Westminster Hall Sitting of 5 May 2004

Preamble
[MR. FRANK COOK in the Chair]

Electoral Register
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Kemp.]
9.30 am
Mrs. Marion Roe: I am most grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of the integrity of the electoral register. For some time, I have been concerned that the system for the registration of voters in England, Scotland and Wales is not sound and could lead to election fraud. When I was appointed as an election scrutineer in the Seychelles on behalf of the Commonwealth and in Angola on behalf of the United Nations, one of the first tasks was to decide who was entitled to vote, followed by the cleansing of the electoral roll. Only by setting those important criteria could we acknowledge that one of the basic principles of free and fair elections had been met.
Today, I shall focus on both those aspects as they relate to the United Kingdom. I am sure that we all accept that an accurate electoral register is the cornerstone of any democracy. If it is corrupted or compromised in any way, the process will be undermined and the general public will lose confidence in the integrity of the Administration. Six months ago, I became aware that the names of some of my constituents who were foreign nationals were appearing on the electoral register. I remind hon. Members that an offence is committed when the householder fails to give the electoral returning officer information that enables him to discharge his registration duties, or when the information provided is false.
There may be several reasons why ineligible people are registered to vote. First, the family may lack the knowledge, education or expertise to complete the registration form correctly. Even children may be added to the roll through a misunderstanding of the system and because the roll has been confused with the census. Secondly, some foreign nationals may have little grasp of the English language. When the registration form comes through their letterbox, the householder, who has a duty to complete the form, may not understand the rules and may fill in the names of everyone living at that address. Thirdly, they may know, as foreign nationals, that they are not eligible to vote and have no intention of doing so but add their names to the register because it is extremely useful for obtaining credit cards, parking permits, loans and so on. Hon. Members will know that many organisations use the electoral register as a database to verify someone's residence.
David Taylor: The hon. Lady rightly focuses on those whose names go on to the register but who are not eligible to vote. Does she accept, however, that for every one of those there are likely to be substantial numbers of people who are eligible to go on to the register but do not
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do so and that, in their efforts to make the register complete and accurate, the authorities should also spend time encouraging those who do have a right to be on it to register?
Mrs. Roe: I fully agree. The electoral roll should be accurate, and those who do not register but are eligible to do so should be given every encouragement and all the information necessary to ensure that they can vote in the proper way.
Fourthly, there may be a criminal element in registering a false name: the aim may be to legitimise false identities and to provide cover for illegal activities such as benefit fraud. Fifthly, false names or those ineligible to vote may unfortunately be registered deliberately in order to corrupt the vote and to enhance the chances of a particular candidate in local and general elections in marginal wards and constituencies, in which case ballot rigging becomes very easy.
Moreover, every electoral returning officer throughout the country produces a different electoral registration form, which adds to the confusion. None looks alike. There is no uniform presentation. In some parts of the country, some registration forms are in different languages to assist voters, but they seem complicated to many people who fail to read the small print.
What caused me serious anxiety was the fact that, in general, no comprehensive checks were made on those who put their names on the register. What was worse was that I was told that the act of investigating people whose names seemed foreign could be deemed to be racist and that there was no need to worry because the system was self-regulatory. When I made inquiries about such matters of the Electoral Commission, I was informed that
"If legislation required checks to be made by Electoral Registration Officers, it would be difficult to decide on what criteria these should be instigated and made … if such checks were done on the basis of the appearance or sound of names, such action could well be deemed to be racist and in breach of the law."
Furthermore, the electoral returning officer is unlikely to make inquiries unless there was an objection to the inclusion of the name. The creation of the rolling register system has made it harder for political parties to use the claims and objections procedures. That was acknowledged by the Electoral Commission in its report, "The electoral registration process", which noted that
"it is questionable whether the objection process really does have deterrent value … a more effective objection process is likely to be valuable in the prevention of fraud."
In a written answer on 9 March 2004 to a question that was addressed originally to the Department for Constitutional Affairs, the Financial Secretary gave a list of 20 constituencies in which the highest number of registered electors was lost from the parliamentary register between 2001 and 2003.
David Taylor: Does the hon. Lady accept that the largest loss of electors from the register occurred in the early 1990s when the community charge was introduced? Thousands of people who were required to

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be incorporated into the register at that time have still not surfaced. Is that not shocking? Is there not something that we can do about it?
Mrs. Roe: I agree. I hope that something can be done about the problem.
I return to the written answer of 9 March. I remind hon. Members that I am talking about the constituencies in which the highest number of registered electors was lost from the parliamentary register between 2001 and 2003. I draw attention to the constituency at the top of the list, Brentford and Isleworth, in which there was a decrease of 15,486—18.6 per cent.—which the Financial Secretary acknowledged in her reply
"may be due to 'cleaning' of the registers rather than actual falls in the number of electors."—[Official Report, 9 March 2004; Vol. 418, c. 1417W.]
Portsmouth, South showed a decrease of 11,210 registered electors, a 14.5 per cent. fall. It follows that there are major implications for the work of the boundary commissioners as well, which have yet to be acknowledged and dealt with when assessing ward and constituency boundaries. The information that I have given hon. Members demonstrates clearly the size of the problem.
There is no doubt that the electoral register is being abused. The argument that cases of fraudulent registration rarely appear in the courts cannot support the view that there is no problem to solve. The reason why no prosecutions are taking place is that no checks are being made and no evidence is being exposed. An article in the Daily Mail on 7 February 2004 stated:
"The astonishing ease with which fraudsters are corrupting the electoral system is exposed today. As abuse increases, especially by benefit cheats and illegal immigrants, a Daily Mail investigation has highlighted a culture of inefficiency and political correctness within local councils.
It allowed us to register a fictitious student, called Gus Troobev, an anagram of 'bogus voter', on 31 Electoral Registers, within just a few hours and to obtain 9 further bogus votes in the most marginal seat in Britain. The Mail has no intention of using any of the 40 votes but, theoretically, they could be used by political parties to swing elections."
The quote continues:
"Almost all the Councils we contacted were happy to allow our man to register for elections without asking for any proof of identity. Most of the officials we later asked if Gus Troobev had made it onto the Register said they would not dare investigate an applicant just because he or she had a foreign-sounding name or had lived overseas. Gus Troobev is now on the Electoral Roll of 31 key constituencies from Scotland to the South West of England."
British citizens can vote in all elections—local, national and European—in the United Kingdom. Citizens of the Irish Republic can do the same, as can all Commonwealth citizens. Finally, citizens of a country that is a member of the European Union can vote in local elections and choose in European parliamentary elections whether to cast their votes in the United Kingdom or their country of origin. Under our system of registration, how can a returning officer know whether "John Smith" is British voting in all elections, a Canadian voting in all elections, or an American who
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cannot vote in any elections? It is impossible to know unless a thorough identity check is available on each individual.
In Northern Ireland, the problem of fraudulent voting was confronted and dealt with through the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act 2002. We have all heard the motto, "Vote early, vote often." Now, in Northern Ireland, there is individual registration of each voter; the householder no longer has the responsibility to complete the forms on behalf of all residents in the home. On the new registration form, there are four identifiers: name and address, date of birth, national insurance number and a personal signature. Those details can be checked more easily. More important, the voter must produce at the polling station when voting photographic identification documents from a list of options.
On the first register compiled under the new system of individual registration, there were 120,000 fewer names—a decrease of 10 per cent.—than on its predecessor compiled under the household registration system. Thus, the electoral register eventually restored credibility and confidence in the procedure of voting at elections. In December 2003, the Electoral Commission produced a report outlining its analysis of the workings of the new system in Northern Ireland, and made recommendations for further improvement.
In one corner of the United Kingdom, therefore, we have already acknowledged the difficulties of producing an accurate electoral register and have introduced legislation to correct the flaws. What are the Government doing to ensure that the same approach is adopted for the rest of the country, especially bearing in mind that for the first time everyone in the north-east, north-west, east midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside regions will be voting by post for the European elections in June? Is that not putting the cart before the horse? Is it not almost an enticement to vote illegally when ballot papers are put through letterboxes with every encouragement to use them? It appears that the Government are sending out the message that we want as many people to vote as possible, even if they are not eligible to do so
In a briefing issued on 15 January on the Government's electoral modernisation agenda, the Minister for Local and Regional Government said:
"We are committed to making voting more accessible and straightforward for the electorate and to allow people … flexibility in where and when they vote."
Surely the priority focus should be on who is eligible to vote. That should come before the introduction of multi-channelled, e-enabled elections. Of course I support making voting more accessible and straightforward for the electorate—that is, for those who are eligible to vote—and more flexibility should be allowed in where and when they vote, but surely that applies only to those entitled to vote. Returning officers need to be given direction on scrutiny of the electoral register, protected from accusations of racism, harassment and so on, supported and given sufficient resources to fulfil their duties.
A knock-on effect is that the percentage figures on those voting are completely distorted, as many people on the electoral register are not entitled to vote in the first place. The whole matter needs to be addressed

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urgently. There will be a strong possibility of challenges to election results in marginal seats if there is a suspicion that fraud has been committed.
I return to the subject of who is entitled to vote in the United Kingdom. Of course, there are no question marks over whether British citizens should have the right to determine who governs them at local and national level, or represents them in Europe. Citizens of countries in the European Union can vote in local and European elections, and there are reciprocal arrangements for British citizens As a result of the Consolidated Act under the Representation of the People Act 1983, citizens of the Irish Republic can vote in the United Kingdom, and a reciprocal arrangement exists for British citizens in Ireland although they are subject to a residential qualification of three months.
Commonwealth citizens can vote in all our elections under the 1983 Act. There are 53 Commonwealth countries. That means that citizens from 52 countries around the world can come to the United Kingdom and vote in our local, national and European parliamentary elections. For example, if I were an Australian citizen, I could come to the United Kingdom, buy or rent a property and, within months, add my name to the electoral register through the rolling register system. I could then start to vote and to influence which political parties govern following local, mayoral, general and European elections. However, a British citizen could not go to Australia and vote on the same basis, as there is no reciprocal arrangement. The same applies to Canada and India.
In fact, only 14 of the 52 other Commonwealth countries offer reciprocal arrangements to British citizens. They are mostly the islands in the West Indies—Barbados, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana—they also include New Zealand, Malawi, Mauritius. Namibia and South Africa. Even citizens from countries that have been suspended from the Commonwealth are entitled to vote in the United Kingdom.
The question must be asked: is it fair that all Commonwealth citizens are permitted to vote in European parliamentary elections to choose the United Kingdom's representatives in Europe? Our Commonwealth cousins are clearly displaying the fact that they believe that the umbilical cord with the mother country has been cut in this respect, and we should accept that that is their desire. I urge the Government to instruct the Electoral Commission to undertake an urgent review of who should be entitled to vote in the United Kingdom, with reference to our Commonwealth cousins. They, of course, should be consulted on whether they wish to continue any reciprocal arrangements. If so, those arrangements can continue. The others should be consulted on whether they wish to initiate a reciprocal arrangement, or whether their citizens should no longer be able to vote in the United Kingdom.
That exercise should be conducted in the friendliest of terms. so that the fairness of the arrangements can be clarified as far as the British public are concerned. At the end of its inquiry, the Electoral Commission should be invited to present an analysis of the current arrangements, as well as all the workable options available to Government that would demonstrate an
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even-handed system, which is understood by everybody. It is important that the practices of other countries should be considered: for example, some have residential qualifications for voting in some elections rather than a Commonwealth link. There can then be an informed debate on the issue. All the information can then be assessed to produce a coherent qualification for voting rights and can thus restore an acceptance that our democratic system continues to be built on a foundation of freedom and fairness in the 21st century.
The Electoral Commission's report on Northern Ireland's new electoral system was published in December 2003. The conclusion states:
"The right to register to vote, and the ability to exercise that right in elections that are safeguarded against abuse and malpractice is the foundation of any democratic society."
Surely it is right that those sentiments must apply to the whole of the United Kingdom in order to guarantee that our democracy continues to flourish. My constituents want to see secure procedures in place for the registration of voters, which will provide an electoral register that has its integrity constantly maintained. Every loophole that allows our electoral process to be corrupted must be removed and any unfairness eliminated.
9.52 am
Dr. Alan Whitehead: I congratulate the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe) on securing this debate on an important issue that goes to the heart of the integrity of our electoral system. Our ability to rely on the electoral register when conducting our electoral business is the cornerstone of how we conduct our voting and judge the veracity of the results that stem from that process.
In this country, the electoral register has always been a process by which people record themselves for electoral registration. In future years—should an identity card be introduced, for example—that system could be strengthened by the production of an identity card when voting or registering. The hon. Lady mentioned the recent clean-up of the electoral register in Northern Ireland, which employed some of those techniques, However, because the electoral registration system is essentially voluntary, it always has been, and it still is, possible to abuse it by registering in the way that she described.
The hon. Lady drew our attention to a recent article in the Daily Mail, which, as I understand it, outlined the committing of a fairly grave offence—one punishable, I believe, by a substantial fine. My hon. Friend the Minister might consider whether proceedings ought to be instituted against the individual who has admitted in print to the fraudulent registration of a number of voters. The offence has been committed whether or not the person so registered exercises the right to vote: the fraudulent registration is the offence.
Fraudulent registration is possible in a variety of fields, and newspapers delight in pointing that out. If one is determined to do so, one can register for bogus gas and electricity bills, bogus car registrations and bogus passports, and the hon. Lady mentioned several such incidents. Nevertheless, the numbers involved are fairly small. As far as I know, large numbers of Australians are not making their way to Britain to

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register, get a vote and take part in elections, although some may well be making their way here for other reasons.
There is scant evidence of widespread fraud and personation in England, Scotland and Wales in recent years. That has not always been the case: in Victorian times, there was widespread evidence of personation and electoral corruption, with people receiving funds to vote. The Conservative candidate in the 1895 election in Southampton, Sir Tankerville Chamberlayne, gave his address as the first floor of the Dolphin hotel in central Southampton. Six strong men carried him shoulder-high from the first floor and placed him in a cart that they had previously unhorsed. They then pulled him to the Cowherds inn at Above Bar, and he waved to the crowds and threw sovereigns at them as he went. Incidentally, his election was ruled invalid, and a further election was held. These days, however, we have relatively clean and uncorrupt elections in the UK, and there is certainly little evidence of personation, fraud, undue influence, bribery and treating in our electoral system.
A much greater problem for the integrity of the electoral register is the fact that it does not record everyone who is available to vote. The numbers involved are not marginal—indeed, they are very considerable. We can form some impression of the extent of the problem by comparing the census figures for people over 18 in England and Wales in 2001 with the numbers on the electoral register in 2001 and subsequent years. The census shows that there were 40,249,000 people over 18 in England and Wales in 2001, but it is generally recognised that the census under-recorded the number of people by up to 1 million. So, leaving aside the marginal numbers of people who, as the hon. Lady mentioned, can vote in local elections but not national elections, the census itself under-records the number of people who can, in theory, register to vote. However, according to the electoral register for 2001, the number of people registered to vote in England and Wales was only 39,531,000. At only 700,000 less than the census figure, the gap does not appear to be enormous, but given the under-recording in the census itself, approximately 1.5 million people are not on the electoral register who should be.
The figures for registration in subsequent years show not only that the 39.5 million has not been maintained, but that it has fallen each year. In 2002, the number registered was 39,404,000 and in 2003, it was 39,192,000. That is the opposite of what we would expect. The 2001 census indicated the size of the population in 2000; the population would have grown a little since then, so the registration figures should have crept up marginally in line with the growth in population.
From those figures, I draw two conclusions. First, about 1.5 million people are missing from the electoral register. Secondly, in just over two years we have lost a further 300,000 people from the register. The gap is increasing as the years go by. However, there is worse news. If we delve a little deeper into those figures—we can do that thanks to the recent publication of the 2001 census figures for each constituency—we will see a wide variation in who registers where. The hon. Lady was kind enough to draw attention to a recent question of
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mine asking which were the top 20 constituencies of those that had lost a substantial number of electors over the two years in question. The answer included a large number of seats in Northern Ireland—as the hon. Lady said, they were the subject of the cleansing of the electoral register—and a number of Scottish seats. I shall concentrate on England and Wales.
Going more deeply into those figures, we see that a large number of seats have suffered a decrease of more than 5 per cent. in the number of electors between 2001 and 2003. The hon. Lady highlighted two of what we might call the worst offenders, but the list is a catalogue of constituencies—50 or 60—that have suffered a decrease of more than 5 per cent. in their electorate during those two years. The list included Brentford and Isleworth; Portsmouth, South; Leeds, West; Southport; Brent, East; Bolton, South-East; Lewisham, Deptford; Dulwich and West Norwood; Brent, North; Tyne Bridge; and so on. Significantly, those constituencies are overwhelmingly concentrated in inner city and urban areas—and, interestingly, in seaside towns.
A second test of the integrity of the changes that have occurred in the electoral register would be to compare the number of people aged over 18 in each constituency, as set out in the 2001 census, with the figures shown in the 2003 electoral registers for those constituencies in order to see how near they are to the 2001 census figures. Again, I emphasise that—if they are an accurate record—we would expect those figures to be close to 100 per cent. of the 2001 census figures for those aged over 18; indeed, they might even be 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. above the census figures, reflecting the increase in the number of people who became eligible to vote after the census. However, the 2003 figures show that a number of seats have more than 10 per cent. fewer people registered to vote than the 2001 census figure suggests. The list of constituencies seems remarkably similar—Brent, East; Hammersmith and Fulham; Brentford and Isleworth; Brent, North; Sheffield, Central; Hackney, South and Shoreditch; Dulwich and West Norwood; and so on.
The shocking fact is that, although the 2003 voter registration figures for a number of seats are 10 per cent. below the 2001 census figures, some of them are as much as 30 per cent. below. The figure for Brent, East is 70 per cent. of the 2001 census figure; for Hammersmith and Fulham and for Brentford and Isleworth 76 per cent., and for Sheffield, Central 81 per cent. In those constituencies, the number of people who are registering to vote bears no relation to the number of people who are really there—the census actually recorded them even if the register under-recorded them. The figures for overall electoral registration in the country mask such enormous variations, which are systematically concentrated in certain parts of the country.
We can see how concentrated they are by examining some of the seats that do not appear in the list and where the registration is stable. It could be that certain seats have always had a low registration and continue to have one, but they would not show up in the figures because they escape the artificial boundaries that I have set. I have concentrated on one particular county: Hampshire. I see present the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), whose constituency is included in this investigation. If we do the same comparison of those registered in 2003 and the 2001 census figures and we

