I am pleased to be able to open this debate on energy policy following the Kyoto summit. I do so as part of an effective parliamentary conspiracy known as the GLOBE group, which stands for Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment, which has members in all Parliaments in Europe and, indeed, in many Parliaments throughout the world. We view effective lobbying in national Parliaments as part of our work, but also aim to ensure that major events such as the Kyoto conference are followed by effective parliamentary action, so that all national Governments keep to their targets.

It could not be more appropriate that we are debating this issue today because, tomorrow, the Minister for Science, Energy and Industry will sit before the Environmental Audit Committee, which will question him at some length about the methods by which the Government will carry out the policies that were agreed at Kyoto. That is a step forward: this Parliament now has a Select Committee where such questions can be raised.

In the past, environmental policies were entirely linked to the Department of the Environment, which was obviously heavily dominated by local government interests. Because of that domination, environmental matters tended to take a back seat. It would be useful if Parliament as a whole had a specialist environment Committee—as opposed to a Committee linking other Departments—in addition to the Environmental Audit Committee. There is a strong case for that.

In June, European Union Ministers will meet in Aarhus in Denmark to discuss the continuation of environmental policies, but we must take other things into account. For example, there are headlines in all today's newspapers about the transport of plutonium waste from Georgia to Britain. That exposes the dangers of nuclear waste and nuclear reprocessing, and effectively challenges all those who believe that the nuclear option is somehow safe and environmentally sustainable, and will ensure clean energy supplies.

I do not believe that there is anything clean about nuclear waste or nuclear power. If anyone proposed that we should start a new energy source that would be dangerous for more than 1,000 years, people would think that they were completely mad. It is time that we seriously challenged the whole nuclear argument.

This Friday, the House has the opportunity to complete the stages in this place of the Road Traffic Reduction (National Targets) Bill, which has been through Committee. It is a great tribute to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Dafis) that it has got that far. I just hope that certain members of the Conservative parliamentary party do not go on yet another outing of trying to destroy an environmental Bill, as they have unfortunately tried to do on various other occasions. The Energy Efficiency Bill is also coming up this Friday. It is important that the House puts together all those issues, so that we have joined-up thinking and joined-up actions in improving our environment.

In many ways, the Kyoto conference was a great milestone in this planet's history. Before Rio, many people throughout the world had been arguing for a more sustainable attitude towards our environment, energy consumption and energy production, but it had not come together. The Rio summit was a major turning point. Likewise, the New York meeting and Kyoto were a major step forward in recognising the limits to growth and to what we can do to our environment and planet, and placed requirements on each country to carry out the work.

However, the background to Kyoto was raging fires throughout south Asia, which were caused partly by drought, but partly because people were seeking to clear forests by burning them down. The news now is that, despite all the campaigning by so many people throughout the world over the past 20 years, the rate of destruction of that huge carbon sink otherwise known as the beautiful Amazon rain forest is proceeding at an even faster rate than ever before. There is no room for complacency in energy policy or environmental protection matters.

The world might look with great hope to Kyoto, post-Rio and all that goes with that, but all Governments appear to be accepting that there is an uncontrollable global economy and that growth is the order of the day. The environmental damage done by excessive transportation, excessive destruction of forests and excessive use of fossil fuels appears to be viewed as the necessary consequence of the eternal growth theory. Therefore, humankind has a long way to go in trying to control what it does to this planet, as, at present, it is merely trying to mitigate the effects on the globe of a free-market economy. Those issues must be brought together.

Having said that, I found the British Government's approach to Kyoto very welcome, especially as they sought a large reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The result—an 8 per cent. agreement—was not good enough; much better could have been achieved. I do not blame the British Government's representatives at the conference, but I am laying some blame on the United States, which is the biggest consumer of energy and the biggest global polluter. Many of the right-wing think tanks in the USA say, "The problem is caused by the third world", but the reality is that every American consumes 10 times as much energy as every person in Bangladesh, south Asia or China. That is the reality of what is happening to this planet. I hope that when my hon. Friend the Minister replies to the debate, he will tell us what steps the Government intend to take to cut CO₂ emissions.

The global economy is having disastrous effects on the environment—for example, the destruction of the rain forests and the fires in south Asia. However, we can also identify and measure global warming. I am aware that there is a scientific argument, of sorts, that there are normal climatic variations and changes anyway and that we just happen to be moving into a warmer period. The truth is that the speed with which global temperatures have risen over the past 15 years is astronomical. The link with the large-scale and increasing burning of fossil fuels around the world suggests that we are doing something dramatic, dangerous and possibly irreversible to our climate. That must be reckoned with.

The many surveys carried out in the Antarctic allow us to measure the degree of pollution throughout the globe. We can date and almost time where the pollution comes from and see what we are doing to the climate. We can also look at the way in which ice caps are melting in the northern and southern hemispheres. Traditionally, the northern hemisphere ice caps have been melting while the southern hemisphere ice caps have been expanding—now they are both retreating, so there is bound to be a rise in global sea levels. That is the consequence of not doing anything.

Although Kyoto was an important step forward, other measures need to be taken. After the election last May, the Government correctly presented themselves as concerned with environmental policies. They reflected what a large number of ordinary people thought, because people recognise what is being done to their environment. Those concerned with protecting the environment live not just in rural communities; they are not only the people trying, rightly, to preserve woods, forests, hedgerows and habitat vegetations—protecting the environment is just as much a concern to people growing up in council estates in inner London or anywhere else. They want a decent environment and clean air to breathe. That is why our energy policies matter.

I am an active member—indeed the chair—of my local Agenda 21 group in Islington. The effort made by so many ordinary people is quite moving. They are desperate for a better world and a better environment to leave to future generations. That is a fairly new phenomenon in politics throughout the world, but especially in this country.

We need to make a number of important changes in policy. Currently, our primary sources of energy are coal, oil and, to a more limited extent, hydro and other forms of renewable energy. Oil prices, if not at an all-time low, are certainly somewhere near that. Even with North sea oil, which is expensive to produce, there is still a profit of about $10 a barrel between production costs and sale prices, despite the current low oil prices. Oil companies are busy stocking up huge amounts of oil, either in large storage spaces or by keeping it under the ground, having gained prospecting licences.

On the figures produced by Greenpeace—I agree with that organisation, as do many others—the maximum amount of carbon that we can burn on our planet without causing major climatic changes is 225 gigatonnes. The amount in storage or available for exploration is far greater than that. When my hon. Friend the Minister replies, will he tell us the rationale behind continuing to grant exploration licences in the north Atlantic, knowing full well the environmental damage that will be done? It is unsustainable, in world terms, to start a whole new round of oil exploration when we should be looking towards sustainable energy sources rather than fossil fuel sources. We must protect the environment.

The world managed to change course on the Antarctic. I have been in the House long enough to see the issue go full circle, from the Antarctic being a place of scientific exploration, to being a place of mineral exploration, and then a place of preservation of the natural environment and prevention of any mineral exploration and exploitation—of the Antarctic shelf itself, but not of the sea around it, unfortunately. Surely we can do the same with the north Atlantic licences that the Government are considering granting. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will give us some hope that the Government will not grant those licences.

My hon. Friend may know that I have tabled a number of questions to the Foreign Office about Rockall and whether Britain actually has the right to grant licences for the sea surrounding Rockall. It is not clear who owns Rockall. Would it not be better to reach an international agreement to preserve that pristine stretch of ocean from exploration and all the damage that goes with it? It should be used as a signal, a pressure and a catalyst for moving towards a more sustainable energy policy.

Britain does not do very well in the new European renewable energy league. In 1990, 0.5 per cent. of our energy came from renewable resources. By 1995, that had risen to the fantastic amount of 0.7 per cent. I suppose people could argue that that is a huge increase, but it is meaningless because it is growth from a very low base. Every other country in Europe does considerably better, the best being Sweden with 25.4 per cent. Much lower down, even France manages 7 per cent. Germany is rather low with less than 2 per cent. The country nearest to us in the league is Belgium, with 1 per cent. There is no excuse for Britain's position, other than the attitude of previous Governments and, within that, attitudes towards Government spending, investment and tax regimes.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister recognises that enormous strides could be made. Indeed, I know that he wants to promote greater use of solar, wind-powered and wave-powered energy and much less reliance on fossil fuels and all the damage that comes with them.

We must also consider the question of energy conservation. Energy requirements are dictated by industry, by transport and heating needs and so on, but we must bear in mind the fact that an initial investment means savings in the long run. About half my constituents live in local authority or housing association accommodation. Most of them complain to me about high heating bills, poor insulation and generally poor living conditions. Indeed, many people living in private accommodation say exactly the same.

Every time we neglect to install roof insulation, cavity walls or a more efficient form of heating, we might save a little on the construction cost of a house, but, in the long run, we are piling huge costs on the people who live in that house and we are doing enormous damage to the environment. A conservation policy is beneficial to everyone even though the initial cost is considerably higher.

In this country, 8 million people suffer from some energy deficiency, in that they are unable to heat their homes or keep themselves warm. Because of the inadequate heating in so many houses, there are 30,000 more deaths in winter than in summer, a fact which appears to be related to the conditions in which people live. Clearly, the attempts made by some hon. Members to introduce private Members' Bills relating to energy efficiency or heating conservation—we shall be debating such a Bill on Friday—are very important.

It is essential that the toughest possible energy conservation requirements are imposed for all new buildings. We must recognise that investing now in good-quality insulation and efficient heating systems means in the long run a saving not only to the individual but to the environment. Of course, if one marries that notion to the free market, there is a conflict between the needs of the environment and those of the gas and electricity companies, whose sole motive is to encourage greater consumption.

I know that several hon. Members want to contribute to the debate, so I move on to my final point, on transport. Transport is a huge but inefficient consumer of energy and is the single biggest source of pollution in most cities around the world. If one has a mind to do such things, one has only to go to the top of Canary Wharf tower to see the effect of transport pollution. There is very little industry left in London to cause pollution, but from the top of the tower one can see a pollution cloud or dome—it is like the millennium dome on a grander scale—stretching across central London. Most of that pollution is caused by transport, mainly cars carrying one person. It is preventable, but we must be prepared to invest more in public transport and reduce the energy consumed for transport.

On a more global note, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Simpson) made a good speech earlier this year about the concept of food miles and the amount of pollution caused by goods being dragged around the world. It is crazy that countries in central Africa, where there is a food deficiency and where many people do not eat terribly well, are being encouraged by international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World bank, of which we are members, to grow early vegetables that are air-freighted to Europe. One can imagine the enormous pollution involved in flying early strawberries grown in Zambia to London, Frankfurt, New York or Paris. When one sees beautiful strawberries, mange-tout and so on in the supermarket, one thinks that they are clean, pollution-free vegetables, but what about the fuel that has been burnt to bring them here and the consequent damage to the environment?

I recall going to a supermarket last year in Worcester. There were millions of apple trees only half a mile from that supermarket, but the apples on sale there came from New Zealand—what a crazy world.

The constant global effort to increase export production and trade is seen as a form of growth, but it damages the environment. Ships pass each other carrying washing machines from one end of the world to the other and back again, but that can hardly be called a sustainable form of growth.

I know that the Government are keen to integrate environmental and transport policies, but it has to happen quickly, or we shall not be able to make the 8 per cent. reduction in greenhouse gas emissions agreed at Kyoto, and we shall certainly not meet the much higher targets proposed by the Government. Parliament needs to be assertive and to keep returning to the issue. If various sections of the Government are not fully apprised of the need for joined-up thinking on the environment, they need to be encouraged to be so. That is Parliament's job.

If, at the end of this century, we cannot turn things round and start to develop technologies that use the energy available from the sun, wind and water, but instead we carry on in the smokestack tradition, the damage to the planet's climate might be irreversible.

Some people say that those of us who look to a sustainable environment are backward-thinking and conservative. On the contrary; we are by no means anti-technology. We want the cutting edge of technology to be used to develop solar, wind and wave power and all the renewable and sustainable methods possible. We want to use that technology for better control systems and less polluting forms of energy use. Unless we get fully involved, we shall be losing jobs in the fossil fuel industries, as has happened already, but we shall not be gaining jobs in the sustainable industries, for which there is a huge global market. I am thinking, for example, of the production of solar panels.

There needs to be a change in attitude. Kyoto provided an opportunity for that, but if we do not recognise that poorer countries need help to develop sustainable energy, the enormous damage will continue. I hope that today's debate will be one of a series of regular debates, so that we can monitor what is happening, what the Government are doing and what pressure we can put on them.

I greatly welcome the debate and congratulate the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) on securing it. It should be seen as a plea for fewer warm words and more hard action. There has been a tremendous change, in that 10 or even five years ago, it was believed that only extremely strange people such as the hon. Members for Islington, North and for Hazel Grove supported the concept of sustainable energy, but it is now one to which Governments worldwide are committed.

I remind the House that the targets that we are discussing relate to reductions in emissions between 1990 and 2010. We are already eight years into that 20-year period, but we are still debating precisely what policies should be in place to achieve those targets. Therefore, it is not a question of our rushing the Government or of the House being impatient; rather, it is a recognition that time is passing, and passing very quickly.

I shall spend a minute or two considering what the Government have done, as opposed to what they have said, since 1 May last year. There are some bad signs, which I shall enumerate, but there are also some good ones. We need to examine not only what the Government say but what they do and the impact of that.

The Government have implemented a manifesto pledge to cut value added tax on fuel. Of course, that helps the poor, and we understand and support that. However, we need to recognise that it will increase fuel consumption and, therefore, carbon dioxide emissions.

There has been a somewhat grudging cut in VAT on energy conservation materials. The Government have done a brilliant job of persuading the public, but they have provided only a limited concession that may allow energy conservation materials to be installed in 40,000 homes, when 8 million homes have poor insulation and bad energy conservation.

I shall not say too much about the Government's policy on coal, as I am sure that others will want to speak about that. However, I have made a point before of drawing attention to developments in respect of our non-fossil fuel obligations and the fact that we now have legislation in place that, remarkably and paradoxically, allows a levy to be placed on renewable energy generators as well as those using fossil fuel.

The Government promised us a Green Book that would be produced alongside the Red Book. Not only would it list all the financial implications of the Budget and the Finance Bill, but it would give us a clear signal as to their environmental and green impact. I asked parliamentary questions about that and was assured that the Green Book was on page 73 of the Red Book. It consists of one page listing 15 items and their environmental impact. Of those 15 items, three are for consultation and not for implementation and will have no environmental impact this year. Two of the items show a small increase in carbon dioxide emissions and only three of the remaining 10 show quantified reductions. Therefore, despite some bold, brave and welcome words about the direction of Government policy and the integration of all Government policies into environmental concerns, the Green Book has become a green page and only three of the 15 policies listed on it will provide any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Over the past few months, I have been asking about energy consumption by the Government, as I have been trying to establish how much energy Government Departments use. I asked how much vehicle mileage was covered by Government employees, but the information was not available. I asked how much energy was being consumed by Government buildings and fixed assets in the United Kingdom. Some Departments have been very helpful and have provided figures, but others have said that the information is not available within the scope of parliamentary questions.

It strikes me as ironic that we meet every day in a darkened room where we have the lights on to have our debates.

I thank the Minister for that intervention and I agree with him. As hon. Members are not allowed to read their speeches, having the lights on should not be necessary, except for Front-Bench speeches.

If Government Departments do not know how much energy they are consuming, how will they know whether they have reduced energy consumption by 8 per cent., 10 per cent. or 20 per cent.—20 per cent. of what and from when? We need to recognise that it is not just a matter of slogans and targets; it is about real plans and real progress if we are to achieve what we all want.

I could also mention the Government's hesitant approach to the European Union White Paper on renewables. I discussed the issue with the Minister in the European Standing Committee, and I understood the political logic of what he said. However, the hon. Member for Islington, North was right to draw attention to the United Kingdom's poor record in respect of renewable energy.

Belgium's percentage of renewables is 40 per cent. greater than ours. When people hear the figures for Sweden, they say that it has rivers and mountains and not very many people and that there are many reasons why Sweden might have an entirely different energy budget from ours, but Belgium is not exactly dominated by mountains.

It is appreciated that although the hon. Gentleman was not a member of the European Standing Committee, he took an interest in it, but he will recall that we debated the fact that Belgium burns all its municipal waste, which raises other environmental issues. Therefore, I remind him that the matter is not quite as simplistic as he appears to suggest.

I welcome the Minister's intervention. He is quite right that the issue is not as simplistic as it seems for the pros or the antis. I understand that he is working in a complex political and economic environment, and I would be the last person to underestimate that.

I do not know what the Minister would say about Ireland, where the percentage of renewables is three times higher than ours. Perhaps there is a particular reason for that, but we need to examine the issue and understand why the United Kingdom is at the bottom of the pile and not at the top.

There are opportunities for the United Kingdom to raise its percentage of renewables without the conflict implied in the Minister's intervention in respect of waste incineration, for example. During the Easter break, I visited the Centre for Alternative Technology and, on behalf of the Minister, I received praise for the Government's investment in the photovoltaic installation there. There are opportunities, but we are not exploiting them.

I expect that the Minister would be a little indignant if I did not mention the good signs. There is clearly wide public acceptance of the need for action, and the Government are being offered a great deal of good will. Their warm words and investment in respect of photovoltaics or renewable energy installations at Ford, for example, are widely welcomed. There are opportunities, and the public are ready to accept them.

Returning briefly to the Government's policy on coal, I welcome the fact that they have now backtracked somewhat on their ban on the installation of gas generators and have lowered the threshold at which it applies. That is common sense, but it underlines the fact that there is much work still to be done before we can be said to have a genuine energy policy for the United Kingdom. It ought to be easy to get started, and it is good that the Government have given a fair wind to the Road Traffic Reduction (National Targets) Bill, the Waste Minimisation Bill, the Energy Conservation (Housing) Bill and the Energy Efficiency Bill, but they are all private Members' Bills. We need strong, positive, Government-directed action.

My plea is twofold. First, will the Government tell us what their energy policy is? It has to be integrated with the environmental policy issues that we are discussing and with fiscal and economic policy, but until that foundation is laid, publicly discussed and agreed, the conduct of the entire debate is extremely difficult. Secondly, I make a far wider plea: we need to get away from the impression that growth, wealth and prosperity can be purchased only at the expense of high energy use and low environmental conditions for the work force and the general population. What should be done next? Liberal Democrats were disappointed that the Budget did not contain a bigger commitment to public transport. Although the figures that were announced were high, careful reading of the Red Book shows that they have to be divided by four, as they apply over four years.

We were disappointed that the changes to vehicle excise duty for next year will not be implemented this year. It is worth noting that, in the European Union, the car fleets with the smallest engine sizes are in Italy and Denmark, which seems to be connected to the fact that the taxation of vehicles in those countries is based on mileage and fuel consumption rather than on a flat-rate tax such as vehicle excise duty. By contrast, the car fleet engine size in the United Kingdom has increased throughout the 1980s and 1990s. I ask the Minister to make those points as clearly as possible—wearing both his Department of Trade and Industry and his energy hats—to his ministerial colleagues.

