I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for making time for this important debate. This is the 13th time that Zimbabwe has been debated in this Chamber during this Session, which is a testament not just to the importance that we attach to Zimbabwe, but, alas, to our impotence to do anything about that country.

I shall begin with some personal reminiscences. In April 2002, I went to Zimbabwe unobtrusively as a tourist. In the company of the redoubtable Peta Thornycroft of the The Daily Telegraph, I decided to see at first hand what Robert Mugabe's policy of land reform actually entails. Peta took me to the Mazowe region just north of Harare to a 5,000 acre farm that had been started in 1936 by Tom Bayley, who was in his 90th year when I met him. When I went to see the Bayley family, they had been under siege for two years and had suffered about as much as the human spirit can endure. The war veterans, as they call themselves, were camped on the Bayleys' land and were burning lumber for fires, roasting and eating the seedcorn, constantly intimidating the Bayleys and making it impossible for them to bring in their crops. The cattle were infested with ticks and dying, and nothing had been sown for years.

The siege was intensifying because the war veterans, as they style themselves, were forbidding the older Bayleys from being visited by their son and daughter-in-law who lived in a separate house. They had been completely cut off for more than a month by a bunch of thugs wielding knives and pipes. Those people had the overt encouragement not only of the Mugabe regime, but of the police. A policeman was milling around and giggling. He was wholly complicit in the operation and refused to do anything to protect the Bayleys' basic right o property.

Thanks entirely to the bravery of the redoubtable Peta Thornycroft, we plucked up our courage and walked the 500 yd from the main Bayley farmstead to the little cottage where the old parents lived. It was very spooky because we had to run the gauntlet of the malodorous, tough-looking "war veterans". After a while, we got through the fence and into the cottage. The old Bayleys were thrilled to see us because they had not seen a friendly face for a month while they had been besieged. They sat us down at their kitchen table and told us what it was like. Tom Bayley said, "We are being tortured." He also said that he had been on the farm for 70 years and had come from Chelmsford in Essex aged 20; everyone had told him that he should go out to the empire, so he did. He said that if he did what the thugs wanted and walked out of the house, they would take everything. He then produced a tray of medals that he had earned for military service for this country during the second world war. He also produced a British passport. At that moment, I felt overcome with shame, embarrassment and pity. I wondered what I as an MP could do for that guy—a British citizen, a British subject. What could the House of Commons and this country do to protect the rights of a Briton who had fought for his country and who had a British passport? I thought how fallen, how changed, this country was that we could do two thirds of zilch to protect a man in such circumstances. He started crying, and it was very upsetting.

The only person who seemed to have a plan in those deeply sad circumstances was the redoubtable Peta Thornycroft, who marched out, confronted the ZANU-PF thugs and said to one, "If you were my son, I'd bend you over my knee and beat you." These correspondents from The Daily Telegraph are pretty tough. As I recall, the man replied, with a signal lack of logic, "If you were my mother, you would not be my mother." I did not quite follow his argument, but in any case we parted with expressions of a mutual lack of esteem.

I returned to London and this place and set about trying to get some Sinemet for the old lady, Mrs. Bayley, who had Parkinson's disease, but there was absolutely nothing more that I could do. There was nothing that the Government could do and nothing that anyone could do—not a sausage, not a bean. That was very depressing.

Within a few months, the old couple were dead. People may say that they were hounded to their graves. He died of a heart attack, and she died of grief shortly afterwards. The younger couple also met tragedy: they were involved in a car crash in which Trish lost her life and her husband was badly injured. Their land was taken away.

When I think of that episode, it fills me with rage. People should think of the economic consequences of that episode alone. They should think of the madness and the economic destruction that the policy of land reform has brought to Zimbabwe. Danbury farm near Mazowe could, in good times, produce enough seedcorn to feed 1 million people. It could produce 47,000 litres of cooking oil. That is what the old boy told me in his misery. It could produce 90 tonnes of edible beef a year. Now those people were to be kicked out and given nothing. They were not going to be paid for the value of their land; they were going to be paid a quarter of the value of the improvements that they had notionally made to the land, and moreover they were going to be paid in Zimbabwean dollars.

Although I had that experience of meeting a white farmer who was being dispossessed of his land, that is not the whole story; it is only a fraction of the story of what Mugabe is doing to his people. It is not a story of black on white oppression. It is the story of one man systematically tyrannising his people: 800,000 black farmers and farm workers have been driven off their land, with catastrophic consequences for the country. If people go to Zimbabwe, they will see that the disaster is of almost biblical proportions. Inflation is running at 300 per cent. According to Save the Children, 5.2 million people need food aid. The economy is contracting. I think that the figure was 12 per cent. for last year alone.

Mugabe spends a great proportion of his time flying around the African continent in increasingly desperate efforts to barter the patrimony of Zimbabwe for vital oil supplies. He is always off in Tripoli trying to persuade Gaddafi to supply him with oil. He is mortgaging Zimbabwe's future, as I am sure the Minister knows, by trying to do a deal involving the pipeline from Beira to Mutare. He basically placed that pipeline in the hands of the Libyans in exchange for short-term oil supplies.

Harare is a glorified car park. It is paralysed. There is simply not enough fuel for people to move around. That is to say nothing of the AIDS situation. I think that HIV affects about one in three—perhaps 35 per cent.—of the adult population. That is to say nothing of the routine torture and intimidation of members of the opposition, the expulsion of journalists and all the stuff that we have read about: the mayor of Harare was suddenly descended on by 15 policemen the other day and ordered to leave his office, and above all, ZANU-PF use what food supplies there are as a political weapon. Grain stocks are being used to bully and coerce, as was described not long ago by Peter Oborne, the political editor of a magazine in which I must declare an interest.

I do not think that this is the place for just another recitation—although I have just given one—of the charges against Mr. Mugabe. We do not need any more tub-thumping denunciations from this House about the black Hitler and all that sort of jazz. We have done all that. My aim is to see what we can do to begin to find a way out for that country and its people. By way of praeteritio, I want to deal with a solution that we will certainly not employ, agreeable though it might be for red-faced colonels in the home counties to speculate about it. There simply will not be—unless the Minister corrects me—a military solution to the Zimbabwe problem in the short term. Delightful though it may be to conjure up images of 2 Para investing Harare airport and the Special Boat Service going up the Limpopo, I do not think that that will happen.

I am sure that the Minister has had many discussions with his constituents about Iraq, and there comes a point in any discussion about Iraq when people say, "Well, what about Zimbabwe?" They say that it is inconsistent to displace a tyrant in the middle east but to leave another tyrant in place in Africa. There is some force in that argument, and it may be true that if cars were powered by bananas, Africa would have greater strategic importance in the eyes of the Pentagon than it does now. We all agree, however, that a military operation would be much harder than people think, chiefly because the lines of supply would not be guaranteed from any neighbouring country. That explains politically why the military option has been ruled out. Mugabe does not stand in relation to his neighbours as Saddam Hussein stood in relation to his.

What does that leave? It leaves diplomacy. I think that it will be common ground in this Chamber—unless the Minister corrects me—that British and global diplomatic efforts have been marked by catastrophic failure. If we are to get anywhere in this business, we must not just put ourselves in the shoes of people such as the Bayleys, easy though it may be to identify with them; we must also try to understand the mindset and the rhetoric of the thugs to whom I talked, who were besieging the farm. We need to go back into history, look at the origins of the crisis and discover whence Mugabe emerged as a liberation leader whose power emanated from the barrel of a gun. In the imagination of his people, he triumphed over the regime of Ian Smith, which was, let us make no bones about it, odious in its own way. We have to go back and understand the history of Zimbabwe and whence Mugabe emerged.

I am in some ways a defender of colonialism. I believe that there were some good things about the British empire. I say that with no shame. I take a Whiggish view of the empire, which I think brought great benefits to many parts of the world, but there is no doubt that what is now called Zimbabwe was acquired by expropriation. The pioneer column crossed the Limpopo in 1890 in search of gold and, failing to find gold, grabbed what land it could. As Martin Meredith has written in his excellent book on Mugabe, the scramble for land became little more than plunder. Farms were pegged out regardless of whether local people were living there. Arriving in 1896, a new administrator, William Milton, was appalled by the scale of the land distribution. As he said:

"Jameson has given nearly the whole country away to Willoughby's whites, and others of that class so that there is absolutely no land left which is of any value."

The result was that by 1980, at the time of Zimbabwean independence, most of the productive land was still possessed by the whites. At the time of the Lancaster House talks, 6,000 large-scale white farmers owned 39 per cent. of the land and 8,000 small-scale black farmers owned 4 per cent. of the land. The remainder—inferior land—was held in common. In communal areas, the population density was three times greater than it was in what were thought of as the white areas.

There always has been—and still is—an overwhelming case for land reform in Zimbabwe. That should be common ground for all hon. Members in this Room. As Lord Carrington said at the time of the Lancaster House talks:

"We recognise that the future Government of Zimbabwe, whatever its political complexion, will wish to extend land ownership."

Mugabe embarked on a desultory programme of land reform, partly financed by the British Government. It was not a wholly successful programme. Partly because Zimbabwe was doing quite well during the 1980s, the programme did not advance very far. Indeed, Mugabe relied very much on the white settlers to keep the Zimbabwean economy going. There then came the problem of his excessive longevity in power and his need to maintain his position.

During the referendum in 2000, Mugabe tried to accelerate the process of land reform constitutionally. He tried to play the anti-colonial, anti-settler card in order to buoy up his popularity and shore up his position in power. Failing in that referendum, he began the terrible pogroms of the sort that we have seen during the past three years. He incited the war veterans to begin despoiling the farms in the way that I saw last year.

If one wanted to be polemical about the way in which the Labour Government have handled land reform and Mugabe, one could say that they have made a pretty poor fist of it. One could say that they have oscillated between apathy and a kind of megaphone diplomacy that simply played into Mugabe's hands because he was able to claim, "The big white chiefs are making a frightful noise in London. They are trying to boss us and bully us as they always used to. Why should we pay any heed to them?" One could make a case that the Government's handling of the issue has not been altogether brilliant.

On the other hand, one has to accept that Mugabe is largely to blame for the corruption of the land reform process and for a disgraceful episode that will go down as one of the most brutal and cynical acts of political manipulation in the past 20 years. It is a great disgrace. The question is what we do now.

There are several actors in the matter. There are the Europeans. In a hotly contested field, the most creepy example of recent French diplomacy was the decision to invite Mugabe to a summit in February, the day after European Union sanctions expired. I do not think that we can expect much real support or action from other EU countries.

A lot of hope is reposed in the other African countries. People often hope that Thabo Mbeki will do the business and pull the plug on Mugabe in the way that the apartheid regime in South Africa pulled the plug on Ian Smith. One has only to consider what Mugabe's fellow African leaders say about him to understand that they see Mugabe and the issue in a very different way. On his re-election in 2002, Daniel Arap Moi sent his

"congratulations and best wishes to his dear brother."

Benjamin Mpaka in Tanzania said Mugabe was "a champion of democracy" and added that

"the people of Zimbabwe have spoken loudly and clearly."

The more one listens to Thabo Mbeki, the clearer it becomes that the South Africans will not pull the plug. It is difficult for Thabo Mbeki to turn on a man whom he regards as a liberator and as his senior in the struggle for freedom for black Africa. Dismayingly, Mugabe attracts considerable support among black South Africans.

That leaves the Americans and us. The Americans are at last beginning to take notice. I was heartened by President Bush's recent visit and by the decision to stoke up interest in the subject in America, but we should not underestimate what we can do in Britain.

Who is Mugabe's greatest enemy? His greatest enemy is himself and the increasing damage that he is seen to be doing to Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwean economy. From talking to people in his regime, I am sure that he wants out. He wants to step down quietly at the age of 79 after 23 years in power. With at least half of his mind, he is aware of his failure and, more importantly, large numbers of people in ZANU-PF also recognise that he is their and Zimbabwe's leading liability.

The question for Members and the Government is whether we should make an exit for him. I have no doubt that ZANU-PF would like to restart dialogue with the British Government. Dialogue collapsed during the long row about land reform and was replaced by megaphone diplomacy, which I discussed earlier. An offer, which my hon. Friends will discuss in a moment and of which the Minister will be aware, will be put on the table. Mugabe, attended by all ceremony and dignity, will disappear from the scene. In return, he will achieve agreement on the following points: the acceptance of land reform with abuses to be dealt with; the recognition of the presidential election, which will be difficult; and the supply by Britain and other countries of substantial and immediate funds to pay for land reform and to assist Zimbabwe in its current plight.

Members and the Government must make a choice. We must work out whether Mugabe is bluffing in offering that so-called deal or whether there is a reason to open discussions. It may be that the deal is a typical ruse by a hardened tyrant who is trying to prolong his period in power. In my view, however, Mugabe's position is desperate: in 2000, some 660 British companies had investments in Zimbabwe; now 440 British companies invest in Zimbabwe. Furthermore, unemployment is running at 70 per cent. It would be a desperate thing for him to cling on, but desperate men may use desperate means.

Should we take the risk that Mugabe will continue to abuse his country until 2008, when his presidential term expires, or should we risk re-engaging with ZANU-PF, which may be seen as legitimising some of the monstrous things that he has done? One way or another, Zimbabwe will need our aid, which we are morally obliged to provide, to help to rebuild the country, which was once the bread-basket of Africa. One way or another, Mugabe will go and it will be sooner rather than later. It is a question for him: does he want to go like Ian Smith and continue to live in Harare or does he want a Ceausescu moment? We must think of the speediest method of removing a man who has done so much damage to his country. The tools at our disposal are limited, but as anybody who has travelled in sub-Saharan Africa knows, we are far more influential in that part of the world than is commonly supposed.

It is no longer good enough for the British Government to say that they are powerless and that anything they do makes matters worse. A policy of standing on one side is no longer good enough, and it is time for us to re-engage for the good of Zimbabwe and for the suffering people of that country.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) on securing the debate. He said that it was the 13th debate on the matter, and it may also be the 13th to take place in Westminster Hall. That is indicative of the Government's position and their embarrassment about the issue. It is a shame that we have never had the opportunity to debate the matter in the House.

I am the new chairman of the all-party Zimbabwe group, and this afternoon, the Zimbabwean high commissioner will meet it for the first time. I must, incidentally, apologise in advance as I am also on a three-line Whip and am expected to be in Select Committee at 10 o'clock, so I shall not be in the Chamber for the winding-up speeches. The Minister for Europe rather than the Minister responsible for Africa, attended the last debate. We did not, therefore, get much change from his speech or the subsequent debate.

We have a money laundering sub-committee in the Commonwealth secretariat, and we know from Transparency International that perhaps as much as $2 billion has been taken by President Mugabe and placed in banks. From Transparency International, we think that the money is largely in Malaysia and the City of London. Is it beyond the wit of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to organise with the Financial Services Authority an investigation into money laundering from Zimbabwe? I have raised this point before and will raise it again: if we can stop the flow of money, we can stop his future. When I went to UBS in Zurich, I was very impressed as it had 8,800 leads on Mugabe, his family and his Ministers going back 23 years. Not one of them led to UBS, and its representatives said in our meeting that all roads led to the City of London or Malaysia. We can raise the issue of his laundered money in this country.

I also want to press the Minister on the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. Will he explain what we are doing with CHOGM and the Commonwealth Secretariat? Don McKinnon is in Mputu this morning and he has been to the African Union Heads of State meetings over the past couple of days. CHOGM is due in Nigeria in December. It cannot be in President Obasanjo's interest to have the President of Zimbabwe arrive unannounced and uninvited to wait to be called on an airstrip in Abuja. The President of Nigeria and the secretary-general of the Commonwealth hold the cards. What conversations have the Government had with Don McKinnnon? We have a window of opportunity between now and December in which to resolve the Zimbabwe question.

I was a proud member of the London branch of the African National Congress for 10 years. Donald Woods, when he was alive, suggested a visit in the mid-1980s by eminent persons to South Africa, and that delegation published a report on its visit. Is that not a solution that would at least start the process of replacing Mugabe? By an agreement with the Commonwealth secretariat rather than the Government, could we not send a delegation of eminent persons to Zimbabwe before the CHOGM meeting, so that it can report on what it finds? It would be independent, untarnished by our colonial past and should be a proper, high-level visit by eminent people. I commend the Minister to follow that route.

President Obasanjo, President Mbeki and President Muluzi of Malawi met Morgan Tsvangari in Harare recently. Can the Minister confirm the four points that they discussed about President Mugabe's future? I believe that they discussed where he would live and a guarantee of his security. They discussed the idea that, if he stood down, there would be no court cases into any fraud, human rights abuses or money laundering. The case involving the former President of Kenya, President Moi, is now on its way to the High Court, and the former President of Zambia, President Chilumba, is on his way to the High Court in Zambia. It would seem remiss if President Mugabe were not also on his way to the High Court in due course. I would still like to know whether that was on the agenda when the three presidents met Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai.

Thirdly, I gather that President Mugabe is prepared to stand down if he can keep his money. I have raised this point before and will raise it again. Could we just turn off his money laundering?

Finally, President Mugabe wanted to name a successor. I understand that the Movement for Democratic Change realises that if there is going to be a shift in Government, there will have to be an interim Government. It is considering that and does not think it a bad idea. However, it will not accept all the other things on the agenda that Mugabe raised during the visit. Will the Minister confirm that?

Members who read The Independent will have seen that it features a front-page story reporting that Mugabe is involved in negotiations and that there seems to be some movement. Is that true? Will the Minister comment on that?

The disappointment for black Africa is the lack of black leadership. That is what we find difficult, given that it was, largely, a white colonial power that took Africa. The most disappointing person is President Mbeki. It is really depressing to hear him play up President Mugabe. He must know, through his own diplomatic sources and evidence, of the criminalisation of life in Zimbabwe. The hon. Member for Henley has already given statistics, and I do not want to go over all of them. He talked about the mayor of Harare, who was arrested twice last week. We should also consider that 800 opposition activists, some of whom have been beaten and tortured, have been arrested in the past six weeks. We have met some of the activists in the House. Some are held in police custody and have no access to the law, and 150 have been hospitalised. Mugabe does nothing to stop that. If the perpetrators are not prosecuted and there is no investigation, there is a breakdown and we have a failed state.