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examine all of the constituencies in Hampshire we find that most of them record 100 per cent. of the 2001 census figure or more. The figure for North-West Hampshire is 103 per cent. of the 2001 census; for Fareham it is 100.9 per cent.; for East Hampshire it is 103.1 per cent.; and for Gosport it is almost 100 per cent.—99.8 per cent. Again, however, the percentages in urban areas are far lower. The figure for Basingstoke is 94.4 per cent.; for Portsmouth, North 92.6 per cent.; and for Portsmouth, South 82 per cent. Therefore, it appears that in rural and suburban areas, by and large, the electoral registration process is keeping up with what one might expect in terms of population, whereas in urban and inner-city seats, that process is diverging radically from what the census reveals.
I imagine that by now many hon. Members will have glazed over at that recitation of interesting statistics—interesting to me, anyway. Nevertheless, there is a point that I feel is worth emphasising. Those statistics show that the real issue for the electoral register's integrity is that in a number of parts of the country, the registration process is simply not working. That should be of concern to all of us who value the register's integrity, who want the electoral process to deliver a result that the electorate can find legitimate and who want to ensure that when people come to vote in an election, they have the opportunity to do so. It should concern us all that in parts of the country—I have mentioned them—as little as 70 per cent. of the population is registered to vote.
I will make one final brief point about statistics. That drop in the number of electors—the under-registration of electors compared with the census—correlates closely to turnout at elections. The same seats that do not have many people registered for them and where the electorate is dropping in numbers also have low turnouts at elections. In the last election—these figures are not predictions for the next—the turnout figure for Brentford and Isleworth was 52 9 per cent.; for Portsmouth, South 50.8 per cent.; and for Leeds, West 49.9 per cent. That suggests that we have, to coin a phrase, a double whammy. We talk about a worrying drop in turnout, but in some instances we are talking about 50 per cent. of 70 per cent. That means that the actual turnout in some constituencies is 35 to 40 per cent. of those who, theoretically, could vote. Again, that raises fundamental concerns about the integrity of the electoral register and the legitimacy of our electoral system.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: The hon. Gentleman is making a clinical presentation, which is certainly relevant and interesting The one thing that he has not touched on is why people do not register to vote. People intentionally do not do so, for various reasons. Will the hon. Gentleman speculate on why, in many urban and inner-city areas, people do not register to vote? Failure to register is intentional; it is not accidental.
Dr. Whitehead: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for providing what one might call a sub-heading for my next set of observations. He is quite right: showing that there is cause to be concerned is not entirely sufficient. What we need to do is consider why the figures are as they are—albeit briefly, as I am aware that other hon. Members wish to contribute and I do not want to stay beyond my welcome.
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It is true, as the hon. Gentleman says, that some people simply do not wish to register and will take steps to avoid doing so. It is also true, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) pointed out, that it was suggested in the early 1990s that a community charge register be set up separately from the electoral register. That can be counted among the effects of the poll tax. In theory, one would not have to look at one register to discover who was liable on the other. Local authorities were charged with establishing the two registers in parallel—an absurd process. However, a relatively large number of people thought that they would be, as it were, spotted for council tax charges if they registered and there was a substantial drop in registration. We have been recovering from that since, although, as I said, the figures from recent years suggest that we are not recovering and are in fact going in the opposite direction.
It is true that some people evade registration, but it is also true that in urban and inner-city areas the population is relatively mobile. The traditional methods of getting hold of people, which require them to be present at a certain time, have not enabled some people in such areas to be registered.
Mrs. Roe: Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that there are people who are registered on an electoral register somewhere else in the country? For example, many students will be on the electoral roll at home—where they come from—rather than in the inner-city area where they attend university or college.
Dr. Whitehead: The hon. Lady makes a point that is certainly valid, but universities are by no means located only in inner-city and urban areas. Since we are in the market for interesting statistics this morning—
Sir Patrick Cormack: We have had quite a few, have we not?
Dr. Whitehead: Indeed, and I thought that we might have one more. The city of Southampton has more students per head of population than Cambridge, yet neither is an inner-city area and both have a large number of students.
I have highlighted urban and the inner-city areas as places where the electoral registration system seems to be going seriously wrong. The problem is probably related to a number of the factors that we have discussed. It could be that some students and people who are fairly mobile or transient do not register and that registration forms do not reach people who change address. To an increasing extent, people do not read official material that comes through their letterboxes, and attempts by electoral registration officers to secure registration by traditional means—letters, reminders and canvassing—fail even when people are there and could register.
The returning officers in some of the constituencies that I have mentioned explain the considerable drop in registrations by saying that they have cleaned up their registers, as has been done in Northern Ireland. They have removed the names of people whom they have not managed to contact in the past year. The problem is not that the people are not there, but that they have not been

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contacted. Increasingly, in urban and inner-city areas, those who are registered are those who can register and who have been contacted by traditional methods.
My plea is that we should find ways to make registration easier and to contact people who are transient. Other methods of registering should be investigated; then, we might get a register that has integrity. I agree with the hon. Member for Broxbourne that having a register with integrity is a way to ensure that our elections are legitimate and that people believe that the outcome has been achieved by a means that they can endorse.
10.17 am
Sir Patrick Cormack: It is a great pleasure to address this sitting of Westminster Hall under your chairmanship, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I am grateful for the opportunity. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) has made a compelling, if not concise, case for compulsory registration, carefully and clinically supervised. I have some sympathy with that. To have the vote is a privilege as well as a right.
There is a case, which we could explore on another occasion—although the Minister might like to take the idea on board now—for holding a special census, with compulsory registration, and for everybody who registers for it to be on an electoral register. However, such a census, properly supervised, could happen only if there were rigorous safeguards to ensure that everybody was legitimately registered. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe) has done a great service not only to us here but to the House. I regret the fact that the debate is not taking place on the Floor of the House with a great many Members present, because she has highlighted an important issue and, as was apparent from her admirable and comprehensive opening speech, she has done a great deal of homework on it.
For a year, I have chaired my party's committee that liaises with the Electoral Commission. My hon. Friends the Members for Broxbourne, for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) and for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) sit on that committee, and we have had some useful discussions with Mr. Sam Younger and his colleagues. We have sought several times to highlight the problem of the register's integrity. On 24 March, I wrote to the Minister making some of the points that have been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne. I found his response a touch complacent.
Two separate issues have been raised today. The first, which needs to be addressed, is that described by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test. The other, which is what we are really debating, is the fact that people register with bogus identities. There is a suspicion that that problem might be much more widespread than we know. In many cases, electoral registration offices seem reluctant to probe the identity and credentials of those who register. It is no answer to that to say that one is committing a criminal offence if one registers in a bogus manner, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne has pointed out, many people find the form somewhat complex, and many come from other cultures and speak languages that are not English. They may therefore not be sufficiently conversant with the process.
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There ought to be a process throughout the United Kingdom similar to that adopted in Northern Ireland. In his letter to me, the Minister says that the results and experience of the new Northern Ireland system are being considered. I hope that that is the case and that the system is being looked at expeditiously.
I hope that the Minister will say a little more about that. He is a highly intelligent man, and he is as concerned as I am about the integrity of the registry. He will acknowledge that it would be a problem if even half a dozen people got on a constituency register who were not entitled to be there. While accepting the limitations of the law, and that the law takes time to change, he should send a strongly worded letter to all electoral registration officers immediately, before the elections on 10 June. He should ask whether they are satisfied that they have conducted investigations into the integrity of their register and urge them to be particularly rigorous in future in ensuring that those who seek to register are entitled to do so.
The constituency situation referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne is worrying, and she is right to be concerned. We also know, and my hon. Friend referred to it, that we are approaching an election in which virtually half the population of England and about a third of the UK population—I think that those are the figures—will vote by post. That is a very large number of people. The Minister screws up his eyes at my arithmetic; perhaps I have it slightly wrong, but it is not very wrong. Certainly about half the electorate in England will vote by post on 10 June. That will be compulsory postal voting, which we have debated in the House. The Minister knows that I was very unhappy that the advice of the Electoral Commission was not followed more closely. However, that is over and done with. The House has decided; Parliament has decreed.
We are none the less concerned that people not necessarily entitled to be on the register will automatically receive postal votes and be encouraged to return them. That may well compound the situation that my hon. Friend has highlighted. If we are to move towards more widespread postal voting—I shall be sorry if we do so on a compulsory basis—we must be even more vigilant about the compilation of the electoral register.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Does he agree that if one physically has to vote at a polling station, one's presence may well be challenged? If one votes by post, it cannot. Bearing in mind that many of the people in attendance at polling stations know a great many people in their areas, the chance of fraud and deception is much less. It is much greater with all-postal voting.
Sir Patrick Cormack: Of course. That is self-evident, and my hon. Friend is right to point it out. If he turns up at a polling station and claims to be Mr. Sam Bloggs, there are many people in Macclesfield who will think that that is not quite right, whereas if he fills in something in the privacy of his home, there is no means of checking it or detecting that.
We have all, of course, heard about cases involving houses in multiple occupation, houses where the ethnic culture is not quite the same as our own, or old people's

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homes. We have heard anecdotal accusations of organisation of voting: it is easy to do that. When we had talks with members of the Electoral Commission, they were rightly exercised by that aspect. I urge the Minister to take immediate steps to contact electoral registration officers about those issues.
I want to touch briefly on eligibility to go on the register; my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne spoke about that and discussed the Commonwealth nations. I was disappointed that when I wrote to the Minister on the matter, he replied:
"While I note your observations on this matter, we do not plan at this time to ask the Electoral Commission to carry out a review of eligibility for registration."
It would be appropriate to carry out a review. Reciprocity is the thing. I have no objection to the system that applies to citizens of the Republic of Ireland, or of those other nations, including South Africa, which my hon. Friend listed, where there is reciprocity. However, where there is no reciprocity, I wonder whether we should persist in automatically giving the right to vote in all elections in this country. It is a question of fairness and balance, and I am not sure that we have got it right.
I shall end where I began, following the comments of the hon. Member for Southampton, Test who highlighted an important issue. If we are seriously contemplating compulsory identity cards—I am not one of those with a big hang-up on the issue—there is a real case for compulsory registration and for telling people that if they are not registered, they cannot receive benefits or do this, that or the other. People should register as a subject and citizen of the country, and all rights and duties should flow from that. I see no sensible objection to that proposition. It should be considered.
I would even say that I prefer compulsory voting to the proliferation of postal ballots. Compulsory voting does not mean having to register a vote for a Labour, Conservative, Liberal or any other candidate. It means having to turn up or fill in the postal form and vote. I am conscious that there are three wind-up speeches to come, so I shall end there. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne for what she has done, and I hope that the Minister will give us a positive and encouraging reply.
10.28 am
Mr. David Heath: I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe) on securing the debate. It is extraordinary that the democratic process, which is the lifeblood of the House, often seems to be such a peripheral and marginal issue here. It is left to those who can be loosely described as anoraks to pore over the details of the statistics and processes. I should like to think that all our colleagues in this place understand the difficulties of the electoral process and take an active interest in it.
Like the hon. Member for Broxbourne, I have been asked on occasion to monitor elections elsewhere. As a member of the parliamentary assembly of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, I have on occasion been asked to go to the emerging democracies in central and eastern Europe to assist in elections. Indeed, I was in Georgia not long ago to see the elections in Tbilisi.
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I find it extraordinary that we often fervently preach about the benefits of strict democratic process and argue about the merits of a democratic structure in our country while retaining a partly appointed and partly hereditary House, but that is an aside. The point is that we often cannot sustain such arguments when our own arrangements are considered, because they are open to abuse.
I do not argue, by extension, that our arrangements are habitually abused to a great extent, as there is abundant evidence that that is not the case. However, it is dangerous to be complacent and to assume that we will always have a reasonably clean electoral system because that has been the case historically, or that we should not endeavour as much as we can to maximise the integrity of the system. That is what the debate is about, and that was the context of the valuable contributions of the hon. Members for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) and for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack).
The potential problems with our electoral system have all been dealt with, to some extent, in previous contributions. The first such problem is false registration. The point of entry, as it were, of the hon. Member for Broxbourne was the concern that it is relatively easy for one to register oneself falsely.
I can think of three reasons for doing that, the first of which is to establish a false identity for purposes outwith the electoral process, and I have no doubt that that happens. The second reason is to perpetrate electoral fraud. I do not know the extent to which that is a problem; I do not think that anyone does. The view expressed by the Minister in previous exchanges on the matter when considering legislation smacks of complacency of a high level. The fact that there have been relatively few prosecutions means not that the problem does not exist, but that it is not being detected. It is arguable that the processes by which it could be detected are so deficient that we are unlikely to have a high number of prosecutions.
However, there are occasional prosecutions. It is unfortunate that we could not refer to a case during proceedings on the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill concerning a gentleman who was prosecuted for electoral fraud at an all-postal ballot election. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) will know of it, as the gentleman concerned was from his part of the country.
Mr. Nick Hawkins: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but I would be grateful if he confirmed that, although the case was, as he put it, in my part of the country, it was not in my constituency.
Mr. Heath: I am happy to confirm that. Having listened to the hon. Gentleman last night in the House with great interest, I know that he has enough problems in his constituency, and I do not want to add to them. I understand that the case involved an elected Conservative councillor in the Guildford constituency, who was convicted.
That case at least serves as evidence that such things do happen. They happen in all parties—this is not a party political point. There have been instances of electoral fraud in all the major parties.

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I ask the Minister the question that I asked the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) when he was representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission: will the admirable code of conduct produced by the Electoral Commission be sent to every candidate in future elections? It is important that people understand what they must and must not do regarding electoral registration, so I hope that that will be the practice. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his helpful response to my question, but it also needs the imprimatur of Government to suggest that it is a necessary part of spreading the word of good practice.
Mr. Peter Viggers: Since the hon. Gentleman has referred to me, may I explain my role in speaking on behalf of the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission? That committee has quite narrow responsibilities with regard to the commission. When I answer questions once a month, I try to incorporate the views of the commission and to make it clear that they are its views. It is not part of my responsibilities to express my personal views in sittings such as this.
Mr. Heath: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. He discharges his duties on that matter extremely well both in the House and elsewhere.
I was saying that there are three areas of false registration—false identity, electoral fraud and, thirdly, sheer stupidity. Every year, some clown comes forward, appears in the popular press waving his electoral registration card for his dog, cat, pet budgie or three-year-old child, and says, "A stupid electoral registration officer sent me this card," not realising that it is they who are stupid for having put that name in the wrong column on the registration form. It upsets me that the press never seem to understand that simple fact. They think that such stories are just a jolly good way to bash yet again the local authority and the electoral registration officers for not knowing what they are doing, despite the fact that someone has committed an offence. The offence was probably committed not intentionally but because of an inability to understand the instructions, but it is nevertheless an offence.
The second area of concern, which I will not dwell on, is multiple registration. I have difficulties with that. I had a long argument during discussions on the Representation of the People Act 2000, because I confess that I do not understand the electoral arrangements whereby one can register in more than one place when the qualifying date is a specific time in the year when one is supposed to be in residence for one evening.
I was repeatedly assured by the then Minister with responsibility for that matter that I was wrong to have disqualified myself from registration at my London flat because I was registered in Somerset. I thought that I was interpreting the rules correctly, but I was told, "No, it is perfectly proper to register in more than one place, provided that you exercise your vote only in one place at an election." If I, as a reasonably well informed member of the public on this matter, am confused, a lot of other people must also be confused. We need to clarify what is allowed.
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I think that it is rare for people deliberately to register in order to exercise their vote in a number of different constituencies, but I am sure that there are people who do that. They need to have a fast car to move from polling station to polling station, but that has been known to happen.
Non-registration is a factor in highly mobile populations, in areas where there are institutions of higher education, and in places where there are many houses in multiple occupation. It also occurs in constituencies that are ethnically diverse and have many young people. It should be of deep concern, as the hon. Member for Southampton, Test said. The rolling register was supposed to help deal with that, but it has not—possibly because people do not understand that register, as it has not been sufficiently well advertised.
All-postal voting, combined with non-registration or false registration, is potentially very dangerous. E-voting will be equally problematical. In Ireland, a major IT programme has been abandoned simply because it could not be made to work, despite high expectations. The hon. Member for Broxbourne has raised some important issues. I am not convinced that the coordinated online register of electors, which I am sure the Minister is going to talk about, is the answer.
On the Commonwealth, I agree with the hon. Member for South Staffordshire that the problem is a relic of empire. People being able to say, "Civis Britannicus sum" is something that we can perhaps no longer deal with. Should we not consider the experience in Northern Ireland, where we have made advances, see what lessons can be learned for mainland Great Britain and perhaps have an electoral system with a great deal more integrity than we have potentially at the moment?
10.40 am
Mr. Nick Hawkins: Thank you, Mr. Cook. I am glad to be here under your chairmanship, Mr. Deputy Speaker—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must remind the Chamber that the House, in its wisdom or otherwise, decided that occupants of this Chair, while they were sitting in it, should be addressed as Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Hawkins: I corrected myself as you were rising, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I apologise. I am glad to be here under your chairmanship.
I sincerely congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe) on securing this important and timely debate and on what she said. On behalf of the Conservative Front-Bench team, I say that we as a party agree with the vast majority of what she set out this morning.
I was particularly struck by the extraordinary decreases in the numbers of electors in certain seats to which my hon. Friend referred. Brentford and Isleworth and Portsmouth, South—the two with the largest reductions—are both seats that I know quite well. I agree with what she said about reciprocity, which was also mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) and by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). Reciprocal rights to vote in elections in both countries are crucial. The House should perhaps investigate