Growth, wealth and prosperity are often thought to conflict with an environmental policy. Countries that have high standards of living, high gross domestic product and, indeed, high energy costs are among the most prosperous, but one need only look at Germany and—perhaps through half-closed eyes at the moment—Japan to see that it would be wrong to claim a connection between a strong environmental policy and a weak economy with low prosperity.

Will the Minister say plainly and clearly what the Government's energy policy is? Do the targets for the United Kingdom that were announced before Kyoto still obtain? Are the Government committed to investment in renewable energy sources and to conservation and the promotion of energy efficiency? He should understand that a strong message is coming from both sides of the House: we want the Government to be positive, purposeful and prompt in tackling the issue.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) on securing this debate, and I welcome the opportunity to make a brief contribution to it. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister on the international role he has taken in recent months to make Governments across the world accept their responsibilities to respond to climate change and to reduce emissions.

It is extremely interesting that we are having this debate this week, not only because of last night's news about an unfortunate incident in the nuclear industry or because of the consideration of the Finance Bill, in which the effect of green taxation on emissions has been a theme, but because on Friday, we shall debate a series of private Members' Bills concerned with energy efficiency, each of which could make a small contribution to our achievement of the Kyoto targets.

My message to Opposition Front Benchers is not to block the progress of those Bills. An unfortunate trend in recent weeks has been that a particular Conservative Member has tried to block every private Member's Bill, regardless of its merits. I hope that the Opposition will take cognisance of the fact that this Friday is an important day for those Bills.

In recent months, as public awareness of the implications of the Kyoto conference has increased, the nuclear industry has attempted to assume a new role and to project itself as the answer to all our CO₂ emission and climate change problems. There is no doubt that nuclear power has a role to play in a balanced energy policy; there can be no dispute about the fact that nuclear energy does not add to CO₂ emissions. However, we would be naive—and do the public a great disservice—if we accepted that nuclear energy was the answer to Kyoto, for the simple reason that the nuclear industry has tried to sweep under the carpet the fundamental problem of nuclear waste. Until there is a safe, secure and scientifically accepted solution—I do not rule one out—to the problem of safeguarding the increasing storage of nuclear waste, I do not believe that nuclear power is the way forward.

Some years ago, I had some involvement in the fight to prevent the pressurised water reactor from being built at Hinckly C. I know that many of my constituents are concerned that the Government have not yet made it clear whether there is a moratorium on new nuclear power installations. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be helpful if the Minister today made a clear statement on the Government's intentions on new nuclear installations?

That is one of the points that I was going to make, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will comment on it in his response.

Last night's incident was significant. The disclosure of the secret deal with the Georgian Government to reprocess 5 kg of uranium at Dounreay will serve to reignite public awareness of the dangers of nuclear power, particularly the storage of waste and the transport of waste for reprocessing.

Does my hon. Friend the Minister believe that the time has come for the Government to call in and give their view on the British Nuclear Fuels application to establish a commercial facility at Sellafield for the production of mixed oxide fuel? The deal between Dounreay and Georgia is the tip of the iceberg of what is being proposed in the British nuclear industry—BNFL wants to establish a fully fledged commercial facility to reprocess waste from across the world. The 5 kg of uranium is a drop in the ocean in terms of the total amount of nuclear waste that could come to Britain to be reprocessed. It is critical that the Government intervene and take a special interest in the matter.

I think that I am right in saying that transport creates about 25 per cent. of our total CO₂ emissions. Public opinion has shifted considerably in the past five years, and there is now a general understanding that we cannot sustain our chronic dependency on the private motor car, and that we must greatly improve public transport and pursue a more balanced and mixed transport policy—We all look forward to the White Paper on integrated transport which will be published shortly.

It cannot be stressed often enough that the Government's responsibility is to use the tax system to engineer the shift away from the dominance of the private car and to encourage the use of public transport and more walking and cycling, as well as to encourage people to question whether their journeys are strictly necessary. The Budget contained important steps towards a green taxation policy, but those steps were tentative, and I hope that, in the coming months, the Government will pursue the agenda with greater confidence, and that the next Budget will introduce a more positive form of green taxation.

We welcome the initial changes to vehicle excise duty, the continuation of the fuel escalator and the action proposed on company cars, but other things can be done. Significantly, the motoring public now accept the annual price rise in petrol. Perhaps the Government are a little behind what the general public are prepared to accept. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will discuss that with his colleagues, and that a much stronger green taxation policy will emerge.

We must not only shift the balance of taxation away from labour and employers' costs to take account of pollution and waste, but consider what we should do with the resulting revenue. We cannot avoid the issue of hypothecation. I know that the Treasury has historically been opposed to it, but the time has now come when we can win public support for green taxation if we can show clearly that the extra revenue is being used for investment in public transport. That is another shift in attitude that will have to come about.

On Friday, several private Members' Bills concerned with minor improvements to energy efficiency are due to be considered. I especially commend the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation (Fifteen Year Programme) Bill, with its ambitious programme for improvements to the 8 million homes in Britain in which households still experience fuel poverty. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North said, improvements will cost money in the short run, but bring enormous benefits in the long run. I welcome the fact that our Government have put enormous emphasis on long-term investment and improvements, getting away from short-term thinking, and the Bill is a perfect example of that.

The current review of the utilities regulators is crucial to energy efficiency. Since privatisation, there has been chaos in the marketplace, with many companies competing desperately to sell more and more fuel, which is obviously incompatible with our Kyoto obligations.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that matter. The review was published a fortnight ago and was warmly welcomed precisely because we built into it those environmental considerations.

I am grateful for that information, and I shall make a point of studying the review carefully.

The new code for fiscal responsibility in the Budget did not have the high profile of some of the green taxation issues. The code was a welcome development by the Chancellor and established five important criteria—transparency, stability, responsibility, fairness and efficiency—but it does not mention environmental sustainability.

We should consider in the next few months whether we should add the sixth key criterion of sustainability. We cannot continue, as an industrial society, to use up resources as we have in the past 150 years. One way in which to draw attention to that fact and to concentrate the minds of the public and the Government on it is to build into the very structure and principles of taxation the concept of environmental sustainability.

We need to consider the limits of economic growth. It has been our society's basic assumption for 100 years or more that, through the application of technology and the plundering of natural resources, we can generate economic growth that is self-sustaining and will gradually increase prosperity for everyone. In the past 10 or 20 years—in this generation—more and more people have begun to question whether that infinite expansion of economic growth and the alleged extension of prosperity for everyone can really be feasible.

There is a growing understanding of the fact that there are limits to economic growth in both social and environmental terms. That represents a major challenge, because it means that we are at a fundamental turning point in the development of our society, and a whole new set of assumptions needs to be made about how we generate prosperity and equality of opportunity. I hope that, in the next few years, Governments throughout the world will take on board the limits of economic growth.

There will soon be a major opportunity for the Government to play a leading role in pursuing the environmental agenda and ensuring that the Kyoto agreements are adhered to, when the G8 summit takes place in Birmingham in the middle of May. Our Government, and our Prime Minister, will have an important opportunity to take the lead again on the international stage.

Even though the Kyoto agreement was signed in December, the most important signatory, the United States, has yet to get the agreement passed through Congress. President Clinton and Vice-President Gore have given it their blessing, but there is still a battle to be fought in the United States Congress. The G8 summit provides the perfect opportunity to ensure that that battle is won.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) on securing this debate.

Kyoto was an important success. Now the problems follow: first on ratification and then on working out emission levels, trading conditions and so forth. It is important to recognise that the cuts envisaged at Kyoto are insufficient.

It is probably impossible to prevent some damaging climate change. That will happen in any case, but we must be determined to prevent it from becoming too serious. We must consider how we can deliver international agreements for substantial cuts in CO₂ emissions beyond the 8 per cent. agreed at Kyoto.

We know what the obstacle is: the United States will not agree to significant cuts, and may not even ratify Kyoto, unless developing countries are brought on board and agree to make their own reductions, or at least stabilise. Developing countries, on the other hand, say that they will not agree to fetter themselves by denying themselves development of the kind that the developed world has enjoyed as a result of its ability to burn fossil fuels.

We have to find a formula that satisfies both parties. We shall not get an agreement unless equity is built in. That brings us to the idea of contraction and convergence, which is proposed by Aubrey Meyer of the Global Commons Institute and has been adopted by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment, or GLOBE International, of which GLOBE UK is a part.

The idea of contraction and convergence is to bring together sustainability and equity in a programme for reducing emissions by a target year on the basis of per capita rights, which become tradeable. It is compatible with the idea that came from Kyoto, but unless we set the target year for sustainability and agree the principle of equity, nothing will happen. I must re-emphasise what the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) said about the opportunities for the United Kingdom Government to take up that agenda and to use it as their platform at the G8 conference in Birmingham. It would be a great service indeed—a new, additional service—if they did that.

We all hope that the Government intend to keep to their own target of a 20 per cent. reduction by 2010. Confirmation of that this morning would be useful, as we have heard rumours that that is not the case. To deliver such a reduction and, indeed, the sort that will have to follow after that, we need action in three areas: efficiency, renewables and cutting demand.

We know what energy efficiency measures can be taken. The question is what the mechanism is that can ensure that they are. The fundamental change must be to the way in which the energy supply companies operate. They have to be persuaded to see their function not simply in terms of selling units of energy and making their profits on the basis of how much they sell, but of selling energy services. How that can be done is the question—how can their function be changed? It comes down to regulation and the function of the regulator, and the Minister has already spoken encouragingly about that.

A recent Institute for Public Policy Research study put it like this: the question is how to ensure that firms compete on total bill, rather than unit price. That same, useful study considers how regulation could achieve such a change.

We all now understand the enormous potential in renewables, and it is terribly important that we take it seriously. The organisations looking into that issue are convinced that we can achieve significant gains. Greenpeace is arguing for fossil fuel phase-out in 30 or 40 years. Whether that is realistic, I am not competent to judge, but we can certainly have major advances.

We want to hear what the Minister has to say about the European Union White Paper on renewables. The EU argues that the share of renewables in total energy demand can be increased from 6 to 12 per cent. by 2010, which would involve significant public investment, but would generate a significant number of jobs—between 500,000 and 900,000 in that period. We are, therefore, talking about an important market opportunity as well as an environmental imperative.

As has been said, the United Kingdom is at the bottom of the league in terms of the share of energy produced from renewables. The position is improving, but not as much as it should. The Government have set a 10 per cent. target of electricity from renewables by 2010, which is good news, but it is not enough. Furthermore, we need to set longer-term targets. The EU framework provides an opportunity to do so.

The Minister for Science, Energy and Industry has been described—I hope inaccurately—as not being particularly enthusiastic about EU targets. I hope that he will take this opportunity to correct any misapprehension that may exist.

If the hon. Gentleman had been able to attend the whole of the Committee in question, he would have found that the following day, The Times published a letter saying exactly the opposite and that I was probably too enthusiastic about renewables. The original report was inaccurate.

It is useful to have such a statement on the Floor of the House and in Hansard,and I am delighted to hear it.

I am looking forward to a serious expansion of renewables, partly because I live in Wales which is an energy-rich country, where there are important opportunities for jobs in rural areas and agricultural diversification as part of the renewables programme.

I shall conclude, as other hon. Members want to speak. The Government have said that the environment is at the heart of their policy and that they are committed to sustainable development. Getting energy policy right in the wake of Kyoto is the most important element; of that there is no doubt. The IPPR publication states in its introduction:

"To most people, energy is not a central political issue".

I would go so far as to say that energy is the central political issue and that everyone has to bend their energies to ensuring that we get energy policy right.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Dafis) for allowing me a few minutes of the remaining time.

I wish to compare the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) with mine. I know his constituency well as I lived in north London some years ago, and I recognise the importance of the needs of his constituents and the huge benefits that could emerge from energy efficiency investment—the better use of public transport, and integrating work and the telecommunications system more closely. Huge advances can be made, and the hon. Member for Ceredigion made some important points about Wales.

I represent Ellesmere Port and Neston which is at the other end of the spectrum. It produces some of the products that all our constituents demand as of right—petroleum, obviously, and vehicles—and there is a nuclear enrichment plant in Capenhurst just next door. I therefore look at the equation from a slightly different perspective from my hon. Friend's. I agree that the carbon dioxide targets to which he referred must be taken extremely seriously and that we must bend over backwards to achieve them. However, I think that he would agree that many of the nations in the developing world have a right to expect the use of energy. We cannot impose some colonial will and say that they will not have access to energy. That is where the arithmetic of the whole debate becomes extremely complicated.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion referred to the possibility of a 12 per cent. increase in renewables not being enough. What of a nation such as China, which has some 1.2 billion people—50 times the population of our nation—and uses per capita one twelfth of the amount of energy that we use? China has an enormous amount of brown coal, and if it achieved a quarter of our energy usage by utilising it, Kyoto would be a useless exercise several times over.

That is the crude arithmetic of the situation that the world faces. I am not saying that we should turn our backs on the problem, as we have to take it extremely seriously, on the one hand, recognising the right of emergent nations to have access to the benefits that energy gives them and on the other, recognising the need to improve the climate for our children and grandchildren.

The only point on which I potentially disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North is the unilateral writing out of nuclear power from the equation. In his opening remarks, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) pointed out that nuclear power had its place. Of course, we have continuing problems with the safe disposal of waste material. My hon. Friend the Minister is, I suppose, the principal shareholder in British Nuclear Fuels so I am perhaps patting him on the back when I say that it has a world-class business in the transport and safe storage of such material, but we should not be complacent. We should continue to invest in the science that will enable us to reduce the potential risks and the time frames to which my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North referred.

This is a wide debate, and I ask hon. Members to consider the point that there is no such thing as a clean energy source. Even renewables need investment in metals, buildings and so forth, which are of themselves energy consumers. I think that all hon. Members would argue that the dash for gas may not have been the best use of a valuable resource in the long term. We all know the problems inherent in coal, nuclear power and other sources.

We must have a balanced debate, and I urge hon. Members to address the matter in such a way. We must look not only at the targets that this nation can achieve—we must stand up for that—but to the achievement of objectives beyond the minor steps taken by the United States in particular. We must do far better than that. I am not arguing in favour of one or another energy source, but we must never forget that the global equation is so enormous and the arithmetic so complicated that no particular source should be excluded from the debate.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) on securing the debate and on his speech. I was interested in a number of his remarks, such as his question to the Minister about Government policy on granting exploration licences in the north Atlantic, which is an important subject about which a number of organisations are concerned. I hope that the Minister will make the Government's attitude clear.

A number of hon. Members referred to private Members' Bills, including the Road Traffic Reduction (National Targets) Bill and the Energy Efficiency Bill. Let me make it clear that Opposition Front Benchers support those Bills; indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) and I are sponsors of the latter. I regret, however, that the matter has been the subject of an Adjournment debate, which must be introduced by a Back Bencher. The Government would make time for such a debate if they were serious about the issue and wanted to back up the Prime Minister, who said last June that the 20 per cent. target for cutting CO₂ was not a conditional target. The issue was last debated in November, also in an Adjournment debate introduced by a Back Bencher.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I am sorry. The Minister will have a chance to reply, and I have only 10 minutes in which to speak.

We have not debated how to meet the targets since November, which shows the low priority that the Government attach to the subject.

My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry, who is a shadow Department of Trade and Industry Minister, has been present throughout the debate, but the Minister is not accompanied by a Minister from the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, which is disappointing. That Department is closely involved with implementing the strategy, if there is one, for achieving the target for cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

Four months after the Kyoto conference, there has been no clear statement from the Government on how they intend to meet those challenging targets. The Minister for the Environment told hon. Members that

"the delivery mechanisms will be set out in detail in our White Paper in the spring."—[0fficial Report, 19 November 1997; Vol. 301, c. 258.]

Spring is more than half over, so will the Minister say when the White Paper will be published? Without waiting for its publication, will he answer the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Dafis), who asked what the Government's target was? Is it 20 per cent., which was in the Labour manifesto and referred to by the Prime Minister, or is it the European Union target of 8 per cent? We note that the Chancellor of the Exchequer referred only to the 8 per cent. target in his Budget speech. Was he hoping that the commitment to the 20 per cent. target would be quietly forgotten?

The target is only a small part of the story. More important is the strategy for hitting it. Are the Government looking to achieve cuts in emissions from households, from the transport sector, from electricity generation or from other sources? I hope that the Minister will at least say what relative contribution is to be made by each of those sources towards achieving the cut. As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) said, the Government made a curious start with households by cutting the tax on energy consumption, then waiting another eight months before making a much less dramatic cut in respect of energy saving.

The Government have not put the environment at the heart of their decision-making process, or even at the edge of it. The only substantial tax change in the Budget Red Book listed under environmental measures was the huge rise in petrol tax, the second in the last eight months. Increasing petrol tax is a substitute for coherent policy. Experience has shown that petrol tax rises have relatively little effect on car use. Under this Government, petrol tax is not so much an environmental policy as a reflection of their hostility to the motorist. The burden on motorists is especially heavy in rural areas, where no alternative to using a car exists. That is a further example of the Government's lack of concern for the countryside.

It is disappointing that so little has been done to explore other ways in which to encourage greater fuel efficiency in cars. A cut to £100 in vehicle excise duty for less-polluting cars, which is still only a consultation proposal, is a start, but much more could be done to reform VED on a revenue-neutral basis to give manufacturers and motorists a real incentive to achieve greater fuel efficiency.

Why was there no Budget Green Book? Hansard reports at column 1062 that on 10 July, the Financial Secretary promised the House that a Green Book would be published with this year's Budget Red Book, setting out the impact of Budget changes on the environment. I have not seen a Green Book. I wrote to the Financial Secretary earlier this month to ask for a copy, but have not received a reply. I fear that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove is right: the commitment to publish a Green Book has shrunk to a single page of the Red Book. There has been virtually no indication since the Kyoto conference of the Government's strategy for tackling climate change. Energy policy is crucial within such a strategy, so the Minister has a chance to put that right today.

I wrote to the Minister for the Environment following a leak which suggested that the Government were about to guarantee coal a share of the electricity generation market. Will the Minister tell hon. Members the Government's targets for the relative share of power generation from oil, from gas, from coal, from nuclear power and from renewables? How do the Government reconcile them with the targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions? What are their implications for consumer prices? Are reports that coal will be guaranteed a market share true? Can the Government's target for cutting carbon dioxide emissions be met if the market share for coal is to be protected in the way that has been reported? Is not there a clear dilemma? Why has coal been singled out for a guaranteed market share, when renewables, to which Labour Members have referred, have not?