If it is right to bring about regime change in Iraq, it is also right to consider Zimbabwe in that context. We should not back away from the matter or be embarrassed about our colonial past. We are talking about the most disgraceful abuse of human rights anywhere in the world. It is shameful that it is allowed and that black presidents in neighbouring countries do not stand up to it. That is part of the disappointment.

Time is running out for Zimbabwe. A political settlement is needed as a matter of urgency. We might disagree about the exact figures, but about 5 million people need food aid, and fuel and electricity are short. Official inflation is running at 300 per cent., but I think that it is substantially more than that. The country has something of the Germany of the 1920s about it. There is no foreign currency, there is a shortage of bank notes and there is unemployment—employment is never a given in any African state—of between 70 and 85 per cent.

Zimbabwe was once the bread-basket of Africa. Over the past 50 years, it could have fed not only itself, but many surrounding countries. It is sad to see what a desperate state the country is in, and it is sad that we just stand by. We cannot support that policy any longer.

We need to engage President Mbeki and President Obasanjo. They are the two key elements in the jigsaw. We have about five months before CHOGM in Abuja on 5 to 8 December. We need to pressure Mugabe now to enter into unconditional negotiations.

I am both pleased and saddened that we are debating Zimbabwe again. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) on securing the debate. It is timely because this afternoon sees the inaugural meeting of the all-party Zimbabwe group, which I hope to attend. If nothing else, it will show the broad cross-party support that exists, as demonstrated by the comments of the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt), with which I completely agree.

In spite of the fact that we have debated Zimbabwe 12 times in Westminster Hall since February 2000, we are here for the 13th time today, because we still take the matter extremely seriously. However, while we debate the issue, the situation in Zimbabwe worsens by the day and by the hour. I wonder, somewhat sadly and forlornly, whether we will be here again in weeks and months to come to debate the matter for the 14th time and to repeat the same impassioned, frustrated and desperate pleas, as we watch what was once the grain basket of Africa rapidly become its basket case.

I shall not rehearse the arguments that have been made today and in previous debates, but, before I come to the main thrust of my comments, I wish to discuss something with which I believe many others have struggled. In a statement on Iraq, the Prime Minister said,

"let us at least not forget the 4 million Iraqi exiles, and the thousands of children who die needlessly every year due to Saddam's impoverishment of his country—a country which in 1978 was wealthier than Portugal or Malaysia but is now in ruins, with 60 per cent. of its people on food aid. Let us not forget the tens of thousands imprisoned, tortured or executed by his barbarity every year. The innocent die every day in Iraq—victims of Saddam—and their plight, too, should be heard."—[Official Report, 25 February 2003; Vol. 400, c. 125–26.]

On the very same day, at Foreign and Commonwealth questions, the Minister for Trade and Investment stated, in his remarks on human rights abuses in Zimbabwe:

"The situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate. The leader of the opposition is on trial for treason. Arrests and torture of those opposed to President Mugabe's regime continue unabated. The economy is in crisis: unemployment is at over 70 per cent., inflation is above 200 per cent., the currency is in free fall, there is a critical shortage of foreign exchange, and more than 7 million Zimbabweans now need emergency food aid."

The rhetoric and barefaced facts in both statements are powerful. In the eyes of many, including me, the former was justification enough to go to war. Yet on the latter, the Minister for Trade and Investment concluded:

"We are doing what we can to feed the population",

and, later,

"if a regime is determined to destroy its own country and its own people, there is a limit to what the international community can do."—[Official Report, 25 February 2003; Vol. 400, c. 105–07.]

In a previous debate on Zimbabwe some time ago. the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Bradshaw)—he has moved ministerial posts since then—accused me of advocating military intervention in Zimbabwe, although I was not advocating that at that time. I am not certain that I share the views so artfully articulated, as one would expect, by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley, because, if there were a genuine desire to use military intervention in Zimbabwe— which, again, I am not advocating this morning—I do not believe that it would pose the problems that my hon. Friend described.

I am confused. Is the hon. Gentleman advocating military intervention?

I am sorry that the Minister is confused. I am not necessarily advocating military intervention, but I am saying that, if there were a desire for military intervention, it would not involve the problems suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley. In other words, it would be possible to intervene militarily, but I am not saying that that is the answer.

Since my hon. Friend has invoked my point about military intervention, perhaps I could clarify it? My intention was to describe the world as I see it, rather than as I would like to see it. I do not believe that military intervention in Zimbabwe is likely; I sought to get that point out of the way and then to consider the diplomatic possibilities. I share my hon. Friend's martial enthusiasm in principle, but believe that it is unlikely to be reflected in practice.

I should not wish it to go on the record that my martial enthusiasm extended to a full-blooded invasion of Zimbabwe, because that is not what I suggested. However, it is worth pointing out that the European Union President was keen to create an African peacekeeping force, the aim of which was boldly stated in the mission statement as being

"an African solution to African problems."

That force was to be accompanied by a European Union funding package of £170 million, but the President was thwarted in his intention because, as he said:

"We face a wall in any contacts, and that wall is Zimbabwe."

I leave it for others to comment on whether there is a message in that statement.

By drawing attention to the consistency or inconsistency between the statements made about the humanitarian raison d'être for using force in Iraq, and the lack of action in Zimbabwe, I was questioning whether the reactions to Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe were proportionately consistent. I am sure that many others struggle with that problem and think along similar lines, but that is not the central issue that I wish to pursue.

The issue on which I shall question a Minister again—although it will be the first time that I question the new Minister on it—is that of the Zimbabwe public service pensions for those who were in government service. Over the past few months, I have received visits at my surgeries and considerable correspondence from a number of Zimbabwean pensioners as well as the Overseas Service Pensioners' Association, about the cessation of their pension payments. Although no agreement was made on public officers when the Zimbabwean Government was formed at the time of independence, the then Minister in charge, Lord Trefgarne, wrote in December 1979 that the Zimbabwean independence constitution would contain full safeguards for public service pensions and their remittability. The 1979 Lancaster House agreement ensured that the Zimbabwe constitution would contain provisions relating to pensions payable in respect of the service of a public officer, and that pension benefits would continue to be paid to those no longer resident in Zimbabwe.

Nevertheless, as we have heard this morning, Zimbabwe has continued to be ravaged by Robert Mugabe, who presides over a country in which inflation has risen to 260 per cent., and where pessimists suggest that the figure may soon rise to 500 per cent. He is bankrupting the country and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley said, he has mortgaged the strategic oil assets to Libya, and plundered the country's exchequer. As a result of that and the rampant inflation, those pensioners' pensions have been rendered almost valueless. Those people, servants of the Crown, have been told by the Zimbabwean Government that payment of their pensions has ceased because the Government have no foreign currency. That has been the case since February.

Unlike Mr. Mugabe, those pensioners are not in a position to raise their salaries from 3 million Zimbabwean dollars to 20.2 million Zimbabwean dollars, with an additional 2 million Zimbabwean dollars in annual cash expenses, as he has done in the past few weeks, It is far easier to stay ahead of such colossal inflationary rises, when one is in a position to award oneself a 600 per cent. salary rise.

The assurances given at the time of Lancaster House were taken at face value, and we must remember the exceptional circumstances of that period. It seems that the Government, through a disingenuous argument, seek now to renege on a promise given in good faith. The reason why there is no safeguard for the former servants of the Crown is explained in a letter from the Foreign Secretary to Lord Waddington on 25 June. In it, he claims that because people were recruited on "local terms", the

"British Government therefore had no responsibility for matters connected with public administration".

The Foreign Secretary disavows any form of responsibility that we may hold towards these people, concluding that:

"Responsibility for payment of these pensions therefore rests with the Zimbabwe Government",

and hence,

"I fear that until the Zimbabwean economy improves, pension payments will continue to be intermittent at best."

He can say that again.

There we have it: because the people who once served our country were allegedly recruited locally by the then Rhodesian Government, they are no longer our responsibility. If that were the case, it would be at best unsatisfactory for us to try to wash our hands of what are blatantly our responsibilities, but even that premise has been robustly challenged by Lord Waddington. In another place on 27 June 2000, responding to a Minister's letter to the chairman of the OSPA, he was right to say that

"what the Minister was conveniently ignoring is that many of the Zimbabwe pensioners were in fact recruited here, on what were expatriate-type terms broadly similar to those of HMOCS"—

Her Majesty's overseas civil service—

"officers in other dependent territories. Their passages were paid out to the territory, they took their leave entitlement back here and now, at the end of their service, they have retired here. It really is disingenuous to pretend that local people recruited locally in the colonies are in like case. Clearly they are not."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 June 2000; Vol. 614, c. 854.]

When the Under-Secretary, Baroness Amos, wrote to me in June last year, she was as unhelpful as the Foreign Secretary:

"I fear that until there is an improvement in the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, and the value of the Zimbabwean dollar on the foreign exchange market increases, there is unlikely to be any improvement in the level of pensions paid to pensioners. I know this will be of little consolation to your constituent".

That is dead right, although I do not even need to answer that further because the constituent who has had his pension frozen, Mr. Wade, answered it for me when he wrote:

"The situation is daily becoming more desperate, not just for the whites, but for the whole community, and just what are we doing politically?—Sweet nothing!"

It is also worth remembering that the British Government have continued to pump money into Zimbabwe—some £51 million since 2001, and an estimated £35 million in contributions this year alone. Mr. Wade's sentiments are echoed by another constituent, Mr. Bibby:

"It seems that Mugabe will be allowed to carry on intimidating and murdering all who stand in his way, and, no doubt, we will spend tax payers' money feeding the starving inhabitants of that benighted country which is entirely attributable to Mugabe's megalomania. We live in strange times".

Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that we should not be feeding the starving in Zimbabwe?

I am not, and if the Minister had been paying attention, he would realise that I was quoting a constituent's letter that merely showed the exasperation felt by many of the pensioners who cannot understand the Government's inactivity. If the Minister allows me to conclude my remarks, I will answer the point in due course.

What does the Minister intend to do to help the people whose pensions have been effectively wiped out? It is no good keeping his head down and hoping that an economic miracle will take place in Zimbabwe. Those people need help and deserve the good faith of a Government who so far appear happy to have turned a blind eye to the problem. Will they consider doing what they did with Aden and Somalia? For other reasons, it was not possible to make a public officers' agreement with the emerging Government, so a loan advance scheme was set up that protected the pensioners for as long as necessary.

The 1,200 pensioners living in this country, 700 of whom were recruited through Rhodesia House—the then Southern Rhodesian Government office in London—are in desperate circumstances. They are owed not only an explanation, but prompt action. The Overseas Pensions Act 1973 would allow Her Majesty's Government to protect the pensions of Zimbabwe public service pensioners in the same way as those of British colonial pensioners. Contrary to what has been stated by Ministers, some groups of pensioners are not covered by public officers' agreements, through which pensions are protected by the Government, and I would welcome the Minister's remarks on that.

The Minister asked whether I thought that we should cease aid to Zimbabwe and allow people to starve just because pensioners in this country are not receiving their pensions. Of course I am not suggesting that. I remind the Minister that I have tabled a number of questions and repeatedly asked what the Government are doing to trace the millions stolen by President Mugabe—the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey suggested earlier that that figure was as much as £2 billion. It is no good saying that whenever we suggest taking action, we are exacerbating the situation politically or economically, because people do not believe that.

I concede that the most important thing to do at the moment is to rid Zimbabwe of the benighted influence of its self-elected President. I am heartened by reports from Pretoria last week that President Bush met President Mbeki to discuss a £6.2 billion reconstruction package over an unspecified time and perhaps elections in 2004 that could involve the exit of Mugabe. I do not wish to discuss my own views on what should happen to Mugabe—whether he should be pursued by a high court, whether all his international assets should be sequestered, or whether he should not be given domicile in this country—because it is more important to get rid of him first on almost any condition that he takes.

However, we are talking about 2004, which is a long time for those who are not receiving their pensions, and a deal between the Americans and the South Africans, with, yet again, Britain playing no role. I find that humiliating. The point that I am trying to make is that, although the Government can continue to deny legal responsibility for the pensioners, they can no longer ignore their moral responsibility.

It is extremely depressing to meet again, for the 13th time in a few short years, to discuss a matter that seems only to get worse without any decent progress being made. Like others, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) for securing the debate and setting out a range of issues and points of view, which deserve serious answer from the Minister. The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt), who has had to leave the Chamber, also set out important questions, in particular about money laundering to which I will return. As the new chair of the all-party Zimbabwe group, he has tackled his brief with enthusiasm and vigour and already instigated a series of initiatives that will hopefully add a perspective, which has been lacking until now, on Parliament's role in the whole sorry saga.

The hon. Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) commented on many of those issues, but also highlighted the serious case of those people in Britain whose pensions are in some difficulty. I hope that the Minister will shed light on that, not least because the 1,200 or so affected are spread throughout the United Kingdom.

Many of the developments have been set out by other speakers, each of them apologising for repeating a well-known story. The seriousness of that story is none the less such that it bears repetition and requires us to confront uncomfortable facts. Every current measure in Zimbabwe is designed to hold on to the power that was stolen in last year's election. Measures may be legal, although they are mostly illegal. They involve torture, rape, murder and a huge list of atrocities. There have been sustained efforts against the Movement for Democratic Change. There have been charges against its leader Morgan Tsvangirai for an alleged murder plot against Mugabe or for organising the stay aways over the past few months.

We must not lose sight of the fact that despite all that intimidation and the real dangers to themselves and their families, thousands of people in Zimbabwe keep taking to the streets. Everywhere they turn, ZANU-PF is waiting with some trumped-up charge or some simple, ugly violence. Only a few days ago the mayor of Harare was the latest to bear the brunt of that. This is more than just a political crisis. It entails serious abuses of human rights that have been documented here this morning and by many international groups.

Amnesty International in its 2003 report sets out the catalogue of violations. They include extra-judicial executions by the Zimbabwe defence force, impunity for state or state-backed groups who commit atrocities, intimidation of the judiciary, and the repression of freedom of expression, association and assembly, which are basic freedoms that we take for granted here in Britain and elsewhere in the west. More than 1,000 cases of torture were reported to Amnesty in 2002.

We must never lose sight of that stark figure, not least because it happens against the backdrop of an economy that adds humanitarian angles to the human rights abuses and the political disgrace of Zimbabwe. It is an economy on its knees. Maize production from the once great producer in Africa now feeds barely 50 per cent. of Zimbabwe's people. Two million people still need food aid. The United Nations estimates that perhaps as many as 5.5 million will need humanitarian assistance by the end of this year.

Responses from across the world have been inadequate. Indeed, the whole world community has been paralysed. It has been taunted by a dangerous dictator and ridiculed by a regime that, despite its lack of public support, its bankrupt economy and collapsing Government infrastructure, still manages to outmanoeuvre and outwit its neighbours, the European Union, the United States and the entire UN. It is the people of Zimbabwe who pay the price.

There is a major responsibility on the African countries, which was highlighted earlier this morning. President Mbeki has claimed that there is a dialogue between ZANU-PF and the MDC, a claim that is rejected by the leadership of the MDC itself. The African Union shows how seriously it takes this crisis by awarding Zimbabwe a prominent position in its secretariat. The New Partnership for Africa's Development, the great hope for Africa and Africa's ability to take these issues on itself and to sort out its own problems, now seems doomed with its hopes dashed. As the Amnesty International report puts it, efforts to promote Zimbabwe as a test of the efficacy of the newly launched African Union and NEPAD have failed, following the reluctance of most African leaders to condemn the Zimbabwean Government's human rights record. That is not being said by some partisan politician in the UK or elsewhere, but by Amnesty International.

Africa's failure has been supported—if that is the right word—by the European Union. We have anguished about it and wrung our hands, but we have implemented only limited sanctions. Our political position has been undermined by the French, who allowed Mugabe to visit their country—that leaves a bitter taste in many people's mouths. In the United States, we have heard increasingly strong words from Secretary of State Colin Powell, yet in South Africa last week, President Bush's comments appeared to soften the tone and to weaken the position that America had begun to develop.

This morning's report in The Independent, referred to earlier, hints at the prospect of a deal. If there is such a prospect, I hope that the Minister will clarify the situation. I make it abundantly clear that this country is not interested in some kind of mediated handover from one ZANU-PF thug to another. If there is to be a transition in Zimbabwe, it must be on the basis of fresh elections.

The UK Government have been strong on rhetoric but they suffer from paralysis. The Minister is new to his portfolio; I hope that he brings a new perspective to it. During his career, he has gained the reputation of being a renowned champion of human rights causes, and there could be no greater challenge than Zimbabwe. The Government must back up their denunciations with efforts, clamp down on exemptions to existing sanctions, extend those sanctions to cover the wives and families of those on the list, and widen the pool of ZANU-PF officials who are covered by it.

As the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey mentioned, the Government must focus on the regime's business partners based in the EU. There are huge new powers in the UK to investigate money laundering. Much is at stake in the City of London, yet there is precious little evidence that any money has been tracked down.

We must broaden the Government's diplomatic operations, and take more action at the United Nations. The Foreign Secretary has argued that there is no majority at the UN in favour of action, but—as was demonstrated during the Iraq crisis—this is surely not a Government who should be cowed by being in a minority. They should be taking the debate to the UN and ensuring that we know who is opposed to sanctions and other actions against Zimbabwe.

Perhaps most fundamentally, we must make up our mind about the MDC. There are major issues concerning any Government intervening in another country's politics. Elected Governments must respect other legitimately elected Governments, but does anybody seriously believe that ZANU-PF is properly and democratically elected, or that Mugabe is the rightful President of Zimbabwe? If the British Government cannot change their position, they should explain why not, but they should not stand in the way of other bodies that could and should be seeking to promote democracy in Zimbabwe. The MDC has routinely demonstrated its credentials and has withstood intimidation on a grand scale; it should have our support.

The post-colonial guilt trip is played against this Government all the time. Rather than continuing to be blinded by it, they must see past it. Rather than being conned, the UK Government should be challenging Mugabe and his regime, holding up the MDC as the hope for the future and agitating on the world stage for real and effective change.

I warmly welcome the Minister to his new role. He carries with him a fine reputation for human rights awareness, so we will be very interested to hear what he has to say today. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) on introducing this important debate. Over a long period he has directly and indirectly highlighted the tragedy of Zimbabwe, and we are grateful for the very forceful way in which he has brought the matter to the House's attention this morning. I also very much welcome the establishment of the all-party Zimbabwe group.