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reciprocity. There is now a Select Committee that shadows the work of the Minister's Department. Perhaps all hon. Members should talk to its Chairman about a future inquiry into reciprocity.
As my hon. Friends know, we have expressed concern about how the Electoral Commission, which was set up by the Government, valuable though much of its work has been, is perhaps developing a life of its own and producing a vast number of glossy brochures and so on, as so many newly created bodies tend to do. The House could valuably consider reciprocity. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne could look at it in future. Both of us might speak about that to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), Chairman of the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, and suggest that the Select Committee investigate it.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, the Minister and I are veterans of what he memorably described as the groundhog day debates on the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill. We went through the same arguments about six or seven times in the ping-pong before Easter between the two Houses of Parliament. In that debate, I expressed the concern—it was also the view of the Electoral Reform Society, for which I have a great deal of time, because it provides independent, objective advice to all hon. Members on matters to do with elections—that large-scale fraud in British elections was now possible for the first time in 130 years.
I was pleased that, as a result of the efforts of my noble Friends in repeatedly defeating the Government in another place, the Government were impelled in the end to make certain concessions to the Lords and to introduce some extra safeguards on the postal pilots, as they were described, although half the country will be voting by post in those so-called pilots. That was the main issue of contention. However, even the extra safeguards that we forced the Government to include in the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill do not go far enough. We are still concerned about some of the things that my hon. Friends the Members for Broxbourne, for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) and for South Staffordshire have commented on. We will continue to raise such points in debates.
My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne said that the question of who is eligible to vote should be the priority focus before the introduction of what the Government call multi-channelled, e-enabled elections. I have made much fun of the Minister's obsession, and that of his officials, with trendy phrases such as multi-channel elections. The Government have got another thing coming if they really believe that talking about multi-channel elections will make it easier for the ordinary voter to understand elections. I do not believe that the ordinary voter has a clue what the Government mean when they talk about multi-channel elections. We must get back to traditional ways of persuading the electorate that elections and politics are important.
I have been slightly critical of the Electoral Commission and its work, but it has said some very interesting things. I received its latest brochure, "The register", in my parliamentary post this morning. It contains some quite interesting things to which I do not have time to refer in detail this morning, but I advise my
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hon. Friends to read in particular the very sensible views expressed on the last page by an office manager in Copenhagen on the European parliamentary elections. I particularly agree with those views.
My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne rightly said that returning officers need to be given more direction on the scrutiny of the electoral register, and protected from accusations of racism and harassment. I agree with the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome that electoral registration officers are busy local government officers with other duties who are often much put upon and insufficiently supported. I hope that, when the Minister responds to this short but important debate, he will make it clear that the Government strongly support electoral registration officers, who have a difficult job that, in my experience, they do as best they can in difficult circumstances and often under great pressure of time. They should be better supported in order that they may make the investigations called for by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire said, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) may have gone a little wrong in his extensive contribution to the debate in being so critical of the newspaper that revealed how easy it was to misregister and to commit other electoral abuse. Would the hon. Gentleman have said the same if the matter had been investigated by The Guardian, the New Statesman or The Independent, and not by the newspaper that is the hate figure for all Labour Members?
Dr. Whitehead: The answer is yes.
Mr. Hawkins: The hon. Gentleman says yes. We await his reactions if that happens. I believe that that newspaper performed a public service. It has the resources to find out how weak the system is, and the Government have been very complacent about that. Seats in parliamentary elections can be decided by tiny majorities. By my calculations, in the 2001 general election, 28 seats in this House were won by a majority of less than 1,000, including the seat of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome. The lowest majorities were 33, 48, 53, 74 and 128. Those tiny majorities show how easily only a few people indulging in electoral fraud can change an election.
Mr. Heath: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right— a marginal seat such as mine is open to such abuse. However, it also produces the highest turnout because people feel that they have something worth voting for, which they do not feel in European or local elections, where decisions appear to be taken elsewhere.
Mr. Hawkins: I agree. For a moment, I thought that I could convert the hon. Gentleman or his party to returning to single Member European constituencies and restoring that constituency link.
In response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield, my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire rightly said that the chance of fraud is much greater in the case of all-postal votes. I agree with what he said about the dangers in respect of houses in multiple occupation. He urged the Minister to take urgent steps to contact electoral

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registration officers. Again, I agree with his comments. He also said that there was a real case for compulsory registration. That could be looked into further, and I hope that the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs will do so.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome mentioned his experiences in Georgia and the elections in Tbilisi. He rightly said that we do not know the extent of electoral fraud. There has not been enough investigation. He also rightly said that Ministers are far too complacent because it is unlikely that fraud will be detected. A detective chief inspector of the west midlands fraud squad, Dave Churchill, said:
"The current election system is based on trust and that trust is being eroded".
Some form of identification is needed both for voters at the polling stations and for those who vote by post. The new postal voting system provides an opportunity for malpractice.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) and the work that he does in the House. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome talked about press misreporting when things go wrong, and about the issue of stupidity. There may be only a few voters who deliberately vote several times in different places, but that can swing an election. This is a serious issue, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne for bringing it to hon. Members' attention. We will doubtless return to it on many occasions.
10.50 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs (Mr. Christopher Leslie): I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe) on securing this debate, which has shown that all hon. Members from all parties rightly continue to be vigilant about the need to have an accurate electoral register. We all agree on that, even though we may differ on the different techniques to achieve that. I appreciate the interest and concern that have been shown on the subject.
Voter registration is clearly fundamental to the democratic process. It is the obvious basis on which all our other electoral processes are built. We fully recognise the importance of accurate and up-to-date electoral registers. Without being on the electoral register, a person is not able to exercise his or her right to vote. We also recognise that it is crucial to have public confidence in the systems in place for voter registration, and to ensure that they are secure and that only eligible persons appear on the electoral register, as the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) urged.
In addressing voter registration procedures, a balance needs to be struck. It is important to make voter registration convenient and flexible to help to maximise voter registration, but we must tackle understandable worries about the registration system being open to abuse. The hon. Member for Broxbourne made that point.
It might be useful to consider briefly the eligibility criteria for registration. Under electoral law, British citizens, qualifying Commonwealth citizens and citizens
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of the Republic of Ireland are eligible to register to vote in all UK elections. The term "qualifying Commonwealth citizen" was introduced in the Representation of the People Act 2000. That amended the eligibility criteria for Commonwealth citizens, as a result of which only Commonwealth citizens who have the right of abode in the UK, or who have leave to enter or to remain in the UK, are now eligible to register to vote.
The hon. Lady raised several points about reciprocity between Commonwealth countries and this country. I do not have the statistics to hand on the number of our citizens who vote in those countries, but I shall look into that matter in more detail. We have well established arrangements that operate on the basis of the good faith relationships that we have with those countries. There are no plans to change that.
Our provisions mean that persons who are here perhaps illegally are not eligible to register to vote. For example, asylum seekers, including those who are Commonwealth citizens, are not eligible to register to vote, as an asylum seeker acquires leave to remain in the UK only if his or her claim is successful. Furthermore, under the Maastricht treaty, citizens of the European Union living in the United Kingdom have been eligible and entitled to register to vote in UK European parliamentary elections since 1994, and in local elections since 1996.
It is obvious, but worth restating, that the people responsible for compiling electoral registers are the local authorities. Electoral registration officers are officers of local government and have a key role in the voter registration process. the Representation of the People Act 1983 requires local authority electoral registration officers to compile electoral registers accurately. They play a key part in ensuring that eligible people complete and return voter registration forms. They also have a key role in publicising voter registration arrangements.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) made eloquently the point that, although there are concerns about the possible abuse of the registration system, to a large extent, our voter registration procedures are based on trust and good faith with the wider community. Given the volumes involved, that needs to be the case, although a number of offences guard against misinterpretations and malpractice.
I am aware of the Daily Mail article about a reporter who fraudulently registered to vote in a number of constituencies. I should explain that it is an offence for a person to register fraudulently and for a person so registered subsequently to vote in an election. The Electoral Commission has been looking into the registration process and has found that a great majority of electoral registration officers have reported no experience of fraud.
However, we do not wish to be complacent and we want to continue to be vigilant. We have given electoral registration officers a range of powers to enable them to carry out their duties. Fairly recently, regulation 23 of the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001 permitted an electoral registration officer to require any person to give information required for the purposes of that officer's duties in maintaining registers of parliamentary and local elections.

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It is an offence, punishable on conviction by a fine not exceeding £1,000, to fail to comply with a request for information from an electoral registration officer or to give false information. Prosecutions for noncompliance are initiated at local discretion. Importantly, the electoral register compiled by the electoral registration officer must be published and available for public inspection. Entries on the register can therefore be checked by political parties, by candidates and by members of the public.
Sir Patrick Cormack: Will the Minister follow up my suggestion and write to all electoral registration officers?
Mr. Leslie: We are in regular contact with electoral registration officers and I personally have a lot of trust and faith in the job that they do. I do not want to suggest that I am losing confidence in their ability to do a good job. As yet, I do not see the evidence that would require me to take that step. However, we are always reviewing such matters.
I want to come to a point mentioned by the hon. Member for Broxbourne. It was suggested that some electoral registration officers have declined requests to investigate the inclusion on the register of certain persons on the basis that that could be construed as discriminatory. What steps to take to ensure that the registers are accurate is a matter for an individual registration officer's judgment.
The ethnicity of a name on an application should not in itself invalidate inclusion, but nor should it preclude an electoral registration officer, who believes that they have a just case, from making inquiries about eligibility. That electoral registration officer would be responsible for compiling as accurate a register as possible, and the integrity of the democratic process is in no small measure dependent on their doing so. It follows that such a registration officer should have discretion to make reasonable inquiries to satisfy themselves about the eligibility of applications, provided that they do so courteously and sensitively.
If Members of Parliament or candidates have evidence that the electoral register contains inaccurate entries, they should inform the relevant electoral registration officer. If MPs or candidates consider that a registration officer is failing to investigate cases of alleged misregistration, they may wish to take the matter up with the chief executive of the local council.
This has been a useful debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test raised a wider question about the relationship between the census and the smaller register of electors in some urban areas. There may be issues to do with transient, mobile populations that we can consider another time.
I believe that we have put in place strong measures. They include rolling registration, which allows a registration officer to take persons off a register at any time, rather than just on one particular day a year. The changes that we have made ensure that we have the best registration process in history, and probably one of the most accurate electoral registration processes in the world.

Asylum Centres (Independent Monitor)
11 am
Tony Baldry: In spring 2002, to the Government's great embarrassment, nightly television news showed footage of young men—asylum seekers from the Sangatte camp in France—getting to England through the channel tunnel. The asylum system was clearly out of control, and with a record 84,130 people claiming asylum in the UK, Ministers desperately needed to be seen to be doing something—anything—to get a grip on the situation. In response to the Sangatte television footage, Home Office Ministers decided that they would establish a network of accommodation centres across the country, where asylum seekers could be taken and processed.
As is so often the case, the Treasury was not wholly impressed by the Home Office's ability to spend ever more money on tackling asylum seekers. It is clear that the Treasury said that the experiment of accommodation centres could go ahead, but only if comparatively few centres were built. To restrain the costs further, the centres had to be built on land that was already owned by the Government, such as surplus Ministry of Defence land. The outcome of such financial horse-trading in Whitehall was a policy to build a small number of accommodation centres, each housing up to 750 asylum seekers for up to six months at a time.
From the outset, the policy was completely friendless. It was opposed by every organisation concerned with the welfare of refugees, from the Red Cross to the Refugee Council. Those organisations believed that the accommodation centres were the wrong size and in the wrong place. In April 2002, eight such organisations, representing a broad cross-section of concerned groups, including the Refugee Council, the British Medical Association and Save the Children, wrote a joint letter to the Home Secretary in which they made their views clear. They told the Home Secretary:
"Supporting asylum seekers in the community—rather than accommodating them in centres—should be the objective of the government's asylum accommodation policy."
Likewise, Oxfam stated that
"the size of such centres is a major concern."
The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux expressed concern about the fact that
"residents will largely be confined to the centre, with … little if any ability to engage in purposeful activity off-site."
The Immigration Law Practitioners Association said:
"we are concerned about the effectiveness of private contractors running accommodation centres, and that 'commercial confidentiality' will obscure how centres are run."
The association's assessment was absolutely accurate: on the ground of commercial confidentiality, the Home Office has never been willing to give any costs for the centres.
The Home Office never managed to find a single organisation that supported its plans, but, with the help of their substantial majority, the Government did not have much difficulty driving their proposals through the House of Commons. However, as is so often the case with legislation that has not been properly thought through or scrutinised in the Commons, it was left to the other place to try to introduce some semblance of sanity

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into the Government's completely friendless proposal. On two occasions, the other place voted down a proposal for large accommodation centres stuck out in remote rural locations.
Critics in the other place came from all parts of the House. The Labour peer Lord Clinton-Davis, a former EU commissioner, observed that
"Every organisation … is against the idea that rural circumstances should prevail as regards accommodation centres",
and added that
"with the depth of their experience, I believe that they are probably not wrong."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 November 2002; Vol. 640, c. 780.]
Lord Dholakia, on behalf of the Liberals, said that there should be smaller accommodation centres. He expressed his hope that Ministers would find it possible, even at that late stage, to take into account the modest amendments that had been put forward for smaller centres, on the basis of the model that the Refugee Council had proposed. Lord Judd, who, as the Minister knows, has considerable experience with policy relating to refugees, observed:
"When so many people with so much experience and expertise in this area are saying that part of what the Government are still proposing is almost certainly going to cause problems and damage, I find it difficult to understand why the Government insist on continuing with that part of their proposals."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 November 2002; Vol. 640, c. 774.]
The Government had a somewhat nail-biting time. The end of the Session was approaching, and if agreement could not be reached with their lordships, there was a danger of their losing the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill. Literally at the last moment—like a rabbit out of a hat—the Home Secretary produced the idea of an independent monitor of accommodation centres. To quote the statute—this is, after all, a statutory provision—the independent monitor will have a statutory responsibility to assess
"the quality and effectiveness of accommodation and other facilities provided in accommodation centres … the nature and enforcement of conditions of residence … the treatment of residents, and"—
importantly—
"whether, in the case of any accommodation centre, its location prevents a need of its residents from being met."
Supposedly, therefore, we were to have an independent person with statutory authority who would have a statutory responsibility to consult organisations concerned with the welfare of refugees and asylum seekers and to consider the suitability of sites from that perspective.
The measure was brought before the House of Commons rather hurriedly one Thursday morning right at the end of the Session. Anyone with any common sense assumed that the independent monitor would be appointed reasonably shortly thereafter and would advise the Home Secretary on the suitability of locations before Ministers went ahead with building accommodation centres. It is fair to say that the Home Secretary did nothing to disabuse the House of that
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view—indeed, rereading his comments that day, one can see a mastery of what was, I suspect, deliberate ambiguity and obfuscation. He said:
"We want to ensure that we have thought the matter through and have an evidence-based approach … The measure is an addition, an underpinning and a reinforcement of the process with regard to, for instance, education, on which we said that a special or specific need might have to be met in a different way. We now accept that that might be dealt with in a broader context, with the monitor offering a view."—[Official Report, 7 November 2002; Vol. 392, c. 456.]
I am not quite sure what that meant, but the Home Secretary certainly gave not a scintilla of an impression that the independent monitor would not be appointed until after accommodation centres had been built.
With the introduction of the independent monitor, the Bill was passed. Only then did everyone discover that the Government, in their Alice in Wonderland world, had drafted the statute in the way that they had because they intended the independent monitor of accommodation centres to advise
"whether, in the case of any accommodation centre, its location prevents a need of its residents from being met"
only once a centre had been built. How crazy is that? The Treasury could spend millions of pounds of taxpayers' money, only for the independent monitor to advise that the location was unsuitable.
Ministers have persistently refused to give any indication of how much accommodation centres will cost the taxpayer on the grounds that the information is commercially confidential. However, one can reasonably assume that the cost will not be inconsequential, because Ministers would otherwise be more than happy to brief the press about such a cost-effective way of processing asylum applications. Two reasonable inferences can be drawn from the lunacy of the Government's policy: either the Government are perfectly happy to waste millions of pounds in nugatory expenditure, or they have absolutely no intention of heeding the independent monitor's advice. The latter would, of course, be entirely characteristic of the Government's behaviour to date in respect of accommodation centres.
Ministers went through the farce of submitting a planning application for the accommodation centre on the outskirts of Bicester and going through a public inquiry. At the Dispatch Box, the right hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Beverley Hughes), then the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration, said in the clearest possible terms:
"The Government have made it clear that we will abide by the planning process, and by the outcome of any public inquiry. That is both fair and democratic'.—[Official Report, 5 November 2002; Vol. 392, c. 152.]
Any reasonable person would have concluded from that that Ministers intended to abide by the advice of the planning inspector whom the Deputy Prime Minister appointed to conduct a public inquiry.
The inquiry duly took place and lasted from 10 December 2002 to 3 March 2003. It heard from about 30 witnesses, although the Government could not find a single witness or organisation, apart from Home Office officials, to speak on their behalf. In due course, the

