I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for allowing us the opportunity to ensure that Zimbabwe is not forgotten at a time when the Government's efforts are rightly focused on ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Indeed, my fear—it is my principal reason for seeking this debate—is that Robert Mugabe may be increasing his oppression and terror under the cover of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In another place last month, Baroness Amos said that comparisons between Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe were not valid. I wonder. He may not have weapons of mass destruction, but Robert Mugabe is a brutal tyrant whose actions threaten not just his own people but the stability of the region. When I visited southern Africa with Edward Heath in 1981, I thought that it was the oppressive apartheid regime of Pretoria that could drive the region into chaos, while the emerging democracy of Zimbabwe offered a beacon of hope to the continent of Africa. How wrong that judgment was—and how much of my error can be explained by the contrasting personalities of Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela.

Our debate is about exposing the horrors that are unfolding in Zimbabwe today, and letting the people there know that we have not forgotten them. We meet after the welcome news of the victory of the Movement for Democratic Change in both of the weekend's by-elections. However, two by-election swallows do not make a summer in Zimbabwe; and this morning we read of an intensified crackdown on the MDC, including the arrest of the party's vice-president. We are indeed still witnessing a winter of discontent in Zimbabwe.

Today, we must give voice to the concern, felt by so many people in Britain and around the world, that Robert Mugabe is being given a free ride in oppressing his people and destroying the economy of southern Africa. I know of that concern because many of my constituents have friends and colleagues in the country. I know of two people in particular. One is a white Zimbabwean farmer who has fled to the United Kingdom and who, to our shame, has hardly been welcomed with open arms the other is the mother of a health professional who fled to the UK from the terrors of Harare—including at least two attempts on his life—who simply did not get the support that he was entitled to expect from the Foreign Office. Perhaps it is because so many of us have such contacts with Zimbabwe, both direct and indirect, that we feel so strongly about what we see as the Government's failure to act with sufficient clarity and purpose to mobilise the international community to deal with Mugabe's growing menace.

Our concern is for all the people of Zimbabwe. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), said in a previous debate on Zimbabwe, that

"Zimbabwe's problems are the result not of a black versus white conflict or a conflict between Zimbabwe and Britain, but of poor Government policies. The main victims of the regime's policies are the poor, black people of Zimbabwe.—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 17 December 2002; Vol. 396, c. 187WH.]

I therefore welcome the seriousness with which today's debate is being taken, notably by my right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram). I hope that it will inspire the Government, for the first time, and in their own time, to have a full day's debate on the Floor of the House on this terrifying tragedy.

Things are getting much worse in Zimbabwe. Amnesty International said of events before the by-elections:

"What we are witnessing is much more than the government's usual tactic of raising the level of violence in the run-up to elections. This is an explosive situation where there seem to be no limits to how far the government will go to suppress opposition and maintain its hold on power."

I shall speak later about the escalating violence, but let us remind ourselves just how bad life is for the vast majority of the population.

Today, 7 million people in Zimbabwe face starvation. There are forecasts of a huge deficit in cereal foods. The Department for International Development has admitted that matters are serious, and said that the World Food Programme is starting to make contingency plans. Can the Minister update the House on that matter? Has any progress been made in stopping the Government of Zimbabwe preventing the delivery of food aid to many vulnerable communities, and in preventing Mugabe from using the food aid that we supply as a political weapon?

The famine has exacerbated the HIV/AIDS crisis. An estimated 2.2 million Zimbabweans are living with HIV/AIDS and more than 600,000 children have been orphaned by the pandemic.

Last month, the Minister, Baroness Amos, said:

"Zimbabwe's economy has continued to decline and is now in crisis. It contracted by 12 per cent. in 2002, according to the estimates of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. It is now the fastest shrinking economy in the world. Inflation is over 200 per cent., unemployment is over 70 per cent. and its currency has continued to plummet in value. There is little food, fuel or foreign exchange. That decline is largely due to poor economic policies, which have undermined macroeconomic stability and destroyed business confidence."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 March 2003; Vol. 645, c. 904–5.]

The country once described as the breadbasket of southern Africa is at breaking point. In October 2002, a well-informed columnist at The Times warned of tribally-based genocide in Zimbabwe. He predicted that

"The majority Mashona tribe, who occupy the richer, northern part of the country centred on Harare, may soon be urged by their leader, Robert Mugabe, and his Zanu (Patriotic Front) governing party into a genocidal bid to take from the southern Matabele ("take back", he would say) the lands which the Mashona believe were stolen from them more than a hundred years ago. The situation has parallels with Kosovo. The plan would be to drive the Matabele, by terror and by massacre, over the southern borders of Zimbabwe whence (in some Mashona minds) they came."

In November 2002 Physicians for Human Rights concluded:

"It is our opinion that starvation and eventually death will occur upon party political lines in Zimbabwe."

Five months on, that terrible prophecy is being realised. Mugabe's aim is undoubtedly the elimination of any opposition to his rule, and famine is his weapon. He does not care about the people of Zimbabwe; all he cares about is his own political survival. Here is a real and vivid parallel with the butcher of Baghdad—and, like Saddam, Mugabe has a record. In the late 1980s, he used starvation as a tactic for political intimidation. His notorious 5 Brigade, trained by North Korean instructors, was used to suppress internal dissent. The campaign was aimed at the power base of his rival ZAPU, its leader Joshua Nkomo and its ethnic supporters. Between 10,000 and 20,000 died, as the world turned a blind eye. To make the same mistake again would disgrace—I would say, is disgracing—the international community.

Today, Zimbabwe bears an uncanny resemblance to Nazi Germany during the 1930s. There is the same steady erosion of the independence of the army, the civil service and the institutions of the state. Like the Nazis, Mugabe's ZANU-PF party has a parallel party organisation that runs alongside, but always overrides, formal state institutions such as the police and the army. Hitler's brownshirts have their precise counterpart in Mugabe's youth leagues, known as green bombers. The similarity is not lost on Mugabe. He even admits to modelling himself on Hitler. Only last week, he told an audience of his henchmen:

"I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their right to their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold. Ten times, that is what we stand for."

He also warned the MDC that, in resisting his regime through mass action, they were playing with fire and that

"those who play with fire will be consumed by that fire."

Mugabe has not just been talking vainly of himself as a vile dictator; sadly, he has been acting like one too. He has gone through the opposition with a fine-toothed comb. There is a programme of imprisonment, torture and sexual assault on opposition activists.

The Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum is not alone in expressing its concern about the increased use of state agents to violate human rights. Last month, more than 500 people were arrested in three days. The Daily News, one of the few independent media outlets in Zimbabwe, reported that 1,000 farm workers, including women and children, at opposition Member of Parliament Roy Bennet's estate in Chimanimani, sustained serious injuries in state-sponsored beatings. Even before the MDC-organised "stay-away" on 18 and 19 March, Baroness Amos had told us:

"This year alone has seen the arrest of eight MPs and four senior officials, including the MDC Mayor of Harare. Some of those arrested have been tortured while in police custody—including the MDC MP, Job Sikhala; an allegation substantiated by government doctors."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 March 2003; Vol. 645, c. 905.]

The Institute for Democracy in South Africa has reported on the most recent violence. It said:

"The severity of the injuries seems to be attributed to the fact that the majority of the perpetrators were apparently Zimbabwe National Army soldiers, in uniform, who were conveyed in military vehicles to the homes of the victims. The perpetrators were well equipped with weapons of torture such as batons, chains, hosepipes, and rifles. In most cases there were groups between twenty and fifty, assaulting individuals.

It is also evident that not only the ZNA were involved. People taken by the police for questioning were handed over to youth militia, and taken behind the police station where they were assaulted severely, again using weapons such as baton sticks, hose pipes and chains."

Observing that this is the first time for three years that members of the military have formed the highest percentage of the perpetrators of such violence, the update continues:

"Nearly all the victims over the past four days were active members of the MDC, holding rank in the party structure, and the more senior ranks were targeted for abduction and torture to obtain more information regarding plans for further mass action. Many of these people are unable to return to their homes, and have continued to receive threatening phone calls. Many were threatened with further assault, if they reported their injuries, and in one case, a victim who had received life saving treatment at a hospital and been discharged was assaulted again, requiring readmission for other injuries."

Those details are corroborated by the Crisis in Zimbabwe coalition, based in Harare. In a lengthy briefing document, which includes the most harrowing case histories, it lists the types of weapon used in the most recent attacks:

"The perpetrators used fists and booted feet to beat their victims. They also used blunt instruments including batons, sticks, and AK rifle butts. The perpetrators were also equipped with sjamboks (whips), chains and hosepipes.

In addition, many victims reported the use of torture tactics, including electrocution. Other traumas included burning with cigarettes and acid, inserting foreign objects into women's genital areas, urinating in the victim's mouth, and forcing the victims to drink substances such as urine.

Psychological torment was also used, as victims were often threatened with a slow and painful death, and warned not to seek medical treatment or to report the incident."

I do not have time to quote extensively from the case histories, but I shall give just one—that of 32-year-old MK, who lives in a suburb of Harare and works for the MDC. MK said:

"At approximately lam on Sunday 23 March 2003"—

last Sunday—

"twenty men (16 in army uniform and 4 in civilian clothing) climbed over the boundary wall surrounding our home. When my father answered the knocking on the door the men burst in shouting that they wanted his wife They called her out and attacked her.

She was wrapped in a cloth, and they did not wait for her to dress before they started to beat her with hose pipes and the butts of their AK 47 assault rifles. Her cloth fell off leaving her naked and they continued to beat her. They locked my father and the younger children in the bedroom. I heard my mother screaming—they made her open her legs and they tried to push the barrel of an AK into her vagina."

That is but the opening of the testimony of MK.

The situation cannot be allowed to continue but, as ever, the question is what can we do. We must start matching our rhetoric with our actions. The Government must accept the conclusion of the report on human rights of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, which states that "the failure" of their policy of constructive engagement in Zimbabwe

"reveals the limits of that policy as an effective diplomatic tool."

The Government must also understand that, although the Prime Minister's promises that there will be "no tolerance" of

"the activities of Mr Mugabe's henchmen in Zimbabwe"

make good headlines, they have a devastating effect on those who look to Britain for help, when those words are not backed up by robust action. The Government must admit that the EU travel ban for Mugabe and his henchmen has been shot through with loopholes. The French, in particular, holed it below the waterline when they invited Robert Mugabe to Paris in February—not that he is the only member of his vile regime to have visited Europe and found a way round the ban. Nor was that his only visit since the ban. Mugabe and two other members of his Government visited Rome four months after the travel ban was introduced last February. There have been other visits by people whom we supposed were banned. Parliamentary answers tell us of four visits to Paris, one to Lyon and four to Belgium, and there have probably been more.

Britain must play a greater role in bringing pressure from the wider international community to bear on Mugabe. It should persuade EU leaders to extend sanctions to the business men who bankroll Mugabe, persuade Commonwealth leaders of the need to press home the principles embedded in the Harare declaration and encourage southern African countries to follow Kenya's lead and condemn Mugabe's vile regime. It is a matter of the greatest regret that some members of the Commonwealth are already urging Zimbabwe's readmission into the organisation. The decision has, at least, been delayed until December. There is a need here for urgent and intense diplomacy by our Government. There can be no question of readmission while Mugabe remains in power.

Another issue is the role of the United Nations in resolving the situation. The Government have talked of activity there, but I do not see enough. I understand that our mission to the UN, and Ministers, have been preoccupied with Iraq, but we cannot fight dictators one at a time. That is the way in which evil flourishes, and it must be fought on all its fronts. Many people are asking why the Security Council still believes that Zimbabwe does not pose a threat to regional security when it is clear that the current situation is having serious regional implications. Others are making the comparison between Zimbabwe and Kosovo, on which the Security Council adopted resolutions 1199 and 1203 in 1998—referring to that "grave humanitarian situation" and "impending humanitarian catastrophe"—and resolution 1244 in 1999.

The Security Council has never discussed Zimbabwe, and it is time that it did. I can conclude only that the world is waiting for the situation to get worse before acting. Is that not exactly the kind of situation to which the Prime Minister referred when 18 months ago he warned:

"If Rwanda happened again today … we would have a moral duty to act there"?

Now is a tragic time for Zimbabwe. Those who look to Britain for help have a right to expect that we, above all, will not turn a blind eye. Ministers must realise that they can rely on rhetoric only for so long before people start asking, "How is Mugabe managing to starve 7 million of his own people without any real consequences?"

Such tragic evil has but one source—the man Mugabe. In any free and fair election, he would lose; but the most recent election was neither free nor fair. Last week Baroness Amos told Lord Tebbitt that

"it is not British policy to have regime change in Harare."—[Official Report. House of Lords, 26 March 2003; Vol. 646, c. 803.]

I hope by that that there was no suggestion of toleration of the results of that election.

Zimbabwe has been poisoned by one man's arrogance and obsession. As Webster wrote in "The Duchess of Malfi":

• "Considering duly, that a prince's court
• Is like a common fountain, whence should flow
• Pure silver drops in general, but if't chance
• Some curs'd example poison't near the head,
• Death and diseases through the whole land spread."

rose—

Order. I intend to call the wind-ups to start no later than 10.30, so I make a plea to hon. Members to be as brief as possible, so that as many as possible can get in.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) on securing the debate. I agree with almost everything he said. Zimbabwe is a very sad place and we and our Government should do more.

Hon. Members who read the early-day motions this morning will have noticed that, serendipitously, the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Campbell) has tabled early-day motion 989 on Zimbabwean cricketers in which he pays tribute to Henry Olonga and Andy Flower. What contact is there with Henry Olonga, who is in hiding in South Africa and whose life is in danger? I hope that the right procedures are being followed through the usual channels so that, if we need to, we can ensure that he is safer.

I have spent a considerable part of the past six years focusing on cricket and money laundering in connection with Zimbabwe. It is appropriate to mention Henry Olonga and Andy Flower, but we should also pay tribute to Nasser Hussain, who took a difficult decision. I am reminded of my phone conversation with Tim Lamb before the England cricketers left Australia to go to Zimbabwe. I had written a personal letter to Nasser Hussain asking whether he would like to come to be briefed by us about events in Zimbabwe. Tim Lamb said that he was minded not to show the letter to Nasser Hussain, to which I replied, "In that case, I might just phone and tell the Press Association immediately I put the phone down on this call." His response was, "In that case, I might show him the letter." The England and Wales Cricket Board has shown the most appalling leadership on this issue. I congratulate Nasser Hussain on the stand that he took, given the difficult position in which he was placed.

It is appropriate to talk about cricket in Zimbabwe because the ECB is holding a wake for cricket today—the annual meeting with county cricketers at Lord's. In the light of that, I hope that UK citizens will peacefully demonstrate against the 2003 summer tour of Zimbabwe to England and oppose the England cricket team going to Zimbabwe in 2004.

I have tabled three early-day motions about cricket in the past six months: early-day motions 458, 549, and 718. I shall not read them out, but I will explore the issues raised in early-day motion 718. I have been trying to take the ECB and the International Cricket Council to court. That was not so difficult with the ECB, because its constitution is so appalling and contains some flaky sentences. It was clear that we had a case and that we would win, which is partly why the ECB withdrew from the tour of Zimbabwe. For example, it said that all cricketers had an interest in the game, but it was not in the interests of the game for people to go to Zimbabwe. There were clearly major holes in the constitution.

What got my goat was that Tim Lamb would not make public the amount of risk insurance that the ECB had taken out for cricketers and county cricketers. Ultimately, county cricket depends on the television and sponsorship rights negotiated by the ECB. The ECB said that it would lose –10 million, but I suspect that that was untrue and that the real loss would be slightly less than –2 million. Tim Lamb would not make public the amount of risk insurance taken out or, indeed, whether he had taken any out for the players. Nasser Hussain took that up with the ECB. I look forward to being corrected publicly if I am wrong about the ECB in that respect.

Tim Lamb was fond of saying that he had never met a Minister or debated Zimbabwe with a ministerial team. My hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Claire Ward) was rather clever in an article that she wrote in The Guardian, because she managed to finesse the minutes of a meeting between Tim Lamb and Foreign Office representatives. I will not put them all on the public record now because they are already in the Library. However, I shall read out one or two paragraphs.

Paragraph 4 of the minutes prepared by officials states:

"Mr Lamb asked whether we could foresee a situation where HMG might wish the tour to Zimbabwe to be cancelled. You said that we had not yet consulted Ministers, but given the Government of Zimbabwe's human rights record, HMG might well find it difficult to accept that an England cricket team should play in Zimbabwe You said that the MDC and civil society in Zimbabwe might also consider that World Cup matches would give credibility, and so aid and comfort, to the Mugabe regime."

Paragraph 5 states:

"Mr Lamb said that the ECB had to write to the ICC by 8 July … giving preliminary views on whether they were willing to play in Zimbabwe. He understood the problems, but did not wish to be the one to pull the plug at this stage. He asked if we might suggest language he could use, without attribution, with the ICC. I attach a copy of the exchange of e-mails."

So, there was collusion.

Finally, paragraph 6 states:

"Mr Lamb's bottom line was that he would accept HMG's advice closer to the time, and would consult again Indeed, the Zimbabwe option might disappear before then, especially if the media group due to televise the matches in Harare and Bulawayo … chose not to do so."

So much for the ECB's spin that it did not get advice from the Foreign Office.

Given what the hon. Gentleman has just read, why did the previous Minister of State, who drew the short straw last time and took part in the debate in December, say that his view that the English cricket team should not play in Zimbabwe was a personal one? Why did he write in his local newspaper that the Government did not have a view at that time?

That is a matter for the Minister, but I see the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making.

The ICC is a body of secrecy. Through my solicitor, Jonathan Haydn-Williams of Taylor Wessing, I have tried to get the ICC to publish its articles of association, but it has refused to do so—not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. It is based at Lord's and says that it is the governing body of cricket, but it is not. It is the most appalling association I have ever come across. It will not release its articles of association—what is it afraid of? There must be something in the articles that would make it vulnerable to a legal challenge in the High Court.

Is the hon. Gentleman in favour of the Zimbabwe tour going ahead this year? Does he agree that if that tour is cancelled, we should invite the Kenyans over? They have done extremely well and taken a robust view of Zimbabwe.

