work with children.
I note that my hon. Friend is supporting the campaign for anonymity up to the point of conviction, which is a long way along the spectrum of anonymity in these cases. It would be very helpful if we could ensure that the cases were dealt with as speedily as possible, so that false allegations could be weeded out at the beginning and matters did not proceed, and people did not have the threat of possible charges hanging over them for months, with the consequent effects on them and their families. The Department for Education and Skills spends £1.5 million a year employing about 26 coordinators, who each have a cluster of schools. Their job is to ensure that allegations are dealt with quickly and weeded out, so that only the serious allegations go forward.
There may be more that we can do to ensure that the system does not militate against teachers in these circumstances, but we do not at present feel that anonymity is the way to go. I give an undertaking that
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we will monitor the revised guidance issued by the PCC and ACPO to see if it is working. The Secretary of State for Education and Skills and the Home Secretary have discussed this, and they are due to discuss it further. They are aware of the campaigns by the NASUWT and the National Association of Head Teachers. These are important and significant areas of concern and we will keep them under review.
I have dealt with the trawling issues, but I also want to say something about prisoners who report crimes. My hon. Friend talked about the circumstances in which they are interviewed. That is a difficult issue in relation to prisoners: because of the very nature of custodial sentences, people are in fairly coercive regimes that do not necessarily provide the kinds of supportive and therapeutic environment in which disclosures about long-term sexual abuse can be managed in the most effective way. However, with the decision to move the prison health service into the national health service, we are beginning to take great strides towards providing a health service environment that is far more appropriate. In addition to allegations of sexual abuse, many prisoners have mental health problems, and there is a great need to improve the mental health provision for prisoners in these circumstances.
However, I can say to my hon. Friend that where a prisoner needs to be interviewed, there is advice in the guidance about choosing a location to achieve best evidence. It is perfectly possible for a prisoner to be taken to an external location for an interview, or to be taken to one of the specially equipped suites. It will be for the governor and the prison authorities to weigh up the balance between security, which is clearly their concern, and the appropriateness of the environment, but such interviews can be carried out either in the health centre within the prison setting or externally.
I understand that we will be investing up to £20 million a year by next year in trying to ensure that there are good mental health services in prisons. We have to go a long way to catch up to make sure that our health services are right in those terms. However, there is the possibility of providing a more appropriate setting for these kinds of interviews to take place. My hon. Friend has raised an important issue.
Finally, I turn to the matter of support for victims of domestic violence, both men and women. The Government can be proud of the progress that they have made, but I would not suggest for one moment that everything is now perfect—we still have much more to do. However, sexual assault referral centres have now been established up and down the country. I visited one in Preston just a few weeks ago, where victims of sexual offences and domestic violence are able to go to disclose in very supportive environments. GPs are on the premises, there is a range of referral workers, and there is outreach counselling to provide support. That is a world away from where we were just a few years ago, when very little support and help were provided to victims in those circumstances.
We have managed to obtain £27 million from the Treasury for our "no witness, no justice" pilots which ensure that there is a witness adviser taking victims through the entire legal system step by step so that they can give the best possible evidence.

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I take on board my hon. Friend's concern about the sparsity of specialised domestic violence support in the community. We need to build capacity in that area, but if she were to visit the excellent scheme in Cardiff where the CPS, the police, the local authority and the housing authority are all working together to support victims of domestic violence, she would see something that represents a step change from where we were.
I know that we have much more to do to ensure that we put victims and witnesses at the heart of our criminal justice system and that the issues raised this afternoon are extremely important. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend and other hon. Members will continue to press me on them. It is right that we are called to account and that there is proper and adequate scrutiny.

Poppy Eradication (Afghanistan)
3.29 pm
David Cairns: I am pleased to have the opportunity to return once again to an issue that I have been raising in the House for more than two years, which is the need to eradicate the deadly international trade in opium that originates from the poppy fields of Afghanistan.
The trade is a chain of misery and degradation. It begins with the exploitation of desperately poor farmers in some of the most inhospitable corners of the planet and progresses via grotesque profiteering by international drug traffickers and their vile associates, resulting in the abject misery and suffering of wretched addicts and blighting the quality of life for those innocents who mus, live beside the seedy reality of petty drug dealing on estates and streets in my constituency and elsewhere. The evil business does not end there, but returns whence it came in the form of narco-terrorist funding. No one who heard the powerful speech by President Karzai at last year's Labour party conference can be in any doubt that international terrorists are directly and financially funding their murderous activity with drugs money. I cannot conceive of a more vicious vicious circle.
Before I address what must be done to tackle the trade at source, let me say that I am well aware that the basic laws of human commerce apply in this area as they do elsewhere. I know that where there is a demand there will be a supply, and that cutting off the supply of heroin that comes from Afghanistan will not end the problems of addiction, but I make no apologies for focusing today on the supply-side regime. I believe in the market, but all markets must operate within social, human and international frame works. The trade in heroin is as immoral, corrupt, violent and destructive as it gets. Furthermore, the demand side of the problem in my constituency, in terms of demand reduction and policing, has devolved to the Scottish Parliament. It is my duty as a Westminster MP to concentrate on those aspects of the trade that are reserved to this place, and that is the reason for this debate.