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inspector reported, and his conclusions were clear and unambiguous. He concluded that, on planning grounds, the development should not go ahead, saying that
"In making the overall decision it is my view that greater weight should be attached to the factors against the proposal than for it. I say this for three reasons. First, the need to create a more sustainable pattern of development lies at the very heart of the Government's well-established approach to land use planning in this country. It would, in my view, be inappropriate for the Government to make an exception in respect of its own development. Second, the necessity for, and the benefits of, the proposed Accommodation Centre being in this rural area were not, in my view, shown by the Home Office to be convincing or overriding. The proposal seems to me to be driven by the availability of some surplus Government-owned land and by an undemonstrated belief that this rural location would aid the self-containment of the Centre. Third, the risk of road accidents involving pedestrian asylum seekers and others is, in my view, a very real, practical worry that was given insufficient attention by the Home Office. My overall conclusion is, therefore, that on balance, the First Secretary of State should not give approval to the proposed development."
In other words, the first two reasons are based on policy considerations—the inspector's view being that it had not been established that the development was appropriate in a rural area—and the third on specific concerns about safety.
Did the Government heed such a clear recommendation? No! The Deputy Prime Minister metaphorically put two fingers up to the advice of the inspector, and said that—as is often the case with Government policy—they would go ahead anyway, regardless of what any public inquiry said. Recalling the words of the former Minister for Citizenship, Immigration and Community Cohesion, it is difficult to see how such steamroller tactics on the part of the Government are either "fair" or "democratic".
As the Minister will know, the matter went to the High Court by way of judicial review, and may well go to the Court of Appeal as a consequence of that review. For that reason, I will say nothing more, other than that, as it was quite clear that the Government had no intention of heeding the advice of their own independent planning inspector, one has to ask whether they will be willing to heed the advice of the independent monitor.
That takes us back to the independent monitor. The Government say that they are keen to get on with the plans, but so far no independent monitor of accommodation centres has been appointed and no advertisement for the post has appeared. It seems that the Government hope to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers' money on an accommodation centre for asylum seekers on the outskirts of Bicester. At some stage, prior to the centre receiving any asylum seekers, they will have to appoint an independent monitor. If they fail to comply with their statutory duty to do so, I assure the Minister that the Government will be taken to judicial review. They will have to give the independent monitor reasonable time in which to carry out his or her statutory responsibilities and to consult—and it will clearly be reasonable of the independent monitor to consult with those organisations that are concerned with the welfare of refugees. If the monitor is not given reasonable time to consult, the Government will be taken to judicial review.
We know from the letter of April 2002 to the Home Secretary what the organisations concerned with the welfare of refugees and asylum seekers are likely to say.
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They will almost certainly repeat their previous concerns about the proposed centres being the wrong size and in the wrong place. In those circumstances, it would not be unreasonable of the independent monitor to conclude in respect of
"the quality and effectiveness of accommodation and other facilities provided"
in the accommodation centre and—again, I quote from the statute—
"whether, in the case of any accommodation centre, its location prevents a need of its residents from being met",
that Bicester is not a suitable location for an accommodation centre in relation to the welfare of asylum seekers. If that is the advice that Ministers receive, and if they ignore that advice from the individual in a post established on purpose by statute to render such advice, I tell the Minister that the Government will be taken to judicial review. That is a matter on which Ministers may well be wise to seek the advice of Treasury counsel, but I think that they would be advised that there is every possibility that the Government would lose in the High Court.
The Government's approach is altogether crazy. I cannot believe that the Treasury will be willing to allow the Government to spend millions of pounds on a project that might never happen. Surely the sensible way forward is for the Government properly to advertise for an independent monitor of accommodation centres, to recruit such a monitor, and to allow him or her to carry out their statutory remit of consulting—I quote from the statute—
"the Secretary of State, and … such other persons as he considers appropriate";
and reporting to the Secretary of State on whether an accommodation centre's
"location prevents a need of its residents from being met."
The Government should do that before they proceed with their plans for an accommodation centre at Bicester.
There can be no justification for or logic in waiting until an accommodation centre is built before asking the independent monitor to carry out his or her work, unless the Government and Treasury are willing to risk wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers' money, or the Home Office is simply determined to ignore whatever advice it receives from the independent monitor. Home Office lawyers told the planning inquiry during cross-examination that
"Bicester will remain to have a trial accommodation centre even if the trial does not work. There would have to be an effective return on the Government's investment."
Neither approach is sustainable. The former—wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers' money—is likely to fall foul of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, and the latter is, I hope, likely to fall foul of the High Court on judicial review. My advice to the Minister, therefore, is to get on and do what both Houses of Parliament thought that that Government were going to do when Parliament passed the Immigration, Nationality and Asylum Act 2002, and appoint as soon as possible an independent monitor for accommodation centres.
11.15 am
The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Mr. Desmond Browne): In my maiden speech in this Chamber as the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration, I congratulate the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) on securing the debate. I have been in the job only five weeks, but having seen how much time dealing with this issue has required in those five weeks, I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman. I recognise the efforts that he has made on behalf of his constituents since January 2002, when we announced our interest in a site in his constituency for an accommodation centre.
The hon. Gentleman set out, appropriately, to establish an historical perspective, with reference to the legislation that has given rise to the prospect of an accommodation centre in his constituency. I remind hon. Members first of the reasons that the Government gave, and still give, for introducing accommodation centres, but as a mark of the significant contribution made by my predecessor in this job, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Beverley Hughes), I must record the fact that the figures that the hon. Gentleman gave, although correct for the time in question, have now been significantly reduced. There are now half, or less than half, that number of asylum seekers seeking to enter the United Kingdom. We have significantly improved our ability to process applications, with 80 per cent. now being processed in two months, and we have doubled the 1997 figure for people removed after unsuccessful asylum applications.
Accommodation centres are being established to improve the asylum process and are an integral and key part of our reforms, which are already having a significant effect on the numbers, processing and removal of asylum seekers. Accommodation centres form part of a robust and well managed end-to-end asylum system of induction, accommodation, reporting and removal centres, and will provide a supportive environment for asylum seekers who are destitute. Most important, the centres are a means of improving the management of contact with asylum seekers. There will be much closer contact with asylum applicants and faster processing than is generally possible at present with dispersed applicants. That will speed up even further the decision-making process. In addition, accommodation centres will reduce pressure on local services by providing all basic services on site, including education and health care. I know that those issues have exercised the hon. Gentleman, as I have recently corresponded with him on those and related matters. The centres will also provide the opportunity for better rates of return of those who fail to obtain refugee status, as well as speed up the returns process. They will also be best placed to ensure that those who are granted refugee status—newcomers to our society—are integrated appropriately.
In the light of the ongoing appeal I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will understand why I am constrained in speaking about the subject of the debate, and in responding to some of the observations that he made. Indeed, he recognised a constraint on the manner in which the issues can be debated, as an appeal is under way.
Tony Baldry: There is nothing about the independent monitor in matters before the High Court or the Court of Appeal. Therefore, the Minister is in no way constrained from responding to my points about the independent monitor.
Mr. Browne: I am grateful for that advice. The hon. Gentleman and I share a legal background. However, for illustrative purposes, the hon. Gentleman's speech covered a much broader subject area than the independent monitor; he rightly set the scene and explained some other factors. As I am a Minister and there is an appeal ongoing, I cannot respond fully in respect of some of those factors, but I want to put it clearly on the record that I do not concede the points that the hon. Gentleman made.
I want to focus on the issue that the hon. Gentleman has chosen to debate, so I turn now to the subject of the monitor. The Government's position has always been clear: decisions on the location of accommodation centres will be made by the Secretary of State, subject to the planning process. We have abided by that decision since we began site searching in 2001. Contrary to what the hon. Gentleman said, we have been equally clear that the monitor will not be involved in the selection of sites for accommodation centres. Furthermore, there is no requirement for the Secretary of State to consult the monitor prior to establishing an accommodation centre. I hope to prove that by reference to the record of debates in this House and in the other place, where there was a more concentrated and specific discussion of this issue and in which a Minister of the Crown set out the Government's position.
The role of the monitor is clearly defined in Section 34 (2) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. He or she will be required to monitor the operation of accommodation centres and
"in particular, will consider—

(a) the quality and effectiveness of accommodation and other facilities provided in accommodation centres,

(b) the nature and enforcement of conditions of residence,

(c) the treatment of residents, and

(d) whether, in the case of any accommodation centre, its location prevents a need of its residents from being met."

The hon. Gentleman concentrated his argument on the last provision. Lord Filkin made the role of the monitor clear in the final debate during the passage of the 2002 Act. On that provision he said:
"The point of the amendment is for the monitor to consider whether in the case of any accommodation centre its location prevents a need of its residents from being met. So once the centre is operating the monitor is required to consider the needs of the residents and whether the location prevents a need being met."
He went on to say:
"The essential point about sites under consideration is that it is the job of the Home Secretary, subject to the planning authorities, to decide whether or not a location is suitable. The Home Secretary's purview and consideration will clearly be wider than that of the planning authorities: the Home Secretary will have to think about whether he is acting reasonably in believing that this location is likely to meet the needs of its future residents in all respects. As noble Lords have pointed out, the monitor will subsequently be charged with the statutory duty of seeing whether that works in operation."

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The hon. Member for Banbury said that that was misunderstood by everybody who took part in that debate, but it was not, It was recognised by Members in the other place, and in particular by Lord Dholakia. He said—I could not put it better—
"The amendment that we supported demonstrated clearly that it would have been possible to pay due regard to the issues of concern before the accommodation centres became operative, whereas the monitor will not be able to do so until after they have been established."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 November 2002; Vol. 640, c. 943-947.]
Therefore, it is clear that there was a debate to a conclusion and an understanding in the House of Lords.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke: The Minister will know that I have an interest in this matter, because the only other large rural camp that is being pursued in the country is on a site in Newton in my constituency. We have had a public inquiry. The report was submitted before Christmas—I think—and we are waiting for a decision from the Deputy Prime Minister.
As the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) are discussing the suitability of locations, will the Minister repeat his predecessor's undertaking that the Government will be bound by the decisions of the planning authorities in taking any decisions on sites—which my hon. Friend and I understood to mean the advice of any inspector who sat on a public inquiry? If that is to be disregarded, what is the point of the monitor being asked to advise on the suitability of the location that is providing services, if that advice is to be given only after the centre opens? What does the Minister think will happen if, after millions have been spent on building the centre, either at Bicester or in Nottinghamshire, the independent monitor advises that the location is not suitable for the purpose?
Mr. Browne: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for his intervention and I know of his interest—in the past he has intervened in debates about the interpretation of section 34. He knows the Government's position on the planning process, and I have no difficulty in repeating and endorsing what my predecessor has said. If he will allow me to go on, I might be able to answer his question, but I feel that my primary duty is to answer the issues raised by the hon. Member for Banbury, who secured the debate. If I run out of time, I promise that I will write to the right hon. and learned Gentleman.
My predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston, set out the position to the hon. Member for Banbury both in written correspondence and in the House, and clarified the Government's position on a number of occasions. I remind the hon. Gentleman of an oral parliamentary question that he raised on the issue in December 2002, to which my right hon. Friend responded:
"The role of the monitor was discussed here and in the House of Lords during the passage of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill, including the implications of the late amendment on location. The hon. Gentleman has put that point before. Lord Filkin wrote to him on 15 November, making it clear that the monitor is not an adjudicator or an arbiter of whether a location would be suitable for an accommodation centre and that decisions
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about where to locate the centres will be made by the Secretary of State subject to the planning process. The monitor will not be involved in selecting sites."—[Official Report, 2 December 2002; Vol. 395, c. 604.]
I will reiterate what my right hon. Friend has continually explained. The monitor will consider only whether the location of an accommodation centre prevents a need of its residents from being met, and that can be assessed only once the accommodation centre is up and running. In the unlikely event that a need is not met—I think that this answers the question asked by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke)—the situation can be rectified and responded to as one would expect during the course of a trial. That is the principle purpose of a trial: to find out what responses need to be made in relation to the operation.
The creation of the post of monitor demonstrates the Government's commitment to transparency and scrutiny, and to developing an asylum support system that works. Accommodation centres will provide much closer contact with applicants and faster processing than is generally possible for dispersed applicants. Together with the integration of the redocumentation processes, that will provide the basis of better return rates for those applicants who do not qualify for refugee status.
Our position on the appointment of the monitor remains unaltered. We still intend, as Lord Filkin made clear on 7 November 2002, to have the monitor in post for a reasonable time before the opening of the first centre. That will enable him or her to begin to think about working methods and processes. We would not want someone in post so far in advance of the opening of a centre that there was nothing for him or her to do.
I would like hon. Members to note that Cherwell district council did not pursue a legal challenge on the issue of the monitor as part of the recent judicial review proceedings and that is therefore not part of the appeal. The administrative court found against the council on all seven grounds of the challenge. Mr. Justice Collins' judgment was absolutely clear on all points, and I am therefore disappointed that the council has now appealed against the decision. However, that is where we are and we will need to deal with the appeal.
Nevertheless, we have made progress on competition for the contract to build and operate the centre at Bicester and I hope to be able to announce the winning contractor shortly. I am determined to make progress with our proposals. In my view, accommodation centres can deliver significant benefits both in providing a supportive environment for asylum seekers and through faster processing, closer contact and increased rates of removal.
I thank the hon. Member for Banbury again for the opportunity to put concisely the Government's position, as I have tried to do, and to record appropriately the reminder that the Government's position has been consistent throughout the debate. I think that I have answered all the questions that he has raised, as well as those raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe.
11.30 am
Sitting suspended until Two o'clock.

Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy
2 pm
Ross Cranston: I am delighted to see you in the Chair, Mrs. Roe, because you have taken a close interest in this subject for many years. I appreciate the support of hon. Members, especially those who are members of the all-party group on alcohol misuse. I should also mention the charity Alcohol Concern, which so ably services the group, and I commend its fine work.
The Government are to be congratulated on developing the alcohol harm reduction strategy. Any criticism that I may make during the next 20 minutes or so will be a caveat to my welcome for that important document, which puts the issue on the agenda as never before. It is a great pity that the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety cannot be here, because she played an important part in bringing the strategy to fruition, and I would have liked to thank her. She has heavy responsibilities for the police and community safety—and now for security, too—but I know that she is committed to putting the strategy into effect. I hope that those other responsibilities will not detract from the task in hand.
I am pleased to see the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration, my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne) here today. I know that his presence is fortuitous, because the Minister who will answer the debate has not yet arrived, but his shoulders are broad and he will, I am sure, be able to reply to many of the points that I, and others, make.
Preceding the alcohol harm reduction strategy was an extremely valuable document—the interim analytical report. Published late last year, it set out the range of important facts on which the strategy was built, the first of which is the enormous cost of alcohol-related harm. The figure put on that by the interim report is £20 billion. Of that total, £7 billion is incurred in relation to crime and social disorder—I shall return to that later—and the cost to the health service is £1.7 billion. It is important to get that £20 billion in perspective: although the Treasury raises billions of pounds in duty, that is not comparable to the cost of alcohol-related harm to the community.
The second important feature noted by the interim analytical report is that levels of alcohol consumption are rising. About 6 million people now drink more than the recommended daily guidelines. The document also identifies the serious phenomenon of binge drinking. In particular, young people drink twice as much now as they did 10 years ago. The document points out that those young people face an increased risk of accidents, and of alcohol poisoning. Men are more likely to be victims of violence, but are also more likely to commit violent offences after binge drinking. Also, especially important for women, there is the risk of sexual assault.
Mr. David Drew: I am sorry to have missed the first few words spoken by my hon. and learned Friend; I had to attend a Select Committee.
I have evidence from Victim Support showing the growing problem of people who are both perpetrators and victims of violence—a problem that needs sensitive
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handling. It shows the degree to which alcohol is responsible for crime. Does my hon. and learned Friend wish to say something about that?
Ross Cranston: My hon. Friend is right. One part of the strategy document focuses on domestic violence and violence associated with alcohol. Interestingly, it makes the important point identified by research that some victims become dependent on alcohol to deal with the violence. The issue is complex, and there are no easy solutions to some of the more complicated problems of social behaviour.
Mr. Jim Cousins: May I bring my hon. and learned Friend back to the important issue of sexual assaults, which he raised before the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew)? Given the busy night life of Newcastle, the police have now set up a sexual assaults referral centre in my constituency. It does not operate from police premises, and has a special team of dedicated staff. It is greatly welcomed that the police have gone about dealing with the problem in such a wise and sensitive fashion. However, does that not also illustrate that there is a serious problem to be dealt with, which imposes personal, psychological and financial burdens on the police service?
Ross Cranston: My hon. Friend is right. I commend his police service for setting up that centre. We need to roll out good practice nationwide. In certain areas there is good practice, of which my hon. Friend has given us an example. His other important point was that there are enormous social costs. In some areas, the police are finding it difficult to cope with the violence and social disorder associated with the excess consumption of alcohol, and they have had to take human resources away from other areas that need policing to deal with the problem that is especially associated with the night-time economy.
The four pillars of the strategy are education and communication, treatment, alcohol-related crime and disorder, and the duties of the drinks industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins), who is a member of the all-party group on alcohol misuse, apologises for not being present today. He wants me to draw attention to what he regards as the fifth pillar, which he calls the Treasury aspects. The strategy refers to price, although it describes the relationship of supply with price as too complex to deal with by raising the price of alcohol to deter consumption. I am sure that my hon. Friend also wishes me to identify resources, and we need money to address the problem—a matter to which I shall return if I have time.
It is necessary that each of the four pillars be given equal weight. As the strategy document rightly states, if the Government are to intervene, their action must be coherent, sustained and strategic, and outcomes must be measured. It is especially important for children that the Home Office and the Department of Health should work with other Departments. For example, the Minister for Children has an important responsibility, as I shall describe in a few moments.
The strategy identifies three important factors in the first pillar of education and communication, the first of which is ignorance. The strategy uses the evidence from

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the poll that was conducted last year, which showed that only 7 per cent. of men know what the Government's recommended level of alcohol consumption is. Women are slightly better: 22 per cent. of them know the safe limits. The second point is that massive sums are spent by the industry on advertising. Alcohol Concern cites the recent international rebranding of Smirnoff, which cost two and a half times the £95 million that we spend annually on treatment services. The third aspect is the culture, which is that to have a good night out one must drink to excess. Advertising creates a glamorous image associated with alcohol, and also, unfortunately, in some respects it advances the message that drinking to excess is acceptable.
Those are three factors that we must contend with in relation to education and communication. How do we do that? In a debate on the Floor of the House on 5 January this year, I set out what I thought should be done about labelling and advertising, and that can be found in column 130 of Hansard. I will not say anything more about that, but I will make two further points.
First, as revealed in a written answer on 19 April, since 1997 the Government have spent nothing on advertising the dangers of alcohol misuse. Clearly, we must do something. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), who has just arrived, because she may have some thoughts on my second point about how we get the message across in schools. There have been successes in her work against drugs. How can we do the same with alcohol. There is tremendous peer pressure on young people. Obviously, there must be more training, but how do we get the message across? I welcome the strategy document's commitment to get Ofcom to review advertising. As I said in the earlier Adjournment debate to which I referred, the code provisions are far too lax and have not been properly enforced, and we need to do something about irresponsible advertising.
The second pillar is treatment. The strategy says that one in 13 people in the adult population of the United Kingdom are dependent on alcohol—3 million people. It also says that of an average of 360 hazardous and harmful drinkers who visit each general practitioner every year, seven or fewer will have their drinking addressed. Obviously, we must do something in terms of screening and identifying those with problems. One omission from the strategy is any mention of the GP contract. The way in which that is changing means that GPs will have even less incentive to identify people with drinking problems.
On treatment, I also want to highlight the issue of resources. Earlier, I gave the figure of £95 million a year, in contrast to the £1 billion spent on drug treatment. That is despite the fact that twice as many people are dependent on alcohol as on illegal and prescription drugs combined. I know that drugs are different and that they give rise to different, and in some cases more serious, problems. None the less, that disparity in resources means that something must be done. That means an increase in funds in the near future.
However, the strategy document identifies the notion of an audit; we have to audit treatment services around the country before we can do anything—but that could introduce planning blight. Those who are
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commissioning treatment services for alcohol dependency will not be able to do anything while the audit is carried out over the next 12 months.
I mentioned domestic violence and treatment. Now I want to talk about children. The interim analytical report said that some 780,000 to 1.3 million children were affected by parents' alcohol problems, including violence, and the psychological problems of dealing with someone in the family who is alcohol-dependent. I know about those problems from personal experience. My grandfather was an alcoholic and my mother suffered terribly as a child, which is one of the reasons why I have taken up this subject. Specialist services must be more widely available to cater for the families of those with dependency problems. As I said, the Minister for Children has a role to play. Social services and children's centres must address the problem of alcohol misuse. The "Every Child Matters" framework must introduce the issue of concern for children in this context.
The third problem is crime and disorder, which my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Cousins) and other hon. Friends, such as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Ms Russell), take very seriously. We may talk about an urban renaissance in which people return to town and city centres to live, but they will not do so if there is violence and disorder, which may be petty and take the form of harassing people on the streets and minor criminal damage such as the destruction of bus shelters, or may be more serious and involve personal injury.
The strategy points out that there is a raft of legislation, such as penalty notices, to deal with that issue. I was pleased when my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety said last week that we must enforce those provisions. She has promised a blitz during the summer on alcohol-related violence, which I welcome. However, we have not done enough. Since 1997, only 12 landlords a year have been prosecuted for allowing drunken or riotous behaviour on their premises. The strategy identifies a code of good practice, and mentions the need for the code to ensure that soft drinks and water are readily available on retail premises. It also identifies the need for a local fund that could, for example, support police and community support officers, which I very much welcome.
Last week, the British Beer and Pub Association said that it wanted action to be taken against publicans who extend happy hours and promote binge drinking. I welcome that, too. We need to do something about binge drinking if we are to tackle the problem of crime and disorder, but we must also be more creative in the design of premises. Modern premises are not like the old-fashioned pubs to which one goes for a quiet drink; they are often designed with a view to encouraging the rapid and sometimes excessive consumption of alcohol.
Fourthly, the industry has a social responsibility. The strategy says that the industry must become more socially responsible, which I welcome. The Portman Group, for example, is supported by the industry and already does a great deal of good work. I have been critical in some respects of its enforcement of its code, but it does do good work and provides very useful information. However, we must acknowledge the fact that the drinks industry is a multinational operation