I am not in favour of Zimbabwe playing cricket here in the summer, but I would welcome the Kenyans with open arms.

I have been looking into money laundering for several years. Four Members of Parliament who had made various comments and allegations about laundered money in Switzerland went to Zurich last year. As hon. Members will remember, the Abacha money was found at UBS in Switzerland, as was the Marcos money, so we went to UBS expecting to find Mugabe's laundered money. As guests of the British-Swiss chamber of commerce, we spent a morning with the due diligence team at UBS. It had recorded more than 8,000 contact lists, which included the names of the Mugabe families and Mugabe's civil servants and ministers. The bank had traced every lead, but it did not have one lead on the missing money. Of course, we asked, "Where is the money?", and without blinking the bank's representatives said, "It is in either the Isle of Man or the City of London."

As a consequence of the amount of criticism that UBS has received, it has taken the lead in saying, "If there are any ethics to this banking business, why do we not agree to sign some sort of statement about laundered money?" To date, only one bank in Britain, HSBC, has signed such a statement, yet there are thousands of banks in the City, and I hope that many more of them will be persuaded to sign it.

Yesterday, my staff and I phoned the usual suspects asking where Mugabe's missing billions could be. There was widespread acceptance among the majority of those to whom we spoke that Mugabe and his associates' funds are mainly held in Malaysia. I have been to the Isle of Man to try to find leads, but that is fairly new information, and we are grateful to Transparency International for helping us to find that out.

Figures cited by the The Sunday Telegraph on 3 March 2002 suggest that the amount of money laundered by ZANU-PF might exceed $100 million, although I think that the figure is nearer $4 billion. The newspaper's sources suggest that about $5 million has passed through the Channel Islands. It has also been suggested that Malaysia is a logical place to store the funds. If one traces the number of visits that Mugabe makes to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, it is revealing and makes me think that the funds are in Malaysia. I hope that, in summing up, the Minister will say exactly what sort of pressure we should now put on the Malaysian Government to come clean and say whether Mugabe has laundered money there. In particular, what powers does the general secretariat of the Commonwealth have with respect to money laundering either in Zimbabwe or Malaysia? Both countries are members of their respective regional branches of the Financial Action Task Force. Malaysia belongs to the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering, and Zimbabwe belongs to the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group. If the reports are correct, both countries are in violation of the charters of those groups.

The United Kingdom has been granted observer jurisdiction over both groups, which means that we are to highlight any problems in them. I would like to know when those meetings will start, who will represent us at them and when we will start to ask questions about the whereabouts of Mugabe's money, because it is vital that we turn off that supply of funds.

We talked to Krall International, the company mentioned in the Sunday Telegraph article, which had been employed by the Financial Services Authority to find Mugabe's assets. It said that it had never been asked to carry out such a task. Christie Lorgen, deputy head of the African department, states that no such business had been tendered by the FSA and that, to her knowledge, no such investigation was being undertaken by any private company. Will the Minister tell us what role the FSA might have in finding laundered money, both in the City and in the global marketplace?

Both the MDC and the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust have offered encouragement for our position on Mugabe's money laundering and believe that successfully freezing his assets would considerably hinder his domestic and international position. The Zimbabwe Democracy Trust also recommends that we push for banks to accept a corporate social responsibility through both positive and negative media exposure. Does the Minister intend to ask Barclays to undertake the same UBS forensic examination of Mugabe's funds and perform the same due diligence? There is concern that there may be laundered money from Mugabe in Barclays bank. What does the Minister have at his disposal to order banks registered in the UK and the Isle of Man to perform the same forensic due diligence that UBS performs?

I hope that the cricketers come to their senses at Lord's today, and that considerable pressure is put on the executive of the ECB, which has done great damage to national and international cricket. I hope also that the Minister will tell us in his concluding remarks what rights and powers he has to examine the issue of laundered money in Malaysia.

Before I start, I should declare a slight family interest in the issue. My great-great uncle led Cecil Rhodes into what later became Rhodesia many years ago.

We heard my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) talk about the shocking statistics from Zimbabwe today. I shall not go through them again at length, but four of them stuck out starkly: about 7.2 million people rely on food aid; 35 per cent. of the population are infected with the HIV virus—some 2.2 million people; a third of all those under 15 are orphans—around 600,000 people; and the unemployment rate is 70 per cent.

Commenting on his recent report on Zimbabwe, James Morris, the head of the World Food Programme, said before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February that

"nationwide shortages of basic commodities and fuel, high parallel market prices and runaway inflation are a formula for disaster. More than half of Zimbabwe's 12 million people are now living with the threat of starvation We are seeing hunger-related diseases. Children have dropped out of schools. Desperate families in rural Zimbabwe have resorted to eating wild fruits and tubers, some poisonous. just to survive. The government has declined permission for us to conduct nutritional surveys that would help target what resources we have to the hardest hit areas … Food is seen as weapon in domestic politics."

That is surely the most damming indictment possible of what is going on in Zimbabwe today.

We probably all agree that the UK cannot act to solve the situation on its own, not least because of our colonial past. However, I share the great disquiet of the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt), and doubtless of hon. Members on both sides of the House, about the Government's recent actions with regard to the cricket tour. There should have been a far more robust stance. It is difficult to imagine the despair of the opposition and those suffering in Zimbabwe when they see the UK Government's apparent acceptance of our cricketers going to Zimbabwe and the comfort that that would have brought to the regime. When the Minister replies, will he say where the Department of Trade and Industry stands on sponsorship and trade with Zimbabwe?

The UK cannot sort out the problem on its own. What other institutions are left to us with which we can work to try to do something about the desperate situation in Zimbabwe? First, there is the Commonwealth—the historic association to which Zimbabwe has belonged, although it is, of course, currently suspended, and of which Britain is the head. I must say, however, that the Commonwealth has badly failed the people of Zimbabwe. During the elections—the Commonwealth's chance to show whether Zimbabwe's Government had democratic legitimacy—it sent only 42 observers to that country. I do not believe that there were enough observers or that they could do their job properly.

The troika that the Government appointed, comprising the Prime Minister of Australia and the Presidents of Nigeria and Kenya, has not found unanimity. Presidents Mbeki and Obasanjo, almost unbelievably, say that things are getting better and recommend Zimbabwe's reinclusion in the Commonwealth. That is staggering. It shows clearly that, sadly, the Commonwealth will not be the vehicle that we might have hoped would solve the Zimbabwe situation.

What of the European Union? In recent weeks we have seen President Mugabe come to Europe, to Paris, despite—I have to say this in defence of the UK Government—strong protests on their part that visit should not go ahead. Nevertheless, President Mugabe came to France, and it is difficult to underestimate the despair that that must have caused among those suffering in Zimbabwe. I understand that the common position on Africa adopted in February 2002 has a get-out clause in respect of travel to the EU, in that article 3.3 says that member states may permit Ministers to come to the EU

"on the grounds of attending meetings of international bodies or conducting political dialogue that promotes democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe".

Sadly, we must conclude that too many EU countries are trying to pursue their own African agenda for us to be able to look with any hope or confidence to the EU as a solution to the problem.

What of the African institutions to which we might look? The Government have tried to work with the South African Development Community and the New Partnership for Africa's Development, or NEPAD. That is a subsidiary of the Organisation of African Unity, within which there is a peer review mechanism to which countries can subject themselves. I believe that that mechanism is fatally flawed, not least because of the strong involvement in the OAU of Libya, which is one of Zimbabwe's greatest supporters in Africa. The peer review mechanism gives us no grounds for hope with regard to intervention to resolve the situation in Zimbabwe.

President Mbeki, who is the current president of the Non-Aligned Movement and a member of the Commonwealth troika, has, almost unbelievably, secured Mr. Mugabe a unanimous vote of confidence from that organisation. That fairly shocking fact means that we cannot look to that group of nations either.

That leaves the United Nations and the World Food Programme as the only international bodies with a chance of getting the international community together to do something about Zimbabwe.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will make it clear that when we say "we", we are talking about the people of Zimbabwe as well as people in this country who are concerned about them. Will he also mention in passing the Churches, which more than 20 years ago spent much time raising awareness of what conditions were like for them? Some are now speaking out bravely, but many others have been cowed and intimidated.

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is right that there are brave groups outside the state in Zimbabwe that are trying to administer food aid. There are also brave Church leaders, although sadly some are complicit with the Mugabe regime. I understand that the diocese of Rochester recently broke its links with the diocese of Harare because it felt that that diocese was too close to the Government and not acting in the interests of the people of the diocese.

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is ironic that the opposition to the regime of Robert Mugabe, who I think claims still to be a Roman Catholic, is being led very bravely by the Roman Catholic Church in Zimbabwe?

My hon. Friend's point is extremely well made. I hope that the UN will grasp the nettle. We saw it falter at the last hurdle with regard to Iraq, but I hope that it will rise to the challenge posed by the desperate humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe. I believe that The United Nations Development Programme, which has representatives on the ground, should go into Zimbabwe with the food that is required to assist the 7.2 million people about whom we have heard repeatedly this morning.

The argument always advanced is that of sovereignty: that the UN cannot interfere in the affairs of a sovereign nation. With regard to sovereignty and democratic legitimacy, I noted that Baroness Park, when initiating a recent debate on the issue in the House of Lords, said that originally there had been 5.2 million Zimbabweans on the electoral register, but that that figure had increased miraculously to 5.6 million just before the general election—an extra 400,000 voters had been "created". However, in August 2002 the census for Zimbabwe showed only 4.2 million adults. The information that has emerged since that general election shows that even if there had been the faintest belief that the general election was legitimate, the rigging of the figures in the electoral registers shows that it was not. The Government of Zimbabwe have no democratic legitimacy.

The world must address the issue of sovereignty. I commend the writings of two able and active Conservatives, James Mawdsley, the former human rights campaigner from Burma, and Ben Rogers, who argued recently that sovereignty lies not only with the Government of a country, but with its people, and that when a Government are clearly abusing the best interests of its people—as is evidently the case in Zimbabwe—institutions such as the UN have the right to intervene.

There is a great deal of hypocrisy with regard to Zimbabwe. I do not believe that if a white regime in Africa were behaving towards its people in such a way, the situation would have been allowed to continue. Why were there marches on the streets when the Selous scouts were in Zimbabwe, but none now with the green bombers? Many in the UK should ask themselves that question.

I add my thanks to the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) for initiating this debate and ensuring that, despite everything that is going on in the Gulf, people do not forget what is happening in Zimbabwe.

I will not add anything to the list of horrors that has been put forward by the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members. I agree with everything that has been said so far. My first point concerns what is happening in Africa in general. We should start to criticise other African countries. Perhaps for too long we have treated southern African countries, and South Africa in particular, with kid gloves, believing that we should not criticise them because they are African countries and have come through terrible times. However, in the past month, we have seen several organisations pass motions of support for Zimbabwe and call for sanctions to be lifted: the Southern African Development Community on 10 March, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa on 17 March and the Non-Aligned Movement in late February. South Africa has taken the lead on that issue.

There comes a time when, despite the horrors of South Africa and the almost total support that there was for the change in regime and the fact that after many years apartheid was lifted and we had a democratic Government, sometimes we must be honest with our friends. The role of President Mbeki and the South African Government has been quite shameful. The British Government have a special responsibility: we cannot ignore the fact that we were the old colonial power. Some argue that that makes it more difficult for us to get involved, but I believe it gives us a special responsibility.

When some of us met the Zimbabwean high commissioner recently, we expressed our serious concerns about conditions in that country. The response was the point that my hon. Friend makes. First, there were no problems, and in so far as there were problems, they were all due to Britain not facing its responsibilities from its colonial history. Would she agree that although our colonial history is responsible for much, there is no excuse for the Zimbabwean Government to starve their people and have unfair elections or for the horrific human rights abuses that we see there? They already say that we poke our nose into everything that they do and use that as part of their propaganda both within the country and across wider Africa. What is the answer?

I thank my hon. Friend. That is precisely why it is crucial that we do not exercise double standards as a Government when we deal with a country, whatever its regime, whatever its colour. We must be committed to democracy. We must make the effort now to put pressure on other southern African countries Our real power, which the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) mentioned, is in the New Partnership for Africa's Development. It is supposed to incorporate best government, peer review and democracy.

The Minister is aware that NEPAD will be discussed at the G8 meeting in June. I urge him and all his officials to ensure that between now and then we push hard a dialogue with African leaders, pointing out to them that they must take a firm stance. They must condemn Mugabe's use of violence and other means of oppression as well as the disastrous economic policies. If African nations fail to take such action, the Government should commit themselves to bringing the whole NEPAD process to a halt at the G8 meeting. Only when we mean what we say about Zimbabwe and really do something will it address the minds of some of those leaders.

What is happening with NEPAD? Why is it being supported when its African partners who are committed on paper to good government have repeatedly gone into print in support of Mugabe, despite all the killings and the maiming of people that have been described this morning? At the forefront of that will be the position of South Africa. President Mbeki and his wife spent a day at Chequers just a few weeks ago, yet we have not heard whether there was any push on him about what was happening. I cannot believe that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did not take the opportunity to hammer home to him the importance of his attitude towards what is happening in Zimbabwe. I know that he wanted to discuss Iraq and to try to persuade the South African Government that the war was justified. He obviously did not manage to do that, but neither did he manage to raise the question of Zimbabwe in any serious way, and that concerns me.

We must stop adopting double standards and we must stop apologising for south African countries. I heard Mike Soper, the vice-chairman of the ECB, on the radio this morning talking about cricket. I know Mike Soper well because he used to be the chairman of Surrey until he gave that up to become vice-chairman of the ECB. He might have handled the matter slightly differently from the current chairman of the ECB, had he been elected. He said this morning that the voice of Nelson Mandela made a great difference to attitudes in South Africa. When Nelson Mandela said that it was all right to go to Zimbabwe, all the liberals who felt so strongly about Nelson Mandela stepped back. That is a real shame, because no one can underestimate the importance of Nelson Mandela to the struggle in South Africa, but it is sad that everyone feels that they must remain silent because Nelson Mandela has spoken.

I share the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt). However, I go further: no one who watches the two test matches and the other matches will enjoy them knowing that the lives of some of the Zimbabwean players have been threatened. I pay tribute to Henry Olongo and Andy Flower and the other players who worked behind the scenes without publicity and who took action to show that they knew that their country was not a democracy. I would like the Government to go upfront on this, not to sit back and pass the buck as usual when it comes to sport and politics. The Government should say that they do not want Zimbabwe to tour. We think of the headlines "Relief for ECB as Zimbabwe agrees to honour tour" and "English cricket's financial worries eased yesterday." Is that what it is all about? I would like my Government to tell the cricket authorities that they do not want Zimbabwe to tour and to urge everyone not to attend the matches. I hope that they will cancel the tour.

It would be terrific if we could get Kenya to come instead. That would show Africa that countries that stand out against the majority can gain by taking that approach. I hope that the Minister will say something on that. It is not good enough to say that such matters are for the Minister for Sport. The Minister for Sport said, "It's not up to me; it's up to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office." We cannot keep passing the buck. Zimbabwe should not tour, and none of those who have bought a ticket should attend the matches. That would be one small gesture that all those in this country who condemn Zimbabwe's behaviour could make.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) on securing the debate and bringing to our attention the desperate situation in Zimbabwe, which the contributions so have graphically illustrated. Recent reports have shown that there has been acceleration in the violation of human rights in Zimbabwe and that attempts have been made to expand the abuse of power; fears are growing of widespread famine and disease. We should remind ourselves that that is the doing of a corrupt and vicious regime orchestrated by President Mugabe.

The Movement for Democratic Change pointed out that the war in Iraq is being ruthlessly exploited by Mr. Mugabe to unleash unprecedented assaults against his opponents while the attention of the world is focused elsewhere. Other hon. Members have pointed that out. The statistics make chilling reading. Using the powers that the regime has granted to itself under the Public Order and Security Act and after the two-day national strike organised by the MDC, the regime arrested more than 500 MDC supporters and officials. At least 1,000 of its supporters have been driven from their homes, and more than 250 people were so badly beaten that they had to be admitted to hospital, many with broken bones. Not only men, but mothers and children, suffered torture by electric shock and cigarette burns. It is important to repeat that women—mothers, teenagers, and in some cases little girls—were subjected to rape by rifle barrels. That is an appalling record of atrocities and it is wholly unaccetable. As the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire said, Mr. Mugabe now boasts that he will not hesitate to act like a black Hitler when it comes to crushing his opponents.

There are indications of further manoeuvres by Mr. Mugabe to expand his abuse of power. Some analysts say that Mugabe would step down but for the slight impediment that if he did, the constitution would require an election for a new president—an election that his supporters might not win. He might be persuaded to go if power could be transferred to a chosen crony in ZANU-PF, but that would need a change in the constitution, for which ZANU-PF would need a greater majority than it currently commands in the Zimbabwean Parliament. That is why the by-elections recently held in the Harare suburbs were so important: victories for ZANU-PF would have been vital to secure the ability to change the constitution. Thankfully, those victories have been denied it.

The latest figures from the United Nations on the humanitarian disaster, which hon. Members have confirmed, are that probably two thirds of Zimbabwe's population are on the verge of starvation and the AIDS epidemic is reaching such proportions that it is overwhelming the country's medical resources. The figures are always vague so one can never be sure, but it appears that between 600,000 and 800,000 young Zimbabweans are AIDS orphans—about one in 15 of the population. That is a huge burden for any country to cope with, let alone a country such as Zimbabwe, which has been stripped almost bare of its resources by Mugabe.

As the Minister will confirm, the United Kingdom Government have extended their funding programmes for food aid to mid-2003 through the World Food Programme and non-governmental organisations. The aim is to feed about 90 per cent. of the starving people in Zimbabwe; the question is whether the food is reaching the needy, or being diverted to ZANU-PF supporters or even to the black market. The Government discount reports that, for example, Save the Children sacks of cereal are going straight to the black market and not to the starving, on the grounds that once the aid has been delivered, the empty sacks are recycled and used a second, third or fourth time for carrying cereals and other things. How does that explain reliable reports that Save the Children lorries loaded with food aid are being driven off by ZANU-PF supporters, or that the aid is being distributed by organisations headed by ZANU-PF MPs? The Government's assurances are not convincing.