As we have heard, Zimbabwe remains in the grip of terror. It is locked in a horrifying downward spiral. Zimbabweans suffer unparalleled economic hardship and brutality, which has come about directly because of the Mugabe regime. When farm occupations started, we knew exactly where they would lead. A legitimate desire for land reform was used as an excuse. Illegal seizure of farmland, coupled with increasing violence, was simply the start of a process of collapse and chaos that has continued unabated. We have seen destruction coupled with economic implosion and starvation, all to a terrifying and sinister backdrop of violence. I applaud my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire), who raised the tragic plight of pensioners who worked as civil servants for the Crown. I hope that the Minister will respond to his points.

My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary and his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude), called for action to halt Mugabe's thuggery at each stage at which it became worse. We called for specific action each time, and we are sad and regret that the Government, indeed the whole international community, have reacted very slowly. The Government initially pleaded for caution, then moved on to say that firm action was being taken. We must ask what action that was. Targeted sanctions and travel bans were introduced only after enormous prompting from Conservative Members and others, and they are, even now, sporadic and unfocused.

In spite of all that, Zimbabweans have come validly as refugees to this country, and some to my constituency. The Home Office appears to believe that Zimbabwe is a place to which it is safe for asylum seekers who seek to stay in the UK to return. Is that really what the Government believe? We need some clarity on that.

My hon. Friends and others have talked about the terrifying economic statistics that provide the backdrop to the situation in Zimbabwe, so I shall not rehearse them. How the country has deteriorated is almost beyond description. The once thriving agricultural sector collapsed last year after confiscation of commercial farms. That was done supposedly for the poor and dispossessed, but land reform actually benefited Mugabe's cronies, the apparatchiks of ZANU-PF and his stalwarts. It certainly did not help landless peasants. On money laundering and the acquisition of properties and moneys abroad, the point made by the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt) was very telling.

The productive land of Zimbabwe lies idle and uncultivated while starvation bites deeper. I saw that for myself last summer when I visited Zimbabwe with my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary. Human rights have been routinely abused. Recently., the persecution of opposition MDC supporters has intensified, and everyone is suffering in consequence. I heard about that, in the most graphic and moving detail a matter of weeks ago from Archbishop Ncube of Bulawayo, who, when in London, spelled out what was happening, so tragically, in Matabeleland. Last month came the arrest of the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. He was paraded in a courtroom in shackles and leg irons before being released on bail on 20 June. His offence was to call for work stoppages and demonstrations to protest non-violently at the economic suffering and political repression. His supporters have been targeted equally.

I echo the points of the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore). For many months we have pressed for the involvement of the United Nations Security Council. I recognise the difficulties involved. We have been told that the UN could not get involved because events in Zimbabwe were an "internal matter". We were told that it becomes involved only when civil war, genocide and wanton destruction spill into surrounding countries. I put it to the Minister that all the ingredients for civil war between the two major tribal groupings are already in place. Indeed, there have been warnings of genocide from Archbishop Ncube and others. There is absolutely no doubt that the crisis in Zimbabwe is spilling into surrounding countries, leading to a dramatic drop in inward investment and considerable numbers of refugees.

South Africa and its African partners understandably fear the repercussions of the state collapse that is happening before their eyes. Two million Zimbabwean refugees are now in South Africa, and we know the effect on the South African economy and its reputation. Damage has been done to the entire continent's admirable efforts to establish new political and trade relationships with the rest of the world through the New Partnership for Africa's Development, part of which deals with good governance.

No matter how brutal state-sponsored violence is, it is no longer great enough to produce compliance among the civilian population. We have seen that recently. Civil rights groups, trade unionists and ordinary people are taking to the streets, staying away from work and challenging the legitimacy of the Government. Despite claims that it was taking a strong line in imposing targeted sanctions and travel bans on leading figures in Mugabe's regime, the so-called common position of the EU was shown to be a sham when Mr. Mugabe visited President Chirac—a point made by the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale. To those who think it right to establish a public dialogue with Mugabe, I say that it simply leads to a further deterioration in the situation and reinforces the leadership of that individual, as we have seen over and over. It has the reverse effect from the original intention.

Yesterday, President Mbeki spoke on radio and television in the UK during President Bush's important tour of Africa. He was explicit in his revelation of discussions between ZANU-PF and the MDC. I was perplexed when I listened to his talk of discussions and Mugabe stepping down. Frankly, we have heard it before, and all too often. I find it hard to believe that Mugabe will willingly surrender power after all that he has done to preserve it. Both ZANU-PF and the MDC have specifically contradicted President Mbeki's view.

Mugabe has been named as the African Union's ambassador for southern Africa. That sends a message merely of acceptance and tolerance of Mugabe's crimes, which should not be the underlying intention of the AU. It is quite extraordinary. Each time we have been told that progress is being made, we have seen precious few results. If there has been softly-softly diplomacy and people believe that progress might be made after so many false dawns and contradictory messages have emanated from Harare, it is not unreasonable that we should look for some sign from Mugabe. The violence must end, and be seen to have ended. That must be concrete, and a clear message must be sent that something positive is being achieved. If President Mbeki is sponsoring some unofficial dialogue, he must continue to press for cessation of the violence as part and parcel of the process, and he should say so openly and publicly.

What light can the Minister shed on recent events and President Mbeki's comments? If there is an agreement in the offing to end the downward spiral of thuggery and economic misery, it will, of course, be welcome, but there can be no resolution until the downward spiral is brought to a halt, Mugabe steps down and free and fair elections take place. Until we see some clear signs of that happening, pressure from the international community must continue.

May I make it clear at the outset that the Government share the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) and his colleagues about the dreadful situation in Zimbabwe? We welcome constructive contributions to the debate on how to deal with the matter and we share the widespread frustration of all decent people that there are no easy or immediate solutions to the plight of Zimbabwe and its people.

During the past two years, there has been a great deal of huffing and puffing from some Opposition Members. As the hon. Member for Henley said, this is our 13th debate on the matter and there has been a marked absence of constructive suggestions. I was pleasantly surprised by the hon. Gentleman's demeanour, but not by that of the hon. Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire). In the Opposition's wilder moments, military action has been suggested, which, as the hon. Member for Henley hinted, may play well in the saloon bars of Henley and East Devon, but which makes us a laughing stock in the real world.

I sought earlier to put the record straight. I was not arguing for military intervention in Zimbabwe, but pointing out its feasibility and disagreeing with my hon. Friend the Member for Henley about that. It is disingenuous of the Minister to repeat what is not the truth.

I was not entirely clear what the hon. Gentleman was suggesting, but he raised the possibility of military action and some of his colleagues, who are not present today, have also done so. I am pleased to hear that the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), after some hesitation, has confirmed to the Foreign Secretary that he, at least, is not proposing military action. I hope that we shall hear no more of such folly.

I have read the contributions of he hon. Member for Henley to The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph which, understandably, focus on the plight of white farmers whose land has been brutally and illegally expropriated. I do not want to minimise the plight of families such as the Bayleys, which he described so movingly, but, outrageous as it is, it pales into insignificance when compared with the plight of the hundreds of thousands of black farm workers and their families who worked on the appropriated white farms, many of whom face destitution and starvation.

Before I move on, I could perhaps make another point. The worst atrocities in Zimbabwe occurred not during the past two or three years, but during the early years of the Mugabe regime when his army slaughtered thousands of people in Matabeleland. It is a matter of record that the Government in power at that time were Conservative. It is also a matter of record that they had little or nothing to say on the subject. They were unable to summon even a tiny fraction of the outrage that they have managed to summon over the dispossession of white farmers. Indeed, I am told that Mugabe later registered his appreciation for the understanding that they had shown over the problem in Matabeleland. So let us have no more nonsense of the sort that we sometimes hear—not necessarily today—from Conservative Members about the Government walking by on the other side of the road.

I utterly refute the assertion that we do not take the situation in Zimbabwe seriously enough. That is manifestly not the case. We have lone as much as or more than any other country to draw the world's attention to what is happening in Zimbabwe. From the outset we have worked with the Commonwealth, the European Union, the United States and—most importantly—other countries in the region to isolate the ZANU-PF regime. We have helped to secure Commonwealth sanctions, EU sanctions and Zimbabwe's suspension from the International Monetary Fund. We will not support sanctions that make the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans any harder than they are at the moment. I assume that we can count on the Opposition to support that position.

EU sanctions, which include a travel ban, an asset freeze and an arms embargo, are targeted at the guilty rather than the innocent. In addition, on 6 June, the IMF suspended Zimbabwe's voting rights—the only time that that has happened to a country not involved in conflict. In effect, Mugabe has imposed his own sanctions on Zimbabwe. It has been suggested that sanctions should be extended to business people with alleged connections to ZANU-PF. The EU has so far not taken that step, but it remains an option that cannot be ruled out.

The hon. Members for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore) and for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) suggested that we should move a resolution at the UN Security Council. Hon. Members will know that the UN Commission on Human Rights is the major forum for addressing human rights abuses. The EU, with the support of the UK, has proposed resolutions on Zimbabwe at the commission in each of the past two years. On both occasions the resolutions were lost to no-action motions. Of the 11 Security Council members on the commission this year, six—including all the African countries—supported no action. Hon. Members may find that frustrating, as do I, but if Zimbabwe's neighbours do not consider that its problems merit UN discussion, there is not the slightest chance of a draft resolution being passed by the Security Council, and even to propose one would be an own goal.

We are working closely with the South Africans, and it is right that they should have the lead role as they are, after all, in the front line. They are playing host to perhaps 1 million Zimbabwean refugees, so they are as aware as anybody of the ruin that Mugabe and ZANU-PF have brought upon Zimbabwe. They have as much interest as anybody in a peaceful transition to a stable and democratic Zimbabwe.

The South Africans have not been inactive. In May, the South African President together with the Presidents of Malawi and of Nigeria went to Harare to discuss with all parties the prospects for a peaceful transition. That dialogue continues; the Prime Minister saw President Mbeki yesterday who again confirmed that there are informal contacts between the Zimbabwean parties, some of which are mediated by the South Africans and some by church groups. President Bush saw President Mbeki on 9 July and noted that the US and South Africa share the same objectives and that he would not second guess President Mbeki, and I do not think that we ought to either.

That is an extremely important point, and we all agree that South Africa has a lead role. If President Mbeki is sponsoring those unofficial contacts, that is good. I hope that the Minister, through the Foreign Secretary or the Prime Minister, will make it absolutely clear that there should be no dialogue while physical persecution is directed against the MDC. There is no encouragement for the MDC to act while their lives and 1 hose of their families are at risk every day.

I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. There are some informal contacts, because I guess that some members of ZANU-PF know that the regime is ending. Not all of them approve of what has been going on over the years and they may be looking for an exit strategy. It is not unreasonable to suspect that informal contact is being made. It is in the interests of both parties, with a view to providing some kind of transitional Government prior to free elections. However, I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale that free elections must be the ultimate goal so that a new democratic regime can be installed.

The Minister has not addressed my central point. I accept what he says, but I merely pointed out that there is no basis for the MDC to have confidence in an ongoing dialogue if its supporters are subject to persecution. The British Government must say to our South African friends, who may be sponsoring the dialogue, that if it is to prosper, there must be a clear indication from Mugabe that he will stop the persecution.

I do not want to speak for the MDC, which is on the front line: indeed, none of us should. I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, and I would not encourage formal contact if persecution took place daily. However, such contacts are taking place informally, and I hope that they will be formal before long.

I will now say a word about the humanitarian crisis and our contribution to dealing with it. Last year we helped to feed more than 7 million Zimbabweans: this year we expect about 5.5 million to require food aid. In addition, about 35 per cent. of the population is HIV-infected. The UK Government have led the international response to the humanitarian crisis. We are the largest European bilateral aid donor and the second overall after the United States. We will continue to contribute significantly to humanitarian relief for the foreseeable future. It is not without irony that Britain and the United States—the two countries most regularly singled out for criticism by Mugabe—are doing more to feed his people than he is. In addition to feeding programmes, we maintain a substantial programme to tackle HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe, and we expect to spend £26 million on the project over five years.

I will briefly touch on some points raised by hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt). If I am not able to deal with all the points made, I will write to hon. Members. Like others, my hon. Friend asked about money laundering. If he or anyone else has evidence that Zimbabwean money is being laundered through the City of London, he should give it to us and we will pass it on to the Financial Services Authority—that point has been made to him before. We require evidence before we can proceed.

I agree that it is highly undesirable that Mugabe should be present at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, and President Obasanjo of Nigeria, who is hosting the conference, is well aware of that and active on the subject. I will meet the Commonwealth secretary-general on Thursday, and we will undoubtedly discuss that issue.

The hon. Member for East Devon asked about pensioners. The fact is that many of those affected are not servants of the Crown. I am sorry if that argument is disappointing, and I understand he will be disappointed for those concerned. There is no obligation under the Lancaster House agreement, which the Government made clear at the time. The Government are responsible for paying the small number of colonial pensioners now resident in Zimbabwe, who were recruited by or on behalf of the Secretary of State for the Colonies to serve on expatriate terms. We also pay British state pensions to some British citizens living in Zimbabwe.

We do not think that it is safe for refugees to return to Zimbabwe. I am involved in discussions with the Home Office about the letter that has been distributed.

In conclusion, although it can sometimes be frustrating, we must work through international institutions and with our international partners. It would be absolute folly for the UK to act unilaterally, and the Zimbabwean opposition groups are not asking us to. On the contrary, they recognise, as most sensible people do, that unilateral action by the UK would play straight into the hands of Mugabe and his henchmen—he would like nothing better. Indeed, he never tires of trying to blame the problems of his country on Britain, and we should not provide him with a further excuse for doing so.

This debate is about the misery of the thousands of my poor blighted constituents who live along the A350 in Dorset. I wish to express my thanks to Dorset county council, the North Dorset Roads Action Group and various parish and town councils for helping me to prepare for this debate. I also wish to thank officials at the Government office for the south-west, who were always courteous but who were unable to give my constituents or me the answers that we sought. I congratulate the Secretary of State on his recent announcement to spend some £7 billion on new motorway projects. Unfortunately, once again, there are no funds for the south-west, but I welcome his realisation that the seven-year moratorium on road building has been short-sighted.

One of the reasons why motorways are so badly congested by short and medium-distance traffic is that far too many A-roads are inadequate. The problem must be tackled in parallel with improvements to motorways and public transport, but improvements to A-roads will benefit most people and will be infinitely more cost-effective than the other two aspirations.

An example of that is the A350 in Dorset, which runs through my constituency. It is an important route but a very bad road. It is of considerable local and strategic importance, but it is a terrible, inadequate, slow and dangerous road. The route provides the only northern link between the south-east Dorset conurbation around Bournemouth, which, with the port at Poole, is the second largest in the south-west, and the hinterland of market towns to the north and west. It connects the south coast and the continent, directly or via the A36 to the M4, the Bristol/Bath conurbation, south Wales, the west midlands, the north-west and even Ireland.

Every day, 10,000 vehicles use the road. Drivers tolerate insufferable road conditions, driving at an average of just 33 mph at best—half the speed that they should reasonably expect. They have no alternatives. There are no railways, and there is no way that traffic can be diverted—nor should it be, as a high proportion of it is local traffic, which includes the small-business economy of the south-west going about its everyday activities. Ordinary people use the only means of transport that is available to them—their motor cars—to go to work, to go shopping, to take their children to school and to conduct their lives.

The economy of the area is underachieving because of the run-down in agriculture and because companies are not investing there, largely because of inadequate infrastructure, including roads. Yet the Government are imposing an increasing housing commitment of some 5,000 houses on the north Dorset district. That is welcome, because lower-priced homes might offer the chance to local young people to slay and not have to emigrate from the area, but there is every prospect that already heavy traffic will increase dramatically and that the chaos of building will start years ahead of improved road infrastructure, for which there are no plans anyway.

Some of the major treasures in Dorset are its villages, which are set in spectacular scenery. They have the potential to attract tourism, but tourist visiting is low because of poor access. Villages and some small towns such as Shaftesbury and Blandford suffer blight from traffic because the A350 road is so bad. Its alignment is 18th century: narrow, rarely more than 4 m in width, whereas the minimum for a modern A road is 6 m; and there are steep hills and blind bends. The road fails even to come up to the standard of a basic service road to a new housing estate. The Department for Transport condemned it 10 years ago as not only inadequate but not fit for on-line improvement.

Between Shaftesbury and Sturminster Marshall, 11 villages in a distance of 20 miles are polluted and afflicted by thousands of vehicles a day, including 42-tonne trucks with six axles, passing at 30-40 mph only a couple of feet from people's homes. Cottages and heritage-listed buildings alike are being shaken to bits. The A350 is so bad in parts that more than half the drivers—about 5,000 a day—find it more convenient to use the "rat run" of the C13, a country lane that fortuitously runs parallel to the main road. It is, however, no safer, and as a country lane it is, of course, inadequate for the size and weight of modern traffic.

The existing A350 road severs villages and prevents people from being able to walk to their neighbours and children from walking to their friends. Overall, the A350 renders these villages "non-communities" with no personal contact, very few amenities, and no or scant public transport. They are cold, empty dormitories. The noise and smells in these villages and small-town environments are horrific. The risk of accidents and damage to homes, for which there is no public recompense, is high and occurs weekly.

Fortunately or, at risk of sounding perverse, unfortunately, there have been few fatalities. There are overpowering traffic, economic, social and environmental reasons to invest in a new and improved road rather than in the existing A350 road. Let us therefore consider the case for a solution and the current state of the proposals. The case is clear: the volume, weight and speed of motor vehicles in the villages in the A350-B3081-C13 corridor between Shaftesbury and Sturminster Marshall are dangerous and damaging hazards to people and the environment.

There is a need for traffic control measures in the villages in the short term, but however successful they might be, they do not obviate the need for a series of properly designed and constructed bypasses that are sensitive to local needs and the environment. The impact on through traffic on existing communities in the corridor is unacceptable. Current Government policies concentrate development pressure within the principal urban areas, so existing problems are likely only to be exacerbated. The case for a proper, purpose-built bypass was first proposed by Dorset county council in 1933, when the volume of traffic was one twentieth of the current level and the weights of heavy goods vehicles were one tenth of what they are today.

The Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole structure plan, which was published in February 2001, states that

"traffic in Dorset grew by 54 per cent. in the 15 years since 1983 and is forecast to grow by a further 29 per cent. by the year 2001".

We have passed that date. Two major road schemes have been proposed for this corridor. The first is the Melbury Abbas bypass. Dorset county council applied for planning permission for the C13 improvement and the Melbury Abbas bypass in 1995. The main reasons given for the scheme were to promote regional economic development and to improve environmental conditions for people living alongside existing main roads.

The A350 is an important link in the primary road network between centres of economic activity in south Dorset and the national trunk network in the north. The A350 is narrow, tortuous and substandard for its purpose. A high percentage of heavy goods vehicles use the road, sections of which are too narrow for two-way traffic. In fact, two articulated lorries cannot pass at 35 points on that stretch of the road. Most of the length of the C13, which is the higher Shaftesbury road and the alternative route between Blandford and Shaftesbury, is of reasonably good standard, with the exception of the short section through Melbury Abbas village, which is narrow and has sharp bends and steep gradients. The combination of relatively high traffic flows and poor road alignments gives rise to accidents and environment nuisance to those living alongside the A350 and the C13-B3081.

Traffic levels have increased since 1995, and future planning policies are likely to focus more development in the south-east Dorset conurbation and exacerbate the existing problems. The National Trust and others objected to the application on the ground that the road scheme would be environmentally unacceptable. That was at a time when the structure plan was nearing adoption. The joint structure plan authorities decided to withdraw the proposed scheme for a Melbury Abbas bypass from the structure plan, as it was considered that, at the time, the scheme's environmental impact would outweigh its social and economic merits.

However, the authorities decided that for the structure plan period—up to 2011—it was appropriate to propose improvements on a smaller scale to those previously proposed, which could and should include a bypass. Importantly, however, longer-term options would depend on the outcome of the proposed multi-modal study on the routes between the south coast and the M4/M5, including the A350 corridor, which had been proposed at that time by the south-west regional planning conference.

South of Blandford is the equally important proposal for the Charlton Marshall, Spetisbury and Sturminster Marshall bypass. The issues concerning that bypass are similar to those concerning Melbury Abbas. This scheme, together with the northern section that I have described, is currently the county's second highest priority, and is contained in the structure plan, the north Dorset local plan and the east Dorset local plan. The environmental impact of this southern scheme is much less damaging than that of the schemes considered for Melbury Abbas, and although this scheme is in the approved plan, the current Bristol/Bath to south-coast study outcomes could prejudice its construction.

I am concerned that the Government office for the south-west believes that Dorset receives ample funding for highways and transport. The county has frequently argued with the office that it does not receive as much money as other authorities in the south-west. Although the office has increased the annual settlement for integrated transport in Dorset at a higher rate than for other authorities—for which we are grateful—Dorset remains the worst funded authority when comparing capital settlements on a per capita basis.

The current year's annual settlement for integrated transport in Dorset is £3.247 million. Funding comes in the form of credit approvals as part of a single capital pot. Unlike other authorities, however, the county can add money from its own resources, so the total capital budget is some £6.3 million. The county could raise its council tax to even higher levels than at present, but that would be politically unacceptable and perhaps would go wider than the debate. The county also has freedoms to transfer funds from other areas of its capital programme, but those are also in politically sensitive areas, such as education, which has its own history of underfunding.

It should be stressed that the integrated transport allocations made through the local transport plan are generally low or medium-cost schemes, identified in the plan for meeting Government-led targets on road safety, encouraging alternative forms of transport, and improving accessibility in rural areas. The funding is used to address the main issues raised through best value and local transport plan consultations.

Funding for major projects costing more than £5 million—such as the project in question—is different. Any improvement schemes in the A350 corridor would fit into that category. Conventionally, such schemes have been funded in the form of a 50 per cent. transport supplementary grant, and 50 per cent. basic credit approvals. Either way, the funding has to be bid for and allocated as part of the local transport plan process. In previous LTP rounds, local authorities were generally limited to one major scheme per authority, and Dorset already has the Weymouth relief road.

To achieve success in the bidding process, the project must meet Government criteria and have the support of the Government office for the south-west. That office has consistently failed to provide the policy context or support for schemes in that corridor. Will the Minister acknowledge the need for the scheme, abandon the arbitrary nonsense of allowing only one major scheme per county at any one time, and instruct the Government office for the south-west to move forward with Dorset county council to bring the scheme to fruition? That will give hope to the thousands of my constituents who live in daily misery along that road.

First, I congratulate the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr. Walter) on securing this debate on a matter that is important to his constituents. I have some familiarity with the road concerned, having travelled down it a few weeks ago. Although it is an attractive route, going north, I agree with him that it is not an ideal route for the throughput of traffic.

In his introduction, the hon. Gentleman welcomed the £7 billion that was announced last week in relation to the multi-modal studies for roads. He then said that there was nothing for the south-west. I also saw a headline in the Western Morning News last week saying that nothing had been announced for the south-west. However, that is because the announcement on the south-west was made six months earlier—late last year. For the record, so that no one will leave the debate believing that nothing has been done for the south- west, I remind hon. Members of the substantial improvements to the A303 east of Ilminster, of the four local transport schemes around Bristol, and of the fact that Cornwall has benefited hugely from a couple of bypasses. There have been many other improvements. The south-west has not been ignored, but received its announcement earlier than other regions.

The hon. Gentleman said that there were no plans for better roads in his constituency. The majority of the roads in his constituency will be local, and Dorset county council has responsibility for those. Perhaps he should address some of the issues that he raised to his colleagues on the council. The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the issue of bypasses along the route of the A350. Having travelled down the route, I can see that such bypasses would be attractive to a motorist. However, I am not sure that they would be cost-effective, and their environmental impact would be enormous. I did not study the road carefully as I travelled down it, but I would have thought that bypassing every village on the route would have an enormous impact on the environment. I believe that one of the reasons why the idea was dropped was the strong feelings locally about the environmental impact.

The Government are committed to sustained long-term investment to improve local transport as a key element of our 10-year plan for transport. As the hon. Gentleman knows, in December 2000 we announced that £8.4 billion would be available to implement local transport plans in England over the, next five years. The local transport settlement announced just before Christmas last year gave details of the third instalment of that funding, with £1.5 billion being made available in the current financial year. That funding will help to deliver the Government's vision of a high-quality transport network that meets people's needs and offers more choice to individuals, families, communities and businesses, such as those about which we have heard today.

We are investing £348 million in 2003–04 to enable local authorities to implement major transport projects across England. Those schemes will help to deliver the targets and outputs set out in our 10-year plan for transport by reducing the environmental impact of traffic, improving air quality by reducing emissions, reducing noise and reducing congestion in large urban areas.

We are providing the investment to enable authorities to deliver a huge range of small-scale transport projects, from safety schemes, bus priority measures and park-and-ride services through to schemes to encourage cycling and walking. I have seen at first hand the impact of many of those schemes on the communities that they affect.

I would like to turn now to the issue of today's debate—the A350 between Blandford and Shaftesbury. I will also say something about the investment that we have made in Dorset. In 2000–01, Dorset county council was allocated £0.9 million prior to the publication of our 10-year transport plan. That has risen in the current financial year to £3.247 million. I think that the hon. Gentleman alluded to that. It is a substantial rise—certainly a threefold rise. We have a: the same time given the authority increased flexibility to determine its own priorities within its local transport allocations. With that greater local discretion we not unreasonably look to authorities to reprioritise their allocations to meet changing demands, including increases in the costs of individual schemes.

In addition to other schemes that I announced earlier, we gave provisional approval in November 2000 to the Weymouth relief road, which would reduce congestion and improve access to Weymouth and Portland.

The A350, as the hon. Gentleman said, is part of the primary route network linking Blandford to Warminster in the north. In the wider picture, it links the Poole-Bournemouth conurbation with Bristol and Bath and the M4 to the north. As part of the primary route network that route should be maintained to allow all vehicles to use it, to serve this part of Dorset and parts of the county beyond. However, the road is a local road and it is for Dorset county council to manage it.

As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, the A350 passes through attractive countryside, including Cranborne Chase and the West Wiltshire Downs area of outstanding natural beauty. The A350 between Blandford and Shaftesbury carries about 3,100 vehicles a day, of which 22 per cent. are heavy goods vehicles. Blandford is bypassed, but the road northwards to Shaftesbury is largely unimproved and passes through several villages. At points the road is steep and passes through some tight, narrow bends.

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's concerns about safety and the practical difficulties experienced by his constituents, given the number of heavy vehicles using the route.

I was perturbed by the figure that the Minister gave for the number of vehicles using the road, because even the Government office for the south-west acknowledges that the figure is in excess of 9,000 vehicles a day. That was what its representatives said when I had a meeting with them two weeks ago. Perhaps the Minister has picked a particular stretch to mention, but there are two roads, the A350 and the C13, which run parallel.

I was talking about the A350. The figure that I have been given is about 3,100. As the hon. Gentleman has questioned that, I shall request that we confirm the figure, and jot him a line about that. The figure for cars using the C13 is of course something in excess of that—about 5,000 a day. That may be where the hon. Gentleman's figure of 8,000 or 9,000 comes from.

No doubt matters would be worse without the parallel route of the C13, which I think is called the high road, locally. It carries fewer heavy goods vehicles than the A350, but I am advised that it takes about 5,200 vehicles a day, 10 per cent. of which are heavy goods vehicles. Heavy goods vehicles are advised not to use that route, because of the steepness of Melbury Abbas. That alternative route runs along the top of a prominent ridge that is visible for many miles, where there are fewer junctions than on the A350 and only one settlement—the Melbury Abbas settlement. Melbury Abbas is located at the northern end of the C13, at the bottom of the steep Spread Eagle hill, after which the road joins theA30 just east of Shaftesbury.

In the past, Dorset county council promoted a bypass for Melbury Abbas. That would provide the potential to remove traffic from the existing A350. I understand that for many years it was Dorset's wish to change the classification of the two roads following the implementation of that improvement, so that the C13 would become the A-road. However, the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that there are difficult environmental constraints around Melbury Abbas, which would make the delivery of an off-line improvement very difficult and probably exceedingly costly.

Not only is the landscape in the area unspoilt and designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty. but there are important wildlife sites nearby, including the Fontwell and Melbury Downs SSSI. Finally, an off-line improvement would be very expensive and would involve serious engineering challenges as it would have to rise up very steep gradients. I understand that, for those reasons, the scheme was withdrawn by Dorset county council some years ago and no longer appears in its structure plan nor in its local transport plan.

The hon. Gentleman knows that we decided that the A36-A46 to the north of this area should be detrunked, following our review of the trunk road network published in 1998. Local authorities in this part of the region have been actively supporting a study looking at the future of the A36-A46, which in part aims to ensure that additional traffic would not use the A350 in this part of Dorset. Dorset county council has been an active participant in that study, contributing both money and expertise. We welcome the support given to this study by Dorset and other authorities.

Dorset had hoped that the study might recommend a solution to the difficult traffic problems experienced on this route. I understand that it is disappointed that the local steering group has not been able to recommend that the A350 in this area should be improved. The study concluded, based on detailed analysis of the traffic, that the majority of cars and light vehicles on the route are local in origin and therefore it is appropriate that Dorset should recommend local solutions to deal with that traffic. I know that some say that this traffic comes from the port of Poole to south Wales and beyond. Our evidence is that that is simply not true. The majority of the heavy goods vehicles come from a wide area across the Poole-Bournemouth conurbation.

The information provided by our study should allow both Dorset county council and the south-west regional assembly to develop appropriate solutions to the problems south of Warminster. In view of the recognised environmental constraints on the A350 and the C13 it is probably right that we do not identify this route for significant or regionally significant improvements. However, we recognise that measures should be put in place to ensure that traffic levels are not increased along this corridor. As a result there is a need for a rapid review of the policies and proposals contained in the current Dorset structure plan to address this point, particularly the distribution of new housing.

If Dorset wishes to promote a scheme to improve the route or to remove heavy goods vehicles, it can do so through its local transport plan. Any such scheme would have to be appraised in the light of our current guidance. We will, of course, look carefully and sympathetically at any such proposal. I hope that that answers some of the hon. Gentleman's points. I cannot give him any great comfort, except to say that as it is a local road, many of the solutions will have to come through his local county council and the local transport plan scheme, which I hope can bring some comfort to those people living along the route.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I think that I have done so once or twice before and look forward to doing it again.

I am grateful to hon. Members for showing an interest. I apologise for the late change in subject, which may have disappointed some members of the audience; I know that it disappointed one right hon. Member, who had come prepared to speak on another subject. The change was made because a statement on entitlement cards is due in the foreseeable future, and it seemed a little pointless to have an Adjournment debate on the subject before then.

I chose community support officers as the substitute subject because Broxtowe, in common with many other constituencies, expects to receive six community support officers in the near future; the first are expected at the end of August. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary may correct me, but I believe that they have been active in a number of other areas for about 18 months. I know that, in general, early reports have been promising, but there have been various critical voices. Away from the argy-bargy of political debate, we are keen to draw on best practice. I spoke to a local inspector in north Broxtowe this morning, and he was keen that we should learn from this debate as to how other areas have found that CSOs can be most effectively deployed.

I worked hard to get CSOs deployed in Broxtowe, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) for his area. For those Members who have not had the inestimable pleasure of getting to know Greater Nottingham, the city is surrounded by three essentially suburban constituencies; Gedling, Broxtowe and Rushcliffe. They all contain a mixture of urban and semi-rural areas.

Although those Members familiar with Nottingham and its nightlife—I am sure that many Members go clubbing regularly—will know that there is a significant public order issue in Nottingham city when everyone spills out of the pubs and clubs. I have always stressed that the residential areas around the city also have a significant problem of antisocial behaviour. That needs to be addressed, not just for its own sake but because it affects the fear of crime.

In common with most parts of Britain, we in Broxtowe have experienced a decline in crime figures. As the Home Secretary remarked a few months ago, people do not believe that, because of a subtle reason. Most of us, fortunately, do not get burgled often enough to form a qualified opinion on whether the rates of burglary are going up or down. We read about horrific burglaries, rapes, muggings and so on in the newspapers, but we do not have a gut feeling as to the trend.

However, we have a gut feeling about the level of antisocial behaviour. In recent years, the level of antisocial behaviour has increased; there is no serious argument about that. People extrapolate from that; if they see youths on street corners getting drunk, shouting, being a nuisance to passers-by and breaking bus shelters, and those same people read in the tabloids about horrific crimes elsewhere in Britain, they assume that that crime is getting worse. They do not dare to go out at night, because they believe that the antisocial behaviour that they see in their area is translated into large numbers of muggers and other troublemakers.

The other day, I was talking to a chief inspector in Dorset, who said that he knows of elderly ladies in villages who do not dare to leave their homes because they are convinced that the streets are full of muggers. That is partly the effect of the press, but also reflects that extrapolation from antisocial behaviour.

It is not realistic to believe that if we have more police, the problem will be solved. As we know, we now have more police than at any time in British history—certainly in Nottinghamshire, and I think that that is also the case nationally—and that has not solved the problem. One of the reasons for that is that the police are trained on a broad front; to solve murders, to investigate rape allegations or to control riots. They are trained to deal with all the law-enforcement issues that may arise. Antisocial behaviour in the community is one among many of those law-enforcement issues, and competes for the attention of the police with more serious crimes.

No one would suggest that a youth standing on a street corner drinking beer and shouting at passers-by is a serious crime compared with burglary and assault. However, the problem is that if someone lives near that street corner and sees the same youth out there every night with 20 of his mates, but the police always give priority to burglary, assault and rape, that person, and the youths themselves, will get the impression that that aspect of the law is not being enforced.

In preparation for the debate, I have carried out a fair amount of research into the deployment of community support officers. They are less expensive to train than police officers because they do not undergo the full training, and so more of them can be recruited. However, the essential point about community support officers is that their role is designed to be locally focused. That means that they should be able, in the tradition of community policing, to identify the key trouble spots and the habitual troublemakers.

CSOs are trained in giving evidence, because one of the major problems has been to persuade people to give evidence and to give credible accounts to the courts about whom they have seen. CSOs are also trained in the low-level enforcement that is often missing in our towns and villages. Even if they are not trained in or expected to take action on the major, headline-grabbing crimes, their training enables them to specialise to a much greater extent than police officers.

We should accept that, initially, the police had some reservations about the appearance of CSOs, perhaps because they felt that CSOs were designed to be a sort of cheap police force that would eventually replace them. However, as the concept has evolved, I understand that that attitude has largely been superseded by straightforward pleasure that issues that could not be addressed in the past are now being addressed.

I have talked to a couple of the officers involved in policing Nottingham city, where there have been CSOs for some time. They said that the level of low-level antisocial behaviour was sufficient that they could not get to it. Every day, they look at a long list of things that they should follow up, and it is simply a relief if additional people can specialise in dealing with such behaviour and deter it.

There can be substantial drops in crime. For instance, in Kimberley in my area, crime is down by 55 per cent. in the last year. It is important to reinforce drops of that order with a strong message about antisocial behaviour. If people see that antisocial behaviour is being curbed, and if the figures show that the numbers of burglaries, muggings and so on have fallen substantially, they will feel safer in their communities. That is one of the most precious things that any Government and any political class, which is what we all are, can provide for their citizens. Indeed, the original contract between Government and the governed is that we will provide security of the immediate environment.

I am extremely keen to see CSOs in Broxtowe and spreading round the country, but I have several questions to explore. First, what experience has there been elsewhere of how CSOs are most effectively deployed? Obviously, one option is to send them out with experienced police officers. I imagine that that would be a natural introduction to their time in service. People should not just hand them a map and say, "Go and sort out this community." To make sense, presumably there must come a point at which they can operate independently in an area. I should be interested to hear about experience as to how quickly that point comes.

Secondly, when will a full assessment of the impact of CSOs be made? When I asked about that at Home Office questions yesterday, my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety said that estimates of the impact of CSOs on antisocial behaviour had not yet been made. Given that they are a new concept, I hope that such an assessment will be made at some point. I would be grateful if the Under-Secretary guided us on when we might expect that.

I am interested to hear about experience as to how large a community a CSO can optimally serve. Broxtowe is made up of numerous towns and villages, and it is unrealistic to expect that every little clutch of streets will get its own CSO. Obviously, that will not happen with six officers, but the alternatives are for, say, a pair of CSOs to be responsible for a huge area covering 25,000 people, or to concentrate on a small area where it is known that there is quite a lot of trouble and hope to get to the other areas later when the trouble has been dealt with. There is always a risk of displacing trouble.