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that makes enormous profits. It must recognise and acknowledge its responsibility for the way in which alcohol is sold down the chain, and it must have a responsible attitude in developing new products. Alcohol has recently been sold in jellies in test tubes. Such gimmicks are, frankly, unacceptable.
We will need statutory underpinning if the industry does not meet its social responsibilities quickly. I welcome what the strategy says about a charter of social responsibility, and the welcome idea that the industry must make some financial contribution. The strategy advances the idea of a central fund to collect about £25 million a year, which is to be welcomed. Will my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary tell us more about how plans to introduce that fund are going?
I welcome the strategy, although I am a little confused by some of the phraseology, such as "light-touch" central arrangements. I also welcome the notion that we have to monitor progress and identify indicators to track the progress of the implementation of the strategy. Will the Under-Secretary tell us to which Cabinet Sub-Committee my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety and the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Miss Johnson) will report? The strategy is a welcome document, but the harm associated with alcohol abuse will be properly addressed only when it is implemented in full.
2.21 pm
Mr. Colin Breed: I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) on securing this timely debate. I, too, welcome the Government's decision to bring the strategy forward, although they have done so somewhat later than some of us might have hoped or expected. Nevertheless, it is welcome.
Many people probably consider my constituency to be a nice, sleepy area that a lot of people visit for its beauty. We usually welcome a growth industry, but the growth of this particular industry in my constituency has had significant effects on more people than most of us realise.
There has been a growth in the number of licensed premises. People can obtain alcoholic drink at both on and off-licence premises. A greater number of premises are applying for the opportunity to sell alcoholic drink. The way in which premises sell such drinks has changed. Not so long ago, supermarkets kept their alcoholic drink behind a separate counter, but one can now simply pick up such drinks and wander to the checkout.
Over recent years, there have been several erosions in controls over the way in which alcohol can be sold. Unsurprisingly, that has led to a huge growth in the number of people drinking and the amount that they drink. It has also led to a change in the age at which they start drinking. I refuse to believe that the availability of alcohol, the proliferation of premises and the way in which alcohol is sold have nothing to do with that.
Most of us are concerned by the amount of drink that young men and, increasingly, young women consume, and the fact that they are starting to drink at younger and younger ages. I regret that, last summer, on far too
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many occasions, children as young as 10 or 11 were picked up by local police and taken to the station, from where their parents were asked to come to collect them. The children did not, of course, purchase the drink themselves. Their brothers, their friends' brothers or others who they knew were old enough—or at least appeared to be old enough—bought it. They then consumed it in the local park or on the streets.
It is no secret that there has been a huge increase in alcohol-related crime and disorder. That results in more police time being taken up. Many hon. Members will have been out with their local police on a Friday or Saturday night. The scenes in large cities at such times are replicated in relatively small rural towns.
There has been a growth in street violence. That violence is against not only the person but property. Several shops in towns in my constituency can no longer get insurance for their windows. I suppose that some might consider it to be very funny and a great prank for people to be pushed on to large plate glass windows, but the windows have to be replaced as soon as a big crack appears in them and they are not cheap. In one of the holiday resorts in my constituency, there is a Chinese restaurant that has to maintain a curved window because it is in a conservation area. The window is listed, it is wonderful, but it regularly has to be replaced at phenomenal cost.
Injuries also occur I expect that many hon. Members have visited their local accident and emergency departments and have seen people being brought in to have glass removed from their person, or to have other injuries treated that are the result of having been in a fight. That is a big problem in holiday resort areas. Some of the worst excesses occur not only in Ibiza but in seaside towns in Cornwall and other places. I am sometimes pleased that I do not represent Newquay, because it has suffered considerably from the consequences of excess alcohol use.
These are important issues. I am particularly pleased to take part in this debate because I cannot think of a subject that has arisen more often in surgeries and meetings with constituents over the past year or so than the antisocial behaviour, mainly of drunken youths, in our towns. That is caused by two things—availability of alcohol and its price Increasing availability at a lower and lower price will only encourage more consumption. It is impossible to get away from that fact. Whatever we may like to believe from all the reports and statistics, greater availability at a more affordable price will lead to increased consumption. Therefore, although I appreciate and support many of the report's recommendations, I think that we should pause a little and consider our current regulations for licensed premises and our current taxation system on alcohol.
When I travel around my constituency. I often think that we have got to the point where we do not need any more licensed premises. We need more that are more responsible in how they sell alcohol, but I am yet to be persuaded that we need more licensed premises. Therefore, when there are applications for new licensed premises, it is important to think about whether they are really needed.
When I was a local councillor some years ago, I was very proud of my council when, for the first time, it took a stand and decided to object to another off-licence

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because there were already enough by far in the town and it would be close to the local youth club. We were supported by numerous organisations, including the youth department of the county council. I stayed all day to attempt to put across our case, but it was clear that there was no chance of sustaining our objection, and the off-licence was granted permission. We ought to consider more closely what we need, and each and every new application must demonstrate that there is a need.
Those who enjoy the opportunity of a licence to sell alcoholic drink should be made more responsible. I have already referred to the situation in holiday resorts. I fully recognise that many pubs and clubs derive significant income from the holiday season trade, but that puts greater responsibility on them.
In the fairly recent past, we saw a great petition to close down a burger and pizza bar because there were always fights outside it. The fights had nothing to do with buying pizzas and the like. People were fuelled by alcohol from pubs in town and decided to have their fights not outside the pubs but outside that particular eatery. The outlet was obviously open, but I am not certain that it was responsible for what went on outside. The responsibility lay primarily with those who were intoxicated and, perhaps more so, with those who sold the alcohol.
We ought to consider a penalty points system on licences, so that people begin to value what they have and recognise that to hold such a licence is a responsibility. if certain pubs are seen as places where people regularly over-indulge, and we are subjected to the sort of behaviour that we see, there should be a warning system. Such places should contribute more to the local pot to fund the police time that is taken up because of irresponsible drinking by what I accept are relatively few people. Their behaviour has enormous implications, in particular for police budgets and time.
Finally, the price of alcohol has come down relative to everything else. It is far cheaper than it used to be. If we believe that we should put additional tax on tobacco because of its health implications, drinking clearly has health implications and assistance is needed in that regard, too. There is a very good alcohol and drug rehabilitation centre, Broadreach house, in Plymouth adjacent to my constituency. which has done a superb job, but it is living almost hand to mouth trying to secure money from local authorities, individuals and appeals. I am sure that there are similar places up and down the country that are in need of relatively modest sums of money. Bearing in mind the totality of the drink trade, they should be assisted in rehabilitating those who have become alcohol-dependent.
Taxation is a way forward. I am not advocating draconian increases, but many would not object to modest increases in the taxation of alcohol to fund the services that I have outlined. As the Government examine their alcohol strategy, I hope that they will consider the problem more widely and deeply, as it has become a much greater problem than when they began considering the strategy five or six years ago.
2.34 pm
Mr. Jim Cousins: I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston)—not for
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Dundee, North, as I thought I heard someone say. No disrespect to Dundee, but I think the views of Dundee might be different from those of Dudley. I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend on bringing this matter to our attention. It is an extremely important topic, and it is important that we strike a balance in our judgments and views. There can be no doubt that the growth of the leisure industry and the leisure economy—certainly in a city such as Newcastle—has brought huge benefits both to the city and to most of the people who live in it.
We are talking about problems of excess, discipline and management. Such problems are, of course, the most intractable and the hardest to solve. I was looking at some figures for my constituency, which reminded me of the growth of employment in service industries. My inner-city constituency is in the top 25 constituencies for having reduced unemployment over the past 12 months. That is a huge achievement, and the growth of the leisure industry, although it has not played a major role, has played some part in that. We should acknowledge that and see what contribution the leisure industry can make to regeneration.
Unfortunately, such developments can go too far. A balance must be struck. Many of the licensing and planning regulations are clumsy, obsolete and out of date. They do not give us the basis for the modern methods of control that we should be looking for. Under the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987, the famous class A3 covers bars, licensed premises and restaurants. That means that it is perfectly possible to convert a small café in which there was some licensed drinking into a vast drinking area, without applying for a change of use.
Only this week, I learnt of a case in my own constituency, on Newcastle's quayside. The premises concerned were used as a health club and swimming pool, which were of huge benefit to people in the area— all sorts of people, from the council estates behind the quayside as well as from the yuppie flats on the quayside frontage. The proposal is to convert that health club and swimming pool into a casino with a bar that will be open until 2 o'clock in the morning. There will be no change of use, because bars, casinos, health clubs and gyms are all in the same use class. In such a situation, one of the obvious methods by which people can control and contribute to the effective management of their community is denied them. I urge that we look at the use classes order to see how we can manage things better.
Another issue is the historical separation of the apparatus for licensing from the local authority planning system. The Government's proposals in the Licensing Act 2003, which will shortly be put into effect, will go some way towards bringing a cohesive approach to consideration of the issues. That is to be welcomed. However, at the moment vast numbers of licence applications are being bunged through before the Licensing Act is put into effect, and that is unsettling for people. Restaurants are being converted into bars and then into nightclubs; pubs, which had a capacity of perhaps 60 people seated and standing, are being converted into vast drinking premises with an agreed capacity of 800 or 900 people. The focus of our attention should not only be the number of licences, although that may be an issue, but the change in the nature of licensed premises.

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I pay tribute to Chris Record and his liver health team in our local hospital in Newcastle, who have mobilised British hepatologists and gastroenterologists into making representations to the Government for a clear labelling system. What is missing from the alcohol harm reduction strategy is the enforcement of proper labelling. There is widespread belief that a glass of wine or beer equals one unit. However, drinks are being transformed into higher voltage liquids; a modern American or Australian wine has a greater alcohol content than a 1970s liebfraumilch.
People do not realise that the alcohol by volume content of what they drink has doubled over the past 20 or 30 years. Whereas a glass was one unit in the 1970s, now it is 1.8 or 1.9 units. Some supermarkets are beginning to use their own brand labelling to bring the matter to people's attention. However, it should be a requirement; people must understand that the content of their drinks has changed. Then they could use self-discipline, because self-management is the most effective type of management.
We should not overlook the consequences for health, to which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dudley, North rightly drew attention. There is a huge collateral effect on health from what might be called drink-related activities: 70 per cent. of people attending the major walk-in centre that the Government have provided in the west of my constituency are there because of drink-related problems such as fights, falling down and motor accidents, and I have already mentioned sexual assaults. We need to invest even more in such health services.
Let me bring to the Minister's attention some specific problems. I have here the draft guidance under the Licensing Act 2003. There is not time to go through all the difficulties found in such a substantial document. However, it has one central defect: it does not show forcefully enough the link between activities that occur in licensed premises and those that occur on the street outside.
As a result of the local legislation that I had the privilege of guiding through this House, we have a doormen's—or rather, doorpersons'—licensing scheme, and national legislation is to follow. The consequence is that much of the disorder is pushed off the premises into the street, where it becomes the responsibility of the police. There has been an enormous increase in the demands on our local police service as a result of growth in the leisure industry, but that is not recognised in grant allocation schemes. We urgently need a mechanism—perhaps a district leisure scheme—through which responsible licensees and owners of hotels, nightclubs and bars can contribute to the extra costs of policing and the use of street wardens. It is Government policy to introduce such wardens, but we are left with the question of how they are to be funded.
We need clear national guidance on the management of happy hours and the discounted drinks that go with them, together with a national proof-of-age scheme that does not rely on local initiatives, welcome though they are. We also need to consider how we can regulate the security industry that is now growing up around the new leisure industries.
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Huge social changes are going on, and many of them are positive, but we require much clearer regulation and management, to enable local people to play their part in the management of their communities, and to deal with the relevant issues. We look to the alcohol harm reduction strategy, which is presently rather permissive, to introduce the specific regulations required to bring the problem under proper management and contribute properly to the life of communities.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mrs. Marion Roe (in the Chair): Order. Before I call the next speaker, I remind hon. Members that I shall call for the wind-up speeches at 3 o'clock.
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Ms Christine Russell: I, too, congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) on securing an important debate. Although she is not here, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety for her huge commitment to tackling the problem of antisocial behaviour, drunkenness and disorderliness in town and city centres and the contribution that she has made to that effort in the past few years.
I shall focus on the vision of an urban renaissance. It is central to the Government's policy. The more people who live in town and city centres, the more attractive and vital those town and city centres will become. We are all being somewhat parochial this afternoon, and I want to cite my constituency, the historic City of Chester, where we are building more than 95 per cent. of all new residential development on brownfield sites in the city centre. However, as other hon. Members have said, if the urban renaissance is to succeed, we need a balance so that those who have moved back into the town and city centres can get a good night's sleep, while it remains possible for others to come in and get a good night out.
Mrs. Cheryl Gillan: I, too, should like an urban renaissance, and I shall be parochial as well: renewing urban centres will prevent the building of more houses in the green belt in my constituency.
Ms Russell: If the hon. Lady studies the planning policies of Chester city council, she will see the way ahead.
Last year, I had the privilege of chairing the inquiry into the evening economy by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning and Local Government Committee. That inquiry took a great deal of evidence—from local authorities, Alcohol Concern and the police. We considered how we would bring about the vision of an urban renaissance and encourage people back into town and city centres, without the awful antisocial behaviour that tends to be associated with late-night drinking and clubbing.
It became apparent early in our inquiry that we must decide—and local authorities have a clear responsibility to decide—between encouraging a vibrant evening economy or a late-night economy. Our conclusions were

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that an evening economy can be an enormously valuable regeneration tool. Plugging the gap between 5 o'clock and 9 o'clock, by encouraging shops and libraries to stay open later, will lead to a more diverse range of activities, attracting many more people to town and city centres.
The late-night economy, as it has developed in Britain, however, has focused solely on young people and alcohol consumption, with all the associated problems for communities of crime and disorder, antisocial behaviour, noise and nuisance, contributing little—and perhaps acting as a deterrent—to urban regeneration.
I am sure that most hon. Members present this afternoon agree with me that it is only those who profit from the alcohol trade who deny that Britain has a drink problem. Reading the strategy, it is quite frightening to discover that two out of five Britons between the ages of 18 and 24 are classified as binge drinkers, which means that they down more than eight units of alcohol a night if they are a man and six if they are a woman.
I do not want to go over the NHS statistics or the pressures that alcohol misuse places on our health service, because other hon. Members have already done so. Instead, I want to describe how alcohol misuse uses up a phenomenal amount of police time and resources.
Like the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed), I have been out late at night with my local police force. Today, I asked the force for the statistics for my area—the division of Chester and Ellesmere Port, not the whole county of Cheshire. In my division, there have been 394 recorded incidents of alcohol-related crime in the past 12 months, including 220 assaults and woundings. Alcohol-related crime is the main factor behind the increase in violent crime statistics in many parts of the country.
During its inquiry, the Select Committee examined international comparisons. It is true that Italians, for instance, consume as much alcohol as we do, but they spread it out over the day and throughout the week, rather than concentrating it all in a few hours on a Friday or Saturday night. Alcohol consumption is increasing only in Britain, of all the European Union countries; in most of the others, it is decreasing.
While I am on the theme of Italian drinkers, I shall mention something that I noted down on the assumption that I would be seeing my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety. Last summer, when the European champions league final was held at Old Trafford, 40,000-plus Italian football fans were out celebrating on the streets of Manchester, but there was not one arrest or incident of disorderly behaviour. That is remarkable. Imagine what would have happened if Manchester United or Manchester City had been playing in Rome that evening.
The strategy endorses everything that the Select Committee said in its recommendations. One key point, which is reflected in the strategy, is that partnership working is the way forward. The police, health services, schools and colleges, local authorities, local communities and, very importantly, the drinks industry must all work together to combat the problems of binge drinking and antisocial behaviour.
The Select Committee identified the importance of local authorities devoting as much attention to what goes on in their towns and cities in the evening as they
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do in the day. My local authority of Chester prepares a night-time strategy, and I would recommend every local authority to do so. One of its key objectives is to work with young people to make the city centre safer for them at night. We are considering working with club venue operators to explore the development of a city centre evening dance venue that does not sell alcohol. We are also considering improving the education programmes on offer because, as has been said, education, too, will play a key role in changing the drinking culture. I welcome the strategy; it is a big step in the right direction. However, I accept that there may be need for further action.
The hon. Member for South-East Cornwall questioned the need for more licensed premises. Under the new licensing regime, that will be an issue that local authorities will have to address; but when we conducted our inquiry and looked into the number of licensed premises and new permissions given, we discovered that in Paris not one additional drinks licence has been granted since 1915.
2.55 pm
Mrs. Janet Dean: I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) on securing this important debate.
I represent a brewing constituency, and hon. Members might like to know that Coors—the largest brewery in the UK—Marston's, Burton Bridge and three other micro breweries, as well as major pub companies, are in my constituency. I warmly welcome the strategy, which is thorough, well researched and recognises the complexities of the issues. The drinks industry welcomes the clear strategic lead on how to target its corporate and social responsibility plans and efforts.
I am pleased that the strategy recognises that there are economic and social benefits to drinking, as well as harm arising from alcohol misuse. We must remember that most people enjoy having a drink without causing harm to themselves or others, and so it is encouraging that the strategy adopts a targeted approach against harmful drinking behaviours. Such a targeted approach is far more likely to succeed than blanket activity aimed at reducing overall consumption of alcohol.
We need to address patterns of drinking; that is important in targeting those at risk from alcohol misuse. In particular, we must address the trend of binge drinking, as hon. Members have said. I will not echo what has been said about the problem, but we all know that the results of binge drinking can be seen in our small and large towns and cities, and in our local communities.
There is evidence to show that strategies that address specific issues of consumption can have a good track record. For instance, although drink-drive fatalities have been dramatically reduced, the overall level of consumption has not gone down, because people who understood that they might be at risk responded positively to targeted, regular and well communicated messages about their behaviour.
I am pleased that the Government recognise that the key to success is partnership with producers and retailers, who understand the sector, are keen to help, and have already done a great deal. My hon. and learned