Action is being taken throughout the international community—by the United Nations, which has been mentioned, the United States, the European Union, the Commonwealth and national Governments. International lawyers argue that the United Nations' ability to intervene directly in situations such as Zimbabwe is constrained by its charter. According to the lawyers, it can be argued that the murders, however atrocious, and the attacks, however appalling, on MDC supporters are politically motivated, not ethnic genocide, although it could equally be argued that much political support in Zimbabwe is tribally based. In Matabeleland, some appalling mass murders were committed, which I am sure were directly related to tribal connections with a political party.

The repression and human rights abuses are currently contained within Zimbabwe. It is argued that the scope for UN action is limited unless and until the trouble spreads to the neighbouring countries, although the increasing exodus of refugees and food shortages in neighbouring countries mean that the problems are clearly mounting and UN intervention may become more justifiable.

Criticism from the United States is mounting and the US sanctions regime is tightening, which is a good example for all to follow. As late as 28 March, the European Union issued a strongly worded statement—I paraphrase it to save time, but it is important to get the essential message across that it strongly condemns the unprecedented violence and repression against the opposition after the protest actions of 18 and 19 March. The EU is especially concerned about the recent events and condemns the wave of arbitrary arrests of approximately 400 opposition supporters, many of whom have suffered ill treatment and even torture by security forces. The EU reiterates its call on the Government of Zimbabwe to respect human rights, to cease immediately its campaign of violent repression and to call to account those responsible for the use of violence and torture. Those are fine words, to which all would sign up, but we are looking for something more positive.

We should put it on record that the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Don McKinnon, has been acting with great courage in recent days to stop Zimbabwe being readmitted to the Commonwealth at the end of its year-long suspension. Other hon. Members have mentioned attempts by President Mbeki of South Africa and President Obasanjo of Nigeria to have Zimbabwe readmitted; they appear to have been thwarted, at least for the time being.

President Mugabe has clearly failed even to attempt to address the concerns set out by the Commonwealth last year, so from my perspective there can be no question of Zimbabwe being readmitted. I believe that a report from the secretariat, which is expected to be issued this week, will state conclusively that the Zimbabwe Government have maintained state-sponsored human rights abuses throughout the country's suspension. There are encouraging signs that the Commonwealth will not split along north-south ethnic lines when it considers whether Zimbabwe's suspension should be continued. The new Government in Kenya and the Government of Ghana have shown that their support for Mugabe is not blind and may be weakening. Caribbean Government members have been appalled by the treatment of Henry Olonga during the recent cricket world cup because he had the audacity to show his disagreement with Mugabe's regime.

Those are positive signs, but they raise the question what positive action our Government are taking to bring pressure to bear on Mr. Mugabe. The Government are on the record as working through quiet diplomacy to try to resolve the problem, but to what effect? As do many hon. Members, I accept that direct intervention in Zimbabwe by the British Government or their agencies cannot be sensibly considered in today's world, but the Liberal Democrats are calling for no further exemptions to travel bans for international meetings, because such exemptions merely undermine our position and that of the EU. Exemptions should be allowed only for meetings relating to the alleviation of the current crisis. We also believe that sanctions should be made wider and deeper, and neighbouring countries encouraged to take up the travel ban in the southern African region.

Hon. Members have referred to NEPAD—the New Partnership for Africa's Development—and the fact that it has set out some high principles or targets for a modern, new Africa in which African countries take their destiny in their own hands rather than relying on support, intervention and so on from the west; we should all subscribe to that set of principles. However, it is incumbent on NEPAD to tackle the situation in Zimbabwe on its own initiative and to spread best practice in human rights and good governance through peer example and peer pressure. The organisation should be encouraged to do that. It is not enough, as some members of NEPAD have said recently, to rely on the ex-colonial powers to intervene when internal conflicts arise.

There is a case from which everyone, especially those who lead NEPAD, should draw a lesson. The French Government were recently invited to help to mediate to resolve the rebellion in Ivory Coast. We all saw the results: the inflammation of an already serious situation, many thousands of refugees, and the resident French nationals, who were such an important part of a previously thriving economy, fleeing Ivory Coast. It is not enough for leading politicians in Africa to pass the buck back to the ex-colonial powers when they find an inernal conflict that peer pressure cannot resolve. The Liberal Democrats call on the Government to spearhead an initiative to encourage African nations to abide by the commitments under NEPAD and to bring pressure to bear on Zimbabwe.

Finally, I have three questions to ask the Minister, to which I hope he will find the time to reply when he makes his concluding remarks. Given the importance of South Africa in resolving the crisis in Zimbabwe, what action is being taken to limit the extent to which that country's opposition to the continuation of Commonwealth sanctions hinders the search for a solution? What monitoring mechanisms are the Government using to assess the success or otherwise of our food relief programmes? What action is being taken to investigate allegations against British-based companies involved in Mugabe's Government's exploitation of the Congo's natural resources?

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) on securing this important debate and on the way in which he introduced it. His argument was persuasive and compelling, and the evidence that he adduced was harrowing.

The debate is crucial because of what is happening in Zimbabwe and why it is happening now. It is wrong that, once again, a member of the Opposition has initiated the debate. It always appears to be the Opposition who bring the matter before us. The debate should have been on a Government motion and it should have taken place in the main Chamber. We once used an Opposition day to debate the subject on the Floor of the House, but the Government have never provided a similar debate. I say to the Minister in all seriousness that until they do, no one will believe that the Government take the situation in Zimbabwe seriously. I say that more in sorrow than in anger, because for the Government Zimbabwe appears to be a problem to be swept under the carpet.

Two years ago, the Prime Minister claimed that he had a moral duty to act. Instead, as we saw during the cricket world cup fiasco, the Government have too often timidly walked by on the other side. They are still doing so. They connived in the technical arrangement that allowed the French to invite Mugabe to visit Paris in February—not that the travel ban was exactly a great and raging success—and since then they have done nothing to bring genuine pressure to bear on Mugabe. They have never explained what the Prime Minister meant in his conference speech two years ago when he said that he would not tolerate the behaviour of Mugabe's henchmen.

Last July, I went to Zimbabwe and saw the horror, fear and ethnic cleansing of black farm workers thrown out of their homes without their property. Above all, I witnessed their sense of betrayal at the hands of the British. The abuse of power in Zimbabwe is not temporary or moderate. As Amnesty International says:

"there seems to be no limit on how far the government will go to suppress opposition and to maintain its power."

That is the reality. I was not surprised when the very courageous MDC MP, Roy Bennet, who is no stranger to beatings and imprisonment, said:

"we feel forgotten by the rest of the world. Mugabe is getting away with murder, torture and rape, and no-one is taking a blind bit of notice."

That is why I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire for raising the matter today in this debate. I just wish that the Government were doing more.

The horrors in Zimbabwe are getting worse. In the past two weeks there has been a massive increase in state-sponsored violence and intimidation. It is no coincidence that the upsurge has come when the world's media are concentrating on Iraq and during the two by-elections for seats that, thank goodness, the MDC held. The smoke of war—even a distant war—has provided cover behind which Mugabe's brutality has grown and flourished. Yesterday's by-elections in Kuwadzana and Highfield, although fantastic victories for the MDC, were marred by Government vote-rigging, false voter-registration of the sort to which my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) referred, and vicious intimidation. The MDC won the by-elections, but by his brutal attempts to steal those contests, Mugabe gave notice that he is determined to use any means to achieve the five parliamentary wins that he needs constitutionally to entrench his vile dictatorship. No wonder he describes himself as Africa's Hitler. We have heard again today of the arrest of the vice-president of the MDC.

Government-sponsored violence has spiralled since the Iraq war began. In addition to the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of black farm workers and the state-provoked and politically directed mass starvation, there are now false prosecutions, murders, the official use of sexual assault and rape as weapons of intimidation, and increasingly vicious beatings. The violent Government reaction to the stay-away two weeks ago has signalled the end of even more human rights in Zimbabwe. The voices of Zimbabwe's people tell us they are angry, hungry and at the end of their tether. If the international community does not act, I fear that the law-abiding, decent, peace-loving people of Zimbabwe, black and white alike, will take the law into their own hands. All the ingredients for an enormous humanitarian disaster are present. We could not walk away from such a conflagration.

Zimbabwe is at the front line of the food crisis. The World Food Programme estimates that 7.2 million people there are vulnerable; that number has increased by 1 million in the past six months. Food production has dropped to about one third of previous years' levels and 34 per cent. of the adult population are now infected with HIV/AIDS. On top of that is oppression. The main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, and his MDC party have reached the limit of what they can legally do to try to force the Government to change. Since the recent strikes, at least 1,000 people have been arrested, assaulted and hounded from their homes.

What has been our response? Baroness Amos said last week:

"The United Kingdom Government are working with our EU partners on a statement condemning the action which has been taken".—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 March 2003; Vol. 646, c. 948.]

They are working on a statement of condemnation. Mugabe's thugs are not working on a statement; they are working over the opposition. The time for statements is long gone—we need action.

The United States has just signed a new and broad sanctions order. Will we now toughen up EU sanctions? Presumably the Government received some promises in return for their surrender to France over Mugabe's recent visit to Paris. We need harsh, targeted sanctions, which should include the families of regime members and the regime's financial backers, freezing the assets of those people as well as banning travel. As hon. Members have said, we must also use the leverage of NEPAD.

Beyond that, the problem of Zimbabwe needs urgently to be internationalised. Several hon. Members have referred to that. We need United Nations action. Last week, Baroness Amos last week expressed her regret that Zimbabwe does not pose a challenge to international security and peace and hence remains a domestic issue in which the UN cannot intervene. I have to say that I totally disagree. Its geographical position means that the impact of Zimbabwe's escalating crisis will extend well beyond its borders. It will destabilise Zimbabwe's immediate neighbours, particularly South Africa, Botswana, Malawi and Mozambique, by driving thousands of refugees into those countries. A political scientist of the university of Zimbabwe, Masipula Sithole has said:

"Given its pivotal position, Zimbabwe has the potential to destabilise SADC"—

Southern African Development Community—

"both economically and politically on a much wider scale."

If that is not the definition of an international problem, I do not know what is.

I should like to see a United Nations Security Council resolution—for which there are many good precedents under article 2.7 of the UN charter—condemning what is happening in Zimbabwe and calling for international monitoring of humanitarian aid and its distribution. That would be a start. If such a resolution were firm enough, as others have been in the past, it could also deal with refugees and ethnic cleansing. Will the Government table such a resolution before the Security Council?

The SADC, especially South Africa, the region's economic powerhouse, should take more resolute action. Morgan Tsvangirai stated last week that the MDC is willing to enter talks on how to solve Zimbabwe's political and economic crisis, but the signs are not hopeful. Following last week's strike, President Mugabe called the MDC a terrorist organisation and vowed that it would be crushed. Nevertheless, I believe that this is a time for renewed effort. Even President Mbeki of South Africa—the country that holds the key to pressurising Mugabe and Zimbabwe—has at last condemned the violent crackdown in Zimbabwe. That is an opening on which we should work.

In his conference speech last year, our Prime Minister talked about

"a coalition to give Africa hope."

Where is that coalition for Zimbabwe? We must start building it now. The Government must act. To stand idly by and watch genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass rape, starvation and torture is no longer an option, if it ever was. We need to get a resolution from the United Nations, to go to the SADC and strike a new alliance, and to return to the EU and toughen the sanctions. Above all we need to give hope back to the people of Zimbabwe.

We acted in Kosovo because of unacceptable floutings of human rights—ethnic cleansing, rape camps, torture chambers and hideous levels of violence. What, in those terms, is different in Zimbabwe? All the same elements are there. The Foreign Secretary might be paralysed by the post-colonial guilt to which he referred in an interview in the New Statesman before Christmas, but that does not mean that the rest of us need be. The oppressed and persecuted people of Zimbabwe, most of them black, see nothing post-colonial in asking us to intervene; rather, they see it as a moral obligation on us to do so and cannot understand why the British Government do not. The Government can act, and even at this desperately late hour, they must act. The time for walking by on the other side is over.

This has been a good and powerful debate. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), the shadow Foreign Secretary, for compressing his remarks to allow me a full 15 minutes in which to reply to the important points raised. I invite hon. Members to write to me if I fail to do so. There may be technical issues on which a full written response is more appropriate.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) on obtaining the debate and on a remarkably powerful speech. He brings to these debates a great knowledge of international development issues and, if I may say so, a moral commitment. I hope that his speech will be widely read in Zimbabwe.

In a recent edition of The New York Review of Books, I read a remarkable essay by Doris Lessing. This was the opening:

"'You have the jewel of Africa in your hands,' said President Samora Machel of Mozambique and President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania to Robert Mugabe, at the moment of independence, in 1980. 'Now look after it' … Twenty-three years later, the 'jewel' is ruined, dishonoured, disgraced … One man is associated with the calamity, Robert Mugabe. For a while I wondered if the word 'tragedy' could be applied here, greatness brought low, but Mugabe, despite his early reputation, was never great; he was always a frightened little man. There is a tragedy, all right, but it is Zimbabwe's. Mugabe is now widely execrated, and rightly, but blame for him began late. Nothing is more astonishing than the silence about him for so many years."

Despite the eloquence of our speeches—we have heard eloquent speeches today—it is the power of a great writer, a woman who has contributed so much to English letters, that I commend to hon. Members if they wish to understand the Zimbabwe situation. She is right to say that we are late in condemning Mugabe.

The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) referred to his antecedents, in that a great-great uncle led the way for the colonialisation of what became known as Rhodesia. I certainly would have been much happier as a student in the 1960s and a young man in the 1970s had there been some undouble standards on the part of the Conservative party in that period in calling for the freedom of Zimbabwe.

The hon. Gentleman said that it was difficult for the UK alone to solve the problem, because of what he described as our colonial past. He is right. It is not appropriate for the shadow Foreign Secretary simply to wish all that away, because the plain fact is, as Doris Lessing said, that we ignored Mugabe's crimes. We ignored them in the 1980s when he unleashed the notorious 5 Brigade on Matabeleland. At the time, a Conservative Minister defended those actions. We ignored Mugabe as recently as 1994, when the right hon. Member for Devizes was a member of the previous Administration, on the recommendation of which Mugabe was given a knighthood. I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman now has discovered that Mugabe, dictatorship and doing wicked things to people are bad. I welcome the Conservative conversion to the position that the Government have always upheld.

We associate ourselves with the speech that Morgan Tsvangirai made yesterday, in which he said:

"Mugabe can and will indeed torture us, maim us, brutalize us and even kill us, but he can never destroy our resolve, our desire and our demand for change in our lives … As we embark on this final peaceful thrust towards our freedom, we ask the Southern African region, the African continent and the international community to be the arbiters of who will cast the first stone and who are the real perpetrators of violence and crimes against humanity."

The Minister associates himself with Morgan Tsvangirai's remarks from yesterday. What does he intend to do as a result of that association?

I was coming to that. Yesterday, my noble friend Baroness Amos, the Minister with responsibility for African affairs, said in South Africa to a South African audience:

"One unfortunate consequence of the Zimbabwe situation … is that it makes it more difficult to promote NEPAD. I spend a great deal of time tackling business about Africa. Foreign investors fear that NEPAD won't work. They question whether an African Peer Review Mechanism can really work if African pressure is so low key and so little heeded, as appears to be the case with Zimbabwe."

She said that

"the issue of Zimbabwe bedevils developed country dialogue with Africa and the Commonwealth, SADC and the European Union. The danger is that EU and G8 leaders could lose enthusiasm for the collective approach which is at the heart of NEPAD."

That speech has been widely reported in today's South African press.

The Government are trying to take the message about what needs to be done in Zimbabwe to its neighbours, and there has been some movement. Two weeks ago, South Africa's Foreign Minister, Dr. Dlamini-Zuma, said that her Government would never condemn Zimbabwe while ZANU-PF is in power. However, last week, on 26 March, President Mbeki said that his Government had

"said to the Zimbabwean government that we would not agree with actions that deny the right of Zimbabweans to protest peacefully, democratically and so on."

That is at least the first statement from the President of South Africa following his discussions with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that moves the South African position a little further forward.

The Government work consistently with the international community, the international financial institutions and the European Union to introduce sanctions that can be imposed on Zimbabwe. I am pleased that the United States has now implemented sanctions such as asset freezing that the European Union initiated. Reference has been made to whether we should impose trade sanctions on Zimbabwe. British Airways continues to fly to Harare, and I have heard no call from Mr. Tsvangirai, the trade unions or the communities that are suffering in Zimbabwe for an increase of that suffering by, for example, cutting off air links to the UK or imposing trade sanctions. The Department of Trade and Industry is not involved in promoting directly business with Zimbabwe.

What position will the Government take with regard to NEPAD at the G8 summit in June? Will Baroness Amos's speech in South Africa then be translated into action?

Indeed. We are urging the neighbouring countries of Zimbabwe to recognise the need for an African approach. It would not be helpful simply to cut Africa off and say that there will be no more aid or help through NEPAD. We want broad investment in Africa. There are some good examples of that in Tanzania, and the new Government in Kenya are moving in the right direction. I do not agree with my hon. Friend, passionate though her point was, that the answer is to shut down NEPAD or to shut down links and trade and investment with the whole of Africa. That would punish the whole of Africa for Mugabe's crimes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt)—

This is an important point. The American sanctions to which the Minister referred are broader than ours and include those who bankroll Mugabe's regime. Will the Minister give an undertaking that the British Government will seek to extend EU sanctions in the same way to cover those who pay for Mugabe's regime?

I shall write to the right hon. Gentleman. There is an asset freeze, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey made a powerful speech about the problem of worldwide money laundering. He referred to the need for British banks to have regard to some of the money that is being transmitted through their branches here and in other countries. He asked about the role of the Financial Services Authority and he referred to Malaysia. He is right to draw attention to the fact that Mr. Mugabe has visited that country and that people on one of the jets on which he was travelling were interested to see many cartons going back to State House in Harare containing products that had been bought in Malaysia. That suggests that Mr. Mugabe has personal access to funds there.