I would like to say one thing about domestic policy: there is little point in my campaigning to stop the flow of drugs into Scotland if Argyll and Clyde health board pulls the rug from under my feet. In its most recent consultation document, it mentions the problem of drugs only once, anti drug treatment is not mentioned at all in the part about closing Ravenscraig hospital in Greenock. That is simply staggering. I know the blight that drug addiction casts on individuals, families and communities, and the criminal activity that goes with it. I would lock up the dealers and throw away the key, but when an addict admits that they have a problem and tries to get off drugs, it is vital that they get the help that they need. Services provided at Ravenscraig are an essential part of that help, and it is unbelievable that the health board's strategy is silent in that respect. Thankfully, the days of Inverclyde being—wrongly—called the heroin capital of Scotland are behind us, but only a fool would claim that we do not still have a problem. That is just one of the major flaws in the health board's strategy and is another reason to oppose the reduction in services that it is planning.

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Supply feeds demand. The more heroin there is, the cheaper it becomes and the cheaper it gets, the more people use; the more people use, the more addicts are created; and more addicts mean more crime, more sickness, more heartbreak for families and more tragic early deaths. Ninety per cent. of the heroin on Britain's streets begins life as poppies in Afghanistan. That did not occur overnight: the trade was built up over many years, accelerating during the second half of the 1990s. It is a lucrative trade: in 2003, the combined income of Afghan opium farmers and traffickers was about $2.3 billion, roughly equivalent to half the legitimate gross domestic product of that country.
We are entitled to ask how that came to pass. Was not one of the reasons for toppling the Taliban that they had, in part, been funded by the opium trade? That was certainly the view expressed by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in his statement of 7 October 2001. As the conflict in Afghanistan precipitated by the attacks of the previous month in New York began, he said:
"We act also because the Al-Qaeda net work and the Taliban regime are funded in large part on the drugs trade…stopping that trade is, again, directly in our interests."
The following day, speaking in the House of Commons, he said:
"We in Britain have the most direct interest in defeating such terror…We know that the Taliban regime are largely funded by the drugs trade and that 90 per cent. of the heroin on British streets originates in Afghanistan."—[Official Report, 8 October 2001; Vol. 372, c. 814.]
After the conflict was over, the Prime Minister returned to that topic in an interview with the BBC World Service in which he praised President Karzai's recent initiative
"to issue instructions to destroy the poppy crop in Afghanistan for this year"—
that is, in 2001. He continued:
"We are giving every support to this. This is very, very important indeed."
I agree wholeheartedly, which is one of the reasons why I strongly supported the removal of the Taliban regime. The problem is that, since the Prime Minister made those comments, the situation has gotten worse. In 2002—the year in which the Prime Minister was speaking—about 74,000 hectares were given over to poppy cultivation. Last year, that had grown to 80,000 hectares—an 8 per cent. increase, which in turn has led to a 6 per cent. increase in the amount of opium produced. The practice is spreading: 28 out of 32 Afghan provinces now report poppy cultivation. The number of people involved is also increasing: it is reckoned that there are some 264,000 opium-growing families and roughly 1.7 million people whose livelihoods depend on that crop. Although the average opium income per capita for the farmers is the modest, to our eyes, sum of $594, that is three times larger than it was just the previous year. The growth continues, and just two weeks ago, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime issued a press release stating that there was:
"growing concern that the 2004 opium crop in Afghanistan may reach a record level."
How is that two and a half years after military action to end the trade, and more than two ears after the Prime Minister spoke of destroying the harvest, things are moving in the wrong direction?
I lay no blame whatever at the feet of Ministers, who have worked tirelessly on this issue. I particularly commend the UK Government's initiative to convene
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the first international counter-narcotics conference in Afghanistan, which was held in February this year. I will deal with some of its conclusions in a moment. However, we must begin from a point of honesty—we must not kid ourselves. The situation on the ground is deteriorating. President Karzai has warned of the risk that Afghanistan
"will again turn into a failed state—this time, in the hands of the drug cartels and the narco-terrorists."
As recently as February he warned that poppy cultivation
"not only affects the economy of Afghanistan, but the money which is earned from the trafficking, production and business of heroin fuels terrorism. Terrorism and narcotic drugs are involved and cooperate in the destruction of Afghanistan. the region and the world."
What can be done? All too often, the debate polarises and falls into two camps. The first camp—in which I admit I occasionally pitch my tent—contains those who say that we should actively seek and destroy the poppies, and deal with the consequences afterwards. The second camp contains those who wish to persuade opium growers that they should develop an alternative crop, and to provide them with the wherewithal to do so. The way forward is likely to be somewhere in between. Enforcement must he accompanied by assistance: the stick of military with the carrot of greater resources. Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, has noted in relation to enforcement that
"in the drug business of Afghanistan the risk/reward balance is skewed: enormous sums of money are being made with impunity. This must be redressed, by increasing the risk of illegality. Energetic measures are needed to repress the traffickers, dismantle the heroin labs, and destroy the terrorists' and warlords' stake in the opium economy".
However, he went on to comment:
"law enforcement alone cannot suffice. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime calls on the international community for adequate resources to help rebuild the economy of Afghanistan where far too many people still have no food security, no electricity, no running water, no roads, no schools and no health services."