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Friend mentioned the Portman Group and the British Beer and Pub Association, which have been producing guidelines on responsible promotions in pubs and clubs.
The strategy makes it clear that the key to success is providing better consumer information about responsible drinking and finding ways of motivating consumers to apply that knowledge to day-to-day behaviours. Tapping into manufacturing and retail companies' consumer expertise is therefore an essential next step.
My hon. and learned Friend mentioned advertising. Coors has produced alcohol responsibility adverts in conjunction with the Scottish Executive, and they ran on Scottish television in the run-up to last Christmas. Also, evaluation showed that the combination of the involvement of the managers of the old firm—Celtic and Rangers—and the Carling brand resulted in adverts that not only were noticed but had credibility. Most of the consumers who responded to an evaluation survey said that they would be more likely to drink responsibly as a result.
In my constituency, there is a good example of a brewer working with the community. Coors has leased one of its properties to the Burton addiction centre at half the commercial rent for a 20-year lease. The addiction centre provides help in Burton and the surrounding area for people with problems with alcohol and drugs. The overall help and saving for the addiction centre resulting from the strategy will be several hundred thousand pounds. That example shows that partnership between the public and private sector can pay dividends.
The strategy is a real opportunity for all stakeholders to join in making inroads into alcohol misuse. I would like increased efforts to be made by manufacturers, and would also like large supermarkets and local off-licences to become more involved in promoting responsible alcohol consumption. There has been a huge change in drinking habits in this country, and that has resulted in the situation that now exists. In 1980, for instance, 11 per cent. of alcohol sold was sold in shops; in 2003, the figure was 39 per cent., and that share is growing. Perhaps this is a real opportunity for some of the supermarkets to join the Portman Group, which has done much to promote responsibility in relation to alcohol.
If the supermarkets were now to bring their scale and expertise to bear on the Portman Group's activities, that would be excellent timing. There could be a code of practice to ensure responsible marketing in the off trade, to match the new promotions guidelines already in place in pubs and in the on trade. I welcome the strategy, and I hope that the drinks and retail sectors can meet the strategic challenges that have been laid down.
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Mr. David Heath: I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) on securing the debate and on his chairmanship of the all-party group. It has been a thoroughly worthwhile and well informed debate.
I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) to her place, but a Department of
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Health Minister could just as easily have been sitting there, or a Minister from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, who could deal with the licensing aspects of the issue. Equally, a Minister from the Department for Transport could deal with the drink-driving aspects, and a Treasury Minister could deal with the taxation of alcohol.
I had not thought of this until the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Cousins) mentioned it, but a Minister from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister could be here, too, to talk about change of use of premises. We so often see our banks turned into wine bars: would it not be nice occasionally to see a wine bar turned into a bank in one of our local communities? Perhaps that would be a step in the right direction.
This subject crosses all departmental boundaries; that is why it is so important. Obviously, the Home Office has a view on issues to do with crime, particularly violent crime. The increases in alcohol-related violent crime across the country are very serious, and we need to take notice of them. We particularly need to take notice of the domestic violence component of violent crime, which is so often alcohol-related, and is of great concern to many of us.
Antisocial behaviour often accompanies excessive drinking, particularly in our town centres. I agree with hon. Members who say that it is time to reclaim our town centres as civilised places to be of an evening, rather than places to get tanked up and have a fight. This issue involves road safety aspects: too many accidents still involve alcohol consumption at some point in their genesis, because of the impairment of driving skills that alcohol inevitably brings.
There are economic consequences, too. My hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) talked about the cost of vandalism, but there are all sorts of other costs, such as opportunity costs for directly affected businesses, and the cost of the fact that people who have indulged in excess alcohol may not be fit for work the next day. That has knock-on consequences, even if such people do not have an immediate health problem.
That brings me to the health issues. More than 6,000 deaths a year are directly attributable to, and probably 40,000 a year are indirectly associated with, alcohol abuse. Young people are imbibing too much alcohol at an increasingly young age. We need to address the societal change of increasing alcohol consumption by women, too. Nine children a day are admitted to hospital with drink-related medical conditions. Even if one discounts the serious health problems associated with alcohol—cirrhosis and other serious diseases—those who drink more than 100 drinks a month will still suffer low-level health degradation, such as memory loss, reduced intelligence, poor balance and impaired mental agility. Those are serious concerns that we need to address.
I have my criticisms of the strategy, but I greatly welcome the fact that it has been published at last. I certainly have serious criticisms of the Government's performance on this subject until now. They have been lethargic: the creation of this strategy was announced in 1998, and it is simply not good enough to see it emerge six years later. Bearing in mind the fact that 40,000

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people a year are killed, indirectly or directly, by alcohol, some 240,000 people have died in the time that it has taken to bring forward a strategy to reduce drinking.
The Government have often been complacent. My hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) recently asked the Department of Health how much it had spent on advertising the dangers of alcohol since 1997 and received the answer: not a penny. Why is alcohol not treated with the same seriousness as other drugs that are abused? I do not understand that. It does not make sense, in terms of public health or of reducing criminal behaviour. The Government have been guilty of confusion. In virtually the same week as the alcohol harm reduction strategy appears, we have the liberalising changes in the licensing laws.
Let us consider the infamous text message sent out before the previous election. It would be almost impossible to render in the Official Report in the form in which it was texted, so I shall paraphrase it in English rather than text language: "Couldn't give a XXXX for last orders? Vote Labour on Thursday for extra time." Many hon. Members will look back on that as a strategic mistake. It gives a mixed message to the people whom the Government are trying to influence.
Mr. John Groganrose—
Mr. Heath: The hon. Gentleman has been patient, and has not managed to speak in the debate, so I will give way to him.
Mr. Grogan: I was far too old to get that text message—but is it not true that reforming the licensing laws is beneficial in terms of some of the discussions that we are having today? There will be less pressure for people to drink far too much in the last half hour before closing time, when everyone is spilling out on to the streets at the same time looking for taxis and fast food. Some 50 per cent. of all alcohol-related violent crime occurs just after closing time, so there are potential benefits.
Mr. Heath: I accept that the avoidance of drinking-up time, which is often associated with excessive consumption, is a benefit. However, the text message expresses that benefit as extra time for drinking excessively. That is not the message that a responsible party, particularly a party in government, should be sending to young drinkers. Although I accept that there are arguments about the reform of the licensing laws, I do not accept that the Government have got it entirely right.
I am critical of the emphasis that was put on the launch of that campaign, because it coincided with an increase in the number of violent crimes associated with alcohol. The whole emphasis should be on reducing crime and antisocial behaviour. All of us want to see those things reduced, but we must recognise that they are the symptoms, not the cause The cause has been correctly identified by every hon. Member who has spoken in this debate: it is the culture of binge and excessive drinking—not social drinking, but drinking to get drunk.
The problem involves many young people. It is the culture of the happy hour and the alcopop—a drink that disguises the taste of alcohol to maximise alcohol intake.
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Incidentally, if my knowledge of physiology is still current, many of those diluted fizzy alcoholic drinks are more easily assimilated into the bloodstream than even a straight vodka, because of the physiological way in which the alcohol is taken into the bloodstream.
We should consider how many factories for alcohol consumption there are—that is the only way to describe some of the stand-up bars with huge capacities. This drinking culture is current in all our towns and cities, including small towns and even some villages. We contrive to export it to other countries, to our eternal shame. It is appalling that we are concerned about people coming here from the European Union accession countries, because they are more worried about British people going to their town centres and behaving appallingly in Prague or Tallin, or any of the other beautiful cities that we, I am afraid, besmirch far too often with our exported bad behaviour.
The Government are at last recognising the issues. Although, as I believe the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central said, some elements of the strategy are couched in permissive terms, they nevertheless move in the right direction. However, the strategy will not be effective in reducing excessive alcohol consumption, which has become a cultural norm that we can do without, until the approach to the subject is more focused and the enforcement is better and more effective.
3.10 pm
Mrs. Cheryl Gillan: I, too, congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) on securing the debate, and on sharing with us his personal circumstances and the reason for his interest in this subject—a very worthy motive for becoming involved in an issue. I hope that the mark that he makes in this area will also have significance for his family.
I also welcome the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) to the debate; I gather that she was late because of the public transport system. If my memory serves me correctly, the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for City of Chester (Ms Russell) and I all once travelled together in an alcohol-free zone in the middle east, so our discussions on alcohol go back a long way—although perhaps not in the terms in which this debate is couched.
There can be no one in the Chamber, whether a Member of Parliament or otherwise, who is unfamiliar with the issues surrounding drinking and antisocial behaviour. To be parochial for a moment, I can tell hon. Members that we have those problems in Chesham and Amersham. They are reflected in my postbag and in the concerns of citizens who sometimes feel that they cannot even walk safely down the street. Late at night in Old Amersham, I have found myself in a similar position, so I sympathise deeply not only with my constituents but with the Government in trying to tackle this problem in our communities.
Like other Members who have spoken in this debate, I, too, welcomed the alcohol harm reduction strategy, particularly when it finally arrived. I believe that it was the hon. Member for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) who alluded to the long gestation period of that

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strategy. Certainly, organisations that brief us on the subject were expecting it much earlier. It seemed to take an awfully long time to be produced—and it is fair to say that there was more than a little disappointment that, after taking so long to be produced, it had less substance than many commentators had expected.
After reviewing the strategy, Professor Ian Gilmore of the Royal College of Physicians said:
"It is stronger on cleaning up the streets than on preventing physical harm."
So we know that it is not a perfect document. That is not surprising, however, as before we even consider the strategy, we have to say that there still seems to be enormous confusion over who is in charge of policies on alcohol, and an inherent contradiction in the Government's actions. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) pointed out that the responsibility for policy is spread across, I believe, up to 10 Departments—but I believe that he missed out the Department of Trade and Industry.
Mr. Heath: Quite right.
Mrs. Gillan: I was ticking them off on my list.
The competing interests of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Department of Health, the Home Office, the Treasury, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and all the rest have resulted in what is perceived to be a piecemeal approach to alcohol policy. In the words of Alcohol Concern. which has briefed us all on the strategy,
"The competing interests of these departments have resulted in a piecemeal approach to alcohol policy and contributed to the failure to produce effective responses to the high level of alcohol-related harm in the UK."
I would be grateful if the Minister could start by helping us to understand the thinking in that respect. Who will have overall responsibility for the national and local partnerships to which Baroness Scotland referred the other day in another place? Will it be the Home Office, which wants sterner measures, the DCMS, which has loosened the licensing laws, or the Department of Health, which reckons that alcohol abuse costs it more than £20 billion a year in lost earnings and health care? Perhaps the Minister could start by clarifying the position that Baroness Scotland failed to address in the other place, and answer the question asked by the hon. and learned Member for Dudley, North about which Cabinet Sub-Committee will have overall responsibility for the strategy.
The Government were right to identify alcohol-related violence as a major problem. Indeed, the Home Office research has confirmed that alcohol is behind nearly half of all violent crime and about 70 per cent. of accident and emergency admissions at night and at the weekend. However, many of the conclusions in the strategy merely urge police and local authorities to use their existing powers more frequently. Measures such as the greater use of fixed penalty fines for antisocial behaviour and better enforcement of the rules on underage drinking were seen as repetition, rather than as any new innovative thinking in the area.
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The Government seem to be a bit short of innovation and their own leaked documents revealed a possible reason for that in The Sunday Times on 14 March. I hope that the Minister will be able to help us to understand those reports. Apparently, the research commissioned by the Home Secretary showed that there had been a sharp rise in violent assaults linked to alcohol, and a significant increase in drunk people attacking strangers. Those increases were so high that senior Home Office officials were reported as reaching the conclusion
"that it is 'more or less impossible' for the police to enforce the law in city centres",
and that in the cities the Government have
"lost control of drink-fuelled crime".
To combat that, The Sunday Times reported, the Home Secretary apparently wants to
"Take powers to fix the prices of alcoholic drinks in city centres to help curb excessive drinking, even though it will break competition law.
Impose a compulsory annual levy on pubs and clubs of an average £10,000 a year each to pay for up to 30,000 extra police officers.
Tell councils to refuse all new licences to premises unless the applicants can prove that they will not increase antisocial behaviour."
However, as The Sunday Times said, none of those "draconian measures", or the details of the internal assessment, were spelt out at the launch of the alcohol strategy because the Treasury, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and the Prime Minister have blocked the Home Secretary's proposals from taking effect before the election because they fear that they
"will be seen as anti-business."
Perhaps the Minister will take this opportunity to deny or confirm the advice that has been given to the Home Secretary and to state the real agenda of the Home Office, rather than camouflaging everything behind the series of voluntary measures aimed at disguising the Home Secretary's long-term compulsory crackdown. I hope that the Minister will be able to share the Government's thinking on what appears to be the accurate information that was reproduced in The Sunday Times.
Perhaps the Minister will also take this opportunity to acknowledge that the alcohol strategy is an admission that the Government's measures to cut crime and antisocial behaviour have failed to date. Violent crime is up by 14 per cent., and according to Home Office officials a significant proportion of it takes place close to licensed premises. The Licensing Act 2003 and the antisocial behaviour legislation seem to have been enacted before the research and advice of the Home Office had been studied. It is all very confusing, and I have great sympathy for the Minister, who appears to be coping with her Government's inefficiencies in trying to put the strategy in place.
There is not much time in this debate to cover anything in depth, although I particularly wanted to probe the Minister on the treatment for alcohol addiction among prisoners, in which I take a great deal of interest. In the time that I have left, I shall ask what her plans are for helping with alcohol treatment in our prisons. I believe that in 2002–03, only 6,400 prisoners undertook alcohol detoxification programmes, and that

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7,000 more prisoners did a combined alcohol and drug detoxification programme. However, it is estimated that 50,000 prisoners—nearly two thirds of the prison population—have admitted to hazardous drinking prior to imprisonment, and about half of those have severe alcohol dependency.
I believe that there are no specific ring-fenced accredited alcohol treatment programmes in prisons in England and Wales, and that the Prison Service survey recently identified only one prison with a dedicated alcohol strategy. If we are even to begin to approach solutions to the problems caused by alcohol misuse in this country, we need to start by examining that sector of the population, which suffers from significantly higher rates of alcohol misuse and dependence than the general population. Those people are in our prisons.
I share the Minister's view, and that of every hon. Member in the Chamber, that we need solutions. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us more detail and reassure us both that there will be regular reports on her progress, and that the proposal is not a half-hearted measure put out in advance of the more draconian measures that would be implemented should Labour goodness preserve us—win the next general election.
3.21 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Caroline Flint): I apologise for being late: I understand that a state visit is taking place, which prevented my driver from picking me up on time from the station. I hasten to add that I travelled down from Leeds by train on a very good service.
I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) on securing this debate. I was in Dudley a fortnight ago, where I sat in on a presentation by Aquarius, which is an alcohol arrest referral project in the area. The group works with the police and those in the health service who are involved in treatment, to address problems to do with alcohol and crime. I was impressed by the work that Aquarius was doing.
As my hon. and learned Friend is aware, I am the Minister responsible for the overall drugs strategy. We already have drug and alcohol action teams in a number of areas, and it is our desire to see more of those. Importantly, we have also actively encouraged drug action teams and drug and alcohol action teams to merge with crime and disorder reduction partnerships, so that the problem can be faced in a more joined-up way than it may have been in the past. That is an ongoing piece of work, to look at what has been going on in communities and see how much progress they have made towards that end.
As the drugs Minister, I was obviously involved with the alcohol harm reduction strategy report. We have to consider some of the issues together. That reminds me of a visit that I made to a treatment service, where I met a gentleman who said, "I'm off crack, but I'm still an alcoholic." There are different uses of different types of drugs and alcohol, and they can all lead to addiction.
Alcohol is enjoyed by millions of people in the UK in a measured, sensible and healthy way. However, the issue is complex, and there are people for whom alcohol becomes a necessity—an addiction. Such people can end up losing their jobs or using all their household income
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to fuel their alcohol addiction. With higher employment and higher disposable income, people are going out more and eating out more, and, possibly as a consequence, drinking more.
We have to address the drinking done by different groups in society, including young people. It is acknowledged in the strategy that across government, we have to look at how we spend money on alcohol education. We have to think about how we can better communicate to people the different effects of alcohol on their lives. In the Home Office we have sponsored a series of videos as part of "Watch over me", a project initiated by Milly Dowler's family, on young people and personal safety, and one of those videos deals with alcohol.
I think that before I arrived my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Mr. Cousins) mentioned people who drink and make themselves vulnerable to sexual assault, which is of course a serious problem. The Home Secretary has just announced £4 million more for sexual assault referral centres and other services for victims of sexual assault. That is one part of the jigsaw of tackling such problems. Importantly, however, we also need to think about how carefully we look after ourselves, so as not to make ourselves vulnerable when we have a good night out.
We want to start the process of changing the culture of drinking to get drunk, but it will not be easy. We shall look into the compulsory labelling of alcohol. There is a lot of debate and discussion about that, and some valid points have been made this afternoon about people's understanding of units of alcohol and what they mean. I have been reading in preparation for the debate, and I understand that the size of the average wine glass has increased. As a result, our preconception of what is meant by "a glass of wine", gained from what we read in magazines and other publications, and from what we see in leaflets distributed by the Department of Health about units of alcohol, has been skewed.
There are new drinks on the market. We need to consider how the industry should deal with them, and how it can help people to be more certain about what they are drinking, and its impact on them. Consequently, they will be able to gauge what they drink, and understand better what they are drinking—and what they should not drink, and what they should not drink more of.
Advertising has been mentioned. I understand that Ofcom will undertake a review of the code of practice for television advertisers, to ensure that it does not target young drinkers or glamorise irresponsible behaviour. We are also considering promotions.
In preparation for this afternoon's debate, I read through one of the current codes. The worry is that it is not being enforced as well as it should be, and I wonder whether we should take another look at that. We need to work with the industry to achieve what we want.
Supermarkets and retailers have been mentioned, and they are not outside the rules. Clear guidelines are in place for retailers, even if they are not being implemented as they should—for example, those on drink sold in supermarkets in places where children might go. I recall walking into a supermarket and seeing near the entrance a promotion of wine at a lower price. I have also seen wine displays at the checkout counter.

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Those are some of the issues that need to be considered so that we can better enforce the guidelines and pick up on retailers and licensees who do not abide by the rules.
Treatment for alcohol misuse is a huge problem. We need a better understanding of what treatment is available. Part of the challenge for me, since becoming drugs Minister, has been to identify not only what drugs treatment is out there but, just as important, which treatments work and which do not. We need to adopt a similar approach to alcohol-related treatment. The fact that there is an ongoing audit of treatment should not prevent primary care trusts and others from identifying such issues in local communities. As I said, drugs and alcohol action teams already examine the issue in partnership, with PCTs.
We are trying to ensure that those who work in the health service—doctors, nurses and other health professionals—can identify alcohol misuse among their patients. I understand that over the next 18 months, the Department of Health will raise the profile of alcohol education for health professionals with the appointment of a deputy chief medical officer and a chief nursing officer as training champions.
The driving force behind the implementation of the drugs strategy is a joint one, shared by the Home Office and the Department of Health. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said, it is a cross-government matter, and in that respect it is not easy. A number of issues are not the responsibility of one Department alone. We have to find a way to harness expertise—not in competition with each other, but in a way that facilitates delivery and ensures that the outcome is effective. We need to identify the gaps in treatment, and we need to ensure that everyone who needs it receives the necessary information.
A number of hon. Members mentioned alcohol-related crime and disorder, and under-age drinking, as causes for significant concern. During the summer we shall work with the police standards unit and the Association of Chief Police Officers, and invite forces across the country to take part in a co-ordinated programme of enforcement initiatives to tackle alcohol-fuelled violence, and to deal with the irresponsible few who encourage under-age and binge drinking. We want to make greater use of existing legislation, but we are considering whether to extend fixed penalty notices to those who run establishments, as well as to those who cause disorder on our streets.
In the time left to me, I shall not be able to do justice to the range of comments that have been made this afternoon—but I can at least say that it is important that our attitude to the problem is joined up. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central asked about the use classes order; I shall write to him about that. We must strongly encourage industry to give clear guidance and information. We want that done on a voluntary, partnership basis—but we will review the situation in the next Parliament, and if more legislation is needed, it will have to be enacted.

Burundi
3.30 pm
Ann McKechin: I welcome this opportunity to speak about a nation which receives very little public attention in the United Kingdom and which is facing a crucial period in its history, as it seeks to move from many years of conflict and debilitating poverty to a period of peace and, hopefully, real development progress.
I welcome the Government's country engagement plan for Burundi and their increased aid spending on that country in the past few years. The Department for International Development has been working hard to ensure that we have a comprehensive set of policies for the entire great lakes region. It is also working closely with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence to achieve that. However, given that Burundi is in a critical period, I wish to press the Minister further on his future policy intentions.
Burundi is the smallest nation in the great lakes region, with a population of just over 6 million. It is also the third most impoverished nation in the world: more than 99 per cent. of its population lives beneath the absolute poverty threshold of $1 per day, and 85 to 90 per cent. of its people subsist on less than $1 per week. Like its neighbour Rwanda, it has suffered an extensive period of ethnic violence between its Hutu and Tutsi populations. It has been estimated that 200,000 people have been killed since 1993, when the conflict escalated. At times that internal conflict has spilled over into Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has had detrimental effects on the stability of the region. That is one of the main reasons why the search for peace in Burundi is so important.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela helped to broker a three-year power-sharing agreement in 2001. That was a key breakthrough. Subsequent negotiations led to the largest rebel group, the Forces for the Defence of Democracy—the FDD—signing a ceasefire with the Government in late 2002. However, this week the FDD accused the Government of not abiding by the peace accord and of not giving it adequate representation in the current Administration. I understand that, according to a United Nations report issued yesterday, the transitional Government are ready to meet the FDD's demands, but I would be grateful if the Minister said whether our Government have had any discussions this week with the Burundi authorities about the problem, and whether they are able to make any assessment of the consequences. Also, is there any sign of progress in persuading the remaining rebel group, the FNL—the Forces for National Liberation— to join with the transitional Government in the search for peace?
Elections are due to take place in October, and for them to pass off successfully it is crucial that security is achieved throughout the country. Sadly, however, extreme and intense violence continues to occur in pockets. In Bujumbura Rurale, the Centre de Blessé medical centre in Kamenge recently had 76 reported rape cases in just one week. On average in the last 12 months more than 100 rapes per month have been reported in that centre alone. That reported figure suggests that the real figure is far higher. In addition, civilians continue to be killed, seriously injured and forced to leave their home as a result of the conflict.

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Last year, the African Union deployed a peacekeeping mission to Burundi, and I welcome our Government's £2 million contribution toward the cost of it, in addition to their share of the €25 million that was provided from the European Union aid fund. Despite that, the mission is suffering from a serious lack of funds and logistical support. However, as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently stated, it has performed very well in difficult circumstances and it has already made a significant contribution to establishing an atmosphere of peace and security. However, severe problems remain, not least in the area surrounding the capital, and it is important that the peacekeeping force is able to operate effectively throughout the country.
Last month, Kofi Annan, responding to a direct request from the African Union, proposed that the mission be taken over by the UN. I understand that the Security Council has, in turn, given him permission to plan a mission, but has yet to give final approval. Can the Minister confirm that the UK Government support the UN taking over from the African Union forces, and will they work to lobby other UN member states to support such a plan? I certainly encourage the Government to consider whether it is possible, prior to the October elections, to provide further funds to the force and any suitable technical assistance that it may require.
I am deeply concerned by the Rwandan Government's admission on 26 April to making a substantial deployment of troops along the borders of both Burundi and the DRC, despite denying such a suggestion earlier that week. On that same day, the DRC Foreign Minister was reported as saying that the presence of Rwandan troops amounted to a threat to the trust and bilateral relations between the two nations. That is another worrying sign, given the fact that that country is going through a transitional form of government. I am worried that such a deployment could have an equally destabilising effect on security in Burundi at this sensitive time in its search for peace and elections. Do the Government believe that Rwanda has legitimate security concerns to merit such movements, or that the terms of the memorandum of understanding between the United Kingdom and the Rwandan Government are being fully respected in respect of current events?
Development issues also affect Burundi. First, refugees are now returning to Burundi as peace begins to be established. They are coming back n their thousands, and those numbers are expected to increase dramatically once political leaders call for Burundi citizens to return to register to vote for the elections in October. Can the Minister give any indication of how DFID assesses the state of preparation of international agencies to cope with that influx? In the longer term, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is planning for upwards of 500,000 people to be repatriated to Burundi by 2006. That is in addition to the ex-combatants and the formerly internally displaced people who are returning to their homes in rural areas. In such a small and terribly impoverished nation, that creates a tremendous stress on very poor rural communities. I urge DFID to assist in strengthening basic facilities in the rural communities to cope with the influx and provide funds for projects to establish links between the returning groups to prevent the possibility of further conflict.
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A study published this week by Médecins sans Frontiéres shows that mortality rates in Burundi are three times higher than those of a country in a stable situation, and well above the internationally recognised thresholds that indicate an emergency situation. The main causes of mortality are identified as infectious diseases: malaria is the main killer, but there is an increasing and worrying incidence of HIV/AIDS infection. Despite the fact that the right to health is enshrined in the policy of the Burundi Ministry of Health, the study shows that the cost-recovery system operated by the Ministry, whereby patients pay the entire cost of all medical acts, medicines and laboratory tests, excludes almost 1 million people—just less than one fifth of the total population—from any type of basic health care. In addition, the researchers found that more than 80 per cent. of the households that consult health centres are obliged to resort to extreme solutions, such as selling cattle or land, or incurring debt from their neighbours, to pay the price of the consultation.
DFID's analysis points to the fact that immunisation rates have dropped from 83 per cent. in 1993 to only 54 per cent. in 2001. One of the examples quoted in the report shows clearly how the system has exacerbated the current problems. A man called Reverien from the Musaga district said:
"My wife died two months ago, very probably from malaria because she had a lot of fever and vomiting. But she never went to a health centre because of lack of money. I don't even have enough to feed my two children, so how could I have paid the price of a consultation? I thought she would eventually get better. That didn't happen. After four months in that state, she finally died."
The 2003 budget for the Ministry of Health was estimated to be only 2.2 per cent. of the total budget. An adequate basic service for all cannot be obtained from such a budget. The human price of the inadequacies of the current system cannot be overestimated. The funds pledged at the international donor conference held in Brussels in January this year focused on the clearly important issues of demobilisation and the return of refugees. However, the future of the health and education sectors in Burundi was not even discussed at that meeting. I am sure that the Minister agrees that there is an urgent need to ensure that a free basic health care system is introduced in Burundi, as it is a key prerequisite to development, progress and disease control. Has his Department held discussions with the Burundian authorities, the European Union and our international partners on that issue? Will the Government urge that appropriate exemptions from the cost-recovery scheme be made for vulnerable elements of the population, to ensure that every person can receive basic health coverage?
Burundi also suffers from unsustainable levels of debt. Its economy is highly dependent on coffee exports, the global market price of which remains depressed. It is entitled to apply for relief under the heavily indebted poor countries scheme, but due to the level of conflict in recent years it has yet to reach the initial decision point. Given that the final expiry date for reaching the decision point under the HIPC scheme is later this year. I urge my hon. Friend to put pressure on the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to consider an alternative arrangement to allow Burundi to obtain that essential concession —when elections have taken place and, hopefully, stability has been achieved. The recent announcement of bilateral debt relief by the Paris Club

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of creditors is welcome, but given Burundi's precarious financial position, further relief from the HIPC initiative is vital if more funds are to be spent on services, such as health and education.
Earlier this year, I was asked by International Alert, a United Kingdom non-governmental organisation, to take part in an evaluation of parliamentary peace forums known collectively as the AMANI forum, that have been established in Parliaments throughout the great lakes region. The role of the forums in Uganda and Kenya has made an important contribution to the search for reconciliation and peace. Unfortunately, due to security concerns at the time, I was unable to take part in the visit to the Burundi Parliament, but it is clear that its parliamentarians often feel isolated and that they lack either the capacity or experience to consider many of the complex problems that they face, especially—as in any impoverished nation—in relation to their control of the armed forces in the country and the attempt to reconcile their communities. Has the Department for International Development made an assessment of how it can support the parliamentarians as part of its declared objective to support peace-building activities in the country? As my hon. Friend will be aware, the UN is proposing to hold a special conference on the great lakes region later this year. It is important that parliamentarians and Ministers from the region take a full part in the work programme. I hope that his Department can assist in that respect.
A huge number of complex problems face Burundi. However, this year gives it and its citizens a window of hope. As I said, I welcome the Government's increased commitment, but I strongly urge them to continue working as hard as possible to allow peace and democracy to have a chance. Burundi and its people have suffered greatly and now is our time to help them.
3.44 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr. Gareth Thomas): I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Ann McKechin) on securing the debate on Burundi and, more generally, on her work with the all-party group on heavily indebted poor countries. She is a great campaigner in the House on many specific issues relating to Burundi. I also welcome the fact that my hon. Friend has succeeded in securing the debate because it provides an opportunity to highlight the work that the UK and the rest of the international community are doing to help bring about lasting peace in Burundi and alleviate the population's suffering, which she so graphically described.
In effect, the country has spent the past 10 years in the grip of an appalling civil war. I agree that this is a critical time for Burundi. My hon. Friend alluded to the fact that the date for the end of the transitional Government created by the Arusha accords of 2000 is fast approaching. If the transition is to be successful, elections to appoint a new Government and a new president must take place before 31 October. To create an environment conducive to elections, the process of demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration must be up and running, and army integration and planning for security sector reform must be well under way. That will
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require not only significant political commitment in Burundi but the active engagement and support of the international community, without which the peace process could, sadly, fail, potentially plunging Burundi back into civil war, with considerable adverse consequences for the rest of the great lakes region.
As my hon. Friend highlighted, the humanitarian situation in Burundi is grim. The country is one of the poorest in the world, with quite appalling human development indicators. It rates as low as 171st out of 175 on the UN world development index, and almost 60 per cent. of its population live on less than $1 a day. Life expectancy at birth is only 40 years—a drop of 10 years since the start of the conflict in 1993, and—to complete a particularly grim picture—the mortality rate among under-fives is one of the highest in the world, with one Burundian child dying every 10 minutes. On top of all that, large numbers of refugees and internally displaced people are returning home as a result of the reduction in conflict; that is putting pressure on host communities, which already have little capacity to cope.
My hon. Friend alluded to the fact that the UK, through the Department for International Development, has significantly geared up its response to Burundi's needs in recent years. We have developed a strong relationship with the Government of Burundi, and I believe that we are respected in the donor community and seen as unbiased and a serious supporter. In the last financial year, the Department committed more than £10 million to Burundi, including significant contributions to the African Union peacekeeping force, about which I shall say a little more in due course. Our staff have also sought to play an active role in improving donor co-ordination in Burundi, working closely with key multilaterals, such as the World Bank, the UN and the European Commission, on issues such as the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration process, security sector reform and election support, which is crucial in the context of the upcoming parliamentary elections. We are also working on humanitarian assistance and, more generally, on social and economic reform.
My hon. Friend touched on the African Union mission in Burundi, which comprises 2,500 troops. It is particularly significant, because it is the African Union's first peacekeeping force to be deployed in Africa. It has been in place since June 2003, and its deployment has been an essential part of the search for a sustainable peace. I want to place on record our appreciation of the contributions that Mozambique, Ethiopia and, in particular, South Africa have made to the force. The UK has provided £5.7 million to support the mission, including support for the Mozambique contingent. My understanding is that the force has sufficient funding at the moment and for the period up to the possible conversion to a UN mission. However, we shall keep the significance and terms of funding under close review, to help us to play our part in ensuring that such peacekeeping contributions can continue.
My hon. Friend asked whether the UK supported the UN Secretary-General's proposal for the creation of a UN peacekeeping mission to take over from the African Union force. We strongly support that, and we hope that there will soon be agreement on a positive Security Council resolution to begin the process. Clearly, with a robust mandate from the Security Council and the

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increased human and financial resources, a UN peacekeeping operation should not only help to create a more secure and stable environment but should also help to move forward the urgent work that is needed on disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration and election preparations.
Alongside the humanitarian challenges in Burundi, which are immense, we need to put the progress that has been made in context. More of the country is becoming accessible as the level of conflict is reduced. United Nations agencies are beginning to gear up their work significantly to meet the challenges that will, clearly, continue to be acute in the coming, months. We are expecting the UN to issue a revised, consolidated appeal for Burundi, based on the latest assessment of the situation there. We are pleased that the humanitarian agencies in the field are strengthening their capacity to deal with the current situation. In particular, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has established regional offices in country, and has good systems in place to deal with the current planned returns of refugees, to which my hon. Friend alluded. As we all know, refugees make their own decisions on when and how to move. Contingency plans are in place to assist with such movements, but we must be in a position to respond quickly if people return in significant numbers. I am confident that my Department has the systems in place that will enable us to respond quickly in that case.
My hon. Friend focused, rightly, I think, on the plight of the civilian population in Bujumbura Rurale, who have borne the brunt of the continued fighting in recent months involving the Burundian army, supported by the Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie and the Front pour la Défense de La Démocratie, in opposition to the Force Nationale de Libération. Large numbers of people, as my hon. Friend said, have had to flee their homes. The incidence of rape and violent attacks is high, and humanitarian access to the area continues to be difficult. Despite the FNL's recent announcement of a ceasefire and its willingness to negotiate directly with Government, fighting continues in three districts where the FNL has concentrated its forces. Tens of thousands of people remain displaced from those areas and are dependent on deliveries of food from the World Food Programme and non-food items from the Catholic Relief Services. We hope that the FNL offer of a unilateral ceasefire will be taken up by the Burundi Government and that the latter will cease their current offensive against the FNL. We hope that all sides will accept the futility of continuing to fight and will enable the FNL to take part in the political process that has gained such success and momentum since the Arusha accords. It is clearly for Burundians to decide whether the FNL should join the transitional Government, but the matter remains a difficult subject for negotiation, not least because of the FNL's appalling human rights record, of which I am sure my hon. Friend is aware.
My hon. Friend asked about our views on the possible withdrawal of the CNDD-FDD from the unity Government. We understand that their agreement to join the transitional Government last year was a huge step forward on the road to peace in Burundi. It would have enormous implications for the future of the
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country if the movement decided to withdraw from government at this critical stage in the run-up to the end of the transitional administration. We understand that the Government are working hard to overcome the difficulties perceived by the CNDD-FDD. I hope that it will be only a matter of days before the key issues that divide the parties are resolved. It is worth noting that the CNDD-FDD has given assurances that its possible withdrawal from the unity Government would not signify a return to arms. I am sure that my hon. Friend welcomes that commitment, and I hope that that commitment and the work of the Government will enable the concerns between the two parties to be resolved.
DFID has supported the work of Médicins Sans Fontières in Bujumbura Rurale, including its centre for war wounded at Kamenge. We are considering what further assistance we can provide. We are due to send a needs assessment mission to Burundi this month, in order to identify how else we can support the Burundians in terms of health and other essential services. My hon. Friend asked about our views on health care. We welcome the extremely useful MSF report. Our priority is to ensure that the poorest of the poor are able to access medical services and, for the moment, the best way to achieve that is through health services being provided free of charge. I understand my hon. Friend's concerns about the need to strengthen the country's health systems. We already provide significant support for health care through our humanitarian assistance, particularly the regional support that we give to those tackling HIV/AIDS, to which my hon. Friend alluded.
Finally, I shall touch briefly on my hon. Friend's concerns about the HIPC initiative. Although the UK is not one of Burundi's bilateral creditors, we strongly support its moving towards the HIPC decision point, which we hope will be reached in mid-2005, with completion point in December 2005 at the earliest. How are we helping to achieve that? So far, we have contributed $2 million to the multi-donor debt trust fund to help with arrears clearance and with the regularisation of relations with creditors, which is one of the prerequisites for the HIPC decision point, and offering ongoing technical assistance to the Ministry of Finance—in particular its debt management division—to help it to make progress in that respect. We are also encouraging other donors, as my hon. Friend suggested we should, to follow the UK's example of going further than is required under the HIPC initiative by trying to provide 100 per cent. relief on the debts owed by countries when they qualify for the HIPC initiative. We are encouraged by the World Bank and the IMF's approval in January of Burundi's first IMF poverty reduction and growth facility. We are also encouraged by the publication of the interim poverty reduction strategy in Burundi and, as my hon. Friend also mentioned, the recent Paris Club granting of debt relief for Burundi on Naples terms.
I have tried to answer as many as possible of my hon. Friend's questions. I shall refer to Hansard to see whether there are any others to which I should respond, and if there are I shall write to her.