How do the Government expect to raise the proportion of energy generated from renewable sources from its current level of about 1 per cent. to 10 per cent. in the next 12 years? What specific steps are they taking to achieve that goal? Does the Minister believe that allocating 5 per cent. of his budget for energy research on renewables is sufficient? What will the Government say at next month's meeting when the European White Paper on renewables is discussed?

We are now almost two thirds of the way through the British presidency of the European Union. What lead has Britain given to the European Union since 1 January on climate change issues? How is the EU's climate change strategy coming along? Is the Minister satisfied with the progress that has been made on agreeing burden sharing within the EU? Does he agree that, after four months in the chair of EU Council meetings, Britain has little or no tangible progress to show on the environmental front? As the hon. Members for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) and for Ceredigion said, the Government can offer leadership, not only within Europe but at the next G8 meeting, and carry forward the Kyoto agenda.

We should not overlook nuclear energy. Does the Minister accept that it is, at least in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, a clean fuel? Does he believe that it has a role to play in helping the Government to reach their carbon dioxide emission cuts targets? Will he redress the disgraceful and alarming secrecy surrounding the Government's decision to accept fuel from Russia for reprocessing at Dounreay by being open, at least about Government policy on nuclear energy?

Do the Government believe that energy policy should be primarily dictated by the market? If so, does the Minister believe that that will protect the environment? Are the Government willing to use the tax system to influence the market in an environmentally friendly direction and, if so, how? Have the green Ministers met to discuss energy policy since Kyoto? How often have they met and what has been the outcome of those meetings? Will the Minister publish the minutes of them? What have the Government done to promote energy efficiency on their own estate and when will the latest figures be published?

After a year in power, it is no longer acceptable for Ministers to hide behind endless reviews. The hard choices of which the Prime Minister speaks so frequently cannot be ducked for ever. The time comes to stop reviewing and start deciding. For energy policy, that time is now. Four months after Kyoto, Britain's strategy on climate change is shrouded in obscurity. Our international influence will start to wane if we do not set out how we intend to achieve those challenging targets.

When the Prime Minister addressed the earth summit last year, he did not qualify his green rhetoric by saying that any action would have to await the outcome of the comprehensive spending review. Given the difficulty of extracting any information from the Government about their follow-up to Kyoto, I conclude with one simple suggestion. Why do not the Government publish half-yearly a progress report about how they are meeting the Kyoto targets? I am confident that such a report would be welcomed on both sides of the House. Even if the Minister cannot accept the other suggestions made in the debate, surely he can at least make that one commitment.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) for introducing this debate and for the terms in which he did so. It has been an excellent debate. My only frustration is that I have only about 10 minutes to reply to it, and that others wanted to take part and have not been able to.

The debate has been wide ranging. I enjoyed the phrase "joined-up thinking" that my hon. Friend used. I am usually accused of insisting on joined-up thinking between Government Departments. The thought that we should take away from this debate is that perhaps we need to move to holistic action. The debate has cut across transport, energy conservation, the Environment Agency, nuclear power, energy generation, gas, electricity and renewable sources of energy, and the technologies behind new sources of energy. That leads into science and technology, and the new industries of the future. It is to the credit of my hon. Friend and other hon. Members that we have raised this matter on the Floor of the House. It is thanks to my hon. Friend today, and we need to continue the conversation.

I will not have time to reply in detail to all the points, much as I would like to. I am always tempted to adjourn to another room to continue this important conversation. It has been said that the two key issues of the new century will be the world's needs for water and for energy. My hon. Friend made the point well. We need to consider the international complexity, and to make the international connections as well as local connections.

We often get hung up on lighting and heating, but most energy will be wasted this summer through the use of fans and cooling systems in Britain. That will be the key source of carbon dioxide and energy loss, although we often do not connect summer conditions with the need for energy conservation. We do not do the joined-up thinking that we need to do in analysing these matters.

I welcome the fact that our Government put environment right at the heart of policy making. I got the impression from the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) that he did not even talk to his colleague, the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell). Perhaps he does not know that we had a full debate in Standing Committee on the European paper on renewables. Perhaps he does not know that we put renewables on the agenda in Europe, or that we have had debates in the House on energy policy and the role of coal and renewables. But then, the hon. Member for South Suffolk sticks to the environment and perhaps he does not talk to the shadow spokesman on energy. We have a different response from the Conservative party on energy every other day, so we are not clear where we are with the Opposition.

Our manifesto made it clear that a commitment to diverse, secure and sustainable energy sources was at the heart of our policy. We committed ourselves in our manifesto to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We set a challenging target of a 20 per cent. reduction to 1990 levels by 2000. On energy, we set the tough target of increasing renewable sources of energy—wave, wind, biomass, landfill gas, energy from waste, energy efficiency and combined heat and power schemes—by 10 per cent. by 2010. That is an ambitious target and we have already taken action to get there. The hon. Member for South Suffolk obviously has not heard of the non-fossil fuel obligation scheme that his own Government introduced. We extended it in November to double the amount of renewable energy. We shall reach 5 per cent. by 2000 as a result of that action and investment.

We inherited from the previous Administration a context in which the old nationalised, centralised system of energy generation, distribution and supply was atomised, separated out and privatised. The national grid was privatised and energy was split into generation by National Power or PowerGen, Scottish Power, Scottish Hydro-Electric and Nuclear Electric. They were all privatised. We expressed reservations about where the free market approach would lead. The system was originally divided into 12 separate regional electricity companies. We saw the opening up of competition in electricity and in gas. We have inherited an energy market system. There is the privately owned Pool for power generation. Spot markets are developing in gas and electricity. Seventy companies are now licensed to sell gas and 25 to sell electricity. In that context, how on earth do we deliver diverse, secure and sustainable sources of energy and ensure that environmental objectives are not undermined by the market system? That is precisely why we have considered regulation. We cannot have pure economic regulation; we must bring into account environmental factors.

Under the previous Administration, 74 per cent. of energy was generated from coal—not from oil as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North said, which is included in total energy use, including transport. In 1980, only 1 per cent. of energy was generated from gas. By 1996, as a result of the dash for gas, and the squeeze on and practical shut-down of the coal industry, gas had moved to 23 per cent. and coal had slipped back to 41 per cent. Renewables were still languishing at 0.7 per cent. So there was not a push in the direction of renewables. There was simply a dash for gas under the previous Government. We felt that that was irresponsible, which is why we have checked it to see what we can do to deliver a balanced energy policy. That includes promoting renewables and insisting on a larger share of generation from them.

One could argue that Britain has achieved its targets for carbon dioxide emissions. It did so because the previous Administration closed down manufacturing. When manufacturing shrinks from 52 per cent. of the economy to 22 per cent., we should not be surprised if carbon dioxide emissions are reduced. That is not the way in which to do it. We want to see a shift from fossil fuel generation to renewable energy sources. Renewable sources, combined with energy efficiency and conservation, will achieve the objectives without undermining our economic capacity.

I was asked about offshore oil and gas licences. I have to say to the hon. Member for South Suffolk that when the Labour Government came in, we insisted immediately that environmental impact assessments be imposed on the energy generation industry. The previous Government ignored that, for all their rhetoric about environmental concerns. We have made enormous strides by insisting that environmental considerations are taken into account.

I share the reservations expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) about the nuclear industry. The Government are not in the business of building power stations, because the industry has been privatised. I suggest to him that the cost of building further nuclear power stations is now prohibitive. I cannot see any private power company establishing an economic, let alone any other, case for doing so. The question of the waste still remains, as my hon. Friend eloquently spelt out.

Yes, we have clear targets as a result of Kyoto. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister was indefatigable in brokering the negotiation at that conference. There were rumours that it would not get off the ground and could not possibly be a success. It is a mark of the achievement of my right hon. Friend that a conclusion was successfully reached. Under the Kyoto protocol, all developed countries now have a legally binding target to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Together, they have agreed to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases to 5.2 per cent. below 1990 levels over the commitment period from 2008 to 2012. We will work through our share of that target and present our proposals on how to meet it.

We have already instituted work on policies to promote renewable sources of energy, in addition to our work on supplementing and carrying forward the fifth round of the NFFO. We have already reviewed sources of power and are looking at the flawed market system set up by the previous Government to determine how to deliver sustainable, secure and diverse energy generation.

We shall take forward the climate change programme with the contribution of renewables. In the next two years, the use of renewables will double from 1 to 2 per cent. Our programme will result in an improvement to 4 or 5 per cent. in the years to come. We need to work with the Commission's White Paper on renewables; as I spelt out in Committee, we shall respond positively so as to develop a strategic approach that will enable us to meet targets to increase the use of renewable energy sources across the European Union. The fifth round of the NFFO order will ensure that we reach a target of 5 per cent. of energy derived from renewables by 2000, which will be no mean achievement.

In my work as Minister with responsibility for energy policy and science, I look at scientific programmes with a view to investing in new technologies, for example, tidal power. A grant from my Department—

Order.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the serious issue of the threat facing the beekeeping industry. It is fair to say that the issue fits into the general pattern of crisis in the countryside, with the decline in agricultural incomes and the threat to the British rural way of life.

Until a few weeks ago, I was not fully aware of the extent of the crisis facing the beekeeping industry, but it was drawn to my attention by my constituents. I, like many of my colleagues, thought that beekeeping was primarily concerned with honey production and that, as long as there was honey on the supermarket shelves, all must be well. I am reminded of a conversation that I had with a senior colleague in which I mentioned my intention to raise the question of beekeeping; he replied that he was all in favour of beef eating. When I said that it was not beef eating but bee farming which I had in mind, he said, "Yes, BSE is a very serious issue." When I said, "No—what I have in mind is the winged sort," he said he had not realised that the problem was getting quite that serious.

The issue is serious, not only because bee farming is worth while in its own right, but because of the central role it plays in British agriculture and the ecological system. There are reflections of the BSE crisis in the problems affecting beekeeping because of the spread of the varroa mite. The varroa mite has been evident in the United Kingdom since 1992 and has spread progressively throughout the country. From looking at the experience overseas, we know the effects of the varroa mite, yet we have taken almost no action to tackle the problem. Today, I shall outline the nature of the beekeeping industry and the threat facing it and our great concern about the passivity and demonstrable inertia displayed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and its failure to act.

I shall start by describing the beekeeping industry as a whole. Beekeeping is as old as the pyramids—in fact, when the tomb of one of the pharaohs was recently opened, a jar of honey was found. It is part of the traditional way of life in Britain and has been so for many thousands of years. Today, there are believed to be 20,000 beekeepers in Britain and approximately 100,000 hives, although we cannot be certain, because there is no systematic recording and no national register.

The industry is almost entirely unsubsidised: bee farming is a cottage industry—the sort of industry where, if sheep, cattle or hill farming were involved, the farmers would be the recipients of large sums of Government money—but it is a worthwhile industry because of the combined efforts of professional beekeepers and the many small hobbyists who supplement a rural income by keeping bees and so preserving countryside traditions. This country used to produce 4,000 to 5,000 tonnes of honey, whereas 21,500 tonnes is imported, so the domestic industry is useful in terms of the balance of payments. Most British honey is of premium quality and is sold through small shops or farmers markets. The industry is one to be treasured and supported in its own right.

More important, bee farming is vital to the agricultural chain, because it is crucial to the future of top fruit and flowering and seeding crops. According to MAFF's own estimates, honey-bees pollinate about £7 billion-worth of crops in the United Kingdom; if the number of honey-bees decreases—in some parts of the country, the honey-bee faces extinction—that yield will decline, to the detriment of agriculture as a whole. The importance of the honey-bee is that it is by far the most efficient pollinator: it is the one species of pollinator that confines its efforts to one species of plant; it is not promiscuous, unlike the bumble-bee, which will move from, say, an apple tree to a pear tree and so cause sterility, not pollination. It has been demonstrated that, if honey-bees are present, many crops yield 40 per cent. more than would be achieved by wind pollination or other insects.

More than that, the honey-bee is vital for the ecology of the British countryside. The National Farmers Union reckons that 80 per cent. of all flowers and trees depend on the honey-bee for pollination; therefore, as the number of honey-bees declines, so too will the number of flowers and trees. That is where we see the importance of small hobbyist beekeepers—a group much derided by MAFF in the correspondence that I have seen. We need hives covering the entire country; on average, bees cover a three-mile radius around the hive, so without having many small beekeepers, some patches of the country will be sterile because of the lack of a honey-bee population. Small hobbyist beekeepers need support. They are dependent on the advice, research and support of the beekeepers federations and MAFF. If we allow this crisis to continue and lose the honey-bee population, there will be no pollination in large parts of the country, with fewer seeds, fewer flowers and, as a result, fewer birds. The garden of England will start to fade.

The threat from the varroa mite to beekeeping is potentially terminal. We estimate that the number of beekeepers has declined from 35,000 to 22,000 over the past few years. We know that in Kent—a top fruit-producing county—that number has declined from 1,000 to 400 in only five years and the number of hives has probably halved. According to MAFF estimates, honey production has fallen from 4,000 tonnes to 2,500 tonnes. The industry is now experiencing a rapid decline of crisis proportions. That decline affects many individual beekeepers, both professional and hobbyist.

I shall describe the experience of a constituent of mine in Tunbridge Wells. Peter Hutton bought 150 colonies in 1995 and planned to increase that number to between 300 and 500 colonies. Since 1995, he has lost no fewer than 165 colonies to the varroa mite and he now has only 50 colonies. The cost to him has been £26,500—a sum few farmers or entrepreneurs can afford.

I know that my hon. Friend has of late been energetic in taking up this issue with MAFF and other bodies responsible for beekeeping. Has he met with sympathetic concern about the problems which he describes, or has the response been less concerned than he would have liked?

My hon. Friend raises the central point, which is that beekeeping is a small cottage industry which, to some extent, relies for its survival in the face of crisis on Government support and co-ordinated action, but we have been faced with passivity and inertia. I shall cover that point and give specific examples later in my speech.

In the United States, where there has been far more experience of and research into the varroa mite than here, the US Department of Agriculture estimates that the cost to US agriculture in the form of lost crops as a result of the failure to halt the spread of the varroa mite is no less than $5.7 billion.

Richard Jones, director of the International Bee Research Association, says:

"Support is needed"

now

"for beekeepers fighting the mite and so possibly saving the honey-bee in the UK".

In other words, unless we take action now, the honey-bee may well become partially extinct in the United Kingdom. It is, almost literally, a question of "to bee or not to be".

Against that background, under the present and previous Administrations, the Department, instead of taking a proactive, interested and understanding approach to the problems of the British countryside and the rural way of life, has displayed a pattern of inaction, inertia and lack of interest and given rise to a catalogue of failure and bureaucratic disregard for the industry's needs.

I draw attention to just three examples of rank failure by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. First, it has failed to help to find solutions and to license pesticides to treat the mite. Secondly, it has failed to provide proper funding for research and co-ordination to find solutions to the problem. Thirdly, it has completely failed to listen to the industry.

I shall cite specific examples, starting with the failure to find and license treatment. Treatment of the varroa mite depends on rotation of alternative chemicals or pesticides to tackle the problem. This is a classic example of a situation where, with a small cottage industry, pharmaceutical companies will not devote large amounts of research money to finding a solution. To find a solution we need international co-ordination; we need to learn from what has happened abroad; and the Government must adopt a proactive and supportive attitude.

Instead, on 11 August 1997, the Government passed Statutory Instrument 1729, which redefined bees as food-producing animals. The consequence of that seemingly innocuous measure was to outlaw for use in beekeeping some of the crucial pesticides that could help to tackle the problem—notably, a pesticide called Apistan. Apistan is the most widely used chemical for dealing with the varroa mite in southern Europe, Germany and the United States. We now depend almost wholly on a single pesticide, Bayvarol. That decision was taken after hardly any consultation with the beekeeping industry. It was peremptory, arbitrary and, to all appearances, unknowing and ignorant.

It is widely acknowledged that, if we continue to depend on a single chemical, pesticide resistance will develop in the varroa mite. Dr. Cowan, an expert in the field, says:

"It is estimated that resistance"—

to Bayvarol, the one chemical on which we depend—

"will be found in the UK in two or three years. It is therefore essential that alternative aracides are registered."

To date, no action has been taken to do so.

Ironically, while we were outlawing Apistan and depending on Bayvarol, in Germany Bayvarol was outlawed as unsafe for use in food production—a classic example of complete failure to co-ordinate within the European Union on a crucial food production issue.

I believe that, for five years, a company called Vita (Europe) has been attempting to obtain a licence to use Apistan in food production. It has been dogged at every turn by simple bureaucratic delay, and we still do not have a licence to use it. A very large proportion of the honey that we import and consume in the UK is produced in Europe or the United States using Apistan, so our measure to abolish the use of Apistan in the UK can have had no conceivable impact on the safety of honey for human consumption in the UK.

Two further products, Apiguard and Apitol, have been developed and are coming on to the market. Their use would help to tackle the problem and create a rotation in the treatment of the varroa mite. Must we wait for another five years of bureaucratic delay before those products can be licensed?

The second failure is the complete failure to fund research.

Is my hon. Friend aware that it costs about £10,000 to get a medicine approved by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate, so, unsurprisingly, many producers are unwilling to do so?

I thank my hon. Friend for that important point. The problem is one of cost, and the fact that we have a widely dispersed, small cottage industry. It is not an attractive market for the major companies, yet, because of the economic and ecological benefits to the country of beekeeping, we need from the Government a proactive and supportive attitude to developing solutions and a willingness to work with, not fob off, the industry.

The Government's failure to fund any research contrasts starkly with the attitude of other EU Governments. In France, Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Germany—as in the United States—a much more proactive approach has been adopted to research, to helping beekeepers through the problem and to ensuring that good husbandry and good practice are adopted throughout the industry.

By contrast, in this country, we have not materially increased the funds available to the industry. Last year, we applied for an EU grant, which was available to help with the beekeeping industry and, much to our evident surprise, we received that grant—in fact, we received more than we had expected to receive. That money, instead of being used to fund research and action to support beekeepers, was trousered by the Treasury and used to reduce public expenditure—a clear example of abuse of the EU subsidy system.

To support that point, I quote from one of many letters that I have received. Ministers do not see fit to reply to letters from the Bee Farmers Association of the United Kingdom themselves, so the task is passed down to an official—incidentally, in the horticulture and potatoes division of MAFF—Mr. Ron Scrutton. Evidently, he is a very important official, because he does not see fit to sign his letters himself, but has them "pp'd" by his secretary. Not only do we not have a letter from a Minister, but we have a letter from Mr. Ron Scrutton's secretary, in which he says:

"As you rightly point out, the UK is now likely to receive much more than we had anticipated via this EU scheme. Nevertheless our policy remains as before. Our programme has been based on existing work and EU receipts will be used to offset the cost of that work. I regret that it will not be possible to increase the expenditure in other areas as a result of this unexpected increase."

In other words, the money has gone to the Treasury.