It was, I assume, in an attempt to get right the balance between those who adopt a literally scorched-earth approach and those who favour gradualism that the UK convened the international conference earlier in the year. I look forward to my hon. Friend's comments on that event, although I believe that he could not reach it to attend, because of unseasonably heavy snow in Kabul. On top of all its other problems, Afghanistan seems to have the wrong kind of snow as well. The conference produced several action plans, and I would like the Minister to take the opportunity now to recommit the Government to implementing them in full. There are action plans on, first, law enforcement, including calls for action against corrupt Government officials who are hampering the counter-narcotics effort in return for a lucrative share of the profits; secondly, alternative livelihoods—there is praise in this context for the appointment of a UK-funded alternative livelihoods consultant; thirdly, drug demand reduction, to deal with the growing problem of domestic drug addiction; and, fourthly, public awareness, with the acknowledgement that opium production has become the cultural norm in many parts of Afghanistan, despite

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being clearly against the tenets of mainstream Islamic teaching. Those are excellent initiatives and of course I wish them well.
However, there is a flaw—one piece of the strategy is missing. There is a terrible missing element that, if not inserted, will doom the rest to failure. There is no commitment to a process of poppy destruction—no plan systematically and to an agreed timetable to seek out and destroy the deadly opium crop. I know that destruction is not enough in itself—I know that we need the carrot. But where is the stick? There must be a clear, unequivocal statement that unless the farmers engage with the authorities in the process of law enforcement and switching to alternative livelihoods, their farms will be destroyed. I welcome Antonio Costa's comment last autumn that the preconditions for change are slowly being put into place, but the process cannot be allowed to drift for years. We have already gone backwards in the two and a half years since the conflict, and we are continuing to move in the wrong direction.
Antonio Costa also said:
"The experience of several countries in Asia and Latin America demonstrates that the dismantling of a drug economy can be a long and complex process, lasting a generation…A generation is a long time. This prompts the question—can Afghanistan, with its democratisation threatened by old terrorists and new drug barons; neighbouring countries affected by drug addiction, an HIV/AIDS pandemic, corruption and violence; and the international community, with its 10 million people addicted to Afghan opiates—afford to wait that long?"
He does not answer that question. I will. The answer is no. I am not prepared to wait a generation for a decrease in the flow of cheap heroin on to the streets of Inverclyde. I am not prepared to tell the decent people of Greenock that they will have to put up for another 30 years with the scumbag heroin dealers who blight their communities. I am not prepared to wag a finger at corrupt Afghan officials and to coax reluctant farmers into seeing the error of their ways without the threat of terrible reprisals if they do not. I am not prepared to return to this issue in another 12 months to report further setbacks. I want real progress.
I close with the words of President Karzai, who said:
"We hadn't seen addicts in Afghanistan before, and we didn't even know what addiction was. But now we see the young addicted to heroin in our community. Addiction by heroin and death are the same. Death inflicted by pistol, rocket and bomb is fast—but death through addiction to heroin causes the slow death of people and the destruction of families."
Too many people have died and too many families have been destroyed. The time to end this evil trade has come. The task has fallen to us.
3.45 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell: I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) for his thoughtful and constructive speech. I would like to put two questions to him. To what extent was poppy production reduced at the height of the Taliban regime, or was it not reduced? Secondly, as one who has been in Kosovo, I would like to know whether there is an Albanian route through Kosovo by which Albanians bring drugs to this country from Afghanistan.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Bill Rammell): I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) not only on his speech this afternoon, but on being the Member of this House who has most assiduously pressed us on the issue of the trafficking of opium and heroin from Afghanistan.
I am pleased to be able to respond to my hon. Friend's remarks today in the context of the visit that I made to Afghanistan a few weeks ago, when I met President Karzai, Afghan Ministers and senior advisers, as well as key representatives of the international community. I saw the work that was under way to give effect to the Afghan transitional authority's counter-narcotics strategy, which aims to eliminate opium poppy cultivation by 2013. I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend said at the end of his speech about not wanting to wait for a generation; I certainly do not want to wait for a generation to see the problem tackled.
We should have a sense of realism, however, about the time scales that will be necessary if the problem is successfully to be tackled. Elsewhere in the world, experience of successfully tackling the problem suggests that it will take up to a decade to achieve that in Afghanistan. That does not mean that the Government are complacent or that we are not trying to make progress, but it dos s mean that we are in this for the long haul.
The UK Government remain committed to supporting implementation of the Afghan counter-narcotics strategy and to the lead role that we have been given in the international community. We have taken on that role not only because we have a sense of responsibility and concern for ordinary Afghan people, but because we have a significant vested interest in relation to the interests of people in this country. My hon. Friend referred to the fact that 95 per cent. of the heroin in UK streets originates in Afghanistan, so the problem for Afghans is every bit as much our problem. That is why we have committed at least £70 million over the coming three years and why we have a significant number of our civilian personnel on the ground. That is part of the UK's ongoing commitment to the Afghan people, and part of the increase in our overall assistance to at least £500 million over five years, which was announced at the Berlin conference on Afghanistan in April this year.
Elimination of opium production is a key challenge for the Afghan Government and the international community. It is a key challenge because it threatens the stability, reconstruction and legitimate economy of Afghanistan. The recent Berlin conference recognised the significance of tackling the drugs problem if we are to ensure a more secure and sustainable future for Afghanistan. It remains an enormous challenge, which we do not underestimate, but as I said, we are in this for the long haul and we are determined to succeed.