I shall have to write to my hon. Friend with more detail on the question of money secrecy, which is becoming a major issue. In a different context, that is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is trying to promote the exchange of information on European taxation. That is the right way to go. Many Members, principally Opposition Members, have strong contacts in the City and hold directorships there. It would be helpful if they could bring their influence to bear to expose any of the hidden money with which we must deal.

I have an open mind on the issue of cricket. My view is that it would be no bad thing for the Zimbabwe cricket team to come here and face demonstrations and placards and posters, particularly from the many Zimbabwean asylum seekers who, I hope, will receive a warm welcome in this country. They should not be condemned just because they are asylum seekers. When those asylum seekers attend the cricket matches with their posters and placards, television images and photographs of them will be beamed back to Zimbabwe. We all enjoyed the account of my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey of how the ECB had discussed and negotiated matters.

The question of whether the English cricket team should go to Zimbabwe in 18 months' time must be discussed. However, we must express hope that perhaps Zimbabwe will have a new Government by then.

Will the Minister say something about the UN Security Council before he sits down?

As we speak, the Government are seeking, with friends and partners, to table a resolution on Zimbabwe at the UN Commission on Human Rights. We tried last year, and our attempt was blocked because the whole of Africa refused to vote with us. The fact is that if one wants to get anything through the UN one must take a majority of countries with one. The problem is that, between independence in 1980 and the development of the Zimbabwe crisis about 18 or 19 years later, there was no public diplomacy by the Government of this country—on Matabeleland or on the growing use of torture and terrorist tactics by ZANU—PF to alert the world to the crisis and tragedy of Zimbabwe. I hope that public opinion is slowly changing.

Reference was made to Mr. Mugabe's visit to Paris, which we deplored. However, I was glad to see that French newspapers, for the first time to my knowledge, carried accounts by farmers who had been expelled from their lands of what the Mugabe regime had done. French newspapers carried editorials condemning the invitation that the French Government had offered. Bit by bit, through the EU, the Commonwealth—I commend the position taken by Mr. McKinnon—the United States and the wider international community, we are seeking to internationalise the dispute. We can take this forward only through concrete action by the Government.

I welcome the debate and I welcome the points made by all hon. Members. However, I wish that some of them would apologise for the complacent appeasement that they offered to Mr. Mugabe between 1980 and 1997. The Government are firmly committed to the concept of democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe.

I am pleased to have secured this debate. I do not pretend that it is of such burning importance in terms of human suffering as the very good debate that we have just had on Zimbabwe, but it is an important subject none the less. I am grateful to the Minister for School Standards for his presence. I realise that the issue is not his direct responsibility. I understand that the Minister responsible for adult education is engaged elsewhere, but I am sure that the Minister for School Standards will be a more than adequate replacement. I am a keen admirer of his intellectual attainments.

I hope that if the Minister follows my argument he will go some way down the road to understanding a couple of general criticisms that people like me make of the Government. In particular, we are concerned about the astonishing rate at which council tax is rising this spring and the general problems caused by the over-prescriptive approach that the Government sometimes take to education. I do not want to harangue the Minister, who has been obliging in coming here today. I simply urge him to listen with good will to what I have to say about the suffering and the painful bureaucratic overload on those who are engaged in providing adult education, and to consider whether he can think of some concrete answers and offer some hope for people in south Oxfordshire.

I am sure that, even if he is not responsible for adult education, the Minister will be familiar with the keep-fit-for-fun W161 course that was run by Oxfordshire county council and used to take place in Wallingford in the neighbouring constituency to mine. Many people used to enjoy that course: 50 women used to do keep fit for fun under the auspices of a very gifted physical education teacher called Andrea. Among other things they would do the grapevine, which, as I am sure the Minister will know, is a complicated physical exercise involving putting one's feet sideways and then together, then sideways and then together again, and then standing on one's toes. It is exhausting and good for these women who wrote to tell me how much they enjoyed it. The 50 women ranged in ages from about 40 to over 80.

To my dismay, I discovered that the teacher of keep fit for fun, Andrea, had decided that she could no longer continue with the class. The game was not worth the candle. Even the attractions of the grapevine palled because she was inundated with Government-inspired paperwork. That is the core of my submission to the Minister. Andrea was asked every year to fill in no fewer than 300 forms about her 50 pupils. The Minister is a skilled mathematician and so he would be able to work out that she was legally obliged to fill in six forms per pupil per year. She had to measure the women's attainments in co-ordination, stamina and general fitness in order to provide the county council with evidence of their success. She decided that she did not come into PE teaching for that. She told me that she was giving it up because of "all the new paperwork." She said that she was not paid for it, and she did not see why she should do it. To use a colloquialism, she jacked it in; she could not be bothered to do it any more, and instead went private. She decided to go outside the ambit of adult education; she potentially removed that course from some of my constituents by taking her course out of the sphere of normal adult education. That is sad, as I am sure the Minister will agree.

I shall quote the husband of one the students of Andrea, the keep-fit instructress, who wrote to me about the closure of the course in moving words. He said:

"Does it matter that 50 women in Oxfordshire may have had taken from them the opportunity to lift their health and spirits once a week by the need of some Council bureaucrat to worship at the management shrine of 'accountability'? Well, it does to the women involved. The Council is paid to help them, not hinder them … But I think it also illustrates a cancer that is infiltrating today's society: the compulsion of many politicians to control, measure and manage everything, whatever the cost, and for bureaucrats to impose their faddish business models and processes on everything that moves. Trapped in their hermetic world of administration it never seems to occur to them to ask 'Isn't this a bit daft?' when issuing a new edict. Whatever happened to common sense?"

Those are the words of a husband of one of the keep-fit-for-fun enthusiasts. One can understand the real irritation, embarrassment and annoyance of husbands who hoped that their wives would enjoy doing keep-fit-for-fun classes only to find that that pleasurable activity was being taken from them.

I was surprised enough to discover the travails of keep-fit Andrea, but I then received a letter from another constituent, a Mr. Edward Horsup of Woodcote, who is a bridge teacher in adult education. I hope, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you and the Minister will not mind my reading what he said about the burdens being inflicted on him. He wrote:

"In common with other Adult Ed teachers, I have to make regular checks to see that I'm on the right tracks; and to report on each student individually. This will prove a time-consuming business, as everything will have to be processed. As one from the Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down school I shall soldier on, hoping for better things … Other teachers, maybe less resolute, or perhaps without the time available inside or outside their course, will leave the profession. People who attend classes—students, although some are very elderly—are unlikely to enthuse about constantly filling in forms. They may think their time is being badly wasted, and drop out. Managers who run Adult Ed courses are having to cope with constant protests, and have to organise all this extra bureaucracy to boot. I know of at least two managers who will soon leave their jobs because of extra pressures."

Mr. Horsup went on to point out something to which many people in the health service will attest, which is the great benefit of adult education to society—and not only of keep fit for fun, bridge and so on. It keeps people active, and keeps their minds and bodies alert. It is of general benefit to society. Without a major interest such as playing bridge, people just sit back in boredom, thinking of excuses to visit the doctor. Mr. Horsup continued:

"Some people have been coming to my classes for years and years. Yet this quango aims to have no one attending a class for more than three years; they should then do something else."

And so he goes on. It would be good if the Minister could think of some way of addressing those concerns.

I received a letter from yet another husband, this time of a lady who has for a long time run a watercolour class in Watlington. I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I labour the point, but he will be startled by the identical way in which these people complain. They are serious, sensible and sober people, and I am sure that he will accept that they have a point. The letter says:

"This tide of regulation which started with tutor-training sessions to risk assessments to lesson plans and monitoring of students and even continues with questioning students is driven by an army of coordinators, administrators and inspectors all backed up with the threat of financial penalty."

There is no subsidy. The letter continues:

"The end seems to be more administration and less classes, typical results for government interference."

Those are the words of a husband whose wife has been giving watercolour classes for many years in south Oxfordshire.

I am sure that the Minister will make the case that public subsidy for adult education classes should be accompanied by some sort of regulation. There should be a broad oversight of what goes on, and I believe that that would be common ground for us all. However, I wonder whether such regulation needs to go quite as far as sending someone who gives classes in watercolours or keep fit a form of stupendous length, which covers the induction checklist, scheme of work, individual learning plan, lesson plan, progress report, initial evaluation form, end-of-course evaluation form, course report, additional learning support form, learner handbook, samples of student work, course description and student destination. That is too much to ask people in adult education to complete. A sledgehammer is being taken to crack a nut. I wonder whether, in the time that we have available to us today and in a collegial spirit of cooperation, we can think of a way of alleviating the problem.

I believe that there should be some element of a market solution to the problem. If a course is had or deficient, if people are bored by it, or if it is plainly not satisfactory, and would not, in the view of the Government or the Learning and Skills Council, rightly command public subsidy, it seems probable that people would drift away from it. The Minister might think creatively about ways of exploiting that natural phenomenon.

Could the Minister—I appreciate that it is not his subject—clarify whether the intention behind all the bureaucracy and regulation is to extinguish some of the courses, on the ground that the Department of Education and Skills and the Learning and Skills Council do not in their hearts believe that they are fit subjects for "education", and therefore are not deserving of public subsidy?

Is the intention to regulate the courses out of existence by inundating their teachers and tutors with such a quantity of paperwork? If that is the intention, it is the wrong way of approaching it. It would be more honest if the Department were to say that watercolours, keep fit, bridge and the many thousands of other classes that people enjoy, and that bring people together throughout the country, do not deserve public subsidy and that it will chop that subsidy. It would be better to be honest and upfront about it than to bully people out of doing a job that they enjoy and to drive people away from adult education courses. I am not sure that that is the intention, and I see that the Minister shakes his head, but he should realise that that is what is happening, and that that is the effect of the regulations that have been produced.

I hope that the Minister will recognise that I have made a case for the existence of a genuine problem, which it is not beyond his considerable powers of imagination to address. I am sure that his fertile intellect will come up with a solution over the next 16 minutes.

I do not recommend the solution that the Department famously came up with before, which was to send teachers already inundated with paperwork a wonderful 150-page document called something like "How to deal with paperwork, and how to solve your problems with bureaucracy, part 1—part 2 follows shortly." I do not think that that will be the solution, and I am sure that the Minister will not want to go down that route.

As I promised at the outset, I want to draw attention to two of the wider ramifications of the phenomenon that I have—I hope hon. Members will agree—convincingly described. I spoke earlier of the forms that Andrea had to fill in when assessing the progress of women who are often aged 80 or over in achieving fitness. She said that the forms were rather depressing. The Minister is beaming, but it is sometimes difficult to put a positive gloss on attempts to improve the fitness of women aged 80 or over, or to say that their general stamina and co-ordination are improving, even with the ministrations of Andrea in Wallingford. She said that she found it taxing and dispiriting to fill in forms intended to record the progress of her charges, when some of them had, quite frankly, made no progress. In a word, the process was completely and utterly pointless, and it was driving her bonkers.

Of course, that is not the end of it. Andrea screwed her courage to the sticking place and made an effort to fill in all the forms. However, there will be a consequence if she or her successor keeps on meeting prescriptions imposed by the Learning and Skills Council or the Government. The Minister knows exactly what I am about to say: someone at the LSC or at Oxfordshire county council will have to process those nonsensical forms, full of meaningless statistics about the non-improvement in the fitness of 80-year-olds who do the grapevine. Someone will have to tabulate those forms, and that person will be a council official of one sort or another. They will have their salary and pension requirements, and there will be increased national insurance payments. That is why we are seeing such huge rises in our council taxes this spring.

The regulation that I have described therefore generates higher taxation, and I urge the Minister carefully to reconsider what can be done to alleviate the problem. As I am sure he knows, Oxfordshire's council tax will rise by 14 or 15 per cent. this year, and £2.7 million will be needed to meet the increase in national insurance contributions. Council tax payers are therefore paying for the increased contributions of council officials. That is a perfect example of excessive paperwork requiring an ontological expansion in the number of council officials, and placing needless extra burdens on council tax payers. I hope that the Minister agrees that I have made a case for linking regulation with taxation. Those are the fiscal consequences of this sort of madness.

I shall make a general point about—I say this tentatively—deficiencies in the Government's general attitude to education. The total assets of Yale and Harvard—the Minister probably went to one of them, or to the John F. Kennedy School of Government, although he is shaking his head—are about £12 billion. The total assets of the top 16 British universities in the Russell group, however, are far less than £1 billion in toto. One must therefore wonder whether the Government's highly prescriptive regulatory approach to education is delivering the results that we want.

I do not want to draw in too many tangential subjects, but perhaps I can tempt the Minister to say whether he agrees with his colleague, the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Higher Education, that there should be quotas for access to Oxbridge from the maintained sector and whether he agrees with the principle of an access regulator, about which the Government now seem to be in doubt. I draw in those tangential subjects because they are directly relevant to the Government's vice of over-prescription in higher education. We shall not make universities better by regulating them in the way that the Government favour, or improve them by bullying them as the Government continue to do. Nor shall we improve adult education if we continue to bully people like keep-fit Andrea and, effectively, drive them out of the profession.

I am sure that the Minister will forgive me for having gone on for so long; I expect that he, too, has many views on the matter, which he will want to expand at length. If, together, we can come up with a positive way to alleviate the excessive burdens on people delivering adult education in Oxfordshire, many who doubt the good sense of the Government will begin to think that their heart is in the right place.

First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) on his tour de force, and on his continuing concern for the well-being of his constituents, particularly those with an adult education interest. Keen students of the hon. Gentleman will know that he has devoted some attention to the subject in his outpourings in different parts of the national press. Andrea was Amelia in November, when we first caught sight of the horror that is unfolding in Oxfordshire. She was still teaching the grapevine as part of a Nietzschean struggle to lose weight. I am sorry that we did not get a chance to debate Nietzsche today. I also apologise for the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis), my ministerial colleague, who has a personal engagement that he cannot break.

I shall address the hon. Gentleman's points, starting from his comment that adult education is good for individuals and for the community, and that it is for individuals to choose what sort of adult education they want. It is their choice whether they learn the grapevine or Greek, and it is the Government's responsibility to support that; it is part of being a healthy community. The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that funding for adult education is increasing significantly—I shall go through the figures for Oxfordshire in a moment. By any measure, the Government's commitment to adult education in many forms is clear. I hope that we shall not fall out about that.

Secondly, the hon. Gentleman's remarks concerned the between accountability—the need for balance proper spending of public money—and a light-touch system that does not bog down either students or teachers in mindless bureaucracy, least of all bureaucracy that feeds off itself and creates a vicious spiral of officialdom that has to scrutinise it. He was good enough to recognise the need for an accountability mechanism. The first port of call in any adult education institution is the principal; it is his or her job to ensure that the teachers are of a good standard. Most people recognise that the Government's proposals will lead adult education institutions to have a clearer focus on their courses, and their principals to have a clearer set of responsibilities to ensure high standards.

I am not familiar with the area, but I understand that the adult learning inspectorate is designed to maintain quality. The experience of Ofsted in the school sector is that there has been a positive effect over the past 10 years. Ofsted has brought qualitative judgments to bear on the performance of individual schools, helping to raise their quality. We hope that something similar will occur in relation to adult education.

The situation in Oxfordshire bears some scrutiny. My statistics suggest that in Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, the single learning and skills council for those three areas has a budget of about £155 million—a significant sum of public money—about two thirds of which is spent on young people under 18. None the less, about £44 million, a substantial amount of provision, is spent on adult education. I understand that the money is spent on work-based learning contracts, including 17 further education contracts, nine of which are with FE colleges and others of which are with adult community groups and higher education establishments. The dividing lines between those sectors are less stark than they used to be, which is a good thing. In addition, money goes to 36 sixth forms and 16 projects for young people.

Of course, Oxfordshire local education authority also funds courses. I understand that it receives about £1.94 million for adult and community learning, supporting 19,000 learners in Oxfordshire. I am unsure whether any of those courses are in the three classes described by the hon. Gentleman, but the adult education commitment of the LEA is delivered through 28 community education centres. All our information suggests that work of high quality is being carried out and that courses of some distinction are being run.

I was shocked by the tale of woe set out by the hon. Gentleman. It is in no one's interests if teachers and tutors are being driven out of the system, let alone being driven mad. It is in no one's interests if choice is thereby being reduced and provision is of a lower quality. I take seriously his allegation that, motivated by the best of interests—namely, higher quality—the Government are achieving the worst of ends. Although I can imagine some possible solutions, it would not be appropriate for me to ski so far off-piste as to mention them.

Given that the Minister has been so kind as to agree with my central point and has offered us the tantalising prospect of skiing off-piste, and given that we are in the less formal confines of Westminster Hall and that the issue is not really party political, I should be grateful if he could adumbrate the ideas that are floating through his capacious mind about how the problem could be solved.

I am glad to have the opportunity to continue my train of thought. The Learning and Skills Council is a new organisation, which brings together the funds for adult education in a way that has not been done before, and should reduce, rather than increase, bureaucracy. I want to make a few points about process before I come to the points of substance.

I shall get in touch with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, South as well as with the LSC, to bring to their attention the specific issues raised and to ask them for an explanation. We should try to ascertain whether the problem lies with the local education authority or with the LSC, and determine whether every learning and skills council is adopting a similar policy or whether the Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire LSC is adopting a particularly rigorous regime. We need to get to the bottom of this and to ascertain whether there are national edicts. I would be interested in seeing the results of such an inquiry.

One danger in government is of its different parts, even in the same Department, collecting the same information. The hon. Gentleman referred a couple of times to pieces of information that were required. Some of that information is very basic, such as names, numbers or sizes of classes. We are trying to cut out that sort of duplication in relation to schools. I hope that we can investigate whether such duplication is occurring in adult education. It drives people mad to have to give the same piece of information twice, three times or more.

I should also like to find out whether the LEA and LSC are working in complete harmony, because the LSC needs to operate in a way that dovetails with the work of the LEA. We should try to investigate that third area to see whether it is a cause of unnecessary bureaucracy. I hope that I have convinced the hon. Gentleman that I take his points seriously. I am grateful to have had a brief opportunity to hear him make his points personally, rather than having to read them.