We have had minimal extra support. No action has been taken. The position is redolent of what happened with BSE. We have watched this problem develop for years and we know that it will be damaging. We know that the cost to agriculture and in agriculture subsidies will be tremendous if nothing is done, yet there has been no attempt to address the problem.

The whole episode is redolent of unwillingness to understand what is going on in the rural community and failure to listen to the industry. Not only has expenditure not increased and no action been taken, but the tone of the correspondence—of which I have many examples—is that of fobbing off beekeepers and farmers and seeking any reason to ignore the problem and hope that it goes away.

That is true not only of the correspondence with the unfortunate Mr. Scrutton. The latest insult is the issue by MAFF of a consultation document—an interesting consultation document, which seems to have been hurried out very late, just in time for the debate.

Until my hon. Friend spoke today for the beekeepers, they had no big guns in their support, so MAFF did not take the issue seriously. MAFF has millions of pounds to spend every year on research, and it requires merely a gesture from the Minister—a flick of the finger—to divert research funds from other projects into research on the varroa mite. However, the Ministry does not do so because it does not regard the countryside, and the small people who take part in beekeeping, as important or as relevant to the affairs of the bigger agriculture industry with which they are obsessed.

My hon. Friend makes the vital point that the beekeepers have been ignored because it has been easy to ignore them. The amount that should be spent on research, and for which we are asking this morning, is small change compared to the enormous volume of research funds and subsidy that goes into other parts of agriculture.

The latest insult, to which I referred earlier, is the consultation document that has been produced in anticipation of applying again for EU funding. It has been rushed out, apparently in an effort to show that MAFF is consulting the industry after all, which has been given a grand total of nine working days to respond to the document. Interestingly, I note that the document is already dated May 1998, so the intention is clearly to issue it unamended regardless of the responses that are received. The document is also riddled with typographical errors—but we will not go into that now. It is a rehash of old work and old proposals and betrays MAFF's clear intention to make no changes and to take no action.

Is my hon. Friend aware that the consultation document does not cover the essential areas of pollination, honey production or the breeding of mite-resistant bees? It does not mention the restocking of collapsed colonies. The consultation paper does not begin to address the problems faced by the beekeeping industry.

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The consultation document is remarkably similar to documents that were released last year. One is tempted to think that it comes from the same MAFF word processor belonging to the unfortunate Mr. Ron Scrutton.

I am sure that the Minister has been briefed for the debate on the reasons why nothing has been done. Therefore, I hope that he will not patronise us today by giving a long recital of excuses. This problem affects hon. Members on both sides of the House and it is of general interest to the rural community and to towns across Britain. Town gardens will also be adversely affected by the disappearance of the honey-bee.

We are not here today to examine the entrails of past failures to act: we are here to get some action now to save the beekeeping industry in Britain. I ask the Minister to address some specific points. First, may we please have a meeting with Ministers at which my colleagues and I, together with leaders of the beekeeping industry, can discuss the problem and find joint and satisfactory solutions? Such a meeting has hitherto been denied by the noble Lord Donoughue. He has written to my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) explaining that he considers such a meeting unnecessary. That betrays an uncaring and uninterested attitude, which is, to say the least, complacent. May we please have an early meeting to discuss joint solutions to the problem?

Secondly, will the Minister assure us that EU funds this year will be used to finance incremental spending on research and the spread of good housekeeping practices in the beekeeping industry? The funds must not be trousered by the Treasury, as has occurred in the past. Thirdly, will the Minister provide an assurance that an approach to facilitate the use of pesticides will be adopted as soon as possible—one that is constructive rather than bureaucratic and which helps to find suitable solutions, paying due regard to food safety?

Fourthly, will the Minister assure us that he will support and help to finance the British Bee-Keepers Association's proposal for a national beekeeping register so that we can at least monitor the extent of the problem and understand how much the bee population is declining? We are operating in the dark at present, with no reliable data. Will the Minister assure the House that there will be a change of attitude in his Ministry? Will he give a commitment that Ministers will answer letters personally and take the issue seriously?

Will my hon. Friend add one more point to his list? We must insist that MAFF withdraws this infantile and puerile consultation document. It should be redone in a manner that befits the gravity of the situation and returned to those who need to be consulted with the imperative that they do not have only nine days in which to consider it and respond to the Department. The consultation exercise must be genuine and not the farce that is contemplated.

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. It might be necessary to submit an application to the EU to replenish our funding for the coming year. If we are late in responding to that deadline, that is the responsibility of MAFF officials. Any consultation must be conducted properly; it should not be a pretend exercise designed to make it look as though MAFF officials are taking an interest in this matter at a late date in anticipation of a debate in the House.

We have raised a very serious issue affecting not only beekeeping but British agriculture, the rural way of life and British ecology. If no action is taken, the result will be the loss of agricultural income and the loss of flora and fauna across the countryside. It will be a tragedy if we look back at this debate in five years and realise that we had a chance to take action and address a problem that has grown progressively—the onslaught of which is entirely predictable and could result in the terminal decline of beekeeping and the honey—bee-but failed to take action and, as a consequence, the British countryside has been changed for ever.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) on securing this extremely important debate. If I were the chairman of a supermarket chain, I would be concerned about what the diary columnists will make of this debate in the next two or three days—with references to shafts of light floating through the window, the bees buzzing and the chairman of Asda expatiating at length on the subject of honey. In such circumstances, diary journalists and others who might make fun of the debate would be demonstrating no understanding of the importance of beekeeping and the honey industry to the countryside and the nation as a whole.

My hon. Friend mentioned the essential nature of honey-bees and their pollinating activities. I think that I am correct in saying that 84 per cent. of all pollination in the United Kingdom is carried out by insects, of which honey-bees constitute a large proportion. Honey-bees are the only insects that stick with a particular plant or tree until they have finished pollination. They play a vital role from the point of view of British agriculture and of leisure. I am particularly keen to participate in this debate as there is a large leisure beekeeping industry in North Wiltshire and my constituents have asked me to raise some specific concerns. If the Minister listens carefully to the debate, takes note of our comments and responds in a similar tone, it is important that he should receive a jar of Wiltshire honey. I shall be happy to let him have one.

Bribery.

He must naturally declare it in the Register of Members' Interests.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) spoke eloquently about the importance of beekeeping to agriculture and the life of the countryside. Does my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) agree that towns are equally important? Many people who live in towns keep bees and others love gardening—most of our fellow citizens rightly take great pleasure in that activity. Without bees, it would not be possible to have beautiful gardens.

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. That is also true for those who are lucky enough to have allotments in the inner cities. I serve on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Select Committee, which is currently considering the great value of allotments to people in our inner cities, many of whom keep bees.

The importance of the bee industry cannot be gainsaid. I suspect that the Minister will respond by telling us how important the bee industry is. However, it is regrettable that his officials have not gone to the same lengths to emphasise the importance of the industry in the correspondence to which my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells referred. The quiet and successful beekeeping industry is severely threatened by the varroa mite. My hon. Friend did not explain in as much detail as he might exactly what that blood-sucking mite is. I am told by my constituents who keep bees that the mites are spreading throughout the United Kingdom and that, if nothing is done to check their spread, it will signal the end of bee colonies in the United Kingdom. It is the most appalling parasite, which can be dealt with in various ways. Beekeepers throughout the United Kingdom seem to agree that it is important to deal with the varroa mite not by one means, but by applying several different means to different colonies or even to the same colony. Mechanical methods can be used—trapping the parasite in the brood comb is one perfectly good way of sorting out the varroa mite. There are the chemicals that my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells mentioned, Bayvarol being the primary one used in this country at present.

There are also home-made old fashioned recipes that work remarkably well. Talc is one, and caster sugar is another. A sprinkling of either in the hive clogs the feet of the parasite, which falls to the floor of the hive and can easily be swept away. Talc and icing sugar are the solutions most commonly used by British beekeepers.

Very sensible, one might think—a down-to-earth solution. Why not make use of a DIY solution to a difficult problem? One might well think that, and one would have been right until a sunny afternoon recently when a European Union official with not much else to do thought, "Let us redefine what honey-bees are. They are no longer insects. Let us redefine them as food-producing animals, thereby putting them in the same category as sheep, pigs, goats and so on." That is an extraordinary redefinition. EU officials are fixated on redefining everything and making everything harmonious and the same across Europe. Why they should have wasted their time redefining the status of the honey-bee, I cannot imagine, but that is their job and perhaps we should not attack them for it.

One unfortunate consequence of redefining bees as food-producing animals is that they become subject to EU statutory instrument 1729. That document may not have made the headlines in recent years, and, for all I am aware, it may not even have been discussed in the House, but it has had an extraordinary effect on the harmless, peaceful beekeeping industry in the United Kingdom.

EU statutory instrument 1729 directs that anything used to make bees better if they are ill must be approved by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate—the body set up to ensure that cows, sheep and pigs are not fed medical substances that they should not be fed. It costs at least £5,000 to £10,000 to have a substance approved by the VMD. Beekeepers are concerned that although they have used talc successfully for years in many colonies, it will now need to be approved by the VMD.

The Minister may say that that is wrong, and that the Veterinary Medicines Directorate needs to approve only medicines that may have some deleterious effect on human health if they are left in the honey. Who is to prove that talc or the other home-grown products that have historically been used by beekeepers do not have some deleterious effect on human health? Is it necessary for the beekeepers to go through some process to demonstrate that talc is harmless? Do the Government intend to go through the process to prove that it is harmless? Perhaps the drug producers would want to go through some process to prove that an alternative substance to the current monopolistic position that Bayer enjoys with Bayvarol is not harmful to human health. Perhaps we must wait until some human becomes ill as a result of the use of one of those products, before a study is undertaken by the Government.

Surely it is time that the Government said, "We know that talc, icing sugar and one or two other products"—folic acid, I think—"are harmless to health. We will demonstrate that. We will license them in the same way as we have licensed other medicines, thereby removing that worry from the mind of the beekeeper."

Another problem for the Veterinary Medicines Directorate is that the cost of licensing a medicine through it means that only one producer so far—Bayer—has got round to doing so. That medicine is Bayvarol which, as we have heard, is losing its effectiveness and, particularly in France and Belgium, it is said that bees are entirely immune to it. Even if that were not the case, it is wrong that the British Government through one of their agencies should allow Bayer to have a monopoly on the only medicine that may be sold in this country to deal with the varroa mite. Should not the VMD move forward and encourage other manufacturers to have their products licensed?

Is my hon. Friend aware that licence applications have been in existence for several years, but the VMD and other Government Departments have made it difficult for companies to obtain licences—for example, for Apistan, which I mentioned?

My hon. Friend is right. The VMD seems to go out of its way to make it difficult for medicines to be licensed, and have not made it clear whether home-grown products that have traditionally been used are appropriate.

The Government are aware of the paucity of solutions to the problem. The Minister of State wrote to me recently:

"The VMD is aware that there is a lack of authorised veterinary products available for use in the beekeeping industry and this has meant for many years that beekeepers have used substances which have been developed for other, often industrial, purposes which they have found, probably accidentally, to have particular curative properties."

Indeed. Why does not the VMD move forward and allow such substances to be licensed in a cost-effective way?

Is my hon. Friend aware that although there are other solutions such as talc or caster sugar, they are extremely time-consuming and labour-intensive to use, and therefore not practical for many beekeepers, who face a declining income anyway and do not have the time—because for them time is money—to devote to the laborious process of constantly administering the treatment, sweeping out the hive and so on?

My hon. Friend is correct to a degree, although he may be speaking more from the point of view of the commercial beekeeper, for whom speed is all and who has a large number of bees to look after, whereas I am speaking more from the point of view of the private, leisure beekeeper, for whom time spent around the hives is part of the pleasure.

The private beekeeper is concerned about the cost. Bayvarol costs about £5 per application to each hive and must be applied twice a season, so that is £10 per hive. There are about 200,000 hives in the UK, so if they were all treated equally with Bayvarol, the total cost per annum would be £2 million. The total income from honey in the UK is £13 million. About one fifth of the total income from honey would therefore be spent not on buying the bees or producing the hives, but on purchasing Bayvarol from the monopolistic supplier, Bayer. The Minister should take steps to encourage other producers to enter the market and sell products that would be useful to private beekeepers in my case, and to my hon. Friend's professionals.

The Government should research what lies behind the varroa mite and what can usefully and sensibly be done to overcome it. Like my hon. Friend, I am disappointed that the Government received extra cash from the European Union and have apparently pocketed it. A research programme costs £113,000 a year—not a huge sum in Government terms. It is extraordinary that such a small research budget should not be increased, when the Government are receiving the money from the EU. That is a mean-minded and unnecessary restraint on research into an important matter.

I call on the Government, as did my hon. Friend, to correct the pocketing—the trousering, as he correctly called it—of the EU funding that should be used to support the beekeeping industry, which is under threat. The consequence of not doing so is too horrible to contemplate.

The beekeeper, and the farmers who depend on him, are under threat from three pernicious enemies—first, the varroa mite; secondly, the European Union official who seemed not to have too much else to do with his time and who has interfered in a particularly unfortunate way; and thirdly, the officials of the Veterinary Medicines Directorate and of MAFF, who have chosen not to step back from an over-zealous European official. Officials, as is so often the case, and especially those at the Ministry, have chosen to go the final mile and to put in place everything to the last line that is set out in the regulations laid down by their European counterparts.

It is important that the officials concerned should correct their approach. It is important that they should consider redefining the honey-bee, and not as a food-producing animal, so that it is not subject to European directive 1729, or whatever else it may be.

British beekeepers have kept bees for generations. They have produced honey and, as far as I am aware, no one has come to any harm through eating honey produced by British bees, which are untainted by being observed by EU and MAFF officials. Beekeeping has been an entirely unregulated industry for many centuries. I am not able to point to one case of so much as an upset tummy that has come about as a result of lack of regulation.

The rash of interference in the beekeeping industry is only one example of the excessive care that the Government and officials are tending to show on behalf of consumers. It was interesting to read in the newspapers this morning that the only salesman of beef on the bone was found not guilty yesterday at the conclusion of a court case on the borders. The judge went to some lengths to say that he thought that the legislation under which the case had been brought was badly drafted and had not been thought through. As a result, he dismissed the case. Two or three other such cases are pending. I do not want to second guess what the judges will do in those cases, but they may well come to conclusions similar to those which were reached yesterday in the borders case.

We have another example of officials sitting around with not much else to do but think up yet more regulations to control what perfectly reasonable industries do, in this case the beekeeping and bee farming industries. They put regulations in place, bring people to court, fine them or send them to prison. They interfere entirely unnecessarily with people's everyday way of life.

The ban on beef on the bone is unnecessary. The ban on feeding bees with traditional medication is entirely unnecessary. I was struck by an article that I read in a newspaper last week, which stated that more people had died through catching fish bones in their throat than through Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. I hope that the Minister will urgently consider banning the use of fish on the bone, which obviously is entirely detrimental to human health.

The hon. Gentleman is making a good speech on an important issue, but, as for CJD and fish bones, he must understand that there is a great deal that we do not know about CJD. In particular, there is much that we do not know about incubation periods. I think that the hon. Gentleman is trying to make a light-hearted point, and, in doing so, is dismissing a serious issue of public health. It is an issue which we take seriously and we intend to be protective.

I am grateful for the Minister's intervention. He is wrong in saying that I am making a light-hearted point. Indeed, I am making an extremely serious point. I believe that one person in 1 billion may be at risk through eating beef on the bone. By banning beef on the bone, the Government are taking an unnecessary step to safeguard the consumer. The step has been taken because the Labour party wrongly believed that the consumer was on its side and would value the protection that it offered. It is—

Order. We have taken flight from the honey-bee and we must come back to it.

You are quite right, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The honey-bee has buzzed off and I must return to the drone. I hope that my speech was not a drone. I am grateful to the Minister for his flattering remarks about the excellence of my contribution. That being so, drone is not the right expression. The expression that comes to mind is worker-bee.

There are a number of things that the Government need to do if they are to put right an appalling situation. First, they must find ways of encouraging more people to register sensible medicines. If that involves cutting the cost of making applications through the VMD, so be it.

Earlier, in a seated interjection, the Minister indicated that he thought that it cost about £10,000 to register medicines because we, the Conservatives, had introduced the directorate when we were in government. I am happy to accept that criticism. If we were still in government and I was speaking from the Back Benches to a Conservative Minister who was responsible for introducing such charges, I would happily attack him, and just as readily as I have attacked the Minister for continuing with such charges. I am asking the Minister to find a way of reducing VMD charges so that more medicines can be registered through it.

Secondly, I ask the Minister to find a way of reassuring traditional bee farmers who use traditional methods such as talc and icing sugar that they will not be in any danger of prosecution in future. A short while ago, the Minister made the point that there has not been enough research into the consequences of CJD. That applies just as much in this instance as it does in others.

We do not know.

The Minister says from a sedentary position that we do not know. Beekeepers are saying precisely that. They do not know that talc and icing sugar are entirely safe. They would like to know from the Government that talc and icing sugar are entirely safe. They do not want words such as those used in the letter that we have received from the Government, to the effect that talc and icing sugar are entirely safe unless it can be proved otherwise. We would like the Government to undertake the necessary research and to reassure bee farmers that if they use traditional methods of dealing with the mite they will be allowed to continue to do so.

European statutory instrument 1729 goes one step too far. It is an SI to which we would do well to pay no attention whatsoever. Energetic UK civil servants with double firsts from Oxbridge should be spending their time using their excellent brains to consider ways in which they can look after traditional industries that have looked after themselves so well throughout the centuries. They should not be thinking how better to apply European directives such as SI 1729.

Beekeeping is nothing to do with Europe. Indeed, it has precious little to do with this place. For centuries, beekeeping has been an entirely self-regulated industry. Let it stay that way. Leave our beekeepers in peace.

First, I inform the House that I have the privilege of being honorary vice-president of the Cambridgeshire Beekeepers Association, in which capacity I have already raised with Ministers a number of the issues that we have been discussing this morning. Secondly, the Chivers Hartley factory is in my constituency. That company is the largest producer of jam in the United Kingdom and a major blender of honey. I have a range of personal and constituency interests, which make beekeeping an important subject to me from that perspective and also from a wider perspective.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) on securing a debate on the subject of beekeeping. I have not checked when the issue was last raised in the Chamber, but it is clearly it is an important subject. I congratulate my hon. Friend, too, on the way in which he dealt with it, explaining the importance of it not only to beekeepers and consumers of honey but to the wider population. My hon. Friend outlined the threats that the industry faces.

My hon. Friend rightly reminded us that the Government's general approach has been wholly inadequate. Perhaps that is no better exemplified than by asking the Minister who is responsible within the Government for bees, beekeeping and related issues. As my hon. Friend said, his correspondence has been with Lord Donoughue, who is believed to be the Minister responsible for horticulture. Most representatives of horticulture find that difficult to understand, given his apparent inability to keep appointments with them.