My hon. Friend referred to the current cultivation trends, and he is correct to say that the latest United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime survey reported cultivation figures of 80,000 hectares and production figures of 3,600 tonnes. That demonstrated a small increase in cultivation and production. The survey results for 2004 are still being collated and assessed by

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the UN office, and they are not due until the autumn. However, it seems clear that cultivation will have increased again this year.
That is obviously unwelcome, and it is legitimate in such circumstances to ask, as my hon. Friend did, why we are in that situation. One has to look at what has previously happened elsewhere in the world. Experience tells us that elimination strategies relating to opium poppy cultivation and production take time in other countries where the problem has been successfully tackled, albeit from lower original levels of cultivation, such as Pakistan and Thailand. Not only do they take time, but in the early years of the strategy, there is an increase in cultivation. Why does that happen? It can happen, for example, because infrastructure and access to water improves, and, as we are seeing in Afghanistan, because when one makes a squeeze on the traditional poppy growing areas, the activity begins to move into non-traditional areas. That does not mean that we are unaware of that problem. Indeed, we are trying to tackle it, but it is one of the reasons for initially seeing an increase in cultivation and production.
My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) also asked about experience under the Taliban—a point is often quoted. For one year, 2001, the Taliban enforced a complete ban on cultivation. If one uses the methods that the Taliban had at their disposal—torture, bribery, corruption and killing—it is possible to bring about a ban in one year, but the Taliban did not stop benefiting from the trading, cultivation and trafficking of heroin. Indeed, they continued to stockpile, traffic and make money from that process. If one goes back further, one sees that levels are not yet what they were during the early years of the Taliban. Our discussions must take place in context.
We need and we are trying to achieve—my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde referred to this—a significant change in the risk-reward balance affecting those who make decisions on whether they will engage in the drugs trade in Afghanistan. Historically, the risks have not been as great as they should be and the rewards have been significant. That is what we are seeking to change, which is why, in concert with the Afghan authorities and other international partners, a comprehensive, long-teem and sustainable approach is being built. We certainly have such an approach in the Afghan Government's counter-narcotics strategy, whose implementation is fundamental. The strategy is coordinated by the counter-narcotics steering group in Kabul, chaired by the Afghan national security adviser We are part of that steering group, as are other international partners.
The basic structures are now in place: drugs control legislation, a counter-narcotics directorate, the Ministry of the Interior's Afghan special narcotics force, counter-narcotics police and, crucially, the central eradication capability. That is one of the key points that my hon. Friend made towards the end of his contribution. We need an holistic approach, and that certainly includes an eradication capability. That capability also needs to be co-ordinated and targeted, which is why we have supported, financially and materially, the central eradication planning cell, because eradication must happen in the right places where it is most likely to succeed.
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We are working with the Afghan Government in all key areas of the strategy with immediate action to interdict the trade in drugs and eradicate opium poppy cultivation in areas where there is access to alternative livelihoods; assistance with the development of a counter-narcotics strand to the criminal justice system; assistance with the reduction of domestic demand for opiates; and support for development initiatives that, crucially, will provide alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers. A number of those pieces of the strategy have recently been put in place, and the next 15 months, particularly towards the end of that period and the next cultivation season, will be the critical test of whether what we are doing is working. I believe that it is, but it is right to make the judgment at that stage.
It may be helpful to give some specific examples of where measurable progress has been made according to that action plan. There has been progress with interdiction, which is a key element. The Afghan special narcotics force is an Afghan initiative to create a special drugs interdiction force under the control of the Ministry of the Interior. Since the force became operational, it has seized more than 32 tonnes of opiates and destroyed 32 laboratories, storage sites and significant quantities of precursor chemicals. The local impact, in particular, has been disproportionately high.
We have also seen the development of the counter-narcotics police, which was created as a specialist unit last year with a UK-mentored anti-smuggling team that has seized 125 kg of heroin, 30 kg of opium and a significant amount of precursor chemicals. That work is developing further. Furthermore, when I was in Kabul recently, I had the opportunity to witness the Kabul city gates project, which we have supported and funded through Customs and Excise, and which seeks to intervene and to catch and stop the trafficking of drugs as they leave and enter Kabul.
My hon. Friend referred to eradication. The Afghan Government has established a central eradication planning cell in the Ministry of Interior, which is critical to analysing and targeting efforts on eradication in a way that is consistent with our policy of eradicating the poppy crop only where farmers have access to alternative livelihoods. An alternative livelihood is a key factor. Anyone who considers the issue will conclude that if we are to persuade poppy farmers to stop undertaking that activity, they must be given an alternative income. That is why DFID is so engaged, why it has trebled its budget and why this is a particularly important strand of its activities.
The security situation is critical. If we are to make genuine progress on tackling poppy cultivation, it must be done in a context where security is improved and, beyond Kabul, is better than it has historically been. That is why the deployment of additional provincial reconstruction teams throughout Afghanistan is critical to expanding the international security assistance force beyond Kabul. ISAF has a key role to play alongside Afghan law and order forces and the US-led coalition in providing the necessary security for the elections. The international community must also ensure that ISAF can be expanded quickly. We are seeking to do that. The tasking of ISAF and the coalition forces to ensure that

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they can participate in counter-narcotics work is an important element of the strategy that we have been addressing. The coalition mandate has been changed to enable that to happen.