It would be helpful to know what, according to experience, was an appropriate area for CSOs to deal with. It should not be so small that they are wasting their time or so large that they are accused, as the police traditionally are, of never being seen. When we get the six officers, the police authority and the local council would be grateful for more guidance on what has happened elsewhere.

The next question is the extent to which the role of a CSO differs from that of the community police. We all talk derisively about the need to get away from the "Dixon of Dock Green" concept, but a lot of people think back wistfully to those days and would like a beat bobby to come round every few hours. The police in Nottinghamshire worked out that a beat policeman apprehends an offender every 24 years. In contrast, if officers are deployed on following and studying the habits of known repeat offenders, they arrest roughly two a week. That is a dramatic contrast. Most people, including myself, feel that the presence of beat officers deters crime. However, the difference between arresting two a week and one every 24 years shows that we must concede that the police have a case for deploying their most experienced officers on chasing routine repeat offenders and ensuring that they are caught as soon as they return to crime.

We must balance that work with a visible presence, and the police cannot do everything. I hope that community support officers will fill that role and give people the sense that, as well as the most experienced officers chasing hardened criminals, there is a local presence and somebody whom they can talk to informally. As MPs, all of us are familiar with the constituent who says, "Well, you know, I don't like to say so, but most of the trouble in this area is caused by the people in No. 17", and when asked why they do not report them, they reply, don't dare." An effective community support officer would know that to be the case and frequently would be seen in the vicinity of No. 17. People would know that an eye was being kept on their activities.

The community support officers do not replace the current beat patrols. We all know that the police are stretched, but every community in Broxtowe has a beat sergeant and a team of constables as, I assume, most other parts of the country do. I expect community support officers to work with beat constables and sergeants, and it would be helpful if we knew more about how that co-operation has worked in other areas. We must try to ensure that CSOs are not used by the police as dogsbodies to do things that they cannot be bothered with, and that they are not seen as competitors. The worst case would be if one person reported a crime and did not get a response whereas someone else found that the police and the CSO followed it up in succession.

There must be close co-operation and I want to talk about how that works in practice. What is the typical profile of a CSO, and whom should we encourage to apply? We all have constituents who say, "If they gave me the chance I'd sort things out", and we have tried asking them to become a special policeman. As a rule, they ask how much the pay is, we tell them it is not a lot and the interest diminishes. However, the more serious people who say that might be interested in applying for the CSO posts.

I shall not read aloud the job advertisement, but it would be helpful to know, for instance, whether a community support officer has a slightly older age profile due to the nature of the work, which is unlikely to be as strenuous and physically demanding as that of a policeman controlling a riot. However, the police could be looking for young people who might move on to the regular police force. That raises the question of the long-term career structure.

When I talked with Les Kominiak, the superintendent responsible for police in southern Nottinghamshire, he said that many CSOs, having gained extensive experience in community policing, would be likely to move on to become fully fledged police officers. That is an option and an objective that he would like to be realised, although he would like people to stay in the job, with CSOs becoming more experienced and having a career and reward structure that reflects that experience. Do the pension arrangements for CSOs reflect those of the police force or are there separate arrangements?

To return to the original theme of the debate, I should like to draw on the response yesterday to my question about the powers of detention for CSOs. Interestingly, the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety replied that if CSOs have the power to detain people for half an hour, as they do in some areas, it is easier to identify those with whom they are dealing.

I shall not anticipate the statement, which we know is not too many months away, but this seems to be an area in which ID cards could make a significant difference. I am aware that the Government's view is that, although ID cards might become universal, it should not be compulsory for people to carry them to identify themselves when requested to do so.

The overwhelming majority of the people to whom I speak are extremely enthusiastic about ID cards. They feel that if somebody is behaving suspiciously, it should be possible for the police to ask that person to identify themselves; not for routine checks of the kind that became notorious in Brixton, but in cases of documented suspicious behaviour. There is more than one way to identify oneself and I do not say that people should be required to carry ID cards, but we should make it a condition that if a CSO or the police ask someone to identify themselves and if that person can produce their ID card, that would settle the matter. If they could produce another kind of ID and the police or the CSO were satisfied, that would be fine too.

I accept our commitment not to require people to carry ID cards at all times, but CSOs and the police should have the power to ask people to identify themselves if they are behaving suspiciously. Let me give an example; a CSO on Beeston high road sees someone wandering along at 11 o'clock at night, feeling the doors of buildings. It is not illegal to feel the door of a building to see whether it is open. If the officer goes up to him, as he might well, and asks what he is doing, and he says, "I am thinking of writing an article for the local paper on local security and I am doing some research to see how many doors are open", the officer can point out that what he is doing is a bit dodgy and might be misinterpreted, but he cannot arrest him for it. Nor can he ask him to identify himself.

The community support officer might walk on round the corner and the next morning it might be reported that a shop has been broken into, but it would not have been possible for the officer to have deterred that by identifying that it was John Smith—or Oliver Letwin, David Blunkett or whatever figure one might think of—whom he interviewed on the street the previous night.

If I were considering such a crime—although I do not do so frequently—and were stopped by a CSO, if I was identified unambiguously, which an identity card would do, I would probably decide to call it a night and go back to bed. I might try again another night, but that would have acted as a deterrent. However, if I could just say that my name was, say, Letwin, it would be less of a deterrent. I might still be a bit worried that I might be recognised, but if I were wearing a hood and generally slickly dressed I would probably feel that it was quite likely that I would get away with it. When we come to debate ID cards in the coming months, I ask the Under-Secretary to consider seriously—although we should not go back on the pledge not to require people to carry them all the time—allowing the police to require people to identify themselves by whatever means they think appropriate.

If we made that obligatory, we would also need to require the police to log all such requests, with an indication of why they considered the behaviour suspicious. We must avoid a return to the stop-and-search culture that prevailed in Brixton, which ultimately led to riots. Basically, if someone was young and black, they were stopped. The Information Commissioner would have to be empowered to inspect the records of police forces to see whether any stood out as having an unusually high level of such inquiries; if necessary, the commissioner could look at individual records.

We all talk about too much bureaucracy, and a balance must be struck. If we get to the point where we allow community support officers and the police to require identification of some kind, we ought to document the circumstances under which that takes place so that we can verify that it is not being misused.

I return to co-operation between police and CSOs. There have been some press reports of forces in which CSOs have been frequently reported for apparently minor infringements of discipline. One interpretation of that is that officers have felt a degree of resentment towards the newcomers and have been eager to pick them up on any little infraction that, in a regular officer, would have passed almost without comment.

On the other hand, in the Metropolitan police in particular, reports are that co-operation has been very good and that the regular officers have greeted the reinforcements with some enthusiasm. So that we can benefit from the good examples rather than from any bad ones, I should be grateful if the Under-Secretary elaborated on what kind of training and advice needs to be given to new CSOs and existing officers to ensure that co-operation is optimal and that they see each other as partners rather than rivals.

At Home Office Question Time yesterday, the Minister of State said that the power to detain people for 30 minutes was proving successful in a number of areas. The issue is important when it comes to the credibility of CSOs. We all hear anecdotally of eight-year-olds who can quote the Human Rights Act 1998. If it became generally known that CSOs could tell someone off, call in the regular police and give evidence against people, but could not detain people until the police turned up, the more daring troublemakers would exploit that.

I am aware that there are reservations about allowing a new group of people the power of detention, but 30 minutes is not excessive. I was stopped for exceeding a speed limit the other day; it was a fair cop. I apologised and it took roughly half an hour to fill out the relevant forms, which I interpreted as part of the punishment. In our everyday lives, most of us are accustomed to incurring half-hour delays because of the maintenance of public order or traffic problems. If someone gives a CSO reason to suspect that they are having a serious antisocial impact on their environment, it is not an excessive infringement of liberty to allow the CSO to detain that person for 30 minutes.

More cynical people might say that 30 minutes is not enough because the police normally take three hours to turn up, so CSOs would hang about for half an hour and then have to let the person go. Well, that is not the experience in my area. Sometimes the police reckon that the criminal has already escaped and that an urgent response will not change anything, so they turn up a day or two later, which causes irritation. However, when the police genuinely believe that an offender is still on the premises, they arrive quickly.

It is a basic requirement of the co-operation between CSOs and the police that we ensure that if CSOs have the power to detain people for 30 minutes, the police will virtually never fail to turn up within that time.

The hon. Gentleman is touching on some matters to which I will return, but I want to challenge him about the issue of detention, which caused grave concern when the Police Reform Bill was in Committee.

As the hon. Gentleman described, the police have to give priority to burglary, robbery, rape and murder—the serious crimes—and CSOs are filling in on the less serious crimes. If a CSO detains a lout—I think that that was the word that the hon. Gentleman used—for an antisocial act in a large geographic constituency such as mine or that of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), and the police are called out to a robbery or car chase, after 30 minutes the CSO has to say to the young hooligan, "Well, no copper has turned up. I am going to have to let you go." What does that do for the credibility of the system?

The hon. Gentleman is right; that is an essential feature of the arrangement. The expectation should be that in the overwhelming majority of cases the police turn up within 30 minutes. If that is not possible because of the intensive levels of rape and pillage in Somerton and Frome, for instance—without wanting to trivialise crime in that constituency—we need to consider whether the period needs to be longer, or whether a different power is needed to require the offender to come to the police station. I want to raise that issue with the Under-Secretary. I would be interested to know whether we find that in the pilot areas it is possible for the police to arrive within 30 minutes.

I make a distinction between the situation that I described at the start, to which the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) referred, and the one that he has just outlined. A hard-working police officer may well be reluctant to turn out for a slightly nebulous report of someone shouting in the street, or a report that someone has been seen throwing bottles. By the time he turns up, the offender might have escaped, and the offence may have been exaggerated anyway. If he has a burglary to follow up, he would put the first issue on one side.

However, if the same hard-working police officer has a burglary to follow up but gets a call from the CSO saying that he has an offender standing in front of him, temporarily detained and ready to be arrested, he would be much more motivated to deal with the situation. If the police feel that CSOs are delivering offenders into their grasp for immediate arrest, that is a very different situation with regard to priority from the question of simply dealing with antisocial behaviour. There seems to be a strong prima facie case for the argument that the power of detention is desirable. Whether 30 minutes is enough, I do not know; I should be grateful for the Under-Secretary's insights into the experience in other areas.

Without wanting to stray outside the limits of today's debate, we should also address the broader question of freedom compared with the crime enforcement carried out by community support officers. That challenge was raised in Hugo Young's article today, in which he suggests that the instincts of Government Members, such as myself, are illiberal. He suggests that where we have a choice between reducing crime and the fear of crime and reducing freedom, we invariably choose against freedom. I am paraphrasing, but that was the substance of his indictment. We have to take such a suggestion seriously because there comes a point where the considerations of freedom override the considerations of crime prevention.

We can all suggest extremes. If we were to intern all teenagers, we would end teenage crime; I have constituents who would favour that solution. However, a long way short of that comes a point where most of us would feel that we were interfering too much in the normal exercise of everyday life. When we consider the tools that CSOs might use, many of them are individually controversial such as evidence from CCTV cameras, evidence from DNA or identity cards. When we examine those, each can easily be justified on the grounds that the benefits of greater community safety outweigh the risks, but there is a slightly more serious case to answer when they are all put together.

Singapore is the most concrete example with which we are familiar. It is widely admired by tourists for the law-abiding behaviour of its citizens, the absence of chewing-gum on the streets and so on. People in that country know that they will be arrested and thrown into prison for offences. Most people believe that Singapore, admirable though it is, perhaps goes a little too far.

We are on solid ground with community support officers. Whereas we must be careful that the gravity of more serious crimes does not lead us into cutting corners in dealing with crime, for the relatively trivial offences of antisocial behaviour, it is widely perceived that there is a huge gap between what people would like to see in their community and what they actually see. My perception from talking to many constituents about the issue is that people would accept a significant increase in surveillance—I deliberately use that loaded word—if it meant a significant reduction in antisocial behaviour. Part of such surveillance is the presence of community support officers who can work with the community to identify the troublemakers.

We all realise that most offences are caused by a small number of people. A member of my own family burned down a beach hut when she was a teenager. I come from a respectable family, whose members do not often do that sort of thing. She went to a beach party with a group of about 20 people. When they got a bit cold, someone asked, "Why don't we set fire to the hut?" Everyone laughed, and they set fire to it. My relative did not suggest it, but she did nothing to stop it.

We are all familiar with the idea of the community ringleader who causes trouble. Part of the job of community support officers is to know who those ringleaders are, to make them know that they are known and that an eye is being kept on them and to reinforce the confidence of others in the community that supervision is being maintained and that something will be done if they report acts, or even planned acts, of antisocial behaviour. Community support officers will also enable people like my relative to have the courage to say, "No, that might get us into trouble. A CSO might come along."

I wish to give the crowd of hon. Members who wish to speak on this debate a chance to speak, so I propose to conclude my remarks in the next few minutes. Communities will welcome the community support officers and are anticipating the role that they will play to the extent that we must be careful that we do not raise expectations too high, as community support officers will not be supermen or women any more than anyone else.

However, reinforcement by people who are based in the community and who are familiar with its troublespots and troublemakers has the potential to make a significant contribution to making our communities feel that we as a political class are delivering the secure environment that is the basic part of the social contract. Those things will be achieved only if we use the CSOs optimally, if we avoid friction with the regular police, if we ensure that the regular police and the CSOs are trained to work together and if we draw on the best practice from around the country. I hope that the areas, including Broxtowe, that are about to get CSOs for the first time can draw on the experience of others.

I am grateful for the chance to speak about the issue at greater length than I had anticipated and look forward to the rest of the debate.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) on securing this debate and the one that he had intended to have, both of which concern pertinent subjects. I am sure that his suggestion that the Palmers are the scourge of the Nottinghamshire countryside with their speeding and arson was inadvertent. I am also sure that he inadvertently mentioned identity cards. His remarks were nevertheless illuminating because his example suggested that the substantive evidence that caused the officer to request the person's identity was that the person was out at night and was wearing a hood. We might have explored that argument had we been dealing with ID cards.

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman so early in his speech, but I said that the person involved was trying the doors of shops along the high road.

I did not understand that the person was trying doors, which is an offence. Perhaps I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman, for which I apologise.

Let us deal with the substance of the hon. Gentleman's contribution because the subject is important. There is a lot of common ground, despite the differences that sometimes occur in debate. It is common ground that antisocial behaviour is a serious problem in all sorts of communities and in all sorts of ways. During the proceedings on the Criminal Justice Bill, the hon. Gentleman's county colleague, the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen), suggested that the mean streets of his constituency were the epicentre of crime in the country. I must say that that is not necessarily the case. Small village communities, such as those that I represent, market towns and the big conurbations all have problems with antisocial behaviour. Our constituents are rightly worried by antisocial behaviour and want solutions to be found.

The importance of the patrol function is the second area of common ground, and the hon. Gentleman spent some time discussing it. He rightly said that for a good many years chief police officers have taken the view that the patrol function is a marginal policing activity because it does not catch and convict criminals, and the evidence suggests that that is the case. That does not undermine the importance of the patrol function in keeping the peace, which is an important part of policing.

The patrol function does three things. It deters—it is possible to overstate that point—and undoubtedly acts to reassure communities that there is a police presence among them, which is desperately important. It is a truism that the fear of crime is almost as debilitating to a community as crime itself. It is appalling that members of the community, who are often elderly, fear even in a village to go out after nightfall because they have read lurid reports in tabloid newspapers that they are about to be knocked over the head by a ruffian. The fact that that is not the case is neither here nor there. They have a real belief that it is the case, and the presence of a uniformed officer is therefore important.

I agree with the hon. Member for Broxtowe that a patrol officer provides intelligence that feeds into deterring and investigating crime effectively. We have lost the direct communication between our police and communities that allows the police to understand what is happening in the community and respond to it, to know the individuals concerned and speak to them and to pick up on the indications of responsibility for crime or impending crime at an early stage. That loss is important.

In my involvement with police forces, I have always stressed the importance of intelligent patrol—making sure that uniformed officers are there at the right time and place to provide the maximum reassurance and deterrence. That means appearing on pensions day at a sub-post office in a small village, and being there at chucking-out time in the middle of a market town on Friday or Saturday night. Those are the times when people need to see a uniformed presence among them and working with them. There is broad agreement that community support officers have a role to play and that they are a plus rather than a minus.

More generally, and without wanting to sound too analytical or philosophical, there are three classes of people. There are, first, core criminals, about whom the community support officers will do nothing. They are the 20 per cent. of those charged with crimes who commit 80 per cent. of crime. They have an extraordinarily high degree of recidivism, and a propensity for committing crimes almost irrespective of the punishment or deterrent set. Community support officers will not have an effect in that area.

The second class is the vast majority of law-abiding citizens, who we often forget, and classify—as the hon. Gentleman did in his humorous aside about locking up all teenagers—as a problem. Very often the view comes through that teenagers are a problem. They are not a problem; some teenagers are a problem, just like some 80-year olds are a problem. We do not do well when we class all young people as the reason for antisocial behaviour and place subsequently inappropriate restrictions on them.

The third class is those involved in antisocial behaviour and petty crime. That concerns the one-off criminal and rowdyism, which can be addressed, deterred and prevented. That is where community support officers, along with a range of sanctions and measures, can have an effect.

One of my worries with the Government—the worry is not new—is that they have addressed the problems of crime time and time again and have introduced 660 new laws during their lifetime. They have been less effective at dealing with the other part of the equation as set out by the Prime Minister in his famous dictum on the causes of crime. Were we to do a lot more about the environment, lighting, facilities for kids, skateboarding parks, recreational opportunities and the effective use of schools, we would reduce antisocial behaviour. Instead we blame anyone who happens to find themselves in a bus shelter at night because there is nothing else to do. We have not addressed some of those community and societal matters with sufficient energy and resources, so we have opened the way for more serious crime.