My correspondence, along with the parliamentary questions that I have tabled on this subject, have been answered by the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Today, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will reply to the debate. Three separate Ministers apparently have a finger in the hive in supposedly trying to deal with the problems of bees and beekeeping.

I was astonished to find that there are about 20,000 species belonging to the super family apoidea and the order hymenoptera, which are all classified as bees. About 500 of those separate species are social bees, including the one that is so familiar to the British countryside.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells rightly reminded us of the valuable role of bees in agricultural productivity. He did not mention the role of the integrated agricultural crops research establishment at Rothamsted. It has calculated that 80 per cent. of pollination in Britain is carried out by insects, and that 80 per cent. of that is carried out by the honey-bee. Its importance to all types of crop production, whether on the allotment, in the field or in the garden, is critical and cannot be overemphasised. Even in crops where wind pollination is common, such as oil seed rape, the yield improvement due to bees can be considerable and is estimated to be at least 14 per cent.

The output of bees is estimated at about £12 million worth of honey, but, in terms of the pollination value to crop production, it is about £6.9 billion at farm gate prices. That is about 10 per cent. of UK consumption. It is also estimated that some 80 per cent. of our hives are owned by amateurs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells said, the Government's references to amateurs and to hobby beekeepers in the document that was released last week show their disdain for people who produce honey and keep bees as a leisure or hobby activity or to supplement other income.

The importance of bees to society cannot be overestimated. In my former life as a practical farmer, I recall beekeepers putting hives in the fields to assist in pollination, particularly of field beans. Hives are part of the English countryside and their location in orchards, especially in Kent, is part of the English country scene. A few years ago, agriculture posed a threat to bees. The early insecticides that were used to control aphids and other insect pests were indiscriminate and caused severe damage to the bee population. Farmers had to use avoidance measures, such as using products at different times of day, to minimise the impact on bees. Just this week, the Country Landowners Association reminded farmers of the importance of following the Government's code of spray safety to protect foraging bees. It reminded farmers that a breach of the code carries a maximum fine of £2,000.

Current agrochemicals are much more specific, and the honey-bee is largely protected from that threat. As we have heard, the current threat is varroa. In 1992, the first infections in Britain were found in Devon, and the previous Government delineated statutory infected areas which have expanded to include the whole of England and parts of Scotland. However, the march of the mite continues. It is clear that such controls are inadequate. Bayvarol, which is the only licensed product, is the only one that beekeepers can use to combat varroa. That stems from the European Court of Justice case of Bruyère v. Belgium which extended the scope of directive 81/851 to prohibit the import of veterinary medicinal products that were not authorised in a member state.

Until that time, although Apistan could not be purchased in this country, beekeepers could buy it abroad and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate took the view that, as it was imported, it did not contravene the legislation. The European Court case ruled that that view was wrong, and it is now impossible to obtain Apistan for use in this country. That leaves just Bayvarol. That has come about without consultation with the industry and it again demonstrates the Government's arrogance in taking decisions without thought and concern for the affected industry.

It was not a Government decision.

The Minister says that it was not a Government decision, but I am sure that they introduced a statutory instrument to which my hon. Friends the Members for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) and for Tunbridge Wells referred. I shall return to that.

The hon. Gentleman is speaking about European Union regulations, which the statutory instrument implements.

I appreciate the results of the European Court case to which I referred. As my hon. Friends have said, the regulations' impact on British beekeeping is catastrophic. Before introducing the regulation, the Government should have consulted the industry to try to minimise that impact. I do not entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire because it is difficult to argue that a bee is not a food-producing animal. It could be argued that it is not an animal, but it definitely produces food. The important issue is not the definition itself but its impact on the industry. Until the consultation paper was published last week, the Government had made no attempt to consult beekeepers about addressing the impact of the European Court ruling.

Although it is right to say that the problem is partly a consequence of the EU ruling, as I said earlier there have been applications over the past five years to license Apistan. I am advised that every application has experienced some sort of bureaucratic delay. For example, it was said that the data were not in the right format. The fact that Apistan cannot be used in the context of food production is partly a consequence of Government action and is not due solely to the EU directive.

As one would expect my hon. Friend has carried out his research admirably, and he is right.

He is not.

The Minister will shortly have a chance to respond. The Veterinary Medicines Directorate is responsible for licensing the products that we are discussing. If my hon. Friend has been correctly informed, and I am sure he has, it seems that applications to license Apistan have constantly been sent back on the bureaucratic ground that information or data were inadequate. The Government and the VMD are under an obligation to go to the company that is seeking the licence to try to sort out the problems and get a product licence. That is not happening.

The Minister has said that the previous Government set the rules about the cost of licensing. He was right. The concept of full cost recovery was introduced by the previous Government to make sure that systems covered their costs. That is a sensible principle, but, like so many, if it is taken to an absurd extent it damages the concept and integrity of the principle.

Many small beekeepers do not have large resources. It is not a market from which pharmaceutical or chemical companies can expect huge returns, and, in the interests of bee health, the Government and the VMD should explore ways of minimising the impact of costs. We are debating a product for a small industry and not one that will be used on 20 million acres of cereals. The Minister would do well to heed that important fact. I shall be interested in his response.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire spoke about traditional remedies such as talc, which is also known as French chalk, and formic and lactic acid. Those products are not licensed because they are not patented and commercial organisations would not benefit from a licence. The VMD has said that under the pesticide regulations only non-medicinal curative substances would be banned if, when transmitted to honey, they would be harmful to human health. The VMD said:

"The VMD is not aware of any health hazards that have arisen from the use by beekeepers over the past few years of the sort of substances various correspondents have mentioned in their letters, although there is considerable concern about something called 'Frow mixture', (apparently comprising of nitrobenzene, petrol, ligroin, methyl salicylate and safrol) about which we are seeking further information."

It is understandable that that should be causing some concern, and I agree with the Minister on that.

The important point is that the VMD has clearly stated that it is not aware of any health hazards from the other traditional remedies. It is a helpful statement and it is right that it should be recorded, but it is still far too vague. Given the structure of the beekeeping industry, which has been rightly described by my hon. Friends, I hope that the Minister will undertake to press the VMD for clear and specific guidelines about the use of traditional remedies so that beekeepers can be absolutely clear whether they can go on using them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells rightly said, they are labour intensive, but, for many producers, they are a satisfactory alternative.

I have just thought of a point that I omitted to mention in my speech. The offending statutory instrument No. 1729, clearly outlaws anything other than approved medicines. Paragraph 6(1) says that if any person uses

"substances which are not mentioned in Annexes I, II or Ill of the Council Regulations he shall be guilty of an offence."

Whatever the interpretation may be, the wording of the statutory instrument is plain and it makes it an offence to use anything other than medicines.

My hon. Friend is right. That is what is said, but the interpretation is equally important. This is an ideal opportunity for the Government to make a clear statement of declaration about how they interpret that statutory instrument.

My hon. Friends have referred to the fact that only Bayvarol is licensed to be used as a chemical treatment in this country. As has been said, there is ample evidence that in northern France and Belgium, just across the channel, the varroa mite is becoming immune to Bayvarol. It is also believed in some parts of Europe that it is becoming immune to Apistan as well because the two chemicals are similar. There is no doubt that it will be only a short time before that immunity reaches this country.

Some months ago, I asked the Government what they were doing about that and the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said:

"We are not aware of any incidence of varroa mite resistance in the UK."

It is not a question of being aware now, but of foreseeing that it will undoubtedly come to this country and that we will need to do something about it.

How can we continue to import honey into this country when other countries are using a product which is not permitted here and without mutual recognition? I asked the Government some months ago what they are doing to ensure that honey being imported into this country is safe. I was told quite clearly that inspections are carried out and that

"Approximately 70 per cent. of the samples collected at random from retail outlets were imported."

In a test for flumethrin, which is the chemical involved in Apistan,

"none of the samples was positive."

Those results were for 1996. The 1997 figures were not available.

We continue to have the problem of British producers not being able to use that chemical. The Government have a responsibility to answer the fundamental question about importing food products into this country which are produced using chemicals and techniques that are banned here. It does not make sense. If it is safe for producers abroad to use those chemicals or treatments, why is not it safe in this country? The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has shuffled off the responsibility to the pharmaceutical industry saying:

"The question of any applications for authorisation of new veterinary medicines to control varroa mites is one for the pharmaceutical industry."—[Official Report, 12 December 1997; Vol. 302, c. 717.]

That is abdicating responsibility for an important industry in this country.

There are other aspects that need to be considered. My hon. Friends both referred to research. Long-term studies being carried out at Rothamsted show considerable variation in the harm being attributed to the disease. It is believed that it may be due to the difference in the incidence of the honey-bee virus in infested colonies. There is no doubt that there is an issue that needs further investigation.

In the United States, which has been mentioned, Michigan state university has been looking at bee resistance to varroa. It has found some strains of honey-bee that are much more resistant than others. Those are examples of a desperate need for urgent further research so that perhaps one day the industry need not be reliant on chemical treatments.

My hon. Friends have also referred to the directive on the improvements for marketing and the production of honey. The Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food told me in July last year that he welcomed the regulation. He said that he was

"currently assessing how the United Kingdom might make the best use of the expenditure reimbursement provisions of the regulation"

Perhaps we should have taken more note of the phrase "expenditure reimbursement provisions". He went on to say that he

"will consult the industry and others about it."—[Official Report, 22 July 1997; Vol. 298, c. 552-53.]

That consultation was a sham and demonstrated, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells said, that the Government were seeking to get some money back for what they were already doing. It did not mean that there would be any more money to help a beleaguered industry.

Will my hon. Friend confirm that under EC regulation 1221/97 the United Kingdom is set to receive more funds per hive than any other European Union member state for the improvement of the production and marketing of honey? Does my hon. Friend agree with me, with my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) and my bee farming constituent, Mr. Ged Marshall, that it is essential that those funds be ring fenced exclusively for the purpose for which they are intended and should not be confiscated by the Treasury or misused and misappropriated for other purposes by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food?

My hon. Friend is entirely right. I have no way of knowing for certain that the comparison with other countries is completely correct, but I believe it to be so. What is undoubtedly true is that not one penny of the extra money coming to the bee industry in Europe is coming to British beekeepers or the British bee industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells in his inimitable fashion referred to the fact that the Treasury has trousered it. That is not a novel event. The Treasury regularly sees the European Community as a mulch cow for getting back some money.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has stated repeatedly in previous months on other agricultural issues that it has no money yet, when there is a little extra money coming from Europe, we see it rolling over to the Treasury, which takes the money back into its own hands.

About £1.7 million is being spent by MAFF—£1.5 million on the bee health programme and about £200,000 on research. I believe that it has applied for an extra £475,000 which, as I have said, is being used to fund existing activities with no extension of research.

I want to challenge the Minister about where we are going from here. I hope that he will answer the questions asked by my hon. Friends. I hope that he will deal with the issue regarding the future of the National Bee Unit. I wrote to the Government in December last year and received a reply in January from the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. He said:

"the work of the National Bee Unit is currently under review as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review which was announced on 29 July 1997."

So the Government are not only confiscating the money that is coming from Europe, but are considering cutting what is being spent anyway. That is totally unacceptable. Will the Minister today rule out any reduction in current expenditure on the National Bee Unit, the bee health programme and indeed research? Better still, will he agree to find a little extra money—we are not talking vast sums here—to fund urgent research into alternative ways in which to control varroa, which is essential? Will he also, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) has asked, withdraw the document that was hurried out last week?

Frankly, it is an embarrassment for any Government to hurry out a document that is riddled with inaccuracies and typographical errors and is clearly a result of the fact that this debate had appeared on the Order Paper. It is not acceptable for the Government to consult on an inadequate document that does not deal with the issues, and to give the industry just a few days to respond. Will the Minister today withdraw that document, redraft it, deal with all the issues and then set out on a real consultation, with the whole beekeeping industry and those who are affected by it?

The speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for Tunbridge Wells and for North Wiltshire illustrated the serious disease that faces the UK bee population. It is of concern not just to beekeepers, but to everyone who is involved in agriculture and horticulture. There is an urgent need for more work—not less—so will the Minister fund more research? Will he show today that the Government actually understand the importance of this industry and undertake that they will not sit idly by, shuffling off responsibility to beekeepers and pharmaceutical industries, while the bee industry is destroyed by a mite that we know little about and which needs far more research? Will he show that, on this issue, if on nothing else to do with the countryside, the Government do actually care?

I congratulate the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mr. Norman) on securing the debate and on choosing such an important and interesting subject. I also thank hon. Members who have made a serious and thoughtful contribution to the issue of beekeeping and the problem of varroa, although I reject any allegation that the Government have failed to act on the issue. Some of the partisan points that were made related more to political campaigning than to dealing with a serious issue and, in particular, public health and consumer safety issues. I was disappointed with some of the comments, which bordered on the fatuous.

There is a need, of course, for research, and I intend to outline the steps that the Government are taking. I also intend to make an announcement that may be of interest to beekeepers and to hon. Members who have spoken, and hope to deal with all the points that have been raised.

Beekeeping is not often raised on the Floor of the House. That, perhaps, is a measure of the nature of the people who are involved in the craft. They prefer to get on with the business of keeping their bees rather than come to us to air their problems. This debate has presented an unusual opportunity for all of us to deal with some of those problems.

During examination of correspondence in preparation for the debate, I found no evidence whatever of hobbyist beekeepers being derided by the Government or Ministry officials—that has certainly not happened in this Administration. There are issues such as the use of pesticides and consumer safety. The point was raised about a national register of beekeepers. Some of the comments have been about bureaucracy. Setting up a national register would itself be a bureaucratic exercise and the cost of keeping it up to date would be considerable. There is the issue of the costs and benefits of such a scheme and, indeed, whether the beekeeping sector could run it.

There is no doubt whatever that beekeepers have many difficulties with which to contend. Bees are susceptible to a range of diseases and visitations. They can become affected by agricultural pesticides and they have to face the vagaries of this country's weather, which recently has seemed to be less and less predictable.

There has been full consultation with the beekeeping sector. I was surprised at some of the comments about consultation. In the first round of consultation on the European documents, there were meetings as well as consultation with representatives from beekeeping organisations. Because of the time scale in meeting the EU requirements, it is not really possible to withdraw the documents. I was also a bit surprised because that follows on from last year's consultation; it is within the timetable that has been laid down by the European Union. More to the point, as far as I am aware, there have been no complaints or representations from beekeeper organisations that the consultation has failed.

Is the Minister aware that the Bee Farmers Association is plain that it was summoned to MAFF for the annual meeting in October last year—there is a meeting every year—and that, during the meeting, the BFA was informed that the use of Apistan had been banned on 11 August? Information of its banning had not been passed on to the BFA in any shape, size or form. It had not been consulted on its banning. MAFF did not inform the BFA that Apistan had been banned until that annual meeting, which took place, I believe, in October or November last year in MAFF offices.

That is the process of consultation: to invite the organisation to discuss these issues. If there are concerns and representations are made by organisations, of course, they will be examined sympathetically.

I think that it is clear that the purpose of consultation is to listen to the representations from the beekeeping industry. The point that has been made to my colleagues is that those representations were made at the annual meeting in October and that they were in no way reflected in the consultation document that was subsequently put out, so, effectively, consultation has not been a listening process, but has been treated simply as a formality. The Minister may be aware that it is also fairly clear—

Order. I know that this is a serious subject, but the hon. Gentleman cannot make another speech during an intervention.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I shall try to deal with the points on Apistan in a moment. I accept that beekeepers are concerned about three particular problems. The mite infestation, varroa, which was first discovered in 1992, is now endemic in England and Wales and there is only one authorised medical treatment to which, in time, the mites are likely to become resistant.

Secondly, the new EU-funded scheme to improve honey production and beekeeping should lead to the UK receiving much more assistance than previously expected—just under £0.5 million—but that is being used to replace existing Government funding work rather than to increase spending. That is the concern. Finally, beekeepers regularly wish to be reassured about the Government's commitment to them.

Those are serious points and they have been reflected in the speeches this morning. I shall try to respond to each of the three key issues.

Will the Minister give way?

Forgive me. I have limited time and I want to try to get through those points, which may be of interest to the hon. Gentleman.

What about the point on replacing existing funding?

I shall deal with that in my speech.

In the wake of the discovery of varroa, our predecessors reorganised the MAFF bee health service. Laboratory and field staff were brought together under the same management for the first time. Regional inspectors were employed on a year-round basis and much more emphasis was given to training and advisory work.

One thing that all beekeepers appear to agree on is that that was a good move and that the quality of service has improved. In addition to free training and advice, beekeepers have a free field inspection service for varroa and the two other notifiable diseases—European foul brood and American foul brood. They also receive a free laboratory diagnosis service.

I stress that responsibility for approving medicines such as Apistan lies with the Veterinary Medicines Directorate. It was able quickly to authorise one treatment— Bayvarol—for the mite infestation. It is true that Bayvarol remains the only authorised treatment, which is a matter of some concern to beekeepers. That is especially true as legislation that was enacted last year to meet Community obligations effectively outlawed the personal importation and use of medicinal substances that are permitted in other member states. It was not a decision by this Government, which is one of the allegations that have been made.

There is nothing I can do about that, but I should clarify one thing; the matter was raised by the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray). Provided that no residue that is harmful to human health is left in the honey, it is still possible to use what are termed non-medicinal curative substances. Those are substances for which no medical claims are made, but which beekeepers believe may serve a useful purpose. The example that was given was talcum powder, which may help to prevent the mites from attaching themselves to the bees.

The question was, who should decide that? Two main bodies oversee safety on additives—the VMD and the Committee on the Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment. Their advice is that the use of talc and other known substances is not considered to be harmful. If beekeepers want an absolutely definitive answer, there is nothing to stop them writing to the Ministry, a Minister or their Members of Parliament, asking them to put specific questions to the VMD about the substances that they are using. They will then receive specific answers. On the point about icing sugar, I am happy to give an assurance that there is no problem with using that treatment.

The Minister has just pushed the onus back on to beekeepers and asked them to put questions to the VMD on whether the substances that they are currently using are acceptable. Will the hon. Gentleman undertake to produce, through the VMD, some sort of guidance leaflet for the many thousands of small beekeepers, telling them whether the various traditional remedies are acceptable?

I have no objection to considering that suggestion. The problem is including in a leaflet everything that people may be using. That is why I said that if there were any doubt, it would be far better if people asked specific questions. However, I shall raise the hon. Gentleman's suggestion with my officials.

We are often asked why only one treatment is actually approved. The simple answer is that the VMD cannot approve anything unless and until an application has been made by a medicines manufacturer, with full supporting documentation. Although the process need not be expensive, depending on what information is already available and whether the medicine is already approved in another member state, we cannot force companies to make applications if they do not wish to do so.