I shall say a few words about the conference in Kabul, to which my hon. Friend referred. I valiantly tried to get to it, but owing to the worst snows in Kabul for 15 years, I was unable to get a plane to land there. It was the first time that all the key international partners and key elements in the Afghan administration from President Karzai down were all together and signing up to the strategy to tackle those problems. Significant action plans were agreed to. The increased interdiction activity will increase the numbers and effectiveness of the counter-narcotics police of Afghanistan and the mobile detection teams. We are contributing by increasing the number of mobile detection teams from one to four this year and by looking for international partners to take on additional teams.
We are also tackling corruption and the involvement of officials and commanders in the drugs trade. Anyone who considers the issue or visits Afghanistan knows that there are key officials who have a vested financial interest in the drugs industry. The problem has to be tackled in the long term, and in part that will be achieved through symbolic high-level arrests, sending out a clear message that to involve oneself in the industry is not an easy and risk-free way to make money.
Another key element of the conference was the need to increase resources for programmes with maximum alternative livelihoods impact and support the design and implementation programmes to fill existing gaps in pro-poor agricultural livelihoods, rural finances, off-farm activities and micro and small enterprise development. We are working with the United Nations office and other international partners to make real progress with that programme. All the key building blocks of the strategy are in place. What we are doing can and will work, but the next 15 months will be absolutely critical and a real test.
If one considers the overall economic prospects and levels of growth that are providing real opportunities beyond poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, one sees that there are real, demonstrable opportunities. This issue is a problem for the Afghan people and for us, where, given the removal of the Taliban, we have a moral and historic responsibility to act and work on their behalf. Some 95 per cent. of the heroin that enters this country and causes such mayhem and damage to so many of our communities comes from Afghanistan. It is every bit as much our responsibility and in our interest to tackle the problem as it is for the Afghan Government and people. We are absolutely determined to work with them to take the issue forward.

Royal Hall (Harrogate)
4 pm
Mr. Phil Willis: I am grateful for the opportunity to lead this short debate on the future of the royal hall in Harrogate. I welcome the Minister to the Chamber. It may be rather empty, owing to the specific nature of the debate, but I assure her that today's proceedings will be widely reported. This is not simply a debate about another civic building in disrepair; it is about the architectural jewel in the crown of Harrogate. The royal hall, more than any other building, is emblematic of Harrogate's spa heritage and its links to the present. It is a building of local, national and international importance and is at the very heart of Harrogate's vibrant society.
The overwhelming support for the restoration of the royal hall to its former glory has been staggering. More than 15,000 people have pledged support, including 6,500 who signed a petition begging the council to work with the Heritage Lottery Fund to find a solution to the problem. Support has poured in from local and national organisations including the civic societies of Harrogate, Knaresborough and Ripon, the Victorian Society, the Frank Matcham Society, the Spas Research Fellowship, Harrogate symphony and philharmonic orchestras, the local Gilbert and Sullivan society, the St. Andrews players, the White Rose and the Tewitt youth bands and the Tom Roberts jazz band—to mention just a few. There is also support from Harrogate international festival, Ripon festival, numerous dance and drama societies and more than 20 local schools that regularly use the royal hall as their town hall for concerts and speech days.
However, the affection for the royal hall goes much further. Messages of support have poured in from a host of artists from the world of music, comedy, theatre and show business, who have entertained audiences over many decades. Sir Cliff Richard, who appeared at the royal hall as a youngster in July 1959, summed up the feelings of many:
"I wish every success to all who are associated with this project, and look forward to hearing that the Royal Hall is once again available for both established artists and those who, like me nearly 45 years ago, are just starting their careers".
The patron of the Royal Hall Restoration Trust, which was set up by the hall's inspirational local champion, Lilian Mina, is none other than His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who sent the following message for the launch of the trust:
"As Patron of the Royal Hall Restoration Trust, I am delighted to lend my support to the Trust's effort to raise funds towards the restoration of this unique part of our national heritage".
In that sentence, His Royal Highness sums up why I have brought the issue to the House of Commons: the royal hall is quite simply a unique part of our national heritage.
The royal hall is the only surviving kursaal, as it was originally named—it was renamed in 1918 following anti-German sentiment; little changes—built by the nation's most famous and prolific theatre designer, Frank Matcham. Although Matcham built or helped to build more than 120 theatres between 1873 and 1913, including the Palladium and the Hackney Empire in London, and Black pool's Grand theatre, Harrogate's

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royal hall is the only example of a cure hall or kursaal conceived and designed in the great continental spa tradition.
Matcham's brilliant building was no ordinary theatre. It was designed to help late 19th century Harrogate retain its position as queen of inland watering places. It was built to incorporate the essential elements of the cure—mineral waters obtained from Europe's famous chloride of iron well, exercise indoors in all weathers using the 360° encircling ambulatories, and dancing or entertainment provided by an astonishing array of performers.
This building of immense elegance was opened in 1903, and Matcham's genius was manifest in many ways. He designed a mechanical system for clearing auditorium seats to allow for dancing that is commonplace in many theatres today. A plenum cooling chamber provided a natural and efficient air-conditioning system for the auditorium. It was similar to the system that we have in Portcullis House today. However, the key innovation, which transformed future theatre design, was the use of cantilever construction principles, rather than view-obstructing pillars, to support upper floors.