I was interested to read a series of reports in The Guardian in the last week or so—other hon. Members may have read them—one of which focused on Bristol, a city in which I have some interest, as I was once chairman of the Avon and Somerset police authority. One of our great successes when I was chairman related to the serious criminals who formed the local gangs and were at the head of the drugs trade and every other sort of serious crime in Bristol—the Aggies, as they called themselves. We had a list of 10 top criminals and we had all of them behind bars. That was a huge success for the Avon and Somerset constabulary.

However, the consequence was that a few years down the track those same communities found themselves in the presence of a new breed of gang; the yardies came in and took over the territory. Resources had not been put into putting up barriers against that new invasion of criminal, so we had simply replaced one set of criminals with another. The Aggies have now finished their prison terms and there is gang warfare on the streets of Bristol. That is appalling, and very difficult for the police to deal with.

I say that not because I expect community support officers to do something about that level of crime, but to underline the need to put resources behind the front line of patrol and policing in order to give the community the strength to resist the activities of criminals. There is now a new breed of officer and, although we have some criticisms of what the Government have developed, there will be advantages to community support officers having a common status with other uniformed presences, so that they can work together under common powers and commands, rather than in separate areas.

We understand the Police Federation's criticisms. It is worried that the measures simply allow policing on the cheap and are a substitute for providing police officers. I do not think that those criticisms are entirely justified, but the view of professional police officers is understandable.

We need to understand that community support officers are not police officers. They have a different function and are working at a different level. As the Under-Secretary's predecessor, the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth), said, they extend the police family—a rather homely phrase, but it expresses what has happened. It is important that we do not expect them to do what they cannot and are not trained to do. As the hon. Member for Broxtowe says, that would undermine their function and their abilities.

It is also important that we select and train CSOs properly for what they do. There is evidence that that has not taken place in some of the forces currently taking on community support officers. I do not want to exaggerate, and I certainly share some of the concerns that the hon. Member for Broxtowe expressed about the experience in the Metropolitan force particularly, but let us be absolutely sure that CSOs are able and prepared to do the job that we want them to do.

One particular power under the Anti-social Behaviour Bill that gives me great cause for concern is that of dispersal. The Under-Secretary knows that we have taken exception to giving that power to CSOs, not least because the Association of Chief Police Officers is worried about the power in itself. I quote from the deputy chief constable of Northamptonshire, Mr. Whitely, who has responsibility for the matter for ACPO:

"The initial reaction from forces suggests that it would not be enthusiastically used in the operational environment. The arguments against centre around street culture and the likely impact within socially deprived and minority areas. Such a power could, potentially lead to confrontation, disengagement and isolation of some elements of the communities".

If ACPO are worried about that happening with properly trained fully competent police officers, the risk of it happening with someone who is not as competent, trained or in the same position is even greater. Will the Government think again?

We should accept that community support officers can play a role in extending the patrol function, particularly to areas that would not otherwise be covered. They are not a substitute for extra, omni-competent police officers or properly trained special constables. They are also not a substitute for a category that I have wanted to see developed but that the Government have shown only occasional interest, which is that of retained, fully trained officers, analogous to our retained firefighters but giving an extra police presence in rural areas. Community support officers have their place, but we must understand their limitations as well as the expectations that could so easily be put on their shoulders.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak. I must admit that when we started, I did not believe that it would be at 3 o'clock, and I am anxious not to squeeze the Under-Secretary out of her time to reply.

I echo the congratulations to the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) on securing the debate. I am less sure that I congratulate him on the subject that he eventually chose, because I suspect—ungenerous as I may be—that the heavy hand of Government rested on his shoulder and they said that they did not want a debate on ID cards 48 hours before a statement. Nevertheless, community support officers and antisocial behaviour are important, and the hon. Gentleman addressed several issues.

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but I want to place on record that I was asked specifically by the Speaker's Office whether any pressure had been put on me to change the subject. I confirm today what I confirmed to the Speaker, that no pressure was put on me. I was simply told that there would be a statement on ID cards soon, and it seemed appropriate to me to change the debate.

I entirely accept the hon. Gentleman's explanation; I simply claim in aid my natural cynicism after 16 years in this place.

The common ground that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) mentioned is shared with my party as well. As a Back Bencher the Under-Secretary spent some time in Committee on the Antisocial Behaviour Bill until she found herself propelled to the Front Bench. That happened before the Bill finished its progress, so she will have seen the issue from both sides. I am sure that she will agree that there was widespread agreement about the problem across the Committee. The disagreement was on the proposed solutions.

There is also common ground on the role of non-police officers in helping to address the problem of antisocial behaviour. From the outset of debate on what is now the Police Reform Act 2002, we emphasised that we want and believe in non-police officers aiding the police in their duties. We have seen neighbourhood and traffic wardens and the development of street patrols, and last week I was in Wandsworth, where the borough council employ a lot of street wardens.

Such people will have a vital role to play, and the area of debate—it is no more than that—is about giving non-police officers a range of police powers. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said, the Anti-social Behaviour Bill will increase the range of those powers. He mentioned one or two, and I will not go into the detail of them all, but it seems premature to extend the range of CSO powers when, as has been said, we will not receive the first evaluation of how the initial tranche of CSOs has settled down until September.

There is a more important aspect, which is that the more that the range of CSO powers is extended, the more the distinction between a CSO and a real police officer—a proper copper—is blurred.

I shall now discuss the financial aspects. I am sure that the Under-Secretary will claim it as a great success that the 27 police authorities that bid for CSOs in the first round wanted them despite the doom-mongers—among whom I include myself—who said that there was no demand for CSOs. However, the way in which the Government did it was bound to create demand, because putting in bids for CSOs was the only way that police forces would get any money at all. I remain of the view that if the Government had simply put that money into the policing "pot" and said that police forces could have either police officers or CSOs, most chief constables would have spent that money on police officers rather than CSOs. However, they were not given that option, and it is hardly surprising that there was demand, because it gave forces the opportunity to increase their overall resources.

It will be interesting to see the results of the evaluation in September. Although it is difficult to be precise, it appears that the pay of CSOs is almost in the same league as the bottom of the pay scale for a police constable. The starting pay for a constable is £18,666. I suggest that not many CSOs are earning considerably less than that, so the cost saving is probably much more marginal than the Government had originally anticipated. However, there is a financial saving in the training of CSOs; their training takes three weeks rather than 19 weeks.

Equally seriously, there are no national standards for CSO training—the training is all carried out in individual forces—whereas police officers are trained according to national standards and through Centrex. I am concerned that we are spending almost as much on paying CSOs and investing considerably fewer resources in their training, while extending the range of police powers that they are given. There seems to be a disjunction between the approaches that are being taken.

According to the Government's press release of 2 May, the next tranche of CSOs will receive only 50 per cent. funding. It remains to be seen whether the demand for CSOs will continue when forces are required to find their own resources to complement Government money.

I now turn to the issue of what I call neighbourhood policing, a concept that was central to the comments made by the hon. Member for Broxtowe. He mentioned apprehending a criminal once every 24 years. Policing, however, is not just about apprehending criminals; it is about ensuring that we all live in an orderly society, and that crime is prevented. In the ideal world, the police would prevent all crime and there would be no criminals, but although we would all love to inhabit such a world, we never will.

However, I strongly agree with the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome that neighbourhood policing has a vital role to play not only in deterring criminals and reassuring the population, but in preventing crime by low-level intelligence gathering in the community of which it is part. Neighbourhood policing also has a role to play in bringing communities together, and in enhancing the physical environment by ensuring, as in New York—the broken windows theory—that things are done; that burnt-out cars and vomit on the street are cleared away, and that broken windows are repaired. If one broken window is left broken, the following week the next window will be broken. Action to prevent that is part of addressing the problems of antisocial behaviour and crime, and is a vital role for neighbourhood policing.

What concerns me is that if we expect CSOs to be playing that role—I believe that that was the nub of the argument put forward by the hon. Member for Broxtowe, and it is certainly the Government's contention—that has two implications. First, we are saying that we have downgraded the role of neighbourhood policing and that it is not a job for a full-blown police officer but a slightly inferior role for a community support officer. That sends out all the wrong messages about neighbourhood policing.

In contrast, I think that neighbourhood policing should be a distinct, positive career path in the police service that needs to be enhanced. It should involve proper career prospects and there should be much less abstraction from neighbourhood policing for the "fire brigade" work of dealing with crime. The risk of using CSOs as replacements for neighbourhood police officers in that role is that we diminish rather than enhance the role of neighbourhood policing.

Secondly, although I may have unwittingly slightly undermined this point in my earlier comments about cost, I have a fundamental concern if CSOs are cheaper than police officers; if they are not, I cannot see why we have embarked on the scheme. I suggested that the saving may not be as great as was originally expected. I can foresee a day when a Chancellor says to a Home Secretary, "Well, I accept that you may want some more bodies in uniform on the street, but you can have 5,000 CSOs or 2,000 or 3,000 police officers. Which is it to be?" We would thus begin the gradual slide of reducing the professionalism of the police force. That would be a very serious trend to start.

I look forward to the evaluation results in September on the various aspects that I have described. The hon. Member for Broxtowe accepted my intervention on detention, and I am grateful to him for that. That gave rise to a great deal of debate during the Committee stage of the Police Reform Bill. I remain of the view that I expressed in my intervention. I am pleased that the Government accepted the need for some pilots to see how the scheme would work, and to see whether my worst fears were realised or unfounded or, as I suspect, somewhere in between; but I think that there are potentially real problems with the use of detention.

Following the hon. Gentleman for a moment down his other side-route on the role of identity and the ability to detain someone while checking their identity, he quite rightly demonstrated that unless someone is required to carry an identity card, one of the fundamental benefits that the public perceive from having them is completely destroyed. If one does not have to carry a card, one cannot be required to produce it. To tell someone that they must bring it to a police station in the next few days, as with a driving licence, is frankly absurd. If someone has given the wrong identity, the fact that they do not turn up at the police station can never be followed up. It is complete nonsense to suggest that, although I have read that that is in part of the proposals.

Another issue is that this time next year there will be 25 countries in the EU, so the citizens of 24 other countries will have the free right to move around this country with just the passports of their native country. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and everyone else knows how easy it is to obtain a forged passport, particularly from some countries either in or about to become part of the EU. That, too, undermines whatever technology may be involved. If someone just produces a Portuguese passport and says that they are a Portuguese citizen—whether they are or not—they will have complied with the necessary legislation. However, the power of detention will not have achieved the fundamental objective—to ascertain or verify the identity of the individual who has been detained.

I shall not detain the Chamber much longer, because I want the Under-Secretary to have the opportunity to respond. I conclude with a completely different point on antisocial behaviour. It is on an issue that we did not debate on Report when debating the Bill because of the timetable, but the Government introduced a new clause on it. It is the problem of travellers. Although I strongly welcome the fact that the Government responded to the pressure that I and others put on them in Committee, I hope that they will consider the matter carefully and that the Under-Secretary will have a chance this afternoon to explain a little more of the background and why they have introduced their amendments to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Requiring alternative sites to be available before the police use the powers that the Government are giving them drives a coach and horses through the enforceability of that legislation.

The Bill will be debated in the other place, and I am sure that their lordships will probe the Government on that, but it is a crucial issue. The Government clearly want to address the problem, and I respect them and congratulate them on their enthusiasm for doing so. But I am not sure that they have not unwittingly created a loophole that will completely nullify the benefit of the Bill.

I am grateful for an opportunity to address the Chamber on this issue, which will not go away. We look forward to the conclusions of the first evaluation. The best thing that I can say about CSOs at this stage is that the jury is out. We look forward to seeing how they settle down. I suspect that they are here to stay in one guise or another, but it is essential to study how they are settling down and how their powers are used if we are to make the most of their role in helping the police to combat crime.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) on securing the debate, which is on an important issue. All hon. Members present will recognise that antisocial behaviour and the changing ways in which it affects our communities is probably one of the top two issues, if not the top issue, that they come across in their postbags. It has changed the face of law enforcement and the issues that police officers have to deal with. I remember watching "Dixon of Dock Green" as a child. I was brought up in what seemed a rather happier time in policing, notwithstanding the fact that police officers also had to deal with serious criminal issues many years ago. Some of that has not changed, but other things certainly have.

It is increasingly recognised that certain crimes, because of their nature and seriousness, demand the attention of fully trained police officers. Indeed, that was reflected in the debate and acknowledged by hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. Antisocial behaviour is not necessarily less serious. If the antisocial behaviour that starts in communities as an irritant is not checked, the people responsible can turn into the full-blown criminals whom our police officers have to deal with.

We must recognise that we need multi-skilled teams. This is not only about community support officers, but about working with local authorities and the health service. That is certainly the case in relation to drugs in the area that I cover. It is increasingly important that the police work alongside drug action teams and other people in that sphere. It is also important to work with community organisations, whether tenants and residents associations, neighbourhood watch or community partnerships. I was told a few weeks ago by a senior police officer in Bristol that where there has been serious crime on the streets, intensive police action has been required to deal with it and to reclaim the streets. The neighbourhoods and the community must be left strong enough to withhold future crime waves by gangs or whatever.

The Under-Secretary is right about the point that I made in my speech. Will she accept that dealing with serious crime such as we have in Bristol causes the abstraction of officers from the rest of the police authority area? In our part of the world, for instance, the whole of Somerset has lost officers because they are dealing with the gangs in Bristol. As a result, we are all losers.

I am pleased to inform the hon. Gentleman that crime is decreasing in Avon and Somerset. The support from Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary and the police standards unit has demonstrated that they have got a grip on their performance issues. Indeed, recent data show positive reductions in recorded crime. Of course, at local level—at force level—it is up to senior police officers to consider the situation throughout their communities and to decide where best to place their resources. There will be short-term and medium-term operations to deal with that, but it is important to recognise that different types of crime or activity, including antisocial behaviour, require different responses.

My major point is that we are trying to build capacity and strength in relation to communities. That is about policing, but it is also about building community partnerships so that local people can take back control of their neighbourhoods and so that a handful of families do not hold whole communities to ransom.

CSOs come into their own in relation to police presence. I do not agree with the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) who said that it is just about police forces saying, "Well, that's where the money is. We're going to put in to have that presence in our community." There is demand from communities for that sort of support and those resources in their immediate neighbourhoods and that is reflected in the number of bids to increase the provision.

Will the Under-Secretary give way?

I want to make some progress because I have only a short time in which to speak, but I will return to the hon. Gentleman if I have a few minutes at the end.

The primary role of CSOs is to provide high-visibility patrols in our communities and deal with lower level crime and antisocial behaviour. CSOs are fully integrated into forces, based in police stations and supervised by police officers. That goes to the heart of the point about teams and good relationships. The police are in control of the process. CSOs complement police officers to provide a better service. We are increasing numbers of police officers to record levels, and, at the same time, we are considering ways to improve the provision of police services to our communities by using mixed-skill teams of police officers and CSOs.

CSOs are not policing on the cheap. Their attributes—a low level of power and targeted training suited to their patrol function—lend them to being better at permanent community patrols. Unlike police officers, whose extensive skills base means that they are likely to be regularly abstracted from their core patrol functions, CSOs are likely to spend long periods without being removed from patrol, acting as the eyes and ears of the police service.

In the communities that I represent—I am talking not about a major town, but about satellite communities—police officers work in partnership with CSOs, with the local inspector. Police officers are still visible, but recognising the different contributions to different levels of crime and nuisance is important.

CSOs support police officers. They are fully trained and empowered by the Police Reform Act 2002 to undertake tasks such as staffing security cordons, carrying out administration at roadblocks or dealing with abandoned cars. Many such tasks do not utilise the full range of skills, or the training, of regular police officers. We hope that CSOs will free up police time so that the police can concentrate on tasks that can best be done by fully trained police officers.

On deployment, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe mentioned the size and nature of communities and asked how large a community was. Those are questions for chief officers to determine in consultation with members of their crime and disorder reduction partnerships and in relation to other patrols available in the area. Deployment should be consistent with the application of the national intelligence model, which will ensure the more efficient allocation of resource, where they are needed. We cannot put a blueprint on deployment from on high, at national level. Actively engaging with community partnerships, community safety officers on local authorities and others will determine how best to fit patrols and resources to local needs.

On evaluation, it has been mentioned that we are learning from the process. We are seeing good results and there has been anecdotal evidence about how well supported CSOs are. Chief officers have had the power to designate their staff as CSOs since December last year, so the process is still young, but we have come a long way in seven months. For instance, 1,390 CSOs have already been recruited and a further 1,233 are to be part-funded by the Home Office in this financial year. There will be only five forces not employing CSOs by the end of this financial year.

Despite being in the early stages of the project, we are receiving lots of informal evidence from forces, local authorities, local papers and Members of Parliament that indicates that CSOs are having a significant impact on local communities. I am pleased to say that several forces have reported significant reductions in crime in areas in which CSOs are patrolling.

Anecdotal evidence is encouraging, but we need a more formal evaluation of the impact of CSOs in order to ascertain what works best. All forces that take on CSOs will evaluate their performance, and we will issue guidance to help to standardise the information across the 27 first-round forces. That is important because we want the results to stand up to rigour and provide an evidential base for further developments. We also want to be sure about best practice and that what we are recommending to other forces can be applied in those forces and other communities. It is important that the information goes beyond the professionals directly to the communities, so that they understand what is happening elsewhere and so that demands can be made from the bottom up. We expect to receive interim returns of evaluation findings in September, although it will take longer to collect more scientific evidence.

I was asked about pensions. For pension purposes, CSOs are treated in the same way as all police staff. Each force has different terms and conditions, which also extend to pensions. There is no bar to CSOs becoming police officers through the standard application process. Some forces—including, I understand, the Metropolitan police—are considering fast-tracking CSOs into the police service, as they will already have met some early requirements.

The nature of the training given to community support officers is a decision for their chief officer. It will depend on the role that they perform and the powers that they are designated to exercise. The evaluation is important because CSOs are employed differently in different communities. Once we have that information we will consider what training should be provided for them to carry out their functions. Centrex has provided forces with guidance, and many other forces have adapted the training package devised specially for CSOs by the Metropolitan police.

Generally, the emphasis in CSO training is on problem solving and dealing with low-level disorder and antisocial behaviour. They are encouraged to use their powers only if other approaches are ineffective. They are not trained to deal with more serious criminal offences and are advised to call for police assistance if there is any doubt about their safety or that of the public.

My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe mentioned friction between CSOs and regular police officers. Local police forces are engaging more and more with the new resource and getting to grips with how it works on the ground. It is important to make an effort to include front-line police officers in development so that they can also contribute to the debate. However, so far there is no evidence of friction. CSOs are trained and supervised by police officers, and they even patrol with them; they work closely together. That is an important part of the teamwork ethos.

Points were raised about ID cards. We will come to those considerations in due course and, depending on the outcome of that debate, we will consider whether CSOs or the police should have the powers that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe suggested. On the subject of public trust and reassurance, his suggestions for a log are interesting. CSOs can currently ask for the name and address of anyone that they suspect has committed an offence causing injury, harassment or alarm to any person, or loss or damage to property. As my hon. Friend will be aware, CSOs who have the detention powers that are being piloted can detain anyone whom they think has not provided the right details.

On the issue of the detention power, the time of 30 minutes was raised. As I said, the scheme is being piloted in certain areas and we are looking at the outcomes of those pilots as to whether they should be extended. A balance had to be struck between the role of the CSO, given their training and skills, and the need occasionally to detain someone for longer than 30 minutes. Parliament has decided that, in the vast majority of cases, 30 minutes would be long enough and that the role of the CSO would not be too enforcement-orientated at the expense of their other duties. We are entering a new area and will monitor that balance to see what works best. We do not yet have any formal analysis of the results of how those powers are exercised. The initial returns indicate that 30 minutes is proving to be enough in most cases, but that is an issue to which we must return.

The hon. Member for South-East Cambridge shire referred to the sums of money. The starting pay of constables does not include significant allowances and progression is obviously much more rapid. It is important to note the difference between cost and salary because of equipment and the additional costs of officers. CSOs are less expensive. We have not conducted a detailed analysis—

Order.

I was pleased to secure today's debate because it is two years since I saw Leyla Zana in prison in Ankara. She was waiting for the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights, which was reviewing the sentence given to her nine years previously. I had arranged to see her beforehand, but there was a difficulty when I got to the prison because the staff did not expect me. There was a challenge at the main gate and it took some time to get into the prison. I sat in the prison governor's office for one and a half hours while he attempted to contact a Minister in the Turkish Government to obtain approval for my visit. The prison governor thought that Leyla Zana should not be in prison and that she should have been released.

I took Leyla Zana a birthday card because it was her birthday. The cards was in Welsh and was X-rayed before being handed over because the authorities did not understand the language and were afraid that it contained a subversive message. The only message it contained was to emphasise the point that it is possible for people in one country to live peacefully together despite differences in background and language.

The meeting with Leyla lasted about two and a half hours, and I was grateful to the prison authorities for allowing me that length of time. I had heard much about her and seen pictures of her. When she met me, prison officers escorted her. She is a young, attractive woman of great dignity. We sat down together and she said how grateful she was for the many letters that she had received from people in Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom. She said that although she did not speak English, the letters meant a great deal to her because they showed that people were thinking of her.

Bianca Jagger was to have accompanied me, but the Turkish authorities said that she could not come because they have strict regulations on who can gain access to someone in prison. Visitors must have a particular or family reason to see a prisoner. My reason was that I chair the all-party group on human rights. I am also a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Union Commission on Human Rights, where a committee with six members selected from all countries campaigns for the human rights of members of parliament, some of whom are unfortunately in prison, in detention or cannot carry out their mandates.

The prison was old and derelict, like most prisons in Turkey. Leyla told me that she was allowed access to television and could read books and newspapers. In the past few years, she had even been allowed her own small garden in the prison. She said that she had not received any visits from her husband for many years because it was too dangerous for him to come to the prison. When her son last visited her in the early 1990s, he was detained overnight, so she told him not to come again. I believe that both of her children now live outside Turkey. She said that she was expecting a decision from the European Court, which was taking a long time.

It was a great privilege to talk to Leyla because she is a woman of great determination and sincerity, and she has strong convictions. In the past, she was offered amnesty on the ground that she was sick, but she refused it because she believes that the other three Kurdish MPs who were detained at the same trial should also be freed. It takes a truly remarkable person to make that sort of decision. She is young, wants to express her strong political views and has a young family that she wants to see grow up; yet she is still in prison.

After taking part of their parliamentary oath at the swearing in ceremony in Turkish and in Kurdish, Leyla and three other Turkish/Kurdish MPs were sentenced in 1994 to 15 years in jail. In May 1984, I swore my oath in the House of Commons in English and Welsh. There was no problem here, but there still is in Turkey.

At Leyla Zana's trial, she was accused of taking her oath in Kurdish and of wearing a hairband in the Kurdish colours: green, red and yellow. At her trial, she said that she had taken her oath in Turkish and Kurdish, and that she had said in Kurdish that she was swearing the oath for the sake of fraternity between the Kurdish and the Turkish peoples. Furthermore, she said that she had worn the Kurdish colours in protest against a legal provision that prohibited their use in the south-eastern part of Turkey in the late 1980s.

Leyla Zana was also accused of attending the funeral of a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party—the PKK. She explained that she was present at that funeral because the person in question was her cousin. Naturally, she could not deny her blood relationship with him and thus condemn her own family. She had also attended the funerals of members of the Turkish military forces.

Zana was the first Kurdish woman to be elected to Turkey's Parliament. She is a former candidate for the Nobel peace prize, and a winner of the Sakharov prize for freedom of thought, which is awarded by the European Parliament.

In July 2001, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the initial trial was unfair and called for her release or retrial. This January, the Turkish Government eventually passed legislation that required the retrial of any court cases that had successfully appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The four MPs obtained a retrial under that legislation.

Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak were put on trial in December 1994 for membership of an armed gang and were sentenced to 15 years in prison. In July 2001, the European Court concluded that they had not received a fair trial and that article 6 of the European convention on human rights was violated owing to the presence of a military judge, the fact that the defendants were unable to defend themselves against a new charge that was introduced at the last hearing of the original trial, and the fact that the defendants and their lawyers were not allowed to question prosecution witnesses. Even so, it took until January this year for the Turkish Government to act. That was when the criminal procedures law was amended to allow for retrials in such cases. Yusuf Alatas, the defence lawyer for Leyla Zana and the other defendants, immediately applied to Ankara state security court No. 1 for a retrial, which was granted. However, his request that the defendants immediately he released until the trial was denied.

As a European Union candidate, Turkey must meet the criteria for membership that were agreed at the Copenhagen European Council in 1993—the Copenhagen criteria—which deal with stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities. Turkey started working towards fulfilling the criteria in March 2001. The Copenhagen European Council of December 2002 stated that if Turkey met the Copenhagen criteria by the 2004 Council of Europe, it would recommend that accession negotiations commence. Therefore, current events in Turkey are particularly sensitive.

The first retrial was adjourned on 21 February 2003, the second on 28 March, the third on 25April 2003 and the fifth on 20 June 2003. The date of the next hearing is 18 July—this Friday. The defence lawyer's report concluded that:

"The re-trial of Leyla Zana, Orhan Dogan, Hatip Dicle and Selim Sadak is being conducted in a manner which violates both the principle of fair trial and the points determined in the decision of the European Human Rights Court, dated July 17, 2001. Until now, the practices of the Court have been far from being objective."

In addition, Mr. Alatas stated that

"the practice and decisions of the court at the hearing on May 23. 2003, clearly indicated that the court was not objective, that the trial was being conducted totally along the lines of the wishes of the prosecution, that none of the requests of the defence would be accepted, that a real trial was not being conducted, and the court would persist with its verdict taken in 1994."

A report by Paul Richmond, a British barrister, on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers was published in June. It presents even more damning evidence of the Kafkaesque nature of the retrial. It says that certain aspects of the right to a fair trial were respected, but that there are

"profound concerns that the principle of equality of arms between the defence and the prosecution was not observed and that the tribunal was neither independent nor impartial".

Let me give some examples of that. The prosecution was allowed to present 26 witnesses, but the defence was not allowed to call even one witness. The defence was prevented from directly asking relevant questions of witnesses for the prosecution. The prosecution failed to disclose material evidence against the accused, a witness for the prosecution whose first language was Kurdish rather than Turkish was not provided with an interpreter in the courtroom and the defence was denied the possibility of having its questions of witnesses and submissions to the court entered directly into the court record. I could go on. If that is Turkish justice, I would not be very happy about being tried by a court in Turkey.

Such clearly unjust procedures are reminiscent not only of Kafka but of a play by Harold Pinter called "Mountain Language", which hon. Members may have seen at the National Theatre, in which the mother of a Kurdish prisoner in a Turkish prison was allowed to speak with her son only in Turkish—a language that she cannot speak.

Although Turkey's recent constitutional reforms have improved the situation on paper regarding the Kurdish language, I am afraid that the reality is very different. It is important to look not at the aspirations but at the reality. In its 2003 world report published this month, Human Rights Watch notes that the Turkish Parliament's August 2002 legislation lifted restrictions on minority language courses and broadcasting, including Kurdish, but the reforms were hedged with qualifications that could block effective implementation.

Most of us have been to Turkey on various occasions. I was at the Ilisu dam some years ago. I was driven there by a driver who had sold his only cow to buy a dish so that he could watch Kurdish language television. There are examples of such continuing attitudes to the Kurdish language.

Leyla Zana's lawyer has confirmed to us today that at the defence's formal request for a retrial the presiding judge refused and commented in open court that

"the deficiencies and mistakes identified by the European Court of Human Rights will not change the guilt of the accused".

The same judge presided at the initial trial in 1994 and remains the presiding judge in the current retrial. Obviously, comments such as that must cast doubts on the judge's and the court's impartiality.

The International Commission of Jurists also has misgivings about the independence of the Turkish judiciary. Although normally independent, it often responds to directives about threats to the state issued by the Government and the national security council. The report of the European Parliament ad hoc delegation to the retrial in April this year stated that

"there was little evidence that things had changed substantially since 1994."

In particular, those who compiled the report were unhappy that the defence lawyers were

"unable to put direct questions to the witnesses".

That practice had also been prohibited at the original trial. Members noted that the trial gave Turkey an opportunity to show the world that it was determined to implement its reforms, but so far there is no evidence that this was the case.

I would like to end with a quotation from Leyla Zana, from her original trial in 1994. She said:

"My worst crime, in the view of the prosecution, seems to be a phrase I spoke in Kurdish on the brotherhood of Kurds and Turks and their coexistence in equality and democracy when I took the loyalty oath in Parliament. Even the colour of my clothes seems to have been a 'separatist crime'. Furthermore, simply by mentioning the existence of the Kurdish people and Kurdistan, by peaceably demanding recognition of Kurdish culture and identity in a democratic system and within existing borders, I have supposedly defended the aims of the Kurdistan Workers Party…But that party is engaged in an armed struggle, while all my activity is aimed at silencing the weapons and seeking a peaceful solution to the Kurdish problem."

That is what she said in her defence at her original trial in 1994. It is an absolute disgrace that four of our fellow parliamentarians languish in a prison in Turkey for doing little more than using their own language and displaying the colours of the minority of which they are members. I hope that while Turkey continues to keep these people in prison its route to accession will be obstructed by those who believe in human rights and democracy.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) for her speech and I congratulate her on obtaining the debate and on her continued interest in the case of Leyla Zana. In a statement in the House this morning, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary paid tribute to my hon. Friend's commitment to human rights and her work on Iraq. I wonder how many other Parliaments around the world have such a redoubtable champion of human rights. There is a saying that hard cases make bad law but, when it comes to human rights, it is only the individual who is the centre of our attention. The fact that my hon. Friend went and talked to Leyla Zana in prison means that she brings so much more to the debate than simply a factual report of the conditions of that sad case.

As my hon. Friend informed us, Leyla Zana and three other former Democratic party deputies, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak remain in prison in Turkey and are being retried by the Ankara state security court. That retrial is extremely important for the individuals concerned, and as a symbol of how Turkey is changing. The legislative reforms passed in August 2002 and February 2003 that made the retrial possible were a significant advance in the protection of human rights in Turkey.

I hear what my hon. Friend the Minister has said about the changes that have taken place, but I believe the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) far more. I spoke at a rally of Kurdish people that took place at 3 o'clock last Sunday, and most of them said that change has taken place only on paper, not in reality. That is the point that my hon. Friend makes. Will my hon. Friend the Minister give a decisive answer to the last question that she asked? Will he say whether Turkish accession negotiations should be allowed to begin before these sorts of human rights violations are brought to a full stop?

I shall answer the points of my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley. Her Majesty's Government, the European Commission and the European Parliament have always taken a keen interest in this case. In 1995, Leyla Zana received the European Parliament's Sakharov prize—an annual human rights award. I am glad that my hon. Friend continues to ensure that the case maintains a high profile. Leyla Zana is also a journalist, and her writings have been translated into English and published in the United States. PEN's writers in prison committee have adopted her, and I pay tribute to the important work carried out by PEN on behalf of writers in prison. There are still too many books that remain banned in Turkey.

Article 11 of title II of the draft constitution—I stress that it is a draft constitution and that nothing has been finalised—for the European Union on freedom of expression and information states:

"Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."

It continues:

"The freedom and pluralism of the media shall be respected."

I welcome, as I think the House will, the standards laid down in the draft constitution.

It would not be appropriate for me as a Minister to comment on the conduct of an ongoing trial. However, I can fully support my hon. Friend's previous assertion, that

"as Members of Parliament, we should be concerned about Members of Parliament in other countries who cannot fulfil their mandates, perhaps because they have been sent to prison unfairly."— [Official Report, 2 May 2002; Vol. 384, c.1098.]

The Government have always maintained that the prosecution of democratically elected politicians for the non-violent expression of their views is wrong. My hon. Friend has spoken for all Members and Ministers. I will make sure that a copy of Hansard containing her speech is sent to the Turkish embassy. I will also ensure that Leyla's lawyer and family know of the concern that the British Parliament has for her case.

Successive Governments have monitored this case closely since 1994. Following the lifting of their parliamentary immunity, Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak were tried with four other Democratic party deputies for treason under article 125 of the Turkish penal code. They were found not guilty of treason, but were convicted of lesser charges under article 168.2 of the penal code, which refers to membership of an armed society or band committed, inter alia, to destroying the territorial integrity of the state. They were sentenced to 15 years in prison. They appealed to the Turkish appeal court and finally to the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds of breaches of their right to liberty, to a fair trial, to freedom of expression and to freedom from discrimination on political and ethnic grounds in the enjoyment of those rights.

On 17 July 2001, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously found Turkey in violation of articles 6.3d and 6.1 of the European convention on human rights, and ruled that the deputies had been tried by a court that lacked independence and impartiality and that they had not enjoyed a fair trial.

Britain has played its part in the Council of Europe's Council of Ministers to help to ensure that the necessary measures are taken to implement this ruling. On 30 April 2002, for example, the Council urged the Turkish Government to comply with the Court's decision without further delay. We expect all member states of the Council of Europe to comply fully with the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.

We also raised the case of Leyla Zana and her codefendants with the Turkish authorities at various levels, and regularly raise it with Turkish officials in Ankara, and at more formal events and proceedings, such as in the continuing human rights dialogue between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and its counterparts in Turkey. From those contacts, I can report that the current Turkish Government, who came to power long after the events in question began, are as convinced as we are that the retrial should be a fair and just process. We are both following the progress of the trial attentively, and will no doubt both have things to say about the outcome once the judicial process has run its course.

I can also report that we are monitoring the trial closely through the British embassy in Ankara and are co-ordinating with EU partners to ensure that all hearings are attended. For instance, a representative of the British embassy attended a hearing on 25 April, and we received a report of the most recent hearing on 20 June from representatives from the embassies of the previous and current EU presidencies of Greece and Italy respectively. British embassy representatives have also met Yusuf Alatas, Leyla Zana's lawyer.

The retrial is symbolic of a sea change in the protection of human rights in Turkey. Turkey has undergone significant reform since the far-reaching constitutional changes of October 2001. In part, that reform has been driven by Turkey's EU candidacy—a candidacy that the Government fully support. Human rights are a central element of the Copenhagen political criteria, which Turkey, like all EU candidates, must meet before it can begin accession negotiations. The criteria require that Turkey must achieve

"stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities".

They therefore require Turkey to address many of the problems highlighted by the case of Leyla Zana and her co-defendants. In this way, Turkey's EU candidacy reinforces the Justice and Development Party—AKP—Government's own reform agenda, but they have made it clear that they see the reforms not as a means to EU accession but as an end in themselves for the benefit of the Turkish people.

In the past six months, Turkey has made considerable progress towards meeting these criteria. It has passed four legislative packages of reform, each of which contains clear evidence that Turkey's political leaders are determined to align the country with EU standards and have brought about far-reaching change. Implementation remains the most difficult challenge, as the AKP Government have acknowledged, but there has been significant progress. Examples include: abolishing the death penalty; introducing better training for the judiciary; improving pre-trial detention and prison facilities; lifting the state of emergency where it remained; ratifying the UN international covenants on civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights; and, of course, allowing for and carrying out retrials in line with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. Paradoxically, the case of Leyla Zana and her fellow deputies highlights the progress that Turkey has made since the mid-1990s, in particular in respect of freedom of expression, the rights of minorities, and the professionalism of the Turkish judiciary.

Implementation of the reforms is crucial, as Turkey's EU candidacy will ultimately be judged on that. Problems still exist and should not be forgotten, but the attitude towards human rights in Turkey is fundamentally different from how it was in 1994.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this matter before the House rises for the summer recess—and, indeed, before the local schools' summer term ends.

The experience of head teachers in Fareham is that the increase in school funds this year has not met the higher salary costs that were incurred because of the Government's actions. As a consequence, teacher vacancies have remained unfilled, learning and support assistants' places are being cut, and school reserves are being used to maintain the status quo. Also, the prospect for the next financial year looks bleak.

All the schools that I have spoken to acknowledge that there has been a significant increase in school funding in recent years. In Hampshire, the Government spending per pupil has increased by £1,040 in the past six years. As a consequence of that funding increase, schools have been able to expand their teaching staff and recruit more learning and support assistants.

It would be appropriate to register schools' concerns about how that funding increase has been brought about. A good proportion of the increase comes from funds that schools have had to bid for to tackle particular issues. Schools have told me that they have concerns about that. Once the initiatives have been entrenched in the school and the funding streams have ended, they are left to meet the cost of those initiatives from their own budget. Schools have also found that the funding streams are unpredictable. Often, the bidding for additional funds takes place during the course of the school year, and schools have found it difficult to respond to that. However, I recognise that the Government have heard those messages from head teachers, and have listened to them. That is to their credit.

There should be increased certainty of funding for schools to enable them to budget to meet their priorities. Given that the Government have a three-year comprehensive spending review, they should be able to give schools an indication of their funding for that period. Yesterday, at the hearing of the Select Committee on Education and Skills, the Secretary of State suggested that that would happen. Fareham schools would welcome that.

Schools in my constituency face a funding crisis. In answer to a question asked by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), the Secretary of State for Education and Skills said that

"the funding of schools is a shared responsibility between national Government and local government…Local education authorities take decisions of various kinds—how much to distribute to individual schools, how much is operated centrally, and so on. I believe that both the national Government and local authorities should take responsibility for the effects of those decisions on the funding of individual schools."— [Official Report, 26 June 2003; Vol. 407, c. 1187.]

Hampshire county council received one of the lowest financial settlements of any shire county this year; it was significantly—just under 4 per cent.—below the national average. That, of course, is a consequence of the redistribution of resources away from shire counties such as Hampshire. Despite that settlement, Hampshire county council decided that it could not allow schools to suffer because of the redistribution of funding. In response to the findings of the Government's questionnaire, which tried— unsuccessfully, in my view—to pin the blame on LEAs, the county education officer wrote:

"The County Council, however, gives a very high priority to the education of its pupils and decided to exceed the pass porting target even though this was met from local resources and contributed to a council tax increase of 15% . This increase flowed through to schools. Schools, therefore, received more than the Government specified."

Hampshire county council certainly recognises its share of responsibility together with the Government. Not only did it passport 105.1 per cent. of the target to schools, but it was one of only four councils in the southeast that increased the amount devolved to schools by a greater amount than the increase in the schools budget. That was a clear policy initiative by Hampshire county council.

It is fair to say, and I hope that the Minister will recognise it in his remarks, that Hampshire county council and council tax payers in Hampshire have fulfilled their responsibilities towards local schools. That is the background against which I shall set out my remarks.

I shall explain what head teachers in Fareham consider to be the cause of the funding shortfall and discuss their response to it. They have attributed their financial problems to significant rises in salaries and related costs. Those costs account for a significant proportion of their budget. One local secondary school said that salary and related costs accounted for 85 per cent. of its budget. Ten to 12 head teachers in my constituency cited four reasons for the increase in those costs.

First, head teachers cite the hike in national insurance contributions: in one secondary school, that accounted for about £27,000. Secondly, they cited the increase in contributions to teachers' pension funds: in the same school the increase was £105,000—a significant amount in a school of any size. Thirdly, heads have cited the funding of performance-related pay as a factor in the shortfall. They recognise that that factor will recur as teachers progress through the criteria for each threshold, improving their performance and becoming entitled to further performance payments, which must be funded. This year, head teachers felt that there was a shortfall in the Government's calculations of how much money should go to schools in Hampshire. Fourthly, the collapse of the nine salary grades into six has led to grade creep, in the sense that, in the new structure, if a salary point is not included in the grade below, teachers have had to move up to the next grade, with the consequent increase in salaries.

Together, such increases are significant: a primary school in my constituency said that the increased salary costs this year were £36,000. In another, much larger school, the increase is £98,000. From time to time, Ministers have blamed the decline in pupil numbers for the deficits of individual schools, but those deficits are despite flat pupil numbers in the first case and a rise in pupil numbers in the second.

What have the consequences been for local schools in tackling these deficits? I have received feedback from nearly half the schools in my constituency, and I base my comments on how individual heads and boards of governors have decided to balance the books.

In several schools the governors have used reserves to meet the shortfall, but that option is not cost free. Often, those reserves have been intended to contribute towards a building plan, and such plans have had to be deferred or cancelled to meet the funding shortfall. That is clearly a one-off exercise, as the piggy bank can be emptied once only. A continued squeeze on funding next year will have serious consequences in those schools. They will experience a double whammy: they will not only have to claw back the funding deficit from this year, which they met through reserves, but will have to cope with any funding decreases.

What other impacts have there been on schools that did not have reserves? Vacancies that have arisen because a member of staff has left have not been filled, or have been filled on a part-time basis, with other teachers increasing their teaching time to meet the shortfall. In a couple of schools, non-teaching positions have been converted into teaching positions, and the administrative work load has been shared among other staff members. Several teaching staff on temporary contracts have had their contracts terminated early or not renewed; again, their teaching time has been passed on to other staff members, increasing their former colleagues' work load.

Hampshire county council advises me that at least one primary school in my constituency is making 1.4 teaching staff redundant. Schools are trying to save money on supply teachers, and either the head or the deputy head fills in for lessons. That means that they spend less time giving the school the leadership that it needs and the staff the support that they need. Schools are cutting back on buying textbooks. One school has cut expenditure on textbooks by 65 per cent., and expenditure on staff professional development by 80 per cent., to avoid making teachers redundant.

We have seen the end of contracts for some learning support assistants, while others have had to reapply for fewer jobs. In one case, a school dropped from six to four LSAs.

The question from head teachers is: how can they implement the work load initiative if they are cutting back on the people to whom teachers should be transferring their work load? That is a problem that many will have to wrestle with this year and next. At another school, the senior teacher leading the learning support unit for children with particular education needs was redeployed to fill a vacancy elsewhere in the school, leaving the unit without a full-time leader. Schools are cutting back in other areas too, whether that is the maintenance of grounds and buildings or information and communications technology costs.

I have been impressed by the resourcefulness of heads and governors in trying to close the gap in their budget. Their primary focus is to avoid compromising the education of their pupils, and they are committed to maintaining the diversity and richness of the curriculum and carrying out some of the initiatives specified by the Government. I want to take the opportunity to thank them, teachers and parents for all their hard work to mitigate the impact of the funding shortfall. They have done a sterling job, as have the county council and council tax payers, in trying to fill the gap left by the shortfall in Government funding.

Where do we go next? One chair of governors has written:

"The cuts we have made cannot be repeated in another year and will damage the life of the school…Smaller teaching groups, better support for less able pupils, inclusion measures to help disaffected pupils, stimulation for more able pupils…more administrative staff to reduce teacher workloads must all become unaffordable."

Schools in Fareham are concerned that this will be the first of several difficult years for school funding. That concern is shared by Hampshire county council, whose county treasurer wrote to me recently to say that if the general grant floor and schools formula spending share per pupil are both set at 2.5 per cent., there would be an estimated funding shortfall of £11 million next year, which is equivalent to 2 per cent. of this year's budget.

In the same letter, the treasurer pointed out that school spending nationally is set to rise by 5.2 per cent., so clearly some LEAs will do well if Hampshire is going to get only a 2.5 per cent. increase. In answer to an oral question by me last month, the Minister said:

"We are committed to ensuring that every school receives a reasonable per pupil increase for next year and the year after that."— [Official Report, 26 June 2003; Vol. 407, c. 1195.]

My concern is about what the Minister views as reasonable, and whether he will agree with the view of heads, teachers and governors in Fareham schools. Will schools locally see a 5.2 per cent. increase in school funding, or will it be more like the 2.5 per cent. increase suggested by the county treasurer? Will they get a raw deal again next year?

Based on the Government's track record, Hampshire schools can expect to receive a below-average increase. Last year, the average national increase in spending per pupil was 6 per cent, while in Hampshire it was 5.2 per cent., and in the previous year national spending again increased by 6 per cent. per pupil, but in Hampshire the Government's contribution increased by only 5.5 per cent. Will the Government rectify that trend?

Where will the funding shortfall leave Fareham schools? The schools that have emptied their piggy bank this year will need to consider some of the same budget cuts that other schools have made, particularly in the largest element of costs—staff. The schools that have already made cuts may need to consider fresh cuts next year unless their funding position stabilises. Short-term measures such as saving on maintenance cannot continue indefinitely, and at some point they will need to be reversed. To reverse those cuts, cuts will be needed elsewhere. That is not scaremongering; those concerns have been expressed to me by head teachers and chairs of governors in my constituency.

The solution is in the Government's hands. As Hampshire has proved this year, authorities can increase the burden on council tax payers to protect school budgets, and the Government will need to consider by how much they are prepared to increase their contribution to Hampshire schools to protect the quality and diversity of their education. The closer the increase is to the national average increase of 5.2 per cent., the lower the risk that teacher and learning support assistant numbers will need to be cut. The smaller the increase, the greater the likelihood that schools will once again have to consider more reductions in staff costs, putting at risk the quality and diversity of education in local schools. It is time for the Government to recognise that Fareham's schools need a fair deal on funding.

As the Secretary of State for Education and Skills said in the House in June, councils and the Government have to take

"responsibility for the effects of those decisions on the funding of individual schools."— [Official Report, 26 June 2003; Vol. 407, c. 1187.]

Given the county council's track record on school funding, without a fair deal for Fareham schools next year the spotlight will be on the Government, who will be held responsible by parents, teachers and governors for their decision on the funding of schools.

It is conventional on these occasions to congratulate the hon. Member concerned on securing the debate. Today I do so sincerely, because the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) has made a thoughtful and serious speech. We have shared several debates in this Chamber, and I hope that I shall not do irreparable damage to the hon. Gentleman's political career when I say that his speech was the best use of an Adjournment debate in which I have been a participant. I may worry him even more when I say that I agree with much of what he said.

The hon. Gentleman explained matters with a fair degree of generosity to the present Government, and also assessed some of the difficulties in the system in a reasonably fair-minded way. As I have said, I do not want to end his political career, so it is just as well that not too many people are present to listen. I hope that the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), who has just arrived in the Chamber, will keep the secret. I hope also to give a serious response to the points that the hon. Member for Fareham made.

In the time available to him, the hon. Gentleman could not mention the progress that has been made in Hampshire schools. in both primary and secondary sectors. I am sure that he has seen that progress when he has visited schools. I was interested to dig up the statistics; there are statistics on everything, but these show that the percentage of children in Hampshire who are doing well at English at age 11 is above the national average. For maths the figure is at the national average, and for science it is above it.

For GCSEs, the performance of secondary schools is not, interestingly enough, as far above the national average as one might think. There are no doubt relevant educational issues that we could discuss at another time, but none the less there is clear evidence of teachers, heads, governors and the wider community working in a committed way to fulfil the potential of all pupils in Hampshire. The hon. Gentleman's remarks made it clear that he has great admiration for the work that those people do, and that is shared by the Government.

The hon. Gentleman was generous enough to refer to the increase of about 36 per. cent. in funding to Hampshire through the local formula over the past five years. He made reference also to the increase in the school standards direct grant, which has been significant. He was not able to touch on the capital position, about which I asked my officials to find out. It is striking that Hampshire's capital budget for this year is £71 million, whereas it was £15 million to £20 million in 1998–99. I hope that that makes a long-term contribution to the education of pupils in his constituency.

The hon. Gentleman devoted a significant part of his remarks to analysis of the problem, and to his solution to the way in which the funding formula distributes money to Hampshire as a whole, and then raised points about how money is distributed from Hampshire local education authorities to schools. I shall deal with those matters. This has been a year of significant change in the schools funding system—notably with respect to the way in which central Government distribute grants to LEAs, and the way in which the LEAs distribute grants to schools. I shall deal with that topic.

I think that the hon. Gentleman would agree that the old system for the distribution of funds from the Government to the LEAs was fatally flawed. It was out of date; it was based on the 1991 census. It was even more complicated than the current system, and impossible to explain. It did not reflect the division of responsibilities between LEAs and schools. The hon. Gentleman will know that under the current system there is real clarity about the LEA block of funding and the proportion that is available to schools. I think that he would accept that that is a step forward.

Our aim with the new system has been to ensure that central Government will attach a similar amount of money to similar pupils in different parts of the country. That is why every LEA receives three blocks of funding for each pupil. First there is an entitlement for every pupil: just over £2,000 for a primary pupil and just over £2,650 for a secondary school pupil. Secondly, there is a top-up for deprivation and additional educational needs. Thirdly, there is recognition of higher costs for salaries, recruitment and retention.

The new system is based on the evidence that we have about extra costs arising from deprivation, and other extra costs. The hon. Gentleman will know that, in relation to additional educational needs, we have used a wider definition of poverty than has been conventional in the past. Instead of simply using the income support indicator to recognise poverty, we have ensured in the new system that the funding formula recognises families in low-wage work, and that should rebound to the benefit of Hampshire where employment is high but where there are significant pockets of low wage-work.

The hon. Gentleman will also recognise that the additional costs of education in London and the southeast notably impose particular pressures on schools. The new system recognises 99 authorities that face those additional costs, and we have tried to recognise that in the system.

The hon. Gentleman did not discuss sparsity, so I shall not dwell on that, but move to this year's funding difficulties. He started by talking about problems in areas where pupil numbers are falling, as is notably the case in the primary sector. Nationwide, there is a fall of about 50,000 in the number of pupils in the primary sector. My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that that is not a problem in Hampshire. It has an increasing population, which explains why its overcall cash increase of 5.9 per cent. translates into a 3.2 per cent. increase per pupil. That shows a significant increase in the number of pupils, which brings its own problems, and I have just completed a statutory instrument with the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) about the way in which the system copes with rising numbers.

My constituency has the opposite problem, which also imposes its own burdens. The hon. Gentleman probably knows more about South Shields than many other hon. Members because of his former candidacy. He is not the only Opposition Member who has fought South Shields. The hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) cast a blazing trail in South Shields during the 1987 general election, so there are at least three of us who can testify to its joys.

I shall dwell on the situation this year, because it has been a uniquely difficult year for school funding. It has been unique for the amount of extra money that central Government have put in, but also for some of the costs that schools have faced. The hon. Member for Fareham referred to the increased cost of the teachers' pension scheme. It is important to put on the record that that cost has been taken care of separately from the per-pupil increases to which he referred. He will know from answers that I have given that those increases are conducted on a like-for-like basis. The cost of pension increases is factored into the system on top of that at, from memory, about £587 million nationally, and that has been fed into the system. He also referred to increased national insurance contributions, and it is true that schools have had to pay those increases for their workers.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about the upper pay scale, which has risen in a number of contexts as a significant cost for schools. The upper pay scale is not just a cost that arises as a matter of course; it arises as a matter of choice. He will know that the pay system for teachers has two key elements in addition to the basic uplift. Recognition of competence—the so-called threshold agreement—pays an extra £2,000 to teachers outside London and an extra £4,000 to teachers inside London.

There is also an excellence element above the threshold—the so-called upper pay scale. There is a national scale, but the cost to each school reflects the decisions made by heads and governors on how many teachers to promote from one point to the next, and he will know that, nationally, about 90 per cent. of teachers progress from upper pay scale point 1 to 2, notwithstanding that the Government have argued strongly that the upper pay scale should recognise excellence rather than competence. That is why, when we submitted our evidence last week to the School Teachers Review Body for this year, we made new proposals to support the decisions of governors and heads in exercising their discretion over the upper pay scale points.

Many head teachers' associations have argued strongly that heads should be supported by stronger guidance from the centre, and we have made a commitment to provide that. We have also provided for every governing body to decide in April each year how many teachers the head should promote up the upper pay scale. As John Dunford of the Secondary Heads Association said last week, the current progression up the scale is unaffordable, and it is important that we play our part in supporting the decisions of heads and governors.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the cost of supply teachers. Of course that is a cost that we want to try to squeeze—not by having heads taking on those responsibilities, but by trying to minimise the amount of time that teachers have to spend out of the classroom, either on courses or through sickness. The extent to which we can squeeze that cost—which is a significant bill of, I think, about £950 million nationwide for the annual costs of teacher supply—releases money for other purposes.

Looking forward, we obviously need to reflect on and learn from the experience of this year. Perhaps I could address the hon. Gentleman's final two or three points by setting out how my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State plans to go forward. The hon. Gentleman will know that on 15 May my right hon. Friend set clear criteria for moving forward in 2004–05 and 2005–06.

The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to the importance of a multi-year planning framework. It is certainly our intention and aspiration to move to three-year funding of schools, but he will know that we do not fund schools directly—we require local authorities to engage in that process. There is obviously a particular difficulty in the schooling area because of changing pupil numbers in any one school, which pose a particular burden on any planning framework. None the less, we want to move to a three-year planning framework, as he does. The decisions of the School Teachers Review Body are absolutely critical to that. We argued to the STRB last year that a three-year framework for school funding was essential. Unfortunately, no one else supported us, not even the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends, and we were unable to make any headway with the STRB last year. This year, I am pleased to report that the 2Local Government Association and the two head teachers' associations have argued for a two-year deal to the end of the comprehensive spending review period, and I hope that that will make a difference.

We also need to get the balance right between money that goes direct to schools from the centre and money that is fed through the local government framework. The hon. Gentleman referred to the difficulties faced by some of his schools through the reduction in standards funds. In this context, we face a clear dilemma. He and I would like to see more money distributed as necessary direct to schools through the LEA framework in a simple way that does not require any bidding and has no ring-fencing. That is what we have tried to do this year, but as he will know from his own schools, although many schools and LEAs argued for it, they do not like the way in which it has worked. We are carefully examining the stated plans for further devolution of funding and the reduction of standards funds grants, because there have been difficulties and turbulence in the system. I can assure him that we are looking hard at those plans.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to the importance of earlier budget notification to schools. He may have more of a business background than I, but even someone who has not run a business will know that if one knows one's budget only in February or March, it makes things difficult for the start of the financial year in April. That system is clearly badly in need of reform, so that we get much earlier notification to schools of their budgets as well as having longer-term budget setting. We are strongly determined to do that, so that schools know earlier what money they have to play with.

It is also important—this is not a matter that the hon. Gentleman was able to dwell on—that the balance between out-of-school funding for special needs or other collective services and in-school money should be right. Although Hampshire has a laudable record in that area, as it has in others, other LEAs have struggled to contain out-of-school costs.

I hope that I have responded in kind to the seriousness of the hon. Gentleman's speech. I felt in his speech a determination to seek greater funding for education because it is the most important priority for the nation. He will find no stronger supporter in that matter than me. The quantum of education funding that has been given to our schools over the past generations—the point applies to Labour Governments in the 1970s as well as Conservative Governments after them—has been too low. We must correct that in Hampshire, as well as elsewhere. I look forward to the hon. Gentleman's support as we try to argue the case for greater investment in our education system over the years ahead.