Westminster Hall Sitting of 18 May 2004

Preamble
[SIR NICHOLAS WINTERTON in the Chair]

Internet (Extreme Images)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Joan Ryan.]
9.30 am
Mr. David Lepper: I cannot say that I am pleased to be leading this debate, because I wish that it did not have to take place. However, I am pleased that so many hon. Members are here and wish to discuss the subject.
The title of the debate is a euphemism: we are talking about violent pornography on the internet. I welcome the action taken by both the present Government and previous Governments to deal with child pornography on the internet. A task group is working on the issue, and there is international co-operation in dealing with the provision of internet pornography involving children, and with those who access such images.
Events in Sussex last year tragically and horrifically threw the spotlight on another form of extreme material on the internet, which until then had not received the same attention—violent pornography in which men and women are depicted as the victims of rape, torture and asphyxiation.
Jane Longhurst was a constituent of mine. She was a talented teacher, and was much loved by her colleagues and the children whom she taught in a secondary school for children with moderate learning difficulties. My last job as a teacher was at that school. That was before Jane started teaching there, but I have kept in touch with the school and my wife is a governor there, so I knew of Jane's colleagues' high regard for her, and of her students' devotion. It is a difficult environment in which to work.
Jane's disappearance in the early spring of last year touched the community in an unusual way—and not only those who knew her. Those who read her colleagues' testimonies shared something of the anguish felt by her mother Liz, who is here today, and other members of the family. That sympathy and anguish became mixed with horror during the trial of Graham Coutts, the man eventually convicted of her murder, and as we heard of the circumstances in which he had murdered her. We heard of Coutts's obsession with pornography showing strangulation, rape, murder and necrophilia.
There was also shock at the revelation that access to sites such as necrobabes and deathbyasphyxia is so easy. In one sense we should not have been shocked, because the internet is the great democratic tool of communication, providing us all with easy access to the knowledge of the world—whatever knowledge that might be. However, it also provides access to the sort of material that fed Graham Coutts's fantasies—and it doubtless led to Jane's death.
As Jane's MP, I joined my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter), in whose constituency live several members of Jane's family, including her
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mother. He, the family and I considered how we could try to get some action taken on access to such images, action that might eventually provide a memorial to the wasted life—it was wasted, because it was ended far too early—of Jane Longhurst. An early-day motion has been signed by many hon. Members, for which the family and I are grateful.
We also presented to Ministers a five-point plan of action. First, there should be work with internet service providers, search engine companies and web hosting companies to consider ways to block access to the sort of material on which Graham Coutts depended.
Brian White: Is my hon. Friend aware of the Internet Watch Foundation, which has reduced the amount of child pornography hosted in the UK from about 18 per cent. in 1996 to less than 1 per cent. in the past year?
Mr. Lepper: I thank my hon. Friend for drawing our attention to the excellent work of that foundation, which I acknowledge. There is concerted action in this country—and, now, throughout the world—to deal with child pornography. Perhaps we need to ask the foundation to consider whether its definitions of obscenity should be broadened beyond child pornography.
The second issue that we took to Ministers was the need to reconsider the Obscene Publications Acts 1959 and 1964, and whether there should be a criminal offence of possessing the sort of images that Coutts used.
Jane Griffiths: My hon. Friend will know that the Obscene Publications Act contains a defence of merit, which is sometimes called the Lady Chatterley defence. However, the Protection of Children Act does not contain such a defence. Does he think that that is right?
Mr. Lepper: I am aware of the defence in the 1959 Act to which my hon. Friend refers. However, I suspect that we shall hear from the Minister that there is a reluctance to carry out a thorough overhaul of that Act. Perhaps there should be discussion of the question of a defence of merit in relation to child pornography—but I cannot see how such a defence could apply to child pornography.
The third issue that we took to Ministers was the need for better international co-operation in dealing with such images on the internet. Well over 90 per cent. of the material that we are debating originates outside the United Kingdom. However, although it is comparatively easy to take action to block access to sites based in the UK, it is less easy to deal with sites based elsewhere, unless we have the co-operation of international partners. We have co-operation with most of our international partners in respect of child pornography.
Fourthly, we asked Ministers to consider the role of Ofcom. When the Bill that became the Communications Act 2003 was being debated, intervention by Ofcom of the type that we are discussing was specifically omitted from the legislation. However, I think that provisions in

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the Act allow Ofcom to take action if it does not believe that the industry is progressing as quickly as it might on issues such as filtering mechanisms.
Our fifth point concentrated on the way in which credit card companies might be involved in putting a financial squeeze on the providers of extreme images. In the wake of the trial to which I referred, newspaper reporters had some success in contacting credit card account processing companies and credit card companies, and got a couple of the sites that were specifically mentioned at the trial closed down. That was the five-point plan.
In early March, my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West and I, along with Mrs. Longhurst and other members of the family, met the Minister and the Secretary of State to discuss the issues. We came away from that discussion heartened by the response, particularly on the issue of international action. The Secretary of State had already had discussions with his counterparts in the United States about greater cooperation. I hope that Ministers will pursue the matter with the G8 countries as well as with all our European partners.
One of the big problems that we face is that although, by and large, there is international agreement on the issue of child pornography, the same cannot be said about pornography involving adults. Frans van der Hulst, who is based in the Netherlands and owns one of the sites mentioned in the Jane Longhurst trial—one of the sites used by Graham Coutts—was quoted as saying:
"I've read all the criticism but I'm doing nothing illegal. I don't feel responsible for what happened to Jane Longhurst. The only person responsible is Graham Coutts."
In a very narrow sense, I suppose that that is right: Graham Coutts committed the crime. However, I feel that many of us here would feel that there is a wider responsibility that Mr. van der Hulst shares with Graham Coutts.
When answering a parliamentary question in the House of Lords in February, Baroness Scotland put the matter quite clearly:
"there is no international consensus on what constitutes obscenity, or when the freedom of an adult to have access to obscene or pornographic material should be constrained."— [Official Report, House of Lords, 23 February 2004: Vol. 658, c. WA31.]
That is one of the stumbling blocks when it comes to the international co-operation that is so much needed. I believe that that co-operation is probably at the heart of the issue of access.
Brian White: Is my hon. Friend aware that although restrictions in one country can damage the industry in that country, that does not solve the problem but simply moves it elsewhere?
Mr. Lepper: In saying that, my hon. Friend is supporting my view about the need for international co-operation. That issue is at the heart of the matter, although in the shorter term it can perhaps be taken together with looking carefully at what can be done through credit card companies and processors—the companies that process the accounts through which
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people pay for access to such sites. Most—not all—of those companies do not wish to be associated with this kind of material. It sometimes comes as a surprise to them to discover that they are helping people to pay for it.
Mr. Richard Allan: The hon. Gentleman has touched on an important point. He may be aware that the credit card companies held a meeting in the House of Commons a couple of years back, at which they were keen to put on record their absolute commitment not to profit from inappropriate material. I hope that we collectively press them very hard, because we will then be able to get quick action in that area.
Mr. Lepper: Although international co-operation is the long-term objective, in the short term we should deal with the finances. It is not charitable organisations that are providing these images—it is big business. We must not only act in any way that we can against the suppliers but consider action against the consumers, although I understand that is much more difficult to define in law.
Tim Loughton: Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that there is a problem with credit cards? How many customers who have been convicted of using their credit cards to buy illegal images on the internet have actually had their cards removed? Is there any truth in the suggestion that people who have been convicted of buying child pornography with their credit cards are being rearrested for committing the same offence with the same credit card?
Mr. Lepper: That is a problem, which is why we need to engage with the credit card companies. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) spoke of their professed willingness to become involved in lobbying on the issue, and we must press them as hard as possible to ensure that the situation mentioned by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) is stamped out.
I pay tribute to Mrs. Longhurst and the way in which she has campaigned since the death of her daughter and the end of the trial for the kind of action that I have described. The petition that she launched a little earlier this year will, I believe, eventually be presented to the Home Office and already has 7,000 to 8,000 signatures. Clearly, the issue is of real concern to many of our constituents. Although no one should overlook the difficulties involved in dealing with it, our constituents are telling us that they want us to get on with the job of overcoming as many of those difficulties as we can in both the short and the long term.
I do not often pay tribute to newspapers, but I pay tribute to the Sussex regional paper,The Argus—and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West will want to mention his local paper, too. Both have supported Mrs. Longhurst's petition and encouraged people to sign it.
These are difficult issues with which to grapple, and the technology is moving fast. In the past two or three weeks, the main mobile phone companies in this country met to consider how to deliver "mobile adult content" in a responsible way. The fact that they use the word "responsible" is gratifying, and most of them are

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considering ways of selling their technology with pre-installed filters either now or in the future. That, too, is a hopeful sign. However, the technology is moving fast, and, in addition to the five points that I mentioned earlier, we might consider involving the manufacturers in exploring more fully the ways in which filtering systems can be installed before equipment is sold to the customer. Indeed, the retailer Comet is already taking action on items sold through its stores.
Many other hon. Members want to take part in the debate, and I hope that it will put down a real marker in the record of the House of Commons: concern about the issue is shared by all parties and crosses party political boundaries. We shall be looking for regular updates from Ministers on progress on the issues that we are discussing. My constituent Jane Longhurst died at the age of 31. We cannot fully share what must have been her family's horrific experience as they heard and read the details of that trial a year ago. As Members of Parliament, we have a responsibility to take action that will be a lasting memorial to Jane Longhurst.
9.51 am
Mr. Martin Salter: I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper) has secured this debate. A number of us submitted identical titles, and it is good that we have worked on a cross-party basis. I am particularly grateful for the support from the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Brian White), my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) and the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley), who, although she is not here today, takes a particular interest in the issue.
On March 14 last year, Jane Longhurst was brutally murdered by a sexual fantasist. At his trial, Graham Coutts admitted to being an avid user of depraved and corrupting internet sites, such as necrobabes, deathbyasphyxia, and hangingbitches. In February this year, Graham Coutts was found guilty of the horrific murder of Jane Longhurst. He violated her dead body and, in between times, logged on to those very same internet sites, to feed his sick fantasies, which, all too tragically, he now had the opportunity to act out for real. Incredibly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion said, such internet images are not illegal in themselves. It is only an offence to publish them for commercial gain. Whereas pornographic images of children are illegal to send and possess, images of women being raped and tortured for sexual gratification can be accessed from internet sites hosted from abroad without fear of prosecution.
The Jane Longhurst campaign against violent internet pornography was born to right that wrong. Jane's mother, Liz Longhurst, made an emotional appeal for political and public support for the family's call for action to block access to such sites. Those sites had, in the words of Liz Longhurst, a direct bearing on her daughter's death. I have worked with Liz, who is here today, and with members of her family who come from the Reading area, to take the campaign forward. There has been remarkable progress in a comparatively short period, as politicians and the public have responded positively to the Longhurst family's call. For
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example, early-day motion 583 has attracted more than 170 signatures from all parts of the House. I understand that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has a similar early-day motion, which has attracted between 70 and 90 signatures. There is widespread support for action to limit access to such images, so the question for this and subsequent debates is: what sort of action?
I was not going to mention the Reading Evening Post, but I now have to. The newspaper has been more than helpful: it has publicised the campaign and assisted us on the streets of Readings, with A-boards and other publicity, in generating support for the national petition. We launched the national petition on 8 March, on international women's day. To my knowledge, it has already attracted more than 9,000 signatures, mainly from the Brighton and Reading areas. It is worth pointing out that we are looking for a national charity to pick up the campaign and put some professional resources behind it. Although as Back Benchers, we have done a pretty competent job, we have limited resources. If we had the resources of a national charity, we could, I am sure, roll out the campaign the length and breadth of the country and attract more than a million signatures in the blink of an eye.
The Internet Watch Foundation, as has already been said, has done incredibly helpful work. I would ask whether the current self-regulatory regime needs tightening, but there is no doubt that the foundation's excellent "notice and take down" procedure has been a model and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion said, has reduced the availability of child pornography. However, we are talking about a different beast today—a different animal altogether. As has been said, we had a productive meeting with the Home Secretary on 4 March, and we submitted our five-point plan, which admittedly was rather hurriedly drawn together.
None of us is an expert in the internet industry, and I struggle to surf the web at the best of times, but I have been guided by more knowledgeable colleagues. I am particularly grateful for the support that we have received from John Carr of the National Children's Home, who has provided excellent briefings. One of the problems of circulating briefs among hon. Members is that others have already said much of what I was going to say, but as long as the points are read into the record, the purpose of the debate is served.
I spent an interesting, if slightly sickening, morning with the clubs and vice squad at Charing Cross police station. While there is intense police activity in hunting down those who promote, distribute and possess images of child pornography, it is a sad fact of life that only three police officers in the entire Metropolitan police area are devoted to tackling non-child pornography—and there is no evidence that other police forces have the necessary specialist skills required. I hope that the Minister can offer some clarification.
Brian White: Is my hon. Friend aware that there are only 240 computer forensic officers, most of whose tasks are based on Operation Ore and child pornography or

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terrorism. There are not the resources in computer forensics to deal with this issue, and we need a major increase in the number of people available.
Mr. Salter: My hon. Friend is one of those Members whose knowledge of the internet has been useful to me and other colleagues in this campaign, and he makes a superb point. As patterns of crime change, and as the internet becomes a more useful tool for those who seek to harm members of our society, police resources need to expand to meet that challenge.
The petition has attracted a lot of high-profile support. We are particularly pleased to have the public support of the Solicitor-General. It is rare for members of the Government to sign petitions to the Government, but this is a helpful liberalisation of freedom of speech in the ranks of the Government, and it is only to be encouraged.[Interruption.] Of course I invite the Minister, too, to sign the petition.
The debate is just another step on a long road. We have to grapple with some extremely complex issues. How do we bring in a regulatory framework for sites that are hosted abroad, often anonymously, which can move from the United States to South America, and then possibly across to Europe, taking advantage of disparities within the regulatory framework across the globe?
Before we move on to that matter—I am sure that others will touch on the technical details—I shall quote an emotional appeal that Jane's mother, Liz, made on 29 April at a school in Reading:
"As many of you may know, my lovely daughter Jane Longhurst was strangled on 14th March 2003 by Graham Coutts. He had had a fantasy from the age of 15 of strangling a woman. When he discovered the Internet he became aware that he was not alone in harbouring these sick thoughts so it then seemed all right to him and he indulged himself by viewing horrific material very frequently. This built up to a crescendo and the day before she died he was on the computer for an hour and a half. The police also found a CD he had made from images downloaded from some of these sites. So in fact he could have been viewing these disgusting images for even longer periods of time than was revealed from a police study of the hard drive of his computer. He was well and truly addicted to these horrible images.
At present it is perfectly legal to view such images (although illegal to copy them and transmit them to others). I feel strongly that the law has to be changed."
We are in this place as lawmakers. We scrutinise the actions of the Executive. We scrutinise the laws and the regulations that we pass to see if they are up to the job and sufficient for the challenges of a 21st century Britain. It will be a monumental task, but I suggest a review of our obscene publications legislation—perhaps not in its entirety, but in its application to the internet. Such a task is long overdue. No one wants to upset this country's cultural community, as I understand thespians are known. On the other hand, are laws framed in 1959 and 1964 appropriate for the global communications revolution that the internet industry has seen?
I was disappointed that the regulation of internet content was specifically excluded from the Communications Act 2003. However, Ofcom has reserve powers to intervene if the internet industry does not, in Parliament's view, respond positively to the
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challenges that we face. There is merit in encouraging the suppliers of personal computers to build in filters from day one. In some of the briefing material sent to us, an analogy with seat belts was made. When one buys a car, the salesman or saleswoman does not say, "Oh, by the way, the seat belts are in the boot. Fit them at your own convenience." The mechanisms that I describe could be built into the provision of PCs in the first place.
Work could be done with internet service providers to provide blocking software. Some search engine companies, one of which is Yahoo!, have chosen to exclude all pornographic items from their operations, and I understand that a Home Office taskforce, which my hon. Friend the Minister chairs, recently established a sub-group of search engine companies to consider what can be done in that way.
One of the most important tasks is to examine in some detail the role and function of the credit card companies and the banks, which I look to the Home Office to do. Access to credit card billing lubricates much of this sick industry. If it were not for the banks' smugness and complacency, it would be possible to hunt down the people who are putting these images on to our airwaves and profiting from the torture, rape and murder of women on camera for private profit and sexual gratification.
Other hon. Members want to contribute to the debate, so I shall end my short contribution now, by thanking hon. Friends and other hon. Members for the support that they have given my colleagues and me in our campaign. I also pay heartfelt tribute to Liz Longhurst and her family for the courage that they have shown. They asked for public and political support on the steps of Lewes Crown court when Graham Coutts was locked up for 30 years: we parliamentarians should respond, and are responding, to the Longhurst family's call. I look to the Government to build on the excellent start that they have made in their meetings with us by acting to protect people in this country from images that, in my view and in the view of Liz and her family, led to the horrific death of a lovely girl, Jane Longhurst.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before I call the next speaker, I should point out that quite a few Members want to speak. I want to accommodate all of them, so I urge people to restrict their remarks to about five minutes. If they do, all will be able to speak. The wind-up speeches should begin at 10.30.
10.4 am
Tim Loughton: I congratulate the Chairman of the Broadcasting Committee, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr Lepper)—my near neighbour—on securing the debate. Many of us applied for the same debate, and I concur with all his comments and with those made by the hon. Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter). I have an interest in the subject for three reasons. First, I am a near neighbour of Brighton, Pavilion, and the case of Jane Longhurst touched the hearts of many of my constituents, particularly teachers, in East Worthing and Shoreham. For that reason, I signed an early-day motion on that subject soon after those tragic events.

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Secondly, as shadow Minister for Children, I am very concerned about child abuse. Last week, I spent an afternoon with the Scotland Yard paedophile unit, which was an eye-opening and harrowing experience. The week before that, I spent the afternoon with extremely dangerous child sex offenders at Broadmoor—another harrowing experience that gave me an insight into the problem that we are up against. Thirdly, I, like many others, was the victim of a Trojan horse e-mail, which contained links to pornographic sites.
This is a modern problem; the internet should be a tool and an asset for people to use and enjoy, yet it is falling foul of those who would abuse it for financial gain and other gratification, and for criminal purposes. The problem is getting worse because of the nature of technology: the greater penetration of computers and the internet; the great success in rolling out broadband to many more people, which makes the downloading of images easier; mobile videophone technology, which is coming on stream; and the computer literacy of many younger children.
There is no easy solution. It would be great if we could come up with an international solution involving Governments and big businesses; the trouble is that many of the images come from eastern Europe, and from the US, where people will plead the first amendment against any attempts to censor the sort of content that is made freely available. The Government deserve credit for encouraging broadband, but unfortunately it has brought many problems and more needs to be done to tackle the downside of the greater access that it provides.
Realistically, what we can try to do now is hack off the tentacles of the beast that has been created, because it will take a lot more international effort over a longer term to get to the beast itself. We must make it as difficult as possible for people to abuse the internet. I do not mean regular pornography—individuals have different views about the acceptability of that—but the extreme images that hon. Members have already described in relation to the tragic death of Jane Longhurst. The sites in question are easy to access in seconds, easy to link to from the increasing number of spam e-mails, and easy for children to access.
There was a furore recently about the beheading of Nick Berg in Iraq; video footage of those hideous events is freely available to anyone with basic computer knowledge who taps into the internet. Anybody who goes to a site called ogrish.com, as I did yesterday—I did not go beyond its home page—can have full access to that horrible footage. The site gives the following excuse:
"Just like all the other uncensored videos and images previously posted, we feel that it is important to show what the human race is capable of in all its uncensored form. We don't MAKE you watch the footage, we just give you the choice. This is the world we're living in right now, sad but true … Can you handle life?"
On that site, and others, as well as being able to access the footage of that horrific beheading, one can access footage of real suicides, an autopsy on a middle-aged woman, a bricklayer murdered by a co-worker after a drunken argument about a soccer match, a cross-dresser who died of asphyxiation after sniffing model aeroplane glue, burnt Iraqi persons, various cancer-related images, and an Iraqi killed by a sword to the back of his neck.
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Unimaginably horrible scenes are freely available to anybody who has had basic instruction on a computer.
To some sad individuals, that is purely entertainment, for whatever form of gratification; to impressionable children, it could prove traumatic and result in long-standing disturbed behaviour. At its worst, especially for people with a propensity to mental illness, it could serve to change their behaviour and promote copycat actions, or as an instruction manual for people committed to performing illegal acts of violence.
Mr. Salter: The hon. Gentleman talks about the effect on children. Does he accept that many of the extreme and corrupting internet sites are available simply by producing a credit card? It is entirely possible for children to get hold of their parents' credit cards, get into these sites and be exposed to images that no child should ever have to see.
Tim Loughton: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I will not dwell on the subject of credit cards; a lot more can be done to cut off one of the tentacles of the monster. Far greater co-operation is needed from the financial institutions that make it possible for these things to happen and for people to profit from them, which is the key point. At the very least, such images demean human behaviour and attitudes to the targets of such sites, particularly women and children.
The second subject is the use of the internet by paedophiles. As I said, I spent last week with Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Spindler of Scotland Yard's SCD5 child protection group—specifically, with its paedophile unit. That unit investigates more than 15,000 crimes committed annually on the most precious and vulnerable victims in our society. At this point, I should congratulate the BBC for its recent series on the police protecting children, which exposed some of the horrific things that happen.
As I have said, the visit was eye opening. It is soul-destroying work for the police officers who have to trawl through the images. Technology does not help much, because if the officers take from a suspected paedophile a hard drive that contains 2 million images, which is not unusual, they have to trawl through every image, not just take a sample, to bring a prosecution. It is incredible how sophisticated paedophiles have become. Using a system that many people would use just to download music tracks on to an MP3 player, they can download ghastly paedophilic images. They have sophisticated swapping rooms and use key words to swap images that are then easily downloaded through the internet.
I know that other hon. Members want to speak, so I shall be brief. My third point relates to my personal experience of a Trojan horse. While I was using my parliamentary e-mail remote system from home one Sunday night, my system crashed when I tried to access an e-mail that turned out to be spam. Two days later, we found out that our telephone line had been cut off. Unknown to me, the Trojan horse e-mail, with a link to some east European pornographic site, had got into my system and changed the dial-up number for the server to a premium-rate telephone line. A telephone bill for about £1,200 later, and after numerous calls to, and unhelpful responses from, my telecom provider, Telecom Plus, I was pursued for the bill with legal action. I received no help at all.

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Apparently, that has not happened to me alone—it commonly happens to people throughout the country, and it is another way of criminally making money out of links. I have had great help from the regulator, ICSTIS—the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services—which is doing great work. It upheld my complaint, and the internet company was fined. Of course, the trouble is that the company will do a flit and will be hard to pin down. Four years ago, ICSTIS received between 3,000 and 4,000 complaints a year. Last year it received 27,000 complaints, while its helpline received 250,000 calls, 77 per cent. of which were inquiries about high internet bills. Of the £1 million that it has levied in fines, it has been able to collect only £300,000. Action is being taken, but as many hon. Members have said, the technology of abuse is ahead of the law.
What can we do? I pay tribute to John Carr from the Home Office internet taskforce, Simon Moores from the e-Government monitor, and Zentelligence; all those have done a lot of work with parliamentarians. I also pay tribute to the Internet Watch Foundation and the Government, including the Home Secretary's internet taskforce on child protection. Many good things are happening, but trying to attack the heart of the problem is unrealistic at this stage—we need to hack off the tentacles. We cannot go down the line of full censorship, as they have tried in Saudi Arabia or China, where everything is filtered through a central server. We would not want to introduce that level of censorship, and satellite dishes would get round it anyway.
There is difficulty about the definition of what constitutes obscenity under the Obscene Publications Acts. What tends to deprave or corrupt one individual may be inoffensive to another. However, it is easier to define child pornography. If we can show that vulnerable people are likely to see the images, a prosecution should be able to take place. Sites or texts that advocate child sex abuse or provide advice or guidance on how to rape children without any trace should be illegal and constitute an incitement to commit illegal sexual acts with children.
We must chop off the financial tentacles and work with website hosts and carriers. We must also use measures such as the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, because such people are committing crimes. When I worked in the City, I had a legal obligation to report any suspicions that money laundering was happening, and if I did not, I could have been prosecuted, regardless of the fact that I was not complicit in any such activity. However, in this situation, internet companies, telecoms carriers and financial companies are making money out of carrying obscene material.
We must encourage better industry co-operation by threatening to use reserve powers under the Communications Act 2003 for Ofcom to regulate internet content, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion said. Those powers could include fitting filters at source, using search engines to cut out trigger terms, and working with mobile phone operators to ensure that people registered as being under the age of 18 do not gain access to such material.
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I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion and to the words of Mrs. Longhurst. This is a challenge to all of us and must involve politicians, Governments across the world, players in the internet industry, big business and finance houses. We urgently need a solution that we can all sign up to.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May I make another plea for brevity? If speeches last only five minutes, the three hon. Members who have just risen will all be called.
10.15 am
Jane Griffiths: I begin by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper) on securing this debate. Although it is not pleasing that it is necessary, it is immensely valuable; we are at the early stage of debating and investigating these important issues. I also pay tribute to Liz Longhurst and other family members for their courage in seeking to raise the issue publicly. I gently correct my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter)—the Longhurst family live in my constituency.
Over the years, when there have been horrific cases, such as the Jane Longhurst murder, we have sometimes reacted emotionally. That is natural; we feel horror, disgust and anger. However, those emotions make bad law. As my contribution to the debate, I suggest that we must consider the issues in a cold and rational way.
Internet service providers are not obliged to host everything that someone might want to host on their site. They all have acceptable-use policies but there are gaps; no internet service provider is able to monitor absolutely everything. I also draw the Government's attention to the electronic commerce directive, which is now in UK law and which gives exemption to internet service providers that unwittingly give access to material that could contravene either the Obscene Publications Act 1959 or the Protection of Children Act 1999. Under that directive, internet service providers cannot be placed under a specific duty to monitor general content. That places an obstacle in the path of action being taken by this Government or an international co-operative of Governments.
It is not possible to achieve an international or other consensus on what constitutes obscenity. Any site or image showing real or apparently real killing or death should not be permissible. However, that might rule out many cinema productions and would put regulatory authorities in difficulty.
I thank hon. Members present for taking the debate forward. I hope that a resolution can be achieved for the protection of us all, but I fear that it may take considerable time.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The Chair thanks the hon. Lady for her co-operation.
10.19 am
Vera Baird: May I add my condolences to those already expressed to the family of Jane Longhurst and, in particular, compliment her mother on the courage that she has shown in bearing

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that awful blow and in turning it to something positive and helpful for society? I compliment my hon. Friends the Members for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper) and for Reading, West (Mr. Salter) on their teamwork and diligence. I have hardly been able to pass through Portcullis House in the past few months without being swooped on by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West waving another piece of paper and saying, "This is the next step, Vera. We must move it along in this way."
I welcome the opportunity to add my voice to those of my colleagues calling for reform, and I support their five-point plan. I want to make several quick points. The argument has been won; replaying abuse or enactments of abuse in the form of electronic imaging are an aspect of abuse. There is no such thing as innocent viewing of some of the images contained on these sites. No one can surf that sort of material without implication. Each viewing feeds the level of demand for such images to be produced, thereby encouraging the market. Each growth in the market pushes at the boundaries of degradation, encouraging future abusers to plumb new depths. Above all, the impact of those images on people already prone to the violent and brutal pursuit of sexual gratification cannot be underestimated. The very existence of those sites appears to normalise perverse sexual drives and to give confidence to those who might otherwise, being aware of the awfulness of their drives, suppress them.
The Government recently introduced the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and will soon introduce a domestic violence Bill. By doing so, they are determined to attack any notion that men, in particular, are entitled sexually to exploit or degrade women and children. Those two pieces of legislation send out the signal that no one is entitled to exploit anyone violently or sexually. They send out a clear message that those days are over, that such behaviour is no longer acceptable to society, and that if someone breaches those norms, they will go to jail. How does the deliberate normative signalling in those two pieces of legislation marry up with allowing extreme sexually degrading material to be readily accessible with society's consent? I hope that the Government understand that that welcome and overdue legislation, which is designed to support and protect groups that were formerly abused, is capable of being undermined by the availability of such material.
It is said to be a measure of our commitment to the principle of freedom of expression that we allow those with whom we disagree to express their views freely. We can all say what we want, read what we want and download what we want. That is a human right—need it be a barrier to legislation?
The European convention contains a number of human rights. Article 2 of the convention states:
"Everyone's right to life shall be protected."
I think that I have already made the causation point. Article 3 states:
"No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment",
which is germane when one is considering this subject. Article 5 gives everyone
"the right to liberty and security of person."
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Article 8 gives everyone
"the right to respect for his private and family life",
which, in the case of the Longhursts, has now been shattered. However, article 10, which gives the right to freedom of expression itself, is conditional. It states:
"The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime."
Article 17 prohibits any right in the convention from being used or interpreted in any way that might cause the destruction of any other of the rights and freedoms set forth in the convention. The balance is absolutely clear, without any peradventure.
As a lawyer, I would be happy to try to help in clarifying what is a very complicated area of law, in order to outlaw those kinds of images and sources, and that sort of behaviour. The Government must bring about change and should not hesitate to do so on the basis of human rights. So far as the safety of women and children is concerned, change is urgent.
10.25 am
Judy Mallaber: I would like to discuss further the role of credit card companies, which has already been raised several times. I also have been working with John Carr of the children's charities coalition on internet safety and have tabled some questions relating to child pornography and the credit card companies.
In opening the debate, the Chairman of the Broadcasting Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper) said that concerted action had been taken on child pornography, which involves some of the most violent images available. However, we are only just beginning to address the issue. I shall outline the history, and give some figures to demonstrate the scale of the problem. Arguably, 1995 was the last year before the internet became a massive consumer medium in the UK. In that year, the obscene publications squad of Greater Manchester police seized a grand total of 12 child pornographic images, all of them on paper or videotape. Just four years later, in 1999, the same squad, covering exactly the same area, seized 41,000 child abuse images, all but three of which came from the internet. Today the police do not bother to count—it is common for an individual to be arrested with tens of thousands of images on his machine. Andrew Tatam from Lincolnshire was jailed for five years for amassing and obsessively filing and categorising the largest known collection of child pornography. He had 500,000 images.
My key point is that in the early days of the internet, the exchange of child abuse images was largely restricted to exchanges between paedophiles—money rarely changed hands. It was a matter of devotees swapping and completing their collections. People do not realise that the exchange of child pornography and violent images has become big business. We have to make it clear that it has become the province of organised crime, which is making huge amounts of money out of it. The landslide website, which gave rise to Operation Ore,

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took $1.6 million in its last month of trading before United States police closed it down. Other pay-to-view websites still operate on a similar scale; I do not think that the full extent of the problem has been acknowledged.
Such appalling websites exist only because credit cards provide a payment mechanism for the gangsters who own them. Because of credit cards, men who are not paedophiles systematically arrange for children to be recruited and raped in front of cameras in order to provide new merchandise. The same applies to the violent images that are the main topic of this debate. We must deal with the problem. None of the criminals who set up the websites has been traced to the UK, but the people who buy their products have been, and we can take action on them, as Operation Ore has shown. In one day, the UK police were given the names of 7,200 purchasers of child pornography; 7,200 people who used credit cards to buy illegal images.
To give credit to the credit card providers, they recognise their responsibility to act, and have joined and support the Internet Watch Foundation. However, they could do a great deal more. It is not clear what action, if any, has been taken. Having tabled parliamentary questions, I am still not aware that a single credit card customer has been deprived of the right to use a credit card as a consequence of having used it illegally and been convicted for buying child pornography or other pornographic images. However, many will have lost their credit cards because they could no longer afford to pay their credit card bills. So, one can lose one's credit card facility because one cannot afford to feed one's obsession, but one cannot lose it because one has been convicted of illegally downloading child pornographic images. That cannot be right; it must be dealt with. The industry must find a way to prevent people from using credit cards to feed their appalling obsessions and, as has been said, to cut off the financing of the appalling industry at the knees.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Before I call the Liberal Democrat spokesman, I thank hon. Members for their co-operation.
10.30 am
Mr. Richard Allan: This is an important debate. I echo the expressions of sympathy for Jane Longhurst's family, and I can testify to what has been an exemplary response from constituency Members from different parties who have lobbied effectively on the issue.
As Liberal Democrat spokesman on information technology, I shall, in the few minutes available, begin to set out a framework for what can be done to deal with the problem. The objective of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper) in introducing the debate has partly been achieved: this subject is now firmly on the agenda of the internet industry—and high on that agenda—as it may not have been before.
I shall try to answer two questions. The first is the often debated question whether the internet is capable of being regulated, and if so, how that can best be done. The answer must be a clear yes. We should not subscribe
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to the view that it is impossible to regulate the internet simply because of the complexity of doing so. That brings me to the second question: how best to achieve our social and public policy objective of preventing access to material deemed to cause significant public harm. Having designated a category of material as causing public harm, we are perfectly entitled to try to prevent access to it. Such an approach has been part of the history of English law.
We need to consider what can be done with specific reference to the literature on internet law. That is not because the internet exists as a separate legal entity, but because there have been studies of the particular challenges posed by a medium that is international and does not conform to old forms of regulation. Lawrence Lessig, in particular, has written a particularly useful book called "Code", which can be found at www.code-is-law.org. Mr. Lessig, defines four forces that act to control content on the internet, sometimes pulling together in the same direction and sometimes pulling in different directions. Those are social norms, the law, the market and the architecture.
In the case of pornography, three of those forces are currently pulling in the direction of liberalisation. Social norms are more tolerant, as seen in jury decisions on cases brought under the Obscene Publications Acts, but they are less tolerant in the case of child pornography and, I suspect, violent pornography. Social norms are perhaps the key determinant.
The market is certainly making access to pornography cheaper, and available to more people. Similar images were available before the internet, but what is different now—the word "democratising" has been used—is that there is no doubt that the images can be reproduced. The unit cost of reproduction is so low that millions of images can be printed and distributed to millions of people far more quickly. The market forces are significant, and have changed the context.
Mr. David Drew: Surely the difference is that if a market mechanism is at work, people make a definite choice to consume. The problem that MPs—along, I am sure, with the rest of society—face is that people send the images anyway. That cannot be allowable.
Mr. Allan: That is a separate issue, and I should certainly come down heavily on people pushing images out to people. However, in the present debate we are considering controlling or dealing with people who choose to access the material in question. The way in which people abuse the internet to push material out, particularly to minors, for whom it is clearly highly inappropriate, is a matter for another equally big and significant debate.
As for architecture, the internet is designed to be open to anyone, so that people can connect without detailed controls. It was built explicitly to prevent people from controlling it, and our aim now is to control something that was designed to be uncontrollable. That is an important constraint.
The most straightforward approach to the problem would be to strengthen the law. That would have a direct effect on the UK internet industry, which is committed to respecting our law in its entirety, which it does

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through acceptable use policies and other formats. We should recognise that the UK industry is one of the best in the world, as shown by its support for the Internet Watch Foundation and the way in which it responds to complaints. There is no doubt that when there is a question of illegal material to be dealt with, the speed and type of response here is way above par in comparison with other countries.
The ideal would be for states to enforce the law effectively, in co-operation with their own industries. Clearly, however, we are a long way from that when child pornography sites are still present in significant numbers even in a country such as the United States. It is not just the Azerbaijans and other such countries that cannot be regulated that are a problem; in the United States there are significant numbers of child pornography sites, and they are not taken down instantly as they would be in the United Kingdom.
As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion pointed out, there is also difficulty about obtaining agreement on what is permitted across jurisdictions. For example, what is permitted under the social norms of Saudi Arabia is clearly very different from what is permitted in the United Kingdom, or, again, what is permitted in the Netherlands. There is a spectrum.
The legal solution would be to review the Obscene Publications Acts and consider whether the category of images that are illegal to possess should be expanded, and more images placed in the category covered by child pornography legislation. Because it would be difficult to change that legislation, attention is now being focused on the architecture of the internet.
There are four points at which access can be blocked: clients' computers, servers, search engines and the physical network. Clients should filter to protect users—in a household, children particularly need such protection, but so do family members who do not wish to receive certain material. Client filters can and should be installed, but they do nothing to prevent those who want to access extreme images or to deal with the kind of illegal and villainous activity that we are considering.
Servers can be taken down if businesses so wish. Internet service providers and credit card companies should take down servers on which illegal material is being posted. The use of that tool by internet service providers in the UK is good, and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion is right to look to credit card companies to strengthen that, as well as to international action. Similarly, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) was right to talk about the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which is turning out to be a useful tool across a range of issues, such as people carrying out illegal activities on the internet. As for diallers that change dial-up settings, I hope that the review of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 will deal with that issue.
Search engines are important, and they are acting in response to social norms. It has already been pointed out that UK Yahoo! is behaving differently from American Yahoo!—at some risk of criticism from the American parent company, I believe—as it recognises that British social norms mean that we expect it not to list or highlight child pornography sites.
The final, and perhaps most controversial, way of blocking access is through network level filtering, which throws up questions about the cost-benefits, about who
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decides what should be blocked, and about the provision of legal protection for internet service providers if they do block. The cost-benefit question is difficult to discuss in the context of a tragic death, but we need to be aware of the potential conflict between Government objectives. The Government want more and cheaper internet access, but filtering would make access more expensive and, potentially, more complex. That tension between Government policies needs to be recognised. However, I reiterate that it is difficult to talk about cost-benefit in the context of today's debate.
An important consideration is who decides what should be filtered, especially with material that is not illegal, and especially if we do not change the Obscene Publications Acts. Asking people to block legal material is very different from asking them to block illegal material. We need to recognise that that will be contentious and difficult for ISPs. They are not unwilling to act; they want to respond to social norms. We are their customers and they want to respond to our consideration of what is appropriate.
Legal authority and cover is important for ISPs. If we ask them to block sites, we need to give them legal cover for doing so. The risk of unintentionally blocking other sites is significant. Recently, there was a case in which the British Airways website was taken over by a Trojan horse that sent out internet spam. If an ISP unintentionally blocked a company such as BA for a period of time because it had been told that there was dodgy material at that address, its potential legal liability would be significant. The problem is not insuperable, but we will need to deal with that issue if we ask ISPs to do such things.
The objective, which is achievable, is to reshape the architecture of the internet to make access more difficult, rather than carrying out a 100 per cent. block, which is not achievable. The architecture remains a significant problem. I am very much in accord with other points that have been made, but the point about Ofcom regulation is difficult, because it would be rather like trying to get Ofcom to regulate content by regulating people who have TV antennae. The architecture of the internet is such that there are millions of connected computers, each of which is the legal responsibility of its owner, not that of the owner of the network. There is not a BBC or an ITV that we can regulate. The point is worthy of debate, but that is the one area in which we would find it difficult to support that level of action, as there is not a broadcaster as such to regulate.
I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion for his constructive approach to this issue. He is right to say that the solution will involve a range of measures. There is no single silver bullet that we can fire to deal with the problem. I believe that there is cross-party support for sensible measures by which we can try to deal with the mischief that we are trying to resolve.
10.40 am
Mr. Jonathan Djanogly: I congratulate the hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper), for Reading, West (Mr. Salter) and for Reading, East (Jane Griffiths) on their contributions and on introducing an important debate. For all the internet's benefits, its darker and more frightening sides

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are becoming increasingly apparent. Many sections of the community are being victimised through this powerful medium in different ways. In order to address the varying yet connected ranges of extreme images, I shall briefly cover child pornography, obscene publications and websites that incite others to commit crimes that sometimes go beyond pornography towards outright terrorism.
Much work has gone into tackling child pornography on the internet through projects such as Operation Ore, and there have been results. The percentage of sites hosted in the UK that the Internet Watch Foundation reported as containing illegal images of children fell, as has been said, to 1 per cent. in 2003. Now the problem, to which I shall return, is what to do with the foreign sites. Operation Ore was a two-year investigation into internet paedophiles. Of 7,200 people identified by the investigation, 3,537 were suspects, 1,679 were charged and 1,230 were convicted—and that was a clampdown on just one site.
However, I have concerns about the delays that occurred during the investigation and its wider implications. Scotland Yard received the names of the 7,200 people in 2000, but my local experience is that the police in Cambridgeshire received the names of those identified in the county only in July 2002, and I suspect that there have been similar delays at other forces around the country. Can the Minister comment on those delays and explain what happened?
I am also concerned about whether the police can cope with their current resources. Are forces properly funded and do they have access to adequate IT specialists? As the hon. Member for Reading, West said, only three forces have units dedicated to investigating paedophile activity on the net. Could the Minister comment on how the police would cope if another 7,000 names were passed to Scotland Yard tomorrow?
Child pornography is not the only issue that must be addressed: pornography on the internet as a whole is in need of regulation. The murder of Jane Longhurst in March 2003 by a man who had downloaded hundreds of evil images before he strangled her has, as was movingly expressed by the hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion and for Reading, West, highlighted the issue. New methods of tackling obscene images on the web must be used, as several hon. Members have suggested.
For example, the banks and collection agents that allow people to pay to enter pornographic sites could cancel cards or make such transactions void; that possibility was well described by the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber). Filters can be put in to computers, there must be more restrictions on unsolicited commercial e-mails and spam, and search engines could be restricted so as not to trigger such obscene sites. Moreover, as other hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, the legislation governing obscene images must be updated. The Obscene Publications Acts of 1959 and 1964 are outdated, with their vague concept of its being an offence to sell or display publicly material likely to deprave or corrupt.
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There is the further issue of using images on the internet to incite others to violence and terrorism. I cite here the example of SHAC—the so-called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign—which, unfortunately, I regularly see in practice in my constituency. SHAC has made effective use of the power of the internet to promote its campaign. Tactics that have been employed include publishing images of employees and inciting or encouraging supporters to target them, and publishing names and home addresses of employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders and professionals, who are then often attacked, intimidated, fire-bombed or sent hate mail. Those problems are indeed serious.
I shall consider briefly what people can currently do by using civil law—if they can afford it—and I shall again use the example of Huntingdon Life Sciences. Its legal department has successfully closed down the SHAC UK and USA websites some 10 to 15 times. Initial complaints are made to the internet service providers, and if unsuccessful, the complaint is passed on to the upstream ISP, which is usually a larger or national or international company. Reference is often made to the ISP's terms and conditions of service, which commonly forbid the use of hate mail or harassing content.
Brian White: In evidence to the all-party internet group, which was considering the use of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, some ISPs pointed out that they can go back several stages in meeting other ISPs, but that they will eventually come to a black hole, and not be able to trace the ISP that provides the service. How would the hon. Gentleman deal with such a situation?
Mr. Djanogly: I shall come to that issue shortly, so I ask the hon. Gentleman to hang on.
Traditionally, reference is commonly made to the ISP's terms and conditions of service, which forbid the use of hate mail or harassing content, and adopt the so-called principles of netiquette, to which many ISPs have signed up. Reference is commonly made to article 8 of the European convention on human rights, which has been so competently described by the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird), as well as to copyright infringement and potentially defamatory remarks. The latter are in line with the case of Godfrey v. Demon Internet, which has eroded the ISP's defence of innocent dissemination if it is informed of the defamatory content but fails to act.
Huntingdon Life Sciences has had less success in the Netherlands, where SHAC's ISP site is currently domiciled, because that ISP holds radical views that make it much tougher to deal with. The interlocutory injunction—a civil remedy—obtained by HLS under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, prevents the publication of protected persons' names and addresses. The order is novel in that breaching it is a criminal offence and is therefore arrestable. The judge also declared that the injunction had to be printed on the SHAC site.
HLS had previously complained to the Information Commissioner that SHAC had not notified itself under the Data Protection Act 1998. The commission investigated the matter and concluded that SHAC had

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infringed the Act, but it refrained from pursuing enforcement. One of the reasons seemed to be that as SHAC would not abide by the criminal sanctions in any event, the limited resources of the commissioner would not be best used by trying to enforce them. That is a sad state of affairs.
One further avenue of compliant was to the Advertising Standards Authority. Complaints have been made that the SHAC website is not legal, decent, honest or truthful. Despite the authority's upholding such complaints, SHAC continues to publish; the toothless enforcement powers of the ASA are inadequate to deal with those who flagrantly flout such decisions.
Despite the problems of using the civil law, the expensive use of injunctions has meant that the civil law now goes beyond what the criminal law has to offer. That needs to be changed, not least because many smaller companies and people cannot afford to apply for injunctions and because, in any event, they expect to be protected by the criminal law.
I make two suggestions to deal with the foreign hosting of illegal sites, which is the key problem. First, the Crown Prosecution Service now has to prove who is the author, publisher or recipient of any articles that appear on the website, and then prove that the material constitutes an incitement to commit a crime, or is a crime in itself. That is clearly extremely difficult if not impossible to prove in respect of organisations such as SHAC. However, the law could be changed so that, under section 4A of the Public Order Act 1986, an extremist, threatening or intimidatory offence could be classified as aggravated in the same way as a racially aggravated offence. If the penalty was increased to make it an arrestable rather than a summary offence, it would be much easier for the police to investigate and gain convictions.
Secondly, a law could be introduced to make the person or organisation registering or paying for the website, wherever it was hosted, responsible for what was published on it, with the burden of proof being on the person or the organisation to show that they were not responsible for the contents of the website.
As highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, none of that should stop the Government working to improve international protocols on acceptable behaviour. Some talk about internet freedom as if it were different, but it is a medium, and like other media it should be regulated to protect people from crime.
10.49 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Paul Goggins): I join others in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper) on obtaining this important debate. He raises an issue of considerable public interest. As we heard, it came to particular prominence following the tragic murder of Jane Longhurst, who lived in his constituency. I hope that he will regard the debate and my response to it as one of the updates for which he called, and to which I am committed, as he and his colleagues roll out the campaign and we seek solutions to the urgent questions that have been posed.
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I have listened carefully to the proposals made by hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber, and I pay tribute to all those who contributed. They demonstrated that they do not confine their interest in the issue to the debating chamber, but do a lot of active research in a difficult and challenging area. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter). He has supported Mrs. Longhurst, who lives in his constituency, and other members of her family. I am pleased that Mrs. Longhurst has been able to listen to our debate. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I met members of the Longhurst family on 4 March to discuss some of the issues raised in today's debate. Given the profound grief that they must feel, the manner in which they voiced their concerns and made their five specific proposals was extremely impressive.
We are all concerned about the availability of extreme adult material on the internet. We are also concerned that similar material might soon become more widely available through other electronic media, including mobile phones, as new services are developed. If we are to take effective action in terms of legislation and enforcement, we need, as has been acknowledged, to consider not only the law in the United Kingdom but the way in which other jurisdictions deal with the issues. We must also consider what is possible technically at a time when new technologies are developing apace and there is still no clear international consensus on what, if anything, should be done.
During his recent visit to the United States, the Home Secretary, in an attempt to promote greater international co-operation, raised the issue of the availability of extreme adult pornography on the internet. That has been mentioned. Talks have continued since among officials. We are also considering what scope there is for a wider initiative to influence how the issue is dealt with by other countries, and for specifically targeting those questions at the G8.
It might be helpful if I say a few words about the sort of material that is forbidden under the criminal law. The obscenity laws—the Obscene Publications Acts of 1959 and 1964—cover, as hon. Members have noted, the publication, distribution, showing, giving and possession for gain of material with a tendency to "deprave or corrupt" those likely to read, see or hear it. That test can be difficult to apply, and is quite different from the way in which we deal with indecent photographs of children, which are relatively easy to identify and are always against the law.
The primary purpose of the obscenity Acts is to tackle the spread of the material and the possible corruption of individuals by it. That is why we do not penalise simple possession of obscene material, although the measures cover a much wider range of material, going beyond the publication of images to cover other media, including the written word. Ultimately, the obscenity Acts leave the test of what is obscene to members of the jury, who of course reflect the moral standards of the time. That flexible interpretation of the test is part of its strength. Although our obscenity laws are not as clear in defining what is illegal as the Protection of Children Act 1978,

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the question of who is in receipt of the publication, and in particular, whether they are a child or an adult, is highly relevant.
As hon. Members have said, the development of the internet has made a significant difference. In 1959, the supply of obscene material was more easily controlled and cut off, so publication was seen to have priority over possession. Now, however, easy access to a wide range of images—some of them extreme—is leading to new and urgent questions about the possession of certain types of material.
Parliament has already taken the view that possession of indecent photographs of children is a criminal act—partly because possession fuels demand for such images. The issues as regards adult pornography are less clear-cut, although we should not be insensitive to the impact of some of the more extreme material on those involved in making it as well as on those who access it.
The question posed in the debate is whether we can find a just and acceptable way of intervening when a person deliberately seeks out extreme material that may lead them towards offending. One immediate difficulty that we face is that there is only a limited amount of empirical evidence to suggest that looking at particular material causes people to commit particular offences. I was struck by the remarks of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who noted that, sickening as it might seem to the majority of us, some people simply see such images as entertainment and are not necessarily led to take a particular course of action—so the evidence is not as extensive as we might like.
There is some indication from sex offenders who have abused children that they have used photographs—including those available on the internet—as part of a process to break down their internal controls to the point where they are ready to commit direct offences. It may seem common sense to all of us that repeatedly looking at an image can accustom the viewer to it and make it appear normal, but the evidence is rather more difficult to evaluate.
Mr. Salter: Although some evidence is anecdotal, does my hon. Friend not accept the view of many of the senior police officers who have been active on this issue that access to images of child pornography, and to
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extreme images of torture and sexual acts involving adults, has been a factor in leading people to commit certain sexual offences?
Paul Goggins: I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution, and I pay tribute to the work of the police officers whom he mentioned. As several hon. Members have observed, they do incredible work in monitoring and intervening in such cases, and none of us would like to do their job. We shall take careful note of their experience and observations; that is part of the evidence gathering that we need to do. I simply make the point, however, that there is no empirical evidence at this time to suggest that looking at a particular image will lead to a particular action. We shall, of course, carefully gather the evidence.
However we define illegal material, we still face the challenge of dealing effectively with it. As several hon. Members have said, we in the United Kingdom are fortunate in having the industry-funded Internet Watch Foundation, which enables anyone to report, for example, images of child abuse on the internet anywhere in the world. The IWF makes a judgment as to whether the reported website carries potentially illegal material and passes details of any illegal material to the relevant law enforcement agencies so that they can take action. Where the site is hosted in the UK, the law enforcement agencies will seek its removal with the relevant internet service provider. That procedure has been remarkably successful in recent years; as my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Brian White) said, fewer than 1 per cent. of child pornography sites identified by the IWF in 2003 were hosted in the UK.
We are also confident in the IWF's ability to identify adult material that is potentially in breach of the Obscene Publications Acts and to refer to the police any site hosted in the UK, although evidence from the IWF and the national high-tech crime unit shows that the UK hosts hardly any of the extreme material carried on the internet that might be illegal in the UK if distributed to an adult.
Much more could be said in response to the many points that have been raised this morning. It is important that we continue to work together—the Government, the industry, the internet—
Mr. Lepper: Will the Minister give way?
Paul Goggins: I fear that I have no time left.
As I have said, in a fast-moving world where technology develops all the time, it is vital that we have this debate and consider what action can be taken together, so that we can intervene where appropriate.

Sex Offenders (Hostel Accommodation)
11 am
Mrs. Helen Clark: I am glad to have the opportunity to open this debate. I was first concerned about the issue of the allocation of sex offenders to hostels in Peterborough in 2002, when two sex offenders were relocated to the city without prior notification to me or to other relevant authorities and without adequate planning as to where they should be accommodated. As I stated at the time in a letter to the Home Secretary, one of the offenders had 115 convictions, including a particularly serious offence, yet he had to be kept temporarily in police accommodation, as there was nowhere else to put him.
In the case of the other offender, my local paper, the Evening Telegraph, seemed to be the first to learn that he had moved into the area, through a woman who had just moved into the city from the same original area as the offender. The local police and councillors, including cabinet children's minister and Conservative councillor Yvonne Lowndes, shared my concerns and asked me to raise the issues in Parliament.
At the time, the fact that two cases had arisen in one week made it look to some as though Peterborough was a definite target for relocation. I am glad to recognise that there has been progress in some respects with the treatment of sex offenders who have served their sentences. As I was informed in a response from a Home Office Minister, there is consultation between police and the probation service—they will soon, of course, come together in the National Offender Management Service, commonly known as NOMS—in order to assess and to manage the risks posed by offenders to the community.
The setting up of multi-agency public protection panels—MAPPPs—for the management of some high-risk offenders is clearly advantageous, despite the large resources required and worries about the response of some offenders to such close attention. That was vividly and, in my view, disturbingly, portrayed in Roger Graef's recent BBC television documentary, "The Protectors", in which those in the team that was featured discussed their worries that the offender in question enjoyed and in some ways manipulated their frequent attentions. It was a most disturbing programme to watch.
Such considerations are, of course, beyond my remit today, but I recognise the complexities involved. I also understand why the general public should not be informed of the relocation of offenders to their community. However, I am still not happy that adequate steps are taken to notify relevant authorities, including councillors with particular responsibility for the area or issue, head teachers of local schools and even the police.
Before I say more, I want to put it on record that neither I nor the authorities and individuals in my constituency are displaying crude nimbyism. Ex-offenders must live somewhere, which includes Peterborough, and they have served their sentences. However, we are concerned about the use of a particular hostel in Wesleyan road, which is near a children's play area, opposite a special needs school and within easy reach of nine other primary schools.
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My other concern has always been about the possible danger to other residents of hostels, especially young and vulnerable people, of close proximity to sex offenders. That is a general policy matter that needs urgent attention, and I will return to it later.
Since February, I have asked a number of written questions and also tabled early-day motion 924, which has attracted 30 signatures without any canvassing on my part. The motion drew attention to the concerns that I have described, and stated that proper notice should be given to local authorities and local MPs, as was always the case before the 2001 general election. It asserted that hostels should not be used if they are next to schools or other facilities for young people, or if they are used to house young people on remand.
As is often the case, the answers to the written questions were less than specific. One question concerned whether nine sex offenders who were recently known to be living in the Peterborough hostel had, as rumoured, been moved, and whether they would be moved back, as some feared, when the publicity following a BBC East programme had died down.
The Minister may be aware that I have again tabled nine questions attempting to unearth some facts and figures on the number of places in probation hostels and the number occupied by convicted sex offenders. What are the changes in the percentage of places in probation hostels occupied by persons on bail between 1991 and 2003? Are sex offender treatment programmes available in probation hostels, and if so, in how many? What specialist training is provided for staff working with sex offenders in hostels? What extra security measures have been introduced to hostels in which convicted sex offenders are housed? Do the Government plan to open any new probation hostels?
I am still asking questions and applying for an Adjournment debate because the more I found out about the general issues, which do not affect only Peterborough, the more concern I felt. The Minister will not be surprised to hear that I was contacted by the National Association of Probation Officers, which had noticed my questions and with which I had already been in contact over other matters. I hope to speak tomorrow in another Adjournment debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Jane Griffiths).
Jane Griffiths: I have indeed secured an Adjournment debate tomorrow. Something that I will not address in that debate, but which is still a serious concern, relates not to the location of hostels in my constituency, but to the fact that authorities are unaware of their existence and of the offences for which inmates have previously been convicted. That is a matter of concern and worry to many hon. Members.
Mrs. Clark: I thank my hon. Friend. I am sure that our concerns are shared on both sides of the House. Her debate is about the National Offender Management Service. Like the debate in March in which I spoke and last week's rally at Central hall, which I addressed with many other MPs, her debate will raise concerns about the structure of the proposed new organisation, its timing and its method of introduction. Such issues are relevant to those raised today, but I will not explore the implications in detail, although I can perhaps do so tomorrow.

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It is clear that police and probation services are already working well together and doing a good job in supervising sex offenders released into the community under the multi-agency public protection arrangements to which I referred earlier. NAPO believes that that is the best model for enhancing public protection. However, it is expensive and more resources are neededȁwhen was it ever otherwise?
Probation hostels are a crucial element in MAPPA planning. Ten years ago, the 101 probation hostels in England and Wales provided space mainly for people on bail. However, by 2002, the number of such residents had dropped to just 35 per cent. of all places in toto. In contrast, the number of people resident on parole rose from 6 per cent. to 44 per cent. over the same period. In January 2004, it was reported in Napo News, the probation staff journal, that 42 per cent. of residents were now sex offenders. Naturally, such a change raises major concerns for staff as well as residents in the community. How have staff ratios changed over that 10-year period? What security measures have been taken? Has there been additional training for staff? Crucially, what is the level of the provision of the sex offender treatment programme?
I also want the Minister to elaborate on a report—in The Daily Telegraph I believe—that the Home Office was last year actively considering the provision of sex offender-only hostels. It may sound controversial, but it is easy to see the advantages in that. Treatment could be given on site, staff could receive appropriate training and suitable security could be provided. Will the Minister please say what the current thinking is on the provision of such hostels?
I have no doubt that there are difficulties, not least in funding such provision. However, in view of the rise in the number of sex offenders under supervision, such measures appear necessary to maximise public safety, particularly in terms of resident youngsters and neighbouring children. Such children are potentially easy targets for the grooming activities that the Government rightly made a new offence under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Such hostels would surely be preferable to the extreme measures adopted in the state of Kansas in the USA, where a statute was enacted in 1997 that allowed for the continued imprisonment of sexually violent offenders, even after the completion of their prison terms. The Washington Post described the position then as
"the top of a very slippery slope"
and said that
"modern history is replete with evidence of the misuse of mental-health proceedings to put dissidents and other troublemakers away indefinitely."
Locking people up indefinitely because of "personality disorders" on the grounds of the estimated probability that they will commit future offences may not be likely in this country. The issue has been canvassed, as we know. However, I fear that if alternatives are not introduced, the current system will not work. In any case, building more special hostels would free up existing places for those in prison, whose presence surely adds to the well known problem of prison overcrowding.
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I would appreciate some reassurances that I can take back to my constituents and to my local authority and police that the Government regard their concerns as legitimate and that active steps are being taken to address them as we speak. Most of all, I would like an assurance that urgent steps will be taken to ensure that no sex offenders are ever housed in hostels that are close to schools or other facilities for children.
11.12 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Paul Goggins): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mrs. Clark) on securing this debate. She has raised some important issues and placed them squarely in the context of her constituency. I note the remarks that she and my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Jane Griffiths) have made about the wider connection between such issues and the development of the National Offender Management Service. I will respond to tomorrow's debate, so I look forward to further discussions with them about the wider issues.
Doing everything possible to ensure that the public are protected and not put at any unnecessary risk is, of course, one of the Government's highest priorities. The safe management of sex offenders and other dangerous people in our communities will never be easy or straightforward. There are no simple choices. However, we should recognise that most sex offenders will eventually be released from prison and return to live in the community. When that happens, we must find ways to assess and minimise the risk that they may present.
The Government are rightly proud of the measures that we have introduced since 1997 to provide a framework within which all the major statutory and non-statutory agencies can work together to manage sex offenders. The multi-agency public protection arrangements, which my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough mentioned, draw together professionals from the probation service, the police and the Prison Service. Since the beginning of last month, the Criminal Justice Act 2003 has further strengthened those arrangements by placing a duty on other agencies, particularly local authorities, to co-operate in the assessment and management of the risk that sexual and violent offenders pose.
In practice, the process starts with an accurate risk assessment through which agencies share information and make a judgment about the level of threat that each individual poses. Key to the process is a joint action plan that is drawn up and agreed by all the agencies and that clearly spells out how an individual's risk will be monitored and managed daily and weekly. The knowledge that one is being monitored under MAPPA can act as a powerful mechanism of external control. People subject to the arrangements know that they are being managed and monitored, which can make a big difference.
The panel can also use a range of surveillance and monitoring powers, including tagging and a requirement to reside in approved premises, as well as sex offender prevention orders and antisocial behaviour orders. In addition, offenders can be required to develop appropriate internal controls, through attendance and participation in offender treatment programmes.

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Through joint working, MAPPA panels can also draw in the expertise and additional resources of partner agencies and organisations, which include the voluntary sector's important contribution.
We know that MAPPA are working. Some 20 per cent. of the highest risk offenders are judged too risky to live in the community and so are returned to prison. That shows a high degree of monitoring of the activities of risky people and a determination to act where they are felt to pose an unacceptable risk. Crucially, such people are returned to prison before they have an opportunity to commit a further serious offence. Only 2 per cent. are actually charged with a further serious offence. Such offences are of course deeply regretted, but those who in the past would have been subject to the MAPPA would have been in the community anyway, only without the much closer supervision of high-risk offenders that the new arrangements have brought about.
The published annual MAPPA report for Cambridgeshire for 2002–03 underlines the support for the arrangements expressed by the local professional agencies and identifies the added value that has been achieved in Cambridgeshire through multi-agency assessment and the effective management of the risk posed by the offenders. I am sure that my hon. Friend is already aware of that report. Apart from my introductory remarks and an explanation of the wider national picture in relation to MAPPA, I shall refer in more detail to her local report, as it goes into considerable detail in listing organisations that are part of the framework in her area.
The report confirms, for example, that whereas the average rate of sex offenders in the community is some 35 per 100,000, in her area it is 36 per 100,000. The prevalence in her area is therefore about the same as it is nationally. The report confirms that of the current 282 registered sex offenders who live not just in her constituency but in the whole of Cambridgeshire, only 12 have been assessed by the police as being very high risk. We are clear on the numbers and on the way in which we have to focus particular attention on those who are the most risky.
The report includes an illustration of the practical application of the arrangements. An example is cited of a Mr. B who is a relatively young offender who has committed serious offences of indecent assault against younger boys. He is a registered sex offender and has been continually tracked by police since his original release from prison in April 2001. He has previously been made the subject of a sex offender order, which includes prohibitions from approaching young children under the age of 16 and allowing young children to visit him at his home address. He disappeared from his last known address in Cambridgeshire but was tracked down to a new address in a northern town.
That young man posed a risk and even ran away from his home area, and yet the police, working with colleagues in other parts of the country, were assiduous in tracking him down to another area. The report continues:
"He was arrested for breach of his Sex Offender Order and given a further sentence of 12 months. As his release date approached, a plan was agreed to insist on hostel residence. There were concerns that Mr B would not co-operate and the police arranged for officers to maintain surveillance on him. He was followed from
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the prison gates, and by the middle of the day it was clear he was not intending to arrive at the hostel by his agreed time. Emergency recall procedures were implemented and Mr B was arrested and returned to prison."
I quote extensively from the report to illustrate that that individual, who was assessed as high risk, was assiduously followed by the law enforcement agencies. He was followed when he was released from prison, and when he did not comply within hours, immediate action was taken. That level of professionalism is applied by the agencies involved in my hon. Friend's constituency and across the rest of the UK.
We recognise that such work is complex and requires great skill from the staff involved, and we also recognise the urgent need to build public confidence in MAPPA. That is why we have decided that the public should, in future, have the opportunity to become more directly involved as lay members in the oversight of its operation. That will give them better access to and understanding of what is done to protect them.
The probation service's management of approved probation and bail hostels, in some cases through the voluntary sector, makes a vital contribution to our efforts to protect the public from the risk of harm that is posed by those who have committed serious violent or sexual crimes. Generally, approved premises, as those hostels are now officially described, accept three categories of residents: bailees, or people who are bailed from court; those on community orders who have been given a condition, as part of the order, to reside at an approved premises; and those released on licence from a custodial sentence.
The Government acknowledge that, as my hon. Friend pointed out, there has been a change in the way in which approved premises are used, in that there are far more licensees in approved probation and bail hostels than 10 or even five years ago, when the proportion of bail cases was much higher. None the less, it is appropriate that approved premises are used to help to reintegrate into the community in as safe a manner as possible those who have served a prison sentence. As she also pointed out, such individuals would be in the community in any event, so ensuring that one of the conditions of their licences is that they reside in a particular approved premises helps in their effective management.
However, approved premises are not merely places to live. They provide high levels of offender support and containment through a series of measures: enhanced supervision in the community; 24-hour double staff cover; a night-time curfew; and rigorously enforced house rules. Some offenders will be subject to additional controls such as electronic tagging or additional curfews—around school arrival and departure times, for example. Some residents will also be required to attend offender group work programmes such as sex offender treatment programmes.
All approved premises maintain close relationships with local police crime management units. Information on the resident population is shared with the police on a regular basis. Many approved premises, including the one at Peterborough, have strong links with their local communities, for example, through a local residents committee. I am keen to encourage the development of such arrangements more widely as they can help to ease communication and help to break down any unnecessary fear that local communities may have.

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If high-risk offenders or bailees cannot go to an approved premises on release, probation areas have no option but to resort to other forms of unsupervised accommodation, such as local authority housing or bed-and-breakfast establishments. That means releasing into the community people who may be a risk, but without the monitoring arrangements that can minimise that risk.
Approved premises are therefore a key part of our strategy to maintain the safety of local communities. My hon. Friend has used the debate to express her concerns about the location of the approved hostel in Peterborough, and she asked several questions. I always try to give the best and most open answer possible; if she has tabled further questions I shall try to answer them as soon as possible. Of course, I understand her concerns and those of her constituents, but the key issue is not where a hostel is placed, but how well offenders are managed and the safeguards that are put in place to protect the public from potential threats to their safety. Playgrounds, swimming pools and shopping centres are never very far away wherever a hostel is located; the fact that people are managed effectively is far more important than the precise location of the hostel.
It may be helpful to look more closely at the experience of the approved premises in Peterborough. As my hon. Friend knows, the hostel has been there since the mid-1970s, and it has some of the most up-to-date security arrangements of any approved premises and a good track record in managing offenders of all types. I checked with the Cambridgeshire probation managers for the hostel, and I am assured that there have been no serious incidents involving sex offenders at the hostel in the past two years, and very few serious incidents of any kind in that time.
My hon. Friend is deeply concerned that there may be a specific danger because of the hostel's proximity to a special school. Although I stand by my comments about the importance of management over location, I understand that that might create some local anxiety. The children are, of course, closely supervised when they are at the school. It is pertinent to emphasise that the vast majority of sexual offences against children—about
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80 per cent. of the total—are committed in the home by a person known to them. I understand that the school is due to close at the end of this term, but I assure her that the staff in Peterborough take very seriously their responsibility for supervising their residents.
On concerns about the nearness of local playgrounds, the risks posed by particular individuals would be tackled through controls such as licence conditions, additional curfews, direct police surveillance and returning offenders to prison when that is judged necessary. Communities are being protected through the robust local management arrangements that have been put in place.
We now have some very effective tools for ensuring that the probation and police services and the managers of approved premises have the powers that they need to work with sex offenders and to protect the public. The Sex Offenders Act 1997, which introduced the registration requirements for sex offenders, has been exceptionally effective in monitoring sex offenders. Compliance with the requirements of the 1997 Act has consistently been about 97 per cent. The Sexual Offences Act 2003, which came into effect on 1 May, will make the notification requirement an even more effective tool for monitoring sex offenders. They must now renew their details every year and notify any change of address within three days.
Accredited programmes provide the cornerstone of interventions with offenders who are either in custody or placed in the community. The Prison Service started to develop sex offender treatment programmes in 1992; programmes now run in 27 prisons and there is a public service agreement to ensure that 1,240 sex offenders are completing treatment in 2003–04. The national probation service currently has three accredited sex offender treatment programmes. Implementation began in 2001, and by October 2003 all probation areas were running one of those programmes.
My hon. Friend raised the issue of sex offender-only hostels. She has written to me about it and I shall reply to her shortly. We do not have any plans in that regard at present, but we will consider the proposal carefully.
11.30 pm
Sitting suspended until Two o'clock.

Further Education Funding
2 pm
Norman Lamb: The last time I was before you in Westminster Hall, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I had to seek your permission to escape early to meet my 12-year-old son outside St. Stephen's Entrance. I can assure you that there will be no similar problems today—I am here for the duration.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise this important issue. The full title of the debate is:
"Funding for education of 16–19 year olds at schools and further education colleges".
I want to look first at the comparative funding arrangements for 16 to 18-year-olds at those two types of institution and then at the impact of the different funding regimes on 19-year-olds at further education colleges. It is important to recognise right at the start that FE colleges have a higher proportion of students from low-income households and backgrounds with some deprivation than do school sixth forms. Clearly, it is important that those people are treated equitably. First, however, I shall set out some facts.
Between them, local colleges have 4 million students, including almost twice as many 16 to 19-year-olds as schools. The Department for Education and Skills forecasts that there will be a further 10 per cent. increase in the number of 16-year-olds at colleges in 2004–05 as education maintenance allowances are extended across the country.
Under the increased flexibility scheme, colleges also cater for 14 to 16-year-olds. Some 110,000 study two days a week for vocational courses at their local colleges, and the figure could rise to 200,000 by 2007–08. The scheme appears to be working well in my home county of Norfolk, and Easton college tells me that it has successful partnerships with schools but needs to secure long-term funding if they are to become a real, lasting commitment.
Colleges are far and away the major supplier of education and training for 16 to 18-year-olds, and nearly two thirds of those in education will soon be in local colleges, not schools. For many years, the Association of Colleges has argued that the funding gap between schools and colleges is utterly unjustifiable. In simple terms, schools were 10 per cent. better funded than colleges in 2002, which, according to the AOC, meant that colleges had £1,000 less per student per year to deliver the same package of three A-levels. That was particularly unfair given that many young people in colleges, especially general FE colleges, come from more difficult backgrounds. Indeed, 27 per cent. of young and adult students in colleges come from the 15 per cent. of wards that are most deprived.
We all thought that convergence—closing the funding gap—was high on the Government's agenda and a major rationale for the formation of the hugely expensive Learning and Skills Council, which was given responsibility for funding all provision for 16 to 18-yearolds. The Government have been remarkably candid in acknowledging the problem, and there have been many promises from the Prime Minister and a succession of Ministers about closing the gap. That suggests that they acknowledge not only that such a gap exists but that it should be closed in a defined period. If that is not the case, their commitments are pretty worthless.
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Let me quote some of the Government's statements. In November 2001, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) asked the Prime Minister whether he was aware that funding for young people in our sixth-form colleges was significantly less than that for young people attending sixth forms in schools. My hon. Friend acknowledged that the problem had arisen from the formula created by the previous Conservative Government, which provided roughly £1,000 a year less to colleges, and asked whether the Prime Minister would increase their funding to the same level as for schools. The Prime Minister replied:
"What we need to do, without in any way penalising sixth forms in schools—"
that is clearly important—
"is to lift up the funding that is given specifically to sixth-form and further education colleges."—[Official Report, 28 November 2001; Vol. 375, c. 966.]
In June 2002, the Minister for Children, when she was Minister with responsibility for higher education, said:
"The Government are committed to raising the level of funding for colleges towards that of school sixth forms. By 2003–04 funding for further education will have risen by 26 per cent. in real terms since 1997. Further progress can only be made as resources allow and we cannot commit ourselves beyond the resources we secure. We are looking to the current Spending Review"—
something I will return to—
"to provide the resources needed to deliver the Government's ambitious agenda for further education."—[Official Report, 13 June 2002; Vol. 386, c. 1409W.]
In July 2002, the Minister for the Arts, then the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, told the Select Committee on Education and Skills:
"We have done nothing to close the gap. That also is subject to the spending review. It is a manifesto commitment of the Government and an over-time move to close the gap but we have not made progress on that yet."
So the Government have a clearly stated position: there is a gap, it needs to be closed and, in a sense, the work is behind schedule.
It is clear that in the past two years, Ministers have placed great reliance on the 2003 to 2006 spending review to resolve a serious problem that effectively short-changes two thirds of 16 to 18-year-olds, many of whom come from the poorest backgrounds. The effects on college funding of the 2003 to 2006 comprehensive spending review initially looked promising. At the Association of Colleges annual conference in November 2002, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills announced a new funding package for further education, which was warmly welcomed. It ended the year-on-year cuts for colleges that had happened since 1993, and signalled three-year funding plans for colleges so that they could plan more effectively. The headline point of the new funding package was that total spending on FE would rise by 26 per cent. in cash terms and 19 per cent. in real terms in the period to 2005–06, based on a 2002–03 baseline. Ministers have repeated that figure time after time in response to requests on how the gap would be closed. Indeed, the percentage increase is an impressive figure.
How does the funding gap between schools and colleges look now? Were and are Ministers right to place their reliance on the 2003 to 2006 comprehensive spending review to redress the unjustifiable imbalance?
Mr. David Laws: Does my hon. Friend agree that there is not only the issue of the funding of sixth-form colleges versus schools, but a question about whether the Government are delivering on their commitment to fund a three-year programme of investment in the colleges? The principal of Yeovil college has written to me this week to say that a number of colleges in the south-west have been informed that there is a funding gap in the Learning and Skills Council budget, which will mean that the previous pledge to deliver three-year improvements in funding may be reneged on. Can we hope that the Minister will clarify that today?
Norman Lamb: I am grateful for that intervention, and I hope that the Minister will clarify the position. I understand that there was a meeting last Friday at the Learning and Skills Council and that there were serious concerns about a shortfall in funding compared with what was anticipated. I hope that we will get clarity on that from the Minister.
Analysis of the overall 2003 to 2006 comprehensive spending review package shows that for most colleges the actual increase for this year is only in line with inflation and that over the full period to 2005–06 the increase in real resources per student is no more than 5 per cent. Looked at another way, subject to achievement of further demanding targets, most colleges will receive an extra 2.5 per cent in both 2004–05 and 2005–06. A small number will receive up to 3.5 per cent. for outstanding performance, while the least successful will receive inflation increases only. That is different from what they had been led to believe when the Secretary of State made that conference announcement.
Mr. David Kidney: May I sound a warning about overachieving on targets? The principal of Stafford college has told me that after overachieving Government priority targets for 16 to 19-year-olds last year, the college has been asked to cut its spending this year to make up for it. When it protested that that would defeat the targets, it was asked whether it could find the savings in adult provision instead.
Norman Lamb: I am grateful for that intervention, too. The funding arrangements seem to be in something of a mess, and the hon. Gentleman gives a good example of the matters that the Minister must address.
Dr. John Pugh: My hon. Friend has spoken about the high expectations that further education colleges had in 2002. He will be aware that when we talked at that time about the brave new world confronting the colleges, sceptical noises were made, and largely on the Liberal Democrat Benches.
Norman Lamb: I am grateful for a point well made.
Let us consider the difference between my analysis of the anticipated increases year on year, and the Government's oft-repeated headline figure of 19 per cent. The principal reasons for it are as follows. The first is the projected rise in student enrolments of about 11 per cent., which is good news in itself, provided that it is funded. I am talking about an extra 100,000 16 to 18year-olds, 750,000 basic skills adult students—that
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incredibly important group must not be forgotten—and an unspecified number of other students, all of whose participation in college courses must be funded.
The second reason is employers' national insurance contributions and pension contribution changes, resulting in increased costs that colleges are required to absorb. That is the classic case of cash in and cash out, with no gain. The next issue is the enhanced premium for widening participation and area costs—amounting to some 1 per cent. of overall national rates—which benefit only a limited number of colleges. Moreover, to earn the extra 5 per cent., colleges have to meet, under agreements in the "Success for All" programme, improvement targets on enrolments, employer engagement, success rates and teacher qualifications, all of which incur costs of some kind for most colleges. The overall increase per student of 5 per cent. to 2005–06 also determines colleges' scope for addressing staff pay levels and other improvements
In 2002–03, when Ministers first answered questions on those issues in the House, LSC funding rates for school sixth forms were 10.5 per cent. above those for FE colleges. However, the AOC believed that the true funding gap was somewhat higher, both because the real-terms guarantee meant that a significant minority of schools were funded above that level, and because local education authorities continued to meet some costs for schools outside those rates that colleges have to meet within the rates. Again, there is different treatment for the two sectors.
By May 2003, it looked as if the funding gap between FE colleges and school sixth forms for 2003–04 would reduce by some 5 per cent., on the basis of the rates announced by the ESC. However, it became clear that the overall funding gap was 10 per cent., on the basis of the 2003–04 budgets. The LSC agreed that figure in evidence to the Education and Skills Committee. At the sitting on 2 February 2004, Mark Haysom, the LSC chief executive, and his director of learning, Caroline Neville, admitted that the gap was about 10 per cent., although they thought that there had been a small narrowing of 1 per cent. in 2002–03. In response to questioning from the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor), they were equivocal about whether they thought that the Government had the political will that they had three years ago for convergence—the Minister may want to respond to that—and they were silent about their own capacity to ensure convergence in the future.
Astonishingly, it appears that by 2004–05, the gap will widen again, although it is not yet clear by how much. There appear to be three reasons for that, which are pretty well known to the Government. First, the LSC formula gives schools more than colleges for exactly the same courses. The LSC spent 7 per cent. more than its 2003–04 budget—£105 million—on school sixth forms, although the number of 16 to 18-year-olds in schools rose by only 2 per cent. At the same time, the LSC spent only 2 per cent. more than its 2003–04 budget on everything else, including colleges, which took in 7 per cent. more 16 to 18-year-olds.
Secondly, one third of schools receive more money than the formula says they should. Thirdly, the money given to colleges must go further—a crucial point to

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take into account when making a comparison. Colleges must pay VAT, corporate and legal costs, and the full cost of running their own buildings.
Paston college, in my constituency, estimates that VAT alone imposes an extra cost of £100 a year per full-time student. That extraordinary anomaly does not seem to be widely known. Peter Mayne, Paston's principal, also tells me that the compliance costs for a small college of 600 full-time students is a particularly heavy burden. The college faces large bills for internal and external audit work, as well as for the audit of the complex management information systems records. Compliance costs Paston college alone tens of thousands of pounds a year. Will the Minister look into the problem of the burden of audit work on small colleges, which is excessive, particularly when compared with that faced by sixth-form schools?
It is hard to see how the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education can justify his response to the House last month on the issue. The hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Lawrie Quinn) asked him whether
"we need to give greater consideration to the inequalities between LEA sixth forms and stand-alone sixth forms".
The Minister replied:
"We are aware of those issues and, in this funding round, the funding gap between sixth forms and further education colleges has closed considerably." —[Official Report, 29 April 2004; Vol. 420, c. 990–991]
From the evidence that I gave the Minister this afternoon, that does not appear to be the case.
What does a funding gap of 10 per cent., or possibly more, mean for the young people at general FE colleges, tertiary colleges and sixth-form colleges throughout the country? I shall give a couple of examples. Cadbury college in Birmingham attracts some 1,300 full-time, 16 to 19-year-old students who all follow advanced level programmes. As an inner-city college, 58 per cent. of its students are from ethnic minorities, and 65 per cent. of its students live in areas designated as socially or economically disadvantaged. Some 60 per cent. of its students receive an education maintenance allowance. David Igoe, the principal, says that current estimates, acknowledged by the Department for Education and Skills and by Ministers, put the funding gap between schools and colleges at around 10 pet cent., as we heard, although the college believes that it is much higher. He says:
"The conservative figure of 10 per cent would add £494,000 to the college's revenue budget. Put another way this is the extra amount a school would receive for the same students following identical programmes. This amount of money would enable the college to: … Employ a further 16 full-time fully-qualified teachers … Employ an additional 25 + support and technical staff … Increase departmental resource budgets by 400 per cent … Purchase up to 1,000 networked, internet ready PC workstations … However, the real benefit of this extra funding would be to give us the resource to really support the specific learning needs of our students. Not surprisingly many have language and literacy difficulties and would be significantly helped with individual and small group support. We have also found that many students do not have either the space or opportunity to study at home and the college has to provide study space and IT facilities which other students in schools and institutions with a more affluent intake can usually take for granted at home."
That is one reason why it is so important for this sector to receive proper equity funding.
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Other colleges have also identified large class sizes and the shortage of funds to pay their staff what they deserve—a major result of this persistent underfunding. Do the Government still accept the need to address this funding gap? I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm that they do. In the Select Committee last month, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw) asked the Minister for School Standards about the funding gap. The Minister seemed to seek to defend the gap by arguing that differences in the terms and conditions of staff justified such a gap, although he added:
"I always look out for…the evidence that lots of colleges are losing staff into the school sector and when I have asked about that I have not seen figures suggesting that there is that sort of movement …I would be alarmed if colleges were saying they were unable to find the staff to deliver the curriculum that they need to."
It is time for the Minister to be alarmed, because colleges are expressing concern about staffing.
In reply to a parliamentary question from the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), the Minister said that recorded losses of staff from colleges to schools had risen two and a half times in the two years from 2000 to 2002, to 540. Inevitably, general further education colleges also lose staff to industry. The principal of Easton college in Norfolk told me that it has difficulty with recruitment and retention of staff and mentioned the better terms and conditions in schools as a significant part of the problem.
Mr. David Drew: It is not just a matter of comparison between the sectors. In Stroud, there is a successful consortium in which three schools post-16 have joined with the local college; the college lecturers teach schoolchildren, and the schoolteachers instruct the college students. There is a stark differential in the rates of pay and conditions, so it is fair and proper that we do something about it. I completely support the hon. Gentleman's case.
Norman Lamb: I am grateful. The local initiative to which the hon. Gentleman referred is an excellent example for others to follow.
I have concentrated so far on the revenue funding differences between schools and colleges, but there are serious problems for colleges in relation to their schools counterparts over capital funding. The Government's investment programme "Building Schools for the Future" is laudable, but it will widen the differential between schools and colleges. The Government will spend £5 billion on school buildings but less than £400 million on college buildings up to 2005–06, which is an extraordinary disparity when primary and secondary school rolls are static and 16 to 18-year-old rolls are rising. That is an astonishing mismatch in funding. Colleges must find 65 per cent. of any capital cost, which comes out of revenue funding, but schools are fully funded—100 per cent. —for capital costs. That is a serious issue for many colleges.
Paston college in my constituency has a wonderfully ambitious plan to provide new facilities for the college, but at present the chances of its getting the resources to fund them look slim. The lack of investment in college building will deny the majority of young people access to equipment and facilities that they will need to develop

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21st century skills. There is also the question of capacity: many colleges are at capacity and need new buildings to manage the expansion in numbers that is required to meet Government targets. Sid Hughes, the principal of Newham sixth-form college in London, which is in one of the most deprived areas in the country said:
"'Whilst levels of funding to this inner-city sixth form college have in recent years reflected this government's target for raising levels of participation post-16 as well as recognising that there are particular costs associated with meeting this target with harder to reach students, the growing funding gap between schools and the college means that the potential contribution we could make to this challenging agenda is unlikely to be realised."
How depressing that is. Mr. Hughes continues:
"This is felt most keenly in the widely different levels of capital resources currently available to schools and colleges. No-one would wish to question schools' access to new funding, it is certainly desperately needed, but our college would wish to increase capacity both to extend 14–16 partnerships with our local schools and to increase progression opportunities post-16. Funding levels in the sector are quite simply inadequate to support this. There are many millions of pounds being allocated to school capital projects in this area, but the message the college receives when seeking funding to support growth is far from positive."
The Government are urging colleges towards expansion for 16 to 18-year-olds and pinning their funding on it, but they seem unwilling or unable to ensure the funding to enable those young people to enjoy equal facilities with their better-off school counterparts in terms of class sizes, access to equipment and books, or the buildings in which they receive their education. Does that not sit uncomfortably with the Government's plans for a guarantee for 16 to 18-year-olds, and how far is even that guarantee a reality?
The Government's perfectly laudable drive to raise 16 to 18-year-old participation steps up a gear with the education maintenance allowance programme this September, but many colleges do not know whether they will receive money to pay for extra students. College success in raising 16 to 18-year-old participation and achievement is under threat because of fixed Government budgets. As the Government have repeatedly warned, there is not enough money in the system to meet their targets, not even for priority groups. At least 50 colleges recruited additional 16 to 18-year-old students in 2002–03 and in 2003–04 on a promise of extra funding from the Learning and Skills Council, but most are still waiting for that payment. That is an extraordinary position for colleges that are trying to plan for the future. In some cases, they will not be paid for another 12 months.
In the academic year 2004–05, the funding restrictions will really bite and colleges will have to turn away 16year-olds and young people already on apprenticeship courses because they will not be able to afford to teach them. That will all affect other courses in colleges and adult education. What happens to the opportunities available to those young people when they reach 19? The Learning and Skills Council appears unable even to make the books balance for 16 to 18-year olds and is therefore forced to cut funding for adults, many of whom have basic literacy and numeracy needs. The Government have acknowledged how important that work is, but it will be undone if they do not sort out the funding problem. Although the Government talk Up
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their skills strategy, their quangos are forcing cuts in courses that develop skills. If the Government doubt that, they have only to listen to the representatives of 120 colleges who will come to the House tomorrow to speak to their MPs.
Since there is not enough in the LSC's budget to pay for the targets that the Government have imposed, colleges are being told by their local learning and skills councils that funding for any course outside certain narrow definitions is under threat. That includes even basic literacy courses for adults in the community; if they do not lead to a recognised qualification, they are not funded. In Norfolk, it is often taster-type courses, which do not lead to qualifications, that first hook an adult into returning to learning. The work done by colleges in Norfolk in helping microbusinesses to upskill also does not generally involve qualifications. That valuable work could all be lost.
If the lucky 16 to 18-year-olds who get a college place want to carry on studying to level 3, there will be cuts in those courses across the country. The Government's answer is to tell colleges to get more money from employers. At the same time as spending £38 million on relaunching modern apprenticeships in a desperate effort to persuade employers to engage with the training of young and older people the Government have this year lost 70,000 adult course places—the equivalent of the entire post-19 apprenticeship programme.
What is the precise position with regard to the apparent funding gap, which my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) mentioned, between the money available to the LSC and what colleges are able to deliver? What was the outcome of Friday's meeting to discuss that issue? What is the gap? What cuts in planned programmes do colleges face? If the Minister does nothing else today, will he at least clarify that position to end the uncertainty for colleges in the sector? Such uncertainty makes it impossible for colleges to plan ahead.
This is an important time for the Government's credibility in providing "education, education, education" for all 16 to 18-year-olds, and not just for the minority in schools. The injustice for the 800,000 young people still losing out must be sorted out. That is the challenge for the Minister today.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: May I make a strong request to Members who wish to participate? At least seven Members wish to speak and we have only half an hour before I should start the winding-up speeches. If Members limit their remarks to about four minutes, all will get in. If they do not, there is nothing that I can do about it.
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Ms Joan Walley: I shall do my best to limit myself to four minutes.
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on securing the debate, which is timely, in view of the lobby of Parliament tomorrow afternoon. Many colleges of further education will be represented, and Mr. Graham Moore from Stoke-on-Trent college will be here. Many MPs, including those of us in north Staffordshire, work closely with colleges to make sure that priority is given to this most important sector of education.

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I welcome the fact that the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg) is here to respond to the debate. He is familiar with the problems that we face in north Staffordshire, and we should impress on him that we want to be constructive critics and to welcome all that the Government are doing in further education. I have just come from chairing a meeting of the all-party regeneration group, attended by his fellow Minister with responsibility for education and skills. We looked at how the Government, if they are to deliver on their regeneration agenda and invest in new hospital building and new housing, must invest in construction skills. Given the number of people leaving Education at 17, it is also important to invest in the skills of our young people.
I wish to flag up one issue in my four minutes—capital investment in colleges. I am delighted that the Government have chosen Stoke-on-Trent as one of the areas where we will have investment in our secondary schools under the "fit for the future" programme. That means that from part of the money available nationally, every single secondary school in Stoke-on-Trent will either be replaced and rebuilt or completely refurbished and brought up to standard. We have campaigned and lobbied Ministers on that, and it is absolutely critical. It involves 14 schools in all and will bring enormous benefits to 11 to 16-year-olds. It allows £125 million for redevelopment and refurbishment, arid it has come not a moment too soon. However, we should look at the effects. I know that we are never satisfied; indeed, I think that it is the job of MPs never to be satisfied, but it will provide a stark comparison with the situation in our further education colleges.
On the current spending available through the Learning and Skills Council, we cannot match the initiative in secondary education in Stoke-on-Trent with similar investment in the fabric of college buildings. We will clearly work closely with our local learning and skills council in Stoke-on-Trent to ensure that we get the best possible facilities. We have just secured £5 million for a new college annexe, which will be based on construction skills, in Burslem. We have worked hard for that.
The Government are aware that colleges are not funded as well as schools, and the burden of borrowing and repaying for capital projects will not be undertaken lightly. Capital investment should not come at the expense of staff salaries. We need the forthcoming spending round settlement to go right across the board, not just for further education colleges in Stoke-on-Trent or north Staffordshire or elsewhere in the country. We need a fair and sensible allocation of capital and revenue funding, and that has to be passed to the learning and skills councils. Without that, I am concerned that the Government's aspiration for the post-16 age group will falter. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise my concern about capital funding in the wider context of the debate.
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Mr. Francis Maude: I am grateful for the chance briefly to contribute to this timely and important debate. As you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I must leave at 3 o'clock for a parliamentary engagement elsewhere in the building, and I mean no discourtesy to
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the House and hope that I shall be forgiven for leaving. My particular concern is with sixth-form colleges. The debate is, perfectly properly, about FE and sixth-form colleges in general, but I am concerned about the particular problems of sixth-form colleges, to which attention should be drawn. If I refer to my parochial concern with Horsham, it is to illustrate the broader problem, which I suspect is widespread.
The college of Richard Collyer in Horsham is a sixth-form college that was originally a boys' grammar school of great historic antiquity. It provides an outstanding 16-to-19 education for 2,000 students. It benefits, perhaps unusually, in terms of capital spending, from the support of the Mercers' Company. Richard Collyer, the founder of the college in the 16th century, was a mercer, and the Mercers' Company continues to support it magnificently, recently contributing £500,000 to a new learning resource centre. In terms of capital spending, it has a generous outside benefactor, and I appreciate that not all sixth-form colleges have that. Owing to its current resources—I stress that none of the three comprehensive schools in Horsham town has a sixth form so that the only place for students to go at the age of 16 is the Richard Collyer college—it does an exceptional job, and has an enviable record of academic achievement.
It has been repeatedly stated—indeed, it will be a constant theme—that the average gap in spending per student in the further education sector is about 10 per cent. That gap is hard to measure because the formulae are so hideously complicated and variable, but it seems to be broadly true that the principal of Collyers, Michael Marchant, has around 10 per cent. less to spend per student than he would if he were head of an all-the-way-through school with a sixth form. The sixth-form students there receive less—of course, money is not everything—than their friends and relations at the Weald school in Billingshurst six miles down the road, where the sixth form is part of the school. That is not the end of the world but it is an institutionalised problem from which towns such as Horsham, whose only 16-to-19 education is provided by a sixth-form college, suffer. That problem must be addressed, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some encouragement.
I differentiate between FE colleges and sixth-form colleges because FE colleges tend to be larger, so they tend to benefit from greater economies of scale. They also have greater ability to generate additional income through charging fees: there is greater flexibility, including provision of different types of course, such as those for mature students, which fall outside the ordinary state system. Many FE colleges have, to a greater or lesser extent, an ability to increase their revenues through charging fees.
If one reads carefully the Government's proposals on higher education, one sees that the bulk of their much vaunted expansion has nothing to do with expansion of the university sector: most of the proposed expansion is to be delivered through two-year foundation degrees in FE colleges. Colleges can look forward to that expansion and an enhancement of their critical mass and the revenue stream available. For all those reasons, sixth-form colleges are uniquely disadvantaged. As one of nature's Treasury Ministers, I do not believe that increasing public spending is the answer to all problems, but sixth-form colleges suffer from unique disadvantage, which needs urgently to be addressed.
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Mr. Kelvin Hopkins: My speech will be short because much of what I want to say has been said by other hon. Members, particularly by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who covered the ground thoroughly in his fine speech. I have the good fortune to represent a constituency with two of the best colleges in the country, one of which, Barnfield college, was the first to be given beacon status, and both of which received a grade 1 in their inspections and are extraordinarily good. I must declare a non-pecuniary interest. For the past 15 years, I have been a member of and am now the vice-chair of governors at the wonderful Luton sixth-form college, which my children attended.
One of my first speeches in the House was about raising the profile of sixth-form colleges, which were not properly appreciated by the Government or the Department for Education and Skills. There used to be separate offices, on different sides of the building, looking after school sixth forms and sixth-form colleges, but they should have been considered together, because things were being done for school sixth forms while sixth-form colleges were forgotten. Fortunately, the situation is better now. There is no doubt that the Government's recognition of sixth-form colleges has improved since then, when I described them as the jewel in our educational crown. That is still true. The performance of sixth-form colleges is astonishingly good. To use another metaphor, they are geese that lay golden eggs. We should nurture and support them to the best of our ability.
A general settlement of 5 per cent. for schools and sixth-form colleges would do nothing to reduce the differential between them. We must address that differential not by cutting schools' budgets, but by raising sixth-form college budgets. A general settlement across sixth-form and FE colleges would also present a problem, because a higher proportion of sixth-form college costs go on staff and they do not have external sources of income. Again, they lose out in that situation; they must be considered separately to ensure that they get the right resources.
My next point is about capital development. Luton sixth-form college is magnificent, but it needs a lot of capital development. We need to modernise it, but we are in danger of doing a cheap job, rather than the right job, because we get only 35 per cent, funding instead of 100 per cent. Changing that alone would make a material difference to Luton sixth-form college, and to many others. We would have the right buildings in which to educate our young people, rather than buildings that will just about do. We would no longer have to do the best we can with inadequate sums.
I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member for North Norfolk that serious points need to be addressed. I hope that the Government will address them, and will ensure that sixth-form colleges are given the resources that they need to do the job.
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Dr. Julian Lewis: The hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) has stolen my metaphor—I was going to describe Brockenhurst college as a jewel in the educational crown of the New Forest, but that is not incompatible with what he said about the out standing college in his constituency.
Normally, when Brockenhurst college contacts me, it is to report some good news or an outstanding success. Occasionally, it does so to invite me to participate in an event or, at general election time, in some sort of quasi-parliamentary debate with aspiring parliamentarians. Today, however, the principal of the college, Mike Snell, who is not unduly alarmist, told me that a major crisis in further education funding is felt to be building up in Hampshire, and that its 22 FE colleges are in for a rough time next year. He has calculated the amount that Brockenhurst college gets is £3,400 per year per sixth-former. As far as he has been able to work out—he stands firmly by these figures—most schools get at least £300 to £400 more than that per pupil per year, and schools with smaller sixth forms could get as much as £700 to £800 a year more.
It is said that all good speeches should make a single point. My point is that the difference is unfair. Will the Minister consider trying to provide similar funding per pupil per annum for sixth formers doing similar courses, whether they are in colleges of further education, sixth form colleges, or school sixth forms?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Three hon. Members are attempting to catch my eye. I shall be able to call all of them if they restrict their remarks to five minutes each.
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Mrs. Annette L. Brooke: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on his comprehensive introduction. Given the time constraint, I shall concentrate on my local college.
My hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) mentioned the problems faced by the south-west, which have ramifications for Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole, where a shortfall of some £10 million in the next financial year is anticipated. There is deep concern about the impact on all courses at Bournemouth and Poole college, a large college with 27,000 students, 350 of whom are international students.
Despite the general prosperity of the area, almost a quarter of the local population has been identified as having poor literacy and numeracy skills. The problem is that it seems that the students who will suffer because of cuts will be in the group defined as "other". Funding supports programmes that respond to the needs of business. If an employer does not want or is unable to send an employee for a national vocational or similar qualification, colleges use the "other" funding to support flexible and customised qualifications, such as open college network modules. Those are very effective, but the cuts to funding will mean that choices have to be made. The students who miss out could be those aged over 19 who cannot afford to pay. How are we to determine who will be cut out of the loop because there is not enough money? Surely such considerations are contrary to the Government's education strategy.

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Others who might suffer are those whom the Government have identified as being able to get a level 2 qualification but who have not previously acquired a level 2 or equivalent qualification. My local college expects that such people will constitute a priority group, funded by charging or excluding other over-19s who are assumed already to have a level 2 or level 3 qualification. It is a difficult problem. How are we to meet the needs of adults without level 2 qualifications? The local skills council has indicated that no additional learning support funding is likely to be available. People who have not been in education for some time make up the very group that needs help and support, yet that is where the cuts will really bite.
The contribution by employers towards further education costs is variable. The Construction Industry Training Board, for example, has a model scheme and works closely with further education bodies, but many groups do not pay a levy or contribute to training costs. Business needs investment in higher-level skills, but in Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole, the majority of employers are micro, small or medium-sized businesses. It is unrealistic to expect them to pay for training or to contribute towards filling the funding gap.
The Government will have to solve the problem; FE courses must be available to all who need them and wish to enhance their skill profiles. Relevant, quality courses are essential to local and national economic development. I hope that the Minister will have more than kind words for the FE sector, and that he will make and adhere to firm commitments —with a time scale attached about future funding.
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Mr. David Chaytor: In the past seven years, the Government have brought more stability to the further education sect or, invested more in it, made more improvements to its physical infrastructure and more greatly enhanced the educational opportunities that it offers than any Government in the preceding 70 years. The 19 per cent. real-terms increase given to FE in the current spending period is vastly more than anything given in the period 1979 to 1987. It is also vastly more than anything that would have been allocated to FE through the Liberal Democrats' former policy of raising income tax by 1 p, and anything that would be allocated under their current policy of increasing the top rate of income tax to 50 per cent.
Having set the record straight on that score, I note that two outstanding colleges in my constituency—Bury college and the Holy Cross sixth-form college—have benefited enormously in both revenue and capital terms from the Government's financial allocations in the past seven years. However, the continuing funding gap between colleges and schools cannot be ignored any longer. Introducing the debate, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) referred to a question that I asked during a meeting of the Education and Skills Committee, in which I pressed Ministers for a time scale. At this week's meeting of the Committee, the chairman of the Learning and Skills Council admitted that the funding gap was between 10 per cent. and 12 per cent., which might even reflect a slight widening of the gap in the last year or two. It critical that the Government set a time scale for closing that gap as part of their strategy for 14-to-19 education and training.
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Students in adjacent institutions pursue the same course, yet are funded at different rates, while teachers in adjacent institutions teach the same course, yet are paid at different rates. Quite apart from those injustices, however, my district and that of the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), who spoke about the college for 11 to 16-year-olds in Horsham, are among those that some years ago sensibly and intelligently reorganised their education systems so that 11-to-16 schools fed into colleges. The districts thereby delivered one of the most coherent existing models for 14-to-19 education, yet those very districts are penalised: not only do they lose out through a lower rate of FE funding, but the sons and daughters of our constituents do not benefit from an enhanced rate for sixth-form colleges. That anomaly must end.
There is a discrepancy in the revenue funding planned for schools and colleges. Perhaps there are reasons for that, but I am less concerned about that discrepancy than about the lack of co-ordination between the investment in colleges and investment in schools. When thinking about a 14-to-19 phase in education, it is ludicrous to separate capital investment for schools from capital investment for colleges. The process must be coherent. Ministers in the Department for Education and Skills might have heard this message before, but I fear that although we are setting in train the admirable process of rebuilding every secondary school in the country, we are not doing so as part of the necessary reorganisation of 16-to-19 education. I repeat to my hon. Friend the Minister that we should take our foot off the accelerator in the "Building Schools for the Future" programme. We should see the process in the context of the reorganisation that the Learning and Skills Council is trying to achieve through its area inspections, and, more importantly, the strategic area review. It is important that we receive the maximum benefit from the record level of capital investment in schools and colleges that we are planning.
Finally, there is an overwhelming case for enhanced funding for FE in the next spending review. Any college principal who in the weeks leading up to the spending review decision did not claim that there was a sense of imminent crisis would not be doing their job properly. We take that as read and we understand the context. However, the issue encompasses not only getting an extra 10 per cent. into FE funding, but the necessary structural reorganisation.
The hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) gave some interesting figures about enhanced funding for sixth-form colleges generally, particularly small ones. In England today there are far too many small sixth-form colleges delivering inadequate provision and achieving poorer results than larger sixth forms and colleges. They are not equipped to deliver the broad and balanced curriculum for which the Tomlinson report argues. Let us look again at what the LSCs are doing and apply a little more pressure on them to take urgent action about structural reorganisation.
We should also give every encouragement to Mike Tomlinson and his committee to get the new curriculum in place as quickly as possible. The new, broader, more balanced, enhanced curriculum, which combines vocational and academic elements, will deliver the 14-to-19 structure that we need. It will force small, inadequate six forms to see the writing on the wall and to

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realise that they have to collaborate—that they cannot survive as independent institutions. That will be one of the most important means by which we close the gap between school and college funding.
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Dr. Vincent Cable: When I introduced a debate on this topic about 18 months ago, there were five of us in the Chamber: three party spokesmen and two others. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) has greater drawing power than I do, or whether we have become more aware of the subject, probably because of the lobby tomorrow.
Richmond upon Thames college in my constituency comes fairly near the top of most conventional league tables for academic and vocational results, both absolutely and in value-added terms. It is a remarkably comprehensive institution where some of the most high-flying sixth formers in the country, who go on to Oxbridge, mix with children from very deprived areas of south-west London, who are doing vocational courses. A remarkable ethos has grown around that remarkable mix.
The college has its problems, some of which have been hinted at. The buildings are dilapidated and totally out of date. There is a serious problem with staff morale, and the staff age structure is wrong—many are over 50. These days we are used to the idea of picket lines and staff demoralisation over pay and conditions. The college principal has written me a rather complex and daunting five-page note on his financial problems.
I should like to make three brief points of substance. The first relates to differences in the salaries of college lecturers and of teachers teaching the same subjects in the same way in schools. That is a serious problem for the morale of college lecturers, which manifests itself in some serious practical ways. For example, the LEA in my borough has hit on the good idea of taking behaviourally disturbed schoolchildren aged 14 and above seriously, and putting them on vocational courses at the college in the hope that it can do something with them. It does, but the college lecturers are paid several thousand pounds a year less than the schoolteachers who failed to deal with those kids. They probably would not be admitted to the school because they are not sufficiently qualified.
The problem has more invidious effects. The LEA has hit on the idea of having sixth forms within schools as well as within the college. The college will provide sixth-form courses on a franchise. College lecturers will go into schools to teach A-levels for several thousand pounds a year less than schoolteachers teaching GCSEs receive. Those are the kind of anomalies that have arisen out of the disparity in pay. The Government have promised to address the problem but last year's 3.5 per cent. pay award goes nowhere near to narrowing that gap and resolving the associated anomalies.
My second point relates to capital funding. The point has been made several times already, but I should like to underline the numbers. My hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk drew a distinction between the £5 billion for schools and the £400 million for colleges. My local
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college has put in a bid for £70 million. It is hoping to raise half of that amount through selling off land; nevertheless, on its own, it is putting in a bid for 10 per cent. of the total national budget. Obviously that is not realistic when dozens of other colleges are also bidding. There is a major rationing problem on the capital side. I do not know what the Government's answer is.
My third and final point leads on directly from what the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) said a few moments ago about Tomlinson. The Government's agenda of promoting continuity from 14 to 19 is clearly attractive to many in the secondary and further education sectors, but colleges are asking what preparations are being made to the system to support such a change. They have seen little evidence of any preparation: there is something called the increased flexibility programme, but little else. Will the Minister give us some indication of how the Tomlinson process will feed through into the college sector?
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Mr. David Rendel: I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb). I congratulate him on raising the issue and on the excellent way in which he dealt with it. Everyone appreciated the excellence of his speech. The lack of response to the debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) last year may not have been due to my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk, but that could certainly be the case in future, given his excellent speech on the issue today.
It is nice to have a well attended debate on this important subject, and other hon. Members would have liked to be here. My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Keetch) has had many representations from his constituency and would certainly have been with us had it not been for a prior engagement.
Of those who have spoken, only the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) is apparently fully satisfied with the level of further education funding. All is well in his world; it is the best of all possible worlds. However, some of us find that there are difficulties with the level of education funding—even under this Labour Government, of which the hon. Gentleman is so proud. I certainly look forward to seeing how representatives of the Association of Colleges respond to his remarks tomorrow.
Those taking part in the debate might well be forgiven their sense of déjà vu, because we have been here before; we had a similar debate in Westminster Hall almost exactly a year ago, on 14 May 2003, when we debated FE funding. That debate, too, was initiated by a Liberal Democrat, which indicates, as does the presence of many of my hon. Friends today, how seriously my party takes the issue.
I had the chance to speak during that debate and, among other things, I said:
"For a very long time, FE colleges have been the Cinderella service of our education and skills system: under-recognised, undervalued, and underfunded." —[Official Report. Westminster Hall, 14 May 2003; Vol. 405, c. 114WH.]
Sadly, that did not have much effect, and my comments still hold true today. The failure to address that issue is perhaps all the more striking when we consider just how important it is. We are talking about a crucial gateway

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opportunity; it is crucial to achieving the Government's "Widening participation" agenda and to wider strategies aimed at tackling social exclusion and skills shortages—in short, to social justice and our country's economic future.
FE colleges are the golden thread that links provision for 14 to 16-year-olds, 16 to 19-year-olds, higher education—they account for 12 per cent. —and adult learning. The FE sector has twice as many students as higher education, and two thirds of them study part-time, but the Government's Higher Education Bill contained nothing for part-time stud ants and failed to acknowledge the contribution of FE colleges. We must have a lobby to champion the sector, and it must be equal to that which has championed the cause of HE.
It is to the Government's credit that funding for HE has increased in recent years, but that must be set in context. We are playing catch-up after many years of underinvestment. Between 1993–94 and 1998–99, real-terms funding per student in FE fell year on year. Overall, it fell by 15 per cent., from £4,030 to £3,420, at 2002–03 prices. Despite increases in subsequent years, unit funding remains below 1993–94 levels.
Meanwhile, student numbers in the FE sector are expanding, and the large increase in overall funding masks the fact that funding per student is growing at a far less impressive rate. Numbers are expected to increase still further, which will increase the funding pressure. Even if existing participation rates are maintained, the rising population of 16 to 19-year-olds will increase the numbers of 16-year-olds in schools and colleges by 52,000, or 4.5 per cent., by 2008.
Like our schools, colleges have had to face extra costs, such as rising national insurance and pension contributions and rising pay for teaching staff. Overall, therefore, colleges continue to face severe funding shortfalls and uncertainty. According to the Association of Colleges, a significant number of colleges are now being forced to cut staff.
In the limited time available, I want to press the Minister on two key issues. The first, which has been mentioned, is the discrepancy in the funding of schools and colleges. Surely, we should apply the principle of activity funding. An activity that is carried out at a college or a school should be funded at the same level.
The Government expect colleges to shoulder the main burden of responsibility for the increased participation of 16 to 18-year-olds, but the college sector receives less funding than school sixth forms. According to the Association of Colleges' spending review submission, the total funding gap between the two sectors for the same work is 10 per cent. Yet in the age group that we are discussing, more than 700,000 are studying in colleges compared with 400,000 in schools. Moreover, college intakes include a larger proportion of young people from less well-off, lower-attainment backgrounds, a point made forcefully by my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk.
According to the Government's youth cohort study, 65 per cent. of 16-year-olds who stay at school have eight or more GCSEs at grades A to C, compared to only 33 per cent. of those who enrol in the college sector. Nineteen per cent. of 16-year-olds in school come from unskilled manual backgrounds, compared to 38 per cent. in the college sector. Where is the sense of justice in maintaining such a funding discrepancy?
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During the passage of the Learning and Skills Act 2000, the Government promised to converge funding upwards; when does the Minister expect that convergence to take place? There is a strong case for a streamlined funding system, rather than a system of separate bureaucracies, with local education authorities, regional learning and skills councils, the regional development agencies and the HEFC all serving different parts of the system.
Another vital issue is the bureaucratic and regulatory burdens being shouldered by the college sector. New money has come with strings attached, as it so often seems to whenever it is provided by this Labour Government. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State talked about trusting the front line as a key principle of public sector reform. Yet they also push what the Secretary of State described as
"a new system of targets and performance management"
for colleges with resources linked to performance contracts. There is even a target to reduce bureaucracy; only new Labour could introduce a centrally imposed target with the aim of reducing bureaucracy.
A further concern is the huge number of separate funding streams through which colleges receive their finances. A typical college has about 30 different sources of funds; far too much money is stuck into specific pots, all of which require separate applications. Sometime soon, I suspect that somebody in one of the colleges will create a further education course in how to apply for money to run FE courses.
The work of the LSC's bureaucracy taskforce made it clear that there is significant scope to reduce the bureaucratic and regulatory burden on colleges, with the potential to release significant resources for the front line. Two quotes from the taskforce report in November 2002 illustrate the point; first:
"The FE sector is full to overflowing with regulation and administration…Over-regulation and excessive administrative burden distract and pre-occupy colleges so that the learner and learning can at times seem like incidentals rather than the heart of further education."
Secondly:
"The key message from colleges in the regional seminars held by the Task Force was their sense that bureaucracy derived from mistrust. A new relationship must be built around trust and transparency rather than monitoring, supervision and multiple review overlays."
I hope that the Minister will use the debate to explain what progress has been made in implementing the recommendations of the bureaucracy taskforce in this important report.
Six years after the groundbreaking report "Learning Works", the Government are still reluctant to recognise the importance of the FE sector, and there is a lack of clarity and of joined-up thinking. Why is there a discrepancy in funding between schools and FE colleges? Why are part-time students not given the same support as full-time students? Where is the joined-up thinking on the relationship between schools, colleges and the workplace in respect of the curriculum framework? Will there be sufficient resources to ensure that staff pay agreements are implemented? The list could go on.

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The persistence of the concerns shows that the Government still undervalue FE, which should be the learning powerhouse of society and the economy. Let us hope that in another year's time we are not lamenting the same failure to recognise how vital these issues are.
3.10 pm
Mr. Mark Simmonds: I add my congratulations to those that have been offered to the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on securing the debate. His contribution was an excellent analysis of the disparity between the Government's message and delivery on the ground. I thought that his speech was clear and well researched.
What we are debating is essential to the educational establishment, and there is cross-party support for that view. We need to work together to ensure that the further education sector does what it is supposed to do. I was delighted when I saw the debate on the Order Paper, because the ages of 16 to 19 are a critical stage of students' education. They make fundamentally important decisions at that time about the direction of their education.
Schools, sixth-form colleges and FE colleges all have a central role to play in providing disparate curriculums—helping pupils either through the current A-level system into higher education or into the vocational sector through foundation degrees or other routes and, it is to be hoped, ultimately into HE. Like most other hon. Members who have spoken today, I want to talk about the FE sector, although if time allows I should like to make a few comments about particular sixth-form colleges later.
Why must we get the FE sector right? The reason is the economy and the skills gap, a gap that appears to be widening. It is vital to our economy that education for 16 to 19-year-olds should improve and that sufficient resources should be allocated to it. Employers have lamented the lack of skilled workers. According to a recent survey of the Institute of Directors, only 53 per cent. of the UK work force have level 2 qualifications— five or more GCSEs at grades A to C, or equivalent qualifications. In Germany the figure is 82 per cent. and in France it is 71 per cent.
If Britain is to remain competitive and a leading economic power, the skills gap in the British work force must be dealt with. Thirty-seven per cent. of employers have encountered skills shortages in the process of recruiting, and 41 per cent. have claimed that existing employees lack the necessary skills for their current role.
Employers are happy to contribute to job training and to pay for that, but they do not think that it is necessary for them to pay for basic education that should have been provided in schools and colleges. There is clearly a dislocation between the education and business sectors and the Government have failed to engage with business to secure sufficient private sector funding in FE. The sector skills councils that the Government established are at best patchy throughout the country.
The economy has restructured in recent years and the FE sector has had to look elsewhere for clients. However, only £44 million of £8 billion in FE funding
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came from business in 2002. Colleges are encouraged to rely on Government bodies—specifically the Learning and Skills Council—for their funding. One leading principal commented that
"our financial strategy is to maximise LSC income. The LSC is the only game in town".
The Government should be considering ways to encourage the FE sector to engage with business. At present, non-public sector groups are regarded with great suspicion.
The LSC is not perfect. Comments from a variety of sources suggest that both at national and local levels it is bureaucratic, lacks understanding and has large overhead costs, although I understand that the relatively new chief executive intends to deal with that. The predecessor of the LSC had about £3 billion to distribute, and in the process spent £15 million on administrative overheads. The current council distributes between £7 billion and £8 billion, and £230 million to £250 million of that goes on administrative costs.
I understand that a tremendous battle is currently taking place in the Government, between Education Ministers and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The ODPM wants to abolish the national LSC and put the funding directly into the regional development agencies. I should be interested to learn whether the Minister has anything to say about that. Has his boss, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, won the battle, or has the Deputy Prime Minister won it?
The hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) made his usual impassioned plea for the FE sector. I did not agree with everything that he said about supporting the Government, but he made a good point about the Tomlinson report. The Minister needs to deal with that today. If Tomlinson is to be implemented—if vocational education is to be extended to 14-year-olds, certainly to a greater extent than it is at present and not just part time, but full time—how will the different rates of funding be allocated to the same educational establishment that may provide a vocational qualification that stretches over two years, with the first part done before the age of 16 and the second part after 16? If the current structures stay in place, there will be an enormous disparity of funding, and the post-16 part will be far more poorly funded.
There are particular problems in the FE sector that the Government need to address. Some have been highlighted today, including the complexity of funding and the disparity of funding streams, of which there are up to 30. The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) referred to that. Business involvement is being sidelined, and there are staff shortages and retention issues. There are high pupil drop-out rates, particularly for those doing the qualifications that the Government have introduced.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley) highlighted building maintenance, and I believe that there should he significant capital improvements along the lines of those that have taken place in schools. There is also increasing Government bureaucracy, through not just the LSC but other systems introduced by the Government. On average, colleges have apparently had to employ seven to nine additional administrative staff to deal with the bureaucracy caused by the LSC and other Government projects.

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The current lack of money in FE hinders collaboration between 14-to-16 education and the FE sector, although I was delighted that my FE college in Boston recently won a national award for encouraging collaboration between the FE sector and schools. At least 50 colleges recruited additional 16 to 18-year-old students in 2002–03 on a promise of extra funding from the LSC. Most are still waiting for payment, and in some cases colleges will not be paid for another 12 months. Drop-out rates for 16 to 18-year-olds are high, and colleges are often left out of pocket because when a student leaves, they lose the funding. Colleges have had to put in place investment to recruit staff to teach students who then drop out.
It is clear that one essential Government role and priority in the FE sector is the provision of basic skills and level 2 courses. Those courses are essential for people trying to escape socio-economic deprivation, but many are under threat. I am sure that the Minister does not enjoy seeing headlines such as, "Cash dries up for illiterate adults", and we must ensure that such events do not happen in real life.
The Association of Colleges informs us that 70,000 courses for adults are under threat as the Government prioritise 16 to 19-year-old education at the expense of adult learning, and I am sure that we all have examples of that from our constituencies. I received a letter only yesterday about a teacher who had been to the local learning and skills council to find out about courses for September, only to be told that funding for classes such as yoga, t'ai chi, dance, art and keep fit was to be withdrawn. She asks why that should be the case while the LSC is working with the health sector to encourage people to keep fit, healthy and therefore out of hospitals. There is a problem in that.
Many adults are being turned away from literacy and numeracy classes as cash dries up, and colleges are being told to cut level 2 courses that are not on the Government's narrowly prescribed approved list. Many basic courses are seen as a drain on budgets as they do not contribute to level 2 targets. There are higher priorities, so they are facing the axe. Despite the tenacity and effort of those who work in the FE sector, those are all problems, which the Government need to address.
This is not a one-way street: there are problems that the colleges need to address. The recent comments by Mark Haysom, the new chief executive of the LSC, who claimed that more than 200 colleges are underperforming and funded at too high a level, need to be addressed by the individual colleges. Furthermore, the recent reports by Ofsted's adult learning inspectorate left no doubt that there was room for improvement in FE teaching.
Many issues need to be addressed, but the Government must ensure that funding goes directly to the colleges to enable them to do their job and provide the education that is so badly needed in our communities throughout the country.
3.20 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Mr. Stephen Twigg): I join other Members in congratulating the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on securing the debate. The good attendance by all three main parties demonstrates
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the strong cross-party commitment to the further education sector. As the hon. Gentleman said, it is timely that the debate is taking place on the day before the lobby of Parliament and the meetings organised by the Association of Colleges.
In my 10 minutes, I shall focus on the three main issues that emerged during the debate. The first is the funding gap between FE and schools for the 16-to-19 age group. The second issue is capital and, in particular, the connection to the 14-to-19 age group and the Tomlinson report. Finally, if time allows, I shall deal with some of the issues relating to bureaucracy, on which the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Bendel) focused. I acknowledge the apologies from the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) and the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), who were unable to stay for the end of the debate, despite speaking earlier on. I understand the reasons for that.
It is good that we have this opportunity to recognise the important achievements of the FE sector. As the hon. Member for North Norfolk rightly said in his opening remarks, and with his focus on 16 to 19-yearolds, young people who go to FE colleges at 16 are far more likely to come from some of our most deprived and disadvantaged communities and families. It is correct to place the debate in that context.
Also underlying the debate is the focus that we have sought to place on increasing participation in education and training among 16 to 19-year-olds. If we consider international comparisons, we see that, as a country, we are doing reasonably well in many respects in primary, secondary and higher education. However, we continue to languish towards the bottom of the international league tables for the numbers who leave education at 16 and, in particular, 17. I have no doubt that FE, along with school sixth forms, has a central role to play if we are to rise from that position and give opportunities to far more young people.
We are pleased that, in the recent Budget, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer was able to set out the overall settlement for education, unlike for other Departments, so that we can start the process of planning for the forthcoming spending review period. The overall financial position is much tighter in this spending review than it was in the previous one, but the extra for education will represent an increase of about £7 billion a year by the end of the spending review period compared with the current year.
Hon. Members will be disappointed but not surprised that I cannot say today what the overall settlement will be for FE. The Department is still working through the detail, but we hope to be able to make further announcements before the summer recess in July, and we welcome the opportunity that this debate provides to listen to views on the pressures and the priorities from hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber.
As has been said, the 2002 spending review gave a significant boost to spending in FE, with an increase of more than £1 billion in the FE sector in the three years to 2005—06. The need for that is demonstrable and was set out in this debate. The extra investment has enabled us to launch the "Success for All" strategy, which is aimed at raising standards, ensuring high quality and focusing on reform in the best interests of the FE sector. Critically, part of the strategy is to direct additional resources into high-quality learning.

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Let us consider the academic year that is about to finish—2003–04. The core funding rates per qualification in school sixth forms have increased by 3 per cent., whereas the rate for FE and sixth-form colleges has increased by the larger amount of 4.5 per cent. Our expenditure plans for next year will see that continue. However, hon. Members are right that, if we compare like with like—if we compare the funding rate for an A-level in a school with that in an FE or sixth-form college—we see that for 2002–03, there was about a 10 per cent. gap—£734 for schools, and £663 for FE colleges. I understand that it narrowed in 2003–04, the year that is just finishing—the figure is 9 per cent., and we expect it to narrow to 8 per cent. in 2004–05 and to 7 per cent. in 2005–06. We are now dealing with the following spending review period.
Norman Lamb: There seems to be some dispute about the figures. None the less, would the Minister confirm whether the Government are still committed to closing the funding gap absolutely in order to achieve equity between the two sectors; and will he say what time scale will be needed to achieve that objective?
Mr. Twigg: I have to disappoint the hon. Gentleman about the time scale. I was coming to that next, because it was raised by a number of Members, and I can understand why. I am not able to set out a time scale, and I acknowledge that the funding gap remains a challenge. I might make myself popular among hon. Members in Westminster Hall by doing so, but I would not want to return to the Department having given such a commitment without licence to do so.
In the three minutes that remain, I shall briefly refer to the various questions asked about the critical matter of capital investment. As several hon. Members said, it relates to the work of the Tomlinson inquiry and reform of education for 14 to 19-year-olds. We have seen a significant improvement in the amount of money going into college buildings. A figure of £400 million has been cited. That is the amount going through the LSC into capital funding.
Prior to Labour coming to power, no funding was earmarked for capital investment in FE. In 2002–03, the figure was £231 million; next year, it will be £400 million. It is a significant boost. However, hon. Members are right to say that that contrasts with the capital investment programme that will clearly benefit school sixth forms. I accept the hidden compliment on the Government's extra investment in schools, but I accept also that we want consistency and synergy between the programmes for schools and for colleges.
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As part of the Building Schools for the Future programme, we want synergy between the investment that it brings to our secondary schools, and therefore to school sixth forms, and the opportunity for additional investment in the 16-to-19 facilities provided by FE colleges and sixth- form colleges. It is important that we take that work forward. A number of hon. Members have made that point, but it was powerfully made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor).
If we are to have consistency, and if we are to be in a position to meet the challenges of 14-to-19 education successfully in all parts of the country, it makes no sense to say that we should have an investment programme for one part of the system but not for another. We will be working closely with the local LSCs and local education authorities. I give one example from my work as the Minister with responsibilities for London schools of a London authority that is likely to be in an early phase of the programme. We are currently considering how to ensure additional sixth-form college provision can take advantage of Building Schools for the Future funding. There are other possibilities, and work is continuing.
Ms Walley: Is the Minister prepared to have similar talks in north Staffordshire?
Mr. Twigg: I am happy to give that commitment. I am sure that my hon. Friend who has responsibility for that area will not mind if I give a commitment to take that forward in discussion with colleagues from Staffordshire and other parts of the country.
I apologise that I shall not have the chance to address the important questions about bureaucracy and funding streams that were made by several hon. Members, and particularly by the hon. Member for Newbury. However, I undertake to write to the hon. Gentleman and to those other hon. Members whose comments I have not been able to answer. It is evident from our debate that there is a strong cross-party commitment to FE, particularly its role in education for 16 to 19–year olds, and I hope that the Department can take it forward.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I congratulate the Minister on his reply and I thank the House for an excellent debate. Westminster Hall is taking off; it is better attended than the Chamber itself.
3.29 pm
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

Schools (Cornwall)
3.45 pm
Matthew Taylor: I am pleased to see the Minister in the Chamber. I appreciate the time that he is spending here, as well as the time that he doubtless spent doing his homework on a wonderful part of the world. I hope that he has enjoyed finding out more about our schools. He is very welcome to visit the area at any time to speak to some of the head teachers of my local schools. In the past few months, I have visited about a dozen of those schools as part of the process of finding out more about what is happening on the ground.
There is much good news, and I shall start from that point, because Ministers are inevitably inclined to assume that they will be given nothing but brickbats and to respond by telling us about all the things that are good, but which they do not expect us to have reflected on. Perhaps I can get some of those things out of the way and we can agree on them.
The new school buildings that I opened a couple of weeks ago at Goonhavern primary school are particularly good news. When I was first elected, I was taken straight to the school by a community activist called David White, who is sadly now dead. He also happened to be a Liberal Democrat, although that was beside the point as far as he was concerned, and simply a way of twisting my arm to get me to see the very old portakabins and temporary buildings such as the school hall, which was so dangerous at one stage that the children could not use it in a high wind. I must say that Goonhavern was not the only school in that situation—being on the north coast of Cornwall, that was not a rare experience. Those new buildings were made possible by a drastic change in Government investment after the Conservatives left office. We argued for a long time that that investment was necessary, and we welcome the fact that the Government made it possible. The new buildings at Goonhavern were directly funded by the county council. Others have been funded through private finance initiatives, which are giving many schools in the Truro area new buildings.
More is still to be done, but the teachers and parents to whom I speak welcome this funding. We supported it, as we supported some of the tax measures that have also made increased spending possible through revenue spending in schools. I have seen some great programmes in schools. I have seen the results of that investment, which I welcome. Everything that I say is in the context of my appreciation that there has been a major step change for the good. The Liberal Democrat party has supported that change. The Conservative party has not supported it, for its own reasons.
I shall concentrate on two serious issues, on which I would appreciate the Minister's response. First, it is acknowledged that there is a growing number of surplus places in our schools, and especially our primary schools, because of a fall in the birth rate. There are simply not enough children. In some Cornish villages, that problem has been made worse by the fact that families with young children can no longer afford many of the properties in the more popular coastal resorts.
Schools such as St. Mawes, which I recently visited, and Roseland secondary school are concerned about that increasing number of surplus places, but without an
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affordable housing programme for local families, it seems unlikely that those numbers can be made up, at least in the immediate future. However, I noticed in the local papers recently that this year's birth figures have shot up again, so perhaps in five year's time we will be discussing a shortage of places if schools close because of the fluctuations in school numbers. The schools in many of the villages that I represent are small, but once they close, the heart is ripped out of the community. They are a meeting place and the place to which young families can expect to send their children, so it is even less likely that they will live in the village, because the facilities are not there.
A discussion has started to emerge in Government. I shall refer later to a written statement on the subject made by the Minister for School Standards on 27 February. We have exchanged words about that statement and I want to explore what he meant and what the Government's position is. We share an awareness of the issue and a concern about how to tackle it, but we do not share a common approach as to what should be done.
The second issue is the continuing shortfall in funding per pupil for Cornish schools compared with the national average. Indeed, the gap between the national average and what pupils in Cornwall can expect has widened. That is based on fundamental flaws in the way in which the formulae are assessed.
The written statement by the Minister for School Standards on 27 February referred to 482,000 surplus places nationally in January 2003—about 11 per cent. of the total capacity. He commented:
"In some cases it is sensible to propose the closure or amalgamation of schools".—[Official Report, 27 February 2004: Vol. 418, c. 64WS.]
He also said that alternative options could be examined. The situation in Cornwall is not that different; there are 4,000 surplus places, which is 10 per cent. of total capacity. That surplus is anticipated to increase by a further 500 places this year.
One might ask why Cornwall should be particularly concerned about the issue. In a large town or city with several schools providing places, a school could close or amalgamate, although that may not be popular, or class numbers or staff could be reduced to accommodate surpluses. Local authorities have often been slow to respond to long-term changes in demographics and the Government have had to prompt them to act. We all understand how controversial it is to close any local school; even if two schools are virtually next door to each other, there will be advocates for both.
In a rural community such as my constituency, most schools are village schools serving a distinct community. A figure of 10 per cent. for surplus places would take account of only 10 or 15 pupils, so it would perhaps refer to as few as a couple of places in the school. To allow parental choice to be exercised, people should have access to their local school. If every school were exactly on the margin, in some years pupils would be unnecessarily forced to move to different schools. That already happens to a certain extent because of the Government's class size rules. It is good that class sizes are reducing, but we would prefer that to happen on a whole school average basis rather than on the basis of rigid enforcement class by class.

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Even if a school is reduced to very small numbers, it is not necessarily wise to close it. There has been pressure to close small schools in Cornwall in the past, because they have been seen as unviable. However, those schools were not closed and a few years later the numbers jumped up again for one reason or another.
Mr. Paul Tyler: Another issue peculiar to Cornwall is that the unexpected arrival of a large family during the course of a school year can make all the difference to the viability of a small school. The unpredictability of such a school's roll is a considerable problem. I credit the Government for the fact that during my parliamentary career, unemployment levels have drastically dropped, which means that more young families with more young children remain in Cornwall. In a village community, that adds to the unpredictability. I endorse what my hon. Friend says about seeking to plan on the basis that a dip in the roll may not be permanent.
Matthew Taylor: My hon. Friend is right. The example of Mithian school, which I recently visited, springs to mind. Its indoor toilets were the first school building that I opened in Cornwall, having been elected in 1987. At that time, there were few children at the school, but it is now thriving. Things can readily change.
In Cornwall, there are 165 schools with fewer than 200 pupils, 102 with fewer than 100, and 32 with about 50. In very small schools, there is only a handful of places.
Andrew George: My hon. Friend is making a great case. He is absolutely right that there is generally a disproportionate fall in smaller rural settlements, where there is difficulty in achieving a school roll across the whole of Cornwall. Certainly, in the market towns, there does not seem to be a very steep fall in school rolls. Does he agree that, in those smaller villages, parents and the community do not campaign for their children to have a poor education, but campaign strongly to retain their schools not just as a community resource, but because they provide a high level of education? In the Isles of Scilly in my constituency, there is high volatility in school rolls—they can go down to very small numbers—but it is important that, although there may not be water between some village schools, they are retained.
Matthew Taylor: I agree with my hon. Friend. The director of education for Cornwall LEA made the point well. He said:
"A few small schools in Cornwall have no intake of 4-year-olds next year".
The fluctuations are a real issue, but he went on to say:
"A crude approach to closure would be a last resort, but falling rolls are going to be a very serious in some schools in Cornwall."
We would not disagree with the Government about finding alternative ways of dealing with the problem, but the concern that the director raised is that, while there has been a perception that the Government have supported LEAs such as ours, which are struggling to retain and keep open rural community schools, the
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statement made by the Minister for School Standards raises the prospect of closures, although he said that that would be the last resort.
We are hoping today for an indication from the Minister of the Government's current position on closures. Has the Department for Education and Skills launched what is in effect a policy review in this area, and if so, what timetable is it working to? When shall we see conclusions and options being considered, and how might they be presented for debate? It is important that local community representatives have a chance to engage in the debate before decisions are taken that would have a social impact wider than simply an educational one in those communities. Incidentally, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) said, one of the reasons why the town schools may be full and the rural schools empty is the affordability of housing for young families. If the Government's policy to address housing issues is taken forward—I hope that it will be—that might change.
On schools funding, I should like to mention some figures to the Minister. We know that schools funding has increased per pupil under the Government; we welcomed that and supported the tax rises. It is also the case that Cornwall county council's policy, for which Liberal Democrat councillors pushed hard, was to passport through all the increases directly. In 2003–04, the full 6.4 per cent. increase was passed on, as was the full 6.1 per cent. increase in 2004–05, not just to schools but to all areas of pupil provision, including special educational needs. However, that was at the expense of other areas of country services; the impact of the rise was reflected across the board of local authority funding.
The Minister for School Standards, in responding to the concerns that I raised about the disparity between Cornish and national funding per pupil, said that schools are not underfunded, because of the rises. However, they are underfunded compared with schools elsewhere, and such relative underfunding has been increasing. In 1997–98—the last Conservative Budget, in effect—the gap for primary pupils was £73, and it was £84 for secondary pupils. By 2000, when I raised the question in an Adjournment debate, that gap had risen to £105 per primary pupil and £117 per secondary pupil. By 2002–03, my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) mentioned in an Adjournment debate that the gap had risen to £126 per secondary pupil, which is the equivalent of £126,000 less for a typical 1,000–pupil school, and £220 per primary pupil, or £44,000 less for a typical 200–pupil primary school.
The latest figures that I have, which the Minister for School Standards confirmed in a recent parliamentary question, show that the figure for secondary schools in England is £3,106 per pupil per year; in Cornwall, that figure is £2,935. That is a shortfall of £171 per secondary school pupil every year —a £170,000 shortfall from the national average for a secondary school in Cornwall. In primary schools, the shortfall is £155 per pupil or £31,000 for a school.
Such figures are based on a formula assessment that is meant to take local needs into account. I have just been discussing keeping open small schools; we know that that is relatively expensive and that there are a large

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number of them in Cornwall. However, the funding formula seems to assume that we can somehow teach those children more cheaply than on average. The second problem is that the Government attach quite a weighting within the formulae to relative wage levels. Cornwall, of course, has the lowest wages in the country.
The whole of the south-west suffers, because it does not get the old area cost adjustment introduced by the Conservatives, which weighted things towards the south-east and London and helped their favoured areas. Labour has put some effort into tackling the disparity for northern cities and some funding has moved there, closing the gaps. In our part of the world, however, the gap has steadily increased, and I have just illustrated by how much.
We are now seeing the same thing in health. The formula adjustment used to assume that there was a 3 per cent. gap between the cost of treating a patient in our part of the world and the national average, because of low wages. That has just been increased to 11 per cent. in the latest suggestions. If that happens, there will be a catastrophic shortfall in health funding.
The problem has been established in education for much longer. Every year the gap is getting wider and the shortfalls are getting bigger, yet the costs of maintaining small rural village schools are not decreasing, but increasing. The latest wage figure evidence from Cornwall—not the statistical figures, which are a couple of years out of date—suggests that the programmes that the Government and Europe are supporting to change the Cornish economy and to get wages up through objective 1 are working. If anything, the gaps are disappearing, but the formulae do not acknowledge that.
I passionately believe that the formulae are unfair. While we do not expect a special deal, we are entitled to expect a fair one. Above all, the formulae reflect only one thing: not a proper working out of what is needed, but the historic spending pattern. It has been true under all Governments, Conservative and Labour, that when they have set local authority spending figures, they have based them primarily on historic spending. One does not want to take away too much from anyone, and therefore one cannot give too much to anyone.
Unfortunately, in years gone by, independent councillors in Cornwall—not those under party control, as it happens—who ran the country over many years, have had the key objective of low expenditure. They prided themselves on not spending much and not providing much service. Since the formulae have come in and have reflected that, we have never broken away from that pattern of historic low expenditure, and neither have we been allowed to do so by the local authority spending and capping regimes. We have seen that again today.
The problem needs to be addressed. I have put it on the table to raise the concern with the Minister and to make him aware of it. He would be welcome to come down to the area and to see both the good results and the quality of education that we have, and the real difficulty that our schools have in meeting thy funding in what is, incidentally, a low-wage area, where local fund raising does not easily make it up.
4.4 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Mr. Ivan Lewis): I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) on securing this debate, which is an important one. Some genuine, authentic issues have been raised that deserve to be addressed, and I will attempt to do that in the next few minutes. I also congratulate the hon. Members for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) and for St. Ives (Andrew George) on their contributions.
It was quite extraordinary, if I may have a little fun at the beginning of the debate, to hear hon. Members talk about and acknowledge record levels of investment in schools, and also to hear them talk about low levels of unemployment, which the hon. Member for North Cornwall mentioned, and rising wages. I hope that the "Focus" leaflets distributed in Cornwall over the next few weeks will reflect the difference that the Labour Government have made to the people of Cornwall. I shall have fun with some of my leaflets following the extremely generous, reasonable and objective analysis of investment in public services given by the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell.
I turn first to the question of a fair funding system. In any funding system, difficult decisions have to be made about relative costs, special needs and social deprivation factors. There will always be some authorities that get more than others. The hon. Gentleman was honest enough to say that there will always be winners and losers. My authority was one of the worst-funded in the country. Under the new system, it is slightly better funded, even if it is not one of the best. I am familiar with the debate.
We should not pretend to constituents, however, that there are easy solutions. Any system that we create or develop, particularly if we make changes, will involve winners and losers. No system can make everybody a winner. The hon. Gentleman should put his party's position on record. Either Cornwall should be given more resources, which means that other local authorities will lose out—perhaps including some that are controlled, dare I say it, by Liberal Democrats—or more resources should be put in so that there is a bigger cake. However, the Liberal Democrats have been absolutely disciplined in saying that the Government have got it wrong by having 70 spending commitments. They say that there should be two spending commitments in terms of the 40 to 50 per cent. increase—subsidising the costs of higher education and providing care for the elderly.
The only way to create an alternative system would be to put in extra money—the Liberal Democrats are not advocating that in terms of either local government or school funding, unless that is another spending commitment of which I am unaware—or to reallocate existing resources, as a consequence of which there would be losers.
Matthew Taylor: Setting aside party politics, a comprehensive spending review is due in June. The Government have already committed two further years' worth of substantial above-inflation increases in education spend, which we welcome. Above-inflation increases in education spend allow everybody to gain and imbalances to be redressed in the process. The

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Government are already putting more money in, so the question is whether the gaps will be narrowed or allowed to continue to increase. Our concern is that they have been allowed to continue to increase.
Mr. Lewis: That is an entirely reasonable point. However, if I reveal today the outcome of the spending review deliberations, I suspect that I shall not appear in Westminster Hall again in future, at least in my current capacity. I understand why the hon. Gentleman is making the case for a fair deal for Cornwall—I made that case on behalf of my constituents—and he will go on making it. However, I have to make the point that there is no simple solution. There is no system that will not result in some people feeling that they are losers. Most objective observers accept that the system that we have now is fairer than the previous one.
I turn to the hon. Gentleman's comments about falling primary school rolls. We understand the particular difficulties that face rural schools; that is what we are talking about in Cornwall. We made it clear in 1998 that we had a presumption against the closure of small rural schools and I can confirm that nothing has changed in that respect. We recognise that we cannot ignore the real and difficult choices that local authorities have to make in the context of surplus places in small schools. At a national level, we are working on guidance for local education authorities that are in such circumstances. That will be published at the end of the year, and it will address questions such as how we can support LEAs in dealing in an exceptional way with surplus places. There is little way around that.
We are also encouraging schools and LEAs to work together on the problem. It has been suggested that they might form federations of schools that work together not just on surplus places but as a matter of good educational practice. That is happening in Cornwall. I do not know whether the extended school option is being considered in Cornwall. A number of services such as welfare benefits advice, social services, housing and youth activities would all be located on the school site. That may be a way of triggering revenue from other funding streams.
While we say quite unashamedly to local education authorities that one of the fundamental parts of their business must be to tackle this problem rather than to avoid it, and while we have made it absolutely clear that there must be a presumption against closure, particularly in the case of rural schools, it does not mean that there will never be a closure. There may come a day in Cornwall when a consensus breaks out on the view that, in the best interests of a family of schools, some difficult decisions have to be made. That would not be the starting point in terms of the local community in Cornwall, and neither would it be the Government's starting point.
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We have to recognise that surplus places present difficulties. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that in our funding announcements this year we talked about protecting schools that have this problem, albeit in a limited way. Having surplus places, particularly if it happens suddenly, can have quite a dramatic effect on funding, and it is hard for head teachers and governing bodies to cope with that. However, as long as we have a per-pupil regime, that issue will be a factor if there are sudden demographic is changes.
Matthew Taylor: The Minister has confirmed that new guidance will be published on the issue towards the end of the year. Obviously, this is a matter of huge concern to local communities and particularly to the teaching staff and the LEA. Will there be a consultation process or will it be draft guidance, which would subsequently be confirmed after consultation? I am sure that he will come back to me in a moment on that.
Mr. Lewis: As good government permeates the DFES from top to bottom, I can guarantee, before I receive the note from my advisers, that consultation will most definitely take place. More than that; it is being developed in partnership with LEAs. If Cornwall wishes to contribute more significantly than it has done until now in this exercise, we would be delighted for it to be fully engaged. The guidance will offer advice on how federations, extended schools and other mechanisms can be used to manage the problem. The guidance will not say simply, "Here's how to close schools." It will be about practical ways of dealing with the short-term consequences of significant numbers of surplus places.
The hon. Gentleman was generous enough to recognise the success that Cornwall's schools have had in recent times. I should like to put on the record some statistics both to make a point and to congratulate the educationists in Cornwall who have made this success possible. The percentage of pupils leaving primary schools in Cornwall and who are doing well in English has risen from 66 per cent. in 1998 to 74 per cent. in 2003; in maths it has risen from 62 per cent. to 72 per cent. and in science from 74 per cent. to 86 per cent. That is pretty outstanding progress in primary schools.
In secondary education, there is equally impressive evidence of what is happening in Cornwall. The number of pupils achieving the important five A✶ to C GCSEs has continued to increase steadily from 51.1 per cent. in 1998, compared with the national average of 46.3 per cent., to 54.4 per cent. in 2003 compared with 52.9 per cent. nationally. There has been constant improvement in return for the significant extra investment that the hon. Gentleman has been reasonable enough to acknowledge.
The education system in Cornwall is on the whole doing exceptionally well, but it has to address some of the distinct sparsity and rural issues. I give the hon. Gentleman my absolute assurance that the Department will be willing to engage with him, the LEAs and the schools, in taking any practical measures to tackle the issues.

Domestic Violence
4.15 pm
Vera Baird: Soon, there will be a new domestic violence Act, which will enhance powers of arrest, improve court procedures and empower sentencers. The mere fact of passing, for the first time in 30 years, a piece of legislation to be known as the domestic violence Act will send out a signal that domestic violence is against the law and that the days when it was tolerated are well over. The Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill a commendable, much-needed piece of legislation.
As is now fairly well known, one in four women suffer from domestic violence at some time in their lives. A call about domestic violence goes to the police every minute of every day of every year, and between two and three women a week are killed by a violent partner or ex-partner. There is, of course, domestic violence against men as well.
Prosecutions are few and convictions even fewer. There are many barriers to complaining. The average woman who lives with her abuser has children and usually has either no job or a less well paid job. The barriers to making a complaint include the risk that the abuser will take his revenge against her or, perhaps, the children. Even if she leaves, he might make it clear that he will follow her and take his revenge. A large proportion of domestic violence continues after the parties have separated.
The abuser has the money and, as a rule, is the tenant or the owner of the house. He helps with child care, or perhaps his mother does, so that the woman can go out to work. What will the complainant do for money if she gets rid of him but cannot work? He will have to leave or, worse, she will have to leave and perhaps go to a refuge—and where then? She has never had a tenancy. The children will lose their father, and be poor and emotionally upset. The home will break up. What will all the people think who regard him as a nice guy? They are bound to think, "It's something she does that makes him want to beat her up. Can she not just put up with the odd thump? It hasn't killed her yet."
Women die from such violence, which is why it is important to go beyond legislation and beyond this debate. All authorities that come into contact with families in which such violence may be happening must be trained to be aware of it, so that they can work out an intervention and help the woman to help herself.
If the woman makes a complaint, it is sometimes even harder to sustain it. When a woman makes such a significant and seemingly counter-intuitive decision, it is imperative that agencies should act on it professionally. Recently, however, the joint inspectors of the Crown Prosecution Service and the police compiled a thematic report on domestic violence that makes it clear how often the police meet such complaints with rather thin interest and reveals the rather cavalier approach taken in CPS file reviews. Both those attitudes lead one to assume that the factors that make it hard for a woman to complain in the first place are likely to re-emerge. Many domestic violence cases will go nowhere. I can give no particular praise to the courts either, except to the specialist courts on the issue that are being piloted and which should be encouraged.
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Since that thematic report, the police and the CPS have started to get their act together at ground level, but the woman, the complainant, will not have the personal power to drive them on. We should remember that, statistically, she will have been abused around 30 times before she makes a complaint. Her morale and self-esteem are certain to have been undermined. It is essential to provide, at least in the short term, a domestic violence advocacy service, to support complainants, overturn the system's lack of enthusiasm and drive the agencies forward.
I was privileged yesterday to discuss the New Zealand system of domestic violence advocates with the Attorney-General of New Zealand, Margaret Wilson, who is in London. I was equally privileged last summer to visit the Auckland domestic violence advocacy project. Margaret Wilson says that domestic violence is no longer a hot issue in New Zealand, which is truly well ahead of us in a number of ways. Advocacy has played its part in cooling this issue. There are advocacy systems in New Zealand, the USA and Australia. I am aware of two in this country—there may be more. One is in Hammersmith and one is in Cardiff. When a domestic violence complaint is made to the police, it becomes the officer's duty, once the situation is controlled, to ask the complainant if she will have the services of an advocate.
Advocates are trained to support the complainant through the multiple impacts of her situation. They are trained to negotiate about housing—a frequently needed skill because all too often it is the woman, not the man, who leaves the house. Alternatively, if she stays in the house, the advocate will help to develop a safety plan to enable her to be safe in her own home—changing the locks, arranging for a panic alarm or CCTV, or whatever it takes. Advocates understand and can manage benefit entitlements, which change when families break down, and can help to arrange child care and, if necessary, to change the child's school. They can make referrals to counselling services, involve other community support agencies, arrange interpreters, where that is relevant, and perhaps support the sufferer in going to the civil courts for an injunction to keep the man away.
In addition, advocates can drive on the criminal case, because they will have experience of other criminal cases, unlike the complainant. They can make sure that full information from the complainant goes to the magistrates for bail hearings, that appropriate conditions to keep the man away are attached to his bail, and that any breaches of bail are taken to court and not ignored. They can make sure that statements are taken from witnesses, accompany the complainant to the police station and the court and ensure that full information is given to the complainant about adjournments, new dates, new times and bail conditions. They can make doubly sure that the complainant does not come across the man in the public areas of the court, which sometimes still happens. Often they can stand with her while she gives evidence, or at least accompany her through the tense wait until she testifies.
Advocates aim to be the complainant's competent guide and friend through the morass of effects of their new situation. My particular interest as a lawyer is that there is also a real probability that advocacy systems increase the complaint and conviction rates. It should be

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remembered that domestic violence perpetrators are often serial offenders. They move from one victim to another woman. A perpetrator must, therefore, be taken to court, not just for the sake of the current victim, but for the sake of those who, otherwise, might be yet to come.
The lead officer on domestic violence for the Association of Chief Police Officers, Jim Gamble, told me last week that it is becoming increasingly clear to police that domestic violence perpetrators are frequently criminal in other ways too. It is in our interest, first, that the courts should stamp out that vicious crime from the lives of women and children and, secondly, that we should all be protected against the public criminality that domestic violence often, it is becoming clear, foreshadows.
The evidence is that advocates increase conviction rates. A complainant who is sustained by an advocate is better able to go through with the process. The agencies are driven by the advocate, too. There is also evidence that advocates help women in ways that go beyond that. Research shows that abused women consistently want one point of contact that they can approach for help. The confusion of different departments, authorities, policies and practices would be a minefield for most professionals in the field, let alone an abused woman. It can make all the difference if there is one point of contact for information and support, so that an overview of the complainant's progress in the various systems can be maintained and advocacy can be provided on her behalf when necessary.
A national domestic violence advisory service is possibly the most efficient, effective and economic intervention in domestic violence that the Government could make. The evidence from abroad suggests that it would reduce crime. Domestic violence advocates have been crucial in reducing domestic violence in New Zealand, the USA and Australia.
The star turn is San Diego in the USA, where a 75 per cent. reduction in domestic violence homicides has been achieved since 1985. There is of course a link between the number of homicides, which is highly visible, and the hidden domestic violence underneath. San Diego has a co-ordinated approach and advocacy is the linchpin. Advocacy in those circumstances has recently been recognised by the Bush Administration, which have provided funding for 12 more jurisdictions to benefit from it. I hope that the Minister now feels under heavy pressure, if the Bush Administration have chosen to fund such a thing.
Evaluations of UK schemes have shown significant reductions in repeat victimisation and benefits for the process of healing after the event. They are cost-effective, too. The estimated cost in 2000 for the police to respond to a single incident of domestic violence was £1,027, whereas the average unit cost per client of an advocacy service is £778. Furthermore, many police attendances are ineffective. Some years ago, I dealt with a case in the north-east in which the police had attended the family 103 times, but had clearly never got a grip on the situation. It was ultimately resolved, if that is the right word, by the woman killing the man, which is how I came to be involved. Many police interventions are
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ineffective, and we should think of the costs. Last year, the police attended more than 500,000 domestic violence incidents.
Estimates of the total cost to the public purse of responding to domestic violence exceed £4 billion a year; a national advocacy service would cost about £45 million a year. Of course, there are figures to count beyond those for police interventions, but a team of dedicated domestic violence advocates will almost certainly be much less costly than repeated visits to health, housing and social services.
Flexibility is an important characteristic, and advocacy services are more effective in the voluntary sector. Many women have concerns about the powers of statutory agencies, which sometimes means that the staff of such agencies get an edited version of events. For example, if the abuser has threatened to kill the children if the woman leaves him, that is often concealed from social workers out of fear that the children may be taken away. Voluntary sector advocacy services can therefore obtain better information and make safer interventions. Advocacy services also work because they are sufficiently flexible to be able to respond to women's individual circumstances. I have emphasised the model of the couple who are breaking up because of the man's violence, but for many women, leaving their partner would mean leaving their community, and even leaving their partner is not an option. Nor is involving the justice system.
Proactive advocacy, safety planning and support are essential in empowering victims of domestic violence to increase their safety. regardless of whether they are staying in the relationship, leaving it or going to court. They may have no one else. Interestingly, lay advocacy services score very highly not only with victims, but with members of criminal justice system agencies. Reports show high levels of victim satisfaction, and criminal justice professionals comment favourably on the advice, support and information provided by lay advocates. Evaluations of advocacy systems show that they lead to a more co-ordinated package of support, intervention and monitoring, because they are finely tuned to identify gaps and flaws in service provision. In other words, they improve the calibre of public service delivery in these specific cases.
A domestic violence advocacy service must have certain features. For women, it must be delivered by women, independent and in the voluntary sector. It must be centred on the complainant, allowing women to define their own safety needs and to have the services that they require. It must focus on increasing safety as a priority, irrespective of including justice system involvement. It has to be available and accessible 24 hours a day. In the end, an advocacy service has to create opportunities for survivors to meet for mutual support, and has to respond to children's specific needs. Specific funding could and should be ring-fenced and distributed to local criminal justice boards for local distribution for advocacy services.
Those proposals are supported by a body of research, including the Home Office's evaluation of its violence against women funding stream, "What Works in Reducing Domestic Violence", which was published in 2001, and "Evaluation of Specialist Domestic Violence Courts/Fast Track Systems", which was published by the Crown Prosecution Service in 2004. Both lend

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weight to the arguments. Domestic violence advocates are championed by the Women's National Commission, Women's Aid and our fellow Labour Government in New Zealand.
The Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill is about improving outcomes at court, but the bulk of it will be less than maximally effective unless it is buttressed by a system of domestic violence advocates.
4.30 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Caroline Flint): I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) for introducing the debate. I pay tribute to her as chair of the all-party group on domestic violence and the group's other members for their tireless work to raise awareness of this horrific crime.
My hon. and learned Friend referred to several statistics that should make us all pause for thought about the terrible situation. Domestics violence accounts for almost a quarter of all violent crime, and in 1999, 37 per cent. of women homicide victims were killed by present or former partners—that is one every three days or two women a week. We know that repeat victimisation is common, and no other type of crime has a rate of repeat victimisation as high as that involving domestic violence. On average, a woman will be assaulted by her partner or ex-partner 35 times before reporting it to the police.
It is a complex situation, based on what is going on in someone's home and whether there are others—for example, children—who are witnesses to the violence. There is a complex series of relationships, and my hon. and learned Friend eloquently outlined the difficulties faced by a woman or man, but normally a woman, who is deciding whether to leave a relationship and/or take legal action against her current or former partner. Those statistics are shocking, and we recognise that we must work across disciplines, nationally and locally, if we are to tackle domestic violence and its impact on victims, their children and the community.
Baroness Scotland chairs an inter-ministerial group on domestic violence, which includes my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General, colleagues from Wales and Northern Ireland, and ministerial colleagues from five key Departments, all with central roles in supporting victims and children. That approach must be developed across Government to tackle the issue, focusing on prevention, protection and justice, and support, the latter of which is the theme of today's debate. As my hon. and learned Friend has said, our hand will be strengthened by the measures in the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill, which is shortly to receive its Second Reading in the Commons. It is a key part of our wider aim of putting victims at the heart of our criminal justice system.
Support is important. Without back-up from statutory agencies and the voluntary and community sector, victims and their children will not have the support that they need to live free from violence. We must ensure that the signs of domestic violence are picked up by statutory agencies, in particular our health services, so that victims can gain access to support as early as possible. I pay tribute to the work of Mansfield District and Ashfield primary care trusts, which are
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already operating a comprehensive domestic violence strategy of training for all staff and routine inquiry in various areas. That means that every woman coming into contact with a health professional should get appropriate information about the available domestic violence services. The recent appointment of a Modernisation Agency national co-ordinator for domestic violence and abuse in health and mental health services should help to improve the response of health services throughout the country and enable more women to access support services.
Having made the often difficult decision to seek help, victims and children will need a range of interventions to help them rebuild their lives. Victims are often at their most vulnerable on leaving. They may need urgent advice, someone to discuss options with or someone just to listen. We are investing £1 million in the next three years in the new national 24-hour free helpline, backed by an online database of refuge places and other services. We have also contributed £1 million to its promotion, because we want the people to know about the services that are available. The helpline was launched last December, and Women's Aid and Refuge are working in partnership to help us deliver results.
I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the tireless and dedicated work of people in the voluntary community sector, many of whom have worked for decades to care for and support victims and their children—often, unfortunately, without the backing of statutory agencies or public policy. Now that public policy is catching up with them, we must use their expertise and experience to ensure that we provide the best possible services.
Safety is paramount, which means that secure accommodation is a top priority. Last year, with the Housing Corporation, we invested £18.9 million in refuge provision. We have committed a further £9.8 million to fund additional schemes in 2004–5 and 2005–6. In practice, that means that at least extra 300 extra units of accommodation will come online. I am sure that people will argue that that is not enough, but it is a start in the right direction.
Where appropriate, it can be less disruptive and more cost effective for victims to stay in their own homes. That may require the installation of new or better security—as with the Sanctuary project in Harrow—as well as outreach and support from specialist organisations and individuals to help to avoid crisis points. That is the kind of housing-based support that the "Supporting People" programme will deliver to victims, either in refuges or at home.
My hon. and learned Friend proposed that we should introduce advocacy schemes to support victims. We know that some organisations already use advocates to great effect, and that projects have shown that they can be a cost-effective intervention. I was interested to hear the statistics that she gave. As I am standing in for the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Mr. Goggins), I will ensure that he is made aware of her observations.
When tackling the criminal justice issue, it is important that we perform a cost-benefit analysis of whether we should continue to run the same system, or try to change it to bring about better outcomes for

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victims of crime while tackling the logjam that occurs when such cases are not dealt with for many years. In many such cases, the perpetrator is not brought to justice.
My hon. and learned Friend will be aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East, who has ministerial responsibility for correctional services and reducing reoffending, has already indicated that we at the Home Office are keen to build on established activities and projects, such as the national helpline, and link them with advocacy services, which will involve a fuller process. The number of issues with which an advocacy worker could be involved is huge and varied, so particular skills will be needed for that job.
I was interested to hear what my hon. and learned Friend said about New Zealand and America. When developing public policy in the UK, it is always important to consider events in other parts of the world and what we can learn from them.
We think that the idea of an advocacy service has merit. It could build on what we are already doing. As my hon. and learned Friend rightly said, some women who come forward to make complaints, and who want action to be taken against their partner or ex-partner, will often fall out of the system clue to lack of support.
The crime reduction programme has funded a number of projects to assess the effectiveness of different advocacy, outreach and support measures. The results are due in the summer. We hope that that will give us all a clearer understanding of what might be needed and, importantly, the cost implications of providing such a service.
My hon. and learned Friend mentioned Jim Gamble, whom I have also met. I am pleased that senior police officers such as Jim are seeking to make changes in their organisations to improve police performance in this important area. I was pleased to hear on the radio, either yesterday or today, that the Police Federation conference—which I think is taking place this week—is devoting part of its agenda to discussing domestic violence, and that my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General is to speak at the conference. There is
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a long way to go, but we must raise awareness of this issue. We need the leaders of law enforcement organisations in the courts to take a stand.
Children are often the hidden victims of domestic violence—living with and witnessing it, and sometimes being abused. They may suffer both short and long-term harm, and it may be necessary to consider the needs of such children and put them in touch with the appropriate services.
The measures in "Every Child Matters" and in the Children Bill will significantly improve services for all, and later this year the all-party group will be examining the problem of children and domestic violence. We would like to see specialist domestic violence services coming under the auspices of the new directors of children's services and safeguarding children's local boards.
Finally, we are committed to ensuring that all communities have access to the support that they need. By commissioning services locally, we believe that agencies will be able to take account of the needs and priorities around them. Nevertheless, we need to consider those national issues that may not be picked up locally. That is why we are funding the first UK-wide working group on forced marriage. We also supported the creation a telephone helpline for victims of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual communities by Broken Rainbow.
I am sure that my hon. and learned Friend and I are in agreement on a number of matters, but we share our pride in being members of a party that puts measures to tackle domestic violence high among its legislative priorities. We agree that an improved response to domestic violence from all statutory agencies needs to go hand in hand with legislative change. That is why our programme is broad, and deals with prevention and support as well as protection and justice.
We can pass laws, and we can make changes to assist the police in enforcing the law; but we must also support people through the process. I am glad that my hon. and learned Friend has given us the opportunity to air the issue.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: We thank the Minister for her sensitive reply to an important debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at nineteen minutes to Five o'clock.