Although designed for wealthy visitors to the spa town, the royal hall proved fabulously versatile and has served visitors and locals alike for more than 100 years. Great artists appeared on its stage: Dame Nellie Melba, Sir Edward Elgar and music hall stars such as Harry Lauder. The 1930s saw the arrival of the great dance bands and, in one single season in 1938, Jack Payne, Jack Hilton, Henry Hall and Joe Loss all played to packed crowds. The hall has been associated with political meetings. Horatio Bottomley's jingoistic speeches during the first world war Mrs. Pankhurst's call for votes for women and Sir Oswald Mosley's blackshirt rallies in the 1930s all featured there. The entertainment and political tradition has continued into recent times. For the past 15 years, the royal hall has been home to Harrogate's growing international and conference exhibition centre.
That combination of tradition and progression was fatally halted in September 2000 when massive structural faults were found in the building. The 100-year-old concrete that makes up most of the internal structure was found to be in an advanced state of decay. In addition, the steel support beams taking the weight of the floors and the balcony were severely corroded. Large sections of the building had to be closed to the public.
To its credit, the borough council immediately put together a rescue bid and made an impressive proposal to the Heritage Lottery Fund and to English Heritage for financial support. The Heritage Lottery Fund supported the detailed appraisal stage and agreed to put £6 million into the final restoration scheme as matched funding for the £2.6 million that the council was prepared to invest. The initial shortfall of £1 million was to be provided by the newly formed restoration trust through private subscription.
Sadly, the initial enthusiasm and collaboration has turned sour. Estimates of costs have risen by £4 million and the new Conservative-led council has reduced its contribution by £600,000, accusing the Heritage Lottery Fund of behaving abominably. In retaliation, the Heritage Lottery Fund has made it clear that it will not
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give additional funds to the project, hinting that unless a reduced scheme can be agreed, it will withdraw its funding. Astonishingly, the council appears to want to send back the offer of £6 million, mothball the royal hall at an annual cost of more than £100,000 and allow that national treasure literally to decay into a ruin.
Mr. David Curry: I represent a large part of the Harrogate district, so my council tax payers have a major interest in the issue.
Can we be clear about the facts? The cost of restoration is estimated at £13.7 million. The council initially said that it had £2.6 million available—a sum supported by Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors. Of that, a significant amount has gone on additional facilities to the conference centre itself, for so-called break-out facilities. The Heritage Lottery Fund is offering £6 million. The council has said that it is looking for a reduced scheme and is offering £2 million, because it needs a cash-limited scheme. It cannot have an open-ended commitment that exposes its own reserves and its constituents. When the hon. Gentleman blames the council, I think that he should understand that it does not wish to have an open-ended commitment on a scheme with major structural failure. The Liberal Democrat members of the council have never dissented from that evaluation of the position.
Mr. Willis: Mr. Deputy Speaker, you can see immediately why the project has become bogged down. The right hon. Gentleman is clearly defending the indefensible. A council that agreed a £2.6 million contribution, matched by the Heritage Lottery Fund's statement that it would make a £8.6 million contribution, should adhere to its agreement. Sadly, that will not be the case.
Of course, sending back £6 million is unacceptable. I hope that the Minister will make it clear that Harrogate borough council has a duty in law to maintain the building and that a partial restoration using the £8 million or £8.6 million that is available is essential. I hope, too, that through her Department she will offer support to bridge the funding gap. The plight of the royal hall illustrates the impossible situation that many small local authorities find themselves in when attempting to maintain listed buildings in their ownership. Had it been a building in private ownership, the council could have served an order, undertaken works and billed the owner, but how does a council serve a heritage order on itself? I hope that she will take that action if necessary.
Despite the borough council's actions, I have sympathy for its position. The resources available to local authorities to maintain, never mind restore, historic buildings are unacceptable. England has 442,000 listed buildings, of which 6,000 are grade I and 18,000 grade II*, including the royal hall. If the total combined budget for last year—£124 million from English Heritage and £113 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund—were allocated simply to grade I and grade II* listed buildings, the average grant per building would be less than £10,000. However, excluding heritage lottery funding, the total grant from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for the maintenance of historic buildings last year was a mere £28 million.

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It is therefore hardly surprising that local authorities have problems with these major building projects. Either the number of listings has to decline or significantly greater resources must be made available to the listed buildings project. Can the Minister explain what additional funding will be made available to English Heritage in the forthcoming comprehensive spending review in order to support that programme? Will she accept that, given a limited budget and the estimated £50 billion that is required to sort out all listed building repairs, a clearer strategy is required for the application of funding?
First, buildings of national importance should be separated from those of local importance and should attract differential funding. It would help significantly if that principle could be established. There should be a national priority according to a building's rarity. If the country had 10 kursaals of similar design, I would accept a prioritisation with regard to restoration, but the royal hall is unique in the United Kingdom and to lose it would be a loss to our national heritage.
Secondly, when a building is selected as one of unique national importance, its restoration should be seen as a priority for Government, but only if it has a sustainable future. Sadly, many buildings do not have a sustainable future, but the royal hall has a full order book of engagements and is urgently needed to supplement the town's conference facilities, and the people of Harrogate want it back as their town hall. I appreciate that there is a list of key buildings at risk that receive special support, but why must we wait until a building deteriorates almost to the point of collapse before intervening?