It is surprising to hear Conservative advocates of free enterprise and the free market arguing for the Government to intervene and tell companies what they should or should not do. We do not have that role; it is not how the system works. We have agreed exceptionally that the costs of the veterinary drug residue surveillance programme for honey will be paid for by the Ministry rather than the industry, which is the case for other sectors. It is because we recognise the nature of the beekeeping sector.

That leads me to the new European Union scheme, introduced last year principally to alleviate the burden on beekeepers of the varroa infestation. The UK allocation from what we might call the EU honeypot is much more than we originally anticipated, at just under £0.5 million. The funding must go towards work conducted by national Governments, and we have chosen—entirely within the letter and the spirit of the rules—to offset the costs of the existing considerable varroa programme, which I described earlier. We are already contributing, as a member state, to the increased budget for the cost to the bee sector. That means that our overall contribution to the bee sector and varroa monitoring has increased. It is not a matter of the Treasury trousering the money. It is a bit much for Conservative Members to criticise the Labour Government, when the previous Conservative Administration used the procedure in exactly the same way.

The issue of European funds comes up regularly, including in debates on agriculture. I must emphasise that there is no pot of free money in the EU. We cannot take money from the EU without that having an effect on, for example, rebate calculations. It is a complicated measure, but we inherited it. It was implemented by the previous Government. It means that money that we take from Europe has implications for the rebate that we receive and the overall public expenditure round. We must take that into account when calling for European funding. Despite that, the overall spending on the beekeeping sector has increased.

Will the Minister give way?

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but I have only seven minutes left.

Incidentally, the net gain to the UK is only a little over £150,000.

Of course, there are calls from beekeepers for the money saved to be used to increase expenditure on bee health work, but there are clear constraints on the public purse, which have to be taken into account. Moreover, beekeepers should also keep it in mind that Government expenditure on the bee sector is not always easy to justify, given that many other sectors want the same treatment that the bee sector has had, such as the Government paying for residue monitoring.

Although our bee health service cannot be exempt from the comprehensive spending review, that does not mean that we do not care about beekeepers or the issue generally. Bees—and, therefore, beekeepers—are important. They produce honey and they pollinate farmed crops and wild flowers and plants.

However, it is fair to say that other insects pollinate, too. The impression was given that bees do everything. I do not want to underestimate the importance of bees, but they are not the only means of pollination.

The benefits are hard to quantify in economic terms, but few would argue about bees playing an important and effective role in the countryside. That is why we have continued to fund the bee health programme that I described earlier. In the UK, it costs about £1.5 million each year. The organisation delivering our bee health policies in England and Wales is relatively new, dating only from 1994. At the outset, it was planned to review its performance after a settling-in period. It was therefore right to include it in the comprehensive spending review. I shall not announce any conclusions about that today, as that would be premature.

In addition to a bee health programme involving field and laboratory staff, we have a commitment to a substantial bee health research and development programme. That programme has already significantly increased our understanding of the relationship between varroa mites, their associated viruses and bee health. A mite population growth model has been developed and chemical control methods compared.

Another MAFF-funded project, which examined diagnostic and monitoring methods for varroa mites in honey-bee colonies, is about to come to fruition. I am happy to pay tribute to the British Bee-Keeping Association, which made a significant financial contribution to that work. As a result, we have been able to produce a varroa mite model calculator to assist beekeepers to assess the level of infestation in their colonies and therefore to plan treatment more effectively. A new advisory leaflet will accompany the calculator. That deals with some of the points made earlier. The leaflet will be launched formally in a few days' time, and the calculator will follow shortly afterwards.

In addition to all that, I can announce today that we have just approved the funding of a new research project to examine potential biological control agents for the varroa mite, which might offer an effective and sustainable alternative to chemical control. Selected strains of fungi and bacteria thought to be active against varroa mites are to be evaluated for their ability to control the mites and to persist and spread within the hive environment. Their effect on harmless insects will also be considered. Such an approach could have considerable economic and environmental benefits. The work is to be carried out as a joint project between the Institute for Arable Crops Research at Rothamsted and Horticulture Research International. It is a four-year project, at a total cost of more than £400,000. It is the latest example of this Government's commitment to beekeeping and is new expenditure.

I have noted the concern expressed by hon. Members. Beekeeping is an important part of the countryside. However, it needs to be stressed that it is important to all areas—gardening, horticulture, allotments and so on. Many people are involved in the sector, although the commercial side is relatively small—but no less important for that. Many people view it as a cottage industry, with much of the honey going to family and friends. Indeed, I visit and talk to many farmers who keep hives, and it is nice to leave with a pot of locally produced honey. I have a few pots, although not so many that I would have to declare them or even hand them over to the Ministry.

I was a little disappointed by some of the comments made by Opposition Members. Beekeeping and its relation to biodiversity and the countryside is important, and many hon. Members have made representations about it. Today, I have stressed that the Government take the issue seriously. We are devoting considerable public funds to the new programme, which I hope will be warmly welcomed by the beekeeping sector.

I have no doubt that beekeeping is important to some people, but the defence of our country should matter to every hon. Member, none more so than those who represent the north of England.

The city of York has been a garrison headquarters almost continuously for 1,900 years. In the region, there is intense pride about and loyalty to the military traditions of the great north of England regiments such as the Coldstream Guards, the Duke of Wellington's, the Green Howards, the Prince of Wales's Own, the Royal Dragoon Guards and many more. We have at Catterick the biggest Army camp in western Europe, and people in York—and, I think, further afield—take immense pride in the fact that the 2nd division headquarters is based at Imphal barracks in York.

I was therefore astounded to be shown at Christmas a work plan produced by UK Land Command, the part of the Army that defends the territory of Great Britain, that detailed the precise steps to be taken to dismantle the 2nd division headquarters at York by April 2000. I was also surprised to find that no alternative to the dismemberment of the York command was under consideration.

I was especially surprised because on 3 August, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence wrote to me saying:

"Headquarters 2nd Division"—

at York—

"will expand from within its existing accommodation in Imphal Barracks into part of the vacated area on the ground floor … in building 107 at Imphal Barracks."

So, even in the latter part of last year, an expansion of the space available in York to the 2nd division headquarters was proposed.

The information that I received about the consideration of a rundown of the 2nd division headquarters prompted me to ask some parliamentary questions. I must pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence for the open and helpful way in which they have responded to my questions and met me to discuss what is happening. They have helped me, not least because now, through their actions, I believe, they have ensured that the closure of the York command is not the only option under consideration.

Let me say from the outset that it is right for the Government, as part of a strategic defence review, to review the Land Command structure. I do not object in principle to a merger between the 2nd division, based in York, and the Scottish district, but the point of this debate is to enable me to express a view that I hold very strongly: if the merger goes ahead, the combined headquarters for the new division should be based in York for military, financial, economic and political reasons.

I endorse all that the hon. Gentleman has said. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) and I agree about the need to maintain the facility at York, but I must introduce a sour note to the debate. Why does the hon. Gentleman think that we have reached the point where a decision is certain to be taken very soon but there has been no public debate or consultation?

I am pleased to see the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) here to support me on this issue, but, in defence of the Government, I must say that their approach in the strategic defence review has been open. They have made it perfectly clear that, as soon as there is a firm proposal, there will be consultation. The purpose of this short debate is to ensure that the proposal that ends up on the table will be sensible for military, financial and other reasons. If the 2nd division and the Scottish district are combined, the sensible decision is for the headquarters to be in York. I shall outline the advantages of that in terms of military effectiveness.

The 2nd division is much bigger than the Scottish district. It has four times as many regular soldiers under its command. Almost 11,000 out of the 13,000 regular soldiers who would be in the combined division are based in Yorkshire and the north-east of England. If one combines the regular soldiers and the Territorial Army soldiers, the 2nd division currently has 28,500, while the Scottish district has 9,500.

Just one of the two brigades in the 2nd division—15 brigade based in York—has 11,266 troops, which is more than in the whole of Scotland. The sheer weight of Army activity in northern England shows where the headquarters ought to be situated for reasons of military effectiveness.

In the post cold war environment, the soldiers in Land Command are there primarily to form regenerative units, to back up other forces when the need arises. If they fight, they are much more likely to fight abroad than in the United Kingdom. Where are the embarkation ports? They are in England—on Tyneside and on Humberside at Hull and Immingham.

When I met my hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces last month, he acknowledged that the weight of Army activity in a combined division would be in Yorkshire and the north-east, but he asked me to consider recruitment. Since then, I have found out that 39 per cent. of all recruits to the British Army come from the north of England. It is true that 12 per cent. come from Scotland, which is also an important recruiting ground, but more than three times as many come from the north of England—far more than from any other region in the UK. It is the core recruitment ground for the British Army.

I know that my hon. Friend is doing a great deal of work on this already, so I do not need to tell him about the need to improve recruitment to the Army. The Army has its KAPE programme—keeping the Army in the public eye—to aid recruitment, but we will not keep the Army in the public eye in the Army's key recruitment ground of the north of England if we close the Army headquarters in that area.

There are also good financial reasons for choosing York. I understand that the cost of establishing the combined headquarters at York would be £7.1 million less over 10 years than the cost of establishing it at Edinburgh. I am also told that the commander-in-chief of Land Command accepts that York as a base would be more cost effective, but I have not seen the official costings. Will my hon. Friend place them in the Library? I would prefer there to be a willingness to share the information; then I should not have to ask my colleagues on the Defence Committee to call for it.

I have to say that I am also under pressure from trade unions representing the staff in York to refer the matter to the National Audit Office. I understand that there is a precedent for the NAO looking into a financial decision before that decision has been made; it did so at the request of the trade unions when Catterick was involved in the competing for quality initiative.

If one compares the cost-effectiveness of the existing York headquarters and the existing Edinburgh headquarters, York comes out a great deal better according to the parliamentary answers that I have received from my hon. Friend the Minister.

The headquarters of the Scottish district cost £5.6 million a year to run, or £578 in administrative costs per soldier under its command. The 2nd division in York is larger and costs £7.6 million a year, or £268 in administrative costs per soldier under its command. The administrative costs at York are half those in Scotland. The headquarters at York is bigger because the 2nd division is bigger than the Scottish district. It would therefore cost considerably more to move a greater number of staff from York to Edinburgh—if that were the final decision—than it would to move a smaller number of staff from Edinburgh to York.

In his letter to me of 3 August, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State let me know that there is spare office accommodation at Imphal barracks in York because 250 manning and records civilian staff based in York moved to Scotland last year. There is no vacant accommodation at the Scottish district headquarters.

The economic impact on York would be substantial if the divisional headquarters were to move. It employs 170 civilian staff and 100 military personnel. York is a much smaller city than Edinburgh, so the effect on the local economy of the closure of a bigger headquarters in York—if that happens—would be greater.

The rate of unemployment is higher in York than it is in Edinburgh. In York, it is 4.24 per cent. while in Edinburgh, it is 3.90 per cent. In the six years since the Conservative defence drawdown began, York has lost 500 MOD civilian posts: 200 jobs were lost at the 41 district Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers workshop in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) and 50 were lost from the King's division at Stensall, just outside my constituency. As I have mentioned, 250 civilian jobs moved in 1997 from Imphal barracks in my constituency to Kentigern house in Glasgow, when the Army manning and records service was centralised.

My hon. Friend is making an extremely pertinent speech. Since the drawdown, my constituency has lost more than 500 jobs from Eaglescliffe naval stores. It was a serious blow to the northern region and should be taken into consideration.

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Parts of the region other than Teesside and York were affected, as more than 1,000 jobs were lost at RAF Harrogate when the Conservatives were in power.

If a further 170 jobs at the York headquarters are moved to Scotland, 670 MOD civilian jobs will have been removed from York over six or seven years, leaving just 50. When I met the Minister last month, he explained that Scottish politicians, quite understandably, face pressure to move a fairer share of public service jobs to Scotland. I understand that pressure. We feel it even more strongly in the north of England because we have an even smaller share of public service jobs than Scotland.

Since meeting my hon. Friend, I have asked my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster a parliamentary question, to which he replied on 17 March. In London, 1.2 per cent. of the resident population are civil servants. The figure for Scotland is 0.9 per cent; in Yorkshire and Humberside it is 0.6 per cent. I asked the Library to calculate similar figures for MOD civil servants. There are 1.5 MOD civil servants per 1,000 residents in London. In Scotland, there are 1.7 MOD civil servants per 1,000 residents and in Yorkshire and Humberside, there are 0.6 MOD civil servants per 1,000 residents—barely one third of the figure for Scotland. In other regions, such as the south-west of England, the figure increases to something like five per 1,000. The Government should not take jobs from Yorkshire to settle the imbalance. Instead, they should move jobs to Yorkshire and to Edinburgh.

In the past six years, 45 per cent. of MOD civil service jobs in Yorkshire have gone. There are only 3,300 left. In Scotland, although the reduction is serious, only 23 per cent. of MOD civil service jobs have been lost in the same period and 9,500 remain. I ask my hon. Friend with great conviction not to take any more MOD civil service jobs away from Yorkshire. If he does, he will give people in Yorkshire the same reason to feel bitter about Scotland as the Scots quite rightly had when the Tory Administration gathered in public service jobs and the bulk of public service investment to London and the south-east. I ask my hon. Friend not to do that to Yorkshire.

I understand the Scottish pride in Scottish regiments and the pressure to have a general based in Scotland to command the Scottish units. I do not argue against it. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister also accepts that the pride of the English in English regiments and Army traditions are just as strong in the north of England as Scottish military traditions are in Scotland. It would be demeaning and insulting to suggest that English support for and links with our regiments in the north of England are any less important than the tremendous links between the Scottish people and the Scottish regiments.

There is a solution that will preserve honour on all sides. It has already been proposed for London. Although the London district will disappear as part of the strategic defence review, London will nevertheless keep its two-star general for ceremonial reasons and reasons of status in the capital.

If there is to be a joint Scotland and north of England division for Land Command as a result of the review, I believe that military, financial, economic and political reasons overwhelmingly determine that it should be in York, but Scotland should retain a two-star general to command the two Scottish brigades and for ceremonial and status reasons in the capital of Scotland in just the way that a two-star general will remain in London.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Mr. Bayley) for raising the issue and congratulate him, not for the first time, on being lucky enough to introduce this important subject for discussion on the Floor of the House.

I should say at the outset that while I recognise the temptation to go down the route that he took towards the end of his speech, this is not a matter of argument between Scotland and England. I am the Minister for the Armed Forces who serve the United Kingdom. United Kingdom Land Command is charged with looking at the structure and management of the armed forces throughout the United Kingdom; it is not taking decisions on the basis of Scotland and England, but according to what is best for the Army. It is not taking decisions merely in respect of the north of England and Scotland, but in respect of Wales, the south of England and London, as my hon. Friend said. I fully understand the passion that my hon. Friend brings to these matters, but it is wrong to believe that a decision will be made in isolation about Scotland and the north of England—the question must be put in its wider context.

The arguments about the integrity of United Kingdom forces and where the Land Command should best be located have been eloquently put by the hon. Member for City of York (Mr. Bayley). As the Land Command has already moved once in the past 10 years—from the Colchester garrison in the eastern area to York—does the Minister agree that it is wrong that it should face another move even further north, to a place that is even less central? Will he assure the House—I repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) said—that full public consultation and debate will occur before any decision is reached?

I shall not give an assurance to condemn anything simply because it involves change. The whole point of the strategic defence review is to test what will be the optimum configuration of forces and their tasks.

I say to the hon. Members for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) and for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) with great respect that, in the past five decades, no subject in the Ministry of Defence has received more public discussion, consultation, submissions—there have been more than 600—seminars, scrutiny or debates on the Floor of the House than the strategic defence review.

I have personally answered more than 20 detailed questions on whether the headquarters should be based at York or Edinburgh, which hon. Members are entitled to read. On 5 March, I discussed the matter fully with my hon. Friend the Member for City of York, who brought representatives to meet me. Moreover, we are having an Adjournment debate on it this afternoon. If the hon. Members for Vale of York or for Ryedale had been sufficiently interested to ask to meet me, I would have discussed the matter with them, too. I do not accept that either I or the Ministry of Defence have been guilty of omission in discussing the issue publicly.

I have enormous respect for the traditions, loyalty and the efforts made at recruitment in the north of England—I fully recognise them, as does the United Kingdom Land Command. I shall not respond to some of the points that my hon. Friend the Member for City of York raised, as he seems to have seen some papers that I have not seen and I do not necessarily agree with all the statistics that he used—statistics are rarely objective, although we are all perfectly entitled to use them to present our point of view.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the matter. He is extremely well informed, not least, I should like to think, because we discussed the subject in my office a month ago—we have been as open as possible in providing information. I have answered a large number of his parliamentary questions and letters—I think that the most recent was only yesterday evening—and I have told him everything that I can at this stage.

Our policy has been to be open, which I hope is to our credit. It is to my hon Friend's credit that he has diligently advanced what he believes to be in the interests of his constituents—and, he would argue, in the interests of the Army—so that I know what those interests are when the proposals are put to me on the future structure of the Army in the United Kingdom.

I say to him again—notwithstanding reports in The Daily Telegraph this morning—that he seems to have the advantage over me, as no such proposals have been put to me. I shall not reply to some of his detailed points, because he is asking me to defend a proposal that has not been made in advance of a decision that I have not taken. The House will not be surprised to note that I shall not fall into that trap.

I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way and for his clarification. As Members of Parliament, we are not absolved of criticism if there are matters about which we should have known and taken action, but I believe that the fact that no proposals have been put to anyone explains why there has been no public debate in the York area. The news that Imphal barracks may close will come as a bombshell to the people of York—the proposal will be greatly resisted.

I do not know where the hon. Gentleman has been for the past four months, but I should have thought that anyone who has read the Yorkshire papers, the Scottish papers or, indeed, Hansard—as I said, I have answered 20 questions on the matter—would be aware that my hon. Friend the Member for City of York has been raising these issues.

We need to distinguish between what is being said and what is actually being proposed. At the moment, nothing has been proposed. In the strategic defence review, we are treating the restructuring of the United Kingdom Land Command in the same way as we are an immense number of other issues. We have scrutinised every aspect of our posture, configuration, weaponry, procurement process, strategic pose, relationship with NATO, the Army, the Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Marines, to ensure that they more efficiently meet the needs of the modern age.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Yes, although, given the constraints on time, my hon. Friend is preventing me from giving a full response.

I have two brief points. First, there is no question that Imphal barracks will close, as there is plenty else there, including 2 Signal Regiment and the 15 brigade headquarters, although the fact that the divisional headquarters may move from the barracks is serious.

Secondly, I am not trying to set a trap for my hon. Friend. I do not want him to defend a Scottish headquarters solution; I want him to acknowledge the strength of the English argument for a York base—I am sure that he will weigh it against other arguments—and to come to a decision based on the best military and financial solution.

I am glad that my hon. Friend has made it absolutely plain that there is no proposal that Imphal barracks should close—it is not only the divisional headquarters, but encompasses an area brigade headquarters. There are a large number of soldiers in the northern region, including recruits, regulars and reserves, as well as command-and-control facilities; there is no question that they should move. No one has suggested such a proposal in the papers that I have not yet seen. I do not want anyone to create in the Yorkshire area a scare that has no basis in fact.

In general terms, the work that is going on in Land Command is not primarily a cost-cutting exercise or an interregional competition. The aim is not to do things cheaper, come what may, but to do things better. At the same time, we are constantly considering ways in which to ensure efficiency. The Secretary of State has made it clear that the search is for ways in which to deliver our existing or improved military capability at reduced cost—that is what taxpayers expect.

By way of background, the House should note that there were in 1990, and had been since 1972, nine mainland districts in the Army structure, conforming to Government home defence regions. In the 1990s, those nine mainland districts were reduced to five and were then rearranged into six. That is the current arrangement, the operational efficiency of which is being considered.

Not only the numbers, but the roles of the divisions and districts have evolved since the cold war. The divisions are more and more preoccupied with support functions, running the home base for regular troops and the training and administration of the Territorial Army, and less and less involved with planning for operational contingencies, the reinforcement of our forces overseas or home defence. It is a matter not only of numbers, but of structures, efficiency and roles.

We are talking about the home base infrastructure rather than the operational structure of the Army, and the two cannot be put together willy-nilly. The regionally based commands are now largely concerned with supporting functions and the management of resources, not with the operational application of fighting power.

That is not to disparage the work that is done in those headquarters. Far from it: it is valuable and even essential work that ensures that our forces are ready when called on to carry out their tasks.

This is one of the extremely important issues that will arise from the strategic defence review. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for City of York, with his usual passion and commitment, has once again been an articulate exponent not only of his constituency interest but of the proud and loyal traditions of the north of England. I assure him that, in any decision, the matters that he raised will not go unnoticed. He has not allowed that to happen.

I hope to use the opportunity of this debate to prove that, although the Government pay lip service to the countryside and to preserving the green belt and green-field sites, in practice those policies are not being observed in the Vale of York.

I want to disclose some irregularities and anomalies in planning procedures that have been followed on certain decisions in the Vale of York. The most intrusive such decision, wreaking havoc on the countryside the length and breadth of the vale and causing severe and permanent environmental damage, is the consent granted by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry for 50 miles of giant pylons.

This decision was unnecessary. The pylons are simply not needed. There is 100 per cent. over-capacity of generation in the north of England at peak times in winter. The transmission of energy in that form wastes power: the combined loss in generation, transmission and distribution is estimated to be 36 per cent. of primary fuel energy. It also flies in the face of current power-generating policy, which is that all electricity should be generated as close as possible to the point of demand. Supply should be located near demand.

The pylons are hugely damaging to the environment. They will blight a landscape between the North Yorkshire dales and the national park. The visual impact of 150 ft steel giants stretching from Lackenby through Picton to Shipton will be grotesque.

The planning procedures associated with the decision are fundamentally flawed. Thousands of objectors will not accept the decision without a fight, including a possible legal challenge. Many features remain unresolved: nine wayleaves in sensitive areas and three sealing end compounds with terminal towers at Nunthorpe and Newby have yet to be decided on.

The opposition to the decision is cross-party and cross-county. North Yorkshire county council and Hambleton district council have pledged their opposition. REVOLT, the campaign uniting that opposition, is co-ordinating a possible legal challenge. The crux of the opposition, and the reason, in my view, why the decision is flawed, lies in the planning procedures that were followed.

It is genuinely believed that evidence given at the public inquiry was misunderstood by the two independent technical inspectors who accompanied the planning inspector. North Yorkshire county council objected to the fact that the applications for consent to the power station at Teesside and for the overhead power lines came separately, and the inspector agreed with that objection. The consent was sought and granted for the power station, and only subsequently, through a later application, was consent given for the overhead lines.

The inspector concluded, in support of North Yorkshire county council, that both applications should have been considered as part of the same application. I refer the House to section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989, which sets out the procedures for the construction of a power-generating station in accordance with a ruling by the Secretary of State.

Section 37 of the same Act refers to consents for overhead power lines, and says that, if a local authority objects, as North Yorkshire county council did in this case, a public inquiry should be held, and that no electricity pylon of more than 20 kV can be installed without the Secretary of State's consent.

I believe that the Secretary of State's decision is flawed, and was reached on erroneous grounds. The people of the Vale of York would like to know today on what grounds the Secretary of State overruled the inspector's advice that the applications for consent to the power station and to the power lines should rightly have been considered together.

Arguably, the Secretary of State overstepped her powers in reaching the decision, and relied on evidence presented by the two independent technical inspectors, which they themselves had misunderstood, leading to her being inadvertently misinformed. The decision should now be subject to a judicial review, to assess whether it was reached erroneously. It seems highly unlikely that the Electricity Act 1989 was interpreted correctly in this case, or that the evidence presented at the inquiry was properly understood.

I gather that there is a very limited time in which an application for judicial review can be lodged, and the local authorities are meeting virtually as we speak to decide whether such a review should be sought.

Wider issues that the public inquiry failed to address and which would have had a bearing on the Secretary of State's decision include the question of undergrounding. I understand that BP is currently holding consultations on the laying of underground pipelines along virtually the same route. Could not the power lines have been laid alongside the pipes? The technology exists, and, on the most recent figures available, National Grid shows a profit of either £681 million, at historic costs, or, at the very least, £445 million per annum at current costs, so it could certainly afford to underground the power lines.

The Labour Government are clearly on the retreat: the Minister for Science, Energy and Industry withdrew his acceptance of an invitation to speak to a meeting at Easingwold in the Vale of York this Friday, where the Government would have had their first opportunity to take questions and explain the issue. The Labour candidate at the Vale of York in the general election pledged that, if a Labour Government were elected, the consent to build the pylons would not be granted.

The Energy Minister, in cowardly fashion, announced the decision in an answer to a written question, so that the Government would not have to respond to questions in the House, and now he refuses to attend the meeting in Easingwold. Curiouser and curiouser: the reason given was that police protection could not be provided, but the police had not been asked to provide such protection in the first place, and we are all extremely law-abiding citizens in the Vale of York, where he would have been given an extremely warm welcome.

If the pylons were the only blot on the landscape, that would be bad enough, but a catalogue of other planning issues are pending, many of which also throw up anomalous procedures on which I hope that the Minister can shed some light.

One success story emerges, which shows that people power, to which the Government respond with alacrity, gets results. Witness the application to build a cattle incinerator at Rufforth, which has now been thrown out.

An alternative site is to be found. The proposed site was on green-belt land in a residential area within a mile of the city of York, yet the city council could demonstrate no special circumstances to justify planning permission.

What is worse, the council overturned the North Yorkshire structure plan and its own green-belt local plan. The local government ombudsman judged that malpractice had taken place in the council reaching its decision. Only in the face of tough opposition by local residents has the council decided to seek an alternative site. At least that is a real success story, and a tribute to people power making the Government review their activities.

I hope that the hon. Lady does not mind me making this interjection and asking a question. I felt slapped by her statement about a "cowardly response". The written question was mine, and I thought that it was a fair way to ask the Minister—I asked him time and again when the report was to be published—so I object to that description. Secondly, does she not welcome, as I do, the fact that the decision will mean that my constituents will have pylons, which were shadowing their homes, taken down, out of their gardens and off their streets? They are hideous things for my constituents to have had to suffer. Surely she must welcome the fact that they—as opposed to green fields—are being freed from those hideous pylons.

Obviously, I am delighted for the hon. Lady's constituents that the pylons will be removed, which shows that the technology exists to put these horrible wires underground. In many respects, the issue is something of a red herring. Many of my constituents will face ruin because the price of their land and property will go down, and the compensation being offered is negligible.

I used the word "cowardly", and I am particularly concerned about the way in which the Minister presented the answer to the House. I must place it on record today that he wrote to me in mid-March, literally 10 days before the announcement, to tell me that there was no news on that front. I was extremely disappointed when an announcement was made 10 days later in answer to a written question. If there is one role that Back Benchers such as the hon. Lady and I can fulfil, it is holding the Government to account on behalf of our constituents by questioning the grounds on which such a decision was reached. I am delighted to have the opportunity to do so today.

The proposed park-and-ride scheme at Rawcliffe has been less fortunate than the incinerator scheme at Rufforth. Even though it faces overwhelming opposition from local residents, it is still being considered. The proposed site for which planning permission is recommended is green-belt land, in spite of the Government's stated aim nationally of encouraging brown-field development wherever possible. Indeed, the Deputy Prime Minister has stated that policy publicly on a number of occasions. Also, brown-field sites exist locally, but have so far not been considered by City of York council, which makes nonsense of the Government's stated national policy.

Constituents judge each planning application on its merits, as the local planning authority should do. In this instance, they feel severely let down. The council is being investigated by the Comptroller and Auditor General, in particular because the consultation focused on those who stand to benefit from the proposed scheme, not those who will be badly and negatively affected.

The hon. Lady says that some people will benefit from the scheme, and my constituents would do so. The centre of York is clogged with traffic, for which it was not designed, and that creates environmental hazards both for people breathing the air and for the historic buildings damaged by pollution. Does she agree that the local planning authority has to weigh the benefits to those living in the centre of York against the benefits and disbenefits to those living in the suburbs? That is the authority's responsibility. Does she recall that I wrote to her to suggest that we went jointly to meet the planning officer at the council to resolve those matters last autumn, but she chose not to do so?

Unfortunately, the planning officer chose to leave the council before a meeting could be arranged. As my constituents' views were not being regarded by City of York council, I decided that it was best for me to proceed alone. It was regrettable that the planning officer left before a final decision had been taken.

On the point about consultation, it had been brought to my attention that an expensive consultation exercise was taking place, as I told the ombudsman, and I have evidence to prove that those most directly affected by the proposal were not even consulted, which is regrettable.

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend on the excellent way in which she is pursuing issues in that part of her constituency that for 10 years was a part of my constituency. Does she agree that the constituents of the hon. Member for City of York (Mr. Bayley) and those in the centre of York will be served by a park-and-ride scheme wherever it is sited? The issue is not whether there should be a scheme, but that it should be sited not on green-belt land at Rawcliffe but on the huge Cliften Moor industrial and commercial estate, where there is popular support for it from her residents, my residents, and, I dare say, the hon. Gentleman's constituents.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has taken the words out of my mouth. I think that we all agree about the need for a park-and-ride scheme. In the more rural parts of the City 'of York area, we share concern about the apparent lack of understanding of rural sites, and the need to preserve the green belt if there are alternative sites. I agree that Cliften Moor is an adequate alternative, but it appears not to have been considered, or even to have been rejected, by the council.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I am reluctant to do so, as I am running out of time and I want to allow the Minister enough time to respond.

I simply want to offer to co-operate on a three-way basis.

Perhaps some guidance today from the Minister on a three-party basis would be helpful.

There is great concern in the Vale of York about rumours of proposed housing developments—a new town between Thirsk and Ripon, about 8,000 houses between Green Hammerton and Whixley, and a new development of homes on the outskirts of Bedale have all been mooted. All those rumours incite great alarm in the local population, and put pressure on access to facilities such as water and sewerage, as well as increasing road traffic and congestion in what is increasingly a commuter area.

The developments would certainly damage the local quality of life if they proceeded. Can the Government clarify the matter, and put my constituents' minds at rest as to how the rumours have developed, and the exact procedures for allowing such developments?

The final issue concerns planning and education policy, again in the city of York—a shared interest with the hon. Member for City of York. The council proposes to merge Canon Lee and Queen Anne schools, creating a split-site school with one mile between sites. York local education authority has a surplus of school places, which it hopes to tackle through the merger, but the council is not forthcoming about its future long-term education policy.

The proposed merger is not uniformly popular, and is not fair to Canon Lee school, which is successful, with an above-average GCSE pass rate. Parents of children at the school are concerned about the removal of parental choice and the lowering of educational standards. Any savings from the merger would be lost, through added transport costs between the schools and the duplication of teaching aids. The split site and the journeys between the two also raise safety problems for the children in question. Parents are voting with their feet and sending their children to schools outside the local education authority.

Those examples, from pylons to the incinerator, the proposed park-and-ride scheme, the possible new town housing developments and the school merger, show that planning decisions and procedures in the Vale of York are at best muddled and confused, and at worst possibly erroneous and irregular under the law. They show a complete lack of regard—a certain contempt—for the countryside and the way of rural life as we know it in the Vale of York. From the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry down to the City of York council, those planning decisions show a Government who are out of control and unaccountable, like their party.

The Labour party said that it would protect green-belt and green-field sites, but then proposed to build pylons, new houses and park-and-ride schemes all over them. The trust that the electorate placed in the Government to look after the countryside and protect green-belt and green-field sites was misplaced. The electors have been severely let down, and the Government should apologise and reverse the planning decisions.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh) on securing the debate on the important issue of planning procedures as they affect her constituency. I regret that the brief time available for my reply means that I shall be unable to deal with all the issues that she raised, but I shall try to address the main points of principle.

Planning procedures can be complex, and always require careful handling by the responsible authorities, be they Secretaries of State or local planning authorities

Indeed, I must take care not to prejudice the outcome of planning cases in which I may become involved, should they be referred to the Department, or to interfere in established procedures for considering complaints about or challenges to planning decisions. The hon. Lady must understand the essential constraints on what I can say.

The Vale of York is an area of scenic countryside which I know well, and I have enjoyed my visits to it. The Government are committed not only to improving the quality of the urban environment, but to conserving and enhancing the quality of the countryside in Yorkshire and everywhere else. We stressed that in our policy document "Planning for Communities of the Future", in which we rightly say that the way to save our countryside is to make our towns and cities more attractive places in which to live and work. It is not a question of country versus town, but of making sensible and balanced decisions that recognise the importance and the value of both.

We are also committed to local and democratic decision making. With a few notable exceptions, planning decisions in local areas are best made locally. We do not intend to interfere in that unless it is necessary to do so. I hope that the hon. Lady, whose constituency includes the historic site of the battle of Marston moor, will not encourage an over-mighty Government to interfere too much in the rights of local communities, or the same spirit that many years ago led representatives of this House to fight for their rights might raise its head again.

I am aware that the hon. Lady's constituency incorporates parts of several local planning authority areas, and that the detailed practices of the authorities may vary from place to place. Let me describe broadly the operation of the planning system in the Vale of York.

Procedurally, the local planning authorities must follow statutory Acts, regulations and directions, but the first and essential point is that planning decisions in the Vale of York must take account of national policy and advice. Our advice is set out in planning policy guidance notes and departmental circulars.

At the regional level, in March 1996 the previous Government published regional planning guidance for what was then the Yorkshire and Humberside region. Work to revise it is under way in the region. The hon. Lady will be aware of our recently stated intention to enhance regional planning guidance with much more extensive regional involvement in preparation.

Will the Minister give way?

I shall, but the hon. Lady will be aware that time is limited.

Can the Minister assure hon. Members that green-belt sites should not be built on?

I can assure the hon. Lady that planning policy guidance in PPG II has always made it clear that there is a presumption against development in the green belt, and that presumption remains absolutely the same. The principle that development should take place in the green belt only in exceptional circumstances has been part of planning policy for some years.

I remind the hon. Lady that, when in power, the Conservative party varied that policy, and allowed developments in the green belt on a number of occasions when it was thought that there were overriding reasons for doing so. It would be wrong to take a party view on the matter. The presumption is that there should not be development in the green belt, except in special and overriding circumstances.

We are committed to a plan-led system for making decisions about planning applications. The guideline is that a planning decision must accord with the development plan, unless material considerations suggest otherwise. The development plan is therefore paramount. Local planning authorities must recognise that in making decisions about planning applications.

In the Vale of York, the development plan that sets out strategic policy is the North Yorkshire county structure plan. It was adopted in 1980, and has been altered three times since then. I understand that discussions are now under way about a further review of the plan, so that it can be brought up to date jointly by the four authorities involved: North Yorkshire county council, City of York council, and the two national park authorities with structure planning responsibilities in North Yorkshire.

Structure plans are rarely concerned with specific sites, which are identified in local plans. The coverage of local plans in the Vale of York is incomplete, but detailed districtwide local plans are being prepared. In the Hambleton district, objections have been considered at a public inquiry. The inspector reported in July last year, and I have been informed that the district council is about to publish proposed modifications.

In Harrogate district, a public local inquiry is looking into objections to the draft local plan. In York, I understand that the city council is soon to issue a draft local plan that will cover the revised city area for the first time. It will be placed on deposit, which will allow anyone to object to its proposals.

There is national advice and statutory direction about what constitutes a departure from local plans, but it is essentially for local planning authorities to decide whether particular planning applications justify departure. The Secretary of State has powers to intervene in any planning application without its being referred to him, but they are rarely used. Most decisions are best taken locally, by the responsible authorities.

That procedural detail leads me back to the statutory Acts and regulations to which planning decision makers must adhere in the Vale of York. I am sure that the hon. Lady does not want me to go into every detail of the matters that we are discussing today, but I should say that members of local planning authorities are elected to represent the interests of the whole community in planning matters.

Local opposition to or support for a proposal is not in itself a ground for refusing or for granting permission, unless there are valid substantiated planning reasons for doing so. When determining planning applications, authorities must take account of relevant views on planning matters, including those expressed by local residents and third parties.

The hon. Lady mentioned the northern gateway park-and-ride scheme. I am aware of the City of York's proposal, and we have received a great deal of correspondence about it. I understand that it is usually referred to as the York northern gateway proposal, a description which applies to a successful bid to the previous Administration by City of York council for support under the capital challenge programme.

I should stress that the availability of Government funding for the scheme has always been conditional on planning consent being granted. Therefore, there is no question of that influencing whether consent will be given. If there are concerns, they must be considered locally. The matter is for the council to decide, following citywide consultation. If local residents are still concerned, they may consider a challenge in the courts or assessment by the local government ombudsman. I have recently replied to correspondence from the hon. Lady on that matter.

I know about the proposals for a temporary animal cremator at Rufforth, and I understand that the City of York council resolved to grant permission in 1997. However, the local government ombudsman has decided that there was maladministration, because the council did not refer the planning application to the Secretary of State.

The council reconsidered the issue last week, and decided to refuse planning consent for a revised application and rescinded the previous resolution. The applicants may consider an appeal to the Secretary of State, so I cannot comment on the matter. I hope that the hon. Lady will acknowledge that the local authority appears to have responded positively to the views of the ombudsman.

The proposed new settlement in the Thirsk and Ripon area is merely one of a number of development scenarios suggested by consultants, not by the Government, and certainly not by the Labour party. The consultants are helping the planning conference of local authorities in what is now Yorkshire and the Humber region on the review of regional planning guidance for the region.

The proposal has no official backing from the local authority planning conference or from my Department. It is simply an issue which will be considered by the conference of local authorities in developing regional guidance. It is proper that they should review options and decide, in the light of their experience of the region the most appropriate solution.