11.30 am

Sitting suspended until Two o'clock.

I am pleased to have been chosen to conduct this Adjournment debate. There are few debates in the House about Parliament and Executive agencies. My examination of the record suggests that this is the first such debate since the Labour Government came to power. I freely concede that that might be because several of my hon. Friends think that this is a tedious subject, but it is important none the less. Almost 60 per cent. of civil servants now work for Executive agencies, which are responsible for yearly expenditure amounting to £18 billion. Executive agencies therefore represent an enormously important area of government business, yet one that, paradoxically, barely rates a mention in the House.

It is interesting that two reports looking into agencies were recently published. The Cabinet Office produced a report last June entitled, "Better government services: Executive agencies in the 21st century", which provided several recommendations; and the National Audit Office issued a report last week entitled, "The Role of Executive Agencies". Among other things, those reports provide a welcome spotlight on the subject and, in the case of the Cabinet Office report, welcome recommendations. However, nowhere in either report is the word "Parliament" mentioned. Actually, that is not strictly true: there is a line, which is not followed up, on page 18 of the Cabinet Office report. Under a list of

"Other complaints that have been highlighted",

one bullet point lists

"ministerial and parliamentary disquiet about the accountability regime".

I will consider agencies, perhaps in the light of that bullet point, and also in the context of a helpful definition provided some time ago by Professor John Stewart, who warned us about universal use of the word "accountability" in public policy. He made the distinction between "giving an account" and "holding to account". Giving an account is the process of providing material, written or verbal, possibly under examination, for what one has done, whereas holding to account is what follows from giving an account—that is, what can be done about the account that has been given. There is no doubt that agencies give full accounts of themselves. Agencies' annual reports, key targets and accounts are published each year. The Cabinet Office report reflects that, stating that

"Because of its transparent structure, problems in an agency are more exposed than in parts of a conventional department."

But can agencies be held to account? If so, in what way? Does it matter?

The original purpose of setting up Executive agencies was to separate steerers from rowers—that is, to ensure that policy civil servants are retained in the core civil service structure and those who carry out the policy but do not make it or help to make it are in separate organisations, with their own chief executives freed to run things and responsible for the pay and rations of their agencies. When the next steps agencies were set up in the late 1980s, it was theorised that that would lead to substantially greater savings, greater operating freedoms, better delivery of policy, and so on, because functions would not be confused.

It was suggested at that time that the creation of Executive agencies would make it easier to measure performance and judge effectiveness. It was also suggested that it would be possible to see which of the agencies might perform better in the private sector, so each was required to review its status, with a view to possible privatisation, every five years—the so-called quinquennial review.

The rowers were to be accountable to the steerers through contract arrangements. There was to be a framework document that set out the function of the agency and its remit; it would contain a set of key performance indicators to measure progress on the tasks set out in the document. The agencies would report directly to Ministers, not to policy civil servants—a logical step since they would not be making policy but carrying out policy determined by Ministers who would want to know whether they had done their work efficiently.

As a result of that structure, one of the main architects of the next steps programme, Sir Robin Ibbs, said in 1998:

"the presumption must be, that, provided that management is operating within the strategic direction set by ministers, it must be left as free as possible to manage within that framework."

How have agencies done? In many ways they have been a great success, and the Cabinet Office report underlines that. Agency chief executives report that the arrangements within which they work are good and much better than those that prevailed before the late 1980s. Objectively, however, it is difficult to tell. The only control would have been to leave half the civil service as it was and to compare its performance against the half that was in agencies. In practice, however, we have a ubiquitous regime: it just is, and that is how things are. We look at success in the model; we do not judge the model itself.

It is difficult to judge because no yardstick was ever established to do so. Remarkably, the whole edifice came into existence without a shred of legislation. Sir Peter Kemp, another one of the architects of the Executive agency programme, recently admitted:

"we were making it up as we went along."

There is nothing to which Parliament can refer. Nevertheless, there was and there remains a fundamental change—MPs cannot ask questions of a Minister on behalf of an agency. It is not a Minister's place to answer. Sixty per cent. of the civil service has slipped from being held to account by Executive action in the first place and not by parliamentary legislation. It is very difficult to find out how the decisions to fund agencies are made, since they are on an arm's-length contract with the Department in which they sit. Professor Colin Talbot records that:

"allocation of resources to agencies is completely mysterious, even to many agency managers. Public expenditure decisions do not reflect or report on how these affect agencies."

That is the gloomy view; the reality is less stark. Agencies do sit in Departments and they do account to Ministers, a good Minister will pay some attention to his or her agency, and the Minister is accountable to Parliament for his or her actions. Some kind of indirect accountability is thereby restored.

How do Ministers judge and how do we judge? They might judge by looking at the key performance indicators. However, there are several remarkable aspects of key performance indicators as they relate to Executive agencies. First, the nature of the key performance indicators changes year by year, so it is difficult to see what agencies are doing on a longitudinal basis. Professor Andrew Massey analysed 10 agencies and looked at their key performance indicators between 1990 and 1995. Between those years, 54 of the original 79 key performance indicators disappeared and were replaced by 45 new ones. Even worse, Professor Massey noted at the time that targets were a similarly unreliable friend when examining performance. Between 1995 and 1996, he looked at comparative targets for those 10 agencies: remarkably, no fewer than 47 were lower than those for the year before. Last summer's Cabinet Office report highlights the persistence of that practice, which has worsened. Between 1998–99 and 1999–2000, more than 50 per cent. of targets, where they can be compared, were lower than the targets of previous years.

How does that happen? Quite simply, it is because agencies set their own targets and key performance indicators and present them to Ministers. It is in effect a civil service version of the local government client-contractor relationship without the client side. In local government, there is a substantial client side, which monitors and appraises what contractors do. The purpose is to ensure identical monitoring of in-house and private contractors. In central Government, however, there is no client side. Departments have a Frazer figure—the name arose as a result of a report by the aforesaid Frazer—who is supposed to study how agencies work in the context of the Department and the policy civil service in which they reside. However, the Cabinet Office report shows that the procedure is implemented only in some cases.

Of course, Ministers could take more than a cursory interest in the agencies for which their Departments are responsible, but the reality is that most do not. That is not because of any failings on their part, but because they simply do not have the time. By virtue of their activities, most agencies fall below the policy radar screen. Select Committees could, and occasionally do, mount inquiries, but they, too, have limited time. The Ministry of Defence has 36 agencies; it would take the Select Committee on Defence most of its time to consider just some of them. Looking back over Select Committee reports from the past few years, we find that virtually no inquiries have been held.

Does that matter? It could be said that we have traded accountability for efficiency and that it has perhaps been worth making such a Faustian pact. However, I think that it does matter, because, as I have demonstrated, it is difficult to gauge how good the efficiency side of the bargain is. That concern comes over and above the perhaps rather abstract notion of Parliament's sovereignty and the need for public service to be accountable to Parliament. However, there is a further concern, which relates to the originally clear distinction between steerers and rowers. The Cabinet Office report freely concedes that several agencies undertake substantial policy work. That was always an acknowledged element of Benefits Agency activities, but according to the report it is now substantially more widespread. That may be a problem for Ministers.

Of course, one can sidestep the issue, as the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) did when he was Home Secretary in the last Conservative Government. When the Prison Service apparently blew up in his face, he said that the steering related to the policy decision that prisoners should not escape and suggested that the fact that they did escape reflected a failure of the rowing, not of the steering. The public did not buy that. In any event, as Sir Peter Kemp said in 1988,

"all policy work has an element of execution and all executive work has an element of policy".

He said that at precisely the moment that he was setting up a structure that assumed a rigid distinction between policy and execution. Now, contrary to the original intentions—although Sir Peter might have anticipated this—agencies take policy decisions, but the machinery of accountability remains such as to suggest that they do not.

That arrangement is a potential problem not only for Parliament but for Ministers. This is not simply an academic issue, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister is well aware of the difficulties that the Scottish Qualifications Authority caused the Scottish Executive's Ministry for Education and Young People a little while ago. I accept that the authority is a non-departmental public body, but the relationship between the two and the way in which the issue was reported to the Scottish Parliament are essentially the same.

If we are to have steerers and rowers, it is important that the steerers steer the ship and that the rowers do not—either because of the force that they place on the oars, or because some row and some do not—send the ship in an entirely unintended direction. The Cabinet Office report recommends that the relationship between agencies and Ministers should involve "no surprises". That is a laudable aim, but the real surprise would be if there were no surprises under the present contract arrangements for agencies.

The landscape of agencies is complex, and my brief contribution is inevitably something of a caricature. There are other issues that open other fronts—for example, the way in which the Government decide to create agencies in the first place. There is no legislation to guide us, so there are currently no constraints. An agency might be created, such as Jobcentre Plus, or a new body might be a non-departmental public body. The Government have on occasions pioneered such new creatures as the office of the e-envoy. The recent White Paper on nuclear waste proposed that a non-departmental public body be set up to deal with the nuclear legacy. Why not an agency? We shall never know, nor shall we have the means to find out. Sometimes, just to confuse us, non-departmental public bodies that call themselves agencies are set up, such as the Environment Agency and the Food Standards Agency.

I have some structural concerns about the relationship of agencies to Parliament and Ministers. Agencies have been developing through what has been described as emerging policy. In other words, we have at each stage justified the existence of those agencies and examined them on policy lines that change and emerge rather than remain true to the original intentions. If one examines the record, one sees that most of the original intentions for agencies have not been met, yet the structure to implement those intentions sails on as if they had been.

The Cabinet Office report made some valuable recommendations and good proposals on the future of agencies, which I thoroughly endorse, such as the end of quinquennial reviews. The report stated that

"some agencies have become disconnected from their departments."

The fact that all the recommendations of that report have been or are being implemented without any brush with Parliament other than an answer to a written question illustrates my point.

However, the report does not address the issues that I have raised. There is neither the mechanism in Parliament to deal with those issues easily, nor any interest or urgency in finding such a mechanism. For what it is worth, my modest proposal is to establish parliamentary Frazer figures for agencies—small groups of Members, each group responsible for reviewing and reporting on a number of agencies, which might submit their thoughts to each departmental Select Committee. I think that that would work quite well, although I also think, for the reasons that I have outlined, that it probably will not happen.

The process by which Executive agencies were created is similar to that which had been used in private industry for some time prior to its adoption in the civil service. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) said, although each agency is subject to a quinquennial review, apart from the two documents to which he referred—the Cabinet Office report and the recent NAO report—there has been no comprehensive assessment of the success of the experiment. I therefore congratulate him on raising the issue today.

The management vogue of the late 1980s and the early 1990s was to separate strategy from tactics, and management from operation. However, the private sector has moved on since those days and developed different theories of working practices, but the civil service has not yet caught up. That is something to think about when we consider modernising government. In an organisation such as the civil service, how does one reflect changing approaches to management structures? How does one deal with issues such as hierarchy and the separation of structure in some of the Executive agencies, for example, in a fast-changing environment? I hope that the Minister will consider those structural issues today and subsequently.

I am also concerned about the way in which innovation has occurred in Executive agencies. There has been quite a bit of innovation in the civil service, but some of the agencies have been doing their own thing. For example, the Medicines Control Agency put its computer system out to tender two months before it was due to be merged with another agency. How do such decisions fit into an overall corporate strategy? My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test is right to raise such matters.

My hon. Friend talked about the key issue of targets. Who sets targets, and who owns them? We need to engage in that important debate. Targets are an important means of assessing whether public services are being improved, but they are not the whole story. We sometimes risk concentrating on the targets without looking at the overall performance of an organisation. For example, among the evidence considered by the Select Committee on Public Administration was the fact that Oldham borough council's high score in every one of its performance indicators did not prevent riots from taking place there; the conclusion of the report was that it should have done better in its performance indicators. We have not got that right. Because Executive agencies are at arm's length, it is important when setting targets for them to understand the difference between target setting and performance management.

We should also consider how Executive agencies operate together when there are cross-cutting targets. We have made substantial improvements in the civil service, but we have done less well at Executive level. My hon. Friend mentioned accountability, one of the key elements of which is transparency of decision making. People should be able to see that their comments have been taken on board by the organisation and have affected its decisions, whether or not they agree with them. I hesitate to talk about the Benefits Agency, because it is too easy a target and it has struggled hard to address the issue, but it still needs to improve.

We have discussed the separation of policy and operations. It was right to do that at the time the next steps agencies were proposed, but we have now moved to a point at which implementation is considered to be the key test, so we have to measure outcomes. It is not always advantageous to separate policy and operations, because if key policy decisions are not grounded in the reality of the daily work, the policy can be bad. Conversely, if one is carrying out daily operations with no understanding of the political or operational policy, one simply carries on with existing practices and does not reflect policy. That is one of the key challenges for those who aim to modernise government.

My hon. Friend did not refer to the fact that the Executive agencies still tend to be far more hierarchical than their private sector counterparts. That, too, is due to the speed of change. When the Executive agencies were first appointed, 93 of 138 chief executives' posts were subject to open competition—more up-to-date figures might be available, but that is the figure I remember—and of the 93, only 34 were external appointments. How to encourage movement—of people in and out of Executive agencies, of policy to operation, of the private to the public sector and vice—versa is a key question, and the Minister should address it.

My hon. Friend touched on the fact that Executive agencies have started to develop their own culture, which is not necessarily the same as the departmental culture from which they have sprung. We have to consider how to encourage that while restraining it in relation to policy. We have begun to develop new models rather than doing what would once have been natural for an Executive agency. A new model such as Sure Start is a better model for a cross-cutting, delivery-focused outside-appointment organisation. It stretches targets and is grounded in the voluntary sector in communities, and it is one of the Government's major successes. In the past, it would probably have been set up in an Executive agency. It is therefore important to reconsider Executive agencies and ask whether models exist that we should apply to them. It was probably right to set up such bodies as Executive agencies 10 or 12 years ago, but is it still right to do that, or are there better models to use?

The debate is primarily about Executive agencies, but some of the comments made by my hon. Friend and some of the issues that I have raised apply also to regulators, their so-called independence, and how they can sometimes be totally cut off from Government policy because they follow a line of thought that does not necessarily fit in with it. Again, we should examine some aspects of Executive agency accountability. One of the greatest barriers to innovation and change in the civil service is fear of the Public Accounts Committee. That is much truer of Executive agencies than it is of the senior civil service. That fear is not the Committee's fault, but it prevents the creation of many new ways of delivering services, and we must challenge it.

We must also examine good old-fashioned Treasury rules, the way in which Executive agencies can access capital markets, and new ways of dealing with funding. We do not need to open that can of worms today, but we must consider the issue.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, which highlights several questions about accountability and key issues about how the civil service should progress. It also highlights some of the challenges described in the modernising government White Paper. There is a success story to be told about some Executive agencies and what they have done. We must not forget that they have delivered a great deal, but there are several challenges to meet and many issues to resolve if the delivery of public services is to be as successful as we all want it to be.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) on securing the debate. Southampton is a city not at all like Umm Qasr, according to a British serviceman, but I shall not go further down that route for fear of offending my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock).

I want to contribute to the debate by making a few comments in the light of my experience as a representative working on behalf of 60,000 citizens of the UK, because that is the key relationship, which I believe the hon. Member for Southampton, Test tried to tease out, between the recipients of the services on whose behalf they are delivered and who pay for them, and the deliverers of the services—the agencies—and their representatives whom they elect to steer the delivery of those services.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that Executive agencies are much more significant than the parliamentary time given to discuss them might imply. However, we usually become interested in them when we receive a complaint, which leads us to gain most of our understanding about the complexity of the system. As parliamentary representatives, we are necessarily required to gain an understanding of the complexity of the relationship between agencies, the public, Parliament and Ministers by virtue of the complaints that are brought to us.

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the key question of accountability. We find out who the steerer is only after examining a complaint and having been through the complex procedure, at which point the key question becomes, "Who can change this?" The fact is that a citizen did not like what happened to them. We must find out who can change things and make them better, which returns us to the question of who the steerer is—to use the hon. Gentleman's analogy of the boat. Can we, as MPs, get at the steerers? That is the other key underlying question. Sometimes we can find out who the steerer is, but there is no direct mechanism for us to try to influence the person who can change the outcome for our constituents.

To give an example at random, we all may have experienced complaints in our surgeries about the Child Support Agency. When a complaint about the CSA comes in—that typically happens with alarming regularity—we have to try to pick through the system to find out whether the agency is implementing the regulations wrongly, or correctly implementing wrong regulations that we have made here, and can do nothing about the problem. That process can be hugely time-consuming, especially for the waiting constituent, who has a significant financial stake in the outcome of the complaint. They are often told that they must wait for several months while we pick through the system in that way. The problem is brought home to me every time one of those cases comes along. There must be a better way of cutting through the complexity. We should be clear at an earlier stage who is responsible and, as I said, where the steerers are.

Members can go on enormous paper trails. There is a learning process for us; we learn over time at whom to target letters rather than simply directing them at a Minister. When we initially come into this place, without the training that we need, we send our letters off to the Minister. When a letter hits his desk he will, quite properly, direct it to the agency responsible—and a little time-consuming loop has occurred. The agency might take the letter through its own complaints procedure, which takes some time, and finally come to the conclusion that it is carrying out Parliament's will and does not have a problem. The matter is then signed off and comes back to the Member, who is told that if they want to do anything about it, they must go through the parliamentary route. That might mean returning to the Minister and saying, "I know I wrote to you about this, and I thought I was complaining about the agency, but I wasn't. I was complaining about the stupid regulations that your Government brought in and now I want to challenge those."

indicated dissent.

The Minister tuts at the idea of any regulation being stupid. Perhaps the regulations concerned were implemented in 1996 or 1995, when regulations were invariably stupid.

The hon. Gentleman certainly cannot expect to get away with that provocation without an intervention. Does he at least accept that there were significantly fewer regulations then?

The hon. Gentleman will accept that my tongue was firmly in my cheek when I made that remark. I have an equal axe to grind with pre-1997 and post-1997 regulations. However, he might have a point in that for various reasons there has been a shift of responsibility from primary legislation to regulation. Any Government might make such a move, but regulations can give much more flexibility to the agencies, which returns us to the point of the debate. There has been a general shift from making a set of rules in primary legislation, examined with full parliamentary scrutiny, to doing so in secondary legislation or even at the level of the agencies themselves, where there is much latitude for interpretation. There might be sound reasons for that, because this place can act as a bottleneck for changes that need to be made, but it raises the questions of accountability that—I think—triggered this debate and that are raised quite properly as the process continues.

There is an ongoing review of the ombudsman service. The ombudsman is, in a sense, the piggy in the middle who has to referee many such matters. He ends up with many of the complaints that are generated after they have gone through other procedures unsatisfactorily. He has a critical role in the way in which the public see the agencies working. The review has identified various shortcomings, which are worth examining.

The review mentions the number and range of public bodies with which the ombudsman has to deal. The list runs to five pages of principal agencies and all sorts of other boards. That range reflects the way in which responsibility has been moved down from central Government. The review considers the large number of complaints coming through. The quantity will inevitably increase over time, as we generate more active, engaged citizens who quite properly feel that they do not have to sit and take services that they consider poor. They are quite willing to come forward. We should respond to that general social change.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Executive agencies have different complaints procedures, and that one of the ombudsman's problems is ensuring that the complainants have been through those procedures before they approach him?

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. Indeed, that is one of the outcomes of the review. I know that he was engaged in that as a member of the Public Administration Committee, through which the ombudsman reports to Parliament. The hon. Gentleman is helpfully engaged in those issues.

One of the key problems has been the proliferation of complaints procedures, which were quite properly motivated by the great citizens charter campaigns of the 1990s. It is right that people who have a problem with public service delivery should have a means of redress. The next steps agency programme was meant to ensure that agencies were seen to be responsive to the public by having their own complaints procedures. However, that has led to huge confusion about which procedures to follow to gain satisfaction, and in which order. Indeed, the fact that some jurisdictions overlap—it can be complex and confusing to individuals—also needs to be dealt with.

I commend the ombudsman's website, at www.ombudsman.org.uk, as the clearest example of a joined-up way of explaining things to the citizen. I have given the full address because I hope that one day the online Hansard will provide a live link, so that people who follow our debates, as I am sure they will, will be able to click on the site and have a look. The ombudsman's website is the clearest example that I have seen; it certainly works better than most Government websites that I have used in order to find out who is responsible for what. It is okay if one goes to the right Department—if one is in the right silo—but if one is connected to the wrong Department, one is stuck there and the system will not say what is going on in other Departments.

The ombudsman's site has a broad overview. It has five pages listing agencies and public bodies. I suspect that bodies such as the Inland Revenue and the Child Support Agency generate most complaints, but the site also covers museums and science bodies such as those on xenotransplantation and other hot topics. If it included the wine standards board of the Vintners Company, the best complaints received by the ombudsman would be from people saying, "The wine standards board got it wrong. It said that that this wine was good, but it is lousy." I can imagine the poor ombudsman's staff having to work their way through cases of the wine in order to decide whether the complaint was justified.

The other important question raised by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test was how policy makers relate to the Departments. That rang a bell with me. The all-party archaeological group inquired into the archaeological policy of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. That is relevant because the Department practises at the furthest end of the agency process; it has explicitly followed that route from its inception. When the all-party group asked why the Department responsible for archaeology policy had no qualified archaeologists, we were told that it would be wrong for civil servants to second-guess the work of agencies such as English Heritage, which decide such policies. We were effectively told that policy is set and directed from outside.

To follow the hon. Gentleman's analogy about rowers and steerers, who are both outside Parliament, the caterers in the Department offer pay and rations to rowers and steerers but do not take a more active role. That raises important questions about how we can influence policy if the policy makers are from an outside agency. These things affect areas such as sport, which has been quite contentious.

I suspect that some of the recent problems with sports funding have occurred because those responsible for funding were not accountable to this place but were working at a distance. As a result, bodies go off with the money and seem to set policy and, at a later date, their representatives are hauled before a Select Committee to say what went wrong. That has had an impact on many projects, including some in Sheffield. We have been involved in bringing the UK Sports Institute to Sheffield. We have found it complex working out who has responsibility. It seems that for much of the time policy is set not in the Department but outside it. It is important to find out how we get hold of those who make policy.

I close by observing that the suggestion of the hon. Member for Southampton, Test that we should have interest groups of MPs to ensure accountability is a very good one. All-party groups have an informal way of fulfilling that function when they are active and working well. They bring people from agencies and outside bodies to talk to them. There is a great deal of sense in a more open and recognised relationship between agencies and Parliament.

I agree that although Select Committees conduct a valuable function, they are full up: there is not much more business that can be got through them. The only way in which they could truly hold all the departmental bodies to account would be to have sub-committees. I doubt, however, that Select Committees would welcome that. They prefer to be smaller bodies that are focused and proactive in making their inquiries. There is therefore a parliamentary gap in which people could work more closely with agencies, and there is a demand in Parliament to do so. There are interest groups of MPs across a range of issues, and they would be pleased to take up such a role.

I again congratulate the hon. Member for Southampton, Test on raising the issue. It is an important matter, and I hope that the Minister can offer us some hope on the Cabinet Office's policy in clarifying it. Clarity and the relationship to the citizen are vital. The citizen may have a lousy experience because he cannot cut through the maze to find out who is responsible. When citizens come up against the system they are told, "What you want is somewhere in the cracks between the floorboards. It is the problem of neither the rowers nor the steerers; it has fallen off the back of the boat." It is no wonder that citizens feel alienated when encountering that response. I hope that the Minister can provide more clarity on how people will be able to work through the agency system and how we can have a clear line of accountability between the citizen and MPs.

rose—

Order. While we are on the question of clear lines of accountability, I understand that there is to be a Division or Divisions at 3 o'clock. There is no certainty that there will be only one. Therefore, my ruling is that we will resume 15 minutes after the beginning of the last Division.

Thank you for that ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) calling today's debate and on the concise way in which he introduced it. You will know better than I that many debates in this place are opened at great length; it was therefore very reassuring to hear the hon. Gentleman make his points in 15 or 16 minutes. I do not know whether the timing of the debate was fortuitous with the report of the National Audit Office coming out last week, but it is certainly very helpful for the Chamber to have the opportunity to consider these issues today.

When I came to consider the issue, I discovered that—as the hon. Gentleman said—it has scarcely been discussed in Parliament. That lack of interest has been reciprocated in the two reports—the National Audit Office report and that of the Office of Public Services Reform—neither of which gives Parliament more than a passing reference. When it comes to this issue, we are all, I suspect, mere amateurs compared with the hon. Member for Southampton, Test. He is far too modest to mention it, but he is the author of a substantial pamphlet on the next steps agencies, which I found very illuminating if not always easily digestible. He is a great expert on the subject.

There are 127 Executive agencies which represent a substantial proportion of the services delivered by central Government civil services. We need to remember the context: the largest proportion of public services consumed by the public—education and health—are delivered through devolved mechanisms that are not part of the Executive agencies or directly controlled, at least in theory, by central Government Departments.

The establishment of the next steps agencies always seemed a logical step on from the introduction of greater management freedoms and the attempt to introduce some private sector disciplines into the operation of the delivery part of the public sector. Three main interrelated issues emerge from the two reports. The first is the rationale for creating Executive agencies. The hon. Gentleman explored in his pamphlet the possibility that political dogma was one of the motives and concluded that, although a little political dogma might have been involved, there was a clear management theory rationale for giving the Executive branch of Government an arm's-length relationship with the policy formulation branch.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the five-yearly reviews that agencies are required to undertake, to determine(whether) whether they would be better off in the private sector. Perhaps we should have a regular review of the basic rationale for what we are doing in the light of changing practices in the private sector, to which the hon. Member for Milton Keynes. North-East (Brian White) referred, and the changing environment in which public services are delivered.

The second issue is the split between the delivery of services and the policy-making arm of central Government. I should like to say a little more about that in a moment. Thirdly, of course, there is the key issue of the lines of accountability of Executive agencies.

The Office of Public Services Reform review identifies the danger of a growing gulf between policy development and implementation, particularly in terms of creating what might unfortunately come to be seen as a B-stream within the civil service and the idea that the implementation is somehow a second-class activity while the high-flyer role is in policy making. We have heard from other hon. Members that perhaps that sharp demarcation between policy formation and implementation can be exaggerated Certainly, when I recently examined the Environment Agency and flooding policy I discovered, as the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) did in a different context, that the Executive agencies of necessity become huge repositories of expert knowledge that are drawn on by the relatively thinly populated policy-making centre and perhaps have a larger influence on the policy agenda than the structure, coldly reduced to a piece of paper, would suggest.

The NAO report suggests that all agencies should have a senior sponsor in their controlling Department to ensure a better two-way traffic and no surprises. Perhaps the Minister can tell us something about what has been done so far to achieve that. In relation to accountability, which is obviously the most fraught area, I too would like to place on record my belief that the role of the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office is crucial. They perform the central role at present in holding Executive agencies to account.

I am somewhat torn between the two models that have been proposed for increasing parliamentary scrutiny of Executive agencies. Clearly, in our everyday role as constituency MPs, we regularly deal with Executive agencies. I recognise the points made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam about having to decide first whether the agency has simply failed in delivery, which means that the issue has to be resolved at agency level, or whether there is a policy issue to be addressed. Would more direct parliamentary scrutiny of the agencies' operation risk undermining the parliamentary accountability of Ministers? That issue needs to be debated further, but I am tempted to think that Ministers may take advantage of more direct parliamentary scrutiny of Executive agencies to avoid answerability for the agencies' performance and actions, even to the extent that they are currently held accountable.

I shall try to be brief, because we are all anxious to hear from the Minister and our time is constrained by the possibility of Divisions, but I should like to say something about targets. One problem is that, in trying to bring into the management of public service delivery some private sector disciplines, we are hindered by the fact that the most influential private sector disciplines are perforce missing. There is no discipline of the capital markets, no price mechanism and, usually, no customers exercising choice. We must therefore ensure that productivity, efficiency and good management practice are delivered by setting proxies for those disciplines in the form of targets that we have to monitor. However, there is a real danger that achieving the targets becomes an end in itself, rather than just a means to deliver the real end, which is good-quality services for the public. No one has mentioned that yet, but I suggest that it can only ever really be measured in terms of public satisfaction.

I do not want to crow, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I shall cite an example relating to the creation of the National Care Standards Commission and the Government's subsequent proposal to introduce a series of standards to measure the quality of the service delivered to older people in care homes. Throughout that process and the sittings of the Standing Committee that considered the Care Standards Bill, we argued that measuring the size of doorways and the square metres in each room with a tape measure and clipboard was not the same as measuring the quality of the care experience delivered to the member of the public who was supposed to be the beneficiary of that service. For a year the Government argued against that notion, but they have now recognised the reality of it by abandoning their prescriptive targets and moving to a more customer-focused approach in measuring the delivery of care to older people.

We must keep that issue clear in our minds. I am certainly not a "private good, public bad" man, and I would not suggest that that was a model to follow, but if we are to harness the maximum benefits of the private sector—the good bits of a private sector approach—we must be careful to ensure that we do not import targets that simply become ends in themselves, rather than means to the end.

:A key piece of evidence given to the Public Administration Committee was that, in the private sector, people are expected to meet about 80 per cent. of their targets and doing so is considered very good, whereas if someone in the public sector failed to achieve 20 per cent. of their targets, they would be slaughtered. That is the difference between the private and public sectors' use of targets. In the private sector, not every target is expected to be met; it is the performance and the quality that are relevant, as the hon. Gentleman said.

The hon. Gentleman uses the term "slaughtered". Ultimately, in the private sector a failing business will be slaughtered and we can be sure that productivity will go on increasing; ultimately, efficient businesses will survive and inefficient businesses will not. In the public sector, because there is not that predatory threat in a marketplace, we have to introduce those controls and measures. I am straying slightly, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but if we consider what is happening in the national health service, with huge spending increases translating, at present, into very small increases in output, we can see the dangers where those disciplines do not drive continual productivity increases.

The NAO report made a number of recommendations and hon. Members are anxious to hear what the Minister has to say about them. I hope that he will tell us in detail which recommendations the Government intend to respond to positively.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) for opening the debate with a thoughtful and well-reasoned speech. He is to be congratulated on his contribution this afternoon and on his wider contribution, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond). My hon. Friend has published a Social Market Foundation pamphlet based on his earlier experiences as a Member of the House in the late 1990s, following his extensive experience in local government.

I will begin by responding to some of the matters raised by my hon. Friend before endeavouring to place the debate in the wider context of the Government's public services reform agenda. On my hon. Friend's general point about setting targets, which was aired in contributions from Opposition Members, targets have to be agreed by the Department and are announced to Parliament so that they are transparent. Guidance on performance management to improve target setting is considered in the recommendations of the National Audit Office report, which has been much discussed this afternoon, and is being promulgated by the Treasury, and indeed the Cabinet Office.

In that regard, my hon. Friend asked whether agencies took policy decisions and where accountability actually lay. Agencies have to take what might be termed operational policy decisions on a day-to-day basis, but they take place within a framework of public service agreements and of policy developed by Ministers. Agencies are free to manage within that overall strategic direction; the kind of rigid distinctions that were mentioned in the debate between policy and delivery can sometimes confuse more than they clarify. Ultimately, however, Ministers are accountable for their Departments' action, including the actions of the agencies, and they account for those actions directly to the House.

My hon. Friend spoke of the lack of legislation to set up some of the agencies. Executive agencies are, by definition, administrative constructs: they are only part of their parent Departments. Departments and Ministers are regularly scrutinised and held to account by Parliament. That is partly why I was not convinced, although I was intrigued, by my hon. Friend's suggestion that there should be specialist groups of MPs overseeing the work of each agency. Of course, it is for Parliament rather than the Executive to establish by which means Parliament should hold the Executive to account. However, personally I think that we must maintain clear lines of accountability, whereby Ministers are held directly to account on the Floor of the House of Commons, rather than a system of accountability that has the potential to become more confused.

My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Brian White) made a practical contribution to the debate, which in part reflected his experience in the Public Administration Committee, on which he has served for some time. He made a specific point about the importance of targets. The performance partnerships will probably feature more largely in years to come in the work of the Public Administration Committee; they are a key driver of the sort of changes that we want to achieve in the Cabinet Office. Through those performance partnerships we are developing with Departments a means by which agency targets can be directly linked to departmental public service agreements. Moreover, we take into account the capacity of the Department and its agencies to deliver those targets; in that regard it is important to recognise that performance partnerships seek to address overall performance rather than just to focus on targets. That is relevant, given the observations that my hon. Friend made about the evidence to the Public Administration Committee.

My hon. Friend asked whether agencies had developed their own distinctive cultures, and it is certainly the case that in the agency policy review of which I spoke at the beginning of my remarks, it was recognised that distinctive cultures had developed in certain agencies, some focusing on delivery skills, others on customer response. By following the recommendations in the agency review, the Government have the opportunity to spread and strengthen some of those best-practice cultures more widely than within the individual silos in which they were originally developed.

My hon. Friend's final point was about where agencies sit within the cross-cutting agenda, which features prominently in the work being taken forward by the Government. It is a commonly expressed criticism of agencies, that in the first few years of their establishment and operation they were not capable of establishing that important joined-up approach. However, the agency policy review did not find evidence as strong as some of the initial concerns might have suggested. In any case, aligning agencies more clearly with the PSA objectives of which I spoke, and the targets for agencies, will contribute significantly to attempts to ensure that they are seen as part of the landscape of delivery that Departments are developing, rather than as being driven solely by the demands of the agency.

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) concluded his contribution with a plea for clarity. All three documents—the pamphlet written by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test, to which the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge referred, the NAO report and the agency policy review—have been widely discussed today and are useful contributions to the attempt to bring clarity to this area of policy. However, I shall return to a point that I made earlier about this when I conclude my remarks. It is important to accept that the accountability that our constituents recognise most easily is that of Ministers to Parliament. As our thinking develops about how to ensure accountability and transparency, I am keen to ensure that we do not lose the clarity and rigour that the parliamentary system brings.

The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge made a very specific point about senior sponsorship in Departments in relation to the agency policy review. I can offer him some comfort by telling him that the Cabinet Office issued new guidance on governance in its guidance on framework documents circulated in January. It included the need for a senior sponsor in the parent Department to provide strategic direction and strategic performance management, which is one of the recommendations that has been adopted.

Given the need for expedition, I have endeavoured to cover some of the points raised, but, as I said at the outset, it is important to place the contributions that we have heard today in the wider context of the Government's objectives for better services generally.

In 2001, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury initiated a review of delivery policy entitled "Better government services: Executive agencies in the 21st century". That review focused mainly on the role of Executive agencies, which we have discussed today. I announced its publication on 22 July, when I explained that the Cabinet Office and the Treasury would work with Departments to put its recommendations into effect. That was part of the wider drive to improve the effectiveness of public service and—the point that I made to my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East—to place a culture of delivery at the very heart of the Government's agenda.

The report concluded that the agency model had been successful, and since 1998 agencies have transformed the landscape of government and the responsiveness and effectiveness of service. The leader of the review, Pam Alexander, who, I assure hon. Members, is no relation, commented in the news release that accompanied the publication of the report, and I believe that it will assist the House if I quote from it. She says:

"Agencies have been a great success story. They have brought to those services delivered within government both customer focus and a real drive to improve performance and to innovate. There is, of course, a range of effectiveness amongst this wide variety of organisations. But, it is generally the case that they have drifted apart from their parent departments and are seen as separate from them. Reconnection with Ministers' aims and departmental objectives, especially those underpinning Public Service Agreemènts is esseńtial if agencies are to play a full part in delivering effectively in the future."

That report was widely circulated. Copies were placed in the Libraries of both Houses, and sent to permanent secretaries, agency and NDPB chief executives, and departmental sponsoring units. The report was also announced to the media in the usual way and placed on our website. Hard-copy versions were also made freely available.

The continuing review was discussed at the agency and NDPB chief executives' conference in autumn 2001 and spring 2002, and in autumn 2002 after the report was finally published. One of the report's main recommendations was to allow departmental and agency key targets and a cycle of views to ensure that structures and processes across Departments support the achievement of key objectives. That would take the form of a one-off review of departmental delivery mechanisms as part of the departmental change known as a landscape review.

The central programme fundamentally to review agencies every five years—the quinquennial review, which was the previous system—was to be stopped, and business reviews of the end-to-end processes involved in delivering specific services were to be introduced in its place. There were recommendations on governance and leadership in Departments and agencies, performance management and financial aspects. As I said, the recommendations were intended to improve overall delivery of services and policy making by ensuring that agencies were closely aligned with Departments' policy-making roles, and by giving agencies more freedoms, which included three-year funding agreements and end-year flexibilities, opportunities for income generation and greater freedom to recruit senior staff. To reinforce their direct accountability to Ministers on operational matters, there were to be improved communications, including at least one discussion a year between chief executives and their respective Ministers.

There was a recommendation that the Cabinet Office should review reporting and other requirements placed on the delivery agents by Government, with the aim of reducing to a minimum the burden that they create. Chief executives were involved in the review of policy and the report contains the recommendations that they wanted. They continue to be involved in the review's implementation group.

The Government accepted the recommendations in the review and stated that the Cabinet Office and the Treasury would, as I have mentioned, work with Departments to put the recommendations into effect as part of the wider drive to improve the effectiveness of public services. An implementation group comprising representatives of the Cabinet Office, the Treasury, Departments and chief executives was established to ensure that the stakeholders were represented. An implementation plan has been drawn up with the aim of implementing the recommendations by the end of 2003. Landscape reviews and the first tranche of end-to-end reviews will feed into the 2004 spending review—effectively they will need to be completed by the end of 2003.

While the idea of a landscape review is new, the end-to-end approach is derived from practice and is familiar in the private sector—it is becoming more so in the public sector. It is in line with other reviews, such as the delivery unit's priority reviews. The NAO report published on 28 March 2003, which has been mentioned much this afternoon, examined agencies and their targets. It looked at the performance of 30 agencies across Government in meeting their targets, analysed eight in detail and three in depth, and made a number of recommendations on target setting and evaluation. The Treasury, in collaboration with the Cabinet Office, will provide guidance to Departments and agencies on performance management. That will take account of the findings of the important NAO report.

Members of Parliament are encouraged to deal directly with chief executives on daily matters concerning agencies, but Secretaries of State are and remain accountable to Parliament on all matters to do with their agencies. Accordingly, they retain the right to intervene in the operations of the agency if public or parliamentary concerns justify it. The chief executive and permanent secretary may be required to appear before the Public Accounts Committee—I endorse the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge when he paid tribute to its work over a number of years. At Select Committee hearings, Ministers will normally ask the chief executive to represent or accompany them if the Committee is specifically concerned with the day-to-day operations of the agency.

Policy on agencies is developing in the context of the Prime Minister's principles for public service reform and plays a major role in ensuring that services are delivered in the most effective, accountable, flexible and customer-focused way possible.

Kazakhstan is probably not as well known in the United Kingdom as it should be when one considers its strategic importance to the UK and to the world. It is in central Asia, borders Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and China, and has an area of 1.6 million miles, making it one of the largest of the former Soviet Union countries. It was home to Attila the Hun, the source of the great silk road, and Genghis Khan occupied it in 1221. Later, it came under the protectorship of Russia, which eventually colonised it, and then it became part of the Soviet bloc. It has been an independent state since 1991 and its relations with the UK have improved from that date. Another little known fact is that in 1985, in the city of Alma-Ata, I met my wife. Ever since that day, I have paid close and particular attention to its affairs.

The country is well known for its oil and gas reserves. Tenzig and Kashagan oil fields contain 88 per cent. of central Asia's oil wealth: Kazakhstan has resources of between 30 billion and 50 billion barrels of oil and its Government estimate that the Kashagan field alone might contain up to 50 billion barrels. Western dependency on energy has made the country strategically important to us, not least by creating a competitive energy alternative to supplies from the middle east. Britain is the second largest investor in Kazakhstan, with £2.5 billion investment led by British Gas. Kazakhstan has proven reserves of 65 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The economy of Kazakhstan is growing well. Its gross domestic product has increased by 13.2 per cent. in the past year—the best year of economic performance since 1991—and by 45 per cent. in the last four years. The hyperinflation that it experienced immediately after independence has been reduced to a respectable 6 per cent. a year. It is important to our interests that we do not lose out to other countries that are building a strong relationship with Kazakhstan—not least the United States, which through the Houston initiative has helped the country to emerge as a key player on the world stage.

The Kazakh economic strategy is to use a Norwegian-style investment fund—which already has £2 million in it—for economic development, and to create a high-tech, high value-added economic base, not one that relies on oil and gas, especially by encouraging joint ventures with western companies. That creates many opportunities for inward investment, such as that enjoyed by the organic foods industry, which has major possibilities, although technical expertise in both processing and storage has to be imported. The economy also has a significant mineral base.

One key recent development is the rapid growth of the private banking system, which now has an estimated £2 billion of deposits, many of them small. The rate of progress needs to be maintained if international confidence is to be maintained. That sector is a key indicator of the economy, and British banks and the British Government need to pay particular attention to it in the assistance that they give to Kazakhstan.

In the current world situation, it is important to note the stability in Kazakhstan, not only in relation to the surrounding countries, which is significant, but globally. Its only nuclear power plant was closed in 1999 and it is now a nuclear-free state. Semipalatinsk, in central Kazakhstan, was closed down as a nuclear testing base immediately after independence. In the years of Soviet domination and control, the whole of central Kazakhstan was used as a nuclear-testing wasteland.

During the Afghan war, the Kazakhstan Government was a loyal ally of ours and provided airspace to coalition forces to help them wage the war on international terrorism effectively. On Iraq, I quote from a statement from Kazakhstan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 19 March:

"Unfortunately, those efforts turned out to be futile, in part because of the destructive position of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein who had not presented convincing evidence of disarmament of his country. The possibility of a peaceful solution of the arisen problem through diplomatic means has been basically reduced to zero."

In the context of international relations, I think that we all share that sentiment.

Kazakhstan's stability compared with neighbouring countries is important. All too often, we lump all central Asia together—if I may make a mild criticism of our own Government and Foreign and Commonwealth Office, they all too often use the descriptive label "central Asia"—but Kazakhstan is significantly more stable than any of the surrounding countries and it is progressing and adopting western values, including those of liberal democracy, more quickly. We should therefore be dealing with the country on its own terms and in its own right, rather than lumping it in with its neighbours.

There are issues to be resolved in Kazakhstan, such as the legal framework, which is important for businesses wishing to invest, but without question there have been significant improvements in recent years. We can provide specialist expertise to help to develop the kind of liberal democracy that will encourage western investment. The death penalty remains a contentious and important issue for the west, and I hope that we will continue to urge the Kazakhs to address it. It has been the subject of public debate in recent months, but it remains a potential obstacle to future development. I hope that we can take it up with the Kazakhs in the friendliest terms.

In terms of dialogue, a delegation of 14 Kazakh parliamentarians is visiting the UK on 12 to 18 May. I am sure that we will give them a warm welcome and that there will be significant, good deliberations during their visit.

Turning to trade unions, I quote the World Bank on trade union organisation in Kazakhstan:

"Unions in Eurasian Transition Economies remain much as they were in the socialist era: aligned with management. As such, they are not independent organisations representing workers' interests. Perhaps the only exception is Kazakhstan, where recent reforms have allowed firms or individuals to opt out of union negotiated settlements and have legalised independent worker groups as bargaining entities."

In the creation and strengthening of civic society, we in the west tend to overemphasise individual human rights as opposed to collective human rights. The independent Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Kazakhstan has 100 union affiliates and 350,000 members and has a role in creating civil democracy. That model has been replicated in countries such as Poland, Zimbabwe and South Africa. We have given direct assistance through the trade union movement and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to Kazakh trade unions to encourage that growth of civil society and civic responsibility. That should remain an important part of our work, and I strongly urge the Minister to consider that.

The sector of the Kazakh economy that is currently underplayed but that I would highlight for potential development is tourism. Kazakhstan is an enormous country, and the cosmopolitan city of Alma-Ata is often described as the new Paris—although some might add that it is more politically reliable than Paris these days. Kazakhstan offers potential tourists a wealth of new opportunities. A simplified visa process for UK citizens who wish to visit Kazakhstan, including those who visit for business, has been introduced, and I hope that the Minister will consider reciprocity in visa arrangements for Kazakh nationals who visit, especially on business. In particular, ecological holidays from the west have the potential for enormous growth. I hope that the Kazakh Government will continue to promote that as the number of visitors to the country increases—it was 1.8 million at the last count.

My hon. Friend is right to praise the tourist potential of Kazakhstan, which those of us in the all-party group witnessed when we visited last November. Will he also mention the potential for co-operation between our great universities? We paid a visit to the Kazakh British university and saw great scope for that.

The link with Aberdeen university is extremely important. I trust that the visit of Baroness Symons has been postponed rather than cancelled, and that it will be resurrected. I urge the Minister to make visiting Kazakhstan in the near future a priority.

The issue of drugs is important in my constituency and across this country. Kazakhstan has 8,000 miles of borders, yet the only project in which the European Union has been involved to tackle drug smuggling—which goes with people smuggling and arms smuggling—through Kazakhstan has been at Alma-Ata international airport. I urge the Government to consider supporting a project to train customs officers, and introduce computers and high technology at border posts in Kazakhstan, so that that country's counter-drugs agencies can enjoy successes that will benefit Britain in terms of our heroin problem. I propose that potential aid project for the Minister's consideration.

I also hope that additional aid can be given—perhaps through the Westminster Foundationߞto help political parties in Kazakhstan to develop themselves.

In May the Beagle 2 rocket to Mars will be launched from Kazakhstan. The Prime Minister has been invited, and I hope that we will send a delegation at the highest possible level to celebrate that success.

Help in tackling drugs and through the extended trade union movement are ways in which we can assist Kazakhstan in its progression to liberal democracy and becoming a major economic player on the world stage. The word Kazakh comes from the Turkic—it means free and independent. After years of Soviet and Russian bondage, that country now has an independent, free state. We need to assist Kazakhstan's democratisation, and I trust that the Minister will respond accordingly.

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), and congratulate him on securing this debate.

I visited Kazakhstan last November as part of the British parliamentary delegation and should therefore declare an interest. As has already been intimated by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy), that visit was very successful. It was facilitated by Erlan Idrissov, the Kazakh ambassador in London, to whom we owe a great vote of thanks.

I saw for myself the great progress that has been made in a number of areas in Kazakhstan. In developing democracy, electoral systems are improving, civic and human rights are progressing apace, a free press is emerging and gaining confidence, and there is a desire to improve the justice and legislative systems. More can be achieved, of course, but the progress made over the past decade is remarkable when one considers how many hundreds of years it has taken us to achieve such progress in the UK.

In terms of social responsibility, Kazakhstan has added great stability to the region by fighting drug trafficking, removing the world's fourth-largest nuclear arsenal, and supporting the international community in fighting terrorism. In commercial and financial systems, macro-economic, fiscal and banking reforms have progressed tremendously in recent years. Markets are opening up, which gives some semblance of rational competition, and although there is still room for improvement, there have been tremendous achievements.

The bottom line is that Kazakhstan is a country that is making an increasing contribution to the international stability of the region, and a country with which we could and should be doing more business. Perhaps we should have a Minister for the UK equivalent of the Houston initiative.

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) on initiating this well-informed and important debate. The House will wish to know that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), is abroad today on Government business.

UK relations with Kazakhstan are, in general terms, excellent. We established diplomatic relations with Kazakhstan 11 years ago, since when we have steadily increased the size of our embassy and range of interests. We continue to examine ways in which we can expand our representation further in key locations such as the capital, Astana, and in Atyrau on the Caspian sea. In time, we expect to move our embassy to Astana.

We have an excellent relationship with the energetic and dynamic former Foreign Minister, Erlan Idrissov, who was appointed Kazakh ambassador to London last year. I believe that that appointment demonstrates the importance that Kazakhstan attaches to its relations with the UK.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Kazakh President are co-patrons of the Kazakh-British Technical university, a facility that was opened by the President last September. Our embassy and the British Council are actively engaged in helping to set up postgraduate courses at the university.

Through the Kazakh embassy, we have established close co-operation with the Kazakh Government to enlist their support for the preparations surrounding the launch of the Beagle 2 Mars Lander, which will take off from Baikonur, the Russian space centre in Kazakhstan, on the Mars Express rocket. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw referred to that event, and we are looking forward to it.

Both bilaterally and through the European Union and other multilateral organisations, we are providing Kazakhstan with assistance to overcome the legacy of the former Soviet Union and to help it to develop into a free and fair market-based society. Examples of that assistance include a Department for International Development project on the former Soviet nuclear test site of Semipalatinsk, and health reform projects.

Our high-level contacts are increasing. The past six months have seen meetings between my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Kazakh President, and between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and the Kazakh Foreign Minister Tokaev. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, met the Kazakh Defence Minister Altynbaev when he visited the UK in January. Furthermore, my hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs met the Kazakh Minister for the Environment Samakova, when she visited London last month.

Such frequent high-level contacts are indicative of the strength of Anglo-Kazakh relations, which we hope will be further strengthened by visits from the Kazakh Ministers of Agriculture and of Justice later in the year. It is a pity that the visit to Kazakhstan by my noble Friend Baroness Symons, the Minister with responsibility for overseas trade, has been postponed in the light of current events, but I can confirm that it is her intention to reschedule that visit later in the year. I also know that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is still keen to visit the country when he can.

I am pleased to say that parliamentary contacts are also improving. A group of UK parliamentarians visited Kazakhstan last November, as we have already heard. I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy), both members of the delegation, present in the Chamber. I am especially pleased that a delegation from the Kazakh Parliament will visit the UK in May under the auspices of the all-party group. The Government warmly welcome that increased activity.

We must continue to work hard to develop our relationship. We need to engage Kazakhstan on important issues, which include not only short-term issues but long-term goals. For the United Kingdom, there are several important prizes, the first of which is energy security. Britain will soon be a net importer of oil and gas. That means that we have an increasing interest in ensuring diversity of supply and liquidity of the oil market. The Caspian will have an important role to play in world energy markets. Working with Kazakhstan to get the oil and gas out of the ground and delivered to markets is, therefore, strongly in our national interests.

The second prize relates to Kazakhstan's regional role. Kazakhstan's per capita GDP is already five times greater than that of its neighbour Kyrgyzstan. In 10 years, that gap will be wider, and it is a similar story with other countries in the Eurasian region. Our objective is that Kazakhstan, the regional motor of growth, should export prosperity and stability to the other countries of the region. The President of Kazakhstan and his Government are already strongly committed to regional co-operation. We greatly welcome that and want to work with them to make it a reality.

Thirdly, Kazakhstan's development will open up a wide range of possibilities for further co-operation between our two countries. Our aim is to support the Kazakh Government to achieve poverty reduction, a better environment and a higher quality of life for the people of their country.

Human rights are also important. Although we recognise that Kazakhstan has a better record than some of its neighbours and that transition is not an easy or quick process, there is serious concern that the human rights position has deteriorated in the past year. With our EU partners, we have lobbied the Kazakh Government on the cases of political opponents such as Zhakiyanov and Ablyazov and the leading Kazakh journalist, Duvanov. Criticism of the Kazakh Government in that respect will not go away—the problem needs to be addressed. We intend to continue raising those issues with the Kazakh Government, with our EU colleagues and with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

We want to work with the Kazakh Government to improve human rights in Kazakhstan. One important issue will be the new electoral law currently under consideration, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw referred. We also intend to fund several projects in the field of human rights and democratisation. One example is an ongoing project to provide technical assistance for the development of trade unions in Kazakhstan.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the point I made earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw is important in developing human rights? If we can forge links between the young people of our universities, that might bring about the sort of climate in Kazakhstan that we all seek.

It is clearly in everyone's interest that young people in all countries, including the United Kingdom and Kazakhstan, are able to play an active part. I would welcome any way of achieving that.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw on his campaigning on drugs issues in the UK. That is another important issue, and we intend to seek out opportunities for greater co-operation between the United Kingdom and Kazakhstan on the drug interdiction.

To touch briefly on the international situation, the UK Government welcomed the comments the Kazakh Foreign Minister made about Saddam Hussein last month, just after the vote in the House.

Kazakhstan was one of the quickest of the former Soviet Union countries to implement essential economic reform, and one of the most thorough in doing so. It was a crucial move, which owes much to the courage and farsightedness of the Kazakh Government. However, Kazakhstan should continue with economic reform—for example, in its development of the non-oil and gas sectors.

Kazakhstan has done much to attract foreign investment. The Government recognised early the importance of foreign direct investment, which has been successful. It has the highest rate of FDI per capita in the countries of the former Soviet Union. British companies have certainly welcomed the investment opportunities: the UK is the second largest investor in Kazakhstan after the USA, with an investment since 1993 of $2.76 billion, or 14 per cent. of the total foreign direct investment in the country. We hope that that investment will continue to grow.

More than 100 companies in Kazakhstan are either fully UK-owned or joint ventures with British connections. Unsurprisingly, they are mostly active in the oil and gas sector, partly because that is the foundation of the Kazakh economy and partly because British firms have so much experience in that sector. It might be worth reminding the House that the UK faced some of the issues that now face Kazakhstan, including local content questions, during the development of our North sea oil resources in the 1970s.

There is also substantial investment in the energy sector and in aviation. For example, BAE Systems set up Air Astana, and many British firms provide consultancy, banking and other financial services. British Gas and Shell are two more high-profile British firms in Kazakhstan. British Gas has a one-third share in the Karachaganak onshore field, and Shell is one of the partners developing the massive offshore field Kashagan.

What of the future? What still needs to be done to ensure that investment, both foreign and domestic, keeps flowing and that the economy keeps growing? I would include in that list the improvement of the regulatory environment and the business climate, the establishment of market-supporting institutions, transparency and the rule of law. Those are all fundamental to business and healthy economic growth. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry raised some of those issues with the Kazakh Minister of Industry when he visited the UK last month. Through Trade Partners UK, we are looking at ways in which we can help to assist the development of Kazakhstan's small and medium-sized enterprises.

There are still risks that Kazakhstan will scare off current and future investors by meddling with the sanctity of commercial contracts and by implementing new layers of bureaucracy. We have made our views clear to Kazakhstan: activity of that sort will seriously deter the new investment that is essential for sustained growth. We will continue to address those issues with the Kazakh Government and through the Kazakh-British Trade and Industry Council.

The Government believe that our expertise and experience can add real value to the development of Kazakhstan and that they will put UK-Kazakh relations on an even firmer footing. I assure hon. Members that we will maintain a close, open and serious dialogue with Kazakhstan. We have much to offer.

It is a privilege to introduce this Adjournment debate, which I do for two reasons. First, it is a development of my national interest. I am not a Front-Bench spokesman on Home Office matters, but I have an interest in policing, and I have the honour of chairing the all-party police group.

The second reason is local. There are major concerns in my area, as in many others, about law and order matters. A couple of weeks ago, my local police community consultative group organised a public meeting—in a hall that, at a pinch, was capable of holding 400 to 500 people—on policing, antisocial behaviour and law and order in an area called Hampton. In the event, well over 1,000 people turned up. With some difficulty—on health and safety grounds—the meeting proceeded, but we are now having to hold the meeting in shifts. There were special circumstances, not least of which was that we had just had the terrible experience in that area of the Marsha McDonnell murder. None the less, the meeting reflected an undercurrent of concern about street crime, antisocial behaviour and the lack of a police presence.

I acknowledge—this is general background—that the Government, the Mayor of London and the Greater London Assembly have responded to concern about police numbers. Those numbers are starting to grow after a decade or more of decline, but I shall focus not simply on numbers but on quality and age profile. The problem in many parts of the country, and certainly in the south-east, is that a serious imbalance is emerging in the police force. That was well captured in a headline in the Evening Standard a few weeks ago: "Crisis as bobbies on the beat really get younger".

The position in many suburban areas in London, such as the one that I represent, is that 60 per cent. or more of all officers on front-line duties are probationers—raw recruits. In some suburbs in outer London, such as in Surrey, the figure reaches 75 per cent. Of course any officers at all—any people who are visible to the public—are welcome, but there are obviously inherent disadvantages in having probationary officers. They lack experience, inevitably make mistakes and perhaps do not inspire the same respect in local young people. Probationary officers are also inherently limited in the amount of face contact that they have with the public. In their first year, they spend 70 per cent. of their time at college; the figure is 40 per cent. in the second year.

An excessive dependence on probationers and raw recruits in the front line of the police service is unsatisfactory in itself. Moreover, the problem will almost certainly get much worse, for two reasons. First, the police force is being pulled in two directions. There are perfectly legitimate pressures to expand it. The ambition is to raise numbers in London from 28,000 to 35,000. That is absolutely right, but it will require an enormous effort in recruitment. Secondly, we are at the same time approaching what the police call the blue bulge. The cohort of officers who were recruited in the mid-1970s on the back of the Edmund-Davies report and more attractive police conditions are coming up to 30 years' service. Because of the limitations of the police pension scheme, which, as the Minister knows, is very restrictive—it prevents pension entitlements from being accumulated beyond a 30-year period—almost all those officers opt to retire.

As I said, the police force is being pulled in two directions. On one hand, there is the pressure for more recruitment; on the other, there is the loss of large numbers of experienced officers. The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, among others, has described that as a very worrying situation. It is worrying for several reasons. First, the large-scale loss of experienced police officers once they reach 50 or 51 affects numbers—it will be difficult to meet the numbers objectives if large numbers of such officers leave the police force next year and the year after, the peak years of the bulge.

Secondly, the dilution of experience has serious effects. Increasingly, there are reports of the quality of police detection work and the presentation of material to the Crown Prosecution Service being diluted and weakened by the lack of experience in the ranks of police officers and the imbalance in the age structure. In addition, there is simply a waste of human resources.

Some 50-year-old police officers get sick. They get worn out and simply want to retire. One does not want them to feel that they have to continue working. Many others have a lot of potential. They are fully fit, fully active and want to continue working. Their resources are largely being wasted at the moment. Many of them, as the Minister will know, go into dead-end jobs with security companies and are not being properly utilised. How do we ensure that the resource represented by retiring police officers is fully utilised? There are two solutions. The Government recognise that, and I want to talk those two options through with the Minister and perhaps get some feedback from him.

The first option, which the Government are currently exploring, is to encourage retiring police officers to remain on an ad hoc basis. Several police forces, including the Metropolitan police, have opted to carry out a pilot scheme, subject to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis agreeing to extend contracts on a year-by-year basis. I do not know whether the scheme is working well. Perhaps the Minister could tell us either today or in a written statement how many officers are being kept through this route, breaking that down by police force. That information would be helpful.

The second route, which I want to explore in more detail and promote to the Minister, is to recruit on a systematic basis and on quite a large scale from the pool of officers who are retiring or have retired. There are currently 20,000 retired police officers in the 50 to 55 age group. Companies are already being established. I have no particular brief for any of them, but I have met and been briefed by RIG Police Recruit Ltd, which is one of the leaders in the field. It has already accumulated a database of more than 500 officers who are ready and available to work in the police. Some of them already are doing so in Thames Valley and Surrey. That is probably just the tip of an iceberg. It represents the beginning of a potentially large process if the Government and individual police forces can grasp the opportunity.

What would these officers do? Clearly they are not in the same position as full-time career officers, including those who have stayed on. If we looked at this imaginatively, we would see that there are many ways to exploit the tremendous resource represented by these retired officers who wish to work. There has been an unprecedented interest in police reform over the last few years following the publication of the Government's paper "Policing a New Century". We have experiments in expanding the police family, all of which I welcome. This is an aspect of the experiments that has not yet been fully explored. There are various things that these retiring or re-recruited police officers could do that are not currently being done.

The first involves recruitment on contract in order to carry out short-term assignments. Very often a police force is suddenly confronted with a major emergency. A classic example would be the terrorist threats surrounding Heathrow, the Soham inquiry in Cambridgeshire or the Marsha McDonnell murder in my constituency. In each of those cases, dozens—sometimes hundreds—of officers are recruited to work on a highly focused assignment. As a consequence, they are pulled out of other work, which the police themselves describe as overstretch. Normal police work is, in effect, undermined by it. Were there a pool of short-term contract officers available—experienced officers coming back into the force on a contract basis for so many weeks or months—those gaps could be filled and the problem of overstretch dealt with.

Those officers could also undertake part-time work. It has always been assumed that police officers will do a full-time job, but there is no inherent reason why they should not work part-time. There are times of peak demand, late evening on a Saturday being the most obvious, for which it should be possible to build up a cadre of part-time officers. There are certain activities that those officers would be ideally placed and qualified to undertake, which, I suspect, are not currently being properly performed. For example, there is a major demand for what are called in the trade "investigative officers". They work in the background on major inquiries. If there is a murder or disappearance, hundreds of officers have to be employed to knock on thousands of doors. Those background officers I have described would be ideally qualified to do much of that routine investigative work.

Post-arrest research is often very detailed, painstaking and labour intensive, but it is fundamental to the success of prosecutions. Again, officers of that background are ideally qualified to do that. Such officers could also work in the forensic service or in CID, or they could work with youth. It is an obvious point that young people will not accord a 20 or 21-year-old recruit the same degree of respect and deference that they would give to a 50-year-old officer with a grown-up family who has been through parenting. That is a simple, human point. If police of that age group and background were used in such a role, they would be so much more effective. I am not a police officer—that is not my background—but I know that there are all those roles available. I ask the Minister to consider carrying out an independent study to evaluate what roles might usefully be performed by re-recruited officers. There is clearly a supply and a need, but we must pinpoint more specifically and accurately where the demand lies.

Why does it appear to be so difficult to get that process moving, given that there is clearly an interest in Government in police reform and that so much is now beginning to happen? Why is this particular initiative proving so difficult to get off the ground? For example, why does the crime fighting fund, a body of funding available to chief police officers to meet their needs, specifically exclude such re-recruited officers working on contract? It is not obvious to me why that is so. Perhaps the Government are afraid that it is a relatively expensive source of manpower, but I am assured by people who work in the business that the hourly rate, and the hourly cost to the police force, is exactly the same. Can we have an evaluation of that?

Will the Minister address some specific issues? First, can he give us an evaluation of the efforts currently being made to encourage officers to stay on in the force beyond retirement age? How well is that succeeding and what is the regional breakdown? Secondly, can he suggest whether it might be possible to undertake a proper, independent study of how the vast resource of retired and retiring police officers could be put to the most effective use? Perhaps that has already been done; it certainly should be. Thirdly, can he tell us what the bottlenecks are on the Government's side? There might be funding or technical issues of which I am not aware, which are holding the Government back from utilising the crime fighting fund and other resources.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing the debate and on the cogent and compelling way in which he has outlined his arguments. He has rightly identified an important issue for not only the Home Office but the entire Government. He gave a compelling example from his own constituency of the importance that people attach to such issues. It is important that we respond to them effectively.

Before I deal with the specific points that the hon. Gentleman raised, I should place the debate in context by pointing out that police forces throughout the country are recruiting very successfully at the moment. He recognised that in his remarks. We are delivering on our promise to put more police officers on the streets, and we are ahead of schedule on our targets. Last week, we announced record police numbers, together with more than 1,200 community support officers. These numbers are proof of our commitment to tackling crime and antisocial behaviour. We promised that there would be 130,000 police officers by March of this year, and by 30 September 2002—six months ahead of schedule—there were 131,548. That is 1,548 officers above the target. In the 12 months to September 2002 strength increased by 4,337, which is the largest increase for 27 years.

The crime fighting fund has already delivered 9,000 new police recruits over and above those that the service had planned to appoint over the past three years. The scheme will continue for a further three years. In 2003–04, the crime fighting fund will support the further growth of about 650 police officers. We have decisively reversed the decline in police numbers, and we expect to see that growth continue this year. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has set a target of 132,500 officers in 2004, and the present numbers show that we are well on the way to achieving that.

As the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, there is far more to improving the effectiveness of the police force than simply boosting the number of recruits, important though that is. Before I turn to the specific points that he made, I should say that it is also important that the police officers we do have spend their time effectively. We must get far more of them out of the station and on to the streets. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be aware of the work that is being done under the bureaucracy taskforce, which was set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham). He is, sadly, no longer the Minister with responsibilities for the police, but I wish to pay tribute to his admirable work in that area. The taskforce was chaired by Sir David O'Dowd, and it is now well under way to being implemented throughout the country.

The need to retain more officers was rightly identified, and I want now to deal with the specific points that were made on that matter. It was pointed out that the police pension, good though it is, can act as a clog to retaining experienced officers. Many of them want to continue working, and they have a great deal to contribute beyond the time when it is in their financial interest to take the pension. We have introduced, as I think the hon. Gentleman is aware, the 30-plus scheme to encourage the retention of officers beyond the 30-year point at which they can retire with an immediate pension of two thirds of their final pensionable salary.

I wish to bring the hon. Gentleman up to date on the scheme. After the police negotiating board agreement of May last year, which included outline provisions for arrangements to retain officers beyond 30 years, the board agreed the details of the present 30-plus scheme in December. The main feature of the scheme is that it enables officers to retire in the normal way so that they can have the benefit of a tax-free lump sum and then rejoin the force if management considers them suitable for further service. Re-engagement is at the officer's former rank and pay. Once the officer is back in service, his or her pension is subject to abatement so that he or she will not receive a full police pension on top of a police salary. However, the scheme allows for sufficient pension to be paid in order to make up for any replacement allowances that are lost on retirement.

We hope that the scheme will be attractive to many officers who want to come back in this way. As pensioners, those participants in the 30-plus scheme cannot rejoin the police pension scheme. However, they could purchase additional benefits by taking out a personal pension. Participants will also be eligible for special priority payments of up to £5,000 on the same basis as other officers. If it is on top of their pay scale, they are eligible for a competence-related threshold payment of £1,000 a year. The aim of the scheme is to retain those officers who would otherwise be lost to the service through retirement. In order to measure the effectiveness of the scheme, and it is important that we evaluate it as it progresses, we are piloting it in two phases before we give the final go-ahead to a nationwide launch. As luck would have it, phase 1 finished yesterday, and I am pleased to announce the launch of phase 2 today, so it is a timely debate.

Eight forces participated in phase 1: the Metropolitan police and the Avon and Somerset, Hertfordshire, North Wales, Surrey, Thames Valley, West Mercia and West Midlands forces. Phase 1 commenced in December 2002. The pilots were not given central funding, and were primarily designed to test the level of interest and take-up among officers. A relatively short time was available, and the number of officers re-engaged was not large, because many of those currently retiring had already made other plans. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, people often plan for their retirement many years in advance and make arrangements with their families, so one would not necessarily expect a high take-up in the early stages.

What is encouraging for the forces taking part is the level of interest among officers approaching the 30-year mark. Although only about 20 officers were re-engaged during phase 1, the indications are that it is worth proceeding with phase 2. We hope to see a higher take-up as the scheme is tested further.

The phase 2 pilots will be run on a wider basis from now until 31 March 2004. We have written to all 15 forces that expressed an interest in phase 2, inviting them to participate. We will use phase 2 to assess the scheme in more detail, to discover whether it attracts the right calibre of officer, whether the retained officers are put to good operational use, and whether, as far as it is possible to tell, the participants would have left the service but for the scheme.

Subject to final confirmation, phase 2 will operate on the same unfunded basis as phase 1, but most of the forces applying have indicated that they would be prepared to participate in the pilot without central funding assistance. One benefit of phase 1 is that it has confirmed to the participating forces that the 30-plus scheme is virtually cost neutral.

The hon. Gentleman made some interesting suggestions, so he is obviously aware that the scheme is not the only answer to the problem of retention. We need to look more widely when trying to encourage officers to stay on, but the scheme promises to be a useful measure in helping management to tackle one aspect of wastage from the police service. If the phase 2 pilots are successful, as I hope and expect them to be, we aim to have the 30-plus scheme rolled out nationally in 2005–06.

I hope that I have given the hon. Gentleman a reasonable assessment of the state of play on the scheme, but that is not all that we and the Association of Chief Police Officers have been doing. He asked what role officers coming back in this way might play. In the course of establishing the forces' interest in the proposal, ACPO has identified a number of possible roles for retired officers—a study that the hon. Gentleman suggested should be done.

I shall list some of the categories that have been identified so far; indeed, the hon. Gentleman has already referred to some of them. They include working as investigative assistants, inquiry officers or scene guards; being a part of house-to-house inquiry teams; acting as statement takers or homes indexers; working in major incident rooms or in casualty bureaux; evaluating DNA hits, operating central switchboards or working control rooms; acting as drivers or assessors of recruits; working in data management; and acting as exhibits officers. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that such officers would have a wide range of opportunities from which to choose. How individual officers should be deployed will obviously be a management or operational matter, but I hope that he is reassured by the fact that such identification has already taken place and will continue.

That is not all that we have done. I referred earlier to the bureaucracy taskforce, chaired by Sir David O'Dowd, which was set up by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and driven forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen.

Among many other recommendations in its report, the taskforce explicitly recognised the concern expressed by the hon. Gentleman about the amount of valuable experience that is currently lost when a police officer retires, although that is not always the case. As he said, we do not want police officers who have done 30 years of valuable service to stay on against their wishes. However, we must recognise, as he does, that many of them have much to contribute and want to continue doing so. The taskforce considered that they represented a significant resource that should be exploited. It noted especially the potential for developing the use of databases for retired officers and the advantages in being able to call upon such a resource. The examples to which the hon. Gentleman referred of incidents such as the terrible murder that took place in his constituency and a range of other events show how valuable such a database could be.

Some databases already exist at a local level and they are used to provide the police service—often at short notice or in the short term—with access to retired police officers possessing particular skills to help to meet unusual demands. The taskforce specifically recommended the establishment of a national database of retired officers. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary accepted the recommendation and we are currently working closely with the Association of Chief Police Officers to make progress on it.

The hon. Gentleman referred to commercial organisations that are already involved in the work, and a number of such organisations already supply individual forces with retired officers through local arrangements. They may be interested in extending the scope of the service that they provide to a national level.

ACPO found that many forces already employ retired officers in a variety of ways—I have mentioned some of their roles—some through their own networks; others employ commercial organisations for that purpose. Usually, officers are employed among full-time civilian support staff but there is a range of other opportunities that are already being taken up: they are employed on casual, temporary contracts in circumstances when, for example, there is no time to employ new members of staff or where that would not be appropriate because the job will be of limited duration. The identification of such roles is an evolving process and we expect it to continue to develop over time. Policing is a skill and an evolving science and we expect the identification of such roles to develop along with it.

Many police officers retire happily and have no wish to return. However, if they want to come back we must ensure that mechanisms are in place to allow them to do so. One key blockage has been the particular nature of the pension. Pensions are often inflexible, not only in the police force but in many other occupations. The work that we have already done has introduced a new level of flexibility. As I said, we are at an early stage in piloting the scheme—

The Minister has given a helpful and comprehensive reply. Before he sits down, however, will he address the specific issue of why the crime fighting fund cannot be used to facilitate recruitment of the type that he described?

We are at too early a stage for the process to take place. We are turning round policing after many years of decline, as the hon. Gentleman said. Investment is coming through and we must ensure that the crime fighting fund is used properly. Unfortunately, matters progress relatively slowly, because we must make sure that we get things right. I understand his frustration. However, the early signs are that the scheme will be successful and that it will be rolled out nationally. We must then consider the most appropriate way to fund it.

We are committed to funding police forces so that they can maintain adequate levels of recruitment and retention.

The hon. Gentleman need not worry that the funding will not be there if there is a need for it. We must ensure that there is an appropriate case for that funding. The early signs are what he would have expected and hoped for: there is a case for the scheme to continue but we have to make sure that there is a demand for it and that it is the most appropriate use of the funding. We are not ruling anything out at present but we must be certain that there is a case to be made for it.

We must take into account not only the pension but the other things that need to be done, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will feel reassured that we have taken steps to address those needs. I assure him that if further need for action is identified in future, we will take it.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at half-past Four o'clock.