Thirdly, we should have regard to the size of local authorities and the number of listed buildings that they have to look after. Harrogate is a medium-sized shire district with 110 grade II* and 50 grade I buildings. Were it a unitary authority, it would have a larger budget to manoeuvre within. At least as a halfway-house measure, will the Minister seek to apportion part of the responsibility for the upkeep of listed buildings to county councils?
To date, Harrogate borough council has refused to take up the offer of a £6 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund in order to restore the royal hall. Two motions to the council, on 3 March and 29 April, to do so were defeated by the ruling Conservative group with a Whip. The offer from the fund remains on the table until 24 June, when it will be recommended to the lottery board whether to withdraw the offer.
I plead with the Minister to intervene and to seek increased flexibility from the Heritage Lottery Fund on funding partial restoration. It is essential that it increases its offer or at least encourages the council to return with another bid after the first phase is complete. I plead with her to seek a change of heart by the borough council so that it commits itself to a partial restoration and restores its agreed funding of £2.6 million. If the Minister can achieve a breakthrough with her own style of diplomacy or, better still, if she can secure some additional funding, her name will go up in lights at the royal hall, but it is currently dark and threatens to be so for ever.
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The Minister for the Arts (Estelle Morris): I think that that is an offer that I can refuse. I welcome the debate, however. Indeed, if I am not wrong, I have had the pleasure of seeing tire hall and attending meetings there on previous visits to the constituency of the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis). Therefore, although I do not claim to know the building as well as he or the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) do, I acknowledge its importance to the local community. The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case for its importance.
I often find myself in a difficult position in these Adjournment debates. I fully recognise that they offer hon. Members a welcome opportunity to raise what are essentially local issues, albeit ones that have national implications for the Government. I want to address my remarks to those two areas. It is of course the Government's responsibility to provide a framework within which decisions about the protection of our national heritage and our built environment can be taken, and I accept that responsibility. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will allow me to say a few words about the Government's approach to discharging that responsibility, even if they do not relate directly to the future of the royal hall.
Before I do so, however, I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is undertaking a comprehensive review of heritage protection in partnership with English Heritage. Although I cannot say what will come out of that, I shall ensure that his comments about the wider policy issues are drawn to the attention of the group that is conducting that review. I do not have a feel for whether it will be appropriate to act on his suggestions, because those issues are not my primary ministerial responsibility. However, I shall ensure that the review group responds to him in detail. if appropriate.
We are lucky in this country to live among some beautiful buildings. most of which are exceptionally old and need a lot of care and attention. However, it is not possible for any nation to respond with the cash that any local community would need. We are left with the difficult dilemma of prioritising. I was grateful that the hon. Gentleman acknowledged that in his concluding comments. There is an absolutist argument, which says, "They're important, so Governments should provide the money." At first I feared that the hon. Gentleman was making that argument, but he did not do so and instead talked about prioritising.
The current provision is for the listing of buildings, which is a good way of doing things. First and foremost, listed buildings that are at risk should receive resources. The hall is a grade II* listed building, so it would normally receive priority. As the hon. Gentleman will know, a lot of the available money comes from the Heritage Lottery Fund, which is by necessity at arm's length from the Government. We put some money into English Heritage as well.
On the framework, three years ago the Government published "A Force for our Future", which was the first statement for a generation of Government policy on the historic environment. To some extent, the Government are still working on that, introducing a new framework

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and structure, which I hope will lead us through the coming decades. The Department has already looked at the structure of the Sports Council and of the Arts Council, introducing significant savings, which have been ploughed back into those activities. The Secretary of State has said that, in the same way, we hope in the coming months to look at the bodies that represent our heritage, to see whether savings can the made that can be ploughed back into the sector. I do not know what will come of that, but we are discussing the issue in the Department and announcements will be made in due course.
I say that to give an inkling that it is perhaps time that the Government looked at the many non-departmental public bodies, the funding streams and the structures that govern the nation's and the community's decisions about spending and about English Heritage. I do not stand up to defend the current structure as perfect, but it is time that we looked at it and that is what we are doing.
As I said, in 2001 we published "A Force for our Future". To reiterate what the hon. Gentleman talked about, we cannot underestimate the role that built heritage plays in our communities' hearts, and in regeneration, tourism, social inclusion, education and civic and local pride. Indeed, the definition of a failed community is one where, often, heritage has been forgotten and opportunities to build something that the community can in future be proud of have not been taken. Built heritage scores on all those counts.
I want to talk about the Yorkshire region, particularly the hon. Gentleman's constituency. I take his point that some of these decisions are local, and that there should be a regional perspective and input. However, I am not sure that he is right about the play that he made between issues of regional and national priority. We are all citizens. I am not from Yorkshire, but I have been to his constituency —more often than not for work. That has not stopped me gaining pleasure as someone who represents a midlands constituency.
We do acknowledge the importance of the regional level. Each region now has an historic environment forum that brings together the key players at regional level. In 2003, those groups each published "Regional Heritage Counts" alongside the national document. That is an effort to reflect the difference between the nature of the regional provision and the national one. The state of Yorkshire's historic environment demonstrates well the contribution that the historic environment is making to the region
More grade I and grade II* listed buildings and scheduled monuments in Yorkshire have been removed from English Heritage's register of buildings at risk than in any other region. That is an important point to make. One cannot argue that less has been done in Yorkshire to remove buildings from the at-risk register. More has been done in Yorkshire, possibly because more buildings were on that register. Indeed, almost half those still on the Yorkshire register are now under repair or have agreed solutions.