Small Schools
3.59 pm
Mr. Steve Webb: My first aim in this short debate is to celebrate—
4 pm
Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House.
4.26 pm
On resuming—
Mr. Webb: As I was saying, I seek first to celebrate the work of small schools in my constituency. In the South Gloucestershire unitary council area there are eight schools with fewer than 100 pupils, all in my constituency. I have recently visited three of them: Redwick and Northwick primary school, Oldbury-on-Severn primary school and Horton primary school. I visited the last two as part of the Global Campaign for Education's "MPs' back to school" day, in which many hon. Members participated.
On seeing the children's excellent presentations during those visits, and after chatting to staff, parents and governors, I was struck by how valuable small schools are as part of the variety of local authorities' educational provision. Large schools clearly have strengths and advantages, but small schools have features that I had not thought about very hard until I saw them for myself. I wish to draw the Minister's attention to some of those strengths, which had not previously occurred to me. I am sure that he, as the Minister for School Standards, already knows of them, but I will highlight them anyway on the off-chance that he does not.
I was struck by the way in which a small school sometimes works for a child who may not be very confident and who may have tried to settle at a larger school, but for whom that had not really worked. I met a few children who had moved to a smaller school environment. They had felt more secure and had received slightly more individual attention, and they had prospered. The nice thing was that they had not been left at that stage, but had flourished in an environment in which everyone counts, everyone knows everyone else, and everyone has to play their part. It was noticeable in some of the presentations on education that I saw, especially in Horton school, which is the smallest school in the authority area, that—certainly among the older pupils—every child took part and had to be involved. In that environment, children can flourish who might not do so well in a larger school environment. They can mature in a desirable way and take on responsibilities, so that when they have become the oldest children in the school, they look after the younger children. I asked what happens when they have to go to the very big school down the road, and whether they are overwhelmed. I was told that they sometimes find the first open day visit daunting, but that, because they have gained confidence and a sense of security, the transition from a small school to one of the larger comprehensives works well—rather better than I might have anticipated, in fact.
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Something else that struck me about those schools was that they are often linked to a particular village. The other five small schools of the eight that I mentioned are: Iron Acton school, Old Sodbury primary school, Rangeworthy primary school, St. Andrews primary school at Cromhall, and Tortworth primary school. Each of those schools is linked to one village in my constituency, usually relatively small, and the school is in many ways the heart of the village. Some villages in my constituency lost their schools, which seemed to rip the heart out of those villages. I am keen to ensure that does not happen again. We should celebrate what is good in those schools, and develop their roles. The fact the schools are so central to village life means that their fundraising achievements are phenomenal—well beyond what one would expect for small schools, with a small number of parents involved. The whole community rallies round and they raise phenomenal amounts of money to help keep the school going. Obviously, we will come back to the issue of funding in a moment.
The schools have two roles. Their traditional role is as a school for the children in the village. However, in some villages, house prices have gone up and it has become difficult for young families to move into the village; children become adults, and perhaps move away, but their parents stay in the village in the house in which they were living. The actual number of children who live in the village and go to the village school may therefore diminish somewhat. However, that does not diminish the value of those schools, because parents from a wider catchment area find that there is something special about the smaller schools, which they want. I stress that my children attend a village school with about 200 children; it is a super school, and I do not mean to undermine the work of the larger schools. My point is simply that we need variety in provision. That is one of my key messages today—larger schools have their place and can offer particular things, but small schools are a key part of the overall pattern.
I am delighted that the Government have a presumption against the closure of rural schools. That is welcome, and I understand that the pace of rural school closures has slowed considerably. I hope that the Minister will keep an eye on South Gloucestershire to see that that policy is rigorously enforced in that authority, which has some very small schools. One of the problems is that it is obviously more expensive, both for the authority and the school itself, to run a small school. There is still one building to maintain and still one roof that can leak no matter how many children there are beneath it.
Similarly, the administrative burdens—the form filling and reporting back requirements—are often just as onerous for a head with 30 pupils as for one with 130. I have heard suggestions that it might be possible to reduce the administrative burden on the head teachers of small schools. The head teacher in Oldbury-on-Severn school spends half his week teaching, and the headmistress at Horton a similar proportion. Clearly, they are trying to fulfil the roles that would be met by several members of staff in a larger school. Given that in smaller schools those roles fall on one pair of very committed shoulders, is there anything that could be done to take some of the administrative burden off the heads of some of the small schools? I hope that the Minister can offer me some encouragement on that.

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One of the ways in which central Government try to help local authorities to deal with some of the issues is through additional funding for sparsity. One of the problems in an authority such as South Gloucestershire is that we are neither one thing nor the other. Certainly, all the small schools are in my part of the authority, but other parts include urban Kingswood and the north Bristol fringe. As a whole, the population of South Gloucestershire is not deemed to be particularly sparse. The consequence of that is that we do not really get much help with the additional costs of running our small schools. That adds to the financial pressure. Could the Minister comment on the possibility of looking at the issue at sub-local authority level—dealing not with averages but with whether there are sparsity issues within the authority area? Are there wards where the population is sparse, where the population is small, and the local school is small and expensive to run? Could that not be recognised?
In general, there is a funding issue. I make no apology for raising the matter, because part of the reason why there is pressure on small schools in my authority is the tight financial settlement for South Gloucestershire, which continues to be one of the lowest funded authorities per primary pupil in Britain. We had a victory on that front: the Government listened, said that the funding formula was not fair, and introduced a new formula. I warmly welcomed that. Furthermore, I know that South Gloucestershire will never be the top funded authority in the country—nor should it be. However, our complaint is that our new funding has been put on hold, because the application of ceilings and floors has meant that £4 million last year and £4 million this year was withheld from South Gloucestershire to fund needy authorities—such as Kensington and Chelsea—and to put a floor under their grants.
Given that the Government have now brought in a fairer funding formula, which we support, and have accepted that we need that extra £4 million, small schools and parents in my authority want to know how long we will have to wait for it. That is a serious, critical question. The new rules quite properly say that we need more money, but will the new system ever be phased in? One accepts the need for some sort of phasing, but there is no end in sight to the phasing process. When will it end? When will the authority get that money? If the authority knew that that money was coming through, the squeeze on the smaller schools might not be as severe as I fear it will become. When will that ceiling go? Can things be done to ease the financial burden on some of the schools?
One argument is, "Let us not get too excited about buildings and structures. Instead, let us look at the quality of education." I agree that that must be our starting point. I bring to this debate my first-hand experience of several of these schools, and can say that they are offering education of excellent quality. They are small not because they are not excellent but because they are physically small and because of some of the demographic factors that I mentioned. There is no suggestion that the lack of numbers of pupils at some of these schools is due to lack of quality—indeed, some of them are full to the brim or even oversubscribed because they are excellent, popular schools.
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The question arises how to deal with fluctuations in numbers. If a school has 35 pupils, as one school in my constituency has, and two big families move out, it can lose a fifth or a sixth of its pupil roll overnight. There is great volatility from one year to the next. One of my worries is that a small school will be closed in error, the village will experience a baby boom a few years later, and people in the village will say, "Wouldn't it be great if we still had a village school?" A school seldom returns once it has gone. I urge central Government to impress on local authorities the need to take the long view. A school in my authority, Trinity school, is no longer a small school because it now serves the three villages—hence its name—of Badminton, Acton Turville and Tormarton; but at times, there has been pressure on it to shut. Some of my predecessors, such as the late Heather Larkins, who was my predecessor as candidate in Northavon, pressed for that school to be kept open when the numbers merchants—the accountants—were saying, "It's too expensive and there are not enough children." That school survived and is flourishing. It is a large and growing school. I would be very sad to see small village schools lose their long-term future because of temporary lulls and cyclical patterns in birth rates.
This debate is not only about education but about community and quality of life. I want small schools to prosper and develop. Throughout Britain, primary teachers are being laid off because of falling rolls and a decreasing need for primary teachers. Does not that give us an opportunity to think afresh about small schools? They have tremendous potential to be centres for their communities, not only in school hours but out of hours and at weekends. They can be places that health bodies as well as education bodies can use. The buildings could be used and the costs shared. There are great ideas for using technology, which the Minister will no doubt share with us, such as enabling a neighbouring school with a specialist teacher in a particular subject to use IT to teach at both sites at once.
There is so much imagination around, and I would be sad if a numbers-driven process meant pressure on the future of schools that have real potential. We should not be misled by relatively small numbers into thinking that they are not very good schools that should not be part of long-term provision. Clearly, transport is an issue in an area such as mine. If we start to pressurise some of the smaller schools, yet more people will have to ferry their children longer distances to school. Again, this debate is not simply about education. Our starting point is the quality of the children's educational experience, but it has to be seen in the context of the whole community.
I hope that my remarks have given a flavour of how unique small village schools are. Each of the eight schools that I mentioned is associated with a village in my constituency. Many families who live in the village now will have sent their children to the village school, but the schools draw in people from a wider catchment area as well, and they can often do things that other schools cannot because of the flexibility of being a small school. Oldbury-on-Severn school, which I mentioned, will organise a poet to conduct poetry sessions, or a potter to do artwork with the children, because that is a particular interest of the head teacher, who uses his contacts. Such schools are often driven by one or more dynamic individuals. What strikes me on my visits is

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how often head teachers, other staff and governors go the extra mile. The schools are centres of commitment as well as excellence.
I do not want to romanticise or idealise. Small schools face pressures—for example, they are more expensive to run. However, we can mitigate some of those problems. We can try to alleviate some of the administrative burden on the senior staff. We can share the buildings with other community groups for other educational purposes. We can use IT to bring in resources. Schools planning must not be an accountancy, numbers-driven process. It has to be about the quality of community and of children's education, and about diversity and choice for parents. I hope that the Minister shares my passion for the high-quality education that so many small and village schools provide.
4.40 pm
The Minister for School Standards (Mr. David Miliband): It is a pleasure for me to be able to put on the record the Government's appreciation of the work that is done in small schools around the country, particularly in South Gloucestershire. I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb). I almost called him my hon. Friend, and although I do not want to end his political career, I have known him for more than 10 years and I hope that he does not mind if I am confused about whether to call him the hon. Gentleman or my hon. Friend.
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman not only on the passion that he brought to the subject of small schooling, but also on the insights of his speech, which spoke well for his knowledge of the schools in his area and about the needs that exist in areas and constituencies like his. It also spoke well for the role of schooling as a public service that binds together a community, is a resource for it, strengthens it and gives it a sense of identity and pride as well as a future.
I intend to say a bit about how the Government see their responsibilities. The hon. Gentleman knows that the organisation of schooling has been a prime responsibility for local government for a long time, and we in central Government respect the constitutional relationship and settlement between local and central Government. I hope to say a bit about how central Government try to support local government in the difficult decisions it faces about how to balance the conflicting pressures that arise as populations move and change.
The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that I am an avid reader of his column in the Bristol Evening Post, so I was able to discover that on "MPs' back to school" day he went to Horton primary school and Oldbury-on-Severn primary school. I understand that Horton has 43 pupils on the roll and Oldbury-on-Severn has 50. However, they are not quite as small as the 27-pupil school that I saw near Shrewsbury in autumn 2003. It is good to read their recent inspection reports. Horton was judged in September 2003 and the inspectors concluded that it was
"a good school where pupils achieve well".
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The less recent inspection of Oldbury-on-Severn in July 1999 concluded that the school performed well across a wide range of activities.
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman drew a distinction between funding numbers and funding quality, because we in Government have a responsibility to focus on funding to ensure that quality and standards are raised. Some schools struggle to attract pupils because parents conclude that the education that they provide is not of a sufficient standard In other areas, schools can struggle to get enough pupils because of demographic change, which is not a reflection on the quality of schooling. I recognise that. The Government see that some special benefits can exist in smaller schools.
There are 18,000 primary schools in England. It is striking that the Department for Education and Skills definition of a small school is one with fewer than 200 pupils. The hon. Gentleman might think—I would probably agree—that 200 is large in comparison with some of the schools to which he has referred. I do not think that he would describe a school with 200 pupils as small. Some 7,000 schools—nearly 40 per cent. of the total—have fewer than 200 pupils. However, it is striking that 2,500 schools have fewer than 100 pupils. Nearly 14 per cent. of primary schools have fewer than 100 pupils and most of those are in rural areas. In South Gloucestershire nearly 40 per cent. of primary schools have fewer than 200 pupils, which means that it corresponds almost exactly with the national average.
The hon. Gentleman made the point in his now-famous article in the Bristol Evening Post that small village schools are at the heart of rural communities, which is why I was glad that he referred to the presumption that the Government have introduced against closing rural schools. That presumption was introduced in 1998 and it exists today. The presumption cannot mean, and I am sure that he did not expect it to mean, that no school, rural or otherwise, can ever close. That would not be sensible. However, it ensures that there must be a strong case for closing a small rural school, and it must clearly be in the best interests of education in the area. I am conscious of my limited powers in this respect, but I am pleased to report that the introduction of this presumption seems to be having some effect. Seven years ago, the average number of rural schools closed was 30 a year; now, it is five a year. No rural school in South Gloucestershire has closed in the past six years, and no doubt that is in part testimony to the hon. Gentleman's vigorous campaigning.
Significant challenges lie ahead for schools, small and large, and it is important that I reflect on them honestly, because that is important for teachers and pupils. Last year, there were 500,000 surplus places in primary schools in England—that is 12 per cent. of capacity, which is a significant proportion. On current estimates, we are due to lose about 50,000 pupils per year from the primary sector in each of the next two or three years. That worries local authorities, which, notwithstanding the hon. Gentleman's antipathy towards accountants, must be concerned about the proper use of resources. Authorities would greatly prefer to be paying for teachers than for empty desks. That is the challenge posed by the problem of surplus places in particular parts of the country.

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In cases where there are falling rolls or schools are struggling to make up numbers, it is important that we put in place the right arrangements to ensure sufficient flexibility is built in for those schools and local government. In his article in the Bristol Evening Post the hon. Gentleman talked about the financial pressures on rural schools. It is important to be aware of the significantly increased funding that is available in south Gloucestershire. I was struck when I read that for pupils aged between three and 19 in south Gloucestershire, a real-terms increase of some £750 per pupil had been invested between 1997–98 and 2004–05. Under current spending, investment per pupil has gone from £2,510 to £3,260 in real terms. The capital position is also striking. Funding in 1997–98 was about £5 million. So far in 2004–05, it is nearly £19 million. That funding relates to some of the opportunities for extended use of schools to which the hon. Gentleman referred.
Mr. Webb: The Minister knows that we could trade statistics on whether education funding is a lot more or only a bit more generous. Last week, I visited a school, which I will not name, and the head said that unless the budget was sorted next year, she would be unable to avoid sacking teachers. That is not because numbers are down, but because money is so tight. Will the Minister address my specific point about the ceiling? The Government admit that South Gloucestershire needs another £4 million, but it appears that they will never phase in the new regime. It would make a big difference if that phase-in happened a bit quicker, because the ceiling is making things difficult.
Mr. Miliband: I am happy to address that point. As always, the hon. Gentleman is a few steps ahead of me: his mind works rather faster than my mouth can speak. However, I hope to deal with some of his points. Whatever the funding pressures —I do not deny that they exist—he and I agree that funding now starts from a much higher base on both the current and the capital side.
It is also important to recognise that this year there is a degree of protection that has never existed before in the form of the 4 per cent. minimum funding guarantee per pupil for every school in the country. There is also a 5 per cent. floor per pupil for every local authority in the country, offering protection to schools, small and large, that has never before existed. On that 4 per cent. per pupil base, we have put in special protection for schools that are facing the challenge of falling rolls. We recognise that there are fixed costs, such as cleaning, repairs and heating, which can be a particular challenge. The formula is designed to recognise that.
The hon. Gentleman also knows, although somewhat ungenerously he did not mention it, that there are special arrangements for the very small schools with 75 pupils or fewer. A much higher proportion of their funding is delivered through the operation of factors other than pupil numbers. The guarantee for small schools will allow them to substitute their proportion of pupil-related funding; it will be for local education
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authorities to tell them exactly what that is. I will be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman to explain the special protection that we have given to the very small schools, if that will be useful.
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the Government's funding formula, which counts the number of pupils, their particular needs—for English as a second language, perhaps, or as a result of poverty— and the additional costs that arise in particular parts of the country, gives more to some areas than to others. He is right to say that South Gloucestershire is on the ceiling. It receives more money than other authorities. This year, the ceiling is 6.8 per cent. per pupil compared with a floor of 5 per cent. Therefore, there is a substantial difference between a ceiling authority and a floor authority, and between a ceiling authority and an average one. The previous year, the gap was between a ceiling of 7 per cent. and a floor of 3.2 per cent. Over those two years, there have been substantial efforts to deliver to South Gloucestershire the increases that have been judged to be necessary from the funding formula.
I was glad to hear the hon. Gentleman refer to the need to phase in any new formula, because that is the right thing to do. It would be wrong if certain schools were to have cash cuts in their budgets, or even real-terms cuts. That necessitates a system of ceilings and floors. However, he is wrong to say that that means that South Gloucestershire will never receive its fair share. Year by year, the amount that South Gloucestershire receives rises, compared with the average as well as with the floor. These things depend on future judgments about how high the ceiling or floor should be, but over two years there has been substantial extra money.
The hon. Gentleman briefly talked about work force reform. That presents particular opportunities and challenges for small schools. I am very impressed by the pilot work that has been done in the small schools in the area west of Shrewsbury that I visited. It shows how small schools can make work force reform work for them. The national remodelling team has a national centre and website as well as representatives in each local authority, and it can show any school how other schools of similar size and budget are dealing with the challenge of work force reform. The work force reform agreement is supported by signatories from the National Association of Head Teachers, teachers and support staff. We are working with six LEAs and more than 75 schools to develop costed proposals for the ways in which schools can meet the challenge of delivering 10 per cent. of teachers' time for preparation, planning and assessment of classes in 2005–06.
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raised the subject of administration. It is important that we free teachers to focus on teaching. However, it is not right that schools with 30 pupils face similar administrative burdens as do those with 130. I take on board the point that forms need to be filled in anyway, but it is quicker to fill them in for 30 pupils than for 130. Nevertheless, no one beats me in my zeal to reduce the administrative burdens and bureaucracy, and the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that the Government have well advanced plans to end the process of sending materials to schools in a great batch and to introduce instead an online ordering system that will allow schools to customise DFES materials to their own benefit and to introduce a principle of "collect once, use many times"

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for all the data that is required by different Government agencies, both local and national. I agree that it is absurd for any school to be asked for the same information by different public agencies. The data protocol means that that will no longer happen.
I turn to my final points. Extended schools are extended in the sense that they offer before or after-school services and also, in a less than literal interpretation of that term, opportunities for nursery provision for under-fives. I hope that local authorities can use school sites in an imaginative way, because the benefits to the community from doing so are clear. We encourage innovation and flexibility in that area.
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned the opportunities for schools to co-operate together to share costs, notably of staff. Federations represent a particular example of that, but collaboration and clustering between primary schools allows them to share the services of specialist staff for music and other
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subjects, or administrative staff and IT officers. I agree with him that, especially for small schools but, in fact, for most primary schools, there are big advantages to be gained from closer collaboration. That can help spread good practice and raise standards of teaching, learning and costs. We are in favour of that.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. It means that, as the authorities in South Gloucestershire analyse how to deal with the difficulties, we in the Department can keep a careful eye on what is going on. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will keep us on our toes and, if there is anything we can do, he will alert us to that fact. We are resolute in our belief that it is a local responsibility to deliver the diversity of provision that is appropriate to local needs. I hope that the framework that is now in place to balance the rights and responsibilities of central and local government allows parental choice and pupil need to be met in an appropriate way.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Five o'clock.