The hon. Lady gave a great deal of time in her speech to the North Yorkshire power line. Unfortunately, that is the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, and it would not be appropriate for me to make detailed comments on it, other than to say that my right hon. Friend looked carefully at the conclusions of the two major public inquiries—six and a half years of consideration—which led to the decision.

The decision was based on the views of independent inspectors who had considered the matter carefully. The full reasons for my right hon. Friend's decision are contained in the decision letter sent by her to the company, and it would not be right for me to comment further on the issue.

The hon. Lady has made allegations about my hon. Friend the Minister for Science, Energy and Industry. I regret that she chose to make them in a debate in which he was not present and was not able to answer. I regret the use—

Order. We now move on to the next debate.

Before I came into this place, I was the chair of the Local Government Association planning committee, and I worked for Abbey National designing its mortgage system. Since I have been elected, a couple of new estates have been built in my constituency, so Milton Keynes has a large number of new homes. We are having this debate in the context of the Government's policy that 60 per cent. of new development should be on brown-field sites, as was mentioned in the previous debate. That policy raises issues about the quality of that development, contaminated land, affordability and a number of other issues.

I congratulate the Government on the initiatives that they have already taken, the reviews that they have done, the updating of the planning legislation, the recent announcement on design for the disabled, and a number of other initiatives taken by colleagues, such as private Members' Bills on energy efficiency. In this debate, I shall try to be reasonable, but I suspect that some of the victims of defects in house building would be less than charitable.

Last week, a television programme called "On the House" looked at an estate in my constituency, where a few houses had serious defects and others had major problems, but most had problems of the niggly variety. The programme damned the whole estate because there is not an adequate system for remedying problems.

The National Association of New Home Owners estimates that about 1,000 to 1,500 new homes have serious defects, by which it means roof supports that do not support roofs and that kind of thing.

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way at this juncture. I congratulate him on securing this debate at a timely moment in the Government's period of office. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on his recent consultation document "Combating Cowboy Builders". A recent Granada Television programme called "Builders from Hell" highlighted some of the serious problems created by rogue builders in various parts of the country.

If hon. Members had viewed that programme, they would have seen 20 minutes dedicated to the Kiely brothers, who have built sub-standard properties in my constituency and around greater Manchester. They are mainly new-built homes with plumbing deficiencies, insulation deficiencies and major structural defects. The builders have left streets unfinished, and failed to provide street lighting or even proper drainage.

One estate in particular—Victoria mews in Bury—has cost the National House-Building Council £750,000 in insurance claims to correct the mistakes. No national insurer will now insure that company. It encouraged clients to use its own firm of solicitors for conveyancing. It provides marketing services—

Order. The hon. Gentleman's intervention is far too long. The hon. Gentleman, with the agreement of his hon. Friend, may make a short speech later. That may be the best way to proceed.

My hon. Friend has dealt with cowboy builders, and I agree entirely with him. Defects can occur with any builder. A large reason for that is the system of subcontracting. The National House-Building Council vets builders, but there is no way in which it can vet subcontractors. The system of competitive tendering, the penalties system and the low skills of the work force that many subcontractors use mean that we have a real problem of poor workmanship.

In my constituency, a reputable builder used a subcontractor from the Confederation of Registered Gas Installers to install gas pipes in houses eight or nine years ago. This year, a number of those gas pipes were found not to have been lagged. Home owners in that street are now worried that they will have major problems with their gas supply, and gas leaks.

There is a real problem with inspections. There is no agreement about how many inspections are needed. Local authorities argue that there about seven points at which new homes ought to be inspected. The NHBC argues that there are four, and does only two. A "Dispatches" programme last November highlighted what happened when half an estate was inspected by local authority inspectors and the other half by NHBC inspectors. In the first half there were few problems, and in the other there were substantial problems in many of the houses. The same programme identified a national survey that showed that many houses had blatant defects.

One builder in my constituency told the home owner that he had forgotten to put the foundations into the porch, and that it would have to be rebuilt. A former NHBC inspector told the "Dispatches" programme that he was constantly told not to upset the builders.

The NHBC gives quality awards to various builders. Despite its denials, I have a letter from a major builder saying that the NHBC tells the builders when the inspection will take place, and how to get round it. Another major concern is the time taken to inspect a house—in general, it is only a few minutes. It is easy to skimp on inspections, because profits are high and penalties almost non-existent for not doing them properly.

My major concern in this debate is the conflict of interests between the inspection and the NHBC warranty. A little while ago, the previous Government forced local authorities to separate their client and contractor roles. With hindsight, I think that that was a good decision. The same applies to the NHBC. There should be a distinct split between the inspection role and the provision of warranties. One company should not do both.

Very few people understand warranties. If one gets one at all, it arrives weeks after moving in to the new home. It is not a guarantee, although most people believe it is. It starts on the day of the final inspection, not when one moves in to the house. Many people do not realise that. If the house has been empty for six or nine months, people have lost that amount of the warranty in the crucial first two years.

Zurich Municipal does have a buy-back scheme for local authorities, but the NHBC does not. That is a source of contention. Many people confuse the warranty system with the mortgage provider's building insurance. If people get a problem, the first response is a denial. The second is to shift the responsibility either from the NHBC to the builder or vice versa. The whole system seems to be delay, delay, delay, especially after that crucial two-year period. The timing of the claim can affect how much compensation people get.

One thing that really worries me about the NHBC is that everyone trusts the Consumers Association, which stands up for consumers' rights in everything except house purchases, which is the single biggest purchase that most people make. I do not accuse the Consumers Association of being corrupt, but if it investigated its role with regard to the NHBC, it would be less than complimentary if the investigation was about anyone other than itself. The Consumers Association should ask itself some serious questions about its role.

I have no faith in the NHBC's proposed consumer council. We ought to have such a council, but it ought to be independent, and have some teeth. Housing logbooks have been talked about for a long time. My hon. Friend the Minister has spoken about them in the past. It is long past the time when we should introduce them. They should be one of the top priorities for the Government.

If most new building is to be on brown-field sites, the warranty system must be extended to refurbishments, alterations, improvements and renovation, for example, of blocks of flats. In addition, the problem of the speed with which most problems are resolved and claims dealt with needs to be addressed, and an independent disputes resolution procedure—perhaps an ombudsman—introduced.

The Government must tackle the monopolistic aspects of the warranty system and the NHBC's role. It makes an operating profit of £10 million, and has reserves of £600 million. It pays out, on average, £15 million a year—although, if my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Mr. Dobbin) is correct, this year's figure may be slightly higher—which means that only a small proportion of its reserves are used to pay out.

On the issue of building control, local authority fees are set by the Government, although the local authority associations came within a whisker of persuading the previous Government to devolve fee setting to local authorities. I hope that I can persuade the Minister to go one step further than the previous Government, and permit that devolution.

Independent structural surveys are crucial to proper inspection. There should be a full survey by an independent structural engineer immediately before warranty—I am sure that the issue of who pays for that can be resolved. If the housing logbook was be made valid by starting with that structural survey, it would build confidence among new home owners.

Before mortgage, purchasers should be required to get an independent structural survey, which would offer them the protection of knowing what they were buying. It would be possible to introduce into that process matters such as the energy rating and other environmental audit aspects of the house. Either the seller or, in the case of a new house, the builder could be made responsible for the first survey, which would help to increase confidence in the system.

There should be an audit mechanism for the inspection process. My preferred solution would be to return the inspection process to the sole control of local authorities, although I am not sure that I can persuade my hon. Friend the Minister to go that far today.

A 1996 Justice report made several recommendations. I urge the my hon. Friend to implement the updating of the Defective Premises Act 1972, so that it is possible to ensure that work is done with good workmanship, using proper materials, and that a dwelling is fit for habitation; and to extend the period in which builders can be sued from six years to, say, 12 or 15 years. In addition, section 38 of the Building Act 1984, which would allow a breach of building regulations to be actionable, has never been implemented, and I urge my hon. Friend to consider implementing such a measure.

So as to allow my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton to contribute, I shall end my speech. The problem is complex, as the Minister is aware, but there is an urgent need for comprehensive reform. Given that it is the Government's policy to build on brown-field sites, which is a welcome development, the problem needs to be addressed quickly so that house purchasers—especially new house purchasers—can have a degree of confidence.

May I take it that the Minister has no objection to the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Mr. Dobbin) addressing the House?

indicated assent.

I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for your earlier advice. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Mr. White) for allowing me a couple of minutes in which to speak. I agree with much of what he has said.

The company I mentioned earlier encouraged clients to use for conveyancing a firm of solicitors which are the company's own solicitors; it also provides mortgages from firms linked to the company. How can that be allowed in 1998? It is obvious that tighter legislation to protect home buyers is urgently required. Raising the profile of this serious problem is one of the reasons that I submitted early-day motion 1146. I received a letter from the chief executive of the NHBC supporting that early-day motion.

As part of the consultation process, I shall offer the Minister some proposals put together by my local trading standards department in the borough of Rochdale. In addition, there was a meeting yesterday of Manchester building control officers, who are considering the problem. I am confident that the Government will tackle this serious issue, and I await legislation to protect home buyers and to rid the country of rogue builders.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Mr. White) on his success in securing the debate, and on choosing a subject of real concern—the standard of new houses and the importance of ensuring that there is real redress when members of the public have acquired a house that proves to be defective.

I share my hon. Friend's concern that there are far too many defects in new houses, and that, when such defects arise, the response is not always as effective as it should be. We should be encouraging in the house-building industry and in the construction industry generally a culture that seeks to ensure zero defects on handover, and guarantees effective remedies when defects are found. If it is properly structured and managed, a new home warranty system can be a powerful force for pushing up standards of construction and after-sales service, and giving the public reassurance that they will be covered.

In my response to the points raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Milton Keynes, North-East and for Heywood and Middleton (Mr. Dobbin), I shall concentrate on three issues: first, the role of the National House-Building Council in respect of new homes and warranties; secondly, the operation of the building control function; and, thirdly, cowboy builders, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton referred. The NHBC's role in the building of new homes falls into two main areas: first, the provision of building control services by its subsidiary company NHBC Building Control Services Ltd.; secondly, the provision of a new homes warranty under its non-statutory Buildmark warranty scheme.

Before I address the concerns raised about the NHBC's Buildmark warranty scheme, it is important to outline the cover it provides. The scheme provides a 10-year warranty consisting of two parts. The first part covers any defects that arise during the first two years as a result of the builder not keeping to any of the NHBC's standards for materials and workmanship. The second entitles the owner to claim against damage caused by defined structural defects within years three to 10.

When a defect covered by the scheme is discovered within the first two years of the warranty and the builder fails to carry out remedial work, the NHBC provides a free conciliation service. Should that prove unsatisfactory, or if a dispute arises between the owner and the builder or the owner and the NHBC at any time in the 10-year period of the warranty, the scheme also provides an arbitration service. That is an independent procedure, with the arbitrator appointed by the chairman or a vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

From correspondence received by my Department, recent television and radio programmes, issues raised by my hon. Friends in the debate and my own personal experience over many years, I know that there are real concerns about the effectiveness of the NHBC warranty scheme. Many representations have been made by bodies such as the National Association of New Homeowners about the failure of the scheme in certain cases to provide adequate safeguards for home owners whose homes have proved unsatisfactory.

I share those concerns, and I am determined that positive action should be taken to address them. That is why I have on three separate occasions in the past year met the chief executive and senior officials of the NHBC, and why I am closely monitoring the NHBC's review of its warranty service. I have not ruled out Government action to improve consumer protection in this area, but I should prefer action to be taken voluntarily

At my most recent meeting with the NHBC's chief executive, on 24 March, I acknowledged that the NHBC has done a great deal of useful work since its review was launched last year. I am encouraged by the progress that the NHBC has made in several areas, and I hope that its efforts bear fruit. However, I believe that the NHBC can make further progress on several other matters; I am especially interested in what proposals it has for improving the conciliation and arbitration arrangements, and for putting into the public domain information on the performance of builders in terms of reliability and after-sales service.

There is a question whether the NHBC should more clearly separate its various roles. I believe that it accepts that there is a need for its roles as standard setter, as independent regulator and as insurance provider to be more clearly defined and demarcated. For example, it accepts that owners need to be assured that the person dealing with a claim under the warranty or carrying out a conciliation between the owner and the builder is from a different part of the NHBC's operations than that which undertook initial inspection of the property for warranty purposes, or for the purposes of building control.

To address that issue, the NHBC has informed me that, from 1 July, all its claims staff will report to the director of claims at NHBC head office. That will ensure management lines which are clearly separate from the inspection function. In addition, the NHBC is undertaking a major overhaul of its conciliation service, so that it, too, will be distanced from the claims-handling function. I await more details, but I hope that those management reforms will help to make the NHBC services more transparent, more impartial and more responsive to consumer concerns.

I hope that reforms to the conciliation service will also include greater powers for the NHBC to step in directly and put matters right. The NHBC has said that its revised conciliation service will be backed by a new finishing standard and after-sales protocol for house builders.

A constituent in Gloucester has had an on-going problem with a 10-year warranty for almost 10 years. During the arbitration process with the NHBC, he has been expected to pay for every arbitration case that has been brought. There is a list of about 65 different items, from the roof going wrong to the floor needing to be dug up, and he has been expected to pay his own costs for every arbitration claim. Will that issue be addressed in the review?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing my attention to that case. As I emphasised earlier, I believe that the NHBC must address the effectiveness of both the conciliation and the arbitration service, because, although in principle the mechanism appears to amount to a sensible approach, I have heard too many cases, such as the one that my hon. Friend has raised, in which people have found it unsatisfactory in practice.

We do not want arrangements that, although they work in theory, do not provide effective reassurance and redress for members of the public who suffer experiences similar to those suffered by my hon. Friend's constituent. If my hon. Friend wants to write to me about that individual case, I shall undertake to raise it with the NHBC, but I give her the assurance that we are seeking general improvements in both the conciliation and the arbitration services, to ensure that the public can rely on them and not feel intimidated by costs or any other factor.

I shall await the NHBC's response to the outcome of our latest meeting, and to the letter that I sent to its chief executive afterwards, and the overhaul of its conciliation service, before considering whether the Government need to take further action in that area. I hope that my hon. Friends will accept, therefore, that I cannot say much more today on the subject, other than to reassure them that I am taking, and shall continue to take, a close interest in the matter.

In the past year, I have spoken to the other major provider of warranties for new home owners, Zurich Municipal, and to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. I have made it clear that warranties, from whatever source, should offer home owners comparable quality of protection and service in dealing with complains and sorting out problems.

I have also encouraged closer liaison between the NHBC and Zurich Municipal, to ensure that, although they are commercial competitors, they can work together against poor performance by house builders. Naturally, there was concern that if either company refused to accept a builder on to its register, it could lose business if the other company automatically took that builder on to its register. It is a legitimate concern, which I fully understand, and I want common standards to ensure that bad builders who fail to meet proper standards will be unacceptable to both main warranty providers. It is still early days, but I am hopeful that the dialogue will lead to effective action.

There is a question about potential conflict between the NHBC's role in providing warranties and its role as an approved inspector. In my view, there need not be conflict between those roles. It is not in the interests of the NHBC as a warranty provider that defects should appear that could lead to claims. For its part, the building control subsidiary has a statutory duty to take reasonable steps to satisfy itself that building work satisfies the building regulations. It also has a commercial interest in maintaining a reputation for effective inspection services against the background of growing competition from other approved inspectors and local authority building control.

I acknowledge the argument that if defects arise, NHBC staff may be more inclined to downplay them or argue that the defects were not initially present in the house as built, because to acknowledge defects would cast doubt on the NHBC's inspection role. However, I believe that the risk can be lessened by the management restructuring that the NHBC is undertaking. I await additional details of the NHBC's plans to put in place effective Chinese walls between the initial inspection staff and claims evaluation staff.

The NHBC's second role in relation to the building of new homes is the provision of building control services. It is important to see that aspect of the NHBC's work in the context of the framework provided by the building regulations. The construction of any new home is subject to the requirements of the building regulations in force at the time of construction. Those regulations are primarily concerned with protecting the health and safety of those in and around buildings. They place responsibilities on the various parties involved in the construction of new buildings, and allow for action to be taken against them when they fail to comply with requirements.

A builder or developer intending to construct a new home is required by law to obtain building control approval. The general function of building control—whether provided by a local authority or an approved inspector—is to ensure, as far as possible, that building regulations are complied with.

I have no doubt that competition between different agencies involved in building control can help to ensure good value and choice to the public. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East mentioned the problem of fee setting by local authority building control. I have announced that I am working on regulations that will allow for the devolution of fee setting. I hope to make further progress on that soon.

I should like to reassure my hon. Friend that I am determined to ensure that competition in the provision of building control does not drive down standards; it must be seen to maintain and improve them. That is why I have consulted the Local Government Association, the Construction Industry Council and the Association of Corporate Approved Inspectors on ways of securing consistent building control standards and better conditions for competition, throughout the public and private sectors of building control. That is why I have welcomed the establishment of a steering group by those three bodies to draw up recommended standards and monitoring arrangements.

However, it should be remembered that building control—whoever provides it—can be only a checking process. It does not remove from the person carrying out building work the primary responsibility for ensuring that the work complies with the regulations.

My hon. Friend mentioned the number of inspections carried out by local authorities and by the NHBC. It is true that, where local authorities carry out building control, there are several stages at which the authority must be given an opportunity to inspect. However, it is for each local authority to decide how many inspections to make in each case.

Approved inspectors must also decide in each case what inspections to make to fulfil their duties. I understand that, on average, the NHBC inspects properties 11 times in cases where it is carrying out both warranty inspections and building control inspections.

I believe that we should concentrate on ways of consolidating and improving standards of building control in both sectors. Building control can be only a checking process, not a substitute for builders' own quality control, but I want building control to provide the best realistic level of confidence that the regulations have been complied with.

My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East mentioned various matters involving the conveyancing system, including surveys and logbooks. My hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Housing has set up a working party, with the Lord Chancellor's Department and other interested parties, to review the house purchase process. That will consider these and other relevant matters, and will, I hope, report later in the year.

My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton mentioned cowboy builders. He rightly highlighted the serious problems encountered by members of the public as a result of the behaviour of disreputable and rogue traders, who provide a poor standard of service and poor value for money, and who often fail to provide any remedy when their failings are brought to light.

It is essential that effective measures are in place to tackle the problems of cowboys, so we published our consultation paper on the subject earlier this month. The paper sets out several options for tackling the problem and providing better information to the public on reputable builders. We intend to drive forward those proposals, but we shall do so very much in the light of the evidence submitted to us as a result of the consultation.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton intends to submit his views and those of related organisations; I very much look forward to reading them. We shall take full account of his views and others submitted in the consultation, to ensure that we have really effective measures to tackle the problem of cowboy builders.