The Heritage Lottery Fund offered 25 per cent. more grant in Yorkshire in 2003–04 than in the previous year. The amount of grant offered by English Heritage in Yorkshire has increased by 11 per cent. since 2002. Indeed, since 1997, English Heritage has offered £371,000 in grants to the hon. Gentleman's
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constituency, which I suspect is £371,000 more than has been offered to my constituency in Birmingham. That is the nature of the different constituencies. It has also offered a further £1.3 million in grants to Harrogate district. My point is essentially twofold: it is time to examine the structure through which the Government operate when protecting the environment, and to ensure that buildings are listed and the at-risk register is run in a way that is most beneficial. There is no way that anybody from Harrogate district or Yorkshire can argue that they have been treated worse than any other city or region.
I acknowledge the difficulty faced by local authorities. I do not want to enter the evident dispute between the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon, who both have constituents who pay council tax to the Harrogate council. Both speak with passion from different sides of the argument. There is an issue about the capacity of local authorities always to respond to such matters. I suspect that local people will blame the local authority before they blame the Government, because of the local nature of such buildings. That is why it is essential that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Department for Education and Skills and DCMS do what they can to work together. Whether local authorities have the necessary money to support all the local buildings that they need to support is a matter for ODPM, not for us, because of the grant system—although I am not trying to get out of replying to the debate.
In 2003, Ministers from the three key Departments signed a new and innovative funding agreement for English Heritage that recognises for the first time the contribution that English Heritage makes to the delivery of all three Departments' targets. I say that merely to make the point that the preservation of our built environment is the responsibility not only of the DCMS. Part of the trick is to get Departments to work more closely together and to ensure that the Government's different funding streams work with lottery funding streams to provide more leverage, whether through donations or money from the private sector or charitable organisations.
On the specific point about the royal hall, I am left with saying that I hope that the parties concerned solve the problem. Nothing that the hon. Gentleman has to say negates that. The Heritage Lottery Fund, which works at arm's length from Government, has provided £6 million, and always made it clear that it would not be in a position to increase the grant if the costs of the project escalated. In terms of the grants that are given out by HLF, £6 million is not unreasonably low. I do not believe that HLF is open to criticism about its action. We cannot constantly consider a project and return to HLF if costs escalate—which they do for legitimate and not so legitimate reasons—expecting that its grant can be similarly escalated. Sometimes it can be, sometimes it cannot be, but that decision must be for HLF to make.
Furthermore, the money from Yorkshire Forward that was on the table is not there now. A sum of £2.6 million came from the local council but, for whatever reason, that has been reduced to £2 million. I have no comment to make about that. I shall not criticise the council for reducing that sum by £600,000. The decision was made by the council and approved in the normal

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way. That is what local authority freedom is about. I must leave it to the borough council to make such decisions.
It seems that there are two options: first, to leave the cost of regenerating the hall at £13 million, and to use the £6 million that is on the table from HLF and the £2 million from the council and to raise other funding from elsewhere. The second option is to reduce the cost of the exercise to one that is manageable with an £8 million budget. It is not for me to decide which option to take; that is not my job. Rightly, that is for local people to decide.
It is important to bear it in mind that HLF has left the £6 million on the table longer that it would usually do, given the local argument that has been advanced and the change of mind that has taken place. I assure the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon that I am not using the term "change of mind" in a pejorative way. The council has a right to change its decision about how it spends its money. That has meant that time has elapsed. HLF could have taken the money away and spent it elsewhere. It has not. Reading between the lines, that is a sign that HLF wants the project to work. There is a meeting on 24 June, and I hope that all parties will sit round the table. I hope that the position is not reached whereby the £6 million is not spent on the hall.
I have had a private conversation with the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough has made public comments about the matter. The problem should be solvable. The town clearly cares passionately about the importance of the hall and its long history, and I hope that we can find a solution that £8 million can fund.
Mr. Curry: Can we be clear about the £2.6 million? Yorkshire Forward seemed as though it would offer about £2.5 million towards the royal hall and additional money for so-called break-out facilities—meeting rooms—to improve the conference facilities. When that failed to materialise, the council invested some of the £2.6 million in providing what was deemed necessary to make sure that the conference facilities were up to date. The council has not arbitrarily cut the amount; it has spent the money on something that is important for Harrogate, so that it can maintain its position in the conference world.
Estelle Morris: That is entirely a decision for the council. Such local matters fall the way of councils. I have been told that the area has problems with concrete sickness. Those problems are not predicted when outlaying funding. Problems have to be coped with as they come along. There is not a pot of money that can just be given to Harrogate or anywhere else because the costs of projects have escalated.
I join the hon Gentleman and the right hon. Gentleman in acknowledging the importance of the hall to the community. I very much hope that, in years to come, Members of Parliament can talk about the stars of politics and stagy who have appeared at the hall from 2004 onwards. I urge all parties to attend the meeting on the 24th and to go with a wish and a will to solve the problem. There is £6 million from HLF; there is £2 million from the local council. Please let that money point a way forward so that the hall will be saved